*Ethan Lindenberger, an 18-year-old from Ohio, was frustrated by his mother’s anti-vaccination stance and went to Reddit to get advice on how to protect himself against infectious disease. Mr. Lindenberger said he wanted to get vaccinated but did not know how.
“This generation of unvaccinated children coming of age has looked at the science and [wants] to protect themselves,” said Allison Winnike, president and CEO of the Immunization Partnership, a nonprofit vaccine advocacy group.*
…states should lower the age of consent needed for vaccinations rather than push for stricter immunization laws.
Proposed official-looking sign someone should put up around protest areas:
“Due to the possibility of communicable disease spreading in crowded conditions, we have installed dispensers for cutting-edge aerosol vaccines throughout the area for your protection.”
While that could certainly be fun, above and beyond its potential as a disinfecting agent, I just meant the sign. Play to their conspiracy-theorist paranoia. Not being able to find any dispensers just means that the dispensers are really well hidden.
Unfortunately, the protesters are generally enjoying the benefits of the very vaccinations they’re protesting. I can’t support purposely infecting whatever neglected children they drag along with them. The kids aren’t responsible for their parents’ hypocrisy and stupidity.
I feel like an asshole for saying it, but we need the children of anti-vax folks to get measles AND bad side-effects, preferable many of the children. Then they may learn the lesson that the parents of the 1950s and 1960s knew about communicable diseases which led to everyone getting vaccinated back in the day.
Sucks for those kids, but it’s likely the only way to get the levels back up.
No, I would disagree. I don’t want kids of these idiots to be punished for their parent’s ignorance. What is really needed is for state’s legislatures to develop some intestinal fortitude and lay-down strict laws that prevent people from claiming exemption from vaccinations “just because”. If enough states do this then these ignorant scumbags will have nowhere to go.
After the kids who survived preventable disease have kids of their own. Their parents aren’t going to learn.
Or, basically, it won’t work and there will be hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the mean time.
This take isn’t too far different from the “my preferred candidate didn’t win, so let’s burn it all down and start over again”. That doesn’t work either and there’s a lot of collateral damage besides.
I don’t want them to punished either, but I’m afraid the only way to stiffen the spines of the state legislature is to provide very strong evidence of what happens when you let herd immunity decline.
Maybe this outbreak will be enough - let’s hope so. And maybe other states can learn from WA misadventure and stiffen their laws before it is a problem.
The insanity seems to have made its way north. The top story on the CBC news site right now is the asshole who refused to vaccinate his three children, took them to southeast Asia, and has now started a measles outbreak in three Vancouver area schools.
To be fair, he made that decision more than a decade ago over fears about the MMR vaccine, and now admits that he was an idiot.
There have been anti-vaxxers since the day we discovered vaccines. I do agree we need stronger legislative or regulatory action, but I think it’s important to listen to and understand the concerns that anti-vaxxers might have. I think a lot of it is psychological. Anti-vaxxers remind me of people who fear flying. Telling them they’re crazy and stupid is probably not going to help change their attitudes much.
I say this as someone who’s frustrated as hell with anti-vaxxers, but my experience has been that talking and listening first and getting them to a point where they’re not ready to fight you is an important first step. Unfortunately that’s not an easy approach to embrace when we’re now dealing with real public health crises.
To your second point, I don’t think anti-vaxxers are asking for people to shut down vaccinations; they’re asking for exemptions from being vaccinated. It would like someone who’s terrified of flying being allowed to drive to a mandatory business meeting as opposed to being forced to fly there. Not a perfect analogy, I acknowledge, but that’s the best I can come up with for now.
To your first point, I get that they’ve been addressed over and over again. What I’m saying is that there is often a psychological discomfort - often an association with an experience - that underlies their objections to vaccines.
Obviously each case is different, but I regularly come into contact with those who purposely don’t get vaccinated and don’t let their children get vaccinated. In an overwhelming majority of the cases beyond “I don’t see the need,” there is a strong belief that the vaccine has made them (or their child) sick. In reality, they probably get the vaccine too late, or they were among the percentage who get flu even in spite of being vaccinated, or maybe they got sick with some other virus. Who knows? To these individuals, their experience, their fear is very real. I don’t feel comfortable shaming or ridiculing people for having that kind of association in their mind. I think there’s a way to confront their ignorance, but shaming them is probably a non-starter.
I confess, there are times when I fantasize about rounding them up and putting them in anti-vaxxer colonies. But it’s just a fantasy. In reality, we need better educational outreach.
