EDITORIAL: This internet rabbit hole could save a life
From this week's Tipperary Star and The Nationalist
If you have a moment today, Google mRNA vaccines.
Park your concerns, questions and fears for a minute and just learn what mRNA is, its role in your body and how the technology is advancing.
While you are there, read about other kinds of vaccines, how viruses mutate, and what herd immunity means.
We promise it’s the best rabbit hole you will end up down today.
The reason we bring this up is because although medicine to prevent and mitigate diseases is coming on leaps and bounds, education is not.
This week, the Department of Public Health issued a warning for passengers of JJ Kavanagh bus number 717 from Dublin Airport to Clonmel, departing at 4pm on Saturday, August 17, 2024.
On the bus was a confirmed case of measles, and the department asked that anyone on the bus who is pregnant, immunocompromised, or under the age of 12-months-old contact their GP or hospital for advice immediately.
Measles is on the rise in Ireland and other parts of the world due to vaccine avoidance.
The people listed in the warning are people who cannot get a vaccine or who are carrying someone who is not protected.
There is no such thing as natural immunity against all viruses, only herd immunity, which happens when enough people are vaccinated that a disease like measles cannot get a foothold in a population, and so does not mutate into something more harmful or transmissible.
So, when enough people who can get a vaccine, do, there is less chance of someone who can’t catching the disease.
But, those chances go up when people are more frightened than informed about vaccines.
The first vaccine was developed in 1796, and since then, they have only gotten better.
Vaccines can be produced, adapted and rolled out more easily these days, so more people can get them. Fun fact, that is in part because of the race to find a Covid-19 vaccine.
One more thing.
If you are unvaccinated and you learn something today, the HSE do regular vaccine catch-up clinics around the country.
These have included MMR, Covid-19 and HPV. Google clinics too.
You might not know it, but you are saving lives, and one of them might be your own.