Vaccinations do work. Just ask your elderly relatives.
Before casually dismissing your elderly loved one’s views at the holiday dinner table, remember they were once kids themselves during the dark days of the 40s, 50s and 60s.
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“I Am Nobody’s Slave” author Lee Hawkins stresses the of talking with the elders around them about their family’s legacy, especially around holidays.
- A Gates Foundation report shows child death rates from preventable diseases are expected to increase for the first time in 25 years.
- Seniors who witnessed diseases like polio and measles firsthand credit vaccines with saving lives and preventing illness.
- New national health policies are dismantling some vaccine protocols, with some leaders looking to Denmark’s minimal vaccination model.
- The article argues that the growing elderly population is evidence of vaccine effectiveness over the past several decades.
In a few weeks, Old Father Time will make way for Baby New Year, filled with energy, good health and ready to take on 2026. At least that’s the image we’re all used to, but the new reality is more ominous for young people.
A newly released Gates Foundation report shows for the first time in a quarter century, child death rates from preventable diseases are expected to increase. Hopefully Baby New Year won’t be among the 200,000 kids under five expected to die from diseases modern medicine could have prevented with vaccines or other treatments.
This should be appalling to everyone, but especially for those 65 or older. Imagine watching your children avoid vaccinating their own kids because they’ve become misled by misinformation and falsehoods. They are also doing this while proven vaccinations and medicines are literally at their fingertips.
Seniors saw loved ones die from now preventable diseases
This year, before casually dismissing your elderly loved one’s views at the holiday dinner table, remember they were once kids themselves during the dark days of the 40s, 50s and 60s. They watched friends and loved one’s cling to life in iron lungs from polio, dying from smallpox, measles, the mumps, plus a host of other infectious diseases.
Young families prayed for something, anything to stop the scourge, and medical researchers responded with vaccinations — based on proven data and science. They worked and these noble efforts wiped many diseases away and brought our population back from a very fearful time.
Now our seniors sit shaking their heads as national health policies systematically dismantle vaccine protocols and therapies in favor of unproven and non-medically based ideas.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to adopt Denmark’s guidelines
New CDC and government leadership supported by committees have ended certain immunization requirements for COVID 19, are in the process of doing the same with Hepatitis B vaccinations for children and are now touting the tiny country of Denmark, which offers very minimal vaccination options for children, as the new role model for U.S. vaccination. Are they serious?
Thankfully, Gov. Tony Evers has taken executive and administrative actions to preserve vaccine access statewide — including maintaining insurance coverage, issuing state- level guidance, and enabling pharmacy access — to counter what he views as federally driven rollbacks on vaccination.
How do the elderly know vaccinations work? Because they’ve witnessed firsthand how impactful they can be. The elderly population over 65 has more than doubled between 1980 and 2020, per the U.S. Census Bureau.
Many credit vaccinations as playing an important role in preventing millions of deaths and far more hospitalizations and illnesses in general. Improved medical care and technology have also played a part, but many seniors are quickly realizing they are still here because of it, not because they snubbed their noses at it.
They just want everyone to listen to them before watching history repeat itself. We’ve come too far to go back now.
Rob Gundermann is President and CEO of the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging and Health Groups in Madison.
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