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Study Finds Unvaccinated Students Putting Other Students At Risk
New submitter haroldmandel writes in with a story about the increase of certain diseases in school-age children due to parents not having their kids vaccinated. "Parents nervous about the safety of vaccinations for their children may be causing a new problem: the comeback of their grandparents' childhood diseases, reports a new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Despite the successes of childhood immunizations, wrote Penn Nursing researcher Alison M. Buttenheim, PhD, MBA, in the American Journal of Public Health, controversy over their safety has resulted in an increasing number of parents refusing to have their children vaccinated and obtaining legally binding personal belief exemptions against vaccinations for their children."
That is all i have say.
everyone's best friend should be Polio.
This is why vaccinations need to be mandatory. If you want to live in society, you have to follow society's rules and that includes rules that keep you from putting others at serious risk.
Vaccines are not that profitable. Please adjust your tinfoil hat.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Every reputable medical doctor, along with every pundit even slightly knowledgable about medicine or even basic biology has been warning of this issue ever since the antivaxxer morons got their idiotic campaign going.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
I suspect that, rather than "Despite the successes of childhood immunizations", it would be because of those successes that the 'controversy' is presently raging...
Because of the effectiveness of widespread childhood vaccination, we've had at least a generation of people with minimal firsthand exposure to all the wacky pathogenic fun that used to be quite common. Plus, depending on the herd immunity requirements for a given pathogen and vaccine, being part of the first n% of opt-outs is basically cost-free. It isn't until you get closer to herd immunity breakdown that being unvaccinated starts to carry any serious additional risk of infection.
If you have a situation where people's knowledge of the risks is largely historical and the odds are pretty good that you can free-ride your way past them in any case, it (sadly) seems only to be expected that there would be room for assorted controversy to flourish.
He didn't need to be paid, the mind control nanobots they put in the vaccines made him do it.
Alternate hypothesis ; anti-vaxxers are actually a shadowy conspiracy of the radical Green movement who want the human race thinning out a bit to lower our impact on Mother Earth.
These diseases cause not just death, but maiming and suffering on a grand scale when allowed to spread unchecked. Not being vaccinated is on a par with smoking - it's a stupid and bad for not just your health but for the health of those around you.
Vaccination must have been very successful for us to even HAVE an anti vaccination movement, because the memory of the horrors of childhood diseases makes anyone bearing it a lifeline proponent of getting your shots...
At its core, the anti-vax movement is bad risk assessment for a few reasons. First of all, the horrors of the diseases that most vaccinations prevent against haven't been seen in a few generations. People my age (30's) with kids have never lived in a world where you could get polio or mumps at any moment and wind up dead, on an iron lung, deaf, scarred for life, etc. They score the risk of these infections as low because they don't see them. (The fallacy here being that the *reason* they don't see them is because of vaccines.)
Then, they hear scare tactics from certain people (Wakefield, McCarthy, etc) who claim that vaccines contain mercury/fetal tissue/generic toxins/etc that will harm their child. One shot and suddenly your child will catch The Autism. (Picture that in a much scarier font and cue a woman screaming off camera.) This would be so horrible and so, they conclude, we must stop all vaccinations until they are proven 100% safe.
The fallacy with this last one is that 1) there has never been a proven link between vaccines and autism, 2) even if there was, the diseases vaccines prevent are far worse than autism, and 3) no medical procedure is 100% safe. In fact, nothing anyone does is 100% safe. Driving in to work? You could get in a car crash and die. Better not commute to work until they can design cars that are 100% safe. Walking down the street? You could trip, hit your head, and die. Better not walk until they design 100% safe sidewalks.
The fact is that risk that vaccines pose is minuscule (and mainly limited to allergic reactions or slight fevers) and the threat these diseases pose is huge should they make a comeback. It is only bad risk assessment that makes vaccines look like a bigger threat than the diseases.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Jenny McCarthy body count
“I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's s___. If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.”
Jenny McCarthy in Time Magazine, April 2009
revenue not profits
you have to spend money on R&D, FDA approval, complying with all kinds of regulations selling to the government, bulk discounts. very little profit on vaccines
The only students at risk are those who do not get vaccinated
False. Some number of children can't be vaccinated for legitimate medical reasons, usually allergic reaction to the vaccine ingredients. Then there's a certain number, ranging from 1-5+% that the vaccine simply doesn't take, they are not 100% effective. These two classes of people rely on the fact that the diseases they are vulnerable to aren't present in the general population, if there is an outbreak, the sick people don't come into contact with enough vulnerable people for the disease to spread at a rate that can sustain itself. The numbers necessary are different for each disease, but generally range from 90-99% need to be immune to prevent a wide scale outbreak. These people are harming more than their own children (which would be bad enough), they put everyone else at risk too.
Having worked in the medical research field, I can tell you with certainty that vaccines are that profitable...
Finally when it's all said and done, the actual pharmaceutical company can bring in billions of dollars in revenue selling the vaccine, which is just about enough to fund the next few projects.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
How about letting choice run both ways? If you choose to refuse vaccination for your child, the school can choose to refuse to allow them in? Exemptions only allowed in the case of provable medical conditions such as allergies.
That way, if your community decides that it wants vaccinations, you can either go along with it, find an alternative school somewhere else or choose to home school.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Vaccines aren't 100% effective. There are some for whom the vaccine didn't work. If we were talking about a fully vaccinated population, it wouldn't matter. Herd immunity would protect these people (along with those too young to get vaccinated and those who have valid medical reasons like allergies). However, if too many people stop vaccinating, herd immunity breaks down and these people are subjected to a disease that their immune system isn't ready for.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Vaccines are not like other drugs. They expire... rather quickly. A large percentage of them are thrown out at the end of the year. Then the research for next years vaccine starts again. It's a never ending cycle and it costs them a fortune. Unlike a drug like Viagra where then can spent a bunch of money researching it, then make pills that have a nearly indefinite shelf life and they do not have to start over every year unless some terrible side effect is found.
... from his buddy Donald Trump who recently claimed:
“Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism spread shots over long period and watch positive result.”
That's almost as bad as Akins "legitimate rape" comment (note: Romney's running mate co-authored the anti-abortion bill by the Republicans.). If you think this thinking is restricted to "just" a potential senator and vice-president please note the Republican platform REMOVED the clause allowing for abortions in case of Rape or Incest.
Judge them not (just) by what they say but what they do.
And that all goes into the drug company's pocket, because, of course, vaccines cost nothing to make.
Vaccines make so little profit that there's difficulties in keeping the manufacturing of them going--and research into new ones has almost stopped.
Oh noes, the chemicals!
First, most vaccines don't contain mercury anymore. Second, vaccines only ever contained very small amounts, as a preservative. If you eat fish even a few times per year, that plus your exposure through drinking water probably adds up to more mercury than you'd get from a vaccine, even if you did get one of the vaccines that still has mercury in it.
The preservative is necessary to keep the vaccine from going bad long enough that it can be reasonably distributed.
In fact, that's the main reason behind the special "vaccine court" that handles claims of problems with vaccines. Vaccines make so little profit that any legal risk they pose to the company could tip the scales into them being not worth the effort. The vaccine court is a way to weed out the frivolous claims (i.e. "this vaccine turned my son autistic and my evidence is Jenny McCarthy") and take action on the valid cases. If vaccines were dumped into the main court system, lawsuits would spread like wildfire over every imagined complaint. The companies would have to defend themselves against them and vaccines just not be worth the effort, money-wise. They would be losing money (via frivolous lawsuits) and their production would be stopped. Then we'd all suffer through those diseases again.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Not vaccinating your kid exposes mine to potentially life-threatening disease. If you think that the (vanishingly small) risk of complications from vaccination is more important than my (vaccinated) kid's risk of contracting a disease that has mutated inside your (unvaccinated) kid.. well, you're bad at math. And, a selfish short-sighted asshole.
I've never really understood why it is that something you were going to do anyway becoming mandatory means that you should automatically resist it. You've lost nothing except the choice you weren't going to make, and society has benefited. Making vaccinations mandatory is not the same as Hitler storming across Europe, get a grip. If the slope were really that slippery, we would have fallen down into the abyss a long long time ago.
Obligatory car analogy: Sure, you have the right to drive around with faulty brakes. At least in this state, you do not need working brakes to pass the yearly inspection. You can argue that you're risking nobody except yourself.. except, you're not. Your passengers, and the other people on the roads that you slam into because you can't stop, would disagree.
Part of living in a civilized society is recognizing when your actions have consequences for others that have no say in the matter. Yes, you can make the choice not to vaccinate your kid. But realize that your actions have consequences for others. (It may come as a shock to you that there are other people in the world besides you and your child.) One of the major problems we (USA) have as a society is the attitude of "I've got mine, fuck you." Take responsibility for your choice; keep your kid away from mine. If your idealism leads to my kid's death.. then it's not worth protecting. Die for your ideals if you want; it's your life to throw away.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Not to mention that mercury was blamed for "vaccines cause autism." They removed the mercury. Autism rates still rose. So they changed their claim of why "vaccines cause autism" to something else. Every time the link they claim is proven false, they move the goal posts somewhere else so they can claim that "vaccines cause autism" hasn't *really* been disproven and that the burden is on everyone else to disprove claim #1,263.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The fact is, there's profit being made here. The next question is what lobbying & what pressure is being put on legislators to insure these profits.
If that is your sole argument, that someone is lobbying the government to force people to get vaccinated so these companies can make money, you've lost any semblance of logical argument.
The fact that you consider homeopathic to be medicine, which it isn't, and choose to focus on the money aspect, which is completely irrelevant to the medically sound reason to be vaccinated, shows your lack of common sense.
I can assure you when people were being vaccinated for smallpox or polio, no one gave a rats ass about who was making a profit, or if a profit was even being made. All they cared about was that the yearly sweeps of infections that plagued the country came to a stop.
Are you now going to complain about all the money those big bad corporations made eradicating smallpox and polio? How about rinderpest, an equally devastating disease which has afflicted animals since before the time of Greeks? Are you going to complain about the money corporations made selling this vaccine to the animal industry to innoculate animals to prevent them from getting infected and making it the second time in human history that a disease has been wiped from the face of the Earth?
It seems counter-intuitive to complain these companies are making money to produce a product which will, eventually, make the use of that product unnecessary (in the case of smallpox and rinderpest). After all, wouldn't it be easier to make something which only treats the symptoms rather than cures it? That way they could have a perpetual source of income.
You and Jenny McCarthy would make a great pair. You should go on tour.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
By avoiding modern health system, you'd be bringing us back to the Middle Ages. If you cut down the average life expectancy, it won't be effective to properly take care of the children, why send them to college until they're twenty-five when half of them will be dead before they are forty? Eventually we'd all sink to the level of dirt streets and chamber pots being emptied out of people's windows and famines and everyone of us would have a really bad time. Oh, and no Nintendo for you.
BTW, meanwhile, evolution happily churns on, no matter whether you like it or not. You don't have to be worried about that.
Ezekiel 23:20
Interesting how "my body, my choice" has such limited applicability.
Typhoid Mary would agree you if she were alive today.
Please explain for all the stupid people in the room how, if student A is vaccinated but student B is not, that this will make student A sick.
From the top of my head:
Vaccine aren't 100% efficient. There might by a few case where the student received the vaccine but didn't develop the antibodies. (Just an example: if you're sick with a fever, there's a risk that the ongoing inflammation will destroy the vaccine content (through macrophages) before antibodies are developped (through lymphocytes))
There might be student aren't anti-vaxx but who aren't up-to-date just yet (they missed a dose or whatever).
There are people who have a compromised immune system (that's an example from TFA) and can't get vaccinated.
There are people who have allergies and for whom the vaccine might be risky (another example from TFA). (As an example: for practical purpose, flu vaccines are grown on eggs. If you're allergic to the egg proteins, no shot for you, even if you're not anti-vaxx).
There are people who have been vaccinated but can't momentarily fight the disease due to a compromised immune system (AIDS, or even disease as simple as mononucleosis can momentarily b0rk the immune system).
etc.
(Case in point: with some disease (like the flu) it's better to vaccinate the population which is at risk of spreading the disease, rather than the group which is at risk of the disease - it better to vaccinate the care taking/nursing/medical personal, rather than the weak elderly patients.)
You end-up with a bunch of people who aren't anti-vaxx, but which still aren't protected against the disease.
- If the number of non vaccinated people is underneath a specific treshold. Nothing happens. When somebody gets the disease due to complex unlucky circumstances, nothing happens, because chances are the sick person will never meet another susceptible person. The disease just can't manage to find enough victims to spread among.
- If the number of non vaccinated people rises above a specific treshold, the shit hits the fan: the disease get a big enough and dense enough population among which to spread. There's a far greater chance that the disease in one sick person will get a chance to meet a susceptible person to whom to jump. Disease which were taught to be almost eradicated suddenly appear again and run epidemic.
By being selfish and refusing to vaccine, anti-vaxx will raise this number above the treshold. They will not only pose a danger to themselves, but to the population as a whole including all the "innocent" categories cited before who weren't anti-vaxx, but will suffer because of the anti-vaxx.
In a completely selfish way, it makes sense for the anti-vaxx to refuse the vaccine: vaccine aren't perfect and there very slight chance of secondary effect (ranging from simple inconvenience to more serious effect). Even rarest problem don't have a rate of absolutely zero but slightly above. And if the disease is almost eradicated chance, the chance to catch is are nearly zero.
But that behaviour is really dangerous for the community because as a consequence of it, the number of susceptible people is at risk at passing the treshold. They end up making the chance to catch the disease non-zero. By just wanting to avoid a statistically really rare inconvenience, they put the community at a bigger risk.
The example is the polio. In theory it has been recently almost eradicated, chance of catching it are nearly non existant. But vaccine against polio isn't a synthetic product, but a "stunned" virus. There a very slight but not completely null chance to develop a serious effect, something like a polio (sorry I don't remember if it was either because the virus wasn't stunned enough, or because the immune system was compromised).
So the reasoning inside the head of anti-vaxx goes "chance of problems with vaccine > chance of problems with polio" therefore "don't get the vaccine".
But the problem is that, in consequence of just a reasoning, the treshold has b
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