#7 Those of us who are old enough to remember measles outbreaks running through the school population and now see such events not occurring may have a different opinion.
The 1962 Agatha Christie mystery The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side tells of an actress driven to murder because a fan unintentionally infected her with German measles (rubella) when she was pregnant with her only child, causing the child be born severely disabled.
The purpose of the rubella vaccine is not to protect the patient from a mild childhood disease, but to reduce the chance of infecting a nearby pregnant woman, destroying the possibility that her child will be born normal and able. Most childhood vaccines prevent diseases that cause deafness, blindness, mental retardation, sterility, nerve and muscle damage (polio), and so forth in a visible number of those who fall ill, while the vaccines themselves are a health risk for a much smaller number.
If there were a vaccine that prevented autism from developing in the womb I’d have taken it in a flash if it would have prevented autism from denying trailing daughter #1 the ability to live independently, let alone have the life and career her intelligence, work ethic, talents, and loving heart led us all to predict before her condition became apparent at seventeen. It turns out being high functioning is no guarantee of being able to function as an adult, when unexpected co-morbidities begin manifesting.
Separately, back in the early ‘90s a friend suddenly lost her child to meningitis. The kid caught a small cold somewhere, not even bad enough to stay home from school, and three days later was dead. So when the trailing daughters’ university demanded they be vaccinated against meningitis before moving into the dorm, I was pleased to comply — sudden death (or merely epilepsy, deafness, and/or permanent brain damage) sweeping through the students without warning is not my idea of a good time.
Even the Covid vaccines, poorly executed though they were, in some population subgroups are as much a health benefit as for other population subgroups they are a serious health risk.
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[Gateway] In a recent Pennsylvania State Senate hearing on June 9, 2023, Silicon Valley philanthropist and technology entrepreneur Steve Kirsch posed a serious challenge to long-held beliefs on vaccinations and their impact on public health.