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Lack of Vaccination Sends Babies In Oregon To the Hospital
First time accepted submitter dmr001 writes "In its fortnightly Communicable Disease newsletter (PDF), Oregon Public Health officials note increasing cases of pertussis (whooping cough) in infants, with 146 hospitalizations noted in the 2 year period ending March 2011, and at least 4 deaths since 2003. Most cases are attributed to lack of vaccination, with 86% of those due to parents declining the vaccine. 'Most of our cases are occurring in under- or unvaccinated children, so getting these kids vaccinated seems to the most obvious approach to reducing illness. In principle... pertussis could be eradicated; but we have a long way to go.'"
but I don't want my kids to get Autism. So I will risk a deadly disease instead. /trolling
Today Vermont state will be voting today on taking away the philosophical exemption for vaccination.
You can show your support for this smart idea by contacting
Patti Komline (802) 867-4232,pkomline@leg.state.vt.us
Paul Poirier (802) 476-7870 paulpoirier33@gmail.com
There is a massive anti-vax push here, be sure to show your support if you live in Vermont.
Trolling is a art,
I trust Government regulation based on scientific research more than other kids' parents' rumors, religion and pop culture when it comes to my kids health.
E pluribus unum
The only people I trust less than qualified, vetted, officials is uneducated jackasses pretending to understand the world around them when really they are just ignorant twits. There is a mantra from conservatives "They think they know better than you!". Um, yep. I think the scientists and knowledgeable health professionals "know better" than the backward backwater assholes who raise their children as if it were the year 1512. Obviously that isn't a general rule -- bureaucrats make all sorts of boneheaded decisions -- but I basically reject the notion that only you can know what is best for you in all circumstances. No; no, no, no; often, others know what is best for you, and people should be open to that possibility.
If we lived in a perfect world, then parents would be rational, intelligent, and informed. Yes, we would all "rather" live in that world. But we don't, we live in a world full of hysterical ignoramuses. (Same basic argument against libertarianism.)
Public Health is a funny thing -- individual actions impact the health of our entire society.
The libertarian in me says that you should be able to make health decisions for your own [and kids] body, including unbelievably stupid things like declining vaccines. However, disease is hard to track -- if your action or negligence causes me physical injury, the libertarian philosophy suggests that you pay the bills. It's hard to employ that tactic for communicable disease. If it's very difficult to measure who is giving the disease to whom, how do we apply libertarian philosophy?
I'd remind you that
(a) this is by and large a state issue, not federal. You're blindly attacking the wrong people, and
(b) this is a generally a bureaucratic and technocratic issue, not a political issue. Public health experts recommend policies, not politicians seeking votes, and
(c) most government folks working for government are civil servants, not politicians. They're just interested in doing their job well, earning a fair wage, and leading a comfortable middle class lifestyle, just like nearly all of us. This idea that "they are sick (control freaks)" is really nonsensical and based on absolutely nothing but your bias. Are individuals troublesome in any organization? To be sure. But you're painting with a remarkably broad brush.
From where I sit, failing to vaccinate a child is reckless endangerment, and social services should get involved. It's easy and inexpensive to reduce your kid's chances of dying from whooping cough to almost zero. Vaccinations. In fact, I submit that since every adult was once a kid, we ought to just cover everybody's vaccinations at childhood 100% by medicare. No insurance, no co-pay, no out of pocket, for both poor and middle class and rich Americans. Hell, I'd include non-citizens too, since the public health costs to citizens can be very high whereas prevention is relatively cheap. Since most parents do this anyway, the net cost for individuals is a wash. Yeah, some old folks end up cross-subsidizing young people, but its a relatively small expense for a good and sustainable public policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
And he is a murderer. It was a fraud.
Being stupid is no defense, but preying on the stupid is something worse: it's evil.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There was a time when that was the mainstream belief.
The odd thing about the anti-vaccination movement is that nobody benefits from it. It's happening without eccentric billionaires funding doublethink tanks to push their economic interests.
Unless it's part of the general anti-science movement, which benefits people who owe their leadership to the ignorance of their followers.
Thanks for the link. It's pretty clear:
There's a lot of Bordetella out there, but the only known reservoir of Bordetella pertussis (the causative organism of whooping cough) is in humans. It cannot live without humans. While pertussis is exceedingly contagious, it is a "fastidious" organism, and can survive only a few hours outside of human hosts. It can be eradicated, in theory, by universal vaccination. The fact that it's a bacteria and not a virus is not relevant. (See Lancet. 2006;367(9526):1926, and Hewlett E. Bordetella species. In: Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases, 5th ed, Mandell GL, Bennett JE, Dolin R (Eds), Churchill Livingstone, Philadelphia 2000. p.2701.)
What makes you evil? Predicating your cost-benefit analysis on pertussis statistics that assume that everyone else is vaccinated.
Incidentally, if you're in the US and have health insurance, the cost of vaccines for children should be zero and the time should be about two minutes tacked on to a pediatrician visit you're already making.
Yes. For example a world-wide effort to eradicate polio is stymied by Islamic fundamentalists in Nigeria who spreading a rumor that the shots are really intended to sterilize male children.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15819797
Ignorance spread intentionally for political reasons has to be the most evil of all human activities.