The position of this web site is not anti-vaccine. It is pro-choice. It respects people's right to be anti-vaccine because they believe all contact with other living creatures' blood makes them ritually impure, because they believe the use of animal cells to make vaccine exploits animals, or because they believe vaccine manufacturers don't do enough to prevent contamination from aluminum compounds or glyphosate or other toxic chemicals that have been found in certain vaccines.
If, however, you eat meat, with all the ritual impurity, exploitation, and contamination guaranteed in every bite, the position of this web site is that you need either to have a specific R/BA for each vaccine decision you make, or to endure being accused of avoiding vaccines because you have a silly phobia of needles.
The position of this web site is that civilized human beings must respect other people's silly phobias, that private people may have some right to indulge their own silly phobias of unvaccinated visitors on their own private property but that governments have no right to discriminate against the unvaccinated in any way. If vaccines are at all effective, you can have the ones you believe you need and thenceforward have no fear of unvaccinated people.
The position of this web site is that "herd immunity" to diseases like smallpox was not altogether bad for the rightful owners of our part of the world, because Europeans and Africans brought in good things along with the disease germs that allowed British immigrants to become the ethnic majority, but it can hardly be said to have served them well and it should not be made a goal. We want to keep breeding natural resistance to natural conditions into the population, rather than becoming dependent on unnatural conditions. If the majority of people are more concerned about avoiding pain than about ritual purity, egalitarian relationships with other species, or even avoiding contaminants that may cause disease conditions perceived as less serious, as in fact they are, then we will have a majority of people choosing to be vaccinated, as in fact we have, and we can afford to have a minority choosing to risk being the immune carriers who keep natural immunity from dying out.
The position of this web site is that we can never rule out the possibility that, if the "most orthodox" followers of religious traditions sincerely believe they need to maintain ritual purity at the risk of having polio or tuberculosis, God may reward their good faith by giving them miraculous immunity, or even leading them to discover effective ways to boost specific immunities without vaccines. During the plague years a century ago, some people did in fact find effective ways to treat and prevent Spanish Influenza, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis. No arrogant little beagle-torturing pismire has a right to doubt that Orthodox Jews or Muslims or Cherokees or Latter-Day Hippies or Jains or any other sort of religious people may receive revelations that are withheld, for his sins, from him. No government should ever allow any human or group of humans to impose their medical choices on any other human or group of humans. We could use a constitutional amendment tot hat effect. And a clause about a ten-year ban on funding any organization associated with attempts to impose medical choices on anybody, anywhere, wouldn't hurt anything either.
Personally, I believe medical choices extend even to children. The reason for recommending dozens of vaccines for infants and toddlers, today, is an assumption that these children will be spending a lot of time in crowded conditions rather than living at home with parents or parent-surrogates. It takes determination, and perhaps a bit of "privilege" (at least enough to say no to welfare), to give children a healthy natural environment where they don't need all those vaccines, but it is still possible. The position of this web site is that people should be able to give children such an environment before they consider producing children.
Are there situations in which I'd want a small child to have a vaccine? There are. They'd be situations different from those prevailing in North America today, but not so different from those that have prevailed in most of the world during most of its history. In that kind of situation, I believe I would be able to persuade a child to have the vaccine I thought it needed. I would not force a vaccine on a child.
An unfortunate side effect of all the panic about coronavirus and coronavirus vaccine--HAVING AN EXPERIMENTAL VACCINE ALWAYS MEANS TAKING A CHANCE, PEOPLE!--is now reported to be that people are now concerned enough about contamination to be withholding polio vaccine from their children:
Well, doesn't your heart just ber-leeed for the corporations who are losing money on vaccines that may be valuable, but are not really necessary, in most of the world today. Here is a friendly suggestion for those corporations: Focus on the need to ban utterly unnecessary, highly toxic contaminants, such as glyphosate, glufosinate, and other "herbicides," worldwide. When there's no more glyphosate in the world, there'll be no risk of glyphosate contamination and all the myriad of unwanted side effects that will cost you money, and should cost you money, and must be required by law to cost you more money than they already do. If you inject glyphosate into babies you deserve to lose money. Your appeal to the public for renewed faith and support should begin with "We have allowed glyphosate-contaminated vaccines to be used. We are very, very sorry. We really do need to warn people that the risks of glyphosate contamination in a vaccine may be more serious than the risks of, say, measles, for as long as there is any possibility of glyphosate contamination. We are working to earn your trust again by building a glyphosate-free world."
Before glyphosate, the Sabin polio vaccine was generally safe and effective, and kept polio from becoming an epidemic of the proportions typhoid fever and Spanish Influenza had reached. I had it and I'm glad. People who've survived both, like the author of the Ozarque blog, say that the pain of childbirth without an anesthetic was minor compared with the pain of polio.
So it occurs to me that this web site could use a Top Ten List of diseases for which I, personally, would consider vaccination--if and when vaccine manufacturers work with us to remove the unnecessary and very toxic contaminants, beginning with glyphosate, from the picture. The vaccines that generally get hyped and "marketed" are for things like flu, measles, and coronavirus, where the pain and damage caused by a contaminated vaccine can very easily outweigh the risks of the disease. Vacicnes that have not caused so much controversy or needed so much hype are for diseases that are still likely to be more dangerous than the vaccines are. People who are otherwise active and healthy and well supplied with vitamins do need to boost their natural immunity to these diseases.
This is my own personal list. I anticipate some disagreement from other people whose vaccine choices are based on risk/benefit analysis. That's natural; risks vary. I don't blame people for believing that they need vaccines against things like flu.
1. Polio (since I've already mentioned it)
2. Rabies (usually recommended for four-legged animals, but in a situation that caused a doctor to recommend it for me, I'd want it; the disease is still 99.99% fatal, and a horrible way to die)
3. Diphtheria (a weird disease that used to cause surplus membranes to grow across the throat, creating the need for those melodramatic amateur tracheal operations that used to be staples of fiction, even good fiction like The Dollmaker; those who don't want to have to depend on having their throats cut by amateurs to save their lives should, if at risk, consider being vaccinated for diphtheria)
4. Tetanus (a.k.a. lockjaw, a vicious infection known for paralyzing the throat, causing death by choking; usually prevented by the same vaccine given for diphtheria)
5. Typhoid fever (caused by a human-specific strain of salmonella, but this is serious salmonella, steroidal salmonella, traditionally associated with three weeks of increasing misery culminating in death by the destruction of the colon--in other words, a way for non-celiacs to find out what continued glyphosate poisoning is likely to do to us celiacs, I think people who are still spraying glyphosate should be rounded up and forcibly injected with this disease, and be saved, at the last minute when they were screaming that they didn't want to be saved, by emergency colostomies so they could then go on to share all the other tortures they've inflicted on everyone else. Decent human beings should, if at risk, be allowed to have the vaccine intead.)
6. Yellow fever (a bizarre tropical disease; as with coronavirus, most people don't know whether they have it or not, but unlike coronavirus, there's no way to know ahead of time who's going to die two weeks after being bitten by an infected mosquito, and who's going to be disabled by liver and kidney damage for months afterward)
7. Encephalitis (literally means "inflammation of the brain," which can be caused by different things, none of which I want; no disease identified as encephalitis is at all common in North America, but some are common in other places)
8. Meningococcal disease (a tropical disease causing painful death in a few hours or permanent disability when it's not fatal)
9. Pneumococcal disease (I personally would probably decide against this one, because I inherited good resistance to streptococcus infections and because antibiotics are effective if a person does go down with any of the strep infections. However, people should know that the harmless little streppy-bugs that people deliberately swallow as probiotic immunity boosters have some not-so-harmless relatives. Some strains of streptococcus bacteria can cause pneumonia, meningitis, or rheumatic fever. People who were really ill when strep infections circulated at school could die, painfully, or be disabled, permanently, if they encountered the nastier kinds of streppy-bugs.)
10. Smallpox (This is another one on which I, personally, would pass, because I had chickenpox. What can be at least very tiresome for people who've had other "pox" virus infections is shingles, which is not life-threatening enough that I'd risk a vaccine for it. Smallpox, now almost unknown, used to be the nastiest virus in the Varicella group. It disfigured more people than it killed or disabled, but it killed and disabled many people. Vaccination was invented as a result of people's discovering that deliberately infecting themselves with cowpox or chickenpox would protect them from smallpox, then discovering ways to make this process more efficient. So those of us who've had chickenpox don't need further vaccines. But, if smallpox ever did break out again, I would recommend that people who've not had chickenpox consider the vaccine. The contraindication that kept me from having this vaccine was that, if you have any kind of open wound when vaccinated, the vaccine reaction is likely to produce ugly smallpox-type scarring. I had scratched-up legs from playing outside, and I had a humane pediatrician who did not recommend the smallpox vaccine for kids with scratched-up legs, because the incidence of smallpox was so low and the scars would ruin our chances in bikini beauty contests later in life. If you are at real risk for catching smallpox, who cares about beauty contests.)
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