Trending
This letter is in response to the letter from Chanda Adkins in the Jan. 6 edition of The Inter-Mountain. Ms. Adkins is exhorting people to come to a rally at the state Capitol called the WV Health Freedom Day, and is advocating for West Virginians to have the option of not vaccinating their children for school. We, the undersigned, are against such legislation.
Presently, West Virginia is one of just a few states who have strict requirements for vaccines at school entry. Because of this, our state enjoys the lack of deadly infectious diseases. Just last week, medical news revealed that there are cases of Pertussis, or Whooping Cough, in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Today there were five cases of measles in Philadephia. Last year there were polio cases in New York state. Several years ago there were measles cases in Ohio and California.
The reasons for these outbreaks are a lack of strict vaccine requirements in those states. Pertussis is deadly for babies.
Ms. Adkins calls herself an ex-vaxxer since she has been vaccinated. She is part of a younger generation of people who are lucky they have not had the deadly infectious diseases the childhood vaccines prevent. Vaccines were the No. 1 success in the 20th Century for public health.
At the beginning of that century those diseases were the No. 1 killer of children. Now the No. 1 killer of children is accidents.
Diptheria was known to wipe out entire villages of adults and children, and killed by forming a membrane in the throat that suffocated them. People were so scared of polio that when Dr. Salk invented the polio vaccine, it was the top headline in newspapers nationwide and parents could not wait to get their kids vaccinated, standing in long lines to get the shot. Just think, we even had a president who was in a wheelchair because of polio.
Even George Washington knew the power of vaccines when he had his troops vaccinated against smallpox. The younger generations today are protected, so they are unaware of how lucky they are.
Ms. Adkins says that she was severely injured by a vaccine she was required to take for pharmacy school. We have extreme sympathy for her. She does not specify what injury she received. However, when you look at statistics, the benefits of vaccines for our children FAR outweigh the risks of vaccines themselves.
The vaccines that are required for school now can only work if there is what is called herd immunity. Herd immunity is when we expose each other to the germs after the kids are vaccinated. We, as a society, are actually helping each other. Herd immunity will not be possible if we relax our vaccine requirements. That is what is lacking in the states mentioned, where some of these infections are popping up.
Our advice is to keep our laws strict for vaccine requirements and keep our kids and adults protected against these deadly infectious diseases.
Mary S. Boyd, MD, Valley Health Care, Pediatrics
Alyson M. Leo, MD, Valley Health Care, Family Medicine
Cameron M. Ross, MD, Internal Medicine, Valley Health Care
Rachel Anger, CPNP, Davis Medical Center
Amanda Pennington, MD, Pediatrician, Davis Medical Center
Ebba K. Ebba, MD, Davis Medical Center