Anti-vaxxers are sick with individualism

DECIDING not to vaccinate your kids is not an expression of being a “unique individual”. It’s a dangerous dereliction of your duty as a responsible citizen, writes Kylie Lang.

NO MAN is an island, but there are plenty of fools acting otherwise.

The insidious reach of individualism hit home this week after the publication of my column calling for unvaccinated children to be homeschooled.

Outraged anti-vaxxers protested on every social medium they could find, telling me the decision not to immunise was their business, and to mind my own.

“I am a unique individual,” crowed one woman, stating the obvious but failing to demonstrate an ability to think any further.

Of course we are unique, but that doesn’t give us the right to do as we please without considering the impact on others.

Our culture is sick with individualism. It’s so rampant that we hardly recognise it.

Consider the parents who refuse to comply with school uniform and haircut policies because their children are “expressing” themselves.

Look at the belligerent motorists who harass other road users who happen to get in their way. And what is shoplifting, which includes scamming at self-service check-outs, but an erroneous belief that we are “special” and deserve more?

One of the most harmful manifestations of blind individualism, however, is the refusal of parents to vaccinate their kids.

A sign at an anti-vaccination rally frames it as a “rights” issue for individuals, but unvaccinated people can cost other people their lives. (Pic: Sarah Matray)

While a tiny number of children cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, it’s not even close to the 7 per cent of the population in some parts of Queensland, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, who are not immunised.

Many of the anti-vax nutters — a descriptor I used on Tuesday and had confirmed by the barrage of nonsense feedback that followed — think that being a “unique individual” absolves them of their duty to be responsible citizens.

Vaccinations have eradicated or virtually eliminated many diseases in our society, and a healthier society benefits everybody.

“When a significant proportion of individuals in a community have become immune to a specific disease through immunisation, people who are still susceptible are less likely to come into contact with someone who is carrying the causative infectious agent,” the Australian Academy of Science says.

An anti-vaccination Rally in Melbourne’s Flagstaff Garden.

This herd immunity is vital. What’s more, we live in a global society. Gone are the days when people stayed in the place they were born.

We travel overseas. We move interstate. And if we are not immunised, we take our chances with whatever disease is going around.

Earlier this year, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade updated its travel advice to Fiji after an outbreak in that country of deadly meningococcal C.

One anti-vaxxer told me her children didn’t need jabs because they lived in a small Byron Bay collective with other unimmunised kids.

But what happens when they grow up and leave the commune?

In the novel The Elementary Particles, nominated for France’s top literary award in 1998, author Michel Houellebecq said hippy idealism was to blame for today’s self-centred society.

He described hippies, and serial killers, as “pure libertarians who affirmed the rights of the individual against social norms and against what they believed to be the hypocrisy of morality, sentiment, justice and pity”.

Humans are social beings. We thrive on interaction and co-operation. Playing the “I’m special” card is dangerous.

Kylie Lang is a Courier-Mail associate editor.

@kylie_lang