Vaccines save lives, so they should be as convenient as possible, and be combined together in one shot when possible

“Measles vaccination has saved 94 million lives globally since 1974. Of those, 92 million were children”, says Our World in Data. But measles vaccination rates have fallen in the U.S., and as a result, unvaccinated children have died in places like Texas and Los Angeles.

Vaccines do not cause autism. “Dozens of studies involving millions of people show there is no link between vaccines and autism,” notes a doctor cited in The Hill newspaper

Moreover, parents are more likely to get their kid fully vaccinated if the kid can get vaccinated for three diseases at once, in a single shot, instead of parents having to bring their kid back to the doctor over and over again for a separate shot for each individual disease. Requiring a child to be jabbed with a needle on three separate occasions rather than just once increases the pain of vaccination and makes the child cry over and over again, which moms and dads hate.

So politicians who are not doctors should not be recommending breaking up vaccination among multiple visits, when the vaccines can all be combined into a single visit. Particularly when a politician may not remember what it is like to be a child getting jabbed with a needle, because he let his wife take their kid to the pediatrician for the shot, rather than taking the kid himself.

Yesterday, President Trump, who is not a doctor and gets basic facts wrong about vaccines, recommended that rather than giving toddlers the MMR vaccination — which combines the vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella in one shot — pediatricians should instead vaccinate them on three separate occasions, with a separate shot for each disease. That would require the child to get jabbed three times. That is wholly unnecessary, because the MMR shot that vaccinates for all three diseases is quite safe. Requiring multiple shots rather than one will delay protection against these diseases, and will make kids suffer unnecessary pain from being jabbed three times rather than once.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical doctor, criticized Trump’s recommendation as “wrong” and said the president “does not have the expertise to make these changes.” Cassidy said, “Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe. Parents should listen to their child’s pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate” claim from Trump. “This is so wrong,” he said.

The Hill reports that “Medical experts have decried Trump’s Monday proposal and said splitting up the MMR vaccine could leave children vulnerable to infectious diseases for longer. Separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines for children are not currently available in the U.S. States set their own vaccination requirements, and many have already said they have lost faith in the Trump administration and are no longer following recommendations from the federal government.”

Of the lives saved by vaccination, about 60% are saved by the measles vaccine, according to Our World in Data.

Trump, who is 80 years old, seems to know little about current vaccination practices. He said “I’ve seen proof of where they have a vaccination thing that looks like the size of a bottle of soda and pour it into a little child’s body.” That’s nonsense, there is no such thing, there is no vaccination thing remotely that big. Bottles of soda all have at least 200 times as much fluid as even the largest dose vaccines, such as the adult Hepatitis A vaccine and certain rabies vaccines. Even those big vaccines are only about 1 milliliter per dose, compared to the 222 milliliters in the smallest bottles of soda. Most vaccines are smaller than 1 milliliter: The typical dose for common childhood vaccines is 0.5 milliliters (half a milliliter), which is about one-tenth of a teaspoon. Some infant doses or specific flu shots are even smaller at 0.25 milliliters. A bottle of soda contains at least 444 times as much fluid as the dose for the the commonly-administered MMR vaccine, which combines three different vaccinations for a toddler. The MMR vaccine contains only 0.5 milliliters per dose.

Trump said, “At one year, you should have 5 separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day.” 5 separate visits means a lot more pain, and a lot of wasted time. For no reason, because the MMR shot, which combines three different vaccines in one visit, is among the shots with the least side effects and lowest rate of complications. The Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine has a strong, well-established safety record and is considered very safe by major health agencies.

Julian Sanchez, who worked at a think-tank for years, disagreed with this, saying sarcastically, “Yes, let’s burden both new parents and pediatricians with FIVE doctor visits instead of one for absolutely no legitimate medical reason.”