OP-ED: When did children become collateral damage?
There was a time when defeating a disease was good news. “Wipe out polio.” “Stop smallpox.” Neither of those diseases were part of any cultural agenda. We knew that kids were getting sick and dying, and if science could prevent it, that seemed like a good idea.
Vaccines have saved millions of lives.
Smallpox was eradicated. Polio nearly disappeared from the world. Measles, mumps, rubella, and other childhood illnesses that terrified parents had become preventable.
Nothing is perfect, not hospitals, doctors, governments, pharmaceutical companies or, for that matter, opinion writers. But vaccines worked.
Somewhere along the way, though, something changed.
Maybe it was COVID. Maybe it was social media. Maybe it was from the campaign to create distrust of institutions. Maybe it was all those things.
Whatever happened, questions that should have been in a doctor’s office somehow became part of our social media, political, and cultural identity.
And that really bothers me, especially when kids are involved.
I understand why people ask questions. They should. Medicine makes mistakes. Institutions make mistakes. Experts can contradict each other. Everybody knows the system is fallible.
Asking questions is healthy. Ignoring answers because we don’t like them is not.
Years ago, a medical paper suggested that childhood vaccines might cause autism. Parents were frightened. The study was later discredited and retracted, and extensive research since then has failed to establish that connection.
But fear has a very long life. And fear sells.
Once we are frightened about something involving our children, it is tough to forget it. Today, fear can spread internationally before the facts do.
Meanwhile, diseases don’t care what we believe.
Measles doesn’t check our voter registration. It is just looking for another host.
That is why I keep coming back to the kids.
During COVID, we argued about everything. Masks. Vaccines. Schools. Statistics. Government authority. Personal freedom.
Some of those debates were legitimate, and some will probably continue.
But who has the least control over any of it? The kids.
Think about this.
When wildlife officials warned us about flu spreading among birds, many of us took down our bird feeders. We didn’t accuse the Audubon Society of stealing our freedom. We figured the people who study birds probably knew more about bird diseases than we did.
We also vaccinate our dogs against rabies, distemper, parvovirus, and whatever else the veterinarian recommends. We give them heart worm medicine, flea medicine and pills that despite eating bugs off the sidewalk, they somehow detect inside a piece of cheese.
We will go to great lengths to protect a dog that believes the UPS driver is their brother from a different mother.
Shouldn’t we be at least as careful with our kids?
This is not an argument that every medical recommendation should be accepted without question. It’s not an argument against parental judgment. And it certainly is not an argument for turning healthcare into one more political loyalty test. We have plenty of those.
It is just a plea for perspective.
We can disagree about government. We can disagree about politics. We can disagree about where individual freedom ends and community responsibility begins.
But surely there ought to be one patch of common ground left.
Kids should not become collateral damage in arguments they did not create and can’t control.
We donate blood. We give to charities. We volunteer. We serve our communities. We accept inconveniences because somebody else needs us to.
Maybe protecting children belongs in that category. Not because somebody in Washington tells us to or not to. Not because our neighbors approve it.
We should do it because they’re kids.
That should be reason enough.
There’s an old line that says the trouble with common sense is that it isn’t very common.
Maybe so. But protecting children seems like a pretty good place to start.
My cousin lost an eye to measles. I’m sure she’d agree.