Vaccination programmes always exposed to falsehoods

In 1796, Edward Jenner, a British Physician started to experiment on different ways of inoculating against variola. He established that by exposing people to small quantities of the cowpox virus, called ‘vaccinia’ or the ‘vaccine virus’ was safer than exposing them to the variola virus that infected humans. The Cowpox virus became the forerunner of preventing and eradicating smallpox and as a result the term vaccine entering the English language.

Thanks to Edward Jenner and later developments from his endeavours, Smallpox, a disease that plagued mankind since the time of the Egyptians, was virtually eradicated from the world by 1980.

Closer to home, most Irish families today will have stories of family members who suffered from Polio or Tuberculosis. Indeed, in the Ireland of the 1970’s, an average of seven children died every year as a result of measles. Many survivors were left with permanent disabilities including deafness or brain damage.

In 1985, Ireland began a vaccination programme against measles and the results were astonishing. The number of measles cases dropped from 10,000 in 1985 to just 201 in 1987. A crystal clear example that vaccines do work and save lives.

During the 1980’s, we also saw the first tentative steps of the internet being born and it has grown to such an extent that people now have instant access to any sort of information, anywhere in the world, at the click on a button.

Mark Twain once lamented that ‘A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots’.

Falsehoods about the Measles Mumps Rubella vaccine began circulating in the ether of the internet about 20 years ago. With the advent of social media in recent years, conspiracy theories around vaccines have become much more prominent and they have had a devastating impact on vaccination numbers.

In 2018, Europe recorded 84,462 cases of measles, up from only 5,273 cases in 2016. In 2018 the UK lost its ‘measles-free’ designation from the WHO, three years after the measles virus was eliminated from the country. Here in Ireland there are concerns that we could lose ours, with the number of cases having risen by 260%, increasing from 25 cases in 2017 to 90 cases in 2019.

There is a clear lesson to be learned here. People are falling, hook line and sinker, for blatantly false information they are seeing on their social media feeds and timelines. This has resulted in thousands of parents deciding to deny their children the MMR vaccine and children have suffered from completely avoidable illnesses as a result.

Ireland has now just embarked on our Covid 19 vaccination rollout and it is more important than ever, that people get their information on vaccines from trusted sources, like the WHO, HSE and qualified medical professionals.

To quote the WHO – ‘Without the appropriate trust and correct information, campaigns to promote effective vaccines will not meet their targets, and the virus will continue to thrive. Misinformation costs lives’.

It is important to reassure people, that the COVID 19 vaccines are a result of unprecedented global collaboration to address the greatest challenge the world has faced since the second World War. While we have accelerated the regulatory process, it is important to stress that this will not compromise the detailed and thorough nature of scientific scrutiny. There will be no lowering of the bar on this. The reason we have seen vaccines approved in previously unimagined timelines is because of massive global investment, the worldwide scientific community have been engaged in the same common cause of finding, testing and ensuring a vaccine is safe to be administered to the public. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been tested across 75,000 people worldwide.

This is all of humanity, working together for a common cause. Vaccines are safe, vaccines work, I will be taking the vaccine when I am allowed to do so and I would encourage as many people as possible to do the same.

Finally, if you do have concerns, place your faith and trust in immunologists who have dedicated their lives to the study of vaccines. We need to believe in science and champion truth over social media misinformation.