Babes & Sucklings: How Antivaxxers will lose the argument

Question: Why are anti-vaxxers the same as Boko Haram?
 

Another one: How are they so like the Taliban?

Of course, there are many reasons why we shouldn’t cnflate North Americans or Europeans who manifest bad behaviour, such as vaccine hesitancy or refusal, with jihadists like the Taleban or Boko Haram. Boko and the Talys are terrorist groups who kill without logic. They do so, even when you try to protect their children from preventable deadly diseases. 

Why do they do the things that they do? Their rationale, if it can be called that, is that immunization is ‘haram’ or forbidden. But by whom or by what they do not make clear. Even more ridiculous, is their claim that vaccination renders their girl-children unfertile.  Neither of these claims is sensible. Us, reasonable people, simply don’t get it, and are totally befuddled by the Taliban and Boko’s assertion that all western-based science is haram, anyway.

         So, the question is, why would someone living in the West, and being of the West, be unable to inoculate themselves against the bizarre and do a Boko or Taleban on us, despite all the rational knowledge they are immersed in? One would imagine that lifelong exposure to the technological ideas that have proved useful and effective, starting from the ancient Chinese who, reportedly, ingested snake venom as protection against the lethal consequences of the reptiles' bite, and up to and including our present-day practices and procedures. We don’t know how well that Chinese science worked, but we can suppose that it did, because, today, there are, indeed, several oral vaccines that are highly effective in controlling some of the dreadful diseases that threaten the health and lives of children. Chief among these, is oral polio vaccine which, as it happens, is one of the immunizations that seem to get Boko and the Taleban’s goat. 

         But, as well as polio, there are many other public health successes that mass immunization has racked up. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the world would be in a far darker place today were we not able to enjoy the protections that vaccines afford against scourges like small pox, notorious killer and disfigurer; the holocaust-dealing yellow fever; polio, which, as well as killing, leaves in its wake, a range of crippling disabilities; and diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, rubella, pneumonia, meningitis, Tb; an almost endless roll-call of killers and destroyers. And we haven’t mentioned hepatitis of various sorts, some of which, as well, may trigger the development of some cancers.

         And for those who might think that catching some of these preventable infections is limited only to the infected generation, may we remind them that the casualty list includes the unborn as well, as in the case for rubella, which takes its toll on the babies of mothers who had not acquired immunity either through natural infection or by vaccination. This protection afforded by the vaccinated individual to her fetus is a specific example of ‘herd’ immunity, the concept that says that, by being immunized, you reduce the chances of your neighbour catching a natural infection from you. It is reckoned that, if 95% of people are immune, then it means that the culprit germ cannot spread. Makes sense, doesn’t it? An epidemic is stopped dead in its tracks. What’s there to hate about that?

         It is shameful to observe that in 2019, children are being denied the protection afforded by vaccines because their parents, for a variety of spurious reasons, are refusing those innocents the option of being protected, some in the belief that the vaccines are harmful. Sounds familiar? The result is that the proportion of immunized individuals among us has declined to a dangerously low level, jeopardizing the immunity in the herd. We are all, thereby, placed at risk because some parents arrogate to themselves the option not to protect their child.

         In 1998, former doctor, Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues published a paper in the Lancet, that claimed evidence that the combination vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) was linked to developmental behavioural disabilities, including autism. That publication triggered a marked fall in vaccination rates in children in UK, Canada and the US, even though the quality of the research has been discredited, not only because of the lack of scientific integrity and rigour, but also because of possible financial impropriety as well.

         Now, fast-forward to 2019. We learn that, among the numerous other reasons why children are not being vaccinated is that their parents are falling prey to an alternative procedure called ‘homeo-prophylaxis’, an offshoot of the shady practice of homeopathy. Not surprisingly, the incidence of measles has been increasing in Canada, for example, with the city of Vancouver leading the way in this dereliction of parental duty. Elsewhere in the western world, the picture is equally dismal, from New York to Florida, to Rome and to Kiev, to Tel Aviv and to Paris, everywhere where parents ought to know better, the children are being let down. And, as we speak, Pakistan has had to suspend a mass polio vaccination campaign because of lethal harassment by the Taliban.

         However, children are fighting back, and where they can, and have full agency, are making the choice for standard vaccination procedures by themselves . “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…”

Tell Fren Tru

Bad Luck

We live in an age of anxiety. In the west what causes sleepless nights the most is whether the next generation will be able to enjoy a richer lifestyle than their parents’. There is near-universal worry that the young will not be able to land a job that pays a living wage or even land one at all. And, as if in mockery of the plight of the struggling poor, the gap between them and the really wealthy 1% is widening by the day.

But the difference between someone in the west who pockets a million dollars, for example, and another who gets only twenty or thirty thousand is not the same as the difference between the minimally employed in a poor African country earning just one dollar a day and their more ruthless brethren who plunder a billion or two from the system.

And the poor in Africa are not only just poor. They lack security of life as well. (Among numerous other deficits).This lack of security may be just local, mediated through the actions of neighbourhood thugs. Dangerous enough. But, too often, the actions of their governments at the centre lead to a more wholesale threat to security. Anyway, however you look at it the governments are culpable for the shocking quality of life that people in these countries have to endure. Governments fail to deliver on promises, misgovern and oppress, and when called to account, over-react and do more mischief to those who dare to protest. Some governments even refuse to go even when they have gone well beyond their use-by date. And wherever they are in the election cycle, if that has not already been rubbished, the people may withdraw their consent to be governed by such incompetent, self-serving kleptocrats.

In the circumstances, all sorts of groups emerge from all quarters of the society, demanding their own slice. Fair enough. But when among them, the very worst emerge with their dubious theologies, the threat to the society becomes elemental. This is what is happening in Nigeria right now. A government, in what is arguably the most corrupt nation on earth and where the gulf between the rich and the poor is one of the deepest, presided over by a man whose performance belies his name, has exposed its people to unspeakable threats. Young men and women, old men and children are being terrorized and captured. Schools, churches and other places of worship and instruction are being targeted, set on fire, their occupants immolated. And now, captured schoolgirls are being threatened with being sold in an ironic replay of the wars that fuelled the transatlantic Slave Trade.

And up to recently, there has been dead silence from Nigeria’s Mr President. The only action of note seems to have been one from a member of the kitchen cabinet, “Her Excellency” Madam President herself, whose quota of testosterone seems to be more ample than that of her husband’s. Too bad that she elected to demonstrate her power by ordering the arrest of those protesting against her husband’s incompetence. Amazing.

Nigeria needs better luck than the measure that Jonathan seems capable of delivering.

Tell Fren Tru