The current23:43“Anti-vaxxer” reformed speaks
When his two -month -old daughter did not stop crying after a vaccine vaccine, Lydia called public health in Alberta, looking for some advice and tranquility.
Instead, she says the call left her feeling goodbye and humiliated.
“They were not very service and they discouraged me as a first -time mother. The current Matt Galloway.
“He simply felt shameful and really didn’t feel that he could trust them.”
Lydia is now a licensed practical nurse and vaccine defender; The CBC is not revealing its full name because it says that it faced threats and harassment related to that work. But that public health call was the beginning of something else: for years, Lydia was a proud Anti-Vaxxer.
The call occurred in 2008, shortly after Lydia and her husband moved to the rural area of Alberta. He had resigned from working to take care of his daughter and had no family nearby. Frustrated by her interaction with public health, she resorted to an online forum for mothers, where other mothers had recently helped her with breastfeeding advice.
“It felt like when I talked to the other moms who also worried about my son in a way I didn’t feel when I called public health … You have this sense of community,” he said.
“When I told them about the reaction of my daughter’s vaccine, they had all these warning stories … and they scared me to continue vaccinating her.”
Myths have ‘Core of Truth’
Lydia’s daughter was good after a couple of days. Until that time, Lydia generally trusted vaccines and medical advice around her.
But while reading more online, he said he gradually believed the myths he was finding, partly because of the desire to protect his children.
“Many of these myths of the vaccine have some type of really nucleus, or something that sounds plausible. But when you move away and look at larger studies, they simply do not hold water.”
Initially he slowed his daughter’s vaccine schedule, then skipped completely.
“Then I had two more children, I didn’t vaccinate them either, and I was a victim of erroneous information,” he said.
Dr. Lynora Saxinger, a specialist in infectious diseases, says that the growing number of measles cases in Alberta is not something he “hoped to see in his life as an infections doctor.” Until Wednesday, the province reported 1,246 cases.
This year, Canada has experienced its worst measles outbreak in decades, with 4,619 cases confirmed as of September 13. Doctor Experts have urged people to vaccinate Against the disease, which was declared eliminated in 1998 after a two -dose universal calendar. According to Health Canada, 88 percent of cases confirmed this year have been in unvaccinated individuals.
Dr. Cora Constantinescu, a pediatrician and specialist in infectious diseases, said that some simply do not see measles as a threat to healthy children. But he warned that this is not the case.
“You can’t underestimate what hospitalization, even in the best places, it means for a child and her family,” said Constantinesc, clinical associate professor at Cumming School of Medicine from the University of Calgary.
“We have no high mortality, we have very good results. But that doesn’t mean no [mean] suffering and trauma to the child and that family that goes through that disease. “
FEED VACCINE PANDEMIA VACCONY
In a Online survey by Angus Reid last year17 percent of parents of children under 18 said they were “really against” vaccinating their children. That figure is an increase of four times since 2019, when it was 4 percent. The online survey survey 1,626 Canadian adults from February 16 to 19, 2024.
Part of Constantinescu’s work is as a doctor at the Vaccine Vaccine Clinic against Alberta Children’s Hospital. She said there are many different factors that play with the vaccine vaccine or low absorption, including difficulties in accessing medical care in remote areas.
Some communities may have religious or cultural reasons to reject vaccines, while newcomers or indigenous communities may have distrust of the government or lack linguistic skills to navigate the medical care system.
She thinks that the Covid-19 pandemic had a specific impact on the opposition of the vaccine.
“[There were] A myriad of public health measures that people felt interfered with their daily lives and their freedom … and I think the vaccine ended up assuming the fault of a lot, “he said.
“Much of that is now translating into attitudes of vaccination as a whole.”
There are early signs that measles, one of the most contagious but preventable diseases in the world, can be spread in parts of Canada. Andrew Chang breaks down the way the virus attacks the body and what makes it so contagious.
On the contrary, the pandemic was when Lydia began to question some of the opinions of the Anti-Vaxx movement. For years, they had told him that sanitation and hygiene were important to reduce the spread of the disease. But those same proponents were now opposed to disinfectant and masking.
“The hypocrisy of the movement made me consider that I could be wrong,” he said.
He began to question other anti-vaxx points in which he had spent years believing, sending his questions to the experts.
“I had immunologists and doctorates and pediatricians who were willing to go through each and every one of the myths he believed,” he said.
Another myth was destroyed at the same time, when his son was diagnosed with autism. Many anti-vaxxers argue that there is a link between children’s vaccination and autism, although those statements were discredited decades ago.
Lydia refused to believe that he could have the condition, initially thinking that he had done everything necessary to avoid such a diagnosis. But he finally accepted the diagnosis, and his involvement that the vaccine link is a myth.
“My son was completely not vaccinated, and he’s autistic.”
Become a vaccine defender
Lydia decided to vaccinate her children, but still had long overcome her long -standing fears.
In the years after the reaction of his daughter’s vaccine, Lydia says that health workers have become more aware of the vaccine and how to work with nervous parents.
“My nurse was great. She said: ‘You do what you can handle, what your anxiety can handle. I will monitor what is left and we will go as fast or as slow as you want,” recalls Lydia.
Today, she speaks in public events about overcoming her own vaccine vaccine, and is part of an online support group that speaks through the fears that parents have. She also tries to have those conversations in her work as a nurse, something that she thinks she was missing.
Constantinesc also believes that it is important that people “are defenders of the vaccine within their own circle”, pointing out that there is a silent majority of parents who vaccinate their children.
“That doesn’t mean you have to know everything about vaccination,” he said.
“It simply means that you have to share that you have chosen to vaccinate your children, you have chosen to protect them.”
Lydia thinks that, as former anti-vaxxer, he is in a unique position to help worried parents.
“The only way you can talk to them is if you listen to them first. That conversation opens,” he said.
“But if you close a person … they won’t hear anything you have to say.”
The Angus Reid Institute said its online survey was conducted among a random sample of Canadian adults, which are members of the Angus Reid forum. Only for comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size would lead to a margin of error of more or less two percentage points, 19 times from 20.
