scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

16.7.08

Team Peet, or, top ten reasons i vaccinate my kid

10. (This reason is new) Now i have a pretty pretty celebrity i can point at. And she was in that silly movie with the hit man, the one with the crumby sequel. Woot! (This is not a proper reason, but works well as filler.)

9. I am very, very happy to be living in a country where i can go to the doctor with my baby whenever i want, and where all the standard vaccinations are covered, for everybody, for free, because we have Government Health Care and i am taking full advantage.

8. Better living through chemistry, man. (Dude. Dude! Dude.) Not that i think traditional medicine is wrongheaded - i just think, well, i can have both. This is the twenty-first century, not the Dark Ages.

7. I am well acquainted with the scientific method, and a lot of my friends are scientists, on top of that, and holy shit are we ever not in this for the money. (Meaning: They been tested. They safe. They are there to help, and they fuckin' work. I know the process.)

6. M is on board. This wouldn't stop me if he wasn't, but does make it easier, because first, i think he's pretty smart, so i'm not second-guessing myself, and second, i don't have to sneak around and trick him.

5. I like to travel. My friends like to travel. (I saw G between Norway and Slovakia, in the Czech Republic. N stopped here between Myanmar and Azerbaijan.) I live in an international city. People move around a lot. The likelihood of me, or of E, now or later, going to a place where things are endemic, or coming in contact with a person who has recently been somewhere where things are endemic, is very very very high. I'd like to not worry about that. Plus, she can go to whatever schools and camps and other things sound interesting and not be disallowed or have extra paperwork or special waivers. Small perk. Baby not referred to as - or, anyway, that much less, as - "germ factory," "snot machine," "walking biohazard." Small perk.

4. My friends are also starting to like to have babies. Diseases are communicable. I would feel like awful shit if somebody got sick with something (like the real people who NEED herd immunity, newborns, the elderly, immunocompromised, already sick, have had actual negative responses to other vaxes, allergic to eggs, whatever, et c) and it could be even vaguely our fault. This is the only reason to feel weird about other people not vaccinating. All the other reasons are completely invalid to apply to any other family making any other decision, ever. But E is still too small to get the MMR shot, for instance. So if somebody else infects her i will be royally pissed off, because that is a preventable thing. If it was just their kids they were putting at risk, fine, no big. And while it mostly is, it isn't just their kids. And they are piggybacking on everybody else being immune and they are betting on there not being an outbreak, hoping that not too many other people will make the decision they have made, and that is not very socially responsible, is it? No, no it isn't. Y'know, modern society. Leviathan, Rousseau, and a little bit Socialist, but that's okay, that's just how reason number four likes to roll.

3. With the autistic spectrum known and diagnosed in my family, i already know we are at an elevated, preexisting risk. But i also know what to look out for, and i know the early signals, and i know that early intervention can - can, not always does - work wonders. I also know that autistic spectrum disorders are things that can be lived with, and if my choice is between a live personbabychild with autism, or a sad and empty freedom after a not entirely unlikely (given the fact that measles and other infectious, preventable, vaccine-prevented diseases are on the RISE in certain countries like, oh, for instance, the U.S.A.) bout with something awful and infectious, i will choose the healthy-and-living but-with-an-autistic-spectrum-disorder every fucking time.

2. (But, the ASD's in my family aren't the regressive kind, they're the right-off-the-bat kind. Plus, i have a girl.)

1. (And really, this is the only reason.) Because i knew a kid with polio. And the kid i knew was lucky enough to live through it.

We are getting every shot, every oral vaccine, every sticker, every immunization i can get my paws on, any vehicle, any disease. I get the flu shot every year. If i could stab myself with cowpox i would in a heartbeat because that shit scares me - smallpox still exists. And we have found this way, this power, to prevent it! Like gods. If i could talk a doctor into malaria preventatives, or - what is it, that they give you before you go to the tropics? Tuberculosis. Typhoid. Anything. Everything. And i will tell anyone about it, anyone at all.

Labels: health, mamadom

scrawled @ 16:19