or a adinfinitumxx:
years later House is still as relevant as he ever was
I wasn’t vaccinated and never got sick so
And I swam and didn’t drown.
Anecdotes aren’t evidence. The reason YOU specifically didn’t get sick is because of something called Mass Immunity.
That means that since everyone ELSE is vaccinated (you’re welcome), there’s nowhere for the virus to establish a hold.
That mass immunity is the only thing that keeps people who CANNOT vaccinate—like the immunocompromised—from catching it.The second that people stop vaccinating, that immunity disappears and the disease resurges, as is clear from the fact that the US is currently experiencing an epidemic of a disease that was projected to become extinct in our lifetimes.
Get immunized. There’s no reason not to.
Considering that there’s a whole host of people in my age range who weren’t vaccinated enough (even I was missing the second dose of MMR until recently) getting the measles and the mumps I think it’s ridiculous that we’re arguing over a life and death situation. Literally, do you want to live or die?
Also, even if you weren’t vaccinated and never got sick—at least not visibly—that doesn’t preclude the possibility that you picked up a virus and passed it on without knowing it.
Maybe you had…oh, let’s say measles. But you had no symptoms. Or maybe you had a fever, or sore eyes, or a harsh dry cough, but that was it. But nothing that said anything was seriously wrong. And in the meantime, you went about your business. Maybe you waited for a bus with an old man, or shared an aisle at the store with a pregnant woman and her wailing one-year-old, or attended a party with your friends.
And the disease you didn’t know you had? That passed on to the people you met, or to people that they met. The disease you didn’t know you had was passed to a friend at that party, and she passed it to her mother and father, they passed it to their workmates, and now two offices are sick with your measles. The old man you saw at the bus stop? He got pneumonia as a result of the measles you passed to him. The pregnant woman from the store? She miscarried. Her baby, who was too young to be vaccinated? She developed encephalitis and died.
You’re not the only one who’s being protected by your vaccination. You’re protecting everyone else as well. That’s the fucking POINT of vaccination.
In fact, asymptomatic people are the most dangerous of plague vectors. They’re invisible.
Two words: Typhoid Mary.
seriously, this was like, the absolute first thing we were taught about rubella (german measles) as why we were going to get vaccinated at school. because it’s most infectious when you’re still asymptomatic (like several other diseases) and hello, want to go near a pregnant woman and thus be responsible for what’ll happen? DIDN’T THINK SO.
