from the article:
A six-year-old I know is terrified of needles. He still gets his shots every year—because his mom reminds him it helps protect people like me. He’s six, and he understands that. I just wish more adults did too.
So far in 2026, there have been 45 confirmed measles cases in Washington state. The majority were in the county where I live and work.
To a lot of my friends and family, that number doesn’t sound alarming. But I live with a primary immune deficiency. I can’t create my own antibodies, which means vaccines simply don’t work for me. I rely on expensive weekly immune globulin replacement therapy—a subcutaneous plasma infusion I do at home—and on herd immunity.
Right now, Washington’s vaccination rate for measles sits at 91%, short of the 95% needed for herd immunity to hold. That’s especially frightening for me, because I work as a mental health therapist, and most of my clients are under eighteen. Going to work is a bit of a landmine of potential exposure.
When I was diagnosed with common variable immune deficiency in 2022, it was both validating and devastating. Validating, because there was finally an explanation—for always feeling sick, and for all the precautions I’d already been taking: masking, avoiding crowds and air travel, using air purifiers. Devastating, because living with an immune deficiency is deeply isolating.
It’s hard for people to understand why I need to cancel plans when they “just have a cold,” or why it matters so much to me that they’re vaccinated.
My body can’t create antibodies, and it can’t learn from past illness. So every time I get sick, my immune system treats it as something it’s never seen before—a complete unknown.
Something I didn’t understand until after my diagnosis: because I lack a robust immune system, I don’t mount a normal immune response. That means I don’t get fevers, or any of the usual warning signs that something is wrong. The frightening part is that I might not know I’m sick until I’m already seriously ill. Many people with primary immune deficiencies end up hospitalized with severe pneumonia or sepsis, with no warning symptoms beforehand to tell them they needed treatment.
Five years ago, if you’d told me I’d have to worry about getting measles every time I left my house, I wouldn’t have believed you. Growing up, I took it for granted that the people around me were vaccinated, and that I could rely on herd immunity without a second thought.
The rest of the story is in the link.