China crisis lesson for anti-vaxx mob
SOME news – especially if it’s killing people, and escalating – gets under your skin.
And so, when my son caught a cold over the weekend, my husband and I looked anxiously at each other, both thinking the same thing.
He’s got Coronavirus.
Even though it’s pretty unlikely he’s been to China without our knowledge, what with him being five years old. Even though no one we know has been there, so there’s no rational way he could have come into contact with it.
Even though he clearly hasn’t got it... what if he has?
Coronavirus – despite sounding like what David Brent would call his beer hangover – seems to be spreading at a staggering pace.
It’s 2020, we’re more technologically and medically advanced than ever before, and yet, it feels as though we’re helpless. Coronavirus is like something from a movie. A movie I wouldn’t watch, because it’s far too scary.
As the patron saint of parenting, Peter Andre, has told us many, many times, you have to look after your kids. That’s the absolute basic, bottom line.
Unfortunately the horrendous truth is that there are many things out of our control. We can’t guarantee safety in this unsafe world.
So in order to ever be able to sleep again, I cling on to the things
I control with can both hands, death grip style. It’s baffling to me anyone would do anything different.
If there is any way of protecting your children, you do it.
So all this has made me think, how can there still be parents around who decide not to vaccinate their kids?
We’re powerless against Coronavirus as there’s no vaccine against it yet. But measles, for example – a disease nobody need die from as there is one – killed 72 people across Europe last year.
The measles vaccine has saved more than 23 million lives around the world since 2000. The disease was officially eradicated in the UK - until last August. That’s like going back in time.
Coronation Street is about to do a storyline about it, presumably to try to sort the real news from the fake, and quieten the anti-vaxx bulls**t for good.
I get that it has been confusing. When so much information is coming at you from so many different angles, often you end up listening to whoever is making the most noise. But you know what they say about the loudest voice in the room.
If you try to keep calm – unlike me, who has just been Googling flu face masks – and look into it properly, the facts speak for themselves. Vaccines work. They’ve wiped out illnesses that used to kill people.
The only doctor who has made a link between vaccines and autism was struck off the medical register for fraudulent science. Because there is no justice in the world he is still banging a) on about it, and b) literally Elle MacPherson, but never mind that. He’s disgraced. So we must ignore him.
Last year the head of the NHS said parents rejecting vaccines are “a growing public health time bomb.” He’s not disgraced. So we must not ignore him.
It’s obvious what the right thing to do is here. Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate. I also won’t be listening to T’Pau for the foreseeable future... possibly overcautious, but better safe than sorry.
‘‘ How can there still be parents who decide not to vaccinate their kids?