You Can’t Shame People Into Vaccinating Their Kids. I Should Know.

Dr. Marnik is an immunologist and science communicator.

In February 2025, a 6-year-old child died of measles in Texas, marking the first death from the disease in the United States in a decade. Shortly after that, another school-age child died from it. Many others have become severely ill. A 7-year-old in South Carolina was recently hospitalized with brain swelling.

On Instagram, where people posted about the deaths and hospitalizations, I saw comments about the parents: “Is she fit to be a mom?” “Their children should be taken away.” “Parents should be arrested for manslaughter.”

I read these comments with a sinking feeling, because those children could have been me. Those parents could have been my parents. I was not vaccinated until the age of 23. Learning why my mother didn’t vaccinate me, and then choosing to vaccinate myself, has led me on a lifelong journey in understanding how love and fear intertwine and what it really takes for people to change their minds.

I was born in 1988, the first of two children. When the pediatrician brought up vaccines, my mom felt that my doctor rushed through her questions, that for him, vaccinating me was just another box to check. Because of insurance and transportation issues, she wasn’t able to follow up with a different pediatrician for a second opinion.

She remembers finding a pamphlet someone had left in the doctor’s office waiting room that recounted stories of children harmed by vaccines. She found more pamphlets and books after that.

She weighed what she understood to be the two risks: the diseases themselves versus the vaccines meant to prevent them. She chose the option that seemed less scary. “I came to my decision based on the way I felt inside,” she told me when I asked her recently why she didn’t vaccinate me. “I didn’t want to take any chances.”

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