Thoughts On Vaccination
Notice: This pig has not been vaccinated!
Everyone’s talking about the swine flu these days, it seems. Whether it’s a discussion of the late vaccines, New York’s speculated defense because of the spring outbreak, or arguments over vaccination side effects, everyone seems to have an opinion. On the Today show the other day, I heard the decision whether to get vaccinated for the swine flu referred to as “such a personal decision.” Well, yes and no. It’s personal in the sense that any medical care is personal, but in several meaningful ways, vaccines are less personal than any other medical decision you might make. Vaccines aren’t just about you not getting sick — they’re about you not passing it on to other people who might also get sick. Vaccines are about public health.
I know that lots of people aren’t planning to get the swine flu vaccine when it finally becomes available, and I think that dialog is frequently missing a key point. Here it is: even if you’re not likely to die from the swine flu, you might come into contact with someone who is. And sure, those people should be vaccinated, but let’s be real. The vaccines are coming much later than anyone had hoped, and lots of people even in high risk categories haven’t had it yet. Even when the vaccines are widely available (probably several months from now), there will be a few people who for one reason or another get missed. And vaccines aren’t perfect.
In a lot of ways, getting vaccinated for epidemics is not for you. It’s for everyone else, for public health as a whole. The more people who get vaccinated, the less likely a disease is to reach epidemic levels, and the safer life and the world are for pregnant women, children, the elderly, the immunosuppressed, and everyone else for whom getting sick could be a very serious problem. Many of these people don’t have the choice to not go to work, not take their kids to day care. The more unvaccinated people they come into contact with in those places, the more dangerous their lives become.
I’m not going to try to argue with people with religious prohibitions or concerns about the dubiously documented link between vaccines and autism. But that’s not anything like everyone who’s planning to not bother with the vaccine. So if you’re planning not to get it just because you don’t think you need it, please rethink. Someone’s life could depend on it.
And that someone’s life could very well be mine. I’ve ‘said’ this before recently but I am one of those people who could very likely die if I get H1N1. I need to get vaccinated when it becomes available to me and appreciate the healthy adults who are choosing to get vaccinated around me in their efforts to protect me (and others like me). It’s a vaccination. It’s probably safer for you than half of what you eat in your fast food and junk food these days.
People don’t generally think of vaccination or other health measures in terms of civic duty, but in some ways I think it’s relevant. If the flu vaccine makes your arm sore or makes you feel mildly crappy the next day, is that really such a big price to pay to make someone else safe? Widespread immunization is the reason we don’t get smallpox any more — and people failing to get immunized is the reason whooping cough is now making a comeback. Those efforts really require everyone to do their part.
And I’m sure you’re right that I have a dozen things in my apartment more dangerous than the H1N1 vaccine. We’re just used to that stuff.