I Have an Opinion on Vaccines

An insistence on mingling amongst shoppers in the mall despite an anti-vaccine stance is tantamount to gleefully joining dinner celebrations without washing the ecoli off both hands after using the toilet. The reason for hand-washing after using the facilities is not because it is some pompous, polite tradition to give one's digits the scent of lilac or lemon. It is because soap kills the bacteria contaminating a hand which would otherwise transfer into the food being handled by everyone. Mouths are covered during sneezing or wretched bouts of coughing to prevent germ-infested spittle from penetrating the nostrils and mouths of companions. It's how a prophylatic contains the spread of disease transmitted through intercourse. These customs and practices are how we judge the hygiene of others. It is how we decide whether to invite them around again for a meal or card game or sex.

The theory of the transmission of disease through germs is well-established. Mukherjee in "The Emperor of all Malodies" tells me so. The transmission doesn't discriminate between whether the germ originates in the lungs, blood, sperm or bowels. A germ is neither filthy nor sanitised. It is a living organism trying to survive. It is either effective at survival or it is not. In its struggle to survive, it could kill its host. If we have a strain of germ in our system, or might have a germ, it is therefore very important to undertake practices such as hand sanitisation before handling a shared pizza, sneezing into a handkerchief in the midst of conversation and, sometimes, extraordinary precautions such as vaccinations to avoid spreading it to our companions.

We may accidentally survive being infected by a germ through sheer bravado. Our associates, or children or elderly may not be that resilient. Vaccines must be equated with hand-washing as one of the tools in humanity's arsenal for combatting disease transmission. We must get it into our psyches that an aversion to vaccinations against disease is just as filthy a mind-set as the staff at a restaurant serving us food on salmonella crusted plates. Billions of people have been vaccinated without complication. Vaccines no more cause autism than soaps cause hangovers.