Why don’t you know? Do you have an internet connection by any chance?
You’re more interesting in whining about the draft than in shutting the window, aren’t you?
Uh, evolution has done that and more.
There you go. I get my kids vaccinated. It takes 2 years longer. Not good enough. Your way or the highway. Got to toe the line.
I did not mention anything about your choice, but thank you for showing all that you are proud of not being willing to learn anything that can shake your faith.
There’s no problem with what you’re doing in my opinion, but do you have any evidence that you are getting any benefit from paying the extra and doing it this way? I’d be genuinely interested in reading papers showing more side effects from combined vaccines if you have any.
Do you quarantine them for two years?
Oh I see, you’re Fighting the Man. How noble. You exposed your own children to risk of serious disease, you exposed the children who had contact with your children to risk of serious disease, and you achieved nothing of practical value.
But you sure showed those assholes who recommended to you a good and effective way to protect your family and friends! You made it clear who’s boss!
What a fuckin’ hero.
Let’s not be facetious, in western developed countries the incidence of deadly diseases is pretty low. Statistically it’s very likely herd immunity will protect them over the two year period. Just as long as they do eventually get vaccinated it seems harmless to me. A waste of time and money, but harmless.
Yeah, let’s all do that. Oh, wait. Then it won’t work.
OK, let’s just give Special Snowflakes a pass. The rest of us will do the heavy lifting while they show what admirable rebels they are by not toeing the line.
You’re really grasping at straws here. If everybody spread out infant immunisations over a longer period it would still work, because they’d still get herd immunity from the rest of the population over 2 years old which is 98% of people. And anyway they’re not giving them no vaccinations for two years, they can give the most at risk ones first, then others every 2 months or every month. It would cost more money, and there’s no evidence that it has any benefit, and it might lead to small increase in some diseases but not a huge epidemic.
There’s plenty of genuine reasons to fight anti-vaxxers but personally I’m willing to let this one slide. Pick your battles.
:dubious:
If it was indeed just a few I would let this one slide, but there is little to justify the delay tactic and paradoxically it increases the risks on older kids.
Ok ignorance fought, I did not know this, thanks for the link. And here is a link on a study of safety of combined vaccines which I’m sure Vicsage will read because he’s a reasonable person who accepts evidence when presented right?
Whoops only the abstract is available for that one. Here’s one you can read the full text:
Incidentally, there’s just been a reported mumps outbreak in NW Arkansas. Unvaccinated children in affected schools are being told to stay home for about a month to limit the spread of disease.
Shame we don’t have an effective medicine that might prevent mumps.
We got a live one! One of the anti-vaxxers came back to the facebook thread. This time she’s spouting nonsense that “there is no scientific data to show a raised antibody response confers immunity to the disease”. This is such basic biology that’s been known for over 100 years. It’s not studied because it’s known beyond all doubt. I sent her the history of Cowpox , how it became the smallpox vaccine. I have no hope she’ll actually learn, but at least she can’t claim “big pharma” was behind that one !
That’s not correct. I heard that opinion expressed pretty much the day after Wakefield came to public attention. People suddenly started asking for the vaccines separately and were refused by the doctors and it made the press.
It’s worse than this probably. People don’t mix evenly. People with young families mix mostly with other people with young families. People with odd anti-vax ideas mix with people with similar ideas. I don’t know how it would work out but the danger to herd immunity would be way worse than if it was all a completely well mixed distribution.
Also, as you say, there’s no up side to this nonsense.
Sort of.
Firstly I think the idea has grown. There may have been some saying that the problem was somehow overwhelming the child’s immune system with multiple vaccines. But the emphasis was on the MMR/autism link, and the reason for asking for them separately (insofar as there ever was any reason that made sense) was the idea that the MMR vaccine was inherently dangerous per se.
Then the evidence that Wakefield’s study was BS came out, and the message changed subtly to an emphasis on a more ephemeral claim that having vaccines close together was dangerous in some unspecified way.
That aside - people concerned about a rare effect like an isolated seizure should read up on measles encephalitis, which used to be universally lethal. There’s some treatment available these days, but honestly, a transient fever or even a febrile seizure (which happens in kids outside of vaccination), which are rare complications, is far, far better than what measles can do. My parents knew schoolmates who spent a couple years dying of measles complications. Yep, we kids all got vaccinated.
All vaccines have a small chance of complications. The diseases they prevent have much higher rates of complication, maiming, and death.
Maybe one of the things that pisses me off about anti-vaxxers is that almost all of them are my generation or younger, they had the benefits of vaccines because their parents remembered friends and neighbors dying of now-preventable illness. But they deny those protections to their kids, and their larger society. It’s despicable, not in the least because it’s other people who suffer and might even be maimed or killed by their stupidity and ignorance.
Yes, there’s a cost-benefit analysis going on there. Ideally, the kids should be tested periodically to make sure their immunity is still strong and the vaccines “took”, and if they didn’t, they should be re-vaccinated. Adults should be re-vaccinated and given boosters periodically throughout life as well but we really fail at that as a society. Well, tetanus boosters, which are now usually combined with diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough) boosters but adults aren’t reliable at getting that (outside of certain weirdos such as myself)
I think you’re overly concerned (absent an actual medical problem in your kids) but as long as they’re vaccinated before going off to first grade the hazard is probably minimal in a First World nation, or even in the US (which in my opinion does not have a First World level of public health) but if you take them on a trip to somewhere a little less advanced I’d get them all caught up on the vaccines pronto.
Yeah, actually the human immune system DID evolve to cope with a LOT more than a mere 5 different antibodies a day. It does such a good job we’re not even aware of how many pathogens the body fights off daily with nary a symptom - until we have to suppress a person’s immune system for something like a bone transplant.
My family is lousy with auto-immune disorders. We still all get vaccinated. I think your vet was being cautious, but honestly, if your kids had that sort of a problem you’d know by now. It’s not that the vaccines are causing an auto-immune disorder, it’s far more likely the disorder has been there all along and makes a reaction to a vaccine more likely.
Like I said, if they’re getting their vaccinations by first grade it’s probably OK. Personally, I have more concern about kids who get moved around a lot, in foster care (where records get lost and trying to get regular care and follow-up scheduled would be a nightmare), living in homeless shelters, they’re the ones at higher risk.
Whenever I hear about anti-vaxxers going on and on about very rare complications, or complications disproven I consider my parents who made the decision to vaccinate me against smallpox (because that was still a thing back when I was a baby) despite my impressive collection of allergies and perennial eczema. They don’t even allow people with a history of eczema to get smallpox vaccine anymore, much less a baby with an active case due the hazard of eczema vaccinatum. Again, these days there are treatments but back when I was a baby it was likely to be fatal. Nonetheless, I have that distinctive vaccination scare on my upper left arm. Now, obviously (because I’m here) that didn’t happen, but as recently as 50-60 years ago choosing to vaccinate a kid with a higher than normal risk of side effects, even lethal side effects, was seen as a sane choice by middle-class parents. But then, my parents were old enough to remember the news accounts of the last smallpox outbreak in the US (they weren’t affected by it, but did hear of it). What killed smallpox? Vaccines and herd immunity. But hey, the anti-vaxxers don’t want to hear about that.
If ever there is an outbreak of smallpox will they keep their opinions that vaccines are bad, or are they willing to see 1/3 of their kids die? (Or more - depends on the strain involved. Might 40% or 60%). Of course, if there ever IS an outbreak of smallpox there will be quarantines imposed until everyone inside is either recovered, vaccinated and immune, or dead. Based on history, that would mean about a third of those inside will die (unless they they’ve been vaccinated in the past 10 years, which no longer applies to most of us).
But, hey, we don’t have to worry about that because of vaccines.
Unfortunately, I do have an allergy to common vaccine but I get all of them that I can get safely. I didn’t just throw up my hands and say “well, that trip to the ER was freakin’ scary, guess I better not ever get another vaccine, ever”, because getting sick just plain sucks and can be just as dangerous (is usually MORE dangerous) than getting a vaccine.
'Course not, that was “big farma”!
CMC fnord!
In Spain you can lose custody of your children if you refuse to get them the required vaccinations. If a child can’t have them for a medical reason that goes to their medical history, but the only acceptable reasons are medical ones. Other than that, the few unvaccinated people we have are almost 100% immigrants (there are occasional pockets of very low-income-level people who haven’t registered the kids or ever taken them to a doctor out of a general “don’t trust the man” mindset; when these are detected, doctors are taken to them).