Anti-vaxxers and epistemological narcissism
Jesse Johnson
This week was vaccine week in the news. Measles outbreaks in California and Arizona shed light on the trend of anti-vaxxers: parents who intentionally do not have their kids immunized against measles (the actual vaccination is against measles, mumps, and rubella). Today I want to appeal to Christian parents who are in the anti-vaxx crowd. But before getting there, a little history:
Measles is a disease that spreads rapidly, largely decimated the Native American populationin the United States, and brought global chaos for centuries. It is not frequently lethal in healthy children who receive medical attention, but because of how painful it is and how quickly it spreads person-to-person, through much of the last 500 years it has been regarded as one of the most dangerous diseases.
But in the 1950’s a Navy pilot and war-hero-turned doctor was able to identify the virus that caused measles. This soon led to a vaccination, likely one of the most impressive feats of the modern world. Not only did the vaccination protect those who received it, but it soon became obvious that there was a societal affect as well. Doctors began to notice “herd-immunity,” which basically means that when over 90% of the population is vaccinated, the disease stops spreading to the point that it dies out. In fact, in 2000 the US Centers for Disease Control declared that measles had been effectively eliminated from the US.
One of the most devastating and feared diseases in the history of the world was defeated by a vaccine—a vaccine that not only protected those who received it, but protected those who were too weak to receive it (such as infants, or those with immune deficiency disorders).