Vaccinations are a good thing
This time last year we were mostly fixated on the latest Donald
Trump antics, but there was a niggling worry about a virus named COVID-19. Now after 12 months in the Atlantic bubble, it feels like we are besieged with vaccine news.
Last week in Nova Scotia so many people were spending days at the computer trying to get vaccine appointments for elderly parents or spouses. The software wasn’t functioning well, but obviously, there’s great buy-in amongst the older generation.
Yet I have heard some muttering along American lines about nonbelievers locally.
A retired physician I know is genuinely concerned about the “vaccine-hesitant.” She says more and better education is critical.
To reach “herd immunity,” so we are all safe from infection, requires up to 95 per cent of the population to be vaccinated for known diseases like measles. Only then will the remaining five per cent, who are unvaccinated, be protected.
Last March, a new law that strengthens Maine’s school vaccination requirements won an overwhelming victory with 73 per cent voting for no change to the legislation, but it was a battle. Maine is one of five U.S. states that forbid all non-medical exemptions to schoolrequired vaccines for so-called childhood diseases.
The vote meant parents of vulnerable kids, parents of infants and older adults could sleep soundly, but it was the result of laws created after measles outbreaks in recent years. The outbreaks were caused by waning vaccination rates. Maine has the highest pertussis rate in the States, for example. Who could doubt that herd immunity has saved children from innumerable diseases like whooping cough?
Charlie Angus, one of my favourite MPs, wrote last March about his grandmother who was a nurse in Timmins, Ont. She “was used to hard work; 12-hour shifts in the age of diphtheria, polio and scarlet fever were commonplace. She knew about epidemics and tried to teach us protection measures.”
But Charlie admitted, “we were the children of penicillin and a strong health system. We thought she was a needless nag.”
He told his constituents: “I’m conjuring my grandmother because I realize our generation has no folk memories to make sense of this pandemic. We don’t remember what it was like when the health inspectors nailed quarantine warnings on the doors of neighbours to stop the contagion of measles and mumps.”
In March of 1916, there was a very violent measles epidemic holding sway in the Valley. Another practical nurse of that era, Mary Elizabeth Clark (M.E.C.), wrote that there were no health offices or quarantine regulations. M.E.C. blamed the “wanton carelessness of the first family to have the measles” for allowing the disease to spread virulently. It took the deadly Spanish flu a few years later to bring about much needed public health measures.
Today, most of us know immunization protects the entire community from disease, but it only works if a majority of the community has the vaccine. My physician friend knows this firsthand due to growing up in India. She remembers her father, a Baptist missionary, encouraging the residents of one rural village to get the vaccine for cholera. The only man who failed to take his advice died of the disease.
Now there is the reality some individuals, such as those with diseases that compromise the immune system, cannot receive vaccines, so they benefit when the people they interact with have had the vaccine.
We debated masks a year ago and Nova Scotians got on board. I remember being shocked when visiting Prince Edward Island last September that nobody was wearing face coverings — except the document takers at the border. Mandating masks was the first step when numbers rose over on the island. That’s because we know they work — for those wearing them and the folks we encounter. Every mask I own fogs up my glasses, but I wear them with the wisdom I acquired in the last 12 months. I may see through a fog, but I feel safe.
It’s the same with vaccines. We’ll line up for the jab, after our seniors, to be safe. Can’t wait.
Former Advertiser and Register reporter
Wendy Elliott lives in Wolfville.