Aside from kids with legitimate (that is, MEDICAL) reasons to pass on vaccinations NO child without vaccinations should be in public school. At least that’s the rule in most places, or at least it was. Every time I transferred schools as a kid (we moved around a bit) my parents had to provide proof of vaccination for us kids before we were allowed to attend. Has that suddenly changed?
It should be safe to assume that any child in public school is vaccinated or has a real reason not to be.
And the onus shouldn’t be on non-vaccinated, non-infected people to be isolated. You quarantine the SICK, that’s the whole point of quarantine. I’m old enough to remember when when such quarantines for mumps, chickenpox, etc. were the norm. It doesn’t scar the kid for life or anything, although it can be inconvenient for the adults (appropriate leave for adult caregivers should be required, of course). Sick people should be at home recovering, not out in the community anyway.
Kids with real medical issues are probably out of school enough, they shouldn’t have to be pulled out because some other asshats won’t get their healthy kids vaccinated. Failure to vaccinate your kids (outside of real, medical reasons not to do so) should be regarded as child abuse. If the parents can’t be arsed to take proper care of their child’s health then the state SHOULD step in for the best interests of the children. We remove kids from parental custody for other neglect of health like starvation or beating the kids, why don’t we when the parents fail to take simple steps to avoid entirely preventable diseases?
There are (and have been) also religious and personal exemptions that are now increasingly being abused, though some states have stepped up and disallowed any but medical exemptions.
That’s why non-vaccinated kids may end up having to be further isolated. In many places, there is no longer a “herd” in which to hide.
For example, outbreaks of pertussis and measles in Texas spiked around churches whose congregants didn’t vaccinate on the advice of religious leaders. There were other cases in the state to be sure, but those asshats did the most damage under the cover of their religion.
According to the CDC, only Mississippi and West Virginia allow for neither a religious or philosophical exemption. To correct my previous post, actually there are 4 states that do not allow a religious exemption, but 2 of those do allow a philosophical exemption.
So no, you should definitely NOT assume all kids at school that can be vaccinated are. Even in Mississippi and West Virginia, I would not trust that they are, as people say finding a doctor to justify a “medical” exemption where none is really necessary is not so difficult.
I don’t have kids myself, so I didn’t really think about the fact that the school would require documentation of immunization… ignorance fought.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding “hiding in the herd”… does that just mean they are relying on herd immunity to keep their kids safe from disease (in which case they’d be in a weird position, as the more people are vaccinated the better the herd immunity is). Or does it mean not talking about it so as to not bring attention to the fact that you’re not vaccinating. The latter is the way I took it… a sort of paranoid “don’t talk about it or you’ll be shunned, your kids will be taken away, they’ll come jab your kids in the middle of the night, ninja-style” kind of way.
I’m not trying to punish kids that cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons by keeping them isolated, or “out” them to make them look bad. I guess what I was wondering is, by telling people to keep their anti-vax position to themselves, are we losing the opportunity to engage them in this discussion, and talk about why it’s a bad position? Or is the thinking behind this that they are already too far gone, no point in talking about it, and we’d like them to not talk about it because all we think that will do is spread their anti-vax position to anyone else?
I think if I was a parent, I would want to know what people are thinking about this subject, so that I could keep my kids away from theirs if there was a danger (i.e. outbreak situation).
The city I live in has the largest number of “religious” exemptions in the state of NC. From what I can tell, their religion is “I type stuff in the Google search bar.”
Remember that one of the legitimate contraindications to some vaccines is egg allergy. A kid with an egg allergy can certainly be in school, but unvaccinated.
If all of us who can get vaccinated get vaccinated, we cut down the available pool of infection. That’s how we got rid of smallpox. That’s how we got rid of measles, too, for one glorious year. Every case of the measles in the US could be traced to overseas exposure. Now we’re back to native infection, because vaccination rates fell too low.
There’s a reason that people get more than one dose of the vaccine. The vaccine is designed to produce antibodies to the disease that can help people fight it off. The vast majority of people will make enough antibodies from one round of the MMR to avoid measles should they get exposed to it. A second dose is given as is a third to help those who may not have responded to the initial disease. You either have measles or you don’t. There is no such thing as a mild case of measles.
What’s happening during this process is that measles is not allowed to gain access to a human host so it disappears. If enough people are vaccinated, the measles virus cannot be transmitted. Hiding in the herd means avoiding vaccination knowing that others are vaccinated. The problem is that breaks down when others aren’t vaccinated as well.
Both the MMR and MMRV are supposed to be fine for egg-allergic people, according to the CDC. The only routinely given US vaccination that seems to be an issue is flu, but there is at least one egg-free version.
You really can’t think that we should spend millions to try and convince a handful of idiots not to be idiots? The solution is not patting them on the back and letting them have a place at the table. The solution is quarantine so they can’t infect others. If that’s unpleasant for them . . . GOOD! Deliberate refusal to adhere to basic public health measures should not be pleasant or easy.
Well, yes, I do think we should spend the money. It’s not just to benefit those that won’t vaccinate anyway. Are you interested in getting rid of these diseases or just punishing “idiots”?
Also, just as it is bad that the child with a heart transplant might have to miss school, it is bad when any child must. The parent makes the vaccination choice, not the child, so there is nothing “GOOD” about the child experiencing unpleasantness as a result. “Unfortunate, but unavoidable,” okay, maybe, but not “GOOD.”
Or was that just yet more nattering and self-congratulatory nonsense from someone who thinks of himself of a critical thinker?
The child is not being punished if we protect them because the parents won’t. Why do you act as if we should treat idiots with respect and spent lots of public money pandering to their vanity? Would you rather the child get exposed to measles and get it? Or stay home and avoid it?
Effective marketing does NOT rely on reasoning people into a behavior.
Anything but!
If it did, wouldn’t smarter people be the most susceptible to marketing?
Then go and have fun with your little marketing program. The rest of us will do the best we can to make sure that our babies, kids and children don’t get a nasty disease because stupid people make stupid choices. You don’t reason with birthers or truthers or flat earthers. You point where they are wrong and then you do your damned best to keep them from the sane public and vulnerable people.
You know that you’re writing to someone who actually went to Washington D.C. last year to ask my congressperson and senator to increase funding for measles eradication? I’m a Champion for the Shot@Life program, a program that helps provide funding for free vaccines in places where they are often fiscally out of reach.
:dubious:
You’re such a little shit. You’re throwing hissy fit at me because I am peeved that anti-vaxers are spreading disease. Meanwhile you describe people who actually help spread disease in glowing terms.