Ontario has announced a new policy: if parents want an exemption from vaccinating their kids who go to public school, the parents have to sit through a class on vaccination:
Vaccine exemptions for kids would require Ontario parents to first take education session:
I highly doubt this will change their minds. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
vaccines are a victim of their own successes. These idiot. anti-vax “parents” have never suffered or known anyone to suffer from the diseases they’re meant to prevent. they think pertussis is “just a cough,” or measles is “just a rash,” or mumps is a totes adorbs puffy cheeks. And once they run out of excuses for their mindset, they fall back on the usual “well, I know what’s best for my child!” as if pushing out a kid somehow imbues you with medical expertise.
This saying pops up regularly on SDMB. I’d like to see that stop. Many positions are based on feelings or on very incomplete information – and many of those positions get changed when additional information becomes available.
It’s not at all unusual for people to change their opinions when exposed to new facts. I felt it was unlikely that Prince had an opiod problem; I was exposed to new information and now I feel it is highly likely that Prince had an opiod problem.
If someone is anti-vaxx based on a few misunderstood facts, some erroneous rumors, and a lack of knowledge, then they could very well be reasoned out of their unreasoned (or badly reasoned) position.
Cynicism aside, the cure for ignorance is always education.
I’m glad they set this up. Even if it only converts a few people. At least the remainder can never claim, they weren’t aware of the risks!
I agree. There might be some “true believers”, but it’s likely a continuum - some people have may be more on the “I’ve heard that vaccines…” and are open to hearing more things. For example, if a parent comes in and explains the suffering that their child went through with pertussis, or a doctor points out cases where a boy went sterile from mumps.
Leave it to the Canadians to do something that actually makes sense. Would you guys mind running our country for us for the next four years or so?
I just hope one of the requirements of the class is that you have to shut up. Otherwise it will be hit or miss whether you get a true believer in your class who just tries to shout down the instructor.
Can you do it online? Like those money-grabbing “defensive driving” courses, in cahoots with the insurance companies, to keep points off your drivers license.
hopefully you actually have to pass the class before you can subject your child to lots of fun diseases.
Have the baby cut in half. The state gets to vaccinate one half and the parents get to keep the unvaccinated half.
I actually had someone try to tell me that the measles wasn’t all that bad because on the episode where all the Brady kids had it, not of them died, or even got very sick.
Yeah. I worked with someone back in the 1990s, who I was told had had a rare reaction to the DTP vaccine, and was now severely retarded with seizures. As a result, her younger brother was put on a delayed vaccine schedule. She received an award from the Vaccine Injury Fund, and her syndrome was well-known among doctors, and generally regarded to be a very rare risk of the vaccine. Having known her, I was an advocate for alternate schedules for some people.
About ten years later, I read about Dravet’s syndrome, and realized this is what the person I worked with must have had. It’s infamous for being a spontaneous genetic mutation that disrupts the sodium channel, causing retardation and seizures, and was present in something like 97% of people tested who had previously been thought to have been injured by the DTP vaccine. The DTaP vaccine was supposed to prevent this injury that it turns out never to have caused in the first place.
Now granted, I had misinformation, rather than a “gut feeling,” but there are plenty of people who listen to an alarmist relative, Google, and come up with a dated website they don’t realize is dated, who may be moved by new information. Their alarmist relative may not, but every generation you get from the original alarmist, you have people more and more easily swayed by good information. You also may possibly have a few people who belong to religious groups they aren’t really sure about (maybe they were raised that way, but their own faith is shaky) who are looking for a reason to say “yes” to vaccines, and the education may give them one. Or you may have couples (I knew one) where one is very anti-vaccine, and the other one is going along, but really thinks vaccines are OK. The educational session might be what it takes for the non-woo parent to put his (it was “his” in the couple I knew) foot down. Couples like that are probably more common than you’d think.
You honestly think this is just a “money-grabbing” scheme? :dubious:
To a degree, your someone, and the Brady kids, had a point. But only to a point.
I had measles when I was 4 or 5. I spent about a week on the front-room sofa, attended by Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Auntie. I later learned that Mom and Dad called in Grandma and Auntie when it became apparent that I needed 24-hour care. and they all took shifts, around the clock. And they took great care to keep me from my younger sister. I survived, obviously; as I am here to post now, but it was no fun.
Now I look at measles, and I’m amazed that I (and Sis) survived. Such a horrid disease! I have no doubt that had there been a vaccination in those days, I would have got it. I hated getting boosters etc. as a kid (let’s face it, they hurt), but Mom and the doctor said they were necessary, so I dealt.
But measles was that bad. When I had it, I felt like crap. The worst I’ve ever felt in my life was then, when I had measles. In my 50+ years since then, I haven’t felt quite as ill as that.
A pro-vaccine advocate in another forum made an interesting point about Ontario’s new requirement. She said it uncomfortably reminded her of laws compelling women seeking an abortion to be “educated” about the procedure (i.e. to be hit with anti-abortion talking points) before undergoing it.
While I’m strongly pro-immunization and am not comparing that position with being anti-abortion, I share some of her unease. I’m probably more in favor of non-mandatory educational efforts, inconvenience and financial incentives* as motivating factors.
*for instance, one country (Australia) has a provision ending government child support payments to parents who refuse vaccination for their children. A problem with that approach is that it wouldn’t have a meaningful effect on upper-income antivaxers.
But objection to abortion is a moral issue, whereas anti vax is really about scientific ignorance, so not a great comparison, I think. Education is a good choice, I think.
I hope it’s more like the driver’s education classes when I was in school, which was as much about gory crash-aftermath videos as actually learning to operate a motor vehicle. Show old movies of kids in iron lungs, a Roosevelt-with-polio movie, a nice Salk biopic (to counter the [del]knee-jerk reflex[/del] idea that vaccines are inherently tainted by “huge” Big Pharma profits), etc. If the problem is people unaware of when vaccinated diseases were a “big deal”, showing them the full consequences of those diseases unvaccinated should illuminate at least some minds.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
A pro-vaccine advocate in another forum made an interesting point about Ontario’s new requirement. She said it uncomfortably reminded her of laws compelling women seeking an abortion to be “educated” about the procedure (i.e. to be hit with anti-abortion talking points) before undergoing it.
While I’m strongly pro-immunization and am not comparing that position with being anti-abortion, I share some of her unease. I’m probably more in favor of non-mandatory educational efforts, inconvenience and financial incentives* as motivating factors.
*for instance, one country (Australia) has a provision ending government child support payments to parents who refuse vaccination for their children. A problem with that approach is that it wouldn’t have a meaningful effect on upper-income antivaxers.
[/QUOTE]
Another problem is that many parents who do need the money will nonetheless forego child support, which will only compound an unvaccinated child’s problems. :smack: Remember, the parents who refuse vaccines honestly feel they’re saving their children’s lives. IMHO, making a parent attend a class is a more targeted solution, with less “collateral damage”.
Here’s how I’d run the class. The first thing that I’d do is get 20-30 parents to give their child’s name (and if possible, show us all a picture). Write the names on the whiteboard. Then the teacher announces that we’re going to pretend like it’s 1950 and there are no vaccines. Pick a name at random, and then: “Mrs. Smith, I’m very sorry to tell you, but your daughter contracted Smallpox and has died.”
Continue the lesson, but intersperse it with inflicting random children with diseases, at historical rates. Have some of them killed, some of them pull through, and have some experience permanent, life-changing side effects. Make it personal for the parents. That will be a lot more effective then hitting them with stats.
Frankly, for some, this is inconvenience as a motivating factor. As someone who performs immunizations (in Ontario, no less), I have had the pleasure of meeting parents who are anti-vax until it becomes inconvenient.
For example, Ontario has recently been enforcing suspensions for students of a certain age who do not have their mandatory vaccines (or have a valid exemption). There is a a segment of parents out there who don’t vaccinate, but have not submitted a formal exemption for their child. Some of these parents are now immunizing because it’s easier to get the shot and avoid the suspension then get the exemption forms figured out.
Having, or not having an abortion does not risk epidemics.
End of story.
Stealing that phrase!!
Although I’m pretty anti-anti-vax, this sounds like something the Soviets would have done. Sure, you’re allowed to disagree with Health Canada, enjoy your trip to the re-education camp, err I mean the education session. Otherwise, it’s a pretty good pushback to the anti-vax movement.