> "Somalia is the first country to apply to Gavi for new funding to give children diphtheria boosters — shots delivered to children in their second year of life, then between 4 and 7 years old and 9 to 15 years old — in areas where the outbreak has seemed most severe."
RFK Jr. was personally responsible for ending US' involvement in Gavi, due to his insane view that the diphtheria vaccine is unsafe:
https://www.statnews.com/2025/07/02/rfk-jr-vaccines-former-c... ("RFK Jr.’s intellectually dishonest excuse for defunding Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance" / "The diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis shot study he cites is fatally flawed")
Interestingly, our paediatrician in the US gave us a long lecture about why vaccines are important and this and that. He's an older gentleman and wouldn't brook any of my interruptions that I've been through this and to please proceed with the vaccination schedule and that I've had measles[0] when I was a young child and have no intention of subjecting my children to it. Presumably his insistence on the subject was because of hesitancy.
In the end, we got the usual ones but didn't give our daughter the COVID vaccine. I can't say it's a super principled position, except that I think I do want to minimize the number of vaccinations she gets to the ones that are the highest risk for her. That's the usual meningococcal, hepatitis for a neonate; the Tdap for an infant, and the subsequent measles et al. for older children. I think I'm content to leave the tail risk items in the tail.
0: I was eight months old, my parents were the only doctors in the rural Indian village, and consequently a local brought their very sick child to our home. The child was in the room for just a few moments before my mother rushed me to the other room. As it so happened it was too late for me. I became quite sick as well.
It's true this isn't the flood, but it's the sound of distant thunder and the sighting of a wall of black clouds on the horizon.
Better walk the dog and call the spouse and kids back from the playground.
You strike an interesting point.
From a scientific PoV, vaccine rejection in the West is pretty much unjustifiable according to mainstream medicine. But the not-worst-case, fairly bad outcome is kinda manageable. Your child gets measles, is probably OK, but if not, goes to an expensive hospital and will probably be fine. Even without vaccinations, it's probably not a life or death scenario. I'm not saying it's good, only that the price tag is likely low.
But of course it's completely different in poorer countries, many places in Africa among them. These are also places with poorer education on average, I'd imagine. And what do they think when the West is sending them (or they're buying out or scarce resources) stuff that we refuse because it's "dangerous"?
And if you get a measles outbreak in Somalia, you won't be worrying about childcare and copayment, it will literally be life and death.
People who peddle anti vaccine BS should think about this too.
I don't understand this take, if you are a parent. For example, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), rarely causes death in developed countries. But 1) like SARS-CoV-2, almost every children will get infected at least once in their first two years of age and 2) a respectable number of non-deadly consequences come from this virus, some of them long term.
My point is death is not the only consequence you should weight. Just having your baby a couple of weeks in "expensive hospital" (i.e. ICU), with a chance short term consequences like respiratory problems and secondary infections, or long term non-deathly consequences like asthma and alergies, sounds like a danger serious enough to me. It seems like a very poor parent decision to not vaccinate your children against RSV, even if it's almost impossible for RSV to kill your baby.
An interesting angle, though I wouldn't say I agree. As one example, I believe all of us in India routinely receive the BCG vaccine against TB right after birth. It's not routinely done in the US (unless I'm wrong and don't remember it). The US choosing not to do it doesn't make Indian people want to not get it.
More likely, there's something else that's making people worried about the standard vaccines.
Just wait for polio to make a comeback. It's life-altering, has no cure, and is easy to vaccinate against.
Which, I mean, was at least true for one of them. Cia, indirectly killing children since 1950 would be a great catchphrase.
What an incredibly selfish point of view. Both for ignoring the risks of measles in your own child, and more importantly, for completely leaving out of the equation the likelihood that they will spread it to someone who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated or for whom the virus is even more dangerous.
> Presumably his insistence on the subject was because of hesitancy.
> In the end, we got the usual ones but didn't give our daughter the COVID vaccine
Perhaps the doctor deserves some slack.
I should have known better than to mention that. For obvious reasons this one virus is a bit of a politicized subject and activates the outrage machine.
I've got no problem with our paediatrician. Rather like him, if I'm being honest. Wouldn't be going back for every subsequent appointment if I did have a problem. The "long lecture" bit is more affectionate than complaining.
Covid is not a tail risk.
Additionally, by not getting a vaccine, you potentially put people at risk who cannot get a vaccine -- immunocompromised folks, etc. Vaccinating your child also protects everyone in their communities.
Choosing not to vaccinate because you want to limit the number for no expressed reason is vaccine hesitancy. You have expressed a position of vaccine hesitancy here.
COVID-19 vaccines are no longer indicated for most healthy children (or most healthy young adults) in most jurisdictions as the risk benefit analysis no longer supports it.
Almost literally everyone has and will continue to get COVID at this point. Not vaccinating your child, or all of the children in the US, won’t prevent that. I don’t know a single person that hasn’t had it, vaccinated or not. So, your child gets the vaccine. They’re then, what, maybe 50% less likely to get COVID for 6 months? Not exactly moving the needle as far as community transmission goes. This isn’t 2021 anymore.
If we had a better, longer lasting vaccine you might have an argument. Very, very few parents are going to do the COVID vaccine for their child every year. At the very least you’re risking them picking up something more serious just by going to a clinic or pharmacy to get it.
No. You probably thinking some other vaccine and infection, not covid. For covid once infected, vaccinated people express similar number of virus in their saliva as unvaccinated (see for example [1]). Additionally, infected vaccinated people have lower intensity symptoms or now symptoms at all, and thus more likely to go about their business as usual (and thus spread the virus) than to stay home like unvaccinated. As a result the vaccinated people do possibly spread more infection than unvaccinated. The obviously propagandistic and using government force push "do it for the good of the community" (very USSR style) for covid vaccinations against the science - as those results were already known at the end of 2021 - drove a lot of new people into vaccine-sceptic crowd.
[1] https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim...
"new study from the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, UC San Francisco and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub shows no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who tested positive for the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. It also found no significant difference between infected people with or without symptoms.
...
Although vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection are much less likely to become severely ill than unvaccinated, the new study shows that they can be carrying similar amounts of virus and could potentially spread the virus to other people."
He did all the mandatory vaccines, the rest is a tail risk. Unless you vaccinate yourself against the flu and your children for both flu and COVID, I don't think you have any leg to stand on.
Alarmism, militant shaming, and omission of details like the ones I mentioned above are three strategies that steer vaccine hesitant people away from taking vaccine advocates seriously. Personally, I would raise concerns about anything but COVID and ease up on the Newspeak.
Imagine saying this about anything else that's good for children. I want to minimize the amount of food she eats. I want to minimize the number of friends she has. Insane mindset, tbh.
