What I’ve Learned About Talking Through Vaccine Fear

I recommend vaccines every day, but I also remember sitting with my son before his two-month vaccines and feeling scared to give them to him.

He had been born with a stroke and seizures, and those first days of his life were filled with wires, medications, neurologists, and more medical uncertainty than I ever expected to experience with my own child. By the time his routine vaccines came around, I knew what the evidence said. I understood the recommendation. I knew the risks were small.

And I still hesitated.

I talked to his neurologist, we vaccinated him, and I barely slept that night because the fear I had carried since his birth was louder than my rational brain.

I thought about that experience a lot during my conversation with Serese Marotta, Deputy CEO of Vaccinate Your Family, because one of the things she kept coming back to was how little judgment helps when a parent is scared.

“I was them.”

Serese lost her five-year-old son, Joseph, to influenza during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

Joseph was healthy. He had received his seasonal flu vaccine, but the vaccine protecting against that new H1N1 strain wasn’t available to him yet. He became sick, was hospitalized, seemed to be improving, and then deteriorated suddenly.

Years later, when Serese hears someone say, “My child is healthy. They’ll be fine,” her response isn’t anger.

She told me, “I was them.”

She didn’t understand then how seriously influenza could affect an otherwise healthy child. And despite everything she has lived through and everything she now knows about vaccines, she also shared a moment years later when misinformation around the HPV vaccine made her hesitate before vaccinating her daughter.

I appreciated that honesty so much because parents can understand the science and still have an emotional reaction when the decision involves their own child. I’ve experienced that too.

Healthy kids can still become very sick

We tend to think about risk in numbers. A complication is rare, or only a certain number of children are hospitalized, or a small number die.

Those numbers can feel distant until your family becomes one of them.

When Serese talks about Joseph, she talks about the five-year-old who loved Spider-Man, Transformers, puzzles, and waking his mom up early to play board games. She also talks about the empty chair that remains at her dinner table and the milestones she’ll never get to see him reach.

Her story stayed with me because “healthy child” can sometimes give us a false sense of protection. Most children who get the flu will recover. But healthy doesn’t make a child invincible, and prevention gives us another layer of protection when we have it available.

Parents need somewhere safe to ask questions

This conversation also made me think about something I’ve seen from the physician side.

During the COVID pandemic, I could feel myself becoming more frustrated when talking about vaccines online. Eventually I had to recognize that if I really wanted to reach families, coming into the conversation angry wasn’t going to help.

The same problem can happen in the exam room.

A parent comes in with questions. Their pediatrician has a full waiting room, very little time, and years of burnout behind them. The conversation gets rushed, the parent leaves feeling dismissed, and then they go online looking for someone who will spend the time explaining it. Unfortunately, the loudest person willing to give that time may also be giving them bad information.

I don’t want parents to feel afraid to ask us questions. Good vaccine conversations should have room for those questions, including questions about safety, effectiveness, and side effects.

Prevent what we can prevent

One phrase Serese used in our conversation was simple: prevent what’s preventable.

That’s really how I think about vaccines.

I don’t promise parents that any medical intervention is without any risk. Vaccines can have side effects, and effectiveness varies depending on the vaccine and the illness. I look at the evidence, the disease we’re trying to prevent, and whether the benefit outweighs the risk. That’s why I recommend routine childhood vaccines.

As respiratory season approaches, I want families to feel informed rather than pressured. Ask questions. Talk to your pediatrician. Look for sources that explain both benefits and risks without trying to frighten you in either direction.

And remember that the choices we make can reach beyond our own homes. Serese will never know who passed H1N1 to Joseph. That person likely has no idea either.

There’s something powerful about remembering that protecting our children can also help protect someone else’s.

Listen to my full conversation with Serese Marotta wherever you get your podcasts. We talk about vaccine hesitancy, flu myths, vaccine safety and effectiveness, how to find credible health information, and why empathy may be one of the most important tools we have in these conversations.

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