By BARBARA SIMPSON
The news has been full of controversy concerning the vaccinations for COVID. Good or bad? Safe or not? Healthy or deadly? The controversy has spread across the country, with the result that while many people have had the shots, many others have not and, in fact, refuse to do so.
Various states have passed regulations that put a physician’s license in danger if he or she speaks of the possibility that the COVID shots might be dangerous. They are legally not allowed to have an opinion on the issue – – even though there is evidence that, in fact, there are legitimate questions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
That puts us in a dangerous situation in which the law is being used to force us to believe a certain way regardless of our own individual reasoning.
While all this is going on, there is another area of vaccinations that might cause an even worse problem than the spread of COVID.
I’m talking about what we have traditionally called “childhood diseases” — you know, measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella, whooping cough — and don’t forget, polio.
WHO and UNICEF have issued a press release warning of the possibility of a major measles outbreak. They say that because of the interruption of normal medical care due to the COVID situation, many children have not had their regular annual vaccinations against these illnesses.
It should be noted that the concern is not just for the United States. The number of cases of measles has increased across the world and with all the political disruptions, there are millions of refugees moving from country to country taking the diseases with them.
The release says that in 2020, some 23 million children did not receive “basic childhood vaccines through routine health services” — a figure that is 3.9 million more than in 2019 and the highest number since 2009.
The problem in this country is that because the vaccinations we have for these diseases are so effective, most people have no idea what they look like and the effect they have on the human body.
In fact, I suspect most young parents regard them as “childhood” diseases — with the inference that they are minor and rare.
They would be wrong.
Those diseases are rare but only because we have had a solid program of regular vaccinations for our children with the result that they remain safe from infection.
They probably don’t realize that measles can blind you and it also is a killer and that polio can leave a person permanently disabled, if it doesn’t kill you.
How do I know? Let me tell you.
When I was a high school sophomore, there was a young man who was a senior and who was a stand-out person. Not only was he a top-notch student, he was a drum major in our school band. He was good-looking, nice, and everybody liked him
But then, he died. He caught measles and it killed him. It was a shock to everyone because while we had been taught about the lethality of measles, it was the first time we saw it firsthand. It was a tough lesson.
Then there was the young woman who also was a senior and also a cheerleader. Her enthusiasm was evident at every football and basketball game — cheering for our guys! She was one of the nicest people I knew and then she contracted polio.
She was hospitalized for a while, but then she was placed in an “iron lung” — one of those medical contraptions that looked like a big drum with the person inside except for their head. The machinery made it possible for the person to breathe safely because polio paralyzed the lung and chest muscles.
She was in the “iron lung” for a long time and in those days, some of the patients were driven to towns, schools, and even county fairs so that people could see what polio could do and pay attention to getting the vaccinations which were new.
When I saw her, she was of good cheer and able to talk to visitors, saying she was not in pain. But it was a terrible shock to see someone close to my age in such a condition — probably for the rest of her life. I don’t know what happened to her after that year.
Those two instances were when I was in high school, but when I was in sixth grade, a girl in my class got measles. All the kids knew it, but then one morning I woke up covered with itchy red bumps. I caught measles too! It was a terrible case — in bed for two weeks in a dark room. Measles can cause blindness and so the doctor ordered a dark room until it all cleared.
Boy, did those bumps itch. The only treatment was calamine lotion — and time. I was lucky, no lasting effects and no one in my family caught it from me.
I might note that a year later, my younger brother caught mumps but none of us caught the disease from him. Good luck, I guess.
Those were my experiences with “childhood diseases” until years later, when one of my children came down with a terrible case of chicken pox — even though she had been vaccinated.
It was awful to see how she suffered and what the disease looked like, but I never caught it (thank goodness!) although my other children contracted it from her. They also had been vaccinated and the doctor told one of them that he had never seen such a virulent case of the disease.
Because of those experiences, I am totally in favor of vaccinations for those childhood diseases because they can also afflict adults, and for them, the illnesses are often fatal.
An indication that our vaccination rate has dropped comes from the CDC, noting the rate of protection against measles, mumps, and rubella (German measles) for kindergarteners for 2019-2020 was 95.2 percent; for 2020-2021, it’s 93.9 percent.
Inasmuch as we are barely getting back to “normal,” who knows what the next totals will be, but the trend is down. That’s neither good nor safe, especially given the millions of immigrants coming into this country from areas that do not vaccinate. They’re bringing the diseases with them and if we aren’t vaccinated, we will all be in danger.
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