With no end in sight over the debate of whether it’s important to vaccinate yourself and your children, more and more people continue to make their voices heard on both sides of the movement. As the number of anti-vaxxers increases, so does the amount of people explaining why this movement can be so dangerous.
One such person is Camille Echols, a registered nurse from Georgia, who is the mother of an 11-year-old girl with complex health issues. When her daughter recently contracted chickenpox, a disease that was eradicated and then made a comeback due to a decrease in the amount of children receiving vaccinations, Echols took to Facebook to share her experience in the ER and explain why a popular argument in favor of anti-vaxxing doesn’t add up.
The argument in question is generally one that sounds like this: “why would my unvaccinated kids be a threat to your vaccinated kids if you’re so sure they work?”
Echols goes on respectfully slam this question down by sharing the fact that her daughter is immunosuppressed and what this means for her ability to receive vaccinations. Read below to find out what she had to say in a post on Facebook.
“I’ve been relatively quiet on social media about the ‘Anti-vax’ movement. I’ve seen smart-ass memes saying “why would my unvaccinated kids be a threat to your vaccinated kids if you’re so sure they work?”
Credit: Camille Echols
“THIS is why. There are people who cannot have live vaccines, like my daughter, who had a kidney transplant when she was 2 years old. She got one varicella vaccine but couldn’t get the second because she was immunosuppressed and instead of developing immunity, she would have contracted the virus.
“She was exposed to a child with chickenpox this weekend and now we are in the ER. She’s getting labwork, injections of immunoglobulin and then we have to wait to see what the infectious disease doctor says. The incubation period of chicken pox is 7-21 days. So even with all we are doing, she could still become sick in the next 3 weeks. And that would mean an automatic admission to the hospital for IV antiviral meds. She could become very, very sick from this.
“Please, if you are someone who believes your child will get autism from vaccines, PLEASE educate yourself. There isn’t a single peer reviewed study that came to that conclusion. And the people choosing to skip vaccinations put children like my daughter at risk. She has been through SO much already. And this was avoidable. 😢”
She shared photos of her daughter in the ER, in pain, after consulting with her daughter’s transplant nephrologist regarding the recent exposure to chickenpox. After receiving comments that point out that her daughter could have been exposed to chickenpox from a child that had recently received the vaccine and was still “shedding” the live virus and many other comments attempting to poke holes in the post, Echols updated it.
Credit: Camille Echols
She added that nowhere in her original post did she point out that an unvaccinated child had been the one to expose her, she just clarified that it is the refusal to vaccinate that has brought back diseases that were nearly eradicated and gives her daughter a higher likelihood of contracting these deadly diseases. With a compromised immune system and no previous vaccines to protect her, Echols’ daughter is highly susceptible to something that could very well end her life.
In an update on Facebook, Echols said that her daughter has so far been feeling great and that no signs of illness had appeared.
😢”
