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Couldn't rep you again but thank you so much Midwest Maven. I have to do research all the time because myself and my husband are the guardians for our adult son and we now realize that is totally upon us to make choices that are appropriate for him and I just wish I could have known all of this 20 years ago.
Adding that I have the flu right now and my son just got over it and when I just went to read the side effects of the flu vaccine, well, if you want to know what we just went through, it is the same as the side effects of the flu vaccine. You gotta' wonder.
Plus, how many strains are there? They are saying there are 3 strains this year, so does that mean you are getting injected with 3 strains?
There are very many strains - probably an almost infinite number of variations.
3 types: A, B & C. C is very weak and doesn't pose a problem C types do not cause epidemics and are not included in the annual flu shot.
The B type virus only infects seals and humans, doesn't mutate as rapidly as an A type - but it does mutate rapidly enough to make long-term immunity impossible. The annual flu shot contains the predicted B type virus for the year.
A type viruses are sub-divided by the the haemagglutinin and neuraminidase antigens (eg H1N1, H3N2)
The annual flu shot contains an H1N1 an H3N2 and a type B. It takes time to produce the virus for the annual shots and while it is being produced, the actual virus is mutating. If the people who predict the virus get it exactly right, then the components of the annual flu shot will mirror exactly the viruses doing the rounds that year.
If the viruses decline to play ball and if they mutate in a different direction, then the annual flu shot certainly won't be a perfect match - but (with luck) it will be near enough that those people who are vaccinated will produce antibodies which will work against the actual virus.
People need to realize that they're taking a chance. It's a chance that you will not get a bad reaction and will get immunity when you get a vaccine. Either way. You are welcome to take the chance, it's personal. You are also not killing anyone if you don't, anymore than you are killing others if you do and assume immunity.
Vaccines don't always work. You don't know unless you check, people rarely check, they just assume. So they can spread the very illness they feel protected from, just like anyone else. This will increase with more vaccinations.
"An outbreak of measles occurred in a high school with a documented vaccination level of 98 per cent. Nineteen (70 per cent) of the cases were students who had histories of measles vaccination at 12 months of age or older and are therefore considered vaccine failures. Persons who were unimmunized or immunized at less than 12 months of age had substantially higher attack rates compared to those immunized on or after 12 months of age. Vaccine failures among apparently adequately vaccinated individuals were sources of infection for at least 48 per cent of the cases in the outbreak. There was no evidence to suggest that waning immunity was a contributing factor among the vaccine failures. Close contact with cases of measles in the high school, source or provider of vaccine, sharing common activities or classes with cases, and verification of the vaccination history were not significant risk factors in the outbreak. The outbreak subsided spontaneously after four generations of illness in the school and demonstrates that when measles is introduced in a highly vaccinated population, vaccine failures may play some role in transmission but that such transmission is not usually sustained."
American Public Health Association, 1987, epidemiology report.
"An outbreak of measles occurred among adolescents in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the spring of 1985, even though vaccination requirements for school attendance had been thoroughly enforced. Serum samples from 1806 students at two secondary schools were obtained eight days after the onset of the first case. Only 4.1 percent of these students (74 of 1806) lacked detectable antibody to measles according to enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and more than 99 percent had records of vaccination with live measles vaccine. Stratified analysis showed that the number of doses of vaccine received was the most important predictor of antibody response. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals of seronegative rates were 0 to 3.3 percent for students who had received two prior doses of vaccine, as compared with 3.6 to 6.8 percent for students who had received only a single dose. After the survey, none of the 1732 seropositive students contracted measles. Fourteen of 74 seronegative students, all of whom had been vaccinated, contracted measles. In addition, three seronegative students seroconverted without experiencing any symptoms. We conclude that outbreaks of measles can occur in secondary schools, even when more than 99 percent of the students have been vaccinated and more than 95 percent are immune."
As far as risk go those will also increase. Long term risk studies are few. The longest being the correlation of increased arthritis in those who received the MMR vaccine. There aren't many long term studies done, only short term. They don't need to be done to market a product or there would be more I'm sure. They are difficult to do given the variables and exposure to other elements. Could be the vaccine, could be a coincidence because of other variables. Very hard to prove or dis prove long term effects.
You could be right about coincidental occurrence, there are variables, but, you could also be wrong. Advocating it for others is not a good idea, IMO, due to this. Not enough studies to prove it either way. Again, a chance you take when being immunized against anything. You also take this chance eating food, drinking beverage, etc. etc. Either way, no way to know. Needs to be a personal choice. Research yourself, take the chance. Nobody else can tell you one way or the other.
As far as your article:
Is the rise really the unvaccinated fault? The numbers are the normal rise for the unvaccinated, the surprise rise is in vaccinated children. There is still more research in this department. We change schedules, taint mass batches, and some don't work for a lot of reasons undefined. Viruses mutate as well, they want to survive.
'It's generally assumed that the measles vaccine, when given in a two-dose schedule in early childhood, should protect against measles infection about 99 per cent of the time. So the discovery that 52 of the 98 teens who caught measles were fully vaccinated came as a shock to the researchers who conducted the investigation.' Measles among vaccinated Quebec kids questioned - Health - CBC News
And still, there are complications other than this. Not enough studies on it. Time will tell a lot. Now, I took the chance personally with MMR, but, doesn't mean it will work.
Your post illustrates several basic misunderstandings that patients with concerns about vaccines have.
The first is that serious complications from vaccines are common. They are not, and safety studies clearly show that. No vaccine would be released for general use if the risks of the vaccine were greater than the risk of the vaccine. This misunderstanding has been fueled by the vaccine/autism fiasco. The link between vaccines and autism has been thoroughly examined. It does not exist. However, the people who fueled the controversy are desperately trying to keep it going because accepting that vaccines do not cause autism will cause them to lose credibility. Losing credibility will mean everything they say will be scrutinized. That means web site traffic will decrease, as will sales for their books and supplements. They cannot afford to admit they are wrong.
Next, there is the argument that vaccines do not work. The majority of vaccines are highly effective, producing immunity in the vast majority of people who take them. These people are protected against infection and do not spread the diseases for which they are immunized. Since no vaccine is 100% effective, some folks who are vaccinated do get the illnesses that the vaccines are designed to prevent. They can spread those diseases, but it is not because the vaccine causes them to do so, it is because the vaccine did not work. The effectiveness of each vaccine is different. Flu vaccine is one of the least effective because there must be a judgment made as to which strains will be most common in a given year. The HPV vaccine is one of the most effective, approaching 100% for the strains in the vaccine. So, yes, for an individual we cannot tell whether the vaccine will be successful or not. What we can do is tell you the likelihood that it will be.
Now we look at the measles outbreaks that you described. What you are leaving out is the number of people who were vaccinated who did not catch measles. For the Corpus Christi outbreak, for example, none of the people who had antibodies to measles got sick. Of the 74 without antibodies, 14 got symptomatic measles and 3 had asymptomatic measles. That means that in this highly vaccinated population, only 17 out of 1806 people got measles. What if none of them had been vaccinated? The expected number of measles cases would have been about 90% of 1806 or 1625 cases. Yes, measles is that contagious. So the Corpus Christi outbreak does not show that the vaccine is "ineffective". It just confirms that failures do occur, which we already knew. What we do not know is the source of the first case in the outbreak --- the index case --- and I was unable to find out after a good bit of searching. We also do not know whether the unvaccinated children were kept home after outbreak started. If measles came to your child's school and your child was unvaccinated, would you keep her home?
Your description of the other outbreak does not provide enough information for me to search for a more detailed report. We do know that vaccine failures accounted for 48% of the cases. Since 2% of the population was not vaccinated, those 2% counted for 52% of the cases. That means the unvaccinated people were much more likely to get sick. Again, the episode shows the vaccine is highly effective, just not 100%.
Your last example is just more of the same thing. The news article does not tell us how many were exposed and did not get sick.
By the way, the arthritis is with the rubella vaccine, and it goes away.
The largest number of cases was in Indiana, brought to the US by an unvaccinated 24 year old American who imported it from Indonesia. It was unrecognized (most US doctors have never seen it!) and five of his family members caught it. There were ultimately 14 confirmed and one suspected case, all extended family members, 13 of whom were unvaccinated, one of whom was a two year old who had received one dose of vaccine, and one was a pregnant woman.
Unvaccinated people are indeed the source of the majority of measles cases in the US, frequently associated with travel to countries where measles is common. The solution would be to require proof of immunization to enter the country --- citizens and foreign visitors alike --- with no exemptions except medical.
Vaccines are effective, they are safe, and any time there is an outbreak some vaccinated people will get the illness, but most vaccinated people will not.
There is no evidence that preservatives (including thimerosal) in vaccines cause autism or any other illness.
Sure there is evidence. But it's either watered down or covered up. When the evidence IS uncovered by doctors or other individuals or organizations, those people and organizations get called fraudulent.
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