If my kid were one of those who got infected because of some idiotic parents refused to vaccinate their kids I’d certainly be looking into what my legal options were.
-XT
And we all have a shared responsibility to KEEP it that way.
And it will come back if people stop vaccinating.
Ask the Russians. They had a diphtheria outbreak in the early 1990’s.
Anecdote related to DPT immunization, rather than the MMR: A friend of mine became seriously ill after his DPT shot as an infant (near-death with high fever, swelling of the limbs, etc). Five years later, his infant brother received the same vaccination despite his parents protest (legal requirement at the time). The infant exhibited the same symptoms and, after repeated calls to the doctor in the middle of the night were met with an insistence that the immunization was not to blame, the infant died. Their subsequent child, after heavy lobbying heavily, was not required to receive the vaccination.
I guess the bottom line is that there are risks associated with vaccinations; in most cases, it’s still a good idea. But it sucks to be one of the exceptions to the rule.
Certainly there are risks. Dudes die every day due to Penicillin reactions. Does that mean we should ban antibiotics?
Thimerosal also caused some allergic reactions- enough so that it was removed. There was also a tiny but real toxicity issue. But it has no risks for causing autism.
The risks for vaccinating your kids are almost unimaginably smaller than the very real risks for not doing so.
In fact, most anti-vacs know this. What they are betting on is the fact that you will vaccinate your kids and thus the anti-vac non-vac kids will not be able to catch anything from the vaccinated kids. In other words, they are being selfish.
It is sort of a sick backwards play on the tragedy of the commons.
However, it’s not working. Too many nutjobs and too many selfish parents.
Another issue to consider: will a child who reacts so poorly to a vaccine react any better to the actual illness?
Reasonable point?
Huh?
My “point” had nothing to do with the subject matter of this thread; it had to do with the use of English, specifically the construction of your statement. As written, it essentially said “A is better than A;” I was suggesting you meant to say “A is better than B.”
But the child may never get the illness on his/her own.
I was responding to your second point. You wrote:
A certain percentage of the population can indeed get away with non-vaccination on an individual basis. The problem is that they punch holes in protection for the rest of us when they do.
Depends on the illness. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to mankind. If you are unvaccinated and you come into contact it with you will almost certainly get it.
Thanks to the anti-vax lobby we’ve had outbreaks of measles in the United States recently. In the event of an outbreak of a vaccine preventable illness it’s hardly likely that public officials will rush to make sure the anti-vaccine crowd can get immediate access to the vaccines they so gleefully disdain. By the time an epidemic is noticed it may even be too lately already to get protected via vaccines. Immunity can take time to develop and multiple vaccine dosages may be necessary.
We’re not understanding each other. I wrote what I thought YOU were trying so say, because what you first wrote was nonsensical. I’m only correcting the language.
At the risk of belaboring the point: “The risks of non-vaccination far outweigh the consequences of vaccine preventable diseases.” No, the risks of non-vaccination CANNOT outweigh the consequences of vaccine preventable diseases, because THEY’RE THE SAME THING.
But the way you’re expressing it isn’t quite true either.
For any given specific person the risks of non-vaccination are not the same thing as the consequences of a vaccine preventable disease. You can get away with not vaccinating and not get a disease because others provide you with herd immunity.
That was my initial point. If I didn’t quite express it as well (and looking back I probably didn’t) I hope subsequent posts have clarified what I meant.
Okay, I misunderstood. Sorry for the attempted correction.
I’m still not getting the “outweigh” part of it though.
Dudes- please stop. Please?
Forgive me but why do you care? The only people who will suffer the consequences of not being vaccinated are those who aren’t vaccinated…and you think they suck anyway right?
It’s not like they can hurt you or your children, and it’s not like they’re trying to make sure other people can’t get vaccinated.
Yes, they can hurt your children.
wiki "Population health
Lack of complete vaccine coverage increases the risk of disease for the entire population, including those who have been vaccinated, because it reduces herd immunity. For example, measles vaccine targets children between the ages of 9 and 12 months, and the short window between the disappearance of maternal antibody (before which the vaccine often fails to seroconvert) and natural infection means that vaccinated children frequently are still vulnerable. Herd immunity lessens this vulnerability, if all the children are vaccinated. Increasing herd immunity during an outbreak or threatened outbreak is perhaps the most widely accepted justification for mass vaccination. Mass vaccination also helps to increase coverage rapidly, thus obtaining herd immunity, when a new vaccine is introduced.[24]
Children who are too young to be vaccinated have died from diseases spread by the unvaccinated. Also, vaccination merely reduces the risk of disease; it does not prevent it altogether. That’s why whenever there’s an outbreak of disease, you will see both unvaccinated and vaccinated people get sick - a large percentage of the small number of unvaccinated people and a small percentage of the large number of vaccinated people.
Wrong…
We have.
I promise.
Not true. What if your child cannot get vaccinated because of medical reasons beyond that child’s control? What if an older family member cannot get vaccinated again because of underlying medical reasons?
Many of the vaccine preventable diseases are highly contagious. Wouldn’t you want to strangle someone who deliberately gave you or a loved one a preventable disease because they were too stupid to vaccinate?
And yes – this cannot be said enough – THEY SUCK!
Oh yes they are. Anti-vax groups constantly lobby against vaccines. They’re convinced that no one should get them, diseases like whooping cough are mild and that vaccines are leading to children with all sorts of problems including asthma, diabetes and obesity.
Jenny McCarthy keeps arguing that vaccines cause autism even after dozens of studies proving her wrong. Her statements get constant publicity needlessly scaring parents away from necessary vaccinations.
Many anti-vax groups would just love to sue pharmaceutical companies for any hint of the sniffles their child develops, putting vaccine production in jeopardy and leading to potential vaccine shortages.
This must be emphasized: those who do not vaccinate put other people at risk. Herd Immunity.
Babies cannot begin to get vaccinated for pertussis until 2 months, and are not significantly protected until several shots into the series, yet these youngest individuals are at the greatest risk of death from the disease. Protection for them involves keeping them from being exposed. A non-vaccinated individual may catch pertussis and be old enough that they merely have a very annoying cough for a month or so but they are coughing on every baby that they come near. These unimmunized and underimmunized high risk babies are protected by being surrounded by those who are protected - in the middle of the herd.
Vaccines do not provide 100% immunity to any individual. They work well because the whole community is nearly completely covered; a case introduced into the population is unlikely to spread far and most individuals are going to be in the middle of that protected herd. The same thing that protects that baby also protects those who are completely immunized but not 100% immune. Yes, that is called “herd immunity” and it protects both the mostly but not completely protected immunized, and most of the non-immunized so long as there are not too many of them. Yes, the refusers get a free ride. And it works. Just immunize the spreaders of disease and everyone benefits. But if there are enough unimmunized individuals that unimmunized individuals come into contact with other unimmunized individuals then *everyone *suffers.
This fact is the biggest ethical justification for mandating some vaccines: refusers are putting others besides themselves (or even their own children) at risk.
Actually one of my kids couldn’t have the DPT vaccine because of an allergic reaction to the first shot, but I don’t think that means I should be allowed to make decisions about the health care of other people’s children.
I hope that they will take responsibility for their health and stay home if they have diptheria tetanus or pertusus, but I don’t get all worked up about it. And yes, he did once get whooping cough at a day care center where every kid was “required” to be vaccinated, it happens.
There are also people who come here from other countries where vaccinations are less common and I don’t think those people are wacko crazy pants or dangerous.
I don’t think there’s any chance that anyone is ever going to succeed in making it harder for those who want them to get vaccines, no matter how hard they try.