The Amazing Spider-Man Saves the Day with Vaccines

My brother is 10-months-old. He has blue eyes, blond hair, a rash, a fever of 104 degrees, tubes hooked up to his little body, and he falls asleep to the hospital machines’ beep. Beep. Beep. He has measles.

I’m a sucker for comic books. So I know all about supervillains, especially Sandman. But I know Sandman doesn’t actually exist. Real-life villains look like the Smiths. The Smiths might not be able to manipulate sand like Sandman, but they manipulate people. To stop parents from vaccinating their kids, they use huge scientific words like, “According to Dr. Wakefield’s research, there’s a positive correlation between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, thus leading to the conclusion that vaccines cause autism.” When an army of researchers in white lab coats come to the rescue and show how wrong Dr. Wakefield was when he said the MMR vaccine causes autism, the Smiths don’t retreat. Like Sandman they have superhuman endurance. They strike back harder with lies like, “Giving too many vaccines at the same time overloads the immune system.” My baby brother has been in the hospital for over twenty days. A bunch of tubes snaked around his little body feed him because he can’t eat or drink by himself, because he’s too weak, because he hung around unvaccinated kids, but we didn’t know they weren’t vaccinated at the time, and at just 10-months-old my brother’s too young to get vaccinated, so he had a 90% chance of catching measles, and luck wasn’t on his side, so now the disease chews up his insides. Out of breath? With his now weakened immune system, that’s what my baby brother feels like all the time as he fights for his life. You see, giving multiple vaccines at the same time doesn’t overload the immune system. But not getting vaccinated and catching measles definitely weakens it.

In the 2007 Spider-Man 3 movie, Sandman robs banks. The Smiths don’t rob people’s wealth, they rob their health.

• The number of people with rubella dropped by 60,000 each year once the rubella vaccine appeared in Canada.
•  When people all around the world got the measles vaccines, from 2000 to 2017, the amount of people who died from measles dropped by 80%. In other words, the vaccine saved 21.1 million lives.
•  526. That’s how many Canadian kids under five-years-old had Haemophilus influenzae (Hib) infections each year before the Hib vaccine appeared.
• 17. That’s how many Canadian kids under five-years-old had Hib infections each year after the Hib vaccine appeared.

When the Smiths run around unvaccinated and use manipulation to stop others from vaccinating their kids and themselves, the Smiths either put our health at risk or they completely rob us of it.

In the movie Spider-Man 3, it first looks like Sandman is this big evil villain who robs banks to fill his own pockets. But at the end we find out he steals to pay for his daughter’s cancer treatments. Maybe the Smiths aren’t completely evil either. Maybe they really think vaccines are dangerous even though tons of research says they’re safe and they protect us from missing school, from ending up in the hospital, and even from dying. I brought this up during my interview with one of my neighbours who goes by the pseudonym Gale Chartrand, and she says, “I don’t send my children to school to get sick, I send them to learn. I understand that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are doing whatever they think is best for their children, but it’s definitely not what’s best for mine. Their right to protect their children ends where my child’s right to protection begins.” But the Smiths don’t see it that way. They don’t get that the decision they make about whether or not to vaccinate their kids doesn’t just involve their kids. It involves everyone’s.

Just like villains don’t all look like Sandman, heroes don’t all look like Spider-Man. Some look like lawmakers. They’re in a position of power and they know that with great power comes great responsibility. It’s why they pass laws that say that, in Ontario and New Brunswick, only vaccinated kids are allowed to go to school. Other heroes look like researchers who work at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology (CCfV). They listen to their tingling spidey senses and before danger strikes, they develop safe and effective vaccines and publish scientifically-sound information about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases. But the best heroes look like your friendly neighborhood civilians who take the time to get themselves and their kids vaccinated against vaccine-preventable diseases.

One out of every three thousand to five thousand kids with measles will die. My 10-month-old brother with the blue eyes, the blond hair, the rash, the fever of 104 degrees, and the tubes hooked up to his little body won’t fall asleep to the hospital machines’ beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeep. The machines beeps will follow one after the other. Beep. Beep. Beep. And one day we’ll take him home so he can fall asleep to our mama’s lullabies.

In the meantime, I try to be a real-life superhero. I get vaccinated on time and I get people to click here for information about vaccines for adults and kids.