The questions swirled in my head … What if my child was the one in a million? What if my family had a genetic quirk that meant vaccines were more risky for us?
I was haunted – in a very real way – by the stories of mothers who had a hunch that immunisation had caused their child’s autism.
A mum’s instinct means something, right? What, we’re all gonna ignore the wisdom of mothers just cos they don’t wear a lab coat?
This was perhaps a reasonable starting point … at one time.
But since that fateful article in the Lancet that set the whole world on fire, science responded with an EXHAUSTIVE body of reputable, reliable, corroborative, peer reviewed research, from every jurisdiction in the world.
And it all showed there was no causative link between vaccines and autism, even for families (like mine) with a genetic predisposition.
Some children can have an adverse reaction to needles. A tiny fraction can have permanent, life long disabilities as a result of immunisation.
But the odds are miniscule.
On the other hand, if polio, measles or whooping cough were to surge back into our communities, the odds of my child or yours developing complications, permanent disability or death would be significant.
Fear is the strongest emotion there is.
It is designed to override everything else. No point finishing that calculus equation if you’re being stalked by a Sabre tooth tiger. Fear is the survival tool that screams at you to drop the pencil and run!
The problem is sometimes fear is not rational.
Sometimes you can find yourself being scared of the wrong thing, the lesser threat. That’s when the rational you needs to have a talk with the scared you.
I overcame my fear in a number of ways but the thing I remember most vividly was footage of a baby with whooping cough.
Rational me pointed at the screen, and scared me waved the white flag.
As a result, my son is fully vaccinated.
I am a big proponent of the covid vaccine. When the news of the latest Victorian spike hit, it was a comfort to me to know my parents, aunties, uncles and my grandmother were vaccinated.
Being vaccinated means that if they were unlucky enough to get covid, their chances of becoming seriously ill would be greatly reduced. Their odds of survival would be very good.
But I also have some people close to me who are hesitant to get the vaccine.
I understand vaccine hesitancy and I also understand how to overcome it.
The rational you has to talk to the scared you. And one way to do it is to look at the current footage from India, or America 6 months ago, or Italy a year ago. And tell scared you that vaccination is a simple matter of weighing the odds.
We weigh the odds every moment of every day. We weigh the odds when we get in a car, go for a swim, light a campfire, use a tampon!!
It’s all a matter of weighing the risks and benefits.
The risks associated with the covid vaccine are tiny. The benefits are overwhelming.
Get vaccinated.
