Vaccinate your babies, people. Whooping cough breaks ribs ribs. Whooping cough leads to pneumonia, brain damage and death in little tiny babies.
Fuck.
Okay, but it doesn’t look like that is an issue here. Seems these Latino farmworkers aren’t vaccinating because they don’t know any better, not because they think it will cause autism or whatever.
Some parents may not have access to health care.
Others, however, are just plain stupid:
Upper class twits.
These people just make me crazy. How many babies need to die before they admit their “personal beliefs” are just plain wrong? Worse contagious and dangerous.
Considering how crazy a lot of these people are, even after babies die they won’t change their minds. And the anti-vax movement is disheartening. But, there are people out there fighting ignorance. Hopefully some of these people who are not the hardcore followers will learn the truth instead of just listening to Jenny McCarthy.
A side-note- Penn and Teller are doing an episode on the anti-vax movement on their show “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!” which looks like it will be interesting.
A lovely comic from TallGuyWrites:
The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a short history of the modern nti-vacc movement.
One of the funny (and by funny I mean stupid) things about the anti-vax movement is that they’ll think “what’s the big deal, anyway? When was the last time you heard of someone dying from polio or measles or something? Clearly it’s not a big danger so it’s no big deal to vaccinate anyway”. But the reason that we don’t have to deal with these diseases is because of those vaccinations, you fucking retards. Do you think people who grew up in the 40s and 50s who saw people crippled by polio or died from diseases that are practically wiped out now scoff at vaccines? Fuck no, they saw the horrible diseases that we’ve managed to nearly eradicate in action and they’re thankful we managed to conquer them. It must blow their minds that people refuse vaccines.
Anyway - I expect that we’re going to see a backlash against the anti-vax movement when we start seeing nearly eradicated diseases pop up and start killing people again. Which really sucks, because the people who will pay the price here are not the idiot parents but their kids and the few people who can’t take/benefit from vaccines due to medical conditions. People are going to have to suffer and die for millions of morons to get over this stupid, stupid conspiracy theory.
The pertussis vaccine (usually administered as part of the DTaP vaccine) is administered in 5 stages. The first dose is generally given at 2 months, with the remaining doses given at 4, 6, and 15 months, and 4-6 years.
The babies who died of whooping cough in the story were all under the age of 3 months. Even children who received 3 or 4 doses can contract pertussis (although they are 80-85% less likely to contract it).
So even if these parents did get their children vaccinated, it wouldn’t guarantee immunity. The real problem is that there are adults out there who are transmitting the disease. What you really should be saying is “Vaccinate yourselves, people.”
For what it’s worth, I was fully vaccinated as a child, and I still got pertussis as a young teen. I am told that it is not uncommon for it to wear off around then. I missed six weeks of school entirely and was on a sharply reduced schedule for the next six.
ETA: That said, I fervently support vaccination and serve on the Board of Directors for the parent organization of the Washington Immunization Action Coalition.
All the more reason to make sure everyone is vaccinated - herd immunity keeps everyone safe.
When I saw the clipped-off title on the main page, I thought this was an abortion thread.
Diminishing herd immunity in California may not be to blame for these five deaths.
What’s clear is that lots more children in California (and elsewhere) are at risk because of lowered pertussis vaccine uptake rates in the general population, and responsibility for that lies heavily with antivaxers and their campaign of misinformation and fear.
As someone who did grow up during the period specified, yes, it does blow my mind. I got the measles as a kid, before the vaccine was widely available. I have partial hearing loss in one ear as a result.
My children are fully vaccinated.
Would that were true. But those kinds of diseases have already popped up. Didn’t make a dime’s worth of difference. The power of human denial is nearly unlimited.
Regards,
Shodan
That is fucking outstanding.
Libertarians argue they should be at liberty to act on their own medical research, not that of some left-wing government doctor. I don’t know (or care) if libertarians also argue they should be at liberty to let their children get preventable disease.
Li-ber-tar-i-ans, just because the name of their political ilk uses five syllables, strut around smugly thinking they have 3-digit IQ’s. But instead, they’re not even dimly aware of a simple fact I learned in primary school:
This. The government doesn’t want to coerce John Libertarian’s son Johnny to get vaccinated because it gives a shit about a stupid libertarian’s son! It’s protecting Johnny’s playmates! People who don’t even know this much shouldn’t be allowed to vote, let alone strut their stupidities at SDMB.
(PS: Since we’re in BBQ Pit I took the opportunity to hold a mirror up to “libertarians”. 
)
That’s a beautiful thing. 
Are American children typically vaccinated against pertussis? I don’t remember that being the case in the UK.
I don’t know why you’re going to town on libertarians on this issue - almost all the antivaxers I’m aware of (I’m having a hard time thinking of one that’s not) are dipshit new agey liberals.
The anti-vaccination libertarians are all living in caves prepared for the coming anarchy. 