On Monday, I received a booster shot so that I can welcome an anticipated grandchild into the world.
The T-dap concoction is to guard me from transferring whooping cough, especially, to the newborn, as well as diphtheria and tetanus.
As a healthy adult I probably dont have any transferable diseases that could prove life-threatening to an infant, but in the off chance I might, getting the vaccination is the least I can do.
TO SEE the rate of immunizations drop in the United States is confounding health officials.
Vaccinations are virtually free at local health clinics. And they prevent death and disease.
Yet the rate of immunizations has declined according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, the number of families of children age 2 and younger that are forgoing vaccinations has more than quadrupled since the year 2000.
The outcome? More than 1,000 cases of measles alone have been recorded in the first five months of this year. Thats more than what occurred in the entire 10 years from 2000 to 2010.
Some theorize our collective memory has become so porous that we have conveniently forgotten the deprivation and misery caused by measles, polio, tetanus, tuberculosis and smallpox.
Unfortunately, forgetting about polio doesnt eradicate its threat.
I can remember schoolmates who wore iron braces on their legs, paralyzed from polio. I was aware of those confined in hospitals dependent on iron lungs that forced their lungs to contract and expand as they struggled for each breath.
As a teenager, my dad was the primary wage-earner for their family of six as his father convalesced from tuberculosis in the high plains of the Arizona desert and later California.
It would be two years before Granddad was well enough to return to the humidity of Kansas and his job at the newspaper.
HEALTH OFFICIALS fear our healthy bodies are undermining what should be healthy skepticism of pseudo-physicians who purport vaccines are unnecessary, at best, and even harmful. During his candidacy for president, Donald Trump tweeted dozen of times from 2012 to 2014 about the supposed dangers of vaccines, including the myth that the measles vaccine can cause autism. (It cannot.) Mr. Trumps goal fit a pattern of eroding confidence in the federal government of the time, even that of public health.
All the while, decades of evidence by those actually trained to study such things prove vaccines have been the most important public health measure in modern medicine. Because of vaccines, smallpox has been eradicated and polio is a close second except for small pockets around the world. Measles continues to take 1.1 million lives a year, according to the world health organization UNICEF, yet could be much lower with effective promotion.
I DIDNT get the T-dap shot for me though its always good to get a tetanus shot but for my grandchild. Prevention is the premise behind vaccinations healthy people warding off the spread of diseases to protect those who are more vulnerable, including the elderly and infirm.
And for children who receive on-time vaccinations, they create an immunity to potentially life-threatening diseases, also helping build a healthier world.
