Tara Hills has written a piece for
thescientificparent.org chronicling her decision to become an anti-vaxxer and then return to believing in vaccinations. She pens the piece from quarantine because all seven of her children have recently been diagnosed with whopping cough.
We’d had a games night at our house in March, my brother-in-law had a full-blown cold, so when the kids started with a dry cough a few days later I didn’t think much of it. But a week after the symptoms started the kids weren’t improving, in fact they were getting worse. And the cough. No one had a runny nose or sneezing but they all had the same unproductive cough. Between coughing fits they were fine.
Then a few days later at midnight I snapped. My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. I’d never seen anything like this before. Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus – I had heard of this before somewhere. My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into ‘something is WRONG’ mode.
The irony is not lost on her. Tara Hills used to be an anti-vaxxer. In fact, she and her husband had only just recently decided to vaccinate, and had even set up
a vaccination catch-up-schedule for all of her children. She writes very clearly on the decisions that
lead her towards the anti-vaccination movement and then her path out.
We had vaccinated our first three children on an alternative schedule and our youngest four weren’t vaccinated at all. We stopped because we were scared and didn’t know who to trust. Was the medical community just paid off puppets of a Big Pharma-Government-Media conspiracy? Were these vaccines even necessary in this day and age? Were we unwittingly doing greater harm than help to our beloved children? So much smoke must mean a fire so we defaulted to the ‘do nothing and hope nothing bad happens’ position.
After the Disneyland measles outbreak, Tara and her husband decided revisited the issue. In doing so she realized what many anti-vaxxers forget, which is that they have excluded, by default, any and all research done by large and/or reputable scientific organizations. She also took a hard look at a small measles outbreak in her personal community and realized, if not for a bit of luck in timing, her family could very well have become carriers of the disease, passing it onto Mrs. Hills' nephew—a 34-week-old infant in an Ottawa neonatal intensive care unit.
I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyone’s sake, by getting them up to date. We can’t take it back … but we can learn from this and help others the same way we have been helped.