I got my second shingles vaccine yesterday. Today my arm is sore, I have a mild headache, and I feel a bit of a chill. But the symptoms are mild and I’ll go about my day just fine. I do marvel at the idea of vaccines and how they can build our immunity to prevent serious sickness. I’m also further excited about how medical scientists are doing research using mRNA vaccines tailored to specific people to fight certain kinds of cancer. This is an incredible breakthrough because normally our immune system does not detect cancerous cells as foreign, and that’s why they are left unharmed by our immune system and spread so easily.

On the flip side, I saw a social media post by a pastor in a small town in Texas bragging that his school was the least vaccinated against measles in the country. There is a measles breakout currently going through Texas and so far one unvaccinated child has died (not from the school mentioned above). In all likelihood, there will be more as a result of not taking the vaccine.

I’m no longer surprised by anti-science, conspiracy minded people.

I can question whether during Covid, if we actually needed to vaccinate small children when only 0.4 percent of the deaths were in those under 20 years old… and still see that the vaccine worked. In fact, the stat above might have been quite a bit higher without the vaccine. I can question the application of the vaccine without needing to question the efficacy.

Imagine our world, with polio and smallpox still being a concern. When is the last time you recall someone getting the mumps? I know that I’m not immune to shingles now, but my likelihood of catching it, and/or having a very bad case is drastically reduced thanks to the vaccine. A friend of my wife got it a week before her scheduled vaccine, and she had to take a lot of time off, and still has nerve damage as a result.

Sometimes you need to trust the science, trust in conventional research, and not social media posts that cherry pick stats and outright lie to convince you otherwise. There are not a cabal of scientists collaborating to dupe you into taking measles or shingles vaccines, to somehow inject you with (insert conspiracy theory here). There are thousands of scientists dedicated to making life better, curing diseases, and increasing both your quality of life and also your time here on earth.

I’m grateful for the advances we’ve seen, and I encourage you, if you’ve missed any of these shots, to go get them.