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I have been seeing a lot of the “you don’t vaccinate your kids therefore you’re putting my vaccinated kids at risk” posts on the old Facebook lately... Usually these are linked to news articles describing an “outbreak” of a disease for which there are vaccines available, and the concept of “herd immunity” is bandied about. The unvaccinated are immediately blamed. So give me a minute to clear up all that nonsense (I have made this extremely basic and easy to read, simply because I’ve noted that most of the people posting these articles are lay people with no understanding of immunology or epidemiology)

There is no such thing as herd immunity in a vaccinated population

The concept of herd immunity was first observed in (surprisingly) herds of livestock. It was noticed that if 90% of the herd contracted a pathogen, the other 10% was protected from it. Once vaccination became widespread, the concept was adopted to vaccinated populations as well (without ever being scientifically proven to exist) However, there’s a problem with that leap of logic – immune responses differ between those naturally exposed to a virus or bacteria (strong, permanent immune response) and those exposed to them through a vaccine (weak, temporary immune response).

When you are exposed to bacteria or virus in nature, your immune system is responsible for fighting it off in the short term and building antibodies against it for long-term protection. It does this by using two separate branches – Th1 and Th2.

The Th1 component is the first line of response – it exists on the skin and mucous membranes, and is responsible for killing the virus initially. The Th1 response is why you feel like crap when you get sick (inflammation, mucous, fever, etc…), and includes the rash portion of measles (and chicken pox).

The Th2 response is the long-term protection. It is responsible for building antibodies against the virus so that you are not susceptible to repeated infection from that virus or bacteria. What is important to note is that the Th1 and Th2 branches work together – right before the Th1 branch kills a pathogen, it holds it up to the Th2 branch in a kind of “here’s the fella, don’t forget what he looks like” type of moment.

When you use both of the branches of your immune system together to fight off a virus or bacteria, you end up with life long immunity. It’s why you only get the chicken pox or measles once.

The idea behind vaccination is to try to get an antibody response from the body by bypassing the Th1 response and going straight to the Th2 response by injecting the pathogen directly into the blood (and avoiding contact with the Th1 rich mucous membranes). That way your immune system can make the antibodies without you “getting sick”. It’s a great idea in theory (as is communism, BTW) but there are practical problems.

The first problem is that you are over stimulating the Th2 branch and under stimulating the Th1 branch. This has been proven to cause allergies, asthma and eczema. Look at the rate of those conditions since the number of vaccines we have added to the schedule has skyrocketed. Do any of you remember kids with peanut allergies when you were young? How about asthmatics?

The second problem is that the immune/antibody response that you get is weak and temporary compared to the one achieved through natural exposure. This is because you’ve cut Th1 out of the loop, so to speak. Many studies show that antibody titers dip to below protective levels seven years after vaccination (on average).

So what does any of this have to do with your vaccinated kids being put at risk by my unvaccinated kids? Well, think about it…. Anybody who hasn’t been vaccinated against a disease in the past seven years is just as “un-immune” to it as somebody that has never been vaccinated against it at all. There goes the concept of herd immunity since that includes almost everyone (even you – that’s right, you’re just as guilty of putting your kids at risk as I am).

So yes, there are cases of the measles popping up (ironically, usually in vaccinated kids). And the mumps, and chicken pox. We were told these diseases were eradicated by vaccination, and we believed it. After all, there’s never any reason to question someone in a white lab coat, is there? So the only possible answer is to blame the horrible, irresponsible parents (like myself) who spent hundreds of hours reading the science behind vaccinations and deciding against them.

Instead, I challenge you to question the efficacy of vaccines. Why do people that have been vaccinated still get the disease (hint – it’s because vaccines don’t work as well as you’ve been told). Why are the outbreaks in 100% vaccinated populations?  And most importantly… if vaccines work so well then why are you worried about my child putting yours at risk? I mean after all, if your kid is “up to date” on their shots, and vaccines work so wonderfully, then what’s the big deal?