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I respect the decisions of all parents, but those who choose not to immunize their children should know that it is not a risk-free choice. It is much higher that it runs without inoculating a preparation that saves lives and does not have serious side effects
Alarmed by the low rate of immunization against measles in Britain, the writer Roald Dalh, author of such popular stories as ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, published in 1986 a letter in defense of vaccines in which he recounted the death in 1962 of his little daughter Olivia due to encephalitis derived from this infectious disease. “There is something parents can do to make sure that this type of tragedy does not happen to their children. They can insist that their children be immunized against measles. I couldn’t do it for Olivia in 1962 because an effective measles vaccine had not yet been discovered at that time. Today a safe and effective vaccine is available to all families and all you have to do is ask your doctor to administer it, ”Dahl wrote.
In the first half of the nineties, childhood vaccination against measles was already routine in Spain. Like the rest of the children, my son then received the so-called triple virus, a preparation that protected against measles, but also against rubella and mumps. However, there was still no vaccine against chickenpox. At the age of three, my son woke up one morning with a high fever and the characteristic skin lesions caused by this virus. It was difficult not to be near the boy at that moment. I assumed that with eight siblings I had to have passed the disease as a child and would have some acquired immunity. The truth is that after a few days he began to regain his tone and I found myself ill. Converted into an ‘ecce homo’ by the multiple bodily signs of the virus, I ended up being admitted with respiratory failure by the Emergency Service of the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid, the reference center for infectious diseases, where connected to a respirator they treated me with health protection equipment. The same professionals who years later assisted the Spanish nun infected by the Ebola virus there. The chickenpox virus gave me severe pneumonia. It took me fifteen days to recover because the antiviral therapy caused liver damage. Fortunately, everything was in a monumental scare, although pneumonia usually leaves cell damage in the lungs.
In 1962 there was no vaccine against measles and in 1995 there was no vaccine against chickenpox. It was authorized that same year in the US Five years later, the Spanish Association of Pediatrics began to recommend universal vaccination in two doses at 15 months and 3-4 years against this virus that, in most cases, is overcome without problems, but it can be dangerous in people with low defenses or in adult smokers, as was my case.
Having vaccines against multiple infectious diseases saves two to three million lives each year. They are a safe and effective public health strategy. This week the vaccination against Covid of children between 5 and 11 years of age has begun in Spain, which will prevent the hospitalization of hundreds of minors in the coming months. Since its approval in the US first and in Europe later, the Pfizer vaccine has been shown to be 90% safe and effective in that segment of the population. Its inoculation has not been linked to any death or serious adverse effect. On the contrary, it is saving lives. The opportunity that Olivia did not have exists now before the Covid. It is true that most children will experience the infection mildly or asymptomatically, but not a few will have to be hospitalized if they are not vaccinated. In Spain, according to data notified to the Renave of the Carlos III Institute, 895 children between the ages of 5 and 9 were hospitalized, 65 of them in the ICU, since the start of the pandemic. Thirteen died. The incidence figures in children under 5 and 10 to 20 years of age are even higher: 2,586 and 4,539 hospitalizations, respectively. I understand that there are concerned parents. We are facing a new disease and a vaccine that has been applied for a short time, but scientific data support the immunization of minors to protect their lives and so that they can recover the social normality that is so important for their personal development. I respect the decisions of all parents, but those who choose not to vaccinate their children should know that it is not a risk-free choice. In these types of dilemmas, the so-called omission bias comes into play: it is more emotionally bearable to do nothing and blame the fatality of a serious infection in a child than to assume a possible unwanted effect of the vaccination that parents have authorized. That said, the chance of either of the two alternatives occurring is low, although the former is much more feasible. In fact, the second has not occurred. No child has died from the vaccine and hundreds of people around the world have died from not having received it. It is regrettable the absence of information campaigns on child vaccination against Covid by the central and regional governments. In reality, there have been no official information and awareness plans, which is a resounding neglect in public health. That task has been left to the media, and social networks, with dire results. The fact that now an attempt is made to encourage vaccination with the Covid certificate, a measure of more economic substance than health, is the corollary of the rejection of the pedagogical and persuasive work of health institutions in this pandemic. And so it goes.
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