Thank you for Portland Press Herald reporter Joe Lawlor’s excellent coverage of the troublingly high rates at which families are opting out of vaccines.

Recently, my infant son, Thomas, broke out in a rash, and my heart sank. We’d just learned that other kids at his nursery school had highly contagious chicken pox. It was scary to take Thomas to the weekend clinic to confirm that he had chicken pox, and related pneumonitis in his lungs, at 4 months old.

Having a sick kid sucks. Knowing that it could have been prevented is infuriating.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to be the mom of an immunocompromised kid and worry that one negligent family at the grocery store could kill your baby. I just started a new job and feared losing it because I needed to be home with my sick infant. My husband and I worked until dawn for two weeks to keep up with our deadlines, punctuated by hours of rocking our crying baby. We spent a fortune on a nanny when we couldn’t be home. The other families with infants at our day care are furloughed for 21 days because five kids were weaponized by a disease. They’re risking their jobs and their finances, too. All of this, because too many families choose to believe bad science and it’s too easy to opt out of vaccines, putting all of us at risk.

Chicken pox is preventable. Kids today are exposed to dozens more deadly antibodies than we were in my childhood, but vaccines can prevent serious illnesses and save lives. Vaccines aren’t a scam — they’re the result of hundreds of years of careful study by people who devoted their lives to saving others. Don’t buy the bad science when it comes to keeping our kids safe.

Caitlin Gilmet is a resident of Portland.

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