Vaccines are incredible

A series

Lately, I’ve felt a bit demoralised reading the rising tide of bullshit about the Covid 19 vaccination. I expected there to be a wave of anti-vaxx sentiment because there’s money to be made from being a professional anti-vaxxer these days. I’ve got into the muck a bit on Instagram but I’ve decided instead of doing that I’ll do a series on vaccination, sharing what I’ve learned from eight years of advocating for immunisation.

This first post of the series will be an explainer as to why I love vaccines and I plan on the next post being about how to combat the ableist rhetoric we are going to see spreading online.

This post is free and you’re welcome to share it as you see fit (along with any of my other free posts). As always, I am eternally grateful for those who subscribe to my newsletter. Please excuse any typos, I’m writing this with two kids lying on me!

As the Covid 19 vaccination roll-out happens around the world we are starting to see the same arguments pop up that are the cornerstone of general anti-vaccination rhetoric. These “arguments” are the same arguments I’ve faced for the last eight years as I’ve attempted to help people to understand vaccination.

I feel like I’ve heard every single argument there is to be had on this topic. For a long time vaccination has been framed as a debate: “Are vaccines safe or not?” This is a pointless debate to have because it is a fact that vaccines are safe and that vaccines are not safe for some people. These two facts are not in battle with each other.

Those people do not get vaccinated and we vaccinate to protect those people. So simple. But despite that, a debate that is filled with toxicity and lies rages on.

Vaccines stopped the devastation of polio, smallpox, chloera, and TB. Tetanus, diphtheria, measles, mumps and rubella, Hepatitis A and B, and Pneumococcal Disease would be out of control were it not for vaccines. These are simple facts.

Vaccines aren’t new - Buddhist monks drank snake venom to build immunity to bites. Smallpox immunity came from smearing saliva or blood from Cowpox onto an open wound to develop immunity. This was in 17th Century China.

Edward Jenner inoculated a 13 year-old-boy with cowpox in 1796 which lead to the smallpox vaccine in 1798. I often think of the mother of that boy. Did she say to Edward Jenner that he could do anything? Just please, please save her son?

In 1897 came the cholera vaccine and the Bacillis-Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination AKA the TB vaccination. It’s difficult to put into words just how ravaged the world was by TB then. Despite this, faith in the vaccination was not high. This is not surprising, given the time and how new this science was.

The vaccine is named after the two people who made it - Albert Calmette was a French physician and bacteriologist and Camille Guérin, his assistant, was a veterinarian. This makes sense because the battle to create a TB vaccine was very closly linked to the smallpox vaccine - developed from cowpox. One of the first steps was understanding that bovine tuberculosis might hold the key to protecting people from infection from human tuberculosis.

But as I said, people didn’t trust it. And for good reason. In 1930, 240 babies were vaccinated in the first 10 days of life. They all contracted TB and 72 babies died. The vaccine they had been given had been contaminated with another, far more virulent strain of TB, that was stored in the same incubator. It was no wonder there was vaccine hesitancy.

So, why am I talking about this vaccine instead of a vaccine like Polio and Smallpox? Because, while I love all vaccines, I hold the BCG very close to my heart because it astounds me that we still use a vaccine that began being developed in 1890. This is a vaccine that is given to 100 million children at least, every year, everywhere in the world. That’s amazing to me. I find it so inspiring.

There is a direct line between the mother who held her baby for the first time and then lost her precious baby to TB, to the mother who vaccinated her baby to protect them and then lost her precious baby to TB, to the mother who doesn’t even think about how her child will never die of TB.

The vaccine has a direct link to my child - It is currently being studied to see if it can treat or prevent type one diabetes. It’s being studied as you read this to see if it can be used in the fight against Covid 19.

Vaccines are truly incredible. In the awful online debates where instagram influencers lie to get people to buy their signature cucumber water to protect against whooping cough instead of being vaccinated - we forget that immunisation is one of the greatest gifts of humanity. Vaccines ARE humanity.

Vaccines come from people seeing devastation and saying - NO. No there must be a better way. Mothers held their babies as they died of smallpox and they were forever changed. The harrowing loss reverberated until it was so loud that nobody could do anything but work toward a cure.

For so long, people tried. And there was nothing, nothing that could be done. In 18th-century Europe, at least 400,000 people died from smallpox every single year. Those who didn’t die were irrevocably changed - one-third of all cases of blindness were due to smallpox.

In 1967, there were 15 million cases of smallpox. In 1980, it was gone thanks to the vaccine. It is impossible to say how many died. Impossible to say how many live now because of this vaccine. Impossible because the number is just too big. We cannot begin to comprehend it.

Just like we cannot comprehend the fact that last week in America a person died from Covid 19 every three seconds.

From the very first Covid 19 cough people have worked tirelessly to stop it. I imagine them in their labs, exhausted and afraid. They worked through this.

In the beginning of Covid 19 we wondered if it would be an extinction level event. Others went to work immediately to try to save us all.

And then when their efforts, their exhausted efforts, paid off in the form of a vaccine that could save us - they were told it was too fast by white women on the internet who are innoculated by their privilege and selfishness.

Imagine quarantining from your family for almost a year, working tirelessly - the longest hours you’ve ever known - to save us and you’re told you worked too fast by someone who thinks kale is a natural vaccination for a coronavirus.

It’s just too quick, I can’t trust a vaccine that hasn’t been tested.

We have been making vaccines and saving each other for as long as there has been human kind! For as long as there has been illness and ferocious disease we have fought it! It is the most beautiful part of of us, of society.

Every vaccine is a stepping stone to another vaccine. Every test has been carried out before. Every step taken is a step in a direction we have been heading for as long as existence.

If you still don’t think vaccines are a gift - I’d like to share one more thing with you.

Do you know what Hib is? Chances are you don’t. Hib’s official name is Haemophilus influenzae type b. Hib causes brain damage, hearing loss, and death, mostly to children aged under five. More than 20,000 kids were infected with Hib each year before the vaccine was developed and given. Of those children, one in five were left brain damaged or deaf. And one in 20 died. Hib was once the most common cause of life-threatening bacterial infection in children. And then, 35 years ago, the vaccine which was initially developed in 1977 became routine. As a result, there has also been a decrease in the rate of meningitis, pneumonia, and epiglottis in children. It’s now given in 184 countries. It is universally effective against all manifestations of Hib disease and has a clinical efficacy among fully vaccinated children of between 95–100%.

It is a modern miracle thanks to the tireless work of many - but especially: Porter Anderson, Jr, David Smith, John Robbins, and Rachel Schneerson.

Behind every vaccine is a team of people who did everything they could to make a difference. And they were never done. Their work continued and continues to this very day.

A direct line from them to us and our children - a line that says to us we must never give up. We must never lose hope. We must always fight for each other.

Credit: Maryke Steffens.