I’ve been very honest on social media about how 2020 changed me. One of the bigger changes that didn’t come till 2021 was my stance on vaccines. Prior to 2021 I was actually an anti-vaxxer. Yes you read that word right I was an anti-vaxxer. No I was not vaccine hesitant I was completely 100% antivaxx. I wasn’t one of those trolls that would tell people they’re killing their baby by vaccinating them, but I definitely shared my fair amount of anti-VAX propaganda on my social media platforms.
Then 2020 hit and COVID-19 came with it. There’s something about living through a real life pandemic that just makes you start questioning a lot of your beliefs or stances on things. Not only did COVID-19 change my mind on a lot of things but also the politics of 2020 sent me down the rabbit hole of deconstructing my faith and naturally, because the anti-VAX community is very large within white evangelical Christianity, I started to question my stance on vaccines.
To start out with I made a list of all of my concerns about vaccines and then started looking for real peer reviewed scientific research to either prove or disprove my concerns. I went into it with an open mind and honestly just wanted truth.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had been lied to time and time again when it came to the talking points of the anti-VAX community. I was led to believe that Andrew Wakefield was only trying to bring awareness that there may be a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism and that he just recommended changing the MMR vaccine to a single dose vile. The truth is that the whole paper that he published was fraudulent. Not only that but at the same time he was recommending single dose viles, he had a patent pending for single dose vile vaccines. This was a wake up call for me to realize that the anti-VAX movement was also fueled by money, not just with the people who push the anti-vaccine propaganda but within its followers who are usually connected to some kind of health and wellness MLM company.
Now don’t get me wrong I do understand that the pharmaceutical industry is about making money. It’s a business, I get that. The thing that anti-vaxxers fail to understand is that the anti-VAX movement is also about making money and they manipulate your emotions and fear monger you into believing their talking points without them being backed by scientific data. This is so you buy their products, whether that’s a set of DVDs or some new health and wellness supplement.
Which I would like to add, all of those supplements are not FDA approved, and the reason I’m pointing that out is because it’s one of the bigger talking points I see from people who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine. These are also the same people who put essential oils in their food and ingest them on the daily while they are all not FDA approved.
Anyway, moving on. Once I realized that there was a huge money motive behind the anti-VAX movement it wasn’t hard for me to find scientific data that disapproved all of the talking points that the anti-vaccine community led me to believe in.
Once the COVID-19 vaccine became available I saw a huge surge in the anti-vaccine community. I saw many people Who had been provaxx their whole life start to switch sides, or at least when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine. This concerned me because we are living through this pandemic as we speak and quite literally the miss information that is continually spread online is killing people. That’s when I decided to be vulnerable and share my story publicly.
Yes it’s come with praise and admiration from many but it has also come with backlash and rumors. You wouldn’t believe how many people think the pharmaceutical industry has paid me to switch sides. If that’s true then I would really like somebody from their HR department to contact me because I’m pretty sure my checks are just lost in the mail.
The real reason that I share my story from going anti-VAX to pro-VAX is because I believe the anti-VAX community is manipulating science, fear mongering, and pushing harmful conspiracy theories that are quite literally killing people. For 10 years they lied to me and took my money. For 10 years they scared me to my core and caused more anxiety than I can express in this one blog post. For 10 years they manipulated scientific data and influenced me to put my children at risk. So now I speak out against them in hopes that my story and sharing real scientific data can help dispel the anti-VAX propaganda and misinformation.
I’ve been asked many times to share sources so below this blog post is a link to a Google doc that lists out all of my concerns that I had about vaccines and then all the scientific data that I found that helped dispel them. There is so much more out there to help dispel antivaxx misinformation, but this is a great place to start if you’re questioning your stance or if you’re vaccine hesitant and want real scientific data and explanations from professionals.
Also I highly encourage you to talk to your doctor about your concerns. They are always great at listening and helping dispel misinformation.
Good luck and be a part of the solution!
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