Get that vaccination!

Vaccination Is Worth It!
By Joseph Walther


Successive word of mouth transmissions of “facts” rarely yield the facts. Most of the time, what we finally hear are the “facts” as interpreted by the many human filters through which the original facts traveled. Sometimes honest misinterpretation causes distortions. Many times, however, if the facts might lead to “wrong” conclusions, people feel compelled to state the “true facts.”

Several of my readers sent me emails referencing a News Journal article. Click here to read it. The sub-head, “Panel may recommend anti-STD shot for girls” was what caught so many people’s attention. “Parents divided over newly approved vaccine” appeared directly beneath the bolded sub-head, only in a smaller, less obvious font. It had all of the ingredients of C-O-N-T-R-O-V-E-R-S-Y, which the publishing world well knows, is the primary ingredient in selling articles.

From reading the article and additional research about the vaccine, it seems that the majority of those aware of it approve of its use. I have spoken with a few locals who are avid proponents of moral and religious conservatism. Not even one of them objected to this vaccine. Although, a couple of them did advocate a desire for parents to have the final say in the decision to vaccinate.

The usual chorus of abstinence proponents have chimed in with their usual “this sends a conflicting message to pre-teens about engaging in sex before marriage.” However, in terms of the usual sheer numbers, the opponents seem to be fewer and much farther between this time.

I most certainly am not suggesting that the vaccine is unsafe. However, I have yet to find a single opponent of the vaccine who has questioned its use from the standpoint of long-term physical effects. The main oppositional argument seems to revolve around the potential for “sending the wrong message about engaging in sex” to pre-teenaged girls.

I think that this argument is pure crap. We read a lot about pre-teens engaging in sexual intercourse. It seems as though it’s become a rampant activity. It only seems that way. When we look at the overall picture, a headline that reads, “0.8 percent of 9-to 12-year-old girls admit to being sexually active” sells a lot more newspapers than “99.2 percent of 9-to 12-year-old girls are not sexually active” does.

The idea that, in the overall national picture, 93 percent of high school students are not doing drugs is not news. Claiming that 7 percent do, however, gets all of us hot and bothered. In a state of over 800,000 citizens, reporting that 80 of them were murdered makes the front-page headlines. The fact 799,920 of those people were not murdered would not.

We have become a society obsessed with the safety of our children. Concern for our children’s safety is fine. Obsession is dangerous and stupid. Over the past twenty years or so, physicians have administered antibiotics for everything. It’s created more harm than good. In some cases, childhood immune systems have become so weakened that viruses thrive on the antibiotics. “Fantastic! Here comes the good stuff,” all self-respecting viruses say.

It’s not just the health issues either. There are parents who will not allow their children out of their sight. There are children who are terrified that they’re going to be kidnapped and murdered by some pervert. As soon as this happens to a single child, it’s all we’re going to read about and hear about on television for months on end.

When I was a kid, I would get so dirty from playing outside that entire species of microscopic bugs set up entire neighborhoods of offspring on me and that was just under my fingernails. My parents had to go over my entire body, several times, during the course of a bath to make sure they removed everything. The next day, I’d come into the house with entirely new colonies of bugs and the process started all over again.

I don’t know how much dirt and grime I actually ate during my childhood. I bet it had to be a couple of pounds a year, though. If I was outside the sight of my parents, there was no such thing as the 5-second rule. That only applied inside my house and only if they were watching me.

Yes, I ate a lot of dirt as a kid. I also did some of the dumbest things humans can do. I also developed an immune system that viruses and bacteria with common sense opted to avoid at all costs. As for the dumb stuff I did, it has shown me that luck is in integral part of staying alive, no matter what your parents do.

Both my parents and I had to worry about such diseases as polio, scarlet fever, mumps, whooping cough, measles, and chicken pox. Polio and scarlet fever had nasty reputations for killing children. The others could do likewise. Vaccines eliminated those fears for me in raising my own children.

We now have a vaccine that will prevent infection by the most common strains of the human papillomavirus that result in the occurrence of genital warts and cervical cancer. Well done, Medical Science.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.