Well, it's happening now, you stupid mother fuckers (vaccines)

The BBQ Pit
1

This article states that measles and other horrible diseases are on the rise. This is attributed to stupid, stupid mother fucking selfish mother fucking cocksuckers who won’t get their kids vaccinated. Guess what you fucking leaches, you’re not just endangering your own kids! Some of the kids that have gotten it were too young to have gotten their vaccinations yet. Ya get that, you stupid mother fuckers? No, you can’t just count on everyone else vaccinating their own kids to protect yours, like a fucking blood sucking parasite. Because some kids are too young, or have other health issues that prevent this. Plus, vaccines aren’t 100% effective. And the more of you stupid mother fuckers who don’t get your kids vaccinated there are, the more danger the kids of the good parents are placed in. Jenny McCarthy needs to be thrown into fucking jail. Her freedom of speech ends where my kids’ lives begin. What she’s doing is equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? These idiotic beliefs are so easy for them to pick up, and impossible for them to let go. Some stupid ditzy bitch with a high school diploma tells them something, and because she’s on TV they will believe it till the day they die, and no amount of evidence will ever dissuade them. I blame the anti-science attitudes a lot of the fucking churches in this country have. A prerequisite for believing the truth of the bible is rejecting scientific evidence in favor of what some guy told you one time, so by the time these morons are adults they’re already well practiced at ignoring evidence that contradicts their pet theory. Add to that the black/white good vs. evil attitude a lot of them are taught, and tell them enough times that science (read: EVIL-ution) is evil, and of course they are going to reject what scientists tell them. “Why, those same scientists want me to believe we all come from a monkey!” Except now, it’s not just them festering and rotting in their own little pissed off world. Now it’s my child’s health on the line.

Note: I’m not bashing all christians. Just the ones who don’t get vaccinated. And anybody else of whatever religion who doesn’t get vaccinated. And anyone who believes a bronze age goat herder over a bunch of scientific studies. I’d love to see some statistics on the religion of people who don’t get vaccines for their kids. I have a feeling I know what the numbers would look like.

2

Jenny McCarthy?

Most of the people I know opposed to vaccinations are leftists.

3

That’s precisely why many of the children in my area aren’t vaccinated against measles. There’s a dispute about how long the vaccine is effective for, and it doesn’t appear to confer the same immunity as having the disease as a child. Several of the parents (apparently on medical advice) decided to try to ensure their child caught the disease naturally, and only vaccinate if the child didn’t catch it before they were ten.

Since the jabs are now combined and they can’t get single vaccines for the other conditions rolled in with the combined jab, they can’t vaccinate their children against the other conditions even if they wanted to. The government won’t give single jabs because of cost, and because they insist the combined jab is safe and therefore single vaccines are unneccessary.

The result is a rise in totally unvaccinated children. Frankly I’d say that is a bigger issue than whether or not the combined jab is safe. If beliefs and myths about it are causing a fall in herd immunity, and can’t be dispelled, then other options need to be made available.

Most of the ones I know are middle class, and from a range of backgrounds.

Then again I only know two parents who would never ever vaccinate their kids, instead of simply waiting until they are older. Both are from Christian backgrounds.

4

Oh yeah. That dingleberry is convinced her son’s autism was caused by vaccines.

You don’t know John McCain very well, do you?

5

The experience of seeing children die from measles, diphtheria, or other easily preventable diseases in this country has fallen from living memory to a great degree. People are so unbelievably ignorant.

Edit to add - the excuse of avoiding vaccine because of thimerosal is bogus anyway. I quote the CDC website here:

Of course, it was always bogus since multiple studies have failed to prove a link between thimerosal and autism.

6

My grandmother described to me the horrible feeling of helplessness they got every summer, as polio started to spread among local children. It would be reported on the news, the health department would quarantine kids but it wouldn’t make any difference, it would keep spreading. They felt totally powerless and terrified all through the summer. She also remembered the feeling of elation and empowerment when the vaccine was introduced.

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The new survival of the fittest - people immune to junk science have healthier kids who survive to reproduce?

ETA: That breaks down when you factor in other people’s bad choices making your kids sick. I have no dog in this fight (no kids), Shirley, but I can somewhat understand your outrage at that. I don’t like other people’s choices affecting me and mine.

8

Out of curiosity, what’s the relationship between being Christian and refusing vaccination? Are there Christian churches that oppose vaccination? And if so, on what basis?

9

My contact lens solution used to contain thimerosal. I am now blind and have autism.

Just kidding. I’m fine. Used the shit for years.

Well, I think I’m fine. :eek:

10

Ok first of all, anybody who is taking parenting or medical advice from Jenny McCarthy deserves to have their children die.

Secondly, being autistic is not worse than dying. Why on earth would a parent choose to not have their children vaccinated against diseases which could kill them, on an unproven chance it might cause a non-fatal mental syndrone? This is what is happening here, which is different from the religious nutcase parents who will sacrifice the health of their children (who are too young to make their own choices about whether they want medical help) because of their own stupid beliefs, which is what the OP sounds…

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That’s a good question - you’ve got me trying to imagine thinking like that. There are Christian ideologies that reject evolution, and go even further to reject many kinds of science on the basis that only biblical things are good, or that God will look after them. I think. I am not too well-versed with that kind of mentality.

12

Oh, sigh. This is so my boss. I’ve posted about this before – we work at a major, major hospital. You’ve heard of it. Free flu shots. She says, “Oh, you’re going to go over there and get shot up with that mercury? OK, go over there. Let them pump you up full of mercury.” And then she tells me the story again of her friend’s autistic kid who is autistic because he got his shots. Because autism was unknown before immunization. Uh, no – they just thought the kid was a demon and drowned him in the river.

And there is no mercury in the damn flu shots.

13

Shirley is alleging a link between fundamental Christians who distrust much of modern science (or at least biology and physics) and people who distrust vaccines. So far, no one has shown any hard evidence beyond anecdotes. To be fair, I doubt if systematic studies of this have been done. I’m not aware of any religious doctrine to avoid vaccines based on fear of thimerosal.

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But the kids probably don’t deserve it. Just sayin’, nutjob parents are a bad enough burden, without adding in the threat of death.

Anyway, for the sake of argument, there is the perception that the incidence of autism is increasing, which is fueling parental fears about some unknown but possibly preventable cause. What follow are serious questions to which I have no answer:

Is that perception (of increased incidence of autism) correct, or are there other factors, such as that diagnosis of it has increased?

If diagnosis has increased, why is that? How would these kids, that are now diagnosed as autistic, have been treated/regarded before?

Why is it not possible (if **tirial ** is correct) to get individual immunizations, or to separate out measles from the other vaccines/immunizations?
Roddy

15

The woman I knew who refused to get her child immunized did not do so for religious reasons. She simply clicked into the mild threat to her child of the immunization itself, and disregarded any societal obligations as a result of considering them a lesser concern.

16

Don’t know about the Christians but my Pagan friend is constantly fighting with her Christian inlaws over various things… including her not wanting to vaccinate the kids. You should have seen how pissed off she got when the father took the daughter to be vaccinated (without her knowing) at his parents urging.

I sympathize about the doing things to my baby that I don’t want done to her part, but we don’t discuss vaccination at all as we have differing stances. (My son is vaccinated, and I’ve gotten my vaccinations up to date also. I didn’t have to get the MMR again when the recent outbreak happened at my college because I’d already gotten it done when my son had his. They’d tested me when I was pregnant and told me I needed it.)

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It is possible. The jabs used to be available in this way, but the government scrapped the licenced single jabs in favour of the combined jab (e.g.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/scrapping-of-single-rubella-vaccine-provokes-outcry-647623.html)

Private clinics offer the option by importing the jabs, but on the NHS, you can only get the combined option:
http://www.immunisation.nhs.uk/Immunisation_Schedule

This means people reliant on the NHS only have the all or nothing option.

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I’m not really trying to say that people aren’t getting their kids vaccinated for religious reasons. No churches that I’m aware of are preaching against vaccines.

What I am saying is that church softens peoples’ brains so they’re more likely to buy into this type of shit. At least that’s my observation, after spending the first 18 years of my life going to church 3 times a week. The man standing behind the pulpit is to be listened to. He is not to be questioned under any circumstances. In fact, questioning him is evil and will cause you to burn in hell. If someone presents evidence to you that contradicts what the man in the pulpit told you, the evidence is wrong and the person presenting it is evil. You must fight against this evil or you will burn in hell. This is what I was taught in the Baptist church. I know not all churches are like this, but lots are. Oh yeah, and fear. Lots of fear. Fear of death, fear of God, fear of hell. And fear is exactly the emotion the anti-vaxers use to their advantage. To me, it makes perfect sense that someone who buys into that kind of christianity would be the first one to fall for the anti-vax nonsense. To someone who didn’t go to the kind of church I went to, it’s probably a tough connection to see.

I mean, if people build their whole life, and their whole sense of identity around something for which there is no evidence, of course they’re going to be more likely to fall for this kind of thing.

19

I don’t know.

I’ve heard this whole debate and watched it go back and forth over the years, and still don’t know what I’d do if it was my child.

Imagine yourself, having reservations about the vaccines. You’ve heard the science debunk the fears, over and over. But, y’know, science has been wrong before. On the other hand you’ve seen countless mothers describe how their toddler was developing perfectly and then, once given a vaccine, they could almost watch as they disappeared into their own worlds, the world of autism. Those mothers and their absolute unwavering certainty that this was the result of the vaccine, have impact for me.

Now you have to choose for your own beautiful and perfect child. What are you willing to risk?
Their entire future? What if all of your intuition was saying, “Don’t do it!” but you allowed yourself to be persuaded, and then your child developed autism? Could you live with yourself?

Or the reverse, you intuitively believed the science of vaccines and chose not to get them because of someone else’s experience, overriding your own feelings. And then your child gets Polio. Could you live with yourself?

I think the answer is that everyone has to choose for themselves, what they believe.

When I first began to travel the world, 20+ yrs ago now, I was given numerous shots of Cholera vaccine. Increasing doses, very painful. But a few years later my immunization book had a full page stamp in it declaring that the WHO had decided the cholera vaccine was contraindicated. Why? Turned out it offered no real protection and was more dangerous to you than exposure to the disease! By then I’d had about 9 shots, 3 series of the stuff.

Malarial (Chlorequin resistant) drugs were about the same. Each year there was a new one, assurances it was much safer than that last one you took. Year after year we were told, when we would inquire about getting the last drug we’d taken, “Oh no, no one prescribes that anymore, it’s not safe!” Thanks so much, doc. Last year we took it for 3 months! I gave up on this whole family of meds when they tried to prescribe a drug that not only made me nauseous most of the day but also made you hypersensitive to the sun! Thanks anyway, I’ll stick to bug spray and long pants!

Science doesn’t know everything, they are often proved wrong, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals. What’s perfectly safe today may turn out to be misguided tomorrow.

I believe when it comes to your health and the health of your children you should make the choice you are comfortable with and not condemn those who choose otherwise.

20

I did a research paper on this phenomenon last fall. I don’t think it’s an attitude confined to right or left, but rather people who have a tendency to think that “They” aren’t telling us all the facts, or “the government” can’t be trusted. (I’ve read a couple of messageboard posts that implied that vaccines were a tool of government mind control, but obviously those are way out there.) Lots of people think this way to some extent, but these are the ones who take it to extremes.

From what I read, there’s also an emphasis on the idea that vaccines aren’t “natural” and that “people used to get them all the time and they’re fine” (yes, because the ones that died aren’t posting on the internet). There’s also a lot of emphasis on feelings - “mother’s intutition” is a big deal, and for some it’s enough on which to base actions and decisions.

Granted, my sample size for some of these was fairly small and on a messageboard devoted to a certain segment of the population (but not explicitly anti-government or political), but those were the impressions I picked up.