A nurse mother-of-two is hitting back against anti-vaxxers who avoid shots as a protest against big pharmaceutical companies.
In a Facebook post that has gone viral, Meggy Doodle, from Monterey, California, claims that she believes parents should be allowed to choose whether or not they want to immunize their children.
However, she believes those same parents should not be allowed to visit the doctor’s office or a hospital if their child gets sick.
‘I think that people who don’t want to vaccinate should have the freedom to do so. If they think that “big pharma” is just trying to turn a profit or poison us all…they should be allowed to believe that,’ Meggy wrote.
‘But the caveat to that is this: Then they should NOT be allowed go to the doctor or the hospital when they get sick, looking for treatment.’
Meggy Doodle, a nurse and mother of two, from Monterey, California, is hitting back against anti-vaxxers who say shots are a plot by big pharmaceutical company to line their pockets with profits
In a viral Facebook post, she says she believes that parents should be allowed to choose whether or not they want to immunize their children. However, she argues those same parents should not be allowed to visit the doctor’s office or a hospital if their child gets sick
Meggy goes on to write that ‘Big Pharma’ – a colloquial term for the global pharmaceutical industry – is also responsible for a number of other medications and treatments including antibiotics, steroids, EpiPens, inhalers and chemotherapy.
‘Big pharma makes those antibiotics we are going to pump you full of when you are about to die from sepsis,’ she wrote.
‘The steroids and epi [sic] we might give you to save your life from your anaphylaxis? Yep, big pharma is behind that too.
‘Having a heart attack? Better break out your essential oils and get your affairs in order, because the only thing we have to offer you is medicine and procedures brought to you by the very same people who are responsible for those vaccines you insist are evil.’
She ends the post by acknowledging that vaccines, like everything, come with risks, but have been proven to be effective.
‘Everything has risks. Everything has side effects. Medicine is not perfect,’ she writes.
‘We advocate for vaccinating your children and yourself because science has PROVEN its the most effective method of controlling the spread of disease and giving you and everyone around you the best chance of NOT DYING from something preventable.’
Since the post was uploaded on October 23, it has received more than 38,000 reactions and has been shared more than 36,000 times.
There are caveats to Doodle’s rant.
While some anti-vaxxers may be protesting Big Pharma, some say vaccines are made from unnatural and unsafe chemicals and that they would rather take their chances on their kids getting treated if or when they get sick.
Others argue that vaccines overload a child’s immune system or that natural immunity is better.
Then, of course, there is the argument that vaccines are linked to autism, a claim that has been debunked by scientists.
Since the post was uploaded on October 23, it has received more than 38,000 reactions and has been shared more than 36,000 times
A survey from May 2018 found that support for vaccinations among Americans has fallen 10 percent in the last 10 years.
About 70 percent said common vaccines, such as for polio and measles, are ‘very important’, found the poll from Research America and the American Society for Microbiology.
This is down from 80 percent who gave the same answer in November 2008.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 90 percent of children under age three have been vaccinated for polio, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), Hepatitis B and chicken pox.
And more than 80 percent have received Haemophilus influenzae, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and pneumococcal infection vaccines.
However, mounting distrust has led some parents to not immunize their children, in turn leading to outbreaks of diseases not seen in years, such as measles, whooping cough and mumps.
Experts say that, as diseases have become less common, people don’t remember a time from before vaccines were commonplace.
‘Because we don’t frequently see these diseases anymore, we don’t perceive the risk of not getting vaccinated,’ says Julie Bettinger, a vaccine safety scientist at BC Children’s Hospital, in Vancouver, Canada, told Today’s Parent.
‘But the diseases we developed vaccines for – like polio, which killed or crippled thousands of children – were selected precisely because they’re so severe.’
Despite only less than one percent of children under age two not receiving any vaccinations, public health officials have warned that inoculations not only protect individuals but the community as a whole in what is known as ‘herd immunity’.
This occurs when the vast majority of a community – between 80 and 95 percent – becomes immune so that, if a disease is introduced, it is unable to spread.
Therefore, those who are unable to be vaccinated, including the ill, very young and very old, are protected.