I’m still pissed that I never had a chance to get Polio. Now my immune system sucks!!
Interesting idea - except I doubt pediatricians would be happy about requiring unvaccinated, potentially infected children to be seen in their offices after 10 p.m. or Sundays at 7 a.m., for example.
Another take on “Melanie’s Marvellous Measles”.
Listen, guys, don’t shoot the Messenger.
On second thought, go right ahead.
How about all the un-vaccinated kids can all go to the same clinic where they can exchange their diseases with each other (and possibly cull the herd)?
Ugh, I just saw on Facebook that one of my cousin’s children is recovering from Whooping cough. What the fuck, take them to get their shots stupid bitch. I am so glad that I live on the other side of the country and don’t have to take my daughters to see them very often.
I guess my family is not as smart as I thought.
To be fair, the vaccine for pertussis only lasts 5-10 years. It’s pretty easy to forget that you have to get re-vaccinated as it doesn’t confer life long immunity. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but I wonder if it’s just a forgetful about keeping up with the schedule. DTap is a bit problematic as it’s recommended for a newborn to receive the shots at 2, 4, 6, and 15-18 months (four shots total in the first year and a half of life) and then another one around age five. Even if the protocol is followed to the letter, the immunity to pertussis may still wear off around age ten.
Every child needs it of course, but I wouldn’t automatically assume that the parents of a child with whooping cough are either anti-vaccine or even idiots.
All of this is true, and is another indication of why herd immunity is so fucking important. Some people genuinely forget to get their boosters or miss out on one of the scheduled immunizations, and others can’t get them at all. Therefore, it’s critical that as many people as humanly possible receive as many as they can.
As an addendum to what I posted above. I just looked it up, and the CDC now recommends another Pertussis vaccine (DTap or TDap, same thing) also be given as a booster around age 12. And then additionally every ten years after that. So before anybody denigrates somebody for getting whooping cough I want them to think and answer this question. “When was the last time you were vaccinated for pertussis?” Herd immunity won’t work if adults are reservoirs.
For me. it was a year and a half ago, but I’m in health care.
Excellent point. Let me shout at people: GO GET YOUR VACCINES!
Nope, I remember when I was last out there that they said they didn’t want to vaccinate at all. I believe their daughter is about 2.
Wow. I hope you aren’t exposing your own children to them at all. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective and we rely on herd immunity to cover most of the rest.
Family or not, there’s no reason to put your own kids at risk due to idiocy.
Well, at least they did you the courtesy of informing you that their daughter will be a walking disease vector. Most anti-vaccine parents aren’t that nice to the rest of us.
If you’re going to be around them a lot, make sure that your vaccines, and your children’s, are all up to date. If it were me, I’d make a point of wearing a surgical mask and gloves when around them, and carry disinfectant spray. But I’m a bitch like that.
OK, well then. They are idiots. I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but nope. Idiots.
There is a relatively simple though gruesome solution. Hundreds of thousands of infants and young children need to start dying until the parents figure it out. If there’s good news it is that the kids will die so young that nobody but their parents and sibs have time to bond with them.
Unfortunately, you are right. When enough kids start to die of vaccine-preventable diseases, the media MIGHT start covering that enough to convince people that vaccines are a public health good. But they’d need to be the right kind of kids - photogenic, well-off, etc. Otherwise, it’s just a back-page story. During California’s whooping cough epidemic in 2010, Latino babies were hit the hardest.
They asked for my kid’s immunization records when we enrolled her in school. I hope this means all her classmates are immunized. People who don’t want their kids immunized should have to send them to a special school for germy kids.
It does not. Depending on your locality, there are many ways for parents to avoid having their children vaccinated. Chances are good that your kid’s school is below herd immunity vaccination levels, given the dropping rates of immunizations.
That’s a completely different problem from the anti-vaccine bullshit, though. Latinos aren’t normally anti-vaccine, demographically that seems to be more of a upper middle class white thing. The outbreak of pertusis in your link is probably due to large families. Newborns do not, and shouldn’t, get the DTaP before two months of age. However, there are probably aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins that are around the kid during those two months that take herd immunity out of the equation. The article you linked to touches on this as the kids were for the most part under 6 months old and the most likely vector was Latino adults.
That may be a problem, but it’s related to finances and access to health care, etc, etc. The true willfull idiocy is from upper middle class whites who think they know better than the doctor. Look at this
Fuck you, Jenny McCarthy.
I wasn’t using the example of the differential effect on Latino children as an example of Latino anti-vaccine sentiment. I was using it in reference to my statement that the media will only cover vaccine-preventable deaths if the RIGHT children die. The whooping cough epidemic in 2010 got some coverage, but not as much, in my opinion, as if the more of the deceased children had been that “right kind.” In other words, if more of those children had been from well-off white families, I think the media would have provided more coverage. I base this opinion on the existence of Missing White Girl Syndrome, which we’ve talked about before on this board.
The rest of your post is of course accurate in every way, especially the last sentence.
n/m