Wendy Tuohy: Anti-vaxxers making a choice to risk safety of others
PARENTS who fail to vaccinate their child are not just selfish. They are making an active choice to put other people’s safety potentially down the drain.
Wendy Tuohy
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IT’S bad enough to take your own child’s life in your hands by refusing to vaccinate against preventable diseases (some of which could kill) but it’s inexcusable to make potentially life and death decisions for other people.
There is no excuse now for pretending you don’t know that failing to vaccinate your child is not just selfish but an active choice to put other people’s safety potentially down the drain.
Those who refuse to do their social duty are voluntarily putting delusional superstitions over others’ right to stay healthy — or, possibly alive.
There is no way even the most self-indulgent objectors could have missed the pleas to see reason on immunisation from grieving parents such as Catherine Hughes, whose baby, Riley, died an awful death from whooping cough.
The reports of how preventable and potentially lethal illnesses are returning to our community due to the meanness or stupidity of anti-vaxxers have been unmissable in the last five years.
Well-educated people in comfortable suburbs in the big cities are among the biggest offenders, along with the herbal mobs in the hills.
Of the many alarms raised over failing to vaccinate children, you would think the question of ‘what happens to them when they grow up and travel to countries where deadly diseases are still out of control?’ would turn the lights on in even the heads of the maddest flat-earthers.
News a toddler has exposed a plane full of international travellers to measles after catching it in Indonesia is receiving an impassioned response on social media.
The parents say they are pro-vaccination and although the child has had some vaccinations they did not vaccinate against measles. We don’t yet know why and until we know all the facts this particular family deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Regardless, it demonstrates just how dangerous even one unvaccinated child can be. If there was a pregnant woman on that plane, there is a chance that because other people didn’t vaccinate their child, her baby won’t be able to hear.
Passengers from that May 13 Jakarta-Melbourne flight have been told to be on high alert. The ill three-year-old is recovering in hospital.
According to acting chief health officer, Dr Brett Sutton: “Measles is a highly infectious viral disease that can cause serious illness, particularly in very young children and adults”.
“People with measles are often hospitalised,” he said.
Serious complications can also result, including pneumonia.
Let’s hope no one on that flight had reduced immunity, had been on chemo, was elderly or was a baby too young to have had complete vaccinations.
And let the outcry breaking now be a warning to anti-vaxxers who continue to make excuses for their “conscientious” selfishness — you’re on notice.
When it comes to putting yourselves above the health of others, the wider community has absolutely had enough.
— Wendy Tuohy is a Herald Sun columnist.
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