I realize I’m probably being over optimistic, but did having their child come down with a serious vaccine preventable illness in any way affect their anti-vaccine stance?
I’m chiming in for Roald Dahl and Patricia O’Neal. Their daughter Olivia died from measles when she was eight.
What I find interesting/odd about anti-vaxxers, is that they tend to come in two varieties.
The first is the one popularized by Jenny McCarthy…typically left-leaning, and very likely to engage in life style choices like vegetarianism, home schooling, environmentalism, “alternative medicine”, and could fall into the stereotypical “new age hippy” crowd, to over-generalize. They seem to avoid vaccinations out of a fear that they aren’t ‘natural,’ full of toxins, etc…
The other group tends to be very right-wing, anti-government, etc… and seem to refuse vaccinations more out of spite and an attitude of “damn government can’t tell ME what to do with my kids!”
Though it does seem both of them buy into the “conspiracy theory” idea that vaccines/Big Pharma are just out to make you sick and get your money.
The one thing the extreme sides agree on! :smack:
I’ve been advocating a very simple solution to the anti-vax nuttery:
Allow health insurance companies to disallow coverage for vaccine-preventable conditions in the absence of a valid and documented medical exemption. No other exemptions allowed.
Let some kid come down with whooping cough or measles because they weren’t vaccinated and have to spend a week in the hospital. The parents are now on the hook for the multi-tens or hundreds of thousand dollars hospital bill.
I think in very short order parents will vaccinate their children.
This is simple and logical and appeals to my sense of justice for the parents. Of course, a kid who has to go through this is gonna be miserable, but that kid has sucky parents.
At any rate, because this idea is logical, I doubt that it would ever be implemented.
While my initial reaction was, “fuck yea,” on reconsideration I have some concerns about this. Parents on the hook for medical or hospital bills may attempt to avoid the bills until it’s too late to save the child or prevent life-long damage. I don’t think children should be punished for the stupidity of their parents.
The kids are already being punished for the stupidity of their parents. If common sense won’t convince these crazy morons, maybe hitting them in the pocket will.
I think a combined approach. Make exemptions much tougher to get, and make parents more financially liable.
And label all the anti-vaccine propagandists with big red Ms. Tattooed to their foreheads.
I would just like to say that I am totally in support of the Spanish flu.
I had a great-uncle who died of whooping cough when he was only three.
I have an eight year old daughter. After reading that I hugged her just a little longer this morning.
I recently sandblasted a friend on Facebook for linking to an anti-vax site. She linked to an article that said the Amish have no incidence of autism, because they don’t vaccinate their children. There was so much stupid in that article, I couldn’t beat it. It was like fighting a hydra made of pure, weapons grade, unstable isotope STupid. Every citation, every pointed-out flaw, just brought her and her like-minded friends that much closer to the criticality of abandoning logic all together. Seriously, the last comment was along the lines of “pertussis isn’t deadly, it’s the complications which are deadly. That’s why it’s okay not to vaccinate your child.”
The Augean Stables has nothing on this pile of shit.
But come on, we’d still hit it. Right?.. Right…
right?
This very day, 12/17/11 is my grandmother’s 107th birthday. As a child she lost two siblings, one to diptheria and the other, as a new born, to unknown causes of my great-grandmother being pregnant and having German measles at the same time.
Grandma has always thought modern medical advances are literally Heaven sent. She was a cancer survivor at the age of 91! I don’t think she’s aware of the anti-vaccination crowd but I suspect she’d be appalled.
This is a lie. The Amish absolutely do vaccinate their children (not to the levels that non-Amish, but they still do). They absolutely do experience autism in their communities. Dan Olmstead, I believe, is the anti-vax lunatic who started and perpetuates this myth.
You know that. I know that. The Amish know that. I’m betting the entire staff of the CDC knows that.
Would it budge my otherwise intelligent and wise friend and her cronies from their utter lack of sense? Nope.
Good for you.
The Amish are not my favorite people on this issue. Many of them avoid several vaccines on the standard vaccine schedule. As a result they’ve had multiple outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases in their communities including polio and HiB.
I hope you don’t live anywhere near those facebook loons. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to your darling baby. One of my neighbors sent me a Jenny McCarthy link and talked about “toxins” in the flu vaccine. I smile and keep the baby as far away from her as I dare.
What’s fascinating about this whole vaccination debacle (cerebrally-speaking) is that according to game theory, in order to maximize one’s best possible outcome, one should *not *vaccinate their kids, and everyone else *should *vaccinate theirs. I think the application of this is (at least partially) why there are so many anti-vaxers out there. I imagine the thought process is something like, “*I know that most people vaccinate their kids. But vaccines come with risk *[at ridiculously low percentages, which people are notoriously poor at assessing]. In order to avoid that risk, I’m not going to vaccinate my kid. If my kid isn’t vaccinated and everybody else’s kids are, then it doesn’t matter anyway.”
But the extreme case (nobody vaccinates) would result in a shitload more deaths from very-preventable diseases. I have a feeling if a majority of people became anti-vax, a lot of the anti-vaxers would change their stance. Especially if their friend’s/family member’s child died from something like measles, mumps, or rubella.
There’s an interesting (if preachy [and debatably hackneyed]) Law & Order: SVU episode about this. An antivaxer didn’t vaccinate her son, he caught measles, and he infected an unrelated baby in the park (who was too young to have received her MMR yet) by proximity. The baby died and the antivaxer was charged with… something (reckless endangerment? manslaugher? I don’t remember). She was found not-guilty, since there are no mandated vaccinations unless you want your kid to attend public school (and her kid was younger than kindergarten-age).
What’s the Buzz Aldrin treatment?
Unkown but wiki suggests:
If so, agreed.
Checked it out, and I agree!
Good grief, that guy packed a punch, especially for his age!