Our pediatrician was amenable to modifying WhyBaby’s schedule, because she was just so darn premature. Turns out there isn’t (wasn’t? don’t know if they’ve made one since) a special vaccination schedule for micropreemies, and the schedule said she should be getting her first vaccines four months before her due date. Now I know they haven’t tested vaccines on babies that young in large enough numbers to have meaningful results. Since her immune system wasn’t up to even newborn standards, I just couldn’t authorize vaccinations that young. Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt, but, hey, she was still in the NICU, and no babies who had ever been outside the walls of the hospital were allowed in her rooms, and no children allowed in, and parents watched like hawks as they did a full 6 minute scrub with clorhex before entering, so the chances of transmission were slim, I thought.
Anyhow, my best advice for dealing with anti-vaxxers is not to fight their hypothetical. I simply say totally matter-of-factly, “Oh, then since she’s too old to develop autism now, you’ll be catching her up on a modified vaccine schedule, right? That’s what we did.” (Even though my delaying had nothing to do with autism.)
Gives them an out, you see. It doesn’t mean that they’re WRONG AND STUPID (which they have to admit by changing their minds), it means that there’s a way they can stay right in their own minds while protecting their own (and others’) kids in reality.
The claim of autism suddenly appearing right after vaccination is popular among antivaxers.
Interestingly, the time when parents say they noticed autistic symptoms has been linked to the degree of publicity about supposed vaccine dangers - for instance, parents were more likely to report symptoms appearing close to vaccination once the MMR scare got widespread media publicity.
And there’s been research showing that experts can pick up signs of autism in young children long before their parents report noticing anything, and thus well before the vaccine(s) that supposedly were the trigger.
I wouldn’t cut off contact with people just because they are not vaccinating their kids for fear of autism (although if I had children I’d have to consider the risk to them from associating with the non-vaccinated kids - or if someone close to me was immunosuppressed and thus at risk of contracting a serious vaccine-preventable disease). Where I’d have trouble maintaining a relationship with the parents is if they morphed into hard-core antivaxers, denying vaccines ever eradicated disease or markedly reduced its incidence, promoting conspiracy theories and the like. That level of doggedly ignorant poison is hard to take.
This anti-vaccine nonsense needs to be nipped in the bud immediately and I have no doubt that the only way to get it through the thick skulls of these morons (and frankly, child abusers) is shame. I wouldn’t let me kid play with their kid and I’d make sure they know exactly why. I’d tell everyone else on the street, too. I doubt they’ll cling so tightly to their misinformation if suddenly they and the kid have no friends due to their poor choices.
It’s awful, but as I see it, information doesn’t work, education doesn’t work, so now we should move right on to shame.
A few weeks ago, a friend of a friend was raging at lunch about the fact that her daughter’s middle school was requiring a whooping cough vaccine. I mean, she was just cursing the school up and down, ranting about her rights, blah blah. I looked at her plainly and said, “Are you stupid? Whooping cough hurts. Why the hell would you wish that on your daughter?” Stammering. Stammering. “Well, I uh, I mean, I have rights!” Uh huh.
Funny enough, two days later her daughter got the vaccine. My respect for her, however, has not and will not recover. She is forever branded an idiot and a bad parent in my book.
My sister shocked me when she revealed to me that she was a birther. I never really went to her for political advice anyway, but this was just crazy talk.
My family doctor said refusal to allow vaccination is a form of child abuse. He does treat under 12s.
My physician DIL will arrange a slower schedule for vaccination if the parents will allow that. She is seriously considering refusing as patients determined ant–vaxxers.
Incidentally, I have recently read (Science Times, I think) that intimations of autism appear very early, long before vaccination; they are just not sufficiently abnormal to note. My youngest grandchild was so social that from 4 months, everyone but his mother had to stay out of sight when he was nursing, because he would rather look at people and smile than feed. Now his getting on to four and he is still super-social.
I’m not entirely certain whether I know anti-vaxxers (well, technically, I know Jenny McCarthy from when she used to work at the local grocery store as a checkout girl), but almost everyone I know seems to have at least one belief I find batshit. Birthers, 9/11 truthers, believers in the supernatural, alien abduction, Jewish conspiracies, FDA conspiracies, homepathy, crystal healing, etc. Frankly, I don’t know how the posters here manage to keep a circle of friends that doesn’t include at least some fringe beliefs. Yes, anti-vax is more dangerous than most, but I wouldn’t sever a friendship based on that.
I read an article just yesterday about doctors in Ontario beginning to turn away patients over this issue - the ones whose “beliefs” are such that the doctors can’t really do anything for the kids anyways. It might just be a handful of patients, but it’s beginning to happen.
In my view, there’s a fair distinction between the bulk of religious claims, which are not falsifiable, and the anti-vax practices, which can be shown to be simply wrong.
Do you see what I mean? As a general rule, there is no test you can apply to religious claims that will show them to be false. You’re correct, of course, to point out that by the same token they cannot be shown to be true, and that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, so the logical default position is disbelief.
But that’s a far cry from rejecting the overwhelming weight of medical evidence with respect to vaccinations.
I wonder, with the state of the economy, and health care in general… whether some of the anti-vax crowd might be “can’t AFFORD to get my kids vaccinations” in disguise.
I have a friend who is full of all sorts of woo - antivaxxer, believes that the government is all full of conspiracies including the one about airline contrails are pumping mind control and other chemicals into the air, anti-Obama stuff [though not a birther] I tolerate his wooness, but sort of fear for his daughter [she is about 3 now] I have given up trying to argue with him so we have a truce. He doesn’t email me his crap and I don’t snopes bomb him.
The argument “my kid was fine on the morning she got her vaccinations, and when we came home she had a autism” is my personal favorite. Autism is a developmental problem, you don’t catch it and develop symptoms in a few hours like the flu.
My sons go to a local pediatric practice that does this. If you will not vaccinate your children, they ask that you find a doctor that has beliefs more in line with your own. If you choose a nonstandard vaccination schedule, they will keep you in their practice, but will not schedule extra appointments to accommodate you; you must go to the Health Department for your vaccinations on your own schedule.
Human beings do this sort of stuff all the time. The Halo Effect is what we call it when we take one positive aspect of a person and, without evidence, assume many other positive aspects. We have similar approaches when we discover something negative about someone. There is a human tendency to use cognitive shortcuts, called heuristics, instead of actually thinking through things. When determining if they’re moon landing conspiracy believers, or Birthers, instead of doing the actual brain-intensive work to think it through, it’s easier to use Attribute Substitution and just plug in “Idiot” and voila, you have your answer. They’re idiots, therefore they’re birthers/moon landing conspiracy believers/etc. The result is a type of cognitive error, specifically the Association Fallacy.
The danger with letting the kind of inverse Halo Effect the OP is experiencing run away with you, which can happen, is it can create Self Fulfilling Prophecies. So while you might have had an entire lifetime of pleasant acquaintanceship with these people, instead you’re on pins and needles waiting for their next episode of batshittery and, well, generally we find what we look for.
This, on the other hand, seems to be pretty much textbook Denialism. Take all of the worlds religions and the claims they make and have made over human history. The vast majority are not only falsifiable but actually already proven false. The world is not part of a giant tree. The sun is not a golden chariot. The ground is not a giant turtle. The Exodus never happened. There was no global flood.
There are large numbers of religious claims that could be falsified if they weren’t ancient and beyond the reach of modern investigation. That’s not the same as an unfalsifiable claim, it’s just the epistemological equivalent of getting away with a crime because the statute of limitations has passed. It doesn’t mean you were right, just that society couldn’t prove you wrong before the evidence was lost.
Part of the point that the scientific community is trying to make is that the herd immunity gained by universal vaccination protects a handful of children who turn out to be allergic. But if we have a bunch of parents refuse to vaccinate their children due to ignorance, they put in danger those children who cannot be vaccinated.
I find the whole anti-vaxx thing a little silly, if you ask me. Come to think of it, I also find the notion that you must bleach/antibacterialize/santize every single thing in your house at least once a day for your house to be “Clean” rather silly also.
For the record, I don’t believe vaccines caused my son to have Asperger’s. I think that the fact that we have several family members (myself included!) with learning disorders made him pre-disposed to it though.
I also do not bleach/sanitize/antibacterialize my house (except my bathroom) on a daily basis and I believe that it’s given my kid a stronger immune system. He doesn’t get sick very often, maybe once a year. The worst he suffers through on any sort of a regular basis are seasonal/outdoor allergies, which he was also pre-disposed to since Stickman and I both suffer from seasonal allergies.
The Vaccines For Children offers free vaccines to all uninsured or underinsured children in the USA. From reading the site, if you’re don’t have insurance that covers vaccines, this act will cover you.
There is a maximum administrative fee the providers are allowed to charge that varies by state, which is around $15.
While it’s true I mentioned “religion” without qualification, the context in which I was speaking was this thread, and the note that the OP apparently attends church with the anti-vax couple. As such, I assumed that they were not members of a faith that accepted giant trees, turtles, or flaming chariots.
It’s certainly possible that they belong to a faith that holds the Exodus literally consisted of 600,000 people, or that the world was literally covered in water and would have been destroyed but for Noah’s timely craftsmenship.
If they do, I concede their claims are on shaky ground.
But it’s at least possible that they belong to a faith that recognizes these as parables rather than literal truths.