When people ask me why I'm so pro-vaccine, I have one answer: they prevent disease and/or death.
So why have three kids already died in what is being described by doctors as a pretty average flu season?
At least one of the children went unvaccinated not because his parents were lax, but because the twelve-year-old reportedly lost his permission slip to get the immunization at a school clinic. Hunter Pope is the first child in Massachusetts known to have died from the flu this season; he was fine on a Friday and gone by Sunday.
Sadly, the weekend also brought the death of a ten-year-old boy on Long Island, the first ever pediatric flu death in the five years since public health officials have been tracking the diease. First believed to have been fighting meningitis, tests eventually showed the boy was carrying the A-strain of the flu, one of two preventable by this year's vaccine. The two deaths followed the announcement of a six-year-old North Carolina child who succumbed to flu complications on February 9 - again because he had not been vaccinated.
Why? It's the question you always ask when a child dies (when anyone dies, really, but the question is more plaintive when a child has been taken). It's just that much more confusing when there was a clear method for preventing a tragedy, and people opted to ignore it. I equate vaccines with seatbelts - they might not work every time, but there's a much higher degree of success with them than without them.
The Centers for Disease Control came out with new recommendations this flu season, calling for every single American under the age of eighteen to get the shot - which paved the way for insurance companies to cover the shot and for those on public assistance to get them for free. They made it even EASIER this year, and yet parents refused.
Why? Read the answers to my post on the CDC recommendations last fall: because they've never gotten it before (neither - might I add, had Hunter Pope - whose parents said he had no pre-existing health conditions), because they are afraid of thimerosal (not necessarily - there are thimerosal-free flu vaccines available for kids six months to twenty-three months), because they think the pro-vax crowd is too preachy.
I realize I stand on a soapbox and beat the vaccine drum, but I will tell you I also practice what I preach. On Halloween day, I lined up at a crowded neighborhood clinic with my daughter so the two of us could get our flu shots. My husband got his - separately, but around the same time.
Seeing the flu really can kill children, will you do the same?
Image: Flu-Vaccine.org
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