Why people refuse vaccinations and how it threatens all of us

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Where does the mistrust of vaccines come from and why anti-vaccinators endanger not only themselves and their children, but society as a whole.

- Why do you refuse to be vaccinated?

- After her, my grandfather died.

- From vaccination?

- No, I fell from the seventh floor.

By the nature of my work, I constantly monitor science news. A month and a half ago, a seemingly defeated enemy - diphtheria - returned to Spain a long time ago. A six-year-old boy from Catalonia, whom his parents refused to vaccinate, became the first Spaniard in 28 years (!) To fall ill with diphtheria. It did not come to a fatal outcome (and the mortality rate in this disease, even if treated well, is about 10%), but the child ended up in intensive care, and the parents who recovered their sight began a series of necessary vaccinations for their youngest daughter.

The family of the sick person is simply devastated, they admit that they were misled, misinformed. They have a deep sense of guilt, which we all help them cope with.

Anthony Mato Head of the Public Health Service of Catalonia

“Misled” and “misinformed” - this sounds pretty mundane when it comes to buying a product from an online store. The most you risk is to lose money and time. However, when it comes to HIV dissidence or anti-vaccination, the stakes skyrocket.

Medicine, as you know, has come a long way from shamanic dances and bloodletting with klystyra to its modern state. It is evidence-based medicine that has given an unprecedented kick to the development of mankind. Such a kick that we are now as much as seven billion, although a hundred years ago there was only one billion and a penny. This will surprise someone, but there are only two magic spells that teleported us from the Middle Ages to the current relatively prosperous state.

These are the magic words: vaccines and antibiotics.

And in that order. At first, vaccinations made humanity less vulnerable to the most terrible infections. Then antibiotics transferred those that we had not learned to prevent from the category of lethal to the status of moderately dangerous.

The cause of all forms of scientific freaky is essentially a consequence of the laws of physics. Specifically, the principle of increasing entropy. It is more likely to be stupid and ignorant than to be smart and educated (thanks to my friend and colleague Viktor Surkov for the beautiful wording). This is all very clear.

Not every person studied decently at school. Not every teacher is good enough to sensibly and unobtrusively implant some basic facts about the world in a child's head.

But how did it happen that, in general, literate and intelligent people - responsible parents, often with higher education - were duped so that in the 21st century they are ready to reject the achievements of medicine, which in fact save hundreds of millions of people in order to put the health of their own (and others) on the line children?

The simplest answer to this question is ignorance. But this word, in fact, does not explain anything. Of course, all of these people have heard about the risks of not being immunized. But anti-vaccines somehow managed to convince them that these risks do not exist in reality. The fact that these are all myths, scarecrows of corrupt media and cynical pharmaceutical companies.

What happened?

What happened is that the average parent no longer trusts science. He believes in conspiracy theories, herbal attendants, and home births. Believes in naturopathy and stone therapy. And this transition from the most advanced (no kidding) healthcare to anti-vaccination workers and HIV-dissidents happened in the memory of one generation of people. My generation.

And it would be okay to talk about a flu shot, which does not promise miracles, but only reduces the risk of complications. But after all, people refuse to vaccinate against such things as rubella, which, if a woman carries it during pregnancy, gives a sickly chance to give birth to a corpse or a child with a developmental anomaly. We are talking about polio, which is quite capable of killing your child or making it disabled for life.

So how do they do it?

Very simple. In addition to primitive lies, manipulations and psychological blackmail are used. No parent wants to hurt their child. But it is the concern about the health of children that makes people vulnerable to the fables about the terrible harm of mercury (merthiolate, thiomersal), which is less in one dose of vaccine than a city child receives with food, water and air during the day. Moreover, this mercury in the vaccine is present in the form of a soluble salt (and, accordingly, is available for excretion by the kidneys), and not in the form of vapors (which are not excreted in any way).

By the way, it is present only in the cheap DPT vaccine, and even then only because it is multi-dose. Paranoia overcame, buy an expensive vaccine in one syringe without merthiolate. As a bonus, the allergy-causing component of the whooping cough was also removed from it.

Another fricosaurus was frightened by the terrible aluminum oxide (in fact, simple alumina), which is present at almost every step in everyday life and medicines - for example, for heartburn and gastritis.

And then there is the terrible formaldehyde, which (suddenly) is a product of normal metabolism and is found in blood in much larger quantities (2-3 micrograms per milliliter of blood) than in a vaccine (about 100 micrograms).

Alas, you cannot take and give everyone the rudiments of medical education at once, although this could, in theory, solve the problem. But you can try to systematically dispel popular myths.

This is what we will do.

About rabies and infantilism

Not everyone knows that the most dangerous infection on the planet is not Ebola or HIV. At the first, although it develops quickly, there is a 30-50 percent chance of survival. The second, although almost 100% lethal (rare cases of non-progression are not counted), even without treatment leaves the infected with years of life, and is also perfectly stopped by modern drugs that can stretch life for decades.

The most dangerous thing on the planet is the rabies virus. It kills one hundred percent and develops (from the first symptoms to the mattress seam on the belly) in a week.

To date, there are six (!) Cases of human survival after clinical symptoms of rabies appeared. Of those survivors, four were vaccinated against the virus, but the vaccine did not work.

Surprise: Even if you are vaccinated, you have a 20 percent chance of dying after being bitten by an infected animal. This percentage, by the way, increases if alcohol is taken after immunization. And there are also rumors that the only plant in the Russian Federation that produced the anti-rabies vaccine is either on the verge of closing, or has already closed.

The prospect of purchasing rabies vaccines abroad is more terrible than the mythical risk of making a child autistic. Don’t you?

But we got distracted. Why did I remember about rabies.

The fact that medical science is not omnipotent and so far many infectious diseases either do not respond to treatment / vaccine prophylaxis at all, or are difficult (the same flu), antivaccinators have managed to turn into an argument against artificial immunization as such.

This consumerist attitude bears the traits of some kind of deep infantilism. Kind of like "well, since you can't get me the moon from the sky, then I won't eat your porridge."

But medicine is not a loving mother. And not even a harsh aunt. It is more correct to compare medicine with a soulless boor sergeant, who, however, on the battlefield raises your chances from unrealistically bad to relatively nasty.

If someone today abandons the achievements of medicine, the doctor, at best, will simply warn him of the consequences. In the overwhelming majority of cases, a person who has succumbed to anti-vaccination propaganda will not be politely persuaded, sorting out individual whims and complexes, they will not save his life, trying against his will to return to reality. Doctors do not even do this in the movies. Why is that?

Because this is the world of adults, and it is assumed that mentally mature parents inhabit it.

About herd immunity

Another important point is that anti-vaccinators are dangerous not only for themselves and their children.

These guys are undermining what can be defined as social (group) immunity. If the infected is surrounded by the vaccinated - as with measles and almost defeated poliomyelitis during the recent almost universal vaccination - the infection does not meet a substrate for spread and does not give rise to an epidemic outbreak.

This fact disavows another argument, which ignorant people like to rush to: "My friends did not vaccinate the child, but he grew up healthy." You cannot tell them that their children remain healthy strictly because there are still enough sane parents around who protect not only their children with vaccinations, but also the offspring of the idiot anti-vaccine.

The principle “for myself and for that guy” has made humanity practically invulnerable to a long list of infections. And some of them (smallpox, partly measles and polio) were literally destroyed. There is no more such a disease as smallpox. And for this, thanks, by the way, to the Soviet Union (it was Soviet doctors who pushed the idea of finishing off smallpox with universal vaccinations in WHO).

But this "collective defense" system is not at all an impenetrable shield against infection. As soon as a sufficient number of anti-vaccinators accumulate in society, gaps appear in it.

In general, man is a terribly ungrateful creature in relation to science. The same thing happens over and over again: science does something useful, we use it, and then we forget, passively betray the source of our well-being. Moreover, the most stubborn of the "traitors" are also actively sawing the branch on which we are all sitting.

Do not do like this.

About bird flu

Finally, a few words must be said about another factor that contributes a lot to the spread of the anti-vaccination myth.

We are talking about the media panic around bird flu and other potentially dangerous infections, which so far, thank Cthulhu, do not lead to the catastrophic consequences that the media portray to the public.

Most of all it reminds of the parable about the boy who loved to shout "Wolves!" When the wolves really came, no one believed this boy.

But is there a rational kernel in the basis of the alertness of doctors? Should we be afraid of new infections?

Any sufficiently contagious new sore is a potential threat to humanity as a whole. The road map for this sore looks like this:

1. Natural focus (animals in nature, which have long adapted to this infection).
2. "Patient zero" who has received a strain of a bacterium or virus capable of living in the human body.
3. An epidemic outbreak that doctors are trying to contain and extinguish.
4. Big epidemic and pandemic, if they didn't succeed.

If you do not try to oppose the new infection with medical methods (quarantine, a ban on staying in public places, even ineffective vaccinations), as well as noise in the press and mass preventive measures, believe me, it will be much worse.

The point is that evolution works nonstop. Mutations occur daily, and they are fundamentally random.

At any moment, a strain of a new (or old) infection that is sufficiently tenacious in the external environment may appear, which, moreover, is imperceptible enough to quietly spread before we have time to react to it.

And there is always a chance that he still stifles a significant proportion of the population, plunging civilization into chaos. Aircraft radically changed the epidemiological situation on the planet. What would have taken tens of years for infection in the Middle Ages now happens in weeks and months.

There is one more nuance: all the most dangerous infections for humans are new infections. Relatively recently (by the standards of evolution) passed to him from animals. Do you understand why there is so much attention from epidemiologists to birds, pigs and other smaller brothers?

Threats must be countered proactively. And therefore, doctors (and after them the media) are paranoid about even small outbreaks of new diseases. And to a large extent, we do not get a pandemic that is fatal for humanity precisely because the corrupt acesulapi in the service of the world behind the scenes manage to take adequate measures every time, and the media make a fuss, in a timely manner attracting the attention of society. The boy shouts "Wolves!" And the danger passes by.

But you shouldn't lose your vigilance.