Louise O'Neill: The deliberate lies and misinformation concerning the vaccine are not okay
Picture of the Tralee vaccination Clinic centre located at the Kerry Sports Academy at Dromtacker Tralee. Picture: Domnick Walsh/Eye Focus LTD
When I was a child, a boy I knew was rushed to hospital. I don’t know what was wrong with him; all I remember is a friend of my parents saying the only reason he survived was because he responded so well to the antibiotics. That wasn’t a given, apparently. Antibiotics were so over-prescribed, this friend said, our bodies were becoming resistant to them.
For years after that, I was wary of medicine. As a teenager, I read Louise L Hay, and believed that all illnesses were psychosomatic, a manifestation of a troubled mind. I wouldn’t take as much as paracetamol if I had a headache, saying my body would heal itself, and that ‘Western Medicine’ was a cult which needed us to be reliant on medication for profit. I was basically Tom Cruise saying “you’re glib, Matt,” as he criticised Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants to treat her post-natal depression.
