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Measles Outbreak In NYC
sandbagger writes "New York City may have to deal with a measles problem. New Yorkers are being urged to make sure all household members, including young children, are vaccinated. To date, there have been 16 confirmed cases and four hospitalizations. This follows news from the CDC in December that 2013 saw triple the average number of yearly measles cases. 2014 is off to an even worse start; there have been cases recently in the Boston metropolitan area and more than a dozen in the Bay Area as well. Vaccinations seem to be a victim of their own success — people look around and see no polio or measles and wonder why they should bother. Others repeat bogus claim about vaccines causing autism. How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?"
Thanks a lot you dumb bitch.
We should present to them the facts! That will sway their minds. /sarcasm...
http://www.followingvaccinations.com
As long as trends like this happen, you won't get through to them.
Hmm was there a major outcry by people who knew **** all about vaccines regarding MMR and the unfounded notion that it might cause Autism? We had a large outbreak of Measles in the UK recently because people had stopped getting their kids vaccinated. Perhaps the same thing happened on your side of the pond.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Cheap kits allowing people to verify exactly what is in the vaccine.
Tell these people a story about a kid that got sick and nearly died because of not being vaccinated. It was recently shown to be effective, which makes sense, since these people seem to think emotionally rather than rationally. Evidence does nothing to convince them.
You can't get through. The more you tell them they are wrong, the more they double down.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-denial-psychology-backfire-effect
Put all the anti-vaxxers together on the same island. See how it goes.
"Well my kid died of measles, but at least he didn't get Autism"
http://i.imgur.com/PyN2w.png
People need to realize that Andrew Wakefield, the father of the anti-vax movement as we know it today, was discredited and disgraced for the shoddiness of his so-called "research".
Oh yeah, and he had a vested interest in kids not getting MMR vax - I think he had ownership of a patent on a different rubella-only vaccine. Herp derp.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Sure the Amish might have exceedingly rare cases of autism & some may point fingers to the MMR which is garbage...but do they get measles?
I cannot wait to find out.
As a start they need to get all vaccine research out from behind paywalls in the public interest.
Trying to reason with an anti-vaxer is impossible, its like trying to talk to a fanatical person of any stripe they don't listen to reason, especially if your facts discount what they believe.
Cue someone complaining about vaccinations
- free vaccinations
- no insurance coverage for treatment if you are not vaccinated
- fines for not vaccinating your children
That leaves stupidity as the only reason not to get vaccinated. Hopefully the money collected from those fines is then used to do something about the stupidity.
If the fines then become an incentive for parents to not treat their children, there should be child abuse laws for not giving your child required medical care that kick in. You could also reverse it, i.e. a tax deduction for vaccination, in case the psychology works better that way.
*blinking cursor*
I don't see how we could get through to them, they've already jumped the bandwagon on at least one dubious claim, facts and research clearly aren't swaying these people. Letting them contract the disease and then tell them why they can't be cured of it, and may die, might have a much larger impact. Sucks that it has to put the rest of us at risk first though.
... whatever
Maybe we'll have the capability to cheaply trace each confirmed case back to the source through the DNA of diseases. Turn a few ambulance chasing lawyers loose on folks causing outbreaks for whatever reason and a few people might change their tune.
"How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?"
Let them all die the way nature intended.
Hope you're proud of yourselves.
It's easy. There's usually hospital or school records of people being vaccinated. If they're not, pin them down and vaccinate them. What would you be charged with? Protecting their life?
If they don't listen when their pediatrician gives them advice based on data and research and standard medical guidelines then the only thing that will get through to them is seeing their child get an awful preventable illness.
you can not Force people to believe something.
So, there is a simple solution for people who refuse to give up their belief that vaccines are dangerous. They themselves are the true public health threat. So we take a page out of history. Typhoid Mary would not stop seeking work as a cook. So she had to be quarantined on an island in the Hudson River.
Move these people there.
Quarantine them .
The only requirement to leave is to be properly vaccinated.
How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?
Unfortunately, I don't think anything will get through to them until their kids and loved ones start dying from very old and highly preventable diseases.
Their mindset is one much like the followers of creationism, etc where they believe that:
1) All scientists have been bought out by "big pharma" or
2) That the consensus among the scientific community is some kind of organized ploy to sell more and more drugs.
Because of this, no matter what scientists or public health officials say, they just plug their ears and go "LALALALALA".
Others repeat bogus claim about vaccines causing autism. How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?
Intellectuals have a significantly higher chance of producing an autist or aspie - it's evolution and the non-autist hooting monkies should just accept it, they are dying out. All hail the new Humans.
Statistically you are more likely to die from a bee sting. So explain to me why there will be 300 posts calling Jenny McCarthy a stupid douche.
How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers
Let their kids start dying of these things again, it'll get through. You can't convince stupid people, especially when they have a vacuous celebrity spokesperson.
Another way of looking at this is that this is a self correcting problem. The retards who don't vaccinate their children end up having their progeny eliminated from the gene pool and thereby preventing the proliferation of their foolishness. Poor kids though.
"How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?"
Easy... ever heard of the phrase "I say we take the safety labels off of all products and let the problem sort itself out"?
I know several people that refuse to vaccinate their children. They don't care what evidence you provide. They will argue until the day they die that vaccines cause autism. You can't argue with that level of conviction(or stupidity).
Yes, there's a good chance we're going to lose people that were vaccinated and still caught the (insert any vaccinated disease here) but that's the breaks when you deal with society. They won't always agree with you. And their stupid mistakes will sometimes cost you more than you are ever willing to pay.
http://i2.listal.com/image/4300557/600full-jenny-mccarthy.jpg
The best way to handle this is for the original author of the paper that started this anti-vaccination mess, Andrew Wakefield, come out and give a public statement indicating that:
1. Apologize for the fact that his study was flawed, and explain why.
2. That no other study has established any material basis in any respect for a link between autism and vaccines or their components.
3. The original funding for this supposed research was made by lawyers who were attempting to find reason to litigate against vaccine manufacturers.
4. That many people will now die of diseases that were nearly eradicated a mere 15 years ago similar to smallpox a few years before it was eradicated.
Put that as a public service announcement on every major TV and radio channel, and online as well, as widely as possible. Show pictures of what happens when people don't vaccinate, particularly to children, the elderly and immune-compromised individuals (e.g. transplant saved his/her life, now they die). Have him make this appeal over and over again until people get this.
Even if we don't get to 100%, we owe it to everyone around us. The public health costs are staggering, and the stupidity is mind boggling.
It's a shitty solution and totally unfair to the kids, but I think it's the only solution.
Trying to reason with an "anti-vaxxer" is like trying to reason with the contrail folks. Just not going to be productive.
The only way this movement is going to die is when a sufficient number of parents watch their non-vaccinated children die or become horribly disfigured from long-since dealt with diseases.
Just tell them that the vaccine is fully organic, low sodium, fat free and gluten free.
Also, it's got Electrolytes.
to leave my children unvaccinated, pray for them to not die when i starve them to death, murder infidels, and force other people to be denied an education because i dont want my kids learning how we are animals.
I'm serious. This is a public health issue, and they're reducing the effectiveness of health initiatives for everyone around them. I'm not keen on giving the government the power to say, "let us stick this needle in your arm, or we're going to toss you in prison," but, as a society, we're quickly reaching a point at which we need to decide whether we have the right to protect society itself from the stupidity of the vocal minority. Slippery slope, I get it, but it's no false dichotomy to point out that the only other real option is to ignore them, and accept the consequences thereof.
How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?
Let nature take its course. Evolution in action.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Point fingers at "anti-vaxxers" all you want, that's not the root of the issue (not to say that it's not an issue). So long as we keep cramming more and more humans into smaller and smaller areas, we're just begging for a pandemic to come through and wipe out a fair amount of the population.
Think about new "super-diseases" like MRSA, or H041 Gonorrhea, which some experts are saying is a worse STD than AIDS.
No vaccination is going to save you from disease-related death if you're all crammed together like cattle in a slaughter shoot.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
As far as I'm concerned, the message should be:
"Here's the only link between vaccines and autism: if you don't vaccinate your children, they might die before they can even be diagnosed with autism."
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I've heard it said before that preventable disease outbreaks like this happen because children who are typically not yet old enough to be vaccinated come into contact with a more mature individual who was never vaccinated.
If so, it seems to me that the only reason this kind of thing keeps happening is because of THEIR choice... and their choice is directly affecting the lives of other children that they could communicate the disease to.
As for how to really get them to support vaccinations? I can only suggest something that is at least mostly preventable through vaccination, but particularly virulent and lethal as what may be the only thing to have any impact. It won't necessarily convince them to do anything about it if they succumb themselves, but the memory of the incident will stick around for at least a couple of generations in the survivors.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Simply make them criminally liable for any other people who catch measles from them or their children.
Also revoke their health care coverage. And eliminate excused exemptions from vaccinations except when approved by a panel of doctors.
... meanwhile on anti-vax FB pages that I have gotten into, they are having measles-parties, mumps-parties, and the like. Intentionally exposing their kids to disease.
Trolling is a art,
Ok, so *you think* your kid might become autistic, if vaccinated.... Better to have a live autistic child than one that is dead from whooping cough.
When it came time to discuss this with our DR, she said to us, "You don't want to see what it's like to watch a child die from whooping cough." It took about 2 seconds for my wife and I to process that, and decide what the larger risk is.
--fatboy
Its sad, but if the kids of parents who only think on a base emotional level die then its clearing out the human gene pool. We should thank them.
If you don't vaccinate your child, fine. But if you reject society like that then expect society to reject you.
No vaccination? Forbidden from attending school. Forbidden from visiting a doctor. Forbidden from visiting any public facilities like libraries, train stations, or airports. Forbidden from riding a bus or train or taxi.
PDP-11's forever, baby!
Easy - let them die of measles. If they chose not to be vaccinated they can choose to die of an easily preventable disease. Then throw a big party celebrating them being gone.
It may not be possible. The anti-vaccination movement has taken on full blown fundamentalist religious zeal. It's like trying to talk about evolution to a fundamentalist christian. In the end you have wasted your breath talking to an ignorance re-reinforced brick wall.
Personally, I think the government needs air strongly worded PSA's during the commercial segments in primetime television with powerful and sickening imagery combined with stories of kids that died becaue they did not get vaccinated. Yes, we need a campaign stronger than the opposition.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Why not just let the measles be a problem again. Let some kids die from it and people will may see the value again....
Autism wasn't the reason I didn't vaccinate my kids. I wanted them to have REAL immunity to childhood diseases, which you only get by catching them and getting over them. The only exception is Tetanis, which often causes permanent damage. Measles is good exercise for a developing immune system. Chicken Pox is a joke, unless you get it later in life, because you got only partial immunity from a childhood immunization. Polio is usually not even noticed, expressing only as a cold. And it started disappearing BEFORE the vaccinations started. Rubella (Whooping Cough) is a hard one. The disease is no fun (the Chinese call it the "100 day cough", and I can attest to that accuracy), and can be harmful to children less than a year old. Older children get over it, and adults have no problem with it. Diptheria really IS dead in the west. HEPA and HEPB don't happen in children. Flus are good for you, mostly.
Now. Everybody flame away. I have a very thick skin.
The only thing that gets through to people who run their lives based entirely on emotions is ....wait for it.... emotions.
Sadly, this will require the deaths of a few infants from vaccine preventable diseases. Once those hit the news parents will be more afraid of the disease than the vaccine.
An artificial vaccine shortage will help. If parents are afraid they might not be able to get vaccines before "the supply runs out" they will panic and stand in line for hours to get their kids immunized.
Mod this "Sad, but true"
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Shunning might work. Unvaccinated kids don't pose a medical danger to vaccinated kids, but they are a potential emotional liability since they may die for a tragically preventable reason. If we say we don't want our vaccinated kids to get close to unvaccinated kids to avoid a possible emotional wound, then that places a lot of social pressure on the issue. Shunning is one of the cruelest things to do, so we ought to be sure the problem is really worth taking such steps. It's been working for smoking though.
If so, it seems to me that the only reason this kind of thing keeps happening is because of THEIR choice... and their choice is directly affecting the lives of other children that they could communicate the disease to.
This doesn't make sense, the childeren that are vaccinated shouldn't be influenced by the children that are. Otherwise why vaccinate at all if it's not even effective stopping you from getting it.
Free range, grain fed!
But the problem is you still thought there was an autism risk and it took you an extra 2 seconds to do it. This is the underlying issue. Andrew Wakefield published a fraudulent paper on the subject stating that vaccinations cause this and got a celebrity to basically endorse it because she (Jenny McCarthy) was looking for a reason why her child was autistic. If it wasn't for JMC being desperate to find an excuse that doesn't include any self blame this would never have gotten even a tiny fraction of the attention it has.
How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?
Require mandatory vaccination. The only exemption being for children who cannot receive the vaccine for medical reasons. And if an unvaccinated child is subsequently harmed by contracting measles prosecute the parents for child endangerment.
If your child dies right after taking these "safe" vaccines, there is no legal recourse at all. They are shielded by bogus laws and that is total bullshit. You don't think it is telling that things like that are in place? Everytime something like this comes up on /. I see people chiming in about polio. Polio is only catchable anal to oral so if you are not licking ass of infected people you shouldn't fear it at all, but wait we don't handle our waste water correctly, so of course instead of doing the right thing, we should shove needles in our veins, what a perfect solution! You all know that now they are requiring chicken pox vaccinations for the schools? Chicken pox really? It is a mild annoyance for near everyone and it is well known what conditions it is dangerous for and that is the only reason for the vaccination of that disease. The list of things they want to inject you for is growing, including the schedule of them. None of you were concerned when they wanted to hit your babies with three shots in on visit? If something goes terribly wrong, which one was it? Was it more than one causing the issue(s). Either way the vaccines are not as safe or effective as they are claimed to be and the people that think that vaccination is the only way are just as blind as the ones that blindly refuse them. Too bad I see that the majority are blind no matter what side they sit on.
This doesn't make sense, the childeren that are vaccinated shouldn't be influenced by the children that are. Otherwise why vaccinate at all if it's not even effective stopping you from getting it.
1. Not everyone can be vaccinated. Persons with immune system conditions, allergies, etc.
2. Not everyone is ready for vaccination. MMR, for example, can't be given until 12 months.
3. Vaccines aren't 100% effective. There's always a small percentage who simply fail to acquire immunity.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Children too young to be vaccinated are affected by other unvaccinated people who have come in recent contact with the disease. If the latter people had instead been vaccinated, the likelihood of passing on the disease to anyone who hasnt't been is immensely reduced (in addition to the fact that they will not get it).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I've always known some people that were stupid enough to fall for this garbage. And I always told them how dumb they were being. But now I have my own kid. Now, I ask... "Is your kid vaccinated?" and if not they are not allowed in my house, and not allowed around my kid unless mandated by law (school) One couple got mad at me, and I finally just told them to go screw themselves. The life of my child is not worth maintaining your pseudoscience addled minds fantasy. I'm sick of it, and everyone else should be to. Ostracize these people and their kids. Do not allow them near you. The only thing that will fix this insane fad is peer pressure.
No, you are a ** moron. Those who don't vaccinate their kids puts their children and the children of OTHERS at risk. Vaccination is never 100% effective and there are some who can't get vaccinated at all for other reasons than stupidity. They rely in herd immunity to prevent the spreading of the disease and if enough dumbskull parents stops vaccinating their kids these other kids get vulnerable to the disease.
Those other parents have the moral right to demand that THEIR kids don't get in contact to YOUR kids. In an ideal world, that would mean demanding vaccination records for all kids in public schools and homeschooling or special schools designated for kids of dumb parents.
And yes, it also makes sense to ask for a premium for health coverage AND criminal responsibility if the kid dies or get disabled because of the decision of the parent.
Despite a generally high degree of safety, vaccination still has significant risks. Hundreds of patients each year suffer adverse consequences, mostly allergic reactions to eggs or other aspects of manufacturing process, and a few have died for that or other reasons associated with vaccination. In the US, federal law has taken away the right to sue because of alleged injury involving vaccination, in nearly all cases. Even if the person administering the vaccine does it incorrectly, even if the vaccine is not stored or handled according to manufacturer's instructions, no matter what the circumstances, you may not sue. Instead you must file a claim with National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Claims are heard by judges alone (no jury) and take years to decide. Something like 60% of claims are rejected; there is no appeal. For an approved claim the average compensation is several hundred thousand dollars. So your rights are significantly different than in general, and this causes some of the antivax sentiment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/
Inevitably for topics such as this where seemingly smart people choose to collectively do something dumb, someone will drag in creationists in a disparaging manner. It's this feeling of superiority over creationists that's causing this particular problem. The thought process of these people who live in affluent progressive areas such as New York City or the Bay Area is that because they feel they are not blinded by the religion of the masses, they are superior in their ability to analyze information to the masses and all those who pander to the masses. After all, if they know better than religious leaders, they might also know better than government leaders who also have to persuade the masses, or business leaders. As long as these people can keep telling themselves that what they are doing is not based on their own religion, they will never be persuaded to accept vaccination. Because going against religion to them is the ultimate good.
Make their kids wards of the state until they pull their heads out of their asses.
So... the "anti-vax'ers" the article mentions... they're only a small subset of the population, right? Last I checked, according to the CDC they only account for less than .2 percent of the population. I understand the numbers are growing, but they're still a small subset. So if the other 99.8% of people are getting their vaccinations then this really only affects the non-vax'ers, right? In other words, they're getting exactly what they understand they'll get by not being vaccinated. So how is this a huge problem again? I'm confused. Granted, no one wants to see anyone, especially children, die unnecessarily when a vaccination could have kept them alive. But those who reject the vax's over fears of autism, etc understand that if they do get it, they're facing a different risk and they're basically playing the odds. In most cases, whether its measles or chicken pox, they get it, they get over it, and they'll never get it again and their immune systems are the better for it. In rare cases, they or their children will die. But they believe the odds of them dying from measles or pox is less than the odds of having a bad outcome from the vax and getting something like autism. Its all about risks the anti vax'ers are willing to take (and to take for their children). But being such a small subset of the population.. I'm not sure how this is a problem for the rest of us that are already vaccinated and can't get it anyway...
Thats not enough.
-Add school segregation rules so their kids do not put other kids at risk.
-Add criminal charges to the parent if the kid dies or get incapacitated by the disease.
It was for polio, and the vaccination wasn't fake. A CIA agent posed as a doctor, likely the others didn't even know. The CIA hijacked the goodwill effort (doctors without borders I believe) for use in spying. The agent got caught (or at least discovered), and it got into the media. This sparked A) Distrust of the vaccinations so people didn't show up, and B) Bombings to kill the doctors (who might be CIA), also manage to kill people trying to get vaccinations, will also keep people away. All of these things hinder the distribution of the vaccine.
However:
1) It was just normal helpful vaccine, not nano spy bots or whatever.
2) It was, apart from the one jerk CIA agent, a bunch of innocent doctors trying to help.
The issue is trust. Anti-vaxxers do not trust a government that does not even trust it's own people.
I wish we had some jack-booted fascist government, that would kick the doors of unvaccinated houses and give the parents a choice - the gun, or the needle.
The orphans can then be adopted by responsible parents.
Silly anti-vaxers. It's not vaccines causing autism. It's Round-Up, artificial food coloring, and the additives California puts in their gasoline.
If you listen to doctors, nothing causes autism. yet, look around: autism. The only thing worse than listening to anti-vaxers is listening to doctors.
Can't we just let the diseases spread as widely as possible? That way the problem will sort itself out....
Too bad it is unethical to deny medical treatment to people who refused to get vaccinated.
Does NYC have a lot of illegal immigrants? They don't have to go through the health checks and vaccinations that legal immigrants do.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Yeah, so if I told a bunch of people to jump off a cliff and they did it, that would make me a mass murderer. Of course, you're going to be modded to +5, and since your viewpoint is so trendy around here (influx of Diggers like rats running from a flood), Dice will probably uncap the moderation to make a +6, Trendy! mod.
Let's inject all the things! I'm happy that so many other people are willing to inject various little micro-organisms into their blood, so that I don't have to. Are you safe from any bi-effects, significant or not? I know I am.
The irony is she actually hurt more kids than she helped...
How ABOUT Not FILLING THE ViaLS WITH MeRCUrY?
My wife and I home school our two daughters. There is a home school support group in our area that is frequented by several anti-vaccine families. My daughters are up to date on their vaccines and we don't associate with the anti-vax nut jobs. Please don't assume that all home schoolers are anti-vax.
I Don't Work Here
Measles is spreading in the Bible Belt of Canada, the Fraser Valley ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
People like you make the rest of us libertarians look stupid. One does not have a right to walk around pointing their gun at people, shooting it in the air, and twirling it around with the safety off. Senselessly putting people's lives at risk is aggressive _before_ that risk turns into grief.
"Stupidity, ignorance, religious preference (which I know a lot of people 'round these parts will lump in with stupidity)"
Now if only we had a vaccine for stupidity...
Remember, everyone. Mama McCarthy says that the toxins in vaccines are bad, but injecting yourself with botulinum toxin is just fine!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
We don't need to "get through to them" any more than we run advertisement campaigns to convince rapists and murderers to please behave, thank you.
These people are endangering lives of other people, first their children and second everyone else (see "herd immunity"). It's time to stop playing nice. Throw them in jail, vaccinate their kids while they're behind bars, let them go after a week with a heavy fine to pay for all the bullshit.
There's a time for being nice and cooperative and friendly, and there's a time for drawing a line in the sand and shooting everyone who crosses it. Everyone with a child knows that you can't yield all the time. Everyone who's ever been in negotiations knows that the right balance between cooperation and shows of strengths gets you the best results. There's even a program by the UN that educated diplomats that incorporates this simple strategy. And if you want to waste an hour of your time, google "Tit for tat", a simple algorithm that is proven to be the optimal strategy in iterated prisoners dilemma and works exactly this way: Reward cooperation with cooperation, punish betrayl, forgive after you've done that.
These people aren't cooperating. Time to stop cooperating with them.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Actually all we need is marketing. Put up the sad story of some kid who died from Measles because they weren't vaccinated or such. Drown out the nonsense. Show a bunch of kids who show that they were vaccinated and didn't get autism (or whatever).
Yeah, it's illogical. But neither are the refusals. You fight emotional responses with emotions, not logic.
We are not associating the parents decisions with a church? I though Slashdot had rules.
... that might help convince peoplo to vaccinate.
"Violet", what on earth are you blabbering on about? I find it difficult to believe that someone who has formed such a dull understanding of evolutionary genetics has the cognitive ability to use the Internet. But I see you've been modded +5, so maybe this beta thing is sufficiently dumbed down to become accessible to idiots.
Let the gun nuts use anti-vaccination idiots as target practice.
Generally, if vaccinations are widespread, those that can not be vaccinated will benefit from the herd immunity afforded by general vaccination.
Herd Immunity...
Assuming all exposures are endogenous to the group, and that inter-group mobility is small.
Otherwise, you get a grad student from U.C. Berkeley who travels to China and brings back measles, and then proceeds to take BART all over the Bay Area, exposing a huge number of people by way of others also taking public transportation, and then we have the current Bay Area measles outbreak among the unvaccinated.
Alternately, we could use relatively cheap monoclonal antibody tests when letting people through international borders based on them coming from regions of known measles, mumps, whooping cough, or whatever outbreaks, and quarantine them until they are no longer infectious.
Ironically, everyone always talks about prevention by vaccination, assuming that there *will* be a patient zero, rather than prevention by disallowing exposure *by* the patient zero. No patient zero running around in your "unprotected" population, and there's no outbreak, and your population is protected; it's just not a politically correct mechanism for said protection.
I think this probably grows out of the victim mentality that it's not patient zero's fault they were infected, it's someone else's fault, and we should have sympathy for them. It's kind of hard to do that when you have a "Typhoid Mary" Mallon who can't be cured, and is running around giving everyone else the disease because she prefers to work as a cook instead of working in a laundry. Thankfully, our fore-bearers were a little more clever than we are, and quarantined her until her death in 1938 ended the threat of her spreading the disease once and for all.
No, *I* never thought that. I was aware that there was a belief by some people that thought that. What took 2 seconds to process was the mental image of our kid dying of an illness that you only hear about in Victorian literature. Knowing I was looking into the eyes of someone that seen it happen. What I am suggesting is that this appeal to emotion may be a good method of dealing with irrational soon-to-be parents.
Yes, when it came to our kids, we asked the Dr. lots of questions. Including "stupid" questions we think we know the answer to. Our 1st child was born with a congenital health issue that is much more rare than autism. Pretty much everything was on the table. Thanks to some biomedical technology, she is thriving.
--fatboy
This is the inevitable result of individualism.
It's true that you do put your kid at lower risk from the complications of vaccination by not vaccinating. And it's true that your kid is very unlikely to get measles, as long as enough other people vaccinate.
Really, it's logical not to vaccinate - as long as everyone else continues to do so.
Can I get some objective data from this? How many people who have contracted Measles also have the vaccination and how many don't? Why do they never publish these numbers? Im not Pro or Anti Vax, I just want to know the number of cases with and without vaccine.
If there is any truth at all to the risk of damage to your child from vaccination, you have a tremendous burden for life.
OTOH the odds of getting measles, at the moment, are very low. And those of us old enough to remember getting it as children (before the MMR was standard) all lived through it; and people who saw it in other countries presumably also lived through it.
So the problem is selling people on an unknown risk of tremendous harm, or an apparently low risk of low expected harm. All you gamer-geeks out there, min/max this, and see if you don't come up with the same decision. You can't expect the average person to understand this as a "tragedy of the commons" issue - that the only reason the measles risk is low is that most people are vaccinated, and that if more people make the selfish decision to avoid the damage risk, then the measles risk goes up.
As it happens, while I am in favor of vaccination, I also think we're giving too much to children too early, before their bodies can handle it, and we have no idea whether we're shaving a percent or two off the whole population's IQ by giving so many babies high fevers. I'd like to see better blood tests before pumping babies full of crap made by the lowest bidder.
if we didn't let the diseased 3rd worlders in, wouldn't that eliminate the various diseases domestically? ie: only allow travel/trade with nations who are technologically advanced enough to eliminate X diseases AND secure their own borders? That could eliminate much of the terrorist threats also... Sux for those living there who are 'good people' but that might encourage them to be activists and cleanup their neck of the woods(especially if we don't let their leaders visit/medical treatment etc)..
How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?
The same way you "get through" to homophobics, sexists, religious zealots, murderers, etc.: society decides that a certain behavior is not optional (at least without penalties) and legally requires you to live within certain parameters. In this case, only in extreme circumstances is it allowed to opt-out of vaxing your children.
If you're vaccinated, what are you worried about?
Honest question, should I have taken my newborn for allergy tests before they gave her vaccinations?
Prophylactic natal allergy tests not recommended
Unless you have a family history of various allergies, such testing is usually not done. A familial tendency towards allergies speaks to a difference in the histamine complex on chromosome 6 as an inheritable trait, and unless it's dominant (i.e. everyone who marries into the family without the allergy has children with the allergy), then it's likely not a problem.
That said, a newborn's immune system is largely a legacy from the mother until it's trained up on its own, and the child forms its own T-helper cells which are involved in IgE production, which is where histamine reactions originate. Typically we do not vaccinate newborns immediately for most things (see the CDC site for vaccination schedules for various vaccinations).
Typically, after the newborns own immune system takes over is when you want to vaccinate in any case, since doing so prior to that point will not "train" the newborns immune system to react to the protein you are attempting to train it to react to.
Childhood vaccinations vary. For example, it's common to wait until the child is no longer a newborn to vaccinate for most things. There are also exogenous training factors which should be taken into account, though most are dietary.
If you have a diet containing horse meat (for example), of which the child partakes, then you may find that the child reacts badly to horse serum derived vaccines, such as those commonly used for Tetanus or Diphtheria. You may also find that they would react badly to tratment for exposure to Botulism Antitoxin, which is also derived from horse serum. There was an entire M.A.S.H. episode based on the use of a horse-serum derived Tetanus immunization program in the Korean war that ran into the problem that horse meat was a common component of the Korean diet at the time. This episode was based on historical incidents.
For someone with a large amount of familial allergies, the typical problem is overgeneralization of the IgE response of the immune system. It's unclear whether this is a genetic predisposition, or whether it's a matter of exposure to a large degree of immunological challenges; evidence tends to support a predisposition to certain classes of allergies are genetic (e.g. peanuts, penicillin, etc.), but for them to trigger, you need a second exposure to the allergen after an initial exposure "primes" the response.
We see this same issue present in so-called "Rh babies", where an Rh factor difference between the mother and the baby resulted in the first pregnancy running to term, and spontaneous miscarriages due to the immune interaction with the mother for subsequent pregnancies. It's actually one of the original reasons for state blood tests for marriage licenses, and thus state involvement in approval or disapproval of marriages (the other state involvement reason being the close relation marriage taboo, which until allele testing was possible, didn't show up on the blood tests the way a mother/father Rh factor mismatch would).
I believe the best common practice for this, if you are concerned, is to sit down with your child's doctor *well before* it's time to make a "yes/no" decision -- i.e. don't do it on "shot day" -- and discuss the issues and your concerns and family medical history with her or him; most frequently, the rational decision, when you aren't forcing it in the heat of the moment, is usually to do the vaccination.
But who cares about pandemics where your average living span is about 30 y.o.?
Don't vaccinate. Look up "Measles Party" or "Mumps Party" and do what smart people used to do.
You Cannot UN-VACCINATE YOUR CHILD!
Me thinks someone doth protest to much. How many of those cases are from people already vaccinated? Where are the multiple studies proving the vaccines are safe? Never mind bringing up Jenny all that does is shoot the messenger, you still haven't actually refuted the message. Why are there multiple studies proving the presence of Squalene anti-bodies in Gulf War Syndrome sufferers? Pig Pharma is not to be trusted, that is why people are not vaccinating. You can scream JENNY JENNY JENNY!!! till your blue in the face and your not going to change anything.
Slashdot moderators have absolutely no intellectual honesty.
Shashdot moderators have no CONSISTENCY. They are randomly selected and only get to moderate a small number of posts each.
Further, they each get to chose which postings they moderate. People with different idea systems and hot buttons will chose different postings.
To expect "intellectual honesty" in the moderators to be visible as some visible, rational, consistency among moderation of diverse items is to expect that the readership of Slashdot to be suffering from such extreme group-think that they all moderate identically (excetpt for their choices of what to moderate).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
From an LA Times story:
And from the story it referenced:
(The estimate was later expanded to millions. Also, this "patient zero" infected four of his family members in addition to any he infected on the BART or elsewhere.)
There's more than fuel efficiency to consider when comparing mass transit vs. private automobile transportation.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
[reference to graph with post-vaccination bumps in Measles incidences and a recommendation for a second, booster, dose at the start of the third bump.]
Maybe this is just the half-time of the shots, and it's time to refresh? I.e. "2014, third dose recommended"
I suspect the second-dose recommendation was driven by the detection of substantial numbers of Measles cases among those vaccinated a few years previously, indicating that the immunity from one dose wore down after a few years.
I also suspect that we'll get a third-dose recommendation iff a similar number of cases is detected among those who had two dosesk (of non-defectivek vaccine, properly spaced).
The proper signal comes, not from the overall infection rate, but from the infection rate among those already vaccinated.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The people who are the best in technical fields tend to have well developed social intelligence as well as being technically brilliant. These aren't either-or abilities. The lack of social or emotional skills is a cognitive deficit.
As one who moved to Silicon Valley (which looks to me like one big Aspergers ward B-J ) and socializes with many of the founders of the compter industry, I can tell you that there are a lot of unquestionably "technically brilliant" and wildly successful people who would be textbook examples of Aspergers' "sufferers".
My own opinion is somewhat between yours and that of the previous poster: I suspect Aspergers' people primarily do well with computers because it's a field where the "missing social skills" are not an impediment to success.
The various levels of social-skill blindness, and the resulting stronger focus on the functionality that IS present, may also help more with the programming somewhat (if only by reducing distriction from anthropomorphizing the machines), or it may simply be irrelevant. I suspect it helps some - more than lack of communication with the Pointy Haired Bosses hurts - but that any such effect pales before the "something interesting I can do" effect.
Yes, social skills can help in teamwork, organizing and finding financing for companies, and in finding problems that technology can solve and earn a profit doing so. (Example: Social media.) On the other hand, building technological prosthetics to help replace the missing functionality can also help lead to success. (Example again: Social media.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
- their children will be removed from the gene pool (eitger through death, sterilisation or permant disability) and the faulty genes that resulted in their defective, illogical, brains will no longer affect the human species.
It's not nice, but it's a free society, where you are allowed to make stupid decisions, but you have to live with them, or die with them.
You can't wrap everyone in cotton wool because a minority are disastrously clumsy.
Sounds like someone has found a revenue stream from the Vaccine companies.
I had measles as a child when I was 5 or 6. Because light can seriously damage the eyes of a measles patient, and I was a typical 5 or 6 year-old, I got tired of staying in the dark, so I would sneak looks out into the sunlit yard through my window. As a result, I am suffering from severe myopia and other degenerative eye issues now. By the time I was 8 or 9, I suddenly needed glasses. My sister noticed when I had to sit practically with my nose on the screen to see the TV... :-( Not good! Back then, there were no reasonable measles vaccinations. So, if you or your children have not been vaccinated, I STRONGLY recommend that you do so, ASAP!
FWIW, the effects of measles on adults is MUCH worse than for children...
Sir,
Yes, some people cannot get shots. My co-worker's child died of whooping cough. (Yes, in the US, the third world of the first world!)
She was too young to get shots, not yet 3 months.
--PeterM
Whitley Bay
St. Brides Bay
Cardigan Bay
Caernarfon Bay
Notre Dam Bay
Trinity Bay
Conception Bay
Placentia Bay
Fortune Bay
St. Georges Bay
Chedabducto Bay
Egmont Bay
Bay of Fundy
Penobscot Bay
Essex Bay
Dorchester Bay
Duxbury Bay
Kingston Bay
Plymouth Bay
Cape Cod Bay
Little Pleasant Bay
Pleasant Bay
Lewis Bay
Buzzards Bay
Mt. Hope Bay
Narragansett Bay
The people in those bay areas will just have to remember their mile marker and zip code.
Vaccines offer ~90% protection. So even if you're vaccinated, there's a ~10% chance you'll GET THE DISEASE if you're exposed.
When the vast majority of people are vaccinated, diseases don't spread, and the 10% of people who are vaccinated but for which the vaccine didn't work don't end up being exposed.
Vaccinated or not, someone unvaccinated is a personal threat to you and your children!
I get it that you can't ostracize your wife, but don't bring HER or YOUR KIDS anywhere near me or mine!
--PeterM
My co-worker's child died of whooping cough. She was too young to be vaccinated, not even three months.
It's not really a tolerable prospect when it is REAL, is it?
Instead of having babies die, how about we make it PAINFUL to not be vaccinated?
No visits to doctors because you might spread disease, no health care coverage because you haven't done the MINIMUM to protect yourself?
Should society even allow anti-vaxxers to have parental rights at all?
--PM
IT IS NOT A VACCINE!
You can still get the disease after you have been vaccinated, which means you are not immune.
Article: http://huff.to/ROzB0h
1. You can't force people to take medication. - give it some thought. big big consequences
2. I have had vaccinations and been tested afterwards and no immunity was found
3. Some people do react terribly to medications especially vaccinations. Crippling them to suit your politics is hardly right.
In my day we had a few vaccination, now there is something in the neighbourhood of 36. Not the same ball game.
http://www.software3d.com/Home/Vax/Immunity.php
"How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?"
First, by not calling them anti-vaxxers. Once you have experienced finding out that your child is autistic - not like other children, not curable, maybe even not fixable - your life is changed forever. You fight the urge to blame yourself and / or your spouse (the parents of special needs children have a higher than usual divorce rate), you wonder incessantly what could have happened, and, more important to this point, what did YOU do?
Blaming vaccines may not be scientific, giving Jenny McCarthy too much air time may have been unwise, but done is done. If there is to be a PSA campaign, it should be done with parents of autistic children as the spokespersons, and if possible, it would be great if they were pediatricians, or some other kind of MD, or pharmacists, or human biologists, to say, "I'm a doctor, but I'm also a parent. When I was told my Jimmy was autistic, I thought I, or maybe my spouse, was somehow responsible. I was desparate. I didn't want to believe that it had just HAPPENED! So, I can't criticize a parent that tries to find something, anything to blame. But, trust me, vaccines are not why my Jimmy, or your child, is autistic. So, please, don't deny your children the protection they need, and the protection the children around them need, from childhood diseases."
{ Voiceover } VACCINES DON'T MAKE YOUR CHILDREN SICK. HELP KEEP EVERYONE SAFE. VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN!
Put some of these pricks on trial.
If I convinced the Church of the Greater Lemming is was time for the whole church to jump into the Grand Canyon and they all died ... I be on death row. The same thing should apply to the per yours of the deadly anti vaccine woo....
By changing the bullshit narrative that all vaccines good, and that anyone that points out there are problems is an idiot.
And that the religious and truly crazy subsection of people that have an issue with the way the US and the FDA are handling the constant deludge of new, poorly tested vaccines are somehow representative of the whistleblowers.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't know enough to have an opinion either way, so STFU.
Better to have a live autistic child than one that is dead from whooping cough.
Bullshit
So you want to know how to get through to the "anti-vaxers". Simple. Tell the truth. Sort of like the government documents do that you haven't taken the time to read so I'll give you a site that covers the highlights and you can download the actual reports via the links on it.
- Quotes from Simpsonwood and Puerto Rico Conferences (vaccines & metal toxicity)
http://www.autismhelpforyou.com/Simpsonwood_And_Puerto%20%20Rico.htm
It is very hard to fault someone for not trusting medical authorities who publicly say "it's perfectly safe" and then talk like this behind closed doors. You may want to lay off the "anti-vaxers" and actually analyze the data and statements made behind closed doors. That is if you have the intellectual honesty and intestinal fortitude to do so.
Oh by the way how many of the people who contracted the measles in this current outbreak were partially or fully vacinated? If it is similar to other recent outbreaks it will be 90+% of them. So is the vaccine failing? Is the disease mutating? Is all the glyphosate in the food (via GMOs and desication) killing our gut bacteria making our immune system malfunction so a vaccine that would have worked with a healthy set of gut bacteria no longer provides much if any protection?
It is pathetic to just blame the "anti-vaxers" when there are so many serious questions and angles just being swept under the rug.
Maybe the vaccine is just a trigger event. What happens at around the same time in a child's life that they start getting vaccinated? They stop breast feeding and start eating solid foods. So why has the percentage of autistic children gone up so dramatically in the last 20 years? Rates of one in 50 in the USA but one in 200 in Germany. What is the difference?
In Germany the GMO foods have to be labled and nobody buys them so there are few if any glyphosate (RoundUp) contaminated foods.
So try this scenario: A child with a developing immune system is being fed glyphosate unknowingly by his parents. It damages the bacteria in their gut wreaking havoc on their immune system, nuerotransmitter production and sufur pathways (garbage disposal). Throw into that mix a vaccine which has aluminum and sometimes still thimerisol (49% mercury) and you have a recipe for a disaster.
So what needs to be researched is what is the rate of autism amongst vaccinated kids who have not been exposed to glyphosate in their food supply either by GMO foods or desication of crops (a practice that should be punishable by years in jail IMHO).
By the way it has been known for a long time (late 1970s / early 1980s) that aluminum and mercury are not additive in their effects. Given a dose of either strong enough to kill 1 in 100 to rats and then give that same dose combined killed 100%.
J. Shubert, E. Riley & S. Tyler. Combined Effects in Toxicology--A Rapid Systemic Testing Procedure: Cadmium, Mercury and Lead. J.Toxicology and Environmental Health v4, p763, 1978
We give their children measles and polio. That'll shut 'em up for good.
Okay first off, I'm a born-again Christian who believes Creation by God in 7 days. Evangelical Christian. Just to clear the air when I say this: About half of my church is anti-vaccination people. They claim their "home remedies" will protect them from this crap and the spout off old studies that have long been disproved or never peer-reviewed. Despite my intense debate with them on FB and in person with study papers in hand or links they continue to believe that their roots & herbs is going to protect them from a virus. Recently one of my elders in church went to the Philippines and is due back to church today. He is an anti-vaccine person and went into an area infected with TB! The wife and I have been debating severely if we should go back to church or not this morning or wait till next week to see if he goes into active TB stage. BUT inactive TB can stay in your system for 2 freakin years! I have a new baby on the way in two months, and at any time this guy could go active and expose my new child who is too young to get the vaccination. Personally, I say let them all kill each other off with spreading these diseases among themselves, but the problem is, they expose their sickness to my children who may be too young to XYZ vaccination. Oh yeah, the same half of the church "claims" they are all allergic to gluten as well. So I feel myself qualified when I say they are a bunch of religious nut-jobs.
Let's start out with the facts. Shouldn't we be asking how many of these already received innoculations?
We all had measles when we were kids and no vaccination ever. None of us died, for goodness sake! We just had to stay in bed in a darkened room and get better. We didn't eat all the crap your kids eat nowadays and we all got well again.
So what's the fuss about? Vaccinated people also get measles, hello!? But people who had measles as kids don't get it again.
How's misleading whom here? Take your pharma propaganda somewhere else, thank you!
As I wrote here: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
"Why not do the same for those who eat junk food? and who don't exercise. And who don't eat large quantities of fruits, vegetables, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains). And don't get enough vitamin D or iodine. And who don't breastfeed infants for at least two years if a mother (WHO recommendation). And who are frequently stressed. And who don't get enough sleep. And who don't work at home. And who don't homeschool their children (to avoid illness spread via compulsory schools). And who don't buy as much as possible online to avoid stores. And who smoke. And who are promiscuous. And who don't buy all organic food and organic cotton bedsheets (just in case). And who bring other stuff with toxins into the house (like formaldehyde off-gassing composite wood products). Because all these things either reduce your immune system or increase your risk of getting sick. So, are you in prison for poor health choices yet? Following your plan, you can leave when you agree to do all of the above... A starting point: http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra... "
Unlike software patches, it is not as easy to "uninstall" a vaccine, or, if all else fails, "reinstall" your body.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Nothing you listed creates a severe public health threat. Infectious diseases like polio do.
The old axiom is that your right to swing your fist ends where another man's nose begins. Someone who has HIV does not have the right to spread it around by engaging in unprotected sex without full disclosure because that creates a public health threat of spreading a deadly disease. Likewise, someone does not have the legal right to refuse a polio vaccine if mandated by the state ; they are creating a public health threat and putting others at risk of contracting a deadly illness.
"Nothing you listed creates a severe public health threat."
Do you seriously believe this?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The last time I checked, poor diet and exercise was an individual choice that does not affect the well-being of others.
By contrast, lack of herd immunity can lead to outbreaks of infectious diseases that can spread rapidly through unvaccinated populations, causing widespread illness, injury, and death.
Maybe you should check again: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...
"Exercise not only helps your immune system fight off simple bacterial and viral infections, it decreases your chances of developing heart disease, osteoporosis, and cancer."
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH...
""Nutrition plays an important part in maintaining immune function," explains George L. Blackburn, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. "Insufficiency in one or more essential nutrients may prevent the immune system from functioning at its peak.""
People with weaker immune systems are more likely to contract diseases and have them for longer and so spread them around more.
So, again, now that you know this, why not lock up those who eat junk food and who don't exercise, or force them at gunpoint to eat vegetables and do push ups? Such people otherwise pose a health risk to everyone else. That is a fact based on what people at the NIH and Harvard have said.
The same for the other things I mentioned which all affect the immune system. See also:
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-...
Many things make contracting and spreading disease more likely (poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, lack of vitamin D, lack of iodine, lack of nursing, sending kids to public school, going into a shared workplace every day, etc.). Why do you call at least some of those "an individual choice that does not affect the well-being of others" when clearly they all increase the risk of disease transmission? All of these choices affect the well-being of those around us. What of the immuno-compromised child who is going to die because your kid spread around the flu contracted in part by vitamin D deficiency, too much sugar, and not enough exercise?
Also, the fact is, vaccinations at best only protect to some degree against catching specific disease. These other things protect against catching almost any disease whether there is a vaccine for it or not. If forcing people to get vaccinated against their will for the public good is a good idea, why not force people to do these other things too?
For example, since people who eat poorly have a greater risk of contracting almost any communicable illness and spreading it around, why allow people to pick what food they want to eat each day for example? Clearly a government appointed dietitian (backed by gun-wielding police) would do a better job of deciding what you should eat each day than you could and thus do a better job of protecting the public health against widespread illness, injury, and death, right? Likewise for those who do not exercise enough. Cops should force people to exercise at gunpoint if needed, right? No less than the NIH and Harvard provide the supporting evidence,
Not laughing enough also is bad for you immune system.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/heal...
"Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that can affect your body by bringing more stress into your system and decreasing your immunity. In contrast, positive thoughts actually release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses."
So, people who do not laugh enough are a health risk to those around them. It would seem then that people thus have no constitutional right to be dour sour pusses, since that puts everyone around them at health risk. So, why not set up a police force who force people to laugh by watching funny websites? Or do laughter yoga? And otherwise incarcerate them if they don't comply?
Although, like anything, I guess that could go too far:
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Sorry to hear about your co-worker's loss. Still: http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/dis...
"Until relatively recently, only a few caught whooping cough, with less than 150 cases being reported in children aged four and under during 2007. Since then cases had been climbing steadily, until the large outbreak outlined above, which affected countries across the world, including USA and Australia. As to why the 2012 outbreak occurred in this way, opinion at the time of writing is divided.
It is possible that the bacteria causing the infection has changed in some way. Conversely, the HPA has conjectured that years of tight control over whooping cough may have led to people's immune systems not being boosted by repeat infections in adulthood, therefore leaving the population as a whole at increased risk."
And also: ..."
http://www.vaccinationcouncil....
"Prior to vaccination, infants were less susceptible to pertussis because real "herd immunity" was in place, and mothers were passing on immunity to their infants during the vulnerable time. Since vaccination, this herd immunity has actually been abolished, and infants are now more susceptible due to their vaccinated or non-immune mothers lacking specific antibody and cellular immunity for pertussis. This can be verified in the medical literature:
"Diminishing maternal immunity increases the risk of infection among the youngest age groups, who have not yet received at least two doses of the vaccine."[3]
When pertussis is left to take its normal course in the community, the supposedly vulnerable infants that the vaccinationists scream and yell about, are protected by maternal antibodies and mother's milk until they are old enough to process the disease on their own. After vaccines were introduced, this protection was vastly reduced, because the mothers were at best, having vaccine antibodies to pass along to their infants, and that defense is neither effective nor long-lasting. The reason for the diminishing maternal immunity is that vaccinated individuals tend to have lower antibody titers long-term, and breast milk antibody (IgA) is not transferred in vaccinated mothers. As we already know, two doses and even three doses of vaccine is far from a guarantee of immunity. In fact that is the exact reason there is a new vaccine in the pipeline to add to the current FAILED pertussis vaccine schedule. This new vaccine will be inhaled, and in this article [4] touting the need for the new vaccine, the authors detail the many problems with the current vaccine.
It's too late to do anything for your co-worker's family, but to prevent such tragedies in the future to others, one might ask (rhetorically, not to the real person):
* was the child breastfed from birth?
* Was the mother vaccinated against pertussis and so had no natural immunity to pass on via breastmilk?
* did they have a home birth and avoid doctors offices and hospitals which spread disease?
* was the mother eating a great diet?
* did both mother and child get adequate sunlight or vitamin D?
* Did both get enough iodine?
* DId other vaccines like HepB at birth weaken the infant?
* DId compulsory work and compulsory schooling practices force the family to be exposed to more diseases (compared to a basic income and homeschooling/unschooling)?
* Did anyone in the family eat junk food, especially with a lot of sugar?
* Were family members getting enough sleep and exercise and laughter (all immune boosters)?
* And so on for other aspects of optimum health, like Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about in "Disease-proof your Child":
http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/...
If your co-worker was at all a typical US American, the answers to most of these questions would be unhea
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
1. Whether or not you show symptoms of a communicable disease, you are usually still infectious. Just because you might not show any flu symptoms does not mean you are not capable of spreading the disease to others. People who are healthy but still infected are a public health threat.
2. The primary purpose of a vaccination program is not to stop individuals from being infected. It is to stop the infection from spreading through a population. That is why vaccines are an effective treatment against the public health threat of infection and diet and exercise are not. Once you reach a certain level of immunity (called herd immunity) it is mathematically impossible to have an outbreak of an infectious illness. Reaching a certain level of good diet and exercise in the population would not do the same. Infected people would still spread the disease regardless of whether they showed symptoms.
Your entire comment is a false analogy. You are comparing things which are CORRELATED with good individual health (and have never been shown conclusively to be a CAUSAL factor) with vaccines, which have been shown conclusively to be a CAUSAL factor in preventing the spread of infections in a population. They are in no way comparable.
Show me a large scale, non epidemiological scientific study that shows that good diet and exercise are a CAUSAL factor in preventing outbreaks of deadly communicable diseases such as meningitis, polio, smallpox, et cetera and I will concede the point. Otherwise, you are just committing the logical fallacy of the false analogy.
The kind of studies you ask for in humans would generally be considered unethical. Even if ethical, they are expensive, and such results don't profit drug companies, so they are rare. So, in humans, we are left with small "gold standard" double-blind controlled studies and larger observational epidemiological studies. A lot of infectious disease were already greatly reduced through improved sanitation, handwashing, quarantine, and better nutrition and lifestyle/behavioral choices (such as not drinking from a common cup and bucket of water on a train as once was common) as well as some curative medicines (antibiotics, phage therapy, etc.) before vaccines came along.
However, I challenge you to supply the same sorts of studies you request for all the specific current formulations of vaccines currently in use today. If you look for such studies in animals, you may find at least some popular vaccines do not work as well as you might think. For example, consider: ... As expected, the unvaccinated baboons developed severe whooping cough, while the baboons that had been sick previously remained well, the research team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Both groups of vaccinated animals also remained healthy. However, the germ persisted an average of 35 days in the throats of baboons vaccinated with the acellular shot, though it grew less thickly than it did in the throats of the sick, unvaccinated animals. Baboons vaccinated with the whole-cell shot harbored the germ for 18 days, and it did not grow at all in animals that previously had recovered from pertussis."
http://news.sciencemag.org/hea...
"The current vaccine for whooping cough, or pertussis, may keep you or your baby healthy, but it may not stop either of you from spreading the disease, a new animal study suggests. Baboons can harbor and spread the disease even after receiving the vaccine, researchers have found.
Note that the baboons that actually had the disease did not pass it on, unlike those who had been vaccinated. Vaccine-based immunity fades fairly quickly for pertussis. It is possible that when people get whooping cough as older children or adults (when it is more manageable) and nursing mothers pass that immunity on to their infants, there may be less mortality among infants from the disease. One problem with many vaccines is that since they fade quickly, you need life-long booster shots, which for dozens of disease could add up potentially to thousands of shots over a lifetime -- each one with a risk of being a mis-manufactured "hot lot" or being mis-injected or being worthless because the disease evolved. Even if each shot may seem to make sense, the total cost for the individual and society of getting on the treadmill of artificial immunity may be quite high. For example, consider the lifetime burden of aluminum from 100 or so annual flu shots.
Of the related research easy to find on exercise and nutrition and disease transmission, here are a few of them:
http://www.ucdenver.edu/academ...
"Children with poor nutrition are at increased risk of pneumonia. In many tropical settings seasonal pneumonia epidemics occur during the rainy season, which is often a period of poor nutrition. We have investigated whether seasonal hunger may be a driver of seasonal pneumonia epidemics in children in the tropical setting of the Philippines. In individual level cohort analysis, infant size and growth were both associated with increased pneumonia admissions, consistent with findings from previous studies. A low weight for age z-score in early infancy was associated with an increased risk of pneumonia admission
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
which have helped with her own ASD kid (whether vaccines played a role or not): http://www.generationrescue.or...
"5. Explore an Allergen Free Diet
Improvement has been seen with the removal of certain allergens such as gluten, casein, or soy from the diet. Explore a variety of special diets, including the gluten-free, casein-free diet and other allergen free diets through the following resources:
Explore the the gluten-free, casein-free diet
Body ecology diet
Elimination diet
Rotation diet
Other allergen free diet
6. Consider Supplementation with multi-vitamins and other beneficial nutritional support
Multi-vitamins and multi-minerals
Probiotics
Digestive enzymes
Fish oils
MB12
Natural detoxifiers
Anti-virals
Anti-fungals
Anti-yeasts"
See also:
http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/1...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org...
I agree with your point about conflict of interest, which I mention in other replies. Does look like US military personnel get little choice about orders to be vaccinated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://thinktwice.com/military...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.