Tea: vaccinations are actually really helpful! But go off and get the bubonic plague, I guess.

So if you don't live under a rock, you've probably been noticing the (very stupid) trend of parents not vaccinating their children. But recently, a super cool example of why you should vaccinate your kids has come forth from the loins of the interwebs. A 6-year-old boy in Oregon was found to have tetanus, and although the original article was published in 2017 (when the kid actually got tetanus), the case has once again become popular within the past few days due to the release of a new federal report. If you don't know, tetanus= bacterial infection, usually transmitted by soil. In addition, tetanus also = very easily prevented. Now on to the deets of the actual event.

This little boy was playing on his family's farm when he got a cut on his forehead. Nothing serious, easily fixable with a bandaid and some ice cream right? WRONG. So about a week later this poor kid's jaw starts to clench and lock and his arms and upper body began to spasm uncontrollably. Then he started to have seizures and arch his back and neck, which looked something like this:

So obviously his parents call for help and this kid has to be helicoptered to a hospital where he is diagnosed with tetanus. He wanted water, but he couldn't open his mouth and could barely breathe. So doctors stuck a tube down his windpipe, gave him some vaccines and a large dose of tetanus immune globulin, which helps the body defend itself against diseases. Over the next few days, he continued to get worse and eventually doctors had to cut a hole in his neck and insert a breathing tube. Finally, after over 50 days, the kid was able to leave the hospital, but not without his $811,929 worth of hospital bills (if we're comparing the stats here, that's around 72x the amount of what it costs to treat an already vaccinated child). And that's not even including the helicopter, rehab and follow up visit costs. 

After all of this crazy stuff, you would think that this kid's family would be like "oh, we were wrong, let's not be stupid and fully vaccinate this child", but nope, they were stupid and chose not to. That was the first case of tetanus in Oregon in almost 30 years, and it could've been so easily prevented. 

So the moral of the story is, vaccinate your kids. Not only is your child at a higher risk to get these potentially deadly, but easily prevented diseases/infections, you are also putting immunocompromised people, babies, and other anti-vaxxers kids at risk to catch something that your kid could've got a vaccine for. I'm not saying that vaccines work all the time, because they don't, but you have a lower chance of contracting anything. Think of it this way: if you were going out in -20 degree weather, you would put as many layers on as possible to try and protect yourself from freezing to death. You would not just go out into that -20 degree weather completely naked and hope for the best, because that would be dumb. 

If you are against vaccines, that's pretty dumb and you should do more research.

Thanks bye!