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Savannah Veazie

Mrs. Jackie Burr

English 2010 Section 5

06 March 2018

Red Wine, Applesauce, and Vaccines

Three words: red wine, applesauce, and vaccines. What do they have in common? Tara

Haelle. What’s a Tara? Not a what, a who. Tara is a mom living in Texas who had her first little

baby in 2010. She loved her job as a teacher but as soon as her and her husband welcomed their

little man, D, she knew she wanted to give her full attention to her son and also to her blog.

Passionate science writer, photographer, and new parent, Tara Haelle decided to create “Red

Wine & Applesauce”, a blog dedicated to providing scientific evidence and research on popular

parental topics. Although her posts are biased, they are full of real facts and first hand

experiences that confirm her opinions.

When studying vaccines and immunizations, uncovering hundreds of “horror stories”

about children getting deathly ill or gaining life long disabilities due to the standard shots they

had received as babies would come as no shock. Media is flooded with these stories provoking

misconceptions and scaring expectant parents. No one wants to stick their sweet angel with

medication that they have heard killed someone once. The truth is, people get pressured into not

vaccinating their children because of vocal people who are against herd immunization. Tara has
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a story to tell about vaccinations. It isn’t your typical “vaccines ruined our lives” kind of a story

but rather, it is a quite boring story that tells the reality of vaccinations.

When her son D was born, Haelle was ready for the questions her doctors would ask her

about immunizing her baby. She had spent countless hours researching the real, scientific pros

and cons of vaccinations and had made her decision; her little boy would get all of his childhood

immunizations.

At his two month appointment, Taras son received his first hepatitis B shot, the first

round of rotavirus, Hib, DTaP, pneumococcal and the inactivated polio vaccines. He cried for a

minute and then was fine. The visits to follow: four, six, and eight months, went the same, D

cried for a minute then nursed then slept and then was just fine. In preparation for his one month

appointment, Tara did more research on vaccines. She learned that at the time, there were twelve

stories of children getting ill from the MMR vaccine but that the researcher who took on those

cases has been seriously discredited and had lost his medical license. In other words, the stories

weren’t true. MMR protects against the measles, mumps, and rubella and her son got it. At his

one-year appointment, he also received the chickenpox vaccine called varicella, the hepatitis A

vaccine, and all of the other recommended immunizations. During this round of shots, D didn’t

even cry and the rest of his habits were normal.

Tara has since had another son who has received all of his vaccinations and is healthy just

like her first son. She created her blog for the purpose of telling her vaccine story and clearing up
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misconceptions and fears. While she is very “pro vax” now, Tara also fell captive to fear after

hearing time and time again that vaccines were bad. Luckily, she’s smart and knew to look

toward the facts before making the mistake of not vaccinating her son but she understands that

the fear and anxiety surrounding vaccines are real. Parents simply want to do the right thing and

with so many opinions, that can sometimes be really hard.

In 2016, one in ten infants were not vaccinated and that same year, over one hundred and

thirty-four thousand children died from the measles. Every single one of those deaths would have

been avoided if all children had received their immunizations. At some point, the question has to

be asked, how much research and evidence is necessary to convince people that vaccines are

safe? There are mountains of data in immunizations favor and maybe one small hill against them.

Tara Haelle knows them all and that is what her blog is all about. One major claim she has found

is that vaccines cause autism and the way she refutes that is by evidence that any disability found

close to the time of injection is purely coincidental. In fact, it just so happens that signs of

disability start to become evident at the same age that children receive their immunizations. So

they happen at the same time but they are independent of each other, not related in the least.

So, for such a boring story, why would Haelle put so much time and research into

promoting vaccines? It’s all to reassure parents that vaccines are safe for kids. She wants all

parents to have the same boring story as her; healthy and happy kids who are vaccinated.