Please Vaccinate Your Kid — to Keep Mine Safe
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Last March, when word first broke about a measles outbreak in New York City, I was sitting in maybe the last place you’d want to be when you hear news like that: a children’s hospital. Less than an hour away from said measles outbreak. Next to my infant daughter’s crib, while she recovered from open-heart surgery.
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My daughter was born with a heart that wasn’t equipped to survive past the first month of her life, due to a rare combination of congenital defects that left her with only two working chambers instead of four. Instead, thanks to the incredible knowledge, skill, and dedication of her medical team, she is now a strong and happy 18-month-old who loves stickers, stars, and “beep beeps!” (her word for anything on four wheels). But to get her here, we had to spend 79 days in the hospital during the first year of her life, while she underwent seven surgical procedures, including two open-heart surgeries. During most of that time, she was not vaccinated against measles — or mumps or rubella and many other illnesses. That’s because, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics Immunization Schedule, those shots aren’t given to infants under certain ages (and believe me — I asked!).
Infants (and certain immune-compromised populations) can’t receive vaccines themselves, so they rely on what’s known as “herd immunity,” or “community protection,” which occurs when almost everyone else has been vaccinated, so the disease in question can’t get a foot in the door. “It’s like we’re able to give a ‘free ride’ ticket to anyone who can’t be vaccinated,” explains Julia Sammons, MD, Hospital Epidemiologist and Medical Director of the Department of Infection Prevention and Control at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). “But we can only give out a limited number of free rides before herd immunity is weakened. If more and more people get free-ride tickets, then fewer people are protected and the disease will begin to spread in the community.”
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It’s not just that infants and immune-compromised people are unable to get vaccines. They are also more susceptible to contracting these diseases in the first place, because they don’t have enough natural immunities to fight them off. And if they do fall ill, the consequences can be devastating. “These patients are at greater risk for dangerous complications, including death,” notes Dr. Sammons. That also holds true for “medically fragile” children, the category my daughter now falls into because she’s medically stable, but still vulnerable. She relies on life-sustaining medications and interventions (including a feeding tube) and a virus that might result in a simple cold for you or me could easily land her back in the pediatric intensive care unit.
When your child is in the hospital, you already live with the constant fear of infection: On any given day, 1 in 25 hospital patients picks up an infection that he or she did not have upon admission; about 75,000 of them will prove fatal each year, reports the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. Most are from things we can’t vaccinate against. During my daughter’s most recent stay, she became septic when staphylococcus bacteria invaded one of the tubes draining fluid out of her chest. The bacteria circulated through her bloodstream within hours and required powerful antibiotics and emergency surgery to treat. The surgeon who did the job told us afterwards that the infection looked like “a bomb had gone off” around her tiny lungs. She also picked up any number of upper respiratory infections during her stays — most likely cold viruses brought in by doctors, nurses, and other patients, despite our hospital’s best efforts to prevent the spread of disease through strict precautionary protocols. This is the price you pay for hospital care and it’s already too high.
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Which brings me to the current situation with measles. 2014 saw 644 cases — a record number — in the United States. This year has barely begun and the count has climbed above 120, thanks to the Disneyland outbreak that has now spread to 17 states. These are tallies we haven’t seen since the early 1990s and there’s no mystery as to why: “Failure to vaccinate is the primary reason for the re-emergence of measles in this ‘post-elimination’ era,” says Dr. Sammons.
It’s easy for me to get mad at parents who choose not to vaccinate. After all, the science on this issue is clear: Vaccines do not cause autism, according to 20 years of studies. Fewer than one in a million children experiences a serious allergic reaction to the measles vaccine. The CDC does report that one in 30,000 have developed a bleeding disorder, one in 3,000 may experience seizures, and more mild issues (low-grade fever, rash, swelling or stiffness) are more common. But vaccines are also responsible for preventing almost 6 million deaths worldwide every year. Meanwhile, in the pre-vaccine era, we saw an average of 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths per year due to measles, notes Dr. Sammons. So why do nearly one in 10 Americans still believe that vaccines are unsafe? And why are these people taking the “free ride” tickets away from children like my daughter, who really need it?
Because they’re scared. “I don’t like the term ‘anti-vaccine’ because there are very few people who are truly opposed to vaccines ideologically,” notes Daniel Salmon, PhD, an associate professor of global disease epidemiology and control at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. “Most of these parents are vaccine-hesitant because they’re concerned about the safety of these drugs and question whether vaccines are in their child’s best interest.” And that, I get. I’m scared for my child’s health every day. And to be honest, even crazy low odds like one in a million aren’t particularly comforting when your child has already been the “super rare” one in 20,000 case. But if vaccines carry risks — and okay, they do, albeit small ones — these are risks that we as a society have to agree to take together. Because that risk is so much better than the alternative. And because vaccinating your healthy child is something you can do to help keep my daughter, and so many other children, safe.
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