To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate - that is the question

[wilheldp_PE]

Doesn't really make sense unless its influx of foreigners and So Cal's who are apparently not as smart as they think they are?

I think the latter is a bigger epidemic than measles.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

so why are these all hitting Disneyland? Doesn't really make sense unless its influx of foreigners and So Cal's who are apparently not as smart as they think they are?

Disneyland was the only common thing between ~70 of those infected. It is likely the original carrier was local as they already have a rapidly growing infection rate due to their low immunization levels, but Disneyland was essentially the same as the "airport" scenario I posed above.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/22/disney-measles-outbreak-strikes-in-anti-vaccination-hotbed-of-california/

 

[ptatohed]

so why are these all hitting Disneyland? Doesn't really make sense unless its influx of foreigners and So Cal's who are apparently not as smart as they think they are?

We just went to D'Land on Tuedsay.

I think it's "hitting" DL simply because all it takes is one person with contagious measles to go there and, since there are so many people at DL, there is a huge opportunity for passing it. Measles is very easy to catch. It can stay airborne in a room for up to 2 hours. So if one person with measles goes on, say, Star Tours and leaves, the next X,XXX people riding that ride in the following 2 hours are exposed. Multiply this by all the rides the infected person went on.

 

[Road Guy]

I don't see many LA types as being religious? I've only been there once but the part that I saw could use some napalm.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

It's also very likely one who "caught it" at Disneyland was actually the one who infected everyone else since Measles do not show symptoms for up to 3 weeks. Most of the people who opt out of vaccines use the religious loophole of "personal belief".

 

[ptatohed]

It's also very likely one who "caught it" at Disneyland was actually the one who infected everyone else since Measles do not show symptoms for up to 3 weeks. Most of the people who opt out of vaccines use the religious loophole of "personal belief".

Is that right? Is there a connection between those with religious beliefs and those who believe vaccines cause autism? I assumed they were exclusive beliefs.

 

[Dleg]

There's a lot of antivax people who aren't opting out in the name of religion, in fact that's pretty rare in most of the excuses I have heard about. It's usually just people who are susceptible to the internet, celebrities giving medical advice, and conspiracy theories and such. You know, dumb people.

 

[Road Guy]

Probably the same type people that look to Alex Baldwin, Rosie Odonnel and others for political advice....

 

[Road Guy]

And I am not an "anti vaxer" I was just tying to say that most doctors are not as smart as people give them credit for and I can see where people effected directly by a certain action could be persuaded... I don't think that makes them dumb to think about the cause

Medicine is not really that much of an exact science and isn't really " fact/fiction". It's basically an educated guess.... This is a group of people that still haven't figured out a fix for the common cold.. Which probably kills more people than measles....

 

[SNAPE/SMOTT PE]

Found this meme, thought it was appropriate.View attachment 7145

 

[Dleg]

This isn't an issue of how smart or not smart your family physician is. In my experience, most doctors have a fatal combination of flaws that make them lousy at giving advice: a.) extreme hubris/arrogance; b.) they've been trained to give any single problem a maximum of 10 minutes of research and thought, so they can rush to the next patient, and c.) not nearly as much education in specific public health type stuff as non-doctors might expect. The issue is also not that medical science is inexact. The issue is that numerous scientific studies have been conducted, which measure real observations and are carefully designed to reject false correlations and such, which show no connection between autism and vaccines. The anti-vaxers can't argue with the science, so they instead manufacture conspiracy theories to discredit these studies. The problem with conspiracy theories is that, if they were true, thousands of people would be involved, from big pharma to your local health department, and if that was the case there would be hundreds of whistleblowers. And there are not.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

An interesting counter-point/conspiracy theory:

"Herd immunity"? You mean like we do with dumb animals,right? This person brings up a "line in the sand" question everyone should be thinking about. We have discovered critters we don't even have names for yet. How many vaccines are you willing to tolerate? Pick a number. Corporate greed,as we see with pharmaceuticals in general, has no stop sign. Childhood health is in a **** hole today because you trusted "good science":Whether you're pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine, or fall somewhere in the middle, the questions you need to ask yourselves are as follows: Do you want to live in a world, where you cannot freely refuse a medical procedure that carries risk of injury or death?

I'm not questioning your comfort level with today's vaccine schedule, because today's vaccine schedule will change. New vaccines and additional doses are added all the time. Children today receive as many as 49 doses of 14 vaccines before they reach age six, which is roughly 12 times higher than the number of vaccines administered to children back in 1940.

With more than 220 new vaccines in the developmental pipeline for children and adults...and no end in sight..the question you must ask yourself is ARE YOU CERTAIN you will be 100% comfortable when 200 more vaccines are added to the mandated list in the future?

If you say that yes, you're comfortable, then you're either:
a) not expecting to be a parent or grandparent,
b) don't think about it much because your kids are grown and out of the house, or
c) lying to prove a point.

No critical thinker, no honest person, would ever sign off on the sight-unseen vaccine schedule of the future. And yet that's what you're doing when you condemn the people who are fighting for your right to refuse. YOU have the right to refuse, should you ever choose to use it, because the very "anti-vaccine" people you demonize have been fighting for us all.

Right now, the burden of "herd immunity" falls on small children, but that is changing. Vaccine manufacturers see an untapped market in adolescent and adult vaccine. They are coming for you next. What will you do if your state, your employer, or your insurance company forces you to get a vaccine that you simply don't want. It hasn't happened to you yet, but if the right to refuse is eroded, it will happen to you sooner than you might think. Who will you turn to? Your legislators who get campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies? The CDC that has former pharma executives sitting on the board? Who will you turn to if you ever want to say no?

What if it harms you, even kills you or your family member? There will be no recourse. No one to blame. You absorb all the medical bills. Deal with all the anger, all the guilt. Alone.

Once we enter the slippery slope of removing and individual's right to refuse medical procedures that carry a risk of injury or death, once we remove an individual's right to speak for him/herself and his/her children, we open ourselves up to an insidious new era, where other drugs and other procedures can be mandated.

I heard (on NPR, interestingly enough) that there are people who want to test for a gene marker that's been found in mass shooters in the hopes that they can put the carriers of that gene on medications in early childhood. Sounds great, right? But many of us carry genes that will never be expressed. You could be a carrier of that gene. Or your child could be a carrier.

So if we follow the "for the greater good" mentality behind vaccines (or the Nazi's "for the greater good" mentality behind eugenics - the breeding out illness. We are looking at forcing people who may never express a sociopathic gene to take antipsychotics, just in case.

Because that's what forced vaccination does. It asks children who may never come into contact with a particular virus to accept a vaccine, just in case. And that's what eugenics was all about. It sterilizes people who can pass on a genetic disease - just in case.

Forced vaccination is a human rights violation. To support it when you know that the government's own National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) has paid nearly $3b to damaged persons. The government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) lists people who have died as a result of vaccines. Vaccination is unethical at best, sociopathic at worst.

What can we do?
1. The ethical thing to do is to allow people their right to refuse. Let doctors and big pharma - who has marketing budgets larger than the GDP of some countries - to do a better job of convincing parents that vaccines are safe, protective and harmless.
2. Reverse the law that grants vaccine manufacturers total immunity from vaccine injury lawsuits. You can't sue a vaccine manufacturer if your child is injured or killed by a vaccine, even in cases where a safer vaccine was available and not chosen.

Think about that. You can't sue the manufacturer. What other product has legal and government protection? The complete immunity from liability does more to shake a parents' confidence in vaccines than anything else. Be sure they know that with an adverse outcome from a vaccine, they are completely on their own. Ed Szall.


While I can appreciate the hatred of corporate pharmacology, I think it extrapolates the "big money" from "elective" drugs (viagra, rogane, etc) to genuine life-saving medicine. With the influx of big pharmacy advertising and the hugely over-used (and often mis-leading) information found with basic Google searches for medical information (wikipedia, webMD, etc), it's easy to see how people have generated a mis-trust of their physicians. Too many rely on self-diagnosis and then demand their physicians treat what they think they have rather than what the science & tests say they actually have. (What do you mean I don't have Tiburculosis, that's what webMD says). The demand of the general public to have a "magic pill" every time they don't feel good has caused the US to be one of the most over-medicated countries in the world which is leading to an ever-evolving, and harder to treat world of "super-viruses" and resistant diseases. Then this same public gets mad when they are mandated to vaccine their children to protect them from genuinely devastating diseases.

Big Pharmacy has been forced to advertise to the general public because our government has seriously limited the amount they can advertise directly to the doctors. These 30-second TV ads with their 20 second descriptions of side-effects are the same spiels that used to only be distributed to physicians who were trained to disseminate the information and make the educated decision as to whether to use it or not. Now, people are inundated with these ads and they are not trained to understand what is actually going on or why doctors choose to use (or not use) them, leading to an ever-increasing distrust of doctors.

The public demands to be educated with what happens to their bodies and their children. I can understand that, but I am sorry to say that the public tends not to take the information objectively and consequently leads to poor choices. The love of your children is precisely the reason why you should not make these decisions. No matter what you say, you will always be biased.

 

[engineergurl]

http://www.amazon.com/Melanies-Marvelous-Measles-Stephanie-Messenger/dp/1466938897

The reviews are pretty funny.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

I don't really have a position on the vaccine argument, but I have seen some of the "herd mentality" with regards to the flu vaccine. There seems to be a lot of pressure from the government, employers, friends and family to get the flu vaccine every year. However, getting the flu vaccine doesn't guarantee that you won't get the flu that year (see: this year's vaccine that totally whiffed on the strain that ended up hitting the populace). I have also heard several anecdotal stories from friends and family about having negative reactions to the vaccine which produces flu-like symptoms. I have never gotten the flu vaccine, and (knock on wood) have never gotten the flu. Given their recent track record, I don't expect to get the vaccine in the near future. I don't care if you want to, just don't push your decision on me.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

My wife was telling me about her employer's policy on vaccines (she works at a major hospital). It is basically, you will get vaccinated or you will find another job. They technically have a religious waiver that you can apply for, but it involves at least 2 written statements by leaders from your religious institution plus multiple meetings to discuss the pros and cons of vaccines, then the hospital will still tell you to find another job. Working in a place where disease is literally everywhere requires the staff to have as much protection as they can possibly get. Anyone who has taken their kids to any public child play area (park, daycare, McDonalds play place, etc), should know those places are just as nasty.

 

[Road Guy]

I think most all hospitals have that policy now, my wife (who has always gotten flu shot) when they first implemented this at her job in Atlanta, was upset that even though she always got one anyway, that it was now mandatory. I think they build up an immunity over time so they probably really don't need it ,but what are you going to do..

the kids get one but except for when I was in the army and it was mandatory I have never received a flu shot...

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

My wife was telling me about her employer's policy on vaccines (she works at a major hospital). It is basically, you will get vaccinated or you will find another job. They technically have a religious waiver that you can apply for, but it involves at least 2 written statements by leaders from your religious institution plus multiple meetings to discuss the pros and cons of vaccines, then the hospital will still tell you to find another job. Working in a place where disease is literally everywhere requires the staff to have as much protection as they can possibly get. Anyone who has taken their kids to any public child play area (park, daycare, McDonalds play place, etc), should know those places are just as nasty.

This work place sounds pretty awesome. Now we just need a similar approach to schools.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

Pretty good clip on doctors & big pharmacy:

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQZ2UeOTO3I

 

[csb]

I don't really have a position on the vaccine argument, but I have seen some of the "herd mentality" with regards to the flu vaccine. There seems to be a lot of pressure from the government, employers, friends and family to get the flu vaccine every year. However, getting the flu vaccine doesn't guarantee that you won't get the flu that year (see: this year's vaccine that totally whiffed on the strain that ended up hitting the populace). I have also heard several anecdotal stories from friends and family about having negative reactions to the vaccine which produces flu-like symptoms. I have never gotten the flu vaccine, and (knock on wood) have never gotten the flu. Given their recent track record, I don't expect to get the vaccine in the near future. I don't care if you want to, just don't push your decision on me.

I think bringing flu into this argument is stretching. We're not talking about multiple strains of polio, measles, etc. like for flu. The vaccines in question are very effective at preventing those particular infections.

Count me in on we've had our kid vaccinated.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

I think bringing flu into this argument is stretching. We're not talking about multiple strains of polio, measles, etc. like for flu. The vaccines in question are very effective at preventing those particular infections.

Count me in on we've had our kid vaccinated.

I know...I'm firmly in the camp of measles, polio, etc. vaccines. But I was just talking about the peer pressure surrounding flu vaccines.