Let’s Talk About Vaccine Choice Arguments...
Anti-vaccine influencers are taking away your vaccine choices by pushing misinformation and propaganda about vaccines.
You hear about the idea of personal choice and when people talk about vaccines these days.
“People ought to have choice and ought to be informed by the best information, so I'm going to make sure that scientific safety studies and efficacies are out there and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
What’s wrong with that?
Let’s Talk About Vaccine Choice Arguments...
A lot of things are wrong with that!
For one thing, people expect their public health experts to make recommendations about things like vaccines, not talk about choice.
By telling them they have a choice, it automatically makes many people think that there is something inherently wrong and that influences their choice.
Plus, by bringing up the idea of choice in this way, it implies that they didn’t have a choice before and that vaccines were being forced on them. Of course, that was never the case. Even with mandates, people still have a choice if they want to get vaccinated.
Also, most of these folks who talk about vaccine choice never talk about what might happen if parents skip or delay a vaccine.
They only talk about their perceived risks of getting vaccinated.
Next, most of the people who talk about choice do not actually give their followers ‘good information’ to help them make an informed decision. Instead, they inundate them with misinformation and propaganda about vaccines that scares them away from wanting to get vaccinated and protected.
They actually push them into making a bad choice!
Lastly, know that anti-vaccine influencers are basically taking away all of our choices when it comes to vaccines.
How?
Well, for one thing, if you are immunocompromised or have an immunocompromised child, you lose your choice of being able to be safe in your community as measles outbreaks surge around you. Remember, not everyone can be vaccinated.
And ultimately, what do you think happens as there are more and more outbreaks of measles and other vaccine preventable diseases?
If you are intentionally unvaccinated, you lose your choice to try and hide in the herd, free-riding on the protection of others.
Eventually you end up with the choice to get vaccinated or to get sick…
And if the outbreaks grow big enough, we end up with mandates or tightening of vaccine exemptions for daycare and school.
Is that the vaccine choice you are looking for?