Meghan Cox Gurdon: Dancing with the swine flu dilemma
By: Meghan Cox Gurdon
Examiner Columnist
October 15, 2009
It's an anxious time for many parents, as we wait for delivery of the H1N1 vaccine. In the last week or so, 19 more children have died of the swine flu virus, bringing the national total up to 81 children.
The calm among us, and I like to think I'm one of them, recognize that in a country of 300 million people, a small number like that is just a blip, not even one day's worth of traffic fatalities.
Yet, it is also true that two children have already died in Maryland. And, as we're hearing, nearly half of all victims do not have any underlying medical conditions that might make them more vulnerable to attack. We can't help but worry, even when we know that statistically there is little to fear.
"We'll have it later this month - maybe," we're told when we phone the doctor, and we hang up feeling uneasy.
It's not wholly the unavailability of the vaccine that makes us nervous. Frankly, we're not sure we really want to shoot ourselves or our children up with the stuff.
Soothing spokesmen from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are quick to explain that vaccination is crucial, that the virus is spreading terrifyingly fast, that more people will die if we don't all take seriously the need to check swine flu by vaccinating our families. "We know it's safe and secure," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
But the anti-vaccine meme is strong, too, running through countless playground conversations and Internet threads. It was not really a surprise when the AP found in a poll earlier this month that 72 percent of parents are worried about side effects from the H1N1 vaccine.
Nor was it a shock that more than a third said they did not plan to vaccinate their children - the whole thing is too new, too untested, too potentially unsafe, these parents said.
It's a fair bet that those parents - and a month ago, I was one of them, before the CDC people got to me - are at the same time suppressing a low dread that they are making the wrong call.
These are very, very difficult decisions - yet they are decisions that have a weird lightness that can almost make them seem inconsequential.
If you do not vaccinate your child, you are not actively doing anything: You are going about your normal business and, if you don't think too much about murderous microbes dancing in the air, it's almost as if they aren't there. Probably, your daughter won't get swine flu in the first place, and, even if she does, probably she'll get over it just as she would a normal bout of the flu. Probably.
If you do vaccinate your child, however, you are taking deliberate action. Outwardly, it's minimal: You take your child to a waiting room. She goes from there to the doctor's chamber, gets spiked in the arm, and departs with a lollipop.
In this case, too, your daughter probably wouldn't have gotten swine flu anyway, but, if she had come in contact, you'll have stopped the virus from using her as a steppingstone to other, more fragile bodies.
We Americans have a tendency to lurch toward things that promise us ease, convenience, or, ideally, long life. Whether it's oat bran or red wine or wheatgrass, if studies suggest any scant correlation between consumption and, for instance, resistance to disease, we'll consume with gusto. We are less easy in our minds when a medical situation demands that we choose a worldview and stick to it.
And, as parents are making decisions (or punting), so are doctors. One pediatrician I talked to advised against the vaccine, saying it invites unnecessary risk in healthy children. Another pediatrician I consulted said I'd be silly not to give everyone the vaccine.
Meanwhile, the H1N1 bugs are wafting about ever more widely in the hopes of being inhaled. Well, probably.
Examiner Columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursday.
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