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There is something I don't understand about this debate. If you have your children vaccinated, how can they then catch the diseases they are protected against?
It seems like the only risk the anti-vaxxers pose is to the other anti-vaxxers. Am I missing something?
With that being said, I have to say I am totally against having something forcibly injected into myself or my kids under penalty of law. That seems like a slippery slope to me.
No vaccine is 100% guaranteed. With many vaccines, the risk of you catching the disease is less than 10-15%, but it is still a risk. The vaccine will lessen the severity of the disease if it is acquired, but may not stop it entirely. Also, if there was a gap in the vaccine program (i.e., missed a dose of a three-dose vaccination, etc.), it also increases the risk. So even if you were vaccinated, you don't know if you were one of the people for whom the vaccine is ineffective.
With adults, the vaccine can wear off over the years. A newly-pregnant woman who may believe that her vaccine for rubella that she received as a baby 25-30 years ago is still protecting her could be exposed to rubella, with devastating effects on her unborn child if her vaccine is no longer effective. (And if the woman is a teacher, her risk of contracting it from her students goes up. And to those who say, "Well, she is at risk, she should get a vaccine," isn't that a little disingenuous?
Add in the fact that many babies are still in the process of receiving vaccinations, and are not totally protected. Why would you want to give a 3 mo. old whooping cough, the measles, the mumps, etc.?
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so snarky in that post. I definitely feel it is about control for some people. I just found it ironic that you were talking about control regarding one side, when the other can easily also claim people's refusal to vaccinate themselves or their kids is also a control thing. A type of defiant "you can't tell me what to do, you don't know what's best for me or my kid" thing. Because in reality, yes, those who create and research the vaccines actually DO know what's best. They do this for a living. They have spent years getting educated and researching this stuff. If they have found an unsafe component or measure taken, they have gone back and fixed it. It is not something they take lightly. They actively try to keep society healthier. The fact that some of the average folk in society (as in - those who are NOT scientists) try to downplay this and act like they know more than the professionals is what irks me, personally.
Thanks. There are people out there who make decisions for the wrong reasons, based on knee jerk reactions rather then a truly informed opinion so I don't doubt that there are some in this group who have chosen to forgo some or all vaccinations. I believe strongly that education as well as access to truly unbiased information is important. I think that people should not make these types of decisions lightly. I respect whatever people choose to do in the end.
"Between 2001 and 2014, 78 reported measles cases resulted from transmission in U.S. healthcare facilities and 29 healthcare personnel were infected from occupational exposure, of whom 1 transmitted measles to a patient. The economic impact of preventing and controlling measles transmission in healthcare facilities was $19,000- $114,286 per case."
"On 12 February 2008, an infected Swiss traveler visited hospital A in Tucson, Arizona, and initiated a predominantly health care–associated measles outbreak involving 14 cases."
"Of 14 patients with confirmed cases, 7 (50%) were aged ≥18 years, 4 (29%) were hospitalized, 7 (50%) acquired measles in health care settings, and all (100%) were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status."
"The 2 hospitals spent US $799,136 responding to and containing 7 cases in these facilities."
It has not been previously addressed, but measles is much, much more infectious than flu. You can get measles from being in a room that was occupied by a person with measles even after that person has left the room - up to two hours previously.
What should be done to minimize risk of transmission of measles in health care facilities:
About half the measles outbreaks in recent years in the US have been traced to returning Americans (the other half to foreign visitors) who did not understand the increased risk of getting measles if you travel to some areas of the world and you are not vaccinated against the disease. That clearly shows that many people who refuse the vaccine are ignorant about measles in general. As the above article points out, some of those who refuse vaccines do know the risks but are free riding on herd immunity: their children get to skip the tiny, tiny, tiny risk of vaccination because their neighbors vaccinate their children. However, by recruiting their neighbors into the anti-vax camp they shoot themselves in the foot because herd immunity collapses.
Illness, germs, bacteria, virus are all a part of life. You can take reasonable measures to protect yourself but those reasonable measures do not include forcing your way on everyone else. It's unrealistic and dangerous to our freedom to choose.
Yes, illness, germs, bacteria and virus(es) are all a part of life. Your house, my house, anyone's house has far more antigen than any vaccine you could inject, swallow, or inhale. That's why it's unwise to be so concerned about antigen in vaccine. As far as toxins, again, there are many toxins in one's daily environment. Nothing in a vaccine is toxic at the dose in the vaccine. Some of the chemicals in the vaccines are present in the environment in much larger quantities, and your body makes far more formaldehyde than is present in a dose of vaccine.
People have a reasonable expectation that they can go out in public and not be exposed to communicable diseases. The right of the government to impose vaccine mandates has been verified many times over. "In 1890, the Supreme Court of California upheld a state law requiring vaccination to attend school (Abeel v. Clark). Fifteen years later in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a claim that a Massachusetts vaccination mandate not linked to school entry violated the constitutional right to due process of law. Later, the Court applied Jacobson in Zucht v. King (1922) to reject a challenge to school-entry mandates in Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court has never directly evaluated a First Amendment claim regarding vaccination, but it has written in the context of other parental-rights claims that religious freedom “does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease” (Prince v. Massachusetts, 1944). Mississippi's Supreme Court ruled that such a distinction violated the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause by favoring religious over philosophical objectors (Brown v. Stone, 1979). " http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...701?query=TOC&
Competent adults have a right to choose their health care. However, even adults can be quarantined with communicable disease. Perhaps you remember this case from a few years ago: https://www.newscientist.com/article...-resistant-tb/ "A law unused for 44 years has been invoked to isolate a man in the US who took commercial flights to and from his wedding in Europe while carrying extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), and after receiving apparently confused instructions from doctors. . . . Doctors knew the TB bacteria resisted several antibiotics, and advised him not to travel. But he claims they knew of his plans to get married in Greece then honeymoon in Rome, Italy, in May."
It's childish to assume that one will go through life without ever coming into contact with a specific list of illness.
Herd immunity makes the risk of coming into contact with a vaccine preventable disease extremely low. There have been no measles cases in Mississippi and W. Virginia since the 1990s, for example. No wild polio in the US since 1979; no vaccine associated cases since the oral vaccine was stopped. Rubella no longer circulates in the US; any cases are imported. Diphtheria: between 2004 and 2015 two cases were reported in the US. Tetanus: anyone can come in contact with it. I'll grant you that one; no herd immunity applies. Hemophilus influenzae? Down 99% after the vaccine, with a risk of 1 in 100,000 kids under age five. Chickenpox? Down 90 to 95%. Hepatitis A? Incidence after the vaccine is 0.1 to 1 per 100,000. Rotavirus: number of positive tests in patients with diarrhea down 74% to 90% after vaccine introduced.
Mumps has not been eliminated yet. There was a large outbreak in a religious community in 2009-2010: unvaccinated person traveled abroad and brought it home:
The pneumococcal vaccine has greatly reduced the incidence of meningitis in children due to the strains in the vaccine, but most adults are still at risk to get it.
Pertussis has already been discussed, including the fact that declining vaccination rates are playing a big part in the increased number of cases.
Influenza is difficult to control because of the nature of the virus; however, higher vaccine uptake could produce herd immunity.
With flu and pertussis, unvaccinated adults play a part in spreading the disease, not just children.
As far as VPDs are concerned, it is not at all childish to expect to go through life and never come in contact with most of them on the list of vaccines for children.
Last edited by suzy_q2010; 04-22-2016 at 05:11 PM..
As far as VPDs are concerned, it is not all childish to expect to go through life and never come in contact with most of them on the list of vaccines for children.
Agreed! In fact, I do not understand the use of that word in this context, and feel the use of it is not conducive to a rational discussion.
In point of fact, most doctors have never seen a case of measles. The vaccine came out in 1963, and cases dropped like a stone immediately. (See graph) A doctor practicing in 1963 would be at least 80 years old now. As suzy said, there have been no wild polio cases since 1979, and none at all since 1999. The practice where I worked had a case of Hib last year, in a baby too young to be fully vaccinated, and the doctor had not seen one before. Universal Hib vaccine for infants came out in 1991, so doctors entering practice after that, who would now be ~ age 55 and yonger, in other words the majority practicing, are not familiar with Hib disease. Graph of U.S. Measles Cases — History of Vaccines
The bottom line, people, is that you do not TRUST your vaccinations to give you immunity and to protect you from the "unvaccinated". If you did, you would not fear being around unvaccinated others who might give vaccinated you or yours measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc.
For those of you older adults on here who had all those diseases yourself before these vaccines existed, and are UNVACCINATED for them, would you fear being around an unvaccinated person, or even a person who currently HAS, say Measles, or Chicken Pox?
THAT is the difference. Vaccinated people do not trust their vaccinations to give them immunity so they fear being in contact with everyone who is unvaccinted so they PUSH total vaccinations for all.
The bottom line, people, is that you do not TRUST your vaccinations to give you immunity and to protect you from the "unvaccinated". If you did, you would not fear being around unvaccinated others who might give vaccinated you or yours measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc.
For those of you older adults on here who had all those diseases yourself before these vaccines existed, and are UNVACCINATED for them, would you fear being around an unvaccinated person, or even a person who currently HAS, say Measles, or Chicken Pox?
THAT is the difference. Vaccinated people do not trust their vaccinations to give them immunity so they fear being in contact with everyone who is unvaccinted so they PUSH total vaccinations for all.
Why do we have to go over the same old, same old over and over and over ad nauseum? dblackga just answered that issue a few posts upthread. Good grief, several of us posting on here in favor of vaccines are about the same age as you, and have pretty much the same history, that is, we've had a lot of these diseases. I am thankful I did not get polio, Hib meningitis, or some of the other "usual childhood diseases" before their vaccines came out.
The bottom line, people, is that you do not TRUST your vaccinations to give you immunity and to protect you from the "unvaccinated". If you did, you would not fear being around unvaccinated others who might give vaccinated you or yours measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc.
For those of you older adults on here who had all those diseases yourself before these vaccines existed, and are UNVACCINATED for them, would you fear being around an unvaccinated person, or even a person who currently HAS, say Measles, or Chicken Pox?
THAT is the difference. Vaccinated people do not trust their vaccinations to give them immunity so they fear being in contact with everyone who is unvaccinted so they PUSH total vaccinations for all.
What about babies too young to be vaccinated?
Folks who have had whooping cough can get it again.
Those who have had VPDs can develop immune deficiencies that make them susceptible to getting diseases they had before.
Having measles causes damage to the immune system that can last up to three years, leaving people at risk to catch other diseases that they thought they were already immune to.
The difference between those of us who are immune by virtue of having had those diseases before there were vaccines for them is that we had to get very sick in order to become immune. Those who are vaccinated are almost always immune, and they did not have to be ill in order to acquire that immunity.
The problem with people who refuse vaccines is that they have no idea how sick people with VPDs can be, because they do not know people who have had VPDs - because of vaccination. It is irrational not to fear VPDs.
I know this is OT, but this just came over my email, and I had to share. I subscribe to a newsletter that gives links to articles about vaccines once a week.
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