Sometime last year, quite by accident, Dawnise and I found ourselves looking at Edward Jenner’s house over his garden gate.
Jenner may not be a household name, none the less his work pioneering vaccination has literally – no hyperbole or exaggeration – saved countless lives.
Vaccination isn’t perfect. Vaccination isn’t infallible. Vaccination saves lives.
We know all of these things to be true beyond any reasonable doubt.
We know that vaccination saves lives. In the immortal words of Richard Dawkins, “it works, bitches.”
A wise magician described science as, “a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence.”
“What’s left,” he went on to say, “is magic. And it doesn’t work.”
Along with millions and millions of other people, I’m likely alive because I’ve been vaccinated against a cadre of diseases that could have killed me in infancy. And my parents, and likely their parents, were vaccinated against diseases they subsequently didn’t get.
Diseases that didn’t kill them. Didn’t maim or cripple them. Or change the course of their lives.
The diseases we routinely vaccinate against have become vanishingly rare in vaccinated populations.
Which is entirely the point.
They’ve become rare enough that many of us have never seen someone affected by any of them. Rare enough that some of us have the luxury of asserting the threat of those diseases isn’t real.
We’ve succeeded in making these afflictions rare enough that we’ve collectively forgotten that not very long ago tens of thousands of people contracted paralytic poliomyelitis each year. We’ve forgotten what a hospital ward full of people who need iron lungs to breathe looks like.
Rare enough that some of us believe, despite a preponderance of evidence, that the risk of being vaccinated outweighs the risk of the disease.
The universe, of course, doesn’t give a toss what nonsense you believe.
Thanks to some of the physicians in charge of America’s vaccination advisory committee – like Dr. Kirk Milhoan – who believes that an individual’s right to choose takes primacy over public health – we may soon have a chance to refresh our collective memory.
“Good news, everyone!”
For the record, I believe he’s wrong. And I believe everyone – not just the people who follow his advice and “exercise their right to choose” – are worse off for having people like him in positions of authority.
I also don’t for a moment believe any argument will change his mind.
His position isn’t objective, or rational. It’s not likely to change when confronted with evidence, or a well reasoned argument. Anyway, assuming for a moment he didn’t get his medical degree from a box of Cracker Jack he’s surely seen the data. He’s surely studied the evidence.
And he’s chosen to value individual choice over collective benefit.
Or perhaps he’s betting on magic over science.
He might as well argue that it should be a surgeon’s choice whether they scrub in for a procedure. Or that it’s a a city’s choice to keep sewage out of the drinking water supply.
After all, the “germ theory of disease” is just a theory.
Of course theory doesn’t mean “personal belief,” or even “someone’s wild-assed guess.” A theory – about anything – is the best explanation we currently have – consistent with all the evidence we currently have. A theory helps us reason about and ultimately understand the thing in question.
Doctors, of all people, know this. Doctors, and engineers, are the people who most directly put science into practice. They use it to solve (and prevent) real problems. They use it to hopefully make the world a little better.
So it absolutely infuriates me that he has the nerve – the utter fucking audacity – to call himself a doctor while actively undermining one of the most effective tools we have to protect health. He’s encouraging people in his care – people who look to doctors for trustworthy advice and guidance – to forgo the best protection against these diseases science has.
<deep breath>
So be it.
As America chooses to turn its back on vaccination, no other country can force them to reverse course.
What other countries can do, and should do, is work to ensure that their populations are protected from America’s choices.
The risks from an individual choice to be unvaccinated absolutely shouldn’t be imposed on others.
Acountry might, for instance, make proof of vaccination against diseases they routinely vaccinate against a prerequisite for crossing their border.
Want to enter such a country? Show evidence that you’ve been vaccinated.
Each time Dawnise and I have relocated internationally, proof of vaccination against some set of things has been demanded as part of our entry paperwork. No vaccination, no entry visa.
During the COVID pandemic we demonstrated that it’s completely possible to scale those inspection mechanisms up to everyone traveling between countries.
Many of us don’t have ready proof of childhood vaccination. The straightforward answer is to get re-vaccinated.
Getting (re)vaccinated, managing and checking records – none of that is free. But the cost are low as compared to what’s at stake.
I recognize that there are some people who really actually can’t be vaccinated. People for whom the vaccination itself actually carries material risk. I even know a few such people.
I also know there are a bunch of people who demand, and are often given exemptions for religious or philosophical reasons.
To me the line is bright and clear: a bone-fide medical exemption permits travel. A religious or philosophical exemption does not. If your god, or your philosophy, preclude vaccination they implicitly preclude international travel.
Because magic doesn’t work.