I’m pretty sure it’s OK to talk about something I read on another message board, isn’t it? (I won’t mention which one.)
A mother was talking about her concerns regarding her preschool-age child who has not received any vaccinations. She says that she decided not to vaccinate because she knows it’s best for the kid’s heath. But now…it’s time to enroll in daycare, and it’s gotten her to thinking…hey, what if some of the OTHER kids aren’t vaccinated? Could this be a big risk to her child?
DUH…ya THINK?
So now she’s trying to figure out if there’s any way she can get information about whether or not the other kids there have had their vaccinations or not. What, is she going to do this for the rest of the kid’s life? And isn’t it nice that she wants the other moms to do something to THEIR kids that she apparently thinks is a big risk to their health, in order to protect HER child from disease? Nice attitude! VERY civic-minded of you, ma’am, our society really appreciates your caring!
Hey, at least that concept has crossed her mind. If she realizes that everybody else’s vaccine information is none of her business, perhaps she’ll do the smart thing and have her kid get the shots.
This whole idea of vaccinations causing autism is ridiculous. How could anyone come to that conclusion? It’s obvious autism is caused by cell phone radiation. All you need to do is have your kid wear a tin-foil hat every day and they’ll be fine.
No offense, but this is hilarious to me. Seriously, if it’s better for her precious little snowflakes to not get vaccinated, why does it matter if anyone else is or not? I would make up a bunch of shit about how un-vaccinated kids are less likely to ever get sick than vaccinated ones and print it out for her. I’m sadistic like that.
Is it fair tot he kid? No, but I am antisocial, I don’t really give a shit about other people, so let them die off, ya know? Seriously, these people should get to face the conseuqences of their own idiocy, and deal with a kid with mumps or whatever.
That being said, I am very much against the chicken pox vaccine – just because the numbers I saw when I was told it was a required vaccine didn’t convince me that it was worth it. I still vaccinated my son, I just disagree that it was worthwhile.
Oh, these anti-vax people don’t even care about the autism thing specifically, anymore. They think all kinds of problems are caused by them…seizures, cancer, asthma, SIDS, learning disabilities, etc. etc.
That one worries me a little, too. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with the vaccine itself, but because it seems to me it might end up leading to more cases of chicken pox in adults, when it is much more dangerous.
I don’t think so - at least not into daycare. I’ve had to provide complete vaccinations records to my son’s daycare since the day he started. He’s 16 months and has been there for just around a year.
Sarahfeena, I’m with you on this one. That woman sounds like a moron. I can’t believe she’d expect everyone else to vaccinate their children just so her unvaccinated kid can avoid infection. While she’s at it, maybe she should require that they put all the other kids into plastic bubbles as an additional preventive method. If it inhibits their development, well, at least her kid will look ahead of the curve. :rolleyes:
That’s the problem; she (and other anti-vaccies) are not morons; quite the opposite. They (or at least the ones I’ve argued with) fully understand and appreciate the benefits of vaccination; they simply believe that they can avoid for their child the (assumed) risks of vaccination by relying upon the (assumed) stupidity of the average parent who will get their kids vaccinated, thus providing herd protection to the anti-vaccies’ kids. They are classic free riders - the antithesis of civilized humans.
The OP hits on the way to beat these fuckers - deny to them any information, specific or general, about vaccination rates in their community. Let them sweat out the possibility that their kid is enrolling in a kindergarten full of the unvaccinated offspring of other selfish smegmas. Betcha that a whole lot of them cave real fast.
This is the only vaccine that we’ve declined so far (yeah, horror of horrors, I even got my kid Rota-Teq.) - and it’s specifically for that reason. I’m hoping my son catches chicken pox on his own before he starts kindergarten (chicken pox vaccine is NOT a required vaccine in our state yet, but we assume it will be by then). If he hasn’t, we will probably try to opt out of the vaccine on a personal objection.
But the woman in the OP is a moron. If you’re not going to vaccinate your own child, you don’t get to worry about what other kids might pass to him/her. You don’t get to play moral compass for everyone ELSE.
Short memory, inability to filter Bullshit from hard information, and pure selfishness.
They forget that just over a generation ago many children suffered from diseases that maimed or killed them in great numbers. They forget how common that actually was.
They forget that due to vaccinations and the work of people in the medical research field that many of those problems were almost completely eliminated or at the very least the threat was greatly reduced. It became rarer for families to lose multiple children due to preventable diseases.
Because of this, among other advances the potential danger of 1 in a billion seems scary because they no longer have to fear real things like the infant mortality rate of 100.9 deaths per 1000 live births (in the US in 1918)
They also can not discern real valid scientific data from a news blurb (“A study shows Vaccinations Might cause autism details at 11”) or a crappy blog saying how evil scientists are because they do things we don’t understand therefore are out to get us.
The little information they get frightens them and so they make the assumption because they don’t hear about Polio epidemics or Rubella outbreaks that they are some how making their kids safer by avoiding the miniscule risks. Now they make it worse because their children are at more risk.
The Selfish thing is they expect everyone else to immunize to protect their tykes. Yeah the two birds with one stone. Jr won’t come down the Terminal stupids caused by vaccination (according to Bob’s BS Blogworld) and because other kids are immunized they can possibly avoid dumd dumb fever. They forget they aren’t the only other ones gambling. There are other selfish twits risking their children too.
I pray there it doesn’t take another reemergence of polio or something to wake them from their little dreams.
Aha! This is just the datum required to complete my master proof of the theory, “People are imbecilic rat bastards.” Thank you.
And yeah, I will chime in that not every anti vax person is so deluded as to buy the autism garbage. And there are legitimate risks to vaccinations - kids do sometimes have serious reactions to them. But to my mind that calls for cost-benefit analysis regarding whether the risk of a shot is worse than the risk of whooping cough in your own kid. Someone who is bald-facedly saying they want everyone else to put their kids through the ringer so their little Precious can be protected without shots needs a serious dope slap.
Ah, well, that’s externalities for you, the same mindset that leads to NIMBYism. Vaccinations, like offshore wind farms, are all well and good, provided the side effects are shunted to someone else.
The ones I argued with (I was banned from a messageboard for being pro-vaccination) were morons - deliberately so, in many cases; by nature in others.
They were complete idiots. One of them claimed to be a medical researcher, but did not understand the word “prophylaxis”. They were a walking textbook of logical fallacies. They couldn’t understand any distinctions at all - “vax bad!” was the sum and pinnacle of their thinking.
The ones I argued largely denied the reality of “herd immunity” altogether, and the best way to start a flame fest was to suggest that there were any benefits to vaccination at all.
You don’t have to deny the ones I saw anything - they make it a point to close their minds off to any realistic thought at all.
I’m probably not the best person to argue the point, though - I have some hearing loss in one ear because I got measles before there was a vaccine for it. I wasted a good hour telling the idiots over and over that no, I didn’t get anti-biotics for my measles ear infection because measles is a viral disease and anti-biotics don’t affect it.
They continued to insist that I must have, because no one ever gets ear infections from measles. And ignoring the links to studies showing that they do.
Like I said, “the common clay of the new West. You know - morons.”
Really? Holy crap; I’d given up paying attention to the underlying arguments a couple years ago – after reading about childrens’ diseases spiking in Japan, directly after repealing their vaccination requirments.
Thank you for pointing this out. I’m totally dumbfounded.
I really feel for these parents who say their children suffered ill effects from vaccines, I can’t imagine they’re all just lying. And they’re reading the stuff from the CDC, not tea leaves. And - I think it IS a good idea to closely examine common practices, to see if they’re actually beneficial. Like giving kids so many shots at one time, is that really wise? People do vary in their sensitivity to all kinds of allergens, why would the reaction to vaccines/vaccine components be universal and uniform?
BUT, yes, it is largely a culture of superiority and ignorance. Very much a “herd” mentality. And a hypocritical one.
I just feel their frustration. My kids’ peds have given me incomplete and just flat-out erroneous information, such as insisting that it’s OK to turn the carseat around at 20 lbs OR 1 year, whichever comes first. Yes, I argued that one.
Semi-related to this topic, I am currently reading a book that, among other things, says there is a study that shows that autistic children are more likely to have been induced births or c-sectioned. Anyone ever heard this one?
I expect the “vaccination causes autism” idea to get even more widespread now. It was on Oprah last week. She had 2 celebrity guests on with autistic sons who strongly implied that vaccinations caused their children’s autism and that Dr.'s and the CDC were ignoring mothers.
I have…some people think there is a link between pitocin, which is the drug used for inducing labor, and autism. I was interested because my births were both induced, but I haven’t found anything that seems to take the theory seriously.