Vaccine Protests and the Return of Whooping Cough
Ever since vaccination was introduced at the end of the eighteenth century by Edward Jenner, the immunization of children in particular has been a source of controversy that has stirred the deepest passions. Mankind accepted therapeutic blood-letting for two thousand years with hardly a murmur of scepticism; but vaccination against smallpox, especially when the state made it compulsory, gave rise to one of the longest-lived social protest movements in British and American history.
Nothing is easier to forget or take for granted than the progress we have made. A recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine points out that from the early 1940s to 1973 the annual incidence of whooping cough in the United States was reduced by immunization from 157 per 100,000 of the population to less than 1 per 100,000. Whooping cough is not a trivial disease: the present death rate from it world-wide is now one in 164 cases, and is higher among infants. Before immunization, several thousand people died annually in the United States from whooping cough; by the 1980s, less than 50 a year died.
The editorial draws attention to, and discusses the reasons for, the current epidemic of the disease in the United States, perhaps the most severe in the last half century. In 2010 the rate was nine times what it was in 1980. The reasons for this are more complex than you might think.
First, it is possible that diagnosis is more accurate and sensitive than ever before, and therefore that the increase is a statistical artefact. A technique called poymerase chain reaction allows the disease to be diagnosed from a single blood sample, and this alone might cause the recorded incidence to rise. It is also possible that fashions in diagnosis change: when doctors are aware of a controversy surrounding a diagnosis, they make it more readily.
Second, the new vaccine against whooping cough, developed because of concerns about the safety of the old vaccine, has been shown to be less effective, though safer and less prone to cause side-effects, than the old. If this were indeed part of the explanation, it would mean that anxiety about the safety of the vaccine had led to an increase in the incidence of the disease; but whether this would outweigh the improved safety of the new vaccine would be a very difficult calculation to make. The serious consequences of whooping cough are not very frequent; those of the old vaccination very, very rare; those of the new vaccination rarer still. Moreover, you would have to know precisely what proportion of the increase in the incidence of whooping cough was attributable to the change in vaccines used to know whether the changeover had been beneficial or harmful.
While the segment specifically addresses the people convinced that vaccinations cause autism, this portion of Penn and Teller’s show seems relevant (WARNING – NSFW):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo
The saddest thing about that clip in post 1 is all the comments underneath it from people who still don’t get it. They should take some walks through really old cemeteries and look at all the children’s grave stones. You can’t prove how effective a vaccine is because it’s doing its job, so you’d never know how many people it saves. All you see are those rare cases of people who have adverse reactions which will happen no matter how safe you make the vaccine, and they’re tragic and easily pointed at.
We know someone who is so anti-vaccine that she even refused to immunize her dogs. Both puppies caught parvo and died. Of course, in the face of their grief, you can’t say, “This was completely preventable had you gotten those puppies their shots.” But, I was thinking it, and I was also thinking that she should be taking an object lesson for her two children who have also never been vaccinated. It’s her choice to make, and I hope her children never pay the price.
The vaccine issue is a lot more complicated than noble scientists on one side and Jenny McCarthy on the other. There are a lot of scientists, doctors, and parents who are concerned that vaccines aren’t as safe as they could be, that US children are over vaccinated (the US schedule is much larger than any other first world country), and that the vaccine industry is largely unaccountable to patients (are you aware of any other industry that has been immunized against product liablity?).
Rob you have been reading the wrong stuff to come to that conclusion. It is in fact simple. These diseases evolved with us as their hosts, without a preventative they cause incredible suffering. We know this from history and from the present day 3rd world. In spite of all the great work by generations of very smart people we have found no other preventative measure even close to the success rate of our modern vaccines. Vaccines trigger our immune system to defend us. Because we are not identical sometimes our immune systems over or under react to the priming and we get people who have side effects beyond the norm. The dilema is that vaccines only work if if large majority of the population get them, this is the crux of the controversy. Folks with little or mistaken knowledge think their instinctive understanding is better than than that gained by generations of struggling with the pain and death caused by these diseases. They are in fact wrong. Could things be better, of course but not by throwing the babies out with the hysteria.
Where am I wrong in my comment, Joe? Are there not doctors and scientists concerned about vaccine safety? Are US kids not more vaccinated than any other first world country? Does not the Vaccine Court immunize pharmaceutical companies from vaccine liability? Please point out where I’ve made an inaccurate statement.
The answer is that there are doctors undoubtedly making a living as “experts” for the lawyers described. The autism article that started this has already been withdrawn by Lancet, although only after that journal had lost much of its reputation.
Sadly, our profession is not immune to temptation. I am a surgeon and have no dog in the vaccine fight but I have five children, now all adults, and they had every vaccine I heard of when they were small. When the Salk vaccine came out, they had the series. When the Sabin oral vaccine came out, they had that. Belt and suspenders, you might say, but they did not have all the childhood diseases I had. Sure, I survived them but it was no fun being at bed rest as a five year old and quarantined.
You may do as you please. It is, so far, a free country. But don’t ever say you were not warned.
Mike, if your kids are adults now, then they likely received less than half the current CDC schedule. Any comparison between kids now is not valid.
Exactly right, Rob. One of the biggest problems in this debate is that people insist on comparing NOW with THEN.
They are apples and oranges.
Yes, the THEN does prove the principle to be valid and valuable.
That tells us NOTHING about the safety or efficacy of current vaccines.
Yet the people doing this comparison claim to be on the side of science.
Mike, just out of curosity, what do you know about the current legal regime for vaccine injuries? I ask, because II seriously doubt many of your collegues are making much of a living being expert witnesses for Vaccine Cout cases. The Vaccine Court is a special court where the deck is very much stacked against claimants. Damage awards are capped, which makes it hard to get effective representation. No doctor is going to testify in such cases out of greed. A doctor would be much better off shilling for Big Pharma if he’s only in it for the money. I do find it interesting that you use the same tactic global warming alarmists use against skeptics. Accuse them of being in the pay of a nefarious group that only cares about money.
But when a vaccine becomes common enough, the casualties of the vaccine itself become the biggest problem. At that point, a parent is actually rather prudent in judging that the risk to his child is greater if the child receives the vaccine than not, especially when that child or a sibling has previously had an adverse reaction (self-identifying his family as an “at risk” group). So that happened and now the risk is sliding the other way. It isn’t perfect but it’s probably better than a “top-down” policy.
I like Heather’s suggestion except that of course, the families would be due a voucher for schooling. (In fact, most of the nonvaccinated families I know are homeschoolers but my family’s circle of friends is nowhere near the norm).
Why not?
Had she fed them sawdust and coal ash, and they had died of malnutrition, would you have remained silent? Had she tied them to stakes in her yard, and they had died of hypothermia, would you have remained silent? Had she kicked them across the room on a daily basis, and they had died of trauma, would you have remained silent?
If her children die of diphtheria, will you remain silent?
If she’d done those things to a dog, she’d have gone to prison. If she does those things to a child, she’ll go to prison.
If her children die of preventable disease because of her actions….meh.
It’s like everything else: your average person will not take vaccination seriously, and (especially if she is ‘educated’), will find reasons NOT to burden her children with that nasty needle… until she watches her own child die of whooping cough. And probably, not then, either.
My grandma was born in 1880. In one week, THREE OF HER SIBLINGS died of diptheria. She also fell sick, but recovered (after a year of being an invalid). A friend of my parents (born about 1912), was one of 2 children born after FIVE of their siblings had died of Scarlet Fever.
Me? I would solve this problem by making a law that, yes, you don’t have to immunize your children, but in that event, you ALSO cannot send them to public school (where they can endanger other children.) Can you imagine the uproar?
I would like to make the point that when children go unvaccinated, it is they who are at risk. The vaccinated children retain their protection. Even when the percentage of those vaccinated slips below the herd immunity threshold, so that the pathogen can get a foothold and spread efficiently, those who are vaccinated still retain their protection.
I lived in Eastern Europe for a number of years in the early 1990′s, and with the chaos in the infrastructure and economic hardship, pertussis vaccination was neglected. Pertussis made a comeback, and affected westerners who were living there also. The typical pattern was that the parents would get the disease because they had neglected to get the booster every ten years. If they had children older than about twelve, these children would get the disease also because their booster had worn off. The younger children would remain healthy. The disease is severe. The coughing fits are dreadful and terribly painful, especially when they have previously caused broken ribs. The coughing fits caused a teenage child to turn blue because he could not manage to breathe through them. His father continued to cough for three months before he was well.
Interestingly, having the disease naturally does not confer immunity, and the same is true of tetanus. The reason is that the toxin produced by the bacteria is so strong, the immune system does not have opportunity to respond to the bacteria. That is why the only way to avoid these diseases is through vaccination which uses modified bacteria that the immune system can respond to.
Vaccination is brilliant and necessary, one of the fairest flowers of civilization. The only thing that remains is to find a way to screen for the very few individuals that will be injured by vaccines, and I do not deny that there is such injury. I hope reason will prevail eventually.
What’s happening now is pushback from states’ overreach. DPT, MMR, HIB, HepC, OPV yes. But as we saw last year during Rick Perry’s 15 minutes, states took contributions from HPV vaccine makers and then all of a sudden decided to make that vaccine mandatory too. I bet the same thing happened with chickenpox; lessee, children must be vaccinated but the vaccine doesn’t last forever. Chickenpox is MUCH less severe when children get it vs adults so of course the least prudent course would be to make sure that everyone only gets adult chickenpox and not childhood chickenpox. And then, since chickenpox isn’t very severe at all, the adverse reactions to chickenpox vaccines are much worse vs the disease itself than for other diseases. Yeah, the grabbermint always has our bestest interests in mind, right?
Yeah, chickenpox is no big shakes.
Unless you are immunocompromised (like, say, a childhood cancer patient). Then, it can and does kill.
I know, all those yukky unhealthy people should just go live in a cave and not be around us.
Far better to have unrestrained virus vectors, walking around, throwing “pox parties” and sending used lollipops through the mail, doing us all a favor by making sure we all get it as kids.
Jeannette says “chickenpox is MUCH less severe when children get it…”. Um, not always. My little girl got chicken pox from an adult who had an active case of shingles (we didnt know the adult had shingles until later..). My daughter spent a week in the hospital and almost lost her life. My daughter was/is fully vaccinated. Just wanted to point out that chicken pox is not as benign as people think….
You don’t provide a “therefore kids should get vaccinated” case here; the kid was vaccinated and caught it from an adult with shingles (a MUCH more severe form of the disease). Also, the plural of anecdote is not data, and you don’t know whether your child would have died or gotten an even more severe case if she got shingles as an adult rather than catch chickenpox as a child.
The arguments for vaccinating kids for chickenpox, here, seems to be that some kids have compromised immune systems, therefore chickenpox should be delayed until adulthood because it’s more severe when adults get it. So it’s better that most adults have an extremely severe case and many die, rather than let kids have it, and a very few get severe cases and a very very few die… Y’all can be as callous as you want toward your fellow citizens, but there’s no escaping that this is callous.
Uh, I’ve never had a chickenpox party or pass around lollipops but boy did you guys ever slay the strawJeannette!
Jeannette, it seems YOU are the one who is callous.
CaliforniaGirl said her daughter almost died from chicken pox. Her daughter is an acceptable casualty to you? Wow.
BTW, adults can and do get the chicken pox vaccine, too. It’s not just for kids. So your argument that we are putting adults at severe risk to hold off a few childhood sniffles is ridiculous.
I guess you don’t know what shingles is like for an elderly person?
Nice try Jeannie. The adult in question WAS elderly; in fact, it was a relative of ours.
I have the same fears about the chickenpox vaccine. My children have had all vaccinations except this one, which I have put off because as each of my children became age eligible for it I was either pregnant or had a young infant at home. Since it is a live vaccine, it can potentially cause the disease, a risk I did not want to take being pregnant. So in a way, the vaccine can potentially be similar to giving your kid a vector lollipop. It can start an outbreak in your family, so it makes sense to weigh the risks and benefits. I also worry about it wearing off when they are adults, with the potential of severe illness. They do not have long term studies. So there is more complex reasoning involved than crazy mom gives her kids chickenpox vector lollipops.
Are chicken pox parties even real, or are they just some kind of urban legend? I’ve never heard of people that actually do this. It is probably just another way to slander homeschoolers.
Yup, they are actually real. My crunchaloon SIL got invited to one. She’s not a homeschooler but does know a lot of people who are into “natcheral immunity iz better for us”.
And yeah, even though Jeannette refuses to believe that it happens, some idiots tried mailing lollipops through the mail, to pass on the joy.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/12/us-chickenpox-lollipops-idUSTRE7AB0SW20111112
/amused look/
Yes, they are quite real, and anybody who thinks it a slander is an ignoramus.
The ones who should be criticized are the ones who AVOID it.
This is a very good point. It is not that Perry took money. The amount was trivial. No, it is that there exists a network of connected people who are willing to use the government to enrich themselves, and their politician buddies collude with them.
Personally, I would favor vaccinations being made mandatory, because it is a public safety issue. You do not have the right to endanger us all because of your paranoia about vaccinations.
Well, I would favor it, except for the trust factor. There is simply no way to screen out the useless vaccinations, because any review system will get corrupted in short order. People are always willing to sell out for money. There will always be the amoral people, and there will always be Judas’s.
It is not true that vaccinated children are free of risk, that is why herd immunity is important. In the event that a vaccinated child remains susceptible to disease, the herd immunity acts as secondary protection. Also, young infants are always at risk, even if they have had their scheduled vaccinations they will not have full protection until they have all scheduled doses. In the case of pertussis, I believe the last dose is at 18 months. So those who choose not to vaccinate their children are reducing the herd immunity and putting all infants at greater risk. Another problem with the pertussis vaccine is that it wears off during the teen years. These teenagers may spread it to infants and other people who are immunocompromised.
Actually you are wrong. A % of those vaccinated get imperfect or no immunity and are at risk to get the disease. Herd immunity allows that % to avoid this risk. You do not know if you or your child are part of this subgroup until the vaccine fails. This is why public health officers exist and have such broad legal powers, our ancestors were rightly afraid of these diseases that smite without regard to virtue, age or caution. We have been trying to find a better solution for a few hundred years. This is in fact the best we have.
It bears repeating: getting vax’d does not guarantee immunity, it is likely to confer some degree of immunity.
As a doc, I’m tired of arguing with the anti-vaxers. I get them out of my practice as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t want a 9/11 Truther, either.
“I would like to make the point that when children go unvaccinated, it is they who are at risk. The vaccinated children retain their protection.”
For that particular strain. But as nature does, bacteria will evolve and that particular preventative measure will no longer be as effective; hence my youngest son, who was up to date on his shots at the time, developing pertussis.
It happens.
Scarlet fever is caused by a bacterial strep infection that is treated with antibiotics not prevented by vaccination. The threat in this case is antibiotic resistance, which is also a real and dangerous threat. Antibiotics have probably saved more lives than any medicine ever. It is quite frightening to imagine the possibility of returning to a time without them. My grandparents met in a TB ward where they lived for a few years. They were released when an effective antibiotic was invented. Because of the antibiotics they went on to raise a family and lead an ordinary life. I would most likely not exist if not for antibiotics. Some may claim that would be for the better, I tend to be thankful for antibiotics.
Even today, there is no vaccine for scarlet fever. Scarlet fever is addressed with early detection and treatment, using antibiotics on strep throat before it develops into scarlet fever.
Um, that’s already the law in a number of places.
Still waiting for the uproar…
What has become concerning about vaccinations is what is coming out of the very mouths of the billionaire elite clubs. Bill Gates admitted his vaccines in concert w/ a nationalized healthcare system (like Obamacare) “can curb the population by 2 billion people”. That is disturbing! It is no big secret the global banker and corporate cronies want a planet of 500 million.
Its all the extra unknowns that accompany the vaccination that folks are worried about.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=6WQtRI7A064
It isn’t precisely correct to say that complications of the old vaccination were “very very rare.” That vaccine had a tendency for some lots to be “hotter” than others in terms of producing adverse effects. I know of several cases in which US physicians dutifully filed reports (which reporting was non-mandatory) with the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting system, only to have no entries made in the database as required by law. The searchable portion of the database was limited to adverse effects defined by the vaccine manufacturer. Other adverse effects made it into a non-searchable notes field.
A more accurate statement is that the reporting system was well designed to underestimate the incidence of adverse effects, and that the real incidence of adverse effects was greater, and possibly much greater than what was reported.
Another cause of under reporting is the natural instinct of the physician to protect his or her business. Pushing vaccines is a major component of the income stream. So, it is very easy to say, for example, that in a particular instance, the child’s reaction did not actually fall inside the somewhat arbitrary grid of symptoms produced for the adverse event reporting system. Thus, the problem goes away. Also, the physician will not want other parents to know that he or she administered a bad vaccine — that could affect reputation, and thus business as well.
If the incident honestly does not fall inside the grid, but is close, there is no feedback loop to have the grid modified if enough cases warrant it.
Our experience with our own son’s adverse reaction, and raising him through cerebral palsy and mental deficiency have led us to conclude that the incidence of adverse reactions to the pertussis vaccine is orders of magnitude greater than reported.
The problem in ascribing the demise of whooping cough to vaccines is one of correlation vs. causation.
Since 1940 a great deal has changed in the typical American life, vaccines being only one of them. Water quality, hygiene, health care facilities, schools, food handling, and work conditions have all experienced dramatic improvement. Tetanus, a disease which occurs even in people who have had tetanus or tetanus vaccination, is an example: it comes from anaerobic growth of the spores in puncture wounds, something farmers and outdoor manual workers were exposed to in far greater numbers in 1940 than today.
Pertussis is an interesting case. The package insert for whooping cough vaccines reads:
“Pertussis (whooping cough) is a respiratory disease caused by B pertussis. This Gram-negative 315 coccobacillus produces a variety of biologically active components, though their role in either the pathogenesis of, or immunity to, pertussis has not been clearly defined.”
Specifically, it means that the “effectiveness” is measured by the makers of the vaccines by checking at the presence of antibodies before and after vaccination, instead of understanding how the disease grows. “The pathogenesis of, or immunity to, pertussis has not been clearly defined.” None of this gives any recipient of the vaccine any assurance that the vaccine “prevents” pertussis.
In fact, in many outbreaks of pertussis that are not related entirely to poor health conditions of the population in general, there is a significant number–often north of 25%–of the afflicted individuals who were vaccinated. Parents are wise to examine the risks of any vaccine, and weigh them against — with often incomplete or misleading information–the effectiveness of the “cure”.
Unfortunately microbes aren’t afraid of lawyers so your theoretical analysis of the risks provides no protection. Doesn’t it suck when there is nobody to sue! Look up Koch’s Postulates and proving causality of a disease and then you might understand why scientists don’t over commit.
I never mentioned lawyers, and couldn’t care less about suing anyone.
I’m a parent, and want to reduce the chances of my infant getting sick. While I vaccinated my first two kids, this third one is going very strong with minimal vaccines so far. And I am not eager to inject a variety of substances into him now without some better information on the efficacy of the treatment (other than some stats on circulating antibodies post-injection in very limited sampling). Further, upon finally getting that info, I intend to weigh it against the rather incomplete information on adverse effects that I can also gather.
Your glib citing of Koch’s postulates gives no comfort in the 21st century. When sellers of vaccines with significant laboratory analytics and microbiologic resources (all the way down to nano-particle levels) deem it necessary to warn me that they do not understand the pathogenesis of the disease or its immunity, I take their warning seriously. I am not the one proclaiming the glories of herd immunity, nor assigning vaccines the victory in dropping the pertussis case counts over 70 years. That distinction goes to your team.
It’s always amusing to see the rationalizations of the over-credentialed and undereducated.
An example:
“Vaccines may not in fact the best protection we have. Vaccines may not only work if we act together etc. This is especially true of specific vaccines (which was my point), rather than vaccines generally.”
If your family were the only one at risk, I would be unconcerned. Darwin explained this in 1839 although he didn’t know about genes. I would not be so heartless as to mention the Darwin Award but it does come to mind.
I conclude that the increase in whooping cough is due to those blood sucking vultures otherwise known as trial lawyers.
That and the internet. Because when you have Wiki & YouTube, you know *everything*!
My daughter didn’t get the full pertussis series as a small child because she had a reaction to the vaccination. When she was eighteen, she got pertussis, one of the first cases in the new wave. She cracked a rib and dislocated another from coughing and had to drop out of college for a semester to recover. Full recovery took years, as the damage from the coughing lingered and she was more susceptible to other respiratory viruses. It was terrible. Get the vaccination if you are able to.
Exactly. Pertussis isn’t exclusively a childhood disease. It presents differently in adults, and often adults who got the vaccine as children can still get it later in life. I was one of the statistics in Washington State in April. I got the vaccine as a child, but still got the disease, and was out of commission for the entire month. Worst disease I’ve ever had in my life. It’s called the “100 day cough” because it hangs on forever. In my case, it was more like 50 days (probably because of the childhood vaccination), but I was hoarse and coughing all that time.
This disease is bad, bad news. This isn’t a game. This vaxism isn’t cute or trendy, it’s insane and evil.
I contracted whooping cough also in 2002. I went to the family physician and described the symptoms to him. He told me it was a smokers cough. I told him it was not. The symptoms were severe. Coughing all nite and producing some white mucus that was strangling me. He continued on with his sermon. Later I found the information in Scientific American after the disease had run its course but would agree with snork on how bad it is. A child getting this would have great difficulty surviving. My point: how many people did I pass this on to? I worked in a busy place handling cash. Makes me rather angry. I would have quarantined myself rather than pass it on.
Since what we’re discussing here is a cost/benefit analysis, candide secure’s 1:59 comment raises another good point. First of all, c.s., did your physician ask “did you have all your childhood vaccines?” The reason I’m asking this is that a physician’s assistant friend told me of a case in which someone, not a patient of hers, complained of a persistent cough, etc. IIRC in some social setting. She said “Gee that sounds like whooping cough, go to your doctor.” She got feedback: “My doctor said it can’t be pertussis since I’m vaccinated.” Diagnosis: ignorant physician. Also, one likely case of reportable illness that didn’t get reported.
In other words, from my own limited perspective, I have seen evidence that pertussis vaccine efficacy has been overestimated and pertussis vaccine adverse effects systematically underreported.
The doctor had probably never encountered a case of pertussis. It used to be very rare.
Brutus, please don’t conflate the climate change stuff with this serious business.
Sadly, there are many such. TOO MANY.
And of course, that comment will raise the ire of the “Doctors are saints” crowd (who are usually doctors or relatives of same), which is why we have so many ignorant doctors. We dare not point out the truth – good doctors are in the minority. To do so is to blaspheme!
I had it when I was a teenager. We were poor back then & moved a lot so I was not up to date on all of my shots.
Thankfully I did not have it as bad as your daughter & was well within month, if I remember right. I do remember that cough though & that long q-tip they used to get a swab.
But you are right. Get the shots if you can.
There’s a simple term for people who don’t get their kids vaccinated.
Child abusers.
Another applicable term would be fracking idiots.
There’s another that isn’t popular with the “authority is always right” crowd: People who can think for themselves.
How easy is it for us to forget? Not so long ago smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, typhus, and so on KILLED people by the millions! Measles (red plague) would show up in a town and in a couple of weeks half the town would be dead! The survivors would be horribly scarred. Vaccination is one of the great inventions of Human civilization.
Indeed. That means that the cost/benefit analysis for lethal epidemics was so heavily in favor of vaccination, that nearly ANY adverse effects — which do exist for smallpox vaccine — were essentially irrelevant.
We know that at least in mice, weekly injection of foreign proteins will induce autoimmune disease. What we don’t know is whether there is a critical time period between injections that lessens the autoimmune induction rate, or whether episodes of introduction of a large variety of foreign proteins at long intervals — as in current childhood vaccine schedules — will also induce autoimmune disease.
It was pneumonic plague that wiped out a quarter of Europe. It is caused by the same bacterium that had mutated and could be passed on human to human. Bubonic plague requires an intermediate host (flea) and is still found in many western states. A number of cases are diagnosed each year. It is rare enough that many doctors fail to diagnose it.
There are a few whackos who dispute that. They are whackos and they are few.
There are also a lot of sensible people who agree with your statement but who are not convinced that
That’s a completely different discussion. Your statement doesn’t have anything to do with the current debate.
My feeling on vaccines is that they are second only to sanitation as the greatest achievements for public health the world will ever see. Vaccines also affirmatively kill and injure children every year. So therefore it seems that the argument is which group of kids should be killed: those by disease (in presumably much greater numbers), or those killed by vaccines. They are likely not the same kids of course, which is problematic. I think that there is not a correct answer to this question despite the utilitarian view that the least amount of kids dead is the best. Indeed, the parent of an unfortunate child from either of these groups deserves more respect than the arguments on this thread seem to give them. Nobody wants a kid to be sick or dead Kevin, it sounds to me like you’ve never had a kid who died from a vaccine. Good for you. Just the same, when you’re done passing judgment on other parents (presumably you are one as well?), try sticking a needle in my infant kid’s arm because you think it’s necessary and see how that works out for you. Because that is what your accusation suggests you are willing to have government do.
Fools proselytize on both sides of this argument, but foolish arguments do not necessarily render their positions incorrect, either. Me? I am a simple person. I reject any vaccine for which the case cannot be clearly and easily made to a layman. If the case is strong enough for the CDC Advisory Panel on Immunization Practices to recommend a vaccine be universally given, the case is usually always easy to make — except editorially I will say that the bar seems to be getting a bit lower, not as many dragons to slay these days, and some of their recommendations are cryptic and suspiciously inconsistent. Regardless, no matter what anyone tells you, there is nothing that cannot be explained sufficiently well by an expert such that a layman can make an informed judgment. Physicians are not immunologists; immunologists are not physicians; and sometimes, neither are parents.
My hunch — and it’s just a hunch although I do read a bit — is that kids in America are probably over-vaccinated, and the threshold for wanting to eradicate disease keeps dropping lower. At some point it may not just be diminishing returns, but the vaccine may be more harmful than the disease. The problem with vaccines is that there’s no clear scorecard. For every HIB which has presumably killed some kids but also been wildly successful at eliminating disease, you have a Prevnar that was not tested against a control and was actually re-purposed when its initial license (against ear infections) turned out to be bogus.
At the end of the day, you have the informed speculation of immunization professionals (and cooperation of a grateful pharma lobby), the informed speculation of family physicians of varying ages and experience levels, and the informed speculation of parents who are told to weigh the risks and benefits. I personally think that if you’re going to stick your kid with a needle, you are obligated to do the research. Mine leads me to get probably 90% of the recommended schedule, including varicella although I have reservations about this given the possible adult ramifications. And yet, I can do this without silently rooting for the 10% I choose not to get to start causing massive problems for the children of others. It’s funny how your thought processes benefit from a little age, life experience, and responsibility.
If you want to force my kid to get a particular shot before attending public school, I’ll thank you to refund my property tax if I decide that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Funny I liked your first 2 sentences then you lost me. You are comparing different types of data and mixing arguments together in a torturous way. There are in fact a lot of things in science that you can only understand by doing the hard work to become knowledgeable in field. The issue is not understanding what the experts know, it is learning to appreciate how they come by their judgements of what are the most important things we do not know or can only suspect with some degree of confidence. You are giving equal weight to opinions of lawyers and activists with their own axes to grind. Most scientists, and pretty much all of the smart ones, are reluctant to make grand statements in public due to the humbling nature of experimentation. 90% of experiments map the regions of no clear effect and it is the rare experiment with clear results that comes from the previous hard work. You mix this with half formed ideas from a totally divergent field of risk management when you build your sand castles of justification. In the real world we are required to make hard choices based on the best data we can find. No data set is complete or without issues.
The crux of the problem is that the best protection we have is vaccines and they only work if we act together and actively take on the much smaller risks of side effects vs. the passive dice rolling of hoping to be the one that survives the disease. One can only see us as over vaccinated when you look back from the safety of not having contracted the disease.
Anti-vaccine hysteria is just that. It’s a factor of fear times ignorance times misinformation. Compound it with some people’s misbegotten idea that vaccination infringes on individual freedoms, and you have a public health hazard.
The way some of these people think, Typhoid Mary should have been allowed to go along her merry way. Vaccination has virtually eliminated smallpox, a horrible plague for centuries, from the face of the earth.
Michelle Malkin is among the worst offenders – she rails against “mandatory” immunization, probably due to herself being inconvenienced some years ago by stupid and inefficient school officials, and yet proudly announced that her own children’s vaccinations are up to date.
Sweetie, if every parent was that responsible, there would never have been a need for mandatory immunizations. They aren’t, and there is.
“Sweetie, if every parent was that responsible, there would never have been a need for mandatory immunizations. They aren’t, and there is.”
Thank you, Estragon, for the clear window you provide into the heart of tyranny. Perhaps we should keep up with the mandates for every aspect of life you so helpfully deem “responsible”. Like, say, solar power, electric cars, bans on sweet drinks, 35 mph national speed limits, biking to work, 100 mpg cars, racial quotas, forced retirement savings, national health care, ad infinitum…..
Read more, do a little science. Maybe in 15 years we find out that aluminum sulfates used to bind some of these vaccine antigens show up in greater alzheimer’s incidence, or other problems with greater frequency than the unpublished “effectiveness” of the vaccine. Do we then show up at your door, sweety, with the moral and financial bill?
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act immunizes drug companies from liability (awards are funded by an excise tax on vaccine doses), but does it cover the various and sundry busy bodies who are Big Pharma’s foot soldiers? An interesting question.
“Read more, do a little science. Maybe in 15 years we find out , or other problems with greater frequency than the unpublished “effectiveness” of the vaccine. Do we then show up at your door, sweety, with the moral and financial bill?”
Causation & correlation, “sweety”.
I am 100% on board with coercive herd immunization for deadly communicable diseases (particularly those that are airborne, have high death rates, and herd vaccination will prevent the spread of the disease). However, if you want to get into pointing fingers of blame for public health problems, don’t forget schools and daycares are breeding grounds for antibiotic resistance. Often children are treated with antibiotics for viral infections as a prerequisite to return to school, and often even when there is a bacterial infection no culture is conducted to identify the bacteria or sensitivity to antibiotics. There are plenty of fingers to point. International travelers spread diseases around the world. The more interconnected the world, and the more we cluster ourselved, the easier diseases spread. Thank God for cars ((at least for now until the 50mpg car never materializes), public transportation is a great place to catch something. College dorms. I could go on. I just don’t think humans were meant to live so clusterf@#ked.
“The crux of the problem is that the best protection we have is vaccines and they only work if we act together and actively take on the much smaller risks of side effects vs. the passive dice rolling of hoping to be the one that survives the disease.”
I’ll skip all of the silly subjective observations you make about my post and get to the one actual thing you asserted. Vaccines may not in fact the best protection we have. Vaccines may not only work if we act together etc. This is especially true of specific vaccines (which was my point), rather than vaccines generally. Perhaps you think it wise to vaccinate against rotavirus (a treatable quasi-’disease’) even though it may ravage the intestines of a small number of children. Perhaps you also think it wise to “roll the dice” as it were by beginning a massive foray into indiscriminate pnuemoccocal vaccinations of 7/91 known serotypes simply on the basis of the success of HiB, with completely unknown consequences not just on your own child but of all children everywhere, but with the known phenomenon of serotype replacement already taking place — without considering the very non-scientific logical premise that perhaps humans evolved to carry the 7 types in question in a manner that displaces far more damaging other serotypes. And, the thing wasn’t even tested against a control group, but another experimental vaccine. Look it up if you dare. Experimentation, indeed.
Also I will note that you stated my point far better than I did. “the passive dice rolling” — here it is clear you attach more weight to doing something rather than nothing, right after you observe that the nature of experimentation is “humbling”. Why? “In the real world we are required to make hard choices based on the best data we can find. No data set is complete or without issues.” Sorry, I simply don’t agree that putting a vaccine into your child is a choice that must be made.
“One can only see us as over vaccinated when you look back from the safety of not having contracted the disease.” Nothing is safe. You are at risk of death and disease every second of your existence. Perhaps you would have given your pregnant wife thalidomide for nausea. Not me pal. Given the “humbling” nature of experimentation, and the limits of human knowledge (which anyone without your degree of hubris would admit readily), I think it’s important to actually in fact weigh risks and benefits. Some vaccinations on the US CDC schedule are probably not necessary. Which was my point, that I presented as a “hunch”.
As it happens, LennyB, I am not a parent. I never will be. This is because of an unvaccinated child and a dose of Mumps.
You will pardon me for not being willing to see both sides of this argument.
According to my wife, my late father-in-law had mumps as an adult. Apparently, for adults, it is much more painful then it is for children. I had mumps as a kid before the vaccine was developed. I remember it wasn’t fun. Also had measles, chicken pox, and german measles, now called rubella I guess. Survived them all.
It wasn’t until my second kid that my wife and I heard the diagnosis “Fifth’s Disease”. “What the hell is that?” we both wondered. Apparently, you don’t (or won’t) get it if you’ve had one of the other spotted diseases, but the vaccinations for the other spotted diseases doesn’t give you immunity from it. At least, taht’s what the doctor told us at the time. All of our kids have had it. It appears to be relatively harmless.
Mumps is, indeed, much more painful as an adult (I was 22). It also has a low, but statistically very real chance of inflicting permanent sterility in males.
With all of the “Childhood Diseases”, most people will recover from them. However:
One in a thousand children with Measles die, een with modern care.
Chickenpox can cause stroke in children, and damage unborn children, including causing blindness and microcephaly.
Mumps, as noted, can cause sterility in pubescent and mature males.
Rubella can of course blind and deafen the unborn if the mother is infected during carriage, or worse.
Pertussis can cause pneumonia, and two in a thousand sufferers will die.
And this isn’t even taking into account the more lethal “epidemic” diseases like diphtheria, smallpox (thankfully, eradicated) Polio, Yellow Fever (which has no non-vaccine treatment)…I could go on, but I think the point is made.
What you cited about chickenpox is part of the reason I have waited to get my children immunize for varicella. Since they were all close together, I was pregnant each time one child was ready for immunization. The vaccine is a live vaccine, so in rare cases can cause the disease. Because I was pregnant my doctor gave me the choice to wait. We plan on getting all of them vaccinated when my youngest is old enough for the vaccine. People who throw around lollipop strawmen are ignorant.
No, I won’t pardon you for being “unwilling” to see both sides of an argument.
There is no reason that you should be unwilling.
The earliest mortality rates I was able to find for the US are interesting. These are for the year 1850.
Infant mortality in deaths per thousand population, White: 216.8, Black: 340.0
Life expectancey, White: 39.5, Black: 23.0.
Now, not all of the change in infant mortality rate is due to vaccination. For example, a large part of the Southern US was once infested with Anopheles (a mosquito) is the most common vector for the malarial parasite, one of the genus Plasmodium. It was basically eradicated in the US through the use of DDT, but is creeping back today.
If through our stupidity, our life expectancy should begin to revert to sub-40 year area, I suppose that our ecopundits will probably rejoice that they don’t have to worry about funding Medicare and Social Security any longer.
Ethically, you should be allowed to decide to vaccinate yourself and your children. The questions are: Should you be allowed to endanger the children of others by inaction? Should you be allowed to endanger your own children through incaction? Likewise, do we tolerate your self-endangerment through inaction?
In my State, the law allows you to take risks personally that you may not impose upon your kids. If you refuse to permit physicians to treat your kid’s broken arm, you will wind up in prison. Should the same apply to failure to vaccinate? What about the children of those here illegally who are not picked up by the system? What duty do we owe these children?
There is a very strong case to be made for coercive herd immunization, particularly for extremely deadly and easily communicable diseases. The case withers when it comes to the HPV or HepB vaccines. If an effective HIV vaccine became available, should all children be forced to have it? There is kind of a sliding scale, depending on severity of the disease and mode of transmission. It is probably wisest to focus on the most deadly diseases and differentiate so perhaps people will less likely be anti- all vaccination.
Also, the justification that can be made for coercive herd immunity could also be used to severely restrict international travel in the event of a deadly pandemic and to take undocumented immigration more seriously. Immunization should be required of all immigrants and travelers upon entering the country.
Of course an HIV vaccine would be made mandatory. It’s the only way the economics work. It the same for the Hep B vaccine. When it first came out, it was, sensibly IMO, mandated for health care workers, just like it would be wise to mandate an HIV vaccine for health care workers. But that doesn’t create enough of a market for the vaccine to be profitable, so the pharmaceutical companies press for it to be added to the CDC schedule and all kids get it whether it makes sense or not.
The anti-vaccine crowd are ill-informed and putting the rest of society at risk. Just like the anti-climate change crowd.
Damn straight. Three cheers for climate change!
I was thinking the exact same thing about the climate hysterics. They want to rid the world of tried and true energy sources, and greatly reduce our society’s wealth and well-being, and replace them with unreliable sources of energy because of an unfounded fear of carbon dioxide, a trace gas. Naturally, women, children, and minorities will be hardest hit.
I rather imagine, just from the people I know, that if you made a venn diagram or anti-vaccine-crowd and anti-climate change crowd, there would be a very small intersection of the two. I’m in the second group- and my kids are all vaccinated. And I keep up with my boosters. (Except for yellow fever, because the shot itself leaves me ill for a fday or two. But, if I were actually going overseas to an area where yellow fever were rampant- I’d put up with it.)
Everyone I know who is anti-vaccine believes in man-made global warming.
And I’m almost willing to bet that a venn diagram of people who believe that there is a secret cabal (probably associated with masons) that runs the world is almost entirely contained within the venn of anti-vaccine people. Stupid belief systems tend to cluster together.
I forget whether it was Salk or Sabin that was given on a sugar cube. I have childhood memories of my family being the first family in town in line for the mass vaccination against polio. Not one of the first in line- the first in line. My oldest sibling had a mild case of polio- and I suspect that my missing eldest first cousin may have been a childhood victim. Which would explain our being first in line… Found out about his existence only a few years ago doing family tree research. Childhood diseases used to claim a lot of victims, and American 40 somethings and younger have no memories at all of that era.
You need to get out more. Nobody I know who is anti-vaccine believes in man-made global warming.
Quite the opposite.
Thank you for that apt analogy.
The science is settled!
Parents who do NOT immunize their kids and whose kids are shown to be the cause of other kids’ sickness are open to civil lawsuits. I fully intend to to use this option if my kids come down sick with anything like this. There should be some deep pockets elsewhere who can also be brought in. And the evidence is all over the web as guilt. People need to held accountable.
We vaccinated our kids fully and homeschool. I don’t know whether we’re in a minority. Many homeschoolers opt out of vaccines; a lot of them are scared moms who surf the net and read the parade of horribles written therein.
Whether one vaccinates is a controversial topic, on a par with whether one used anesthesia during childbirth, and whether one eats organic food. Personally, I think it’s silly.
There was a whooping cough quarantine imposed on a local homeschooling family.
A lot of these people get to high school age and then enrol their kids in public school by signing a conscience exemption, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. So they are endangering the “herd,” which, as pointed out by others, may be needing a booster in teen-age years to be up-to-date.
tommy, I did “a little science” and you are dead wrong. Your examples are instances of self risk. What you do to your kids doesn’t concern me but you eventually risk everybody else’s, except mine, of course, who got their immunizations when indicated or available.
The most serious problem with pertussis is simple, and the data confirms it. The states that allow a parent to exempt their child from immunizations for personal or philosophical reasons have the greatest number of cases. Of the ten states with the highest number of cases in 2012, 8 allow an exemption of this type. Nearly 17,000 cases, 55 percent of all the cases in the United States are from those eight states. The same data held true in the 2010 outbreak.
I have not studied the demographics for 2012 yet. In 2010, the pertussis outbreaks in the top states centered in wealthy, nearly all-white counties, and many of those counties held major universities, Univ of Texas, Ohio State, etc.
The other problem that the U.S. has is the utter lack of appreciation in the public health community for the dangers from this illness. The Wisconsin public health agency even told me that they will not use the term “epidemic”. The general public health consensus is that pertussis comes around in cycles and there is nothing that can be done.
There is. California had nearly 9,000 cases of pertussis in 2010. It is a personal exemption state. They did three things. They pushed immunization education, they made vaccine available to pregnant and newly delivered moms, and they added a booster shot requirement to enter seventh grade. This year, through week 37, they have seen just 387 pertussis cases.
Pertussis is not cyclical. Pertussis is the result of parents not immunizing their children and large populations of pre-school and school children being vulnerable to the illness. We could use a better vaccine. We could return to DPT, which is used in many other countries. We could also ask our county, state and national public health agencies to focus on disease rather than teen pregnancy, obesity and the horrors of type two diabetes.
Children can get it from adults as well. We need booster shots throughout our lives.
My daughter got pertussis this summer at age 10 – three months from her 11th birthday. Her doctor’s office gives the booster at 11. I got it from her. I hadn’t had the booster – no GP had ever suggested it that I can recall. She was actually diagnosed with pneumonia (which she did have as a secondary infection). Not until I was actually nasal swab tested did anyone realize that she had it, too.
It is absolutely miserable. My daughter would cough until she vomited. I would cough until I choked. It’s often worse when you lie down, so you finally get to bed at night, exhausted, but you have such horrible coughing spells you cannot catch your breath. I can see why it kills infants, with their tiny windpipes. It’s frightening, even at age 46.
I highly suggest any adults reading this ask for the booster and I hope they change the schedule for children. This article suggests that the numbers are higher due to better diagnosis, but there are lots of people not reflected in those numbers. If a family member comes down with symptoms, they don’t swab you. They just treat you. And my daughter wouldn’t have been “counted” had I not gotten it.
Oh, and the antibiotics don’t do anything for the symptoms – they just keep you from being contagious. Important, but it points to the hideous thing about pertussis – virtually NOTHING helps.
Part of the problem with vaccines is that the CDC, government epidemiologists and public health officers, and many pediatricians and family practice physicians are misusing one vaccine and lying to everybody about it. The vaccine I refer to is against hepatitis B, a viral disease that is spread via blood-to-blood transfer or sexual intercourse. About a dozen years ago, against all sense, the CDC recommended vaccination of newborn, day-old babies against hepatitis B.
Why is this bad?
1. Newborn babies cannot form antibodies against anything. That’s why no previous vaccines had ever been given to infants younger than two months old.
2. The vaccine has a high rate of side effects.
3. The vaccine is unlikely to be effective for more than ten years without booster vaccinations, and young children are not at risk for hepatitis B because they aren’t sharing heroin needles or having frequent sexual intercourse with a hepatitis-infected partner.
4. When infants begin making antibodies, they have to distinguish between self-antigens and foreign-antigens. If any of the hepatitis B vaccine antigens are present when an infant’s immune system turns on, the immune system will consider those antigens to be “self” and will not make antibodies against them. Such infants _always_ will be at risk for hepatitis B.
The lies about and misuse of hepatitis B vaccine makes it easier for people to ignore or argue against other vaccine recommendations even though most of them are good.
In addition to vaccination and encouraging herd immunity, people need to take pertussis seriously. Earlier this year my infant son had a severe cough and since we had heard it through the grapevine that a contact of a contact had potentially had an undiagnosed case of Pertussis, we decided to bring our son to the hospital. After checking in at the ER and telling them that we thought our son may have Pertussis, they directed us to the crowded waiting area. I thought to myself, are you kidding? We decided to leave and wait it out for our physician’s office to open. We did this for his sake and for the other patients. If he had had it we would have spread it to everyone in the room. Also we thought if they had no concern for spreading whooping cough around the waiting room, what the hell else was lurking in the air in the waiting room. I figured if he was facing a 100 cough and a chance of death, he sure as hell didn’t need to catch another disease or the flu or something from the nasty waiting area. Thankfully his test came back negative, but made me realize that people don’t take it seriously. Also, how many cases go undiagnosed because of either doctor ignorance or perhaps milder symptoms and it gets passed of as a cold. Meanwhile it spreads to infants and others. (And yes my son was vaccinated, but a 6 month old can still get it if vaccinated).
The problem is – it is easier to obtain an exemption than it is to fully vaccinate your child.
300 million people died from small pox in the 20th century, thankfully we eliminated this killer by vaccinating everyone. Polio, like pertussis is making a comeback.
Conservatives who cry “limited government” but then insist on government mandates to vaccinate children make me sick.
There really isn’t a conflict there. Limited government is by no means the same as “no government” – and I think everyone but the libertarian fringe agrees that government does have a role to play in the public health sector. Precisely what role? That is where reasonable people can reasonably disagree.
I’m allergic to the Mercury compounds that are used as preservatives in adult vaccines. This is one of the reasons why I’ve never had a flu shot.
Kevin, if you were vaccinated against mumps and still contracted it, you cannot possibly blame the unvaccinated child for causing your illness. If you were not vaccinated, you also cannot blame the unvaccinated child for causing your illness. Disease is exactly that: disease. It was not created by this unvaccinated child. Such a child may have increased risks to you, certainly. But you cannot claim to know that they are responsible for you contracting the disease any more than a doctor can claim to the parent of a deceased infant that the vaccination had nothing to do with their mortality. You may well have shared contact with an asymptomatic carrier. It may be true, it may not be.
Now before I go further, I say two things. First, you can still be a parent, and I urge you in the strongest possible terms to explore ways in which you might do this. I clearly matters to you, and arguments such as this one are ultimately meaningless. What should matter to you is that if you want to be a parent, avenues are likely available. Look into it. You will not regret it.
Second, I will say that my children have been vaccinated against mumps, pertussis, and all manner of other assorted pestilence. I share many of your feelings when I consider that kids at the daycare may not be vaccinated with DTAP as my children have, and that my children are at increased risk because of this. It’s rather infuriating. I even took a TDAP booster myself, and in fact suffered some problems that are still not resolved that may or may not be attributable to this shot. But I don’t regret it in the slightest, because as you say I used the best data available and I did it to protect my infant.
But my point is, humans are not responsible for disease, and the CDC is not always right, and no government should ever make health decisions in place of a parent. Ever. It is not always the correct decision to vaccinate just because you can, and it is never the correct decision to vaccinate because your friends and neighbors believe you should. Often people who are indiscriminately pro-vaccine without doing any research whatsoever simply want every other kid’s parent to decide what is best for their own kid — which I totally get, on a visceral level, and particularly once they’ve borne the risk of vaccinating but even if not. But when the mortality for a disease targeted by a given shot is roughly approximate to the presumed risks of side affects, and no immunologist can give you concrete numbers about this risk-benefit ratio, and the disease itself is not universally fatal, and the peer pressure is still there — uninformed collectivist group think as it often is — what does one do? Agree with the CDC that the mortality risk should be shifted from those children predisposed to succumb to certain diseases to those children predisposed to succumb to the shot, and hope you’ve got a good gut feel for which group your kid falls into? Disagree, and risk the consequences in the event your child succumbs to that which you chose not to vaccinate against? Not an easy decision, but very easy for certain of the schedule.
I have some experience with infectious disease myself and lost 8 months of my life to recovery from one. I should be relentlessly pro vaccine, and I daresay I am — but the first time you talk to a pediatrician who knows less about a given vaccine than you do, you will start owning every single shot they offer — and you’ll still even get most of them, because your research tells you to, even after reading the minutes from CDC advisory panel meetings that resulted in their addition to the schedule.
What my experience with infectious disease taught me is that blaming humans for disease is ultimately a self-defeating premise, and that no matter how bad you have it, someone else always has it much much worse than you ever will. So take heart and look into adoption, if it’s right for you. And you know it just may be. Then you will be like me — wanting to protect your child from harm, making the decisions you believe are right by them and everyone else (first and second, in that order, and anyone who tells you they decide otherwise is lying), and hoping like heck that you’ve not done them or anyone else any harm.
I was vaccinated. I even had recently had a booster shot. But, as I don’t doubt you know, vaccines are not perfect – they give a limited immunity.
Unfortunately, I encountered a friend’s child, who had NOT been vacinated, and had contracted the disease.
Had the child beebn vaccinated, the chances of him getting Mumps were small, and he would likely have been more resistant if he had – in either case, much less likely to have passed it on to me.
I don’t blame him. I don’t really even blame his mother, and blaming a disease is pointless. But having studied the subject and knowing the odds, there simply is no good reason NOT to be vaccinated – both for your own health, and for the health of those around you.
I agree with you, for most shots. As I said my kids got mmr, given the consequences of them contracting it as well as the consequences to others if they carry it. But my question is this. At what point are you supposed to weigh risks for any shot? When is it truly necessary, and at what point should CDC stop adding them? Never? No physician would ever counsel you to receive unlimited, indiscriminate vaccination, because ultimately they know that vaccine risks and particularly accumulated aggregate risks are not well understood. That is why they don’t routinely advise e very shot in the book.
Austin: “Parents who do NOT immunize their kids and whose kids are shown to be the cause of other kids’ sickness are open to civil lawsuits. I fully intend to to use this option if my kids come down sick with anything like this. There should be some deep pockets elsewhere who can also be brought in. And the evidence is all over the web as guilt. People need to held accountable.”
Really? Your response to your kids potentially becoming ill by vaccine-preventable disease is that “people need to be held accountable”?
You know, I can’t stand it when people bring colds to the office. Literally cannot stand it. I want to punch them in the face. I give them the cold shoulder, silently stew about how nobody’s role in the office is that important and that they presumably can’t take off because they stockpile sick leave as extra vacation. But you know what? People do it. Everyone does it. Viruses usually are transmitted before symptoms start anyway.
The difference between me and you is, I go home and bitch about it, and often I go home with their blasted cold, which I detest beyond measure. But I also realize it’s not up to me to hold them accountable. I know this because I’m not a megalomaniac. Or at least I hope I’m not. So please tell me by reply: how in the $#%@ is it necessary to vaccinate a 12-hour old newborn with hep-B? A shot that may wear off before 15 years, precisely when the only real risk of acquiring Hep-B in the developed world (behaviours such as drug use and promiscuous sex) begin to manifest? Are you going to sue me when your child starts making stupid decisions?
My kids are too young to shoot up or have sex, but they do interact with other little kids.
Those other little kids, even from the best of families, on occasion bite each other, and practice generally appalling hygienic practices.
I also know that some of their school buddies, particularly a few currently being raised by grandparents, came from homes where drug abuse took place. Heaven knows if they came in contact with syringes, or if dear ol’ Mom decided a few sessions of shootin’ up wouldn’t be all THAT bad while they were pregnant.
So yeah…..got my little angels the shot. Because viruses don’t care if you are nice, white & upper-middle class. They just want a host. And I really don’t want my kids to provide one for them, KWIM?
You make a fair point. Except for the whole white upper middle class thing, where the risk may in fact be higher if you happen to live with a suburban kid on heroin. But that’s an awful lot of vectors before your kid is in the cross hairs, and hep B is not often fatal and not easily transmissible. I plan to get my kids the shot when they are older nevertheless. But the only reason to vaccinate that young an infant is if a primary caregiver is positive, or they a born where the disease is extremely widespread. Oh, and the greater public health initiative to save people from their later poor judgments by getting to everyone before they are old enough to have seen their first sunrise. Almost forgot that, considering the public health usually trumps a kid’s health when the vaccine schedule is concerned. If I were going to peddle a shot like that, I’d hit new parents at 3am before they have a chance to consider the above.
One solution here would be the obamacare mandate approach. Everybody who did not get the vaxine paid an extra tax. Most people would have a big incentive to get it, and the few who strongly oppose it could still opt out by paying the tax. And the tax is justifed because unvaccinated people are potentian spreaders of the disease, and thus free riders.
On the obamacare mandate, I didn’t oppose the mandate just because it was a mandate, with free emergency room use their is a legit free rider problem. The real problem is there was no choice in the type of mandated insurance, all the coverage was dictated rrom DC. A mandate with a choice of low cost catastrophic plans, with mandated emergency room coverage, would have been mush more reasonable, and would not have been the same burden on young healthy people. It would have solved the free rider problem, without having all our insurance decisions dictated from DC, and young healthy people having to buy costly gold plated plans not suited to them.
Follow the money. Condemned if you do, condemned if you don’t. Welcome to parenthood.
The real issue here is actually lost on East coast doctors and scientists. The issue is that when we allow millions to illegally migrate into our country they bring diseases we are no longer familiar with. I was a resident of a border state overridden with illegals when, in 1999, I came down with Whooping cough. It was one of the scariest illnesses of my life. Even more frightening was the fact most doctors did not know the signs and, after several of us in our town became I’ll, one person found a doctor who could diagnosis it.
This will be repeated with multitudes of illnesses that our vaccines cannot prevent as long as we allow illegals who are ill to run wild over our sovereign country. We have children to protect and even vaccines don ‘t guarantee health as I and my young son, both of us vaccinated, found out. We are approaching this problem incorrectly.
I also have a child who suffered a significant brain injury after taking the MMR vaccine. I’ve seen both sides, becoming ill despite being vaccinated and becoming gravely ill as a result of vaccination. We need to re-evaluate this entire process.