Vaccinate with Confidence: CDC’s New Campaign

This Vaccinate with Confidence campaign has 3 aims:

#1 Protect Communities. Thank goodness because we need this. We need to protect communities against brain damage and toxic overload, resulting in children with an average life expectancy of only 36 years old. Vaccine-induced encephalitis and encephalopathy should be our first priorities. And, since we know that breastfeeding reduces infant mortality and has lifelong benefits for moms and babies, we also need to protect communities against irresponsible and misleading advertising from the formula industry whose main objective is to derail a mom’s ability to breastfeed. Thank you, Vaccinate with Confidence campaign!

#2 Empower Families. Sweet! Yes, yes, yes! Empowered and informed families are the ones who choose to delay, space out, and forgo vaccines. The most educated are the most vaccine-hesitant because … they do their homework. The more you empower families, the more they choose a gentler, safer vaccine schedule. Thank you, Vaccinate with Confidence!

#3 Stop Myths. This one makes me so happy I could cry. The CDC’s Vaccinate with Confidence campaign is committing to myth-busting. Hallelujah. We’ve got a boatload of myths to bust. Here are just a few of the myths the Vaccinate with Confidence campaign can bust wide open:

• Infants need a vaccine at birth against a sexually transmitted disease. They don’t. There is no scientifically valid reason to give the hepatitis B vaccine to your baby at birth.
• The rotavirus vaccine is safe and necessary. Look up intussusception. It is a sometimes lethal bowel blockage that can be caused by the vaccine). There is also evidence that taking rotavirus out of circulation is the reason we are seeing these norovirus infections, that are so virulent that some elementary schools have been forced to close because of them.
• Chicken pox is a deadly disease for which every child must be vaccinated or they will die: While a severely immune-compromised child with underlying health conditions may have a bad outcome from contracting chicken pox, everyone in my generation knows that chicken pox is a common, mild childhood illness. Very few countries in Europe routinely give this vaccine. Why not? Because they know it isn’t necessary.
•  Tylenol is safe. Literally one of the worst things you can do is give a baby acetaminophen before or after a vaccine.
•  Parents who don’t vaccinate are “crackpots.” Peer-reviewed science consistently shows that parents who don’t vaccinate are among the most educated and most affluent.
• There are no benefits to getting vaccine-preventable diseases. Wrong again: evidence suggests that getting mumps protects against cancer; getting measles may be protective against allergies, and contracting some infectious diseases leads to lifelong immunity and a reduction in chronic conditions.

And my favorite myth of all: Vaccines are promoted relentlessly for the good of public health, not to line the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry. Because, you know, profit and shareholders (and the fact that the pharmaceutical industry sponsors the CDC) have nothing to do with why parents who make judicious choices about their families’ health and wellbeing are relentlessly maligned.

Related content:
Seven of My Vaccinated Kids Have the Measles Right Now
Wondering About Vaccines, Not Sure Where to Start
13 Reasons Why the CDC is Right and You Should Vaccinate Your Kids