Hello friends, humans and other sentient organisms.
My name is Forrest Maready.
I am a college graduate from Wake Forest University.
I'm a designer, a software developer, an inventor
and in general a very curious, inquisitive
individual.
I'm also an anti-vaxxer.
Think of anti-vaxxers kind of like the Amish,
except we drive Corvettes.
Because we are so often misunderstood, I just
wanted to extend an olive branch to you and
give you a quick peek into the mind of an
anti-vaxxer. We are not as crazy as you think.
Like Maya Angelou said in that inspiring Apple
commercial (by the way Maya Angelou was a
"professor" at Wake Forest while I was there
but we all wondered why the caged bird never
taught any classes).
Maya Angelou said "We are more alike my friends
than we are unalike."
And that is true for you and me.
I want to show you how.
I'm guessing you may not know what we believe,
so I just want to explain it to you so you
can understand where we're coming from.
Not all Anti-Vaxxers agree on everything-
we fall along a spectrum of beliefs, but in
general, we believe that vaccines don’t
work as good as advertised.
We believe they harm more often than people
realize.
And we believe they aren't quite as necessary
as commonly thought.
That's all.
It is a cost/benefit analysis for us.
Vaccines have a risk for harm, sometimes death.
I'm sure you would admit that.
Now you would say it's infinitesimally small.
I think it's a medium sized risk.
Not huge.
But not tiny.
You might think multiple vaccines at the same
time are completely safe.
I believe the risk goes up, exponentially,
every time a vaccine is administered alongside
other vaccines.
We disagree on the amount of harm vaccines
cause, but I think we can both admit there
is a theoretical point at which the risk for
harm outweighs the benefits, right?
Your point is here, and my point is here.
Where are we with the vaccines?
I believe that vaccines don't work very well.
In terms of immunity, they're certainly inferior
to a natural infection- I don't think anyone
would disagree with that.
Vaccines typically work for a few years then
fade away, but a natural infection works forever
in most cases.
It's just natural infection carries a risk
from getting sick, right?
What's the cost/benefit?
I believe the risk for serious harm or death
from Measles, or Mumps or Chicken Pox, etc.
to be extremely tiny.
You probably believe it's a medium sized risk,
right?
Not huge, but not tiny?
So your threshold is here, and this time mine
is over here.
You can get a natural infection once, or you
can risk vaccines multiple times over the
course of your life.
Where are we with the vaccines?
What does the data say, right?
Shouldn't the data be able to inform us if
the risk outweighs the benefit of vaccines
vs. natural immunity?
Finally, I believe vaccines aren't as necessary
as commonly held.
I'm over here.
I'm assuming you believe vaccines eradicated
smallpox, eliminated polio, basically and
have kept all the other diseases in check
for years and years.
Saved millions of lives.
I used to believe that too- don't bail on
me for a second.
I really believed that, with all my heart,
but the truth I think is a little fuzzier
than we would like.
There are a bunch of difficult things to come
to terms with, when you start really digging
through the medical history.
You start to see that the small pox vaccine
really didn't work that good.
It killed a lot of people- now you may accept
that- it was the first vaccine and had some
issues, but the reality is diseases have come
and gone on their own since the beginning
of time and it's unclear how much the vaccine
played a part in the eradication of small
pox.
Polio, everyone's favorite vaccine, was a
completely innocuous disease and never paralyzed
anyone until the 1900s.
It's hard to hear that, because we've heard
our entire lives that the polio vaccine saved
the children from iron lungs and crutches.
The real story is much more complicated when
you start looking a little deeper than the
paragraph we were taught in US History.
All the diseases, all the vaccines, we believe
have been glossed over, painted and shellacked
to tell you a beautiful happy story of nothing
but success and progress.
We understand why.
Humans like that story- it's a happy story,
and we want to hear happy stories.
The reality is much more complex, and is not
all happy.
So that's how we anti-vaxxers feel.
I don't think it's too far from where you
are- we can all agree vaccines do cause harm,
we just might disagree on the amount.
We all realize that vaccines aren't perfect,
and don't work for everyone, or don't work
forever.
We would just disagree on how often they fail,
and when they work, how long they do work
for.
We probably all agree that vaccines aren't
always necessary for every disease- you might
want more of them, whereas we want less of them.
I hope maybe you can see that we're not as
crazy as you have been led to believe.
We do not take a decision like this lightly.
We do not take what our doctors and the CDC
tell us at face value.
We do the research and are willing to accept
the facts, no matter how much it hurts.
We're willing to accept some that there are some grey areas- it's not as crystal clear as we would like to believe.
I hope that we are more alike in this way,
too.
And that is my incredible, anti-vaxxer's opinion.
