Recently, there has been a great outbreak in mumps spreading across eight states to date with over 1,000 cases reported. This brings to life the vaccine versus anti-vaccine debate. Personally, I have not been vaccinated for everything I was told I needed to be, and I currently don’t want to be vaccinated. I have been vaccinated in a few instances, but not the 13 plus vaccines I was told by my state government to get.

My argument is simple. If you are vaccinated, you should not have to fear an outbreak of any preventable disease. That’s what the vaccine is supposed to prevent, right? Therefore, why should anyone butt into someone else’s business and tell them they should vaccinate? If one and one’s dependents are vaccinated, why should they have to worry about my personal decision to not vaccinate? The answer is simple. Vaccines are not perfect. Vaccines can screw up sometimes, and sometimes that results in severe symptoms worse than the disease you were trying to prevent. 10 percent of the mumps vaccine receivers are still at risk to develop the mumps. Vaccines fail. This is a point that I personally use to justify not being vaccinated. If the vaccinated person of today is unable to stop themselves from getting an illness that they have been specifically vaccinated against, why should I even bother with the needles and the chemicals? If they are concerned about getting the disease from me because I personally have not been vaccinated, then they obviously don’t trust their vaccine. Ergo, my point.

It’s my business if I want to or don’t want to have chemicals injected into my body to physically alter my biology in the hopes that it will prevent a disease. It happens that my belief is that vaccines are a short-term solution for a long-term problem and that to vaccinate is to create a biologically weaker immune system in yourself and in your progeny. 

I can sympathize with mothers of infants who are unable to safely vaccinate their children due to their age and thus worry about their safety if they are exposed to unvaccinated adults. However, the danger goes both ways. My sister, between the age of one and three, was vaccinated. She had a very severe reaction to the vaccination. During her recovery from this reaction, my sister had lost almost 10 percent of her weight and her physical capabilities started regressing. On a young child, that is an extremely severe setback. She was in and out of the hospital for the next year, on a special diet to help her gain weight during one of the most crucial times of her development. She still has not recovered this body fat, even though she is now in her early twenties. 

In short, I believe that vaccines can do more harm than good. If someone isn’t vaccinated and that worries a vaccinated person and makes them fear for their safety, I would suggest they either put more faith in the science behind vaccines or dig a little deeper into the mountains of research surrounding vaccines and make a fully informed, personal decision on being vaccinated rather than just getting injections because they were told that they should.