“I didn’t set out to become an anti-vaxxer. To be honest, for a while I didn’t even realize I was one.”
I’m ashamed (read: furious and disappointed) to admit that when my now-grown daughters were little, I never questioned a single shot on the vaccine schedule. Oh, you’re going to take my minutes-old newborn over there and inject her with aluminum and formaldehyde to protect her from a disease primarily contracted through sexual intercourse and intravenous drug use? By all means! Obviously, you wouldn’t do that if it weren’t both prudent and necessary. You’re the doctor. I’m just a hormonal hot mess over here wearing adult diapers.
At the time, I knew there were some fringy people who believed there may be a link between immunizations and childhood developmental disorders. But to hear the talking heads tell it, the science was as clear as it was settled: Vaccines did not cause autism. Period. They were tested. They were effective. They were lifesaving. They were approved by the FDA, whose very job it was to ensure drug safety. Not getting them was selfish and irresponsible and would definitely cause the immediate, deadly, rampant return of polio, meningitis, hepatitis, diphtheria, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, procrastinitis, snoozeatosis, invisibilia, and FOMOphobia. Who wanted to be responsible for that?
I did hesitate—for several years, in fact—with Gardasil. Other than the seasonal flu vaccine (which, yes, we dutifully lined up for every year; go ahead and call me a moron—I do it all the time), it was the only one that was presented as voluntary. My daughters were still in elementary school the first time their pediatrician recommended it, and I was instantly hesitant. It was too new, and they were light years away from being sexually active, so I declined. The doctor was openly annoyed by my refusal. When he pushed back, I told him my decision was firm and that the discussion was closed.
And then we moved to Texas. Our new pediatrician was a woman; a warm, motherly type who spent tons of time with us. My oldest was just about to turn 15, and this very kind medical expert explained that this was Sophie’s last chance to get a two-dose series; if we waited another year, she’d need three. It would protect her from cancer—something both of my parents had, and my dad had died from. It had been on the market for nearly a decade. Of course she’d given it to her own daughters!
TL; DR: I caved.
I can’t tell you exactly how or why I knew, instinctively and almost immediately, that the COVID “vaccines” were a scam, but I did. The story was the same: They were tested. They were effective. They were lifesaving. They were approved by the FDA, whose very job it was to ensure drug safety. Not getting them was selfish and irresponsible and would most definitely cause an immediate, deadly, rampant explosion of COVID cases around the globe. But this time, I wasn’t buying it. In fact, I was adamant about my family not getting those jabs. Nearly everyone in my circle thought I was nuts, including my daughters. All of their friends had been vaccinated and they were fine. Suddenly I was smarter than their doctor? Why did I have to be so stubborn? It took an excruciatingly long time, but eventually, mercifully, they came around.
“Make sure they don’t come near you with that COVID vaccine poison,” I shouted at then 17-year-old Sophie, who was on her way to the pediatrician’s office to pick up the medical records she needed for college applications.
“LOL, Mom, I know,” she laughed.
“Or any other vaccines!” I added.
She stopped in her tracks and turned to glare at me.
“Wait,” she said. “I thought it was just COVID. Please don’t tell me you’re a full-on anti-vaxxer now.”
I hadn’t acknowledged or even fully realized it yet, but I guess I was. Of course I was. They had lied about every single aspect of the pandemic in general and COVID in particular; why on earth would I trust anything they said about anything? I’d spent the past year digging, wondering, watching, questioning, and reading. I’d learned about the appalling criminal histories of Pfizer and countless other big Pharma players. I’d seen Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe and A Shot in the Dark and the Thalidomide documentary No Limits. The more I learned, the more I knew that I would never let another needle pierce the skin of someone I loved if I could help it, nor could I ever trust our existing medical system again.
So yeah, I was (am) an anti-vaxxer.
Just as the COVID vaccinated are the ones repeatedly catching COVID, suffering myocarditis, becoming permanently disabled, and dying quickly of “turbo cancers”, study after study shows that children who forego routine vaccination fare better in every conceivable health metric: They have far fewer learning and developmental disabilities, fewer speech and digestive disorders, and significantly lower incidences of sinusitis, epilepsy, and asthma. Childhood cancer, autism, ADHD, and SIDS are virtually unheard of in the unvaccinated. In one study of 1,482 never vaccinated individuals of all ages, there wasn’t a single case of ADHD, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, or cancer among the adults. (The same study found that the mortality rate of vaccinated children was five times higher than the unvaccinated children.)
As I educated myself, two things became abundantly clear:
1) They—the pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies, independent researchers and scientists, advisory committees, and public health agencies—had to know these things, and
2) They didn’t care.
It’s hard for compassionate, principled people to fathom that there are folks out there so motivated by power and greed that they would knowingly subject infants, children, and adults to a lifetime of suffering and disease. Nobody (decent) wants that to be true. It’s easier and more comfortable to believe that a newborn baby is at grave risk of contracting an STD, or that an unproven, untested chemical cocktail jabbed into your veins is superior to your exquisitely designed immune system. These platitudes are actually absurd when you think about them; the problem is, we’ve been taught not to think about them.
One of my daughters had a completely vaccine-free friend when she was little. I fully and remorsefully admit, I judged the parents. I couldn’t fathom that reckless, egocentric decision—because I was taught not to fathom it. When the COVID vaccine bomb dropped and I was beating my angry chest all over social media, the mom of that friend reached out to me privately. She told me that one of her older children had been vaccine-injured, and (obviously) that was why she’d jumped off the ever-accelerating vaccine train decades ago. I apologized for never being kind or curious enough to ask her about her decision. She’s now become a close friend and an ongoing source of information, inspiration, and support.
I didn’t set out to become an anti-vaxxer. I actually hate it that I’ve lost all faith in the industries and agencies I once relied on to protect me and my family.
And while you can’t unring a bell, unscramble eggs, or put the toothpaste back in the tube, you can stop drinking the carefully concocted Kool-Aid any time you’d like. You can wonder, watch, question, and read. You can ask yourself which side of this hotly debated topic has everything to gain and which side has nothing to lose. And then you can decide for yourself.
