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That's about three times the usual number of cases of measles, CDC Director Thomas Frieden said Thursday. The USA has seen nine outbreaks this year, with the largest in New York, North Carolina and Texas.
More than 98% of measles patients were unvaccinated, Frieden said.
Interesting tidbit about like-minded anti-vaccine communities becoming the weak spot in the defense against these illnesses.
Well Obama said that they might cause Autism and he dismisses the vast majority of scientists that have weighed in on the matter.
"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it." -Obama
Last edited by michiganmoon; 12-07-2013 at 05:37 PM..
I can't completely speak for them... but their most popular opinion is that vaccines introduce side effects and health risks.
So do the diseases they prevent.
Everything has risk. You have to ask yourself what you'd rather risk. The side effects from the vaccine or the life long issues of the disease. Before vaccines it was common for children to die. Today it's uncommon.
What is really sad here is not that the anti vaccers risk their kids, it's that they also risk those who cannot be vaccinated and those for whom vaccines are ineffective but I'm sure they don't care about that.
So what? If they decide, based on their own judgment, that the risk associated with the vaccine to them is greater than the risk of contracting the disease, that's a risk they have a right to take and a decision they have a right to make; not only that but oftentimes, when all the components and risks are weighed, declining a vaccination is the safer decision. If you're vaccinated you should be protected, so if you want to be protected from measles get yourself vaccinated, if you haven't already. If these vaccines do not protect those vaccinated from the disease, then it would be time to start asking some questions about their effectiveness.
Also, about children dying and vaccines preventing that, it's also uncommon for an unvaccinated child to die of a disease today, probably because we have much better sanitation and medical care than we did, say, 100 years ago, and the diseases are not as prevalent as they were. Vaccines did play a part in the 20th century improvements in child mortality, but to make a leap from that to claiming, in effect, that an unvaccinated child today would suffer a fate fitting a compatriot of Oliver Twist, is unwarranted. It's worth noting that generally speaking even on the off chance you do get these once-common childhood diseases, the chances of you being killed, crippled, or even having lifetime effects of any kind are remote. So it is with vaccines; however, you only have a possibility of receiving these diseases, whereas you have a certainty of receiving the vaccine. That means that for the vaccine to be worth the risk in most of these cases, the chances for death, injury, or adverse reaction from the vaccination would need to be at least an order or two of magnitude lower than for the disease itself.
In my view this is not true of the flu vaccine, where the disease itself is mild in the vast majority of cases involving healthy people, as opposed to the common (mild) adverse reactions associated with the vaccine. However, any given person will only contract the flu once every few years, as opposed to the annual flu vaccination. In my humble view the vaccinations are worth it in the cases of childhood diseases such as measles and chicken pox. Many of you here may not agree with me on these conclusions, which is precisely why I (or anyone else) shouldn't be allowed to dictate to the rest of you what sort of vaccinations you must get. In short, it is a personal lifestyle choice.
I will conclude by pointing out that if the rates of these once-common diseases rise, then that would give more weight to the risk of contracting the disease versus the risk of the vaccination, and thus more people would prefer to get vaccinated.
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