Vaccine Skepticism: Finding the Balance

It was 4am and my first-born one-year-old daughter was limp and breathing shallowly. She had a mixture of spots all over her and a temperature of 104 degrees. I was frightened and desperate. I berated myself, “oh why had I given her the vaccine”. It was less than three days ago that my daughter had her one-year well visit when she was given the MMR and Varicella shots together and I naively hadn’t thought twice. Baruch Hashem, my daughter stabilized, but never did I ever give the MMR and varicella shots together again.

Anti-vaccine skeptism is real and valid. We don’t need to unquestioningly accept every medical recommendation, and no one else knows how our kids react except us. Nuance exists and so do the grey areas of life. But with twelve Israeli children under two years old dead from the current measles epidemic, and hundreds more seriously hospitalized, how far should anti-vaccine ism go?

Let’s take a journey to another topic and then come back to the vaccination.

I personally am a data privacy freak. I hate facial recognition and biometric data collection technology. I hate google and amazon and meta.

Some people think google offers free services like email and photo storage and search and then sells ads to make money. They don’t know that google’s real product is YOU. They collect all your data from your emails and searches and photos and sell it to the highest bidder. Whatsapp pretends to encrypt your messages but actually they collects notes on who you message, where they are located, what time you message them, how often you message them, how long your messages are and what pictures you are sending. Whatsapps parent company, Meta, puts a tracker on nearly every webpage you visit that collects information like how much time you spend on the page, what the topic is about, etc. Then they put all that information about you together and make a usually highly accurate profile (which can include things like your likely medical conditions, lifestyle habits, family problems etc. and sell to marketing companies or advertisers which try to sell you products based on the above information.) Already insurance companies are using this type of data to decide how much of a risk you are and how much your insurance policy should cost. In more regressive countries like China, the government collects this data and then issues you a social credit score which is a measure of how trustworthy they think you are. This social credit score is used to determine who can open a bank account and what jobs people can get.

While Amazon, Meta and Google are some of the more well-known data collectors, there are plenty of others, collecting your calls and texts metadata, your location data etc. and selling it on the open market (that’s not even getting into the data collection underworld).

Ok so now that we know about the deep state and conspiracies and money going into data collection and some ways it can be harmful to us, we can understand the idea of needing to be cautious about it, right?

Hopefully some of you are shaking your heads. This sounds too crazy to be true. (It’s all true). Some of you could care less (I haven’t done anything wrong; the government isn’t going to come after me). And Some of you are in full blown panic mode wondering what can be done.

So, here’s the line.

In my personal life, I avoid using google. I use DuckDuckGo. I don’t have an android or an apple cell phone. I use a custom OS. I never allow TSA to take my picture.

But how do I avoid making data privacy a religion?

The answer is that when it interferes with my mission as a proud Lubavitcher, then I know it’s going too far. Because Hashem created me primarily to make a Dira Bitachtonim in this world. To add in goodness and joy and light. To learn Torah and do Mitzvos.

Anything that interferes with my mission is not my job to take care of, it’s His job. And I leave it up to Him.

So when the rehab center that we frequent, requested us to check in with facial technology before our Purim Megillah reading, I agreed. (Even though I knew the company they were using did not have strong privacy protections and third parties likely had access to it).

When my son’s camp illegally used facial recognition technology to find him in all the camp pictures, even though I had declined to provide consent, I let it pass.

When I needed to use a filter to kosher my computer, I download it without a question, even though they have access to all my information.

When I need to download apps that require all sorts of crazy permissions but I need them for my avodas hashem, such as by making sure I don’t spend too much time on my phone at bedtime, I download them without hesitation.

And even though I feel very strongly about data protection and I am determined to not be a victim of Big Tech or Silicone Valley, whenever I have to make a choice that conflicts with my hashkafic or religious values, I ask myself, why did Hashem create me? Which of these choices reflect my mission in this world? And more importantly- is this my job or His job?

Hashem created the world to run with a natural order of things. Nowadays, the natural order of things is that most people are willing to give up their privacy in order to get conveniences and entertainment. That is the way of the world. Hashem created us to follow in the natural ways of the world (except obviously when it comes to religious matters) and does not fault us if we do things al pi derech hateva. So, while of course I am allowed to have my own hobbies and interests, and be a data privacy geek if I choose, that is only if it does not come at the expense of my primary mission of making a dira bitachtonim.

So, Hashem did not create me to be a data privacy activist or to spend tens of hours figuring out how to defy Google by using an NAS to store my photos. Its not my job to lobby the government for privacy laws.

If I follow the derech haTeva of giving up my data privacy whenever it interferes with my primary mission of making a dira bitachtonim, I know Hashem will take care of me. At the end of the day, the data privacy rules and culture are written by him and the same way that right now people are willing to give up their privacy, Hashem can change that instantly so that the primary culture in America is that companies are not allowed to harvest and sell your data. So, at the end of the day, I need to put my role in serving Hashem first and keep all other things (which are really His job to take care of) as secondary.

Moving back to vaccines, this is a valuable perspective to keep in mind.

As someone who dealt with the medical system with a medically fragile child and has experienced medical malpractice first-hand, I fully understand the hesitation and skeptism of the medical system and Big Pharma.

At the end of the day, humans are not infallible. They make mistakes and sometimes are corrupted by greed or power. Studies are not perfect. And research may be wrong.

But when is it too much?

And the answer is when it affects your Avodas Hashem.

Hashem says” Vachai Bahem” and that applies to our philosophies also.

Are you choosing a school for your child based on the Chinuch and Hashkafa values that it imparts to your kids or based on the vaccination schedule?

Are you refusing to vaccinate your kids during an active measles epidemic even though there’s no family history of a reaction?

Is your anti-vaccine activism affecting your Shlichus?

Currently, the Derech Hateva in America is to vaccinate with basic childhood vaccines although the timing of the shots may vary.  Anyone who follows the Derech Hateva can rely on Hashem that they are doing the right thing. Although this line of thinking may be this way because of corruption and cronyism and who knows what else, however, at the end of the day, this is how Hashem arranged current medical thinking to be. So, if you ever find yourself at a crossroads wondering, when does anti vaccinism not become a religion?

When you can put your Avodas Hashem first and your anti-vaccineism second, knowing that if you follow Derech HaTeva, you can’t go wrong.

To end off, we know that 300 years ago, doctors used leeches, blood sucking worms, to “cure” people of diseases. Nowadays, with our advanced scientific technology we know that this is a myth. Yet, Rebbeim used to tell their Chassidim to go to the doctor who would use such medications! How could it be? The answer is that leeches were the Derech Hateva of the time. So, if a Chossid made a keili by going to the Rebbe, making a hachlata, saying Tehillim and using leeches, then he could be cured. Because the power and koach of healing was given to doctors by Hashem and ultimately Hashem is in charge of the medical system, who gets sick, who gets autism, and who gets cured.