FBEL – Vaccines

Vaccines are a hot topic right now. A lot of states are removing mandates about vaccines. It’s a topic that’s come up often between Chris and myself, as I struggle to come to terms with damage. Chris has said, and I suppose this is true (though I still struggle with it), that I believe most people are too stupid to make good decisions about vaccines.

I believe childhood vaccines are important. I have friends (now passed away, sadly) who couldn’t have kids because, as children, they’d had chicken pox that scarred their ovaries so badly that they weren’t capable of bearing children. Their adopted children were vaccinated; they all have kids of their own. Yes, we treated “common childhood diseases” as no big deal, but I don’t believe that was correct. It WAS a big deal, but we didn’t have a good way to deal with them.

As an example, when Ed Jenner discovered milk maids who’d had cow pox as youngsters didn’t get infected with smallpox, he came up with the general idea of vaccination. He gave pus from someone with smallpox to an 8 year old child, James Phipps. The child didn’t die; instead, he had a mild case, recovered, and went on to live a normal life. That whole thing led to us finding the vaccine for smallpox. At the time when Jenner did it, there was nothing better, and infecting Phipps with the disease in a controlled manner was the best he could do. Many people did it. You got sick, yes, but you didn’t die of it. I think that a lot of the “measles parties” and such were an extension of that desperation that caused Jenner to infect a healthy child with a deadly disease.

But we DO have vaccines now for measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, and others. I don’t think we’ve had a tetanus death in the United States in years, because of the vaccine. Shingles, HepA and B, Yellow Fever, Diphtheria, and others are all well controlled (though not eradicated) by vaccines. All these vaccines are well tested, with 40+ years of use and reporting behind them. The handful of severe reactions to them are noted, and reflected in information given to people getting the vaccines. The chances of getting a disease and having a severe reaction to it is much higher than the chance of having a severe reaction to the vaccines.

When I was growing up, I was taught that vaccines don’t make you immune. They boost your immunity, meaning they make it much less likely that you’ll get a disease, and if you do get it, it will be much more mild. This is what I’ve always believed. That’s what my immunologist friend told me during COVID, too. It’s why I like to get a flu shot when I can, because when I do get influenza, I get it very badly and it puts me out for weeks. If I’m vaccinated, my likelihood of getting the flu goes down exponentially (in fact, the years I got shots, there’s only twice that I did get the flu, and both times it was relatively mild, if bothersome). Not everyone has that reaction to the flu, and there are enough people that get the jab that it’s neither here nor there whether anyone gets it or not.

With COVID, I listened mostly to my friend. She worked with MMR vaccine trials back in the 80s and 90s, when they were first developed, and she’d handled some of those early trials herself. So when she told me something, I took her words as truth. When I asked her if she thought I should get the COVID shot, she asked me some questions first. Did I have a severe reaction to flu? Did I ever have an allergic reaction to another jab? Was I prone to respiratory illnesses? How many comorbidities did I have? After talking for a while, she felt it was worth getting the shot. Some three years later, with the newer boosters coming out, I asked again if she thought I should get it. She asked different questions at that point. Had I gotten COVID at all, tested positive for it? Was it severe or mild? Did my family get it? What were my risk factors? That second time, she didn’t feel it was necessary for me to get the shot. Why? Because I have not tested positive for COVID even once. Everyone else in my house has had it, some twice or three times, but not me. Two times I had VERY similar symptoms to others, which she said could have been illnesses that “hitched a ride” with the COVID virus in others and then implanted in me, it was relatively mild. I was down for a week with a really bad cold. Her statement was if I hadn’t had it by now, then I wasn’t likely to get it, and it’s possible I either was naturally immune to it (though not the hitchhiker diseases), or that the MRNA shot had boosted me so hard that I had developed a functional long-term immunity. Either way, she didn’t see any reason for me to get the shot again, since it didn’t seem to be problematic. Her final statement to me was that if I caught it and reacted badly, there were now meds and beds available, so I didn’t have to worry. And I could always get boosters later, just like with flu, if I felt the need.

At this point, I figure that most of the people who would have died of COVID have done so. Whether that happened due to vaccines, lack of vaccines, being trapped in an old age home with COVID victims from hospitals being shunted in, or anything else, doesn’t really matter. It wasn’t as deadly as it might have been, or that we were afraid it would be. I considered it a good trial run for my “EOTWAWKI team” (which changed drastically during COVID). I used it to learn things about myself and others, especially after the fact.

Regardless, this is supposed to be a chat about non-COVID vaccines, because I’m seeing RFK knocking them down. During his confirmation, he said he wouldn’t do that, that he would conduct studies on efficacy and vaccine schedules and such, and then be public about it. That doesn’t appear to be what’s happening, though. While I didn’t like how they treated him in the most recent hearings I caught snippets of, I do have questions.

I didn’t know until recently that the CDC recommendations affect how people get (or can get) vaccines and other medicines. When the CDC removed its recommendation that people get the COVID jab, it made it so that insurance no longer covered it in many places (in some states, apparently, CDC recommendation is THE way they decide if something is covered, so no recommendation means no coverage). This is an effective way of taking away a vaccine from the populace while still saying it’s available. Yes, it’s available… out of pocket. I know I don’t have the $200+ available to get a COVID (or other) shot handy. I’m still recovering from an economy ravaged by the Biden administration.

The problem isn’t, imo, the COVID part. It’s that the CDC is not recommending certain things because the new people aren’t giving out ANY recommendations. This has led to some states, like Massachusetts, deciding that pharmacies will not and MAY not give out a flu vaccine shot. In order to get one, you have to get a script from your doc. Then you have to have another appointment to get the shot itself. So let me add that up for you: $100+ for the initial visit where you explain why you need a flu shot (regardless of what is in your records, as in my own case), $100+ for the appointment to get a nurse to give you the shot, and then the cost of the shot itself on a scale between $20 and $120 depending on a huge variety of things.

That isn’t supporting choice. That’s restricting it. I realize that the CDC has not had time to complete studies they only just began in the last few months, but we do know that a lot of people want the “basic” shots that have been around for 50+ years (flu, pneumonia, HepA/B, and the “usual” ones for kids: MMR, DiTap, etc). Withholding recommendations means that low income and even middle income families may not be able to get those shots. There are a lot of ways they could have handled it, but unilaterally making it difficult to get is not a great way to move forward. Say what you want about COVID and the flu, there are other diseases that we’d almost eradicated which are now making a comeback as our immunization levels fall.

And please understand… I was once anti-vax entirely. My own bio kid had a VERY severe reaction to her first set of baby shots (MMR), and my doc at that time recommended a different schedule of shots for her. I chose not to vaccinate at all. When it came time to go to school, I had little choice, and I had to get her vaccinated. I’m glad I did, but I wasn’t at the time. I felt defeated. I watched Chris and his wife vaccinate their twins, and I was worried for them. Nothing bad happened.

To add to all this confusion, upset, and concern, there’s the niggling frustration in my brain that tells me how very wrong I was about legacy media and their lies. I believed them for years. Is this another situation like that? I worry it is, although I’ve talked to people I trust to tell me the truth, people who actually worked with vaccines and understand the science in a way I simply cannot. And that’s the rub. I have to depend on experts to explain this stuff in a simple manner for me, because the science is beyond my understanding. Just as I have to depend on English translations when writing my cookbooks and working with German and Latin recipes, I have to depend on today’s epidemiologists to explain whether vaccines are safe and useful. I believe they are… but it’s the same type of belief that dictates that I believe the light will come on when I hit the switch. “It just does.” Someone smarter than me in this genre of science has told me it’s safe, so I know it’s safe.

Except now I doubt.

And that unresolved doubt is not good. Even when it turns out to be reasonable (as with legacy media), it’s horrible for someone’s mental health to be walking around constantly doubting everything that’s said and done around them. And yet here I am, mentally spinning around like the pointer for a children’s game. Chris schooled me on the effectiveness of vaccines when he vaccinated his own kids. Was HE wrong? Did he listen to the wrong people? Was I right originally, and then became wrong? Or am I right now, in supporting childhood vaccination? I can’t find out for certain without getting a degree in epidemiology and figuring it out for myself… and at 54, I think that ship has sailed.

So I worry, about every decision I make. I doubt, pretty much everything these days. I stress, because who knows whether this expert is right, or that one.