Answers to Anti-Vaccine Talking Points

Anti-vaccine folks are very good at coming up with questions about vaccines.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

It is good to be skeptical about things.

Unfortunately, they tend to believe the answers that they make up and any “evidence” that agrees with their point of view (confirmation bias). They also will agree with any “expert” who agrees with them, even if 99.99% of experts don’t.

And tragically, they sometimes convince some vaccine-hesitant parents that their answers are right too.

Answers to Anti-Vaccine Talking Points

Most questions people have about vaccines have easy answers.

• Clear Answers and Smart Advice About Your Baby’s Shots
• Top 20 Questions about Vaccination
• CDC – Common Immunization Questions
• CDC – Infant Immunizations FAQs
• Vaccine Questions and Answers
• Ask the Experts About Vaccines
• FDA – Questions About Vaccines
• CDC – Frequently Asked Questions about Thimerosal
• CDC – Questions and Answers About Vaccines During Pregnancy
• Vaccine Safety: Answers to Parents’ Top Questions
• AAP – Questions and Answers about Vaccine Ingredients
• Questions Parents Ask About Vaccinations for Babies

Anti-vaccine folks likely were not expecting answers when they came up with their “9 Questions That Stump Every Pro-Vaccine Advocate and Their Claims,” but they quickly got them, even after they came up with 9 new questions.

• Nine Questions, Nine Answers.
• The opposite of stumped: 9 unanswerable anti-vax questions answered
• Nine vaccine questions from an anti-vaccine activist

So folks were hardly stumped by these fallacious arguments…

“To say that the relationship that antivaccine activists have with science and fact is a tenuous, twisted one is a major understatement.”

David Gorski on How Not To Debate a Pro-Vaxxer

How about all of the graphs they made proving that vaccines don’t work?

• Pre-Vaccine Declines in Measles Mortality
• Yes, vaccines did save us from disease: a graphic analysis
• Theatricality and deception, weapons against the uninitiated
• “Vaccines didn’t save us” (a.k.a. “vaccines don’t work”): Intellectual dishonesty at its most naked
• Analysis of Anti-Vax Graphs

Or the 14 studies that they think say vaccines cause autism?

• Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine propaganda machine, and “Fourteen Studies”
• More On Fourteen Studies
• 14 Studies Later
• Vaccines and autism: A thorough review of the evidence
• 131 Research Papers Supporting the Vaccine/Autism Link…or Not. No, They Don’t.

It should be obvious by now that folks who push anti-vaccine misinformation have a poor understanding of science and a “poor understanding of how vaccination works.”

• Misconceptions about Vaccines
• Vaccine Myths Debunked
• 7 Biggest Lies of the Antivaccine Movement Debunked
• WHO – What are some of the myths – and facts – about vaccination?
• 15 Myths About Anti-Vaxxers, Debunked – Part 2, Part 3

Parents who are hesitant about vaccinating and protecting their kids shouldn’t though.

• Learn what package inserts really say and don’t say.
• Review common contraindications to getting vaccinated, so that you can understand that there are actually very few reasons to not vaccinate your kids.
• Understand that shedding isn’t the big risk that some folks claim it to be, certainly doesn’t cause outbreaks, and doesn’t routinely restrict kids from visiting cancer patients.
• Know that vaccines worked to eradicated smallpox, helped control measles, diphtheria, rubella, and other vaccine preventable diseases, and have helped get us very close to eradicating polio.
• Understand that kids get more vaccines today so that they are better protected, but that it is still not too many and that they don’t get them too soon.
• Review why vaccine ingredients are not toxic.
• Know that no major religion is against you getting your kids vaccinated.

Getting educated about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases will help you make a truly informed decision so that you don’t fall for the tactics and tropes of the anti-vaccine movement.

After all, once you get educated about vaccines, you will know that:

• Andrew Wakefield has never been proven right
• the movie VAXXED is pure propaganda
• the CDC Whistleblower didn’t really blow the whistle on the CDC
• herd immunity is real
• they vaccinated folks at Leicester, it wasn’t all about quarantines
• unavoidably unsafe does not mean that vaccines are dangerous
• while almost $3.5 billion dollars have been paid out by the Vaccine Court since 1988 for about 5,555 compensated awards, it is important to understand that at least 2.8 billion doses of vaccines have been given just since 2006, and almost 80% of the compensated cases were settled, without an admission that a vaccine caused an injury.
• the anti-vaccine movement harms autistic kids and their families
• your pediatrician, with the CDC and Big Pharma, and doctors all over the world, are not part of a conspiracy hiding evidence that vaccines cause autism or any other vaccine induced diseases
• while waning immunity is a problem with some vaccines, we are still in much better shape than we were in the pre-vaccine era, so even these vaccines are working, if not working perfectly well.
• an unvaccinated child can more easily get measles, chicken pox, mumps, or pertussis because they don’t have immunity, not because we think these vaccine-preventable diseases will spontaneously pop up in their bodies.
• natural immunity is great, as long as your child doesn’t suffer any of the complications of having a life-threatening disease.
• you can sometimes wait too long to get your child immunized – long enough for them to get a vaccine-preventable disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine they didn’t get.

Most importantly,  realize that no matter what decision you make, no one is going to force you to vaccinate your child. You always have a choice, even if your choice is to skip or delay your child’s vaccines and put those around you at increased risk for getting a vaccine preventable disease.

What To Know About Anti-Vaccine Talking Points

Get educated about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases so that you will understand that vaccines are safe, necessary, and that they work, and so you will be able to counter any anti-vaccine talking point you hear.