Vaccines protect all our children

Joseph I. Golden, MD, MPH, Member of the League of Women Voters of West Virginia in Beckley

An earlier version of this essay was published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

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Parents worry when their kids get sick. With time, parents learn to judge when their child is seriously sick, or instead has a minor illness. Common diseases of the recent past, such as whooping cough, diphtheria, polio, measles, rubella (German measles), and sepsis and meningitis caused by pneumococcal and Haemophilus influenzae infections can be extremely dangerous and sometimes deadly.

Although people today have lived through the Covid pandemic, most have never encountered individuals sick from any of these other noted communicable diseases, let alone been through epidemics caused by them. Parents who deny standard vaccines for their children that cover these serious infections do not have personal, first-hand knowledge of the damage these infections can do.

I am of the Baby Boomer Generation, born at the end of the 1940s. In my own lifetime, before many vaccines for the “germs” noted above were available, I have seen people affected, and devastated, by these viruses and bacteria. When I was about 5 years old, I got Mumps, and was mildly sick. However, my mother got it as well, and she developed pancreatitis from it. Mumps also can cause infection of the testicles, which can then lead to male infertility.

When I was in college, I worked one-on-one with a 5-year-old girl who was blind and deaf, because her mother got Rubella while she was pregnant. This is an example of how such infections during pregnancy can severely affect the unborn. During my medical residency, in the 1970s, we often had to do spinal taps on babies and young children to determine whether their high fevers were due to meningitis with Pneumococcus, Haemophilus, or other bacteria. Meningitis can be severe and cause permanent brain damage.

Later when in practice, I remember a 35-year-old man who died from septic shock caused by Haemophilus. He was born a few years before the vaccine targeting this bacterium was available. I had an adult patient, who as a teenager got polio and was at Marmet (Polio) Hospital, part of the time in an iron lung respirator. As an adult, when her diminished reserve of muscle tissue declined with aging, she developed significant weakness and chronic pain. A neighbor of mine growing up had polio, which left him with a shriveled, paralyzed right leg. A case of severe measles can cause severe pneumonia or encephalitis with its associated mortality risk.

The diseases noted above, probably do not mean much to most people today, because they have not had first-hand experience with people who suffered from these diseases. Vaccines, developed over the past seven decades to give immunity to these diseases, have greatly decreased their occurrence. Because of the marked decrease in the number of severe cases, members of the general public may not understand the risks these diseases bring, nor the value of vaccines in preventing the suffering these diseases can cause. Yet, we continue to see outbreaks in states with lax vaccination requirements.

All medicines, including vaccines, can have serious side effects. However, the risk of adverse events from vaccines is minuscule compared to the serious complications and possible death that can come from un-immunized children getting a preventable disease.

Increasing numbers of parents who deny the use of these vaccines to their children may not only put their children at risk for severe disease, but also their children’s playmates, schoolmates, and friends in church or the community. When a child suffers a severe outcome from one of these diseases, whether one’s own child or an acquaintance of the child, the anguish and the remorse of the parents and the family affects the whole community.

Getting standard vaccines in childhood not only improves an individual child’s chances for healthy and good development, but it also protects the other children and the adults in their environment. If we are truly our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers, are we not also the keepers of the children and others in our community? The health of all is tied to one’s own children’s health. Let us protect all the children in our community.

The West Virginia Legislature is currently considering whether strict state laws requiring childhood vaccinations should remain or whether exemptions should be permitted. Legislators also appear not to remember those days when whooping cough, diphtheria, polio, measles, rubella (German measles), and sepsis and meningitis caused by pneumococcal and Haemophilus influenzae infections were so common and so dangerous.