Let us be clear about this - to the best of my knowledge only the Christian Scientists and the Amish actually are against vaccines (and most other medical stuff) on religious grounds. Maybe a few other extreme sects of fundamentalists be it Islamic or Christian too. But 99.99% (okay number pulled out of my ass, but if anything I’d bet it undercalls it) of those who claim a religious exemption are not one of those faiths; they are just saying “Faith!” and the schools accept it with a wink wink nudge nudge and have no power to do anything other than that.
True deeply held religious beliefs should, I think, be deeply respected and cut a wide swath. That swath however does not get cut so wide that these believers’ children are placed at risk, does not include putting others at risk, and does not justify extending that already unwarranted protection to the plethora of pathetic puerile parents prepared to prevaricate in preference to protecting their progeny from preventable pathology.
Do you have a cite? See my earlier post, I think the “hippy-dippy” sort of anti-vaxxers tend to get used a lot in media reports, simply because they tend to be the people reporters (and for that matter, Dopers) are likely to have easy access to. But I’m not sure they actually make up that large a chunk of the non-vaccinated.
honestly, I think the biggest reason is that the people refusing to vaccinate their kids simply don’t appreciate how dangerous these diseases can be. past generations saw first-hand the crippling effects of polio, and/or the distress of pertussis, the long-term effects of measles (deafness,) and so on. they’ve been out of the public consciousness for so long that the average shithead (who thinks history began the day he/she was born) equates it to the flu.
If ignorance is the lack of knowledge, then stupidity is the desire to remain ignorant. these people are stupid.
Yeah, well, this year my grandpa got the flu vaccine just like he’s done for years and years because he “believes” in it. Then he got the flu this year and nearly died.
This year’s flu vaccine was pretty useless overall. shrug
(btw. I am not anti-vax, but I also don’t think the flu vaccine should be lumped in the same category as “real” vaccines against shit like measles or whatever when talking about this stuff)
More from an article in 2013. Still not hippy dippy but attracted to alternative medicine. And a bit more likely to trust a friend’s story about alleged harm from a vaccine, or a celebrity assessment.
OK. I did some calculations and figured that with a death rate of 0.001 there would have to be around 1680 cases for the probability of at least two deaths to hit 50%. As of today, there have been about 100 cases in the U.S. There would have to be almost 17 times that number of cases for two deaths to become more likely than not.
This isn’t likely to happen unless an epidemic gets started in a pocket of unvaccinated people. The vaccination rate in the U.S. as a whole is high enough to cause herd immunity. If measles took hold in, say, a community of several thousand people with only a 50% vaccination rate, there could be enough cases for multiple deaths to become likely.
As I mentioned before, measles is a much worse disease for people with compromised immune systems. It will be a real shame if someone who is undergoing radiation treatment dies from the measles.
And the reason I think this is striking home is that every middle class American knows people who have taken either kids on a Make a Wish trip or an infant to Disney. The narrative simply writes itself - even if it doesn’t happen. Suddenly, the narrative features a kid without hair, their parents begging other parents to protect their kid via herd immunity. That wasn’t a prominent feature of the narrative before - and its a powerful one.
(I’m one of those weird Disney fans whose other message board is for weird Disney fans. And lots and lot of people take their infants to Disney. I think its risky, myself, until your kid has been through their full vaccination cycle - too many people, too close a space, and who knows what the vaccination beliefs of the Mom on Dumbo before you are).
I hope for vaccinations and in general. It’s both the “precious snowflake” generation that my opinion is valid, dammit. And general acceptance of false equivalency.
I’m not talking about religious weirdos in my post; I’m talking about my peers in suburban Dallas. In general, they’re white, college-educated and professional, and for whatever reason, their risk-assessment circuitry has gone awry and they think there’s a bigger threat to their children becoming autistic or obese or whatever from vaccinations than there is from the diseases that are being vaccinated against.
One guy 10 years ago seemed eccentric, but when it’s 1 in 3 of people you meet, it seems almost criminally irresponsible, because the very presence of herd immunity caused by very high vaccination rates is what makes it LOOK like the vaccines are a higher risk. I suspect that if the neo-hippies and others actually saw kids with whooping cough, TB, mumps, measles, tetanus, etc… like people did in the 1930s, they’d shut right up and march their kids to the doctors to get vaccinated tout suite.
Do I have a “cite” or stats showing the demographics of anti-vaxxers? No, I do not.
But just for grins, let’s look at this graph from the New York Times, showing where measles outbreaks are now occurring:
Note well where the outbreaks AREN’T occurring! They AREN’T occurring in Alabama. Or Mississippi. Or Tennessee. Or Georgia. The Deep South, where you’d expect measles to be running rampant if the anti-vaxxers were largely the kinds of “fundies” mocked here on the SDMB, has been untouched by the measles.
One thing I wonder about: what percentage of the unvaccinated kids in California are Mexican immigrants, be they legal or illegal.
I live in one of the most liberal/crunchy/hippie towns in the United States.
My SO is a nurse at the local hospital, where she’s exposed on an almost daily basis to all kinds of nasties.
I have a feeling that herd immunity will be almost nonexistent here. I had all my shots 30-40+ years ago, but I’m seriously considering re-vaccination.
It need not come in the backs of Mexicans, you know. Any state that sees a lot of overseas travelers is at exposure risk.
Red states tend to not be these kind of states, so no big surprise measles isn’t turning up there. California has the double whammy of being both a travel hub and a state where anti-vaxxers are relatively common.
A few days ago, I saw someone on Facebook make a couple ridiculous arguments to support their anti-vaccination stance along with a “the government has no right to tell me what to do with my family” claim. I don’t know why, as it wasn’t relevant to anything, but he made a point of mentioning that he gets his pets vaccinated.