Živilė Kropaitė-Basiulė on vaccines and antivirals: when people join their ranks, they lose some connection to common sense

– What is your opinion about vaccines? Are you getting vaccinated?

– I myself have been vaccinated with all the mandatory vaccines, they have also vaccinated me against the flu, I have also wanted tick-borne encephalitis for a long time, but every time I heard that the initial scheme consisted of three vaccines with certain intervals, I was not prepared somehow. This summer I had to regret it: the mite was absorbed for the first time. I was very scared, but I pulled it out while I was doing it, leaving my head on my feet. I was reassured when I read that that head doesn’t necessarily matter and that you have to wait. After waiting two weeks, I was already beginning to celebrate that I didn’t feel the signs of encephalitis, that everything was fine, and that I was trying not to gnaw away the lack of vaccination, but there was a Lyme disease-like stain. If there really was Lyme disease or infectious dermatitis, this is clearly not the case so far, but I took antibiotics that are safe during pregnancy and I seem to have managed to recover. Thank God I met the Santar doctors who took great care of me and greatly reduced my anxiety. But if someone were to ask me now, what is the first thing to do in preparation for summer, I would say, get vaccinated against encephalitis when you go out into the wild? Smear your feet. There is no vaccine against Lyme, but how long the mite remains in the body and how it is removed can have an effect on the course of Lyme. So I urge everyone to keep that in mind.
And basically, I am absolutely in favor of all recommended vaccines, as well as all possible non-state funded extras. I am waiting at the moment so I have also had a flu shot.

– Will you be vaccinating your child with additional vaccines not funded by the state?

– We planned to get vaccinated against rot, but we changed doctors, we skipped the vaccine and we couldn’t wait. We have been vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis, we are going to get the flu in the winter and we are happy to get vaccinated against chickenpox from the optional ones. I didn’t get the flu that winter because a doctor later said that when a woman gets a flu shot during pregnancy, feeding her baby gives her some protection. I don’t know if it’s a myth.

Last winter, the child became very ill, so we continue to postpone the last recommended Pentaxim vaccine. In the end, we only got vaccinated after quarantine, because when we brought the patient, we had to postpone this vaccine. And the rumors that I will protect my son from the flu while feeding him … At the time, the additional vaccinations did not seem so necessary, I wanted to get vaccinated as soon as possible, to complete the entire vaccination schedule.

– Have you had any side effects in your family after vaccination?

– My husband had a fever, he felt very bad after getting the flu shot, so when I got vaccinated, I set my schedule so that if I felt bad, I could be home and “get the flu”, but I had absolutely nothing. The son developed a fever in the first few months. We gave him medication and both, and there were no other reactions.

– Have you had opponents of the vaccine in your immediate environment?

– I remember that a friend told me that all vaccines are necessary, except whooping cough, because when was the last time we met a person who would have it. And I remember when that came up antivacinins the movement has just emphasized the medical argument that people don’t get sick because they have been vaccinated for many years. I have a student who is trying really hard to show that there are so many arguments why vaccines are bad. Those arguments are so useless, as are discussions, because they have already found some of their own arguments, and you have never found them because you trust the people who work in the field. That discussion with antivacteria it is practically impossible because I have never seen conspiracies in vaccines, that is why I have never been interested and I intend to be interested in whether they contain, for example, those residues of abortion or not. There are certain groups of people who may feel insecure and then it may seem like the whole world has paid off for them and wants it to be worse for them.

– Are you trying to change people’s minds against vaccines, or are you just listening to both?

– If I was in a very close environment, for example, my mother or sister would be against me, I think I really could not stay still and say nothing.

But for some things it is better to save health. For example, some older people are very religious and believe that there is only one religion because only their prophet is right and all other religions are already sects. With such a discussion, it is hardly worth it.

I do not hide and avoid my position, also at work. If there is someone who offers to speak to someone in the programs antivaxerįIt seems to me that a professional should not “listen to all parties” in this case, but simply not talk to him, because he cannot disseminate the position of a person who does not say adequate things, based on science. Basically, I didn’t waste too much life trying to convince everyone that vaccines are good.

– Do you tolerate, without reason, that parents refuse to fully vaccinate their children?

— No, because you have to think about others, not just yourself. This is unacceptable to me because not vaccinating someone can lead to an outbreak that my child could also be involved in. It is not about allowing everyone to ‘individually choose’. It is not a personal style, eating habits or anything else. Your choices here also determine the quality of life and the health of others.

– How do you react to the various fears associated with vaccines?

– I don’t answer much. I’m just curious to know how it happens that a person lives live and suddenly decides that the whole world is against her. For me, medicine has never raised doubts.

– Have you ever hesitated to vaccinate your child?

– I was hesitant about the flu shot, but it was because, as I said, I was informed that breast milk also provides some protection against the flu if it has been vaccinated. Maybe there was a lack of information, maybe there were many other things, and I have not heard of children so young who have been vaccinated in the immediate area. But despite all the planned and state-funded vaccinations, I never doubted.

– What advice would you give parents who are afraid to vaccinate their children due to misinformation?

– The first thing to see is how we are all in the situation with Covid-19 now and how we are waiting for the vaccine. Anyway, it is important to select the information according to the appropriate sources, we cannot treat the statements of some members of the Seimas that are unfounded as a normal source of information, we cannot think for ourselves that the objective of someone is to destroy us. us, humanity.

We must understand that all intelligent and critically minded professionals behave in vain in the way they behave, believe in what they believe and develop what they are developing.

We cannot think that all the doctors who have been in the university for 10 years somehow got into the circle of the conspiracy and decided to kill everyone. Logically, this is absolutely impossible. You have to think about it and see it to see what medicine has already achieved and what it has done in other areas, such as what infant mortality was in hospitals 60 years ago and what it is now. This alone is an objective criterion to see how advanced the medicine is.

It still depends a lot on what kind of people are around you. If there are those who simply know how to speak persuasively, the weak will break even more. This is how the so-called “arguments” are born. For example, you may be influenced by a good friend who claims to have paid a lot, but then you have to think that your friend is not necessarily right, he may be deceived and lost in some vague mazes because he had a bad time in life and He had to express dissatisfaction with her surroundings. Just as people fall into a sect where they lose all their money, they also fall into antivakserių ranges where it loses some connection with common sense. There have always been people who have said that the earth is not round.

– Would you be in favor of introducing mandatory vaccination?

– I think it would be quite logical. We are not yet such a mature society that we understand for ourselves that our concrete actions and their consequences can have repercussions for the general public. Often times, we still see the state as an enemy. Recall how we recently “showed” a car coming from the other side to announce that a policeman was stopped somewhere on the road. What nonsense is this? Since when are police officers common enemies of all? Since when have the doctors been in charge?
There are things in this country that will only arrive and arrive on time, and some areas will need quite a bit of time. And it may be that we still need things like ‘mandatory’, ‘optional’, ‘required’, ‘unnecessary’.

Of course, it would be better not to need resounding cases to, for example, pass all the necessary child protection laws. Ideally, women should not be killed to adopt the Istanbul Convention. They also wouldn’t want people to die from an outbreak of whooping cough so that everyone suddenly realizes that they need to be vaccinated. I don’t think mandatory vaccinations are really a violation for anyone.

– Have you heard more serious side effects after vaccination in the immediate area?

– I missed.

– Do you think there is enough information about vaccines from the doctors themselves?

– I think the doctors could do more about it. Sometimes when it comes to additional vaccinations, doctors, in my opinion, are afraid to provide paid services because they know that some cannot pay and then they feel uncomfortable because they think that patients will now “see them as thieves with everything in them. pocket”. And there are those who are generally not very inclined to interact with people. But most doctors, even if they have communication difficulties, are wonderful specialists, and we must not stop enjoying and trusting both the progress of medicine and the doctors of a particular country – Lithuania. Covid reaffirmed it.