Vaccinations are not about you

©2019 Christy K Robinson

[Edit in 2023: This article was written and published 9 months before COVID-19 appeared in the United States. The facts are unchanged.]

I'm annoyed at the selfish comments by people who say a preventable disease is no big deal, or they had it and survived, or similar dreck that's all about them.

I’m annoyed by the crazy conspiracies that originate on mommy blogs and “health” websites that are not written by physicians, scientists, and immunologists. I hate the fact that there are parents who intentionally infect their children with diseases-- because it’s child abuse. Why would you make a child suffer, ever, if it can be prevented?

I’m annoyed—and repulsed—by the religious fundamentalists that say vaccines are formulated using the cells of aborted fetuses. They are not. And vaccinations do not cause autism.

My mother was chronically ill from her birth, and she took a veritable cocktail of meds that allowed her to live but suppressed her immune system. Because people would go to church sick, or send kids to school sick, she was often a prisoner in our home. We kids had to take precautionary measures. Mom belonged to a support group of others who had similar illness, and they were also restricted. They often caught colds or flu because they were breathed upon in the doctors' office, and would have to be hospitalized for pneumonia a short time later.

Our family always "patriotically" got the flu shot, the smallpox and polio shots, or whatever vaccinations were available so we wouldn’t experience life-threatening diseases ourselves, and we would not be carriers to others. I had the chickenpox and the measles and mumps as a child before the vaccinations were developed, and yes, I obviously survived. But some children do not survive the high fevers, scarring, the blindness, the brain damage from encephalitis.

Now, in this age, we have many more people, both adults and children, who have fragile health during or after chemotherapy or congenital illness. Some of them can't have vaccinations because of their compromised immunity. Just because you might not recognize their illness, vulnerability, or disability, doesn’t mean they don’t suffer. When my mother would park in the blue disability spaces that she had a permit for, people would criticize her for looking healthy and parking there anyway. Because she put on makeup and styled her hair and wore attractive clothes, she didn’t “look” like an invalid unless she was sitting in a wheelchair. Yet my mother suffered every day of her life, and died at age 54.

Should immune-compromised people be forced to live in a virtual bubble so healthy people can avoid the tiny needle prick of a vaccination, or indulge a fantasy that has been disproved time and time again by scientists with eight or more years of postgraduate education?

As an adult who enjoys rather high immunity anyway, I still get the shots for flu, pneumonia, and shingles because I'm a music teacher and church musician who circulates with many people, shakes hands, and sometimes hugs, and I don't want to carry diseases from one person to another. When my niece was pregnant, I got the DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus) so I couldn't pass whooping cough from some stranger through me to her newborn.

Think about your community: your family, your friends (and their vulnerable kids), your church, your neighbors who shop or work where you do. We cannot be "rugged individualists" and call ourselves caring, compassionate, godly people.

If we know we can help stop the spread of disease, permanent damages, and misery, why would we not?  

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. Philippians 2:5-8 MSG

It’s not about being some rebellious adolescent. It’s about the people you love, and the people you don’t love, who breathe the same air and touch the same produce in the supermarket, and sit behind you in church or the movie theater. It’s about your children’s friends and their teachers. It’s about compromised children who have recently overcome cancer, or who need organ transplants.

This is not some what-if dystopian fantasy: this has actually happened. A terminally ill boy was taken to the UC Davis medical center with seizures: he had been exposed to measles by an unvaccinated child. The story is HERE.

But it’s not about you. Get over yourself. 

It's about being selfless because it's what God does and we want to be like him. We don't have to suffer crucifixion. But we can get a tiny vaccination for ourselves or our kids because it's right for our loved ones, and it's right for the community at large. Preventing disease and suffering is a godly, kind, merciful thing to do.

*****

Christy K Robinson is author of these books:

We Shall Be Changed (2010)

Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014)

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)  

Effigy Hunter (2015)  

Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:  

Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)

Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)

William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)