Vaccines are not harmless, as no drug is. They have a primary intention, that of protect who receives it from a certain disease, but they also have possible side effects that make more and more parents doubt whether administering them is the best decision.
To this we must add that, fortunately, many of the diseases from which children are vaccinated barely exist in our environment, in the first world, and not seeing them, we lose some respect.
This is not the case with this family, because their daughters caught a rotavirus, which is a common infection, but it was enough for the mother to change her mind. First he chose not to vaccinate, but when his sick daughters fell he decided to do the opposite.
He felt that he had a truth that the rest did not want to see
We talk about Kristen O'Meara, a teacher of children with special needs whose testimony was published in the New York Post, which decided together with her husband not to vaccinate her daughter Natasha, as her friends also did, all with a high educational level.
As he explained, he has always been very critical of the authority and the pre-established order, and the subject of vaccines caused him a lot of skepticism. He looked for information in books and anti-vaccine websites, where he saw that vaccines were linked to an increase in allergy, asthma and ADHD rates (although at the moment it does not appear that unvaccinated children have better health), and where he was scared much upon discovering the report by Andrew Wakefield (already discredited) associating the measles, rubella and mumps vaccine with autism.
He found a pediatrician who thought the same about it, and this helped him make the decision to don't vaccinate your daughter. Two years later, when his twins Áine and Lena were born, he did not even consider the possibility of doing it differently.
As he said, got to feel superior to others, possessing a truth that others were not able to understand because they did not have the same skills to investigate and see reality. He saw the other parents as sheep who followed the **** pack and did not question anything they were doing.
But his daughters got a rotavirus
In March 2015, her daughters got a rotavirus. You will never know how they got infected, but you will never forget the three weeks you lived as a family. Her twins, who were then three years old, were screaming in pain as if they were suffering from stomach cramps (she says so).
Days later, the eldest, Natasha, was infected with the same result: a strong dehydration and without any treatment that could help them.
He felt that he had failed them, and that even group immunity had failed her. I had that the vaccines were effective, but believed that since most children were vaccinated, their daughters would not be in too much danger.
He couldn't take his twins to school
He began to reconsider his choice to see what they had suffered, and to receive a letter from the school in which he wanted to enroll the little ones saying that they no longer admitted children who had been vaccinated. With the eldest, Natasha, she managed to get in by claiming she didn't vaccinate her because of religious beliefs, even though it wasn't true. So he wondered if he really wanted to spend the rest of his life writing that kind of letters on a subject he was no longer entirely sure of.
Then he began to investigate the other option, the one that talked about the efficacy and safety of vaccines, and also read some books and web pages about it. He changed his mind, changed his pediatrician, and took his daughters to give them an accelerated vaccination schedule, so that now his daughters are already taking all the vaccines they have for them by age.
Along the way, she has lost a friend
Kristen lamented that in making this decision he lost his best friend. When he explained what he had decided, he noticed tension at the moment. The relationship did not end at that moment, but since that day it cooled down so that they no longer speak.
Relying on his new decision, he thought about writing to the Voices for Vaccines pro-vaccines group and explaining his story, which ended up being published on his website.
Finally, he explained how frustrated he felt with the amount of erroneous information he found in relation to vaccines (here he does not specify whether he is in favor or against), but at the same time glad to have been able to reevaluate his position according to the evidence which says that if we stop vaccinating children, diseases will return.
