The three invitation-only school meetings have been focused on altering your family’s vaccination choices. Apparently, these people know what is best for you and your children, and here come the typical propaganda methods!
Shock and awe in the local paper. Dismiss/minimize dangers. Promote fear! Exaggerate vaccine effectiveness. And, most insidiously, an attempt to turn Islanders against each other.
Divide and conquer on Vashon? Really?
Can a 300-word letter adequately respond to an entire page worth of newsprint? No. And it makes me wonder about the upcoming community dinner. Supposedly they want a “conversation.” I believe a conversation is a two-way street, and, sadly, it appears that they’ve already made up their minds. So if they’re no longer listening, why talk?
Don’t they know that Vashon parents, and Washingtonians in general, are exceptionally well-informed?
Since I can’t attend the dinner, here are some thoughts about the recent articles.
All doctors love vaccines? No. Google “Doctors Against Vaccines.”
Pertussis is “horrific!” Really? My sons and I (1, 3, 28) didn’t find it horrific, just annoying. But that makes sense: Individual differences abound in both the experience of a disease and in vaccine reactions!
Herd Immunity? Check an article about this at www.vran.org (Vaccination Risk Awareness Network)
I learned in high school to judge statistics carefully. Let’s keep commonsense in mind, too. My husband spent weeks sleeping in the same bed as my boys and I and never caught pertussis. Why did I get it, but he didn’t? I don’t know, but I was vaccinated as a child, while he actually had whooping cough 50 years ago. Wow! Natural immunity rocks!
These manipulative school forms are dishonorable. They force narrow, biased opinions under parents’ legal signatures. It would work better if you listened respectfully.
