^ Agreed. Also, the goalposts always move. Autism isn’t the only fear, just the most well known. There’s also mercury, the vague “toxins,” the “but they haven’t had a double blind placebo controlled study!” the “natural immunity is stronger and lifelong”, the “too many vaccines at once may overwhelm the undeveloped immune system,” the, “vaccine preventable illnesses were winding down their life cycle when vaccination started, so we don’t know if vaccines really work or not,” the “vaccine preventable illness have been eradicated by better sanitation, not vaccines,” the, “my baby is not a drug user or having sex, so he doesn’t need a hepatitis vaccine,” the “vaccinating for HPV will make them think it’s okay to have sex!” …I mean, they have an endless supply of rationalizations. If you think autism is the only - or even the primary - reason for anti vaccination sentiment, then you don’t know enough about the problem to offer a workable solution.
Do the Freedom of Religion types have an unvaccinated leg to stand here?
So, here’s what people are saying on a Facebook page of some news show running a story:
*Ok so parents who do vaccinate should be required to watch educational videos and read material on the adverse effects of said vaccines!!
If the vaccines work, why would the vaccinated kids & teachers be in danger from those who haven’t been vaccinated??
I will watch the video but I will NEVER change my mind! And talk to my doctor? oh you mean the one that supports the pharmaceutical companies. No thanks!
Why does the government need to make a law to dictate everything we do? Not looking like the land of the FREE anymore. Everyday there is some new law in the works. Ridiculous.
Can you say brainwash??
Parents choosing not to vaccinate are already informed of their decisions.
Next were gonna be watching videos on how to discipline our children. Maybe the politicians should watch an educational video on how to run the county like it is meant to be.
kill the bill it should be choice of parent and child when old enough to be educated
It’s a parent’s choice, not the governments. I immunize my children but know many that don’t. Their kids are sick less often than mine. What’s that tell you?
I don’t want GMO’s in my vaccines or those given to my children! EVER http://www.globalresearch.ca/fda-approves-first.../5338052
FDA approves first GMO Flu Vaccine containing Reprogrammed Insect Virus
www.globalresearch.ca
should be the other way around, those who chose to vaccinate need to watch an educational video on what poisons are being put into their children.*
(Yes, someone tried to point out that you already have to actually sign and take a copy of a packet of information about the vaccine you or your child is getting, and that includes the information these geniuses want vaccinating parents to watch on a DVD.)
And this isn’t a proposal to make not vaccinating a criminal offense. This is a proposal to require parents to watch a video OR talk to their child’s doctor if they don’t vaccinate. Which, y’know, most of us do anyhow, whether we vaccinate or not, the talking to the doctor part.
This is a population that’s almost as opposed to the “Mandatory” part of the issue as they are the “Vaccination” part. They’re not going to go down quietly. Efforts to force them to submit will cause a large howl which will infect the medically illiterate.
I strongly support vaccination, but I also don’t think it’s a good idea to just blanket mandate vaccination. That said, I would probably be in favor of something not unlike how it was handled for the school districts I attended as a kid. I could be mistaken, since I was a kid and it’s been a while since I graduated anyway, but they required immunization records to attend public schools. I had to either demonstrate that I was up to date on various shots, or have an exemption from my doctor.
Now, sure, that sounds kind of pointless on the surface, after all, a strong anti-vax person could just go shopping for an anti-vax doctor to sign the waver, sure, but I do think there’s plenty of other reasons for exemptions besides idiocy. For example, I know I went to school with kids who had some very strong religious beliefs that didn’t allow it. Similarly, while vaccinations are generally demonstrated to be overwhelmingly safe, there are some conditions that may alter those risks for certain individuals.
So the point here is, regardless of whether we just flat require them or not, the anti-vax people will find a way around it. If they’re THAT strongly against it, they’ll ignore all reason, they’ll forge them or find a doctor that will fudge the records either to say they got them when they didn’t or that they have a medical reason not to. However, I suspect that a lot of the anti-vax people are just ill-informed and if they go to a doctor and ask for an exception, that doctor can then explain to them why they’re wrong and maybe help convince them to correct it. And I’ve heard of plenty of pediatricians who, when finding out the parents won’t immunize their kids, will refuse to treat the kids.
So, I guess the point would be, we can’t realistically require immunization, but we can at least require people who might otherwise be too lazy or ill-informed to have a conversation with a properly educated, trained, certified person. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to help cover curb the damage caused by the truly wacky anti-vax crowd, along with the others who may have legitimate religious or medical reasons.
Ultimately, from a policy perspective, I don’t see this as all that much different from abortion or drugs. Even if you think abortion is always wrong, it doesn’t make sense to just ban it, because it’s GOING to happen, I’d rather those people have those procedures done by a medical professional. And just like banning drugs doesn’t just make drug use disappear. If it’s just flat required, people will find a way to circumvent the system and we have no way of knowing what the risk level is or informing people why circumventing the system is stupid.
When they don’t get vaccinated, it causes outbreaks that infect us with actual diseases. I’d like people to make informed and rational choices based on information, but that’s not how it always works out. The web makes information available to everyone and makes education easier, and it also makes misinformation and crazy bullshit available and gives it places to fester. Your point about outreach to educated women is a good one and I’d like to see that attempted, but I’m concerned that we’re just giving too much deference to insanity here. This is killing people.
Except that it isn’t. It isn’t killing people in the US. A bit over 200 people have gotten measles so far this year, and that’s a lot more than 20 years ago and it’s way too many, but no one has died. Measles is fatal only 0.2% of the time. Harping on the death thing is factually incorrect and makes us as unreliable as the antivaxxers. Measles: Overview and More
Right - only mentioning deaths is a typical antivaxer ploy meant (in a weird and sick sense) to minimize the consequences. We should be also be harping on the hospitalizations (40% of all cases in one recent series of outbreaks), serious complications, and costs of containing outbreaks* things.
“About 30% of measles cases develop one or more complications, including
Pneumonia, which is the complication that is most often the cause of death in young children.
Ear infections occur in about 1 in 10 measles cases and permanent loss of hearing can result… As many as 1 out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, and about 1 child in every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis. (This is an inflammation of the brain that can lead to convulsions, and can leave the child deaf or mentally retarded.) For every 1,000 children who get measles, 1 or 2 will die from it. Measles also can make a pregnant woman have a miscarriage, give birth prematurely, or have a low-birth-weight baby.”
http://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html
*In the 2008 outbreak in southern California alone (cause by an unvaccinated patient of Dr. Bob Sears, celebrity antivaxer), cost of containing the outbreak was $150,000. Take into account many different states and numbers of outbreaks and we’re talking major financial costs.
About 20 a year. Again, too many, but not enough to motivate most people. More children choke to death on hot dogs every month.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/pertussis/fs-parents.html
Exactly. These deaths are tragic, but realistically, I don’t believe the small number of deaths rationally justifies the state strong arming vaccines, nor do I think they are sufficient to motivate change in behavior. But hospitalizations and complications and just the general suckiness of watching your child suffer through a week of sleepless nights may motivate.
Antivaxers reach their conclusion based primarily on emotional factors, then go fact and logic shopping for arguments to support that conclusion. Actually this is how most people reach most conclusions unless they have been trained in objectivity.
If you want to change their conclusions you will be most effective appealing to their emotions. This probably means anecdotes of children damaged by preventable diseases.
No worries- it’ll go up. So I was right when I said this does kill people, and I think this is an urgent problem. It’s not yet killing a ton of people in the U.S., but it does kill people and more and more people are catching these diseases.
Personally, I think critical thinking classes in schools would be more beneficial than any educational strategy targeting vaccine myths specifically. An ability to see through the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy alone would be invaluable. It’s damn near impossible to change the mind of an ardent anti-vaxxer, but I would imagine that giving a person the tools to avoid becoming one in the first place would be rather easy.
I would not mandate all vaccinations. Two that come to mind are the flu and cervical cancer vaccines. The former because its effectiveness is so limited - a single strain of a rapidly mutating virus, the latter because it is actually possible to be a part of modern society - especially during childhood - without becoming a transmission vector, unlike for diseases like measles.
Three strains. And it’s not equally effective every year, but my impression is that they’re pretty good at figuring out how the virus will mutate in the months between its isolation and the manufacture of the vaccine.
Yet we’ve managed to have mandatory vaccination without all those other things for, like, 50 years or something.
Slippery slope is a logical fallacy.
The latter protects from cervical cancer and can only (I think) work if it is given early in life. And there’s no way one can predict who will be a vector and who won’t. Like abstinence-only sex ed, it won’t work.
It can only work if it’s given before you’re exposed to the virus. That’s why people recommend earlier vaccinations, but it’s approved for people as old as 26.
No, we have “mandatory” vaccinations with ridiculously easy opt-outs. If you don’t want to vaccinate, you can write a letter saying Jesus told you not to vaccinate, and that’s the end of that.* Or your doctor can write a letter saying that your other kid had a reaction (they don’t have to specify what kind or how minor it was) and that this child shouldn’t be vaccinated, and that’s the end of that.
*Oddly, it has to be religious, though. No such thing as a moral exemption or ethical exemption that doesn’t include God. I find that rather loathsome on a whole 'nother level.
Do most anti-vaxers use that excuse? I have a hard time believing McCarthy does that.
On top of the religious exemptions that exist in almost every state, many states have “personal belief exemptions” that cover non-religious objections to vaccinations.