Anti-vaxxer crowd should be careful what they wish for
By Lethbridge Herald on May 8, 2025.
Editor,
Along with many others, I remember the Convoy shutdowns when trucks with giant Canadian flags sticking out the backs of their boxes roared en masse up and down University Drive and Scenic Drive, shutting down various streets and roads. They were protesting vaccine requirements. Meanwhile, every year millions of people in third world countries die because of lack of vaccines. They would give anything to come to Canada with their families and enjoy our strong public health programs. I had a cousin who contracted polio prior to the vaccine being available – his left leg was withered and he had to wear a brace his whole life. My great-aunt developed TB before vaccines and spent time in an iron lung. Anti-vaxxers need to be careful what they wish for. Their children’s futures are at stake.
Leslie Lavers
Lethbridge
5-4
You only have to look at the clusters of measles across North America to realize , or should realize the value of MMR amongst others. Despite the evidence supporting vaccinations, the anti-vaxers believe the falsehoods propagated via the internet or their entrenched narrow minded beliefs in their holy scriptures. It takes a single infected kid to infect hundreds . Unless the vaccination rate is in the 90s the program falls apart as is the current situation in Alberta and Ontario. Exceptions are allowed based on religious or philosophical grounds. Therein is the problem. The answer is “non vaccinates” being prohibited in schools. Of course the libertarian crown will scream and holler, but sometimes the health of a child trumps that of adults personal ideals.
What has happened here I believe is the massive increase in distrust of governments and their various puppet agencies. Measles at one point was basically eradicated. The measles vaccine was first tested from 1958-1960 on a small group of children. Trials began on thousands in New York and Nigeria in 1961 and hailed as 100% effective and the first measles vaccine was licensed for public use in 1963 after FIVE years of development and testing.
And now we switch to covid. Has anyone even give it the slightest thought that after a couple of months the supposed vaccines and boosters was ready?? While reports are and should be questioned as to the value of the covid vaccine and the boosters many have decided that we don’t trust you and take all your vaccines and stuff it. To label those as truck driving, flag waving, Neanderthals is labelling those that have lost their faith in governments and their institutions. The apparent long term effects of covid and the alleged effects of an “unproven” vaccine by past science standards, have all contributed to people who no longer want to take the “risk” dictated by someone and some company that they no longer trust.
So there is my two bits, five years to develop one and one that was ready to go in less than 3 months. Who you gonna believe, ghostbusters. I see their point but the measles vaccine is proven and it works. Get it done. Name calling will only cement the resistance.
I wonder if there was some event that made the Covid vaccine more urgent? You know, the kind of thing that would let researchers have essentially unlimited funding, and access to a large population likely to come in contact with the disease to speed up testing?
Oh well, guess we’ll never know. Probably a conspiracy.
i hope your covid vaxes served you and yours well. i chose not to support pharma, as explained above. i wore a mask, but not the badge of honour that the vax was sold to be.
I bet you didn’t bother to mix with friends and relatives like we did and get the most out of life.
Ten of us got COVID after having 4 shots and we know they saved our lives because fools we knew who didn’t bother are all dead because of their stupidity.
Our retired doctor friends still warn it’s still out there and you can still get it. Of course these Reformers won’t warn you about it Danielle Smith found it smart to compare us to Nazis that’s how stupid she is. She is likely the fool behind not bothering to warn people about the measles until it was a real problem and doctors were furious with them. How much has it cost taxpayers with the 11 hospital visits?
You can be these Reform Party fools were all vaccinated as youngsters but parents who were a lot smarter than them.
moderna came out of virtually nowhere and its stock rose exponentially; ditto that little piece of scrap pharm that distributed under phizer, biontech. phizer stock did not fire like moderna, but biontech’s did.
your point that people do not trust is spot on, and those not trusting have so many reasons for their reticence. govt and big corp are full of it. somehow still so many people refuse to acknowledge that we are led by sociopaths and psychopaths. not all, perhaps, but enough that we and our planet is far more harmed than not.
sorry to big brit, but govt/society forcing their way into the bodies of another is fascist; using strong arm tactics to coerce, such as no school and no job is utterly disgusting.
if the vax works, being vaxed will work.
meanwhile, there are those of us that will not support the serial torture of animals to derive and determine the safety and quality of anything.
animal torture is a horrific process. that is not say we should not have meds, and meds only by choice of each. but the approach that we support is pathetic as it is ugly and cruel.
As usual the thought police show up with the references to conspiracy theories. Point was get vaccinated for measles, proven to work.
As regards vaccination hesitation, and leaving aside those opposed to vaccines for religious reasons (that group is a whole other story), the most difficult people to get through to are, in the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson, “people who know just enough about a subject to think they’re right but not enough to know they’re wrong.”
Tyson’s observation is especially applicable to people who don’t understand the scientific methodology in general or the science of vaccines specifically, but question scientific advances anyway.