There are plenty of vaccine myths. Coming from a country where access to healthcare and a lack of education results in lower vaccination rates. It’s rather shocking that on the other side of the pond, the reasons for not vaccinating are a matter of choice.

Vaccine Myths

In NY, I’ve seen every exanthem I’ve never seen in my life including secondary syphilis. While that is an entirely different story, I’m surprised by the anti-vaccination group. I blame millenials, yes I know, people of my own generation who have given in to this. Millenials feel very proud about their brave decision to not vaccinate their kids. And so as NY has now made it mandatory to vaccinate, we debunk common vaccine myths. California has seen over 9000 cases of whopping cough. And while I’d love to see a case, I wouldn’t wish that on my own child or someone else’s.

Vaccines are responsible for autism

The first time autism was linked to vaccination, it was a study published in the Lancet by a British surgeon. He suggested that cases of measles, mumps, rubella were increasing autism in British children.

There were procedural errors identified by peers, financial conflicts of interest were not disclosed, and ethical violations did take place. Andrew Wakefield was stripped of medical license. The Lancet retracted the paper.

Since then many research studies have debunked this myth. Studies have shown that autism occurs even before vaccines. And many have shown that autism occurs in utero.

Vaccines don’t prevent diseases, better hygiene does

Do anti-vaxxers expect us to believe that the number of polio, Hib(Hemophilus influenzae) cases decreased simply because of better hygiene. Co-incidentally, this drop occurred at the same time that vaccines were introduced. In 1990, Hib disease virtually disappeared in children with routine Hib vaccination. From an estimated 20,000 cases a year to 1,419 cases in 1993. Surely, this can’t be a coincidence.

There are other examples too. Japan cut back the use of pertussis vaccine and found a dramatic jump in the number of cases. A drop in vaccination rates from 70% to 40% led to an increase in pertussis from 393 cases and 0 deaths in 1974 to 13,000 cases and 41 deaths in 1979. It’s not all about hygiene, baby.

Newborn immune systems are too fragile for vaccines

Newborns have a lot of antibodies. Based on the number of antibodies alone present in their blood, a baby theoretically could react to around 10,000 vaccines. However, all 14 scheduled vaccines are never given at once. If they were, it would still use up slightly more than 0.1% of a baby’s immune capacity. In reality, babies are exposed to countless bacteria and viruses every day. Their cells are constantly replenished.

Kids are exposed to fewer immunologic components than children in past decades.

Vaccines cause side effects

This vaccine myth is widespread. One specific mention about side effects of vaccines is that we don’t even know many of it’s long term side-effects. Let me say that most adverse events are minor and temporary. A sore arm or mild fever can be handled with paracetamol.

One of the more popular vaccine myths is that DTP vaccine causes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). An analysis of the benefit and risk of DTP immunization shows that if there was no immunization in the US, pertussis cases could increase 71-fold and deaths would rise four-fold.  So if there’s one adverse event, it doesn’t justify not vaccinating the millions of others.

Natural immunity is better than vaccine-acquired immunity

Getting a disease does result in a stronger immunity to the disease than a vaccination. However, you could face death first. If you wanted to acquire immunity to measles, by contracting the disease, you have a 1 in 500 chance of dying from your symptoms. However, the number of people who had a severe allergic reaction from an MMR vaccine, is less than one-in-one million.

Vaccine related diseases have been eliminated from my country so there’s no need for vaccination

While it’s true that many countries have all but eliminated many diseases, the borders of the world are slowly disappearing. People travel and bring pathogens. These diseases causes epidemics in other parts of the world and can come to your location.

Simultaneously, without vaccinations, a single case can quickly become hundreds and thousand of cases as seen in NYC’s recent measles outbreak. Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion springs to mind. Now, most of you know I’m not a movie person but if I recommend something, it’s because it won’t be a waste of your 90 minutes. If you want to see how a pandemic occurs and how hard it is to track patient zero or the index case, watch this film.

Vaccines contain toxins

Another one of the popular vaccine myths is that vaccines have toxins. The use of formaldehyde, mercury or aluminum in vaccines has people worried. And for good reason. These chemicals are toxic to the human body. However, vaccines contain trace amounts of these chemicals.

The FDA and the CDC say that the human body makes more formaldehyde by our own metabolic systems. There’s no scientific evidence mercury or aluminum at such low levels in vaccines are harmful.

Vaccines can cause the disease it’s trying to prevent

There is only one recorded case in which a vaccine caused the disease it was trying to prevent. This was the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV), a live vaccine, which is no longer used in the U.S. Vaccines have been in safe use for decades and follow strict Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. In fact, all refrigerators that store vaccines have centralized thermometers. If the temperature dips below 36 or rises beyond 46 degrees, an alarm gets activated. This alerts the DOH and they hold all vaccine deliveries to the center until they’ve inspected and the issue is resolved.

Vaccines are one of the biggest discoveries of modern medicine. Millions of people have died from measles, smallpox, whooping cough, or rubella, to name just a few. Today they are completely preventable with a shot.

Let’s not forget how many deaths and diseases vaccines have prevented. Also, let’s not put other people at risk, even if we may be willing to risk our own. I’m surprised that anti-vaccination groups have been given such free reign on public platforms. It’s strange that social media will take you down for making a “wrong” political statement but allows people who are risking the health of millions to have such a huge platform without much censure.

We need to be educating people more and talking to them to debunk their vaccine myths, lest we put our patients and ourselves at risk for something this is so easily preventable.

What’s your take?

Have your say. Tell me what do you say about about it? How do you handle the anti-vaxxers? I’d love to add your answer to my rebuttal the next time I meet a mom who’s FB group said she shouldn’t vaccinate!!!! In the meantime, check out my other posts.