Actually, it seemed my information was mistaken, I was basing my radius around my parents’ significantly more rural town, somehow I got the numbers confused in my head. Currently 55 confirmed H1N1 cases in my county, so the state says. Regardless, I’m not worrying about getting the vaccine until there’s enough vaccine available that I wouldn’t feel bad about getting it.
Yeah, this is about the opposite of how I’m dealing with it.
I’m not getting a vaccine. Not that I think it is useless or going to make me autistic or dumb or something, but because;
Just in case lack of health insurance is causing anyone else to hesitate about a vaccine, our health department (and I imagine many others) is giving both the injection and the mist for free.
His posts have been irritating in the past, calling out well-respected posters on giving their advice - on a message board, fancy that! (such as on panache45’s excellent advice here: Tell me this wasn't rape.. - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board). But in this instance I was simply replying personal anecdote for personal anecdote with the less than engaging NajaNivea. As I’ve said before, if he really did titer, that’s fine, otherwise his fear is putting the rest of the herd at risk. And individuals who do so willfully should be called out for it.
Fine, but he said he had a bad reaction - i.e. maybe he is allergic to thimerosal or something else that is commonly used in vaccines? I don’t think it’s fear of the needle or doctor so much as fear of dying because of an allergic reaction that he’d previously had to a vaccination.
lindsaybluth, what’s with calling me out as “less than engaging” for providing supporting information on the use of titer testing, as per the discussion? My “personal anecdote” involved… the use of titer testing for proving of immunity for the purpose of avoiding unnecessary vaccines. That seems fairly applicable, to me.
The story as he presented it did not support you calling him out for his post as a paranoiac or, later, a liar. Don’t start snarking at me for pointing it out.
Fear of dying is a bit extreme, don’t you think?
NajaNivea, I should have been more specific, I meant BigT’s anecdote in comparison to mine. He posts quite often, throughout the day, so it’s also likely that he’s ignoring this thread intentionally.
But really, this back and forth is going nowhere about actual anti-vax H1N1 people anymore, so it should probably just die down.
WTH? No, it’s not extreme. That’s like saying someone who is allergic to bees and avoids bees due to a fear of being stung and dying as a result is being extreme.
I’m afraid of dying and take measures to avoid things that may cause an untimely death if I can help it.
From this article (which addresses the safe immunization of people who are allergic to vaccines):
The article goes on to say:
It sounds like BigT had an allergic reaction and is taking the correct measures to prevent that from happening again. I’m definitely not anti-vax, but there are some people who cannot be vaccinated.
Both are free here as well.
Oh man… I have a friend who is some massage therapist or something who always posts about how the vaccine causes autism or walking backwards or contains mercury or blah blah blah. I finally took the bait, and posted my disgust. Ouch.
Here’s what I think is going on:
Vaccines came out, wiped out smallpox and polio. The populous, used to random death, rejoiced, and sang its praises.
A generation or two later, the kids look back and say, ‘bah, no one dies from smallpox gramps, you must be making stuff up’, and fail to believe in vaccines because they have no accidental verification of their own.
Eventually, generation or two later, the positives of the vaccines are spun into, ‘you only get sick if you get the shot!’, coupled with the wild and wacky news stories, and of course, the press only amplifies the statistical outlier and not the normal outcome.
So, now we have a flu that is slightly more deadly than in years past. Time to step up and put it down. Only, half the population no longer ‘believes’ in vaccines because they are the same as the turn of the century, and heck, we used to drink radium drinks back then, so…
It’s all rather annoying. I’m sick of the breeders refusing flu shots, and then me ending up with all kinds of stupid diseases because I have to work around them. I’ve already had my swine flu this summer, thanks, and it sucked. Sucked in a big way. I wanted to die, or at least somehow figure out how to make my body stop hating me so much. If I could have gotten a shot, I sure as hell would have.
Thanks for the term ‘pro-disease’, I’m going to start using it.