In my mind the biggest problem with vaccine side effects is the psychological aspect about it. If you get you kid vaccinated and it develops some serious medical conditions afterwards, it might feel as if you have hurt your kid on purpose. However, if you don’t vaccinate and the kid dies from something like pertussis, you can at least blame the illness itself. Of course, you will also feel guilty for not vaccinating when looking back – But the psychological thing of harming your kid by doing something is probably way harder.
What can you do about that? There might be no good solution for this problem – If you do harm by vaccinating you will most likely feel guilty. But you can try to understand the statistics behind vaccination. Maybe this will help you. I will try it with a little story:
Let’s imagine a situation where your loved one got kidnapped by some freak. This freak puts an indestructible bomb-necklace around your kids neck. He gives you the keys for the necklace and the following information: “This necklace might explode and kill your kid with a chance of 1%. It will not explode in a certain amount of time – but at a 1% chance it will. If you use the key, you will be able to unlock the necklace in 99,99%. However, in 0,01% you will trigger an explosion and your kid will die immediately. What do you choose?”
The dilemma of this story is about the same as the dilemma with vaccines. Yes, few people might suffer dramatic damages from vaccines. But in the end, many more will die if you don’t vaccinate. For a whole community, it is a pure game of numbers. A few will suffer for the good of the whole group. This sounds hard. But what better option do we have?
Leave your thoughts on how we can make vaccination more accepted - Or let me know what keeps you from using vaccines!