Bernie believes vaccines are safe. I don't agree. I'm not sure he thinks they should be mandatory, but I think he said something like it is unacceptable for children to be at risk due to other children not being vaccinated.

Before anyone starts calling me a crazy anti-vaxxer, and blaming me for gasp measles, this is why I do not believe vaccines are safe:

Minutes after getting one, I lost consciousness. I came to 44 hours later, alone in my apartment, paralyzed and barely breathing. I spent six hours motionless on my couch just trying to increase the depth of my inhalation because my respiratory muscles were nearly paralyzed, and it took that long for me to be able to take a deep breath and adequately reoxygenate my body.

In the weeks that followed, I had no working memory, and I fumbled through my days, confused about why I was in a certain place or what I was supposed to be doing. I never fully recovered and I have had serious health problems including impaired function of my liver, brain, and respiratory muscles as well as intense sensitivity to sound and light ever since. It's been eight years. Before then I was a completely healthy 39 year old.

Vaccines can cause neurological damage. Read the risks in the liner notes. I wish I had.

(Actually, to be perfectly accurate and in case anyone else who just happens to read this post ever finds themselves with paralyzed respiratory muscles and wants to live through it, this is how you do it: I did not work on increasing my inhalation but my exhalation. I was not able to inhale at all, but I was able to exhale just a teensy bit. Once you exhale, the atmosphere itself does the of the work of filling your lungs up without any help from the muscles responsible for inhalation. Keep exhaling so that you create a pendulum of ever-deepening exhales and the ever-deepening inhales which automatically result. I happened to know this tidbit and applied it in that moment and it kept me alive.)