Amid a heated vaccine debate, immunization advocates are laying out the facts, not the fury, to try to silence the anti-vaccine movement.
Some experts and pundits have resorted to slamming parents who oppose vaccines, but others, who are equally as dismayed by the campaign, have urged relying on the overwhelming figures, instead of vituperative language. Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, for example, recently tweeted a clear-cut infographic that delineated just how many children’s lives have been saved from infectious diseases in recent history alone.
According to the chart, which was excerpted from his foundation’s annual letter, the number of global deaths in kids from measles has dropped 80 percent since 2000. The disease was deemed eliminated in the U.S. that same year, according to the Associated Press.
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“I understand that there are families that, in some cases, are concerned about the effect of vaccinations,” Obama said in a pre-Super Bowl interview on Sunday. “The science is, you know, pretty indisputable. We’ve looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not.”
Gates, and his wife, Melinda, who have made bringing vaccines to the poorest countries a cornerstone of their advocacy work, have also used their personal experiences to push back against anti-vaccine claims.
“[Women in Africa] will walk 10 kilometers in the heat with their child and line up to get a vaccine because they have seen death,” Melinda Gates said in a recent interview with HuffPost Live. “We’ve forgotten what measles deaths look like. We’ve forgotten … the scourges they used to be. But in Africa, the women know death in their children and they want their children to survive.”
