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New Jersey Gov. Christie: Parents Should Have Choice In Vaccinations
kwyjibo87 writes: New Jersey Governor and self-appointed public health expert Chris Christie weighed in on the public debate over whether or not parents should have a choice in vaccinating their children, telling reporters in the U.K., "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that's the balance that the government has to decide." He added, "Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others." These statements from Gov. Christie follow President Obama commenting in an interview with NBC: "There is every reason to get vaccinated — there aren't reasons to not."
Gov. Christie quickly backpedaled on his "vaccine choice" comments, with the Governor's office stating, "The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," but amending: "At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate."
Gov. Christie quickly backpedaled on his "vaccine choice" comments, with the Governor's office stating, "The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," but amending: "At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate."
This is what happens when you get extreme partisanship - the other side's knee-jerk reaction to anything is to oppose it. Kind of like a rabid animal will bite anything.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yet again, we get a GOP primary debate circus solely around Tardisil and the merits of encephalitis over autism. Fuck this party, I'll go Liberta--what's that, Mr. Paul? Oh. You're one of them, too. Shit.
Rand Paul says vaccines cause mental illnesses! I guess that explains libertarianism.
He was obviously speaking off the cuff. One can't expect a sitting governor to have given any prior thought to controversial public health issues that have been in the news for fricking ever.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
If only his comments had clarified anything. After his clarifying statement, I still have no idea what he meant. Typical politician.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Don't freak out at the phrase "vaccine choice". The speaker may not mean what you assume.
Rand Paul said something similar in a TV interview today. The interviewer was shocked and Rand Paul explained that "vaccine choice" does not inherently mean some science denier who does not believe in medicine. What Paul, and probably Christie, mean is that parents can reasonably delay some vaccines. Paul mentioned that children sometimes receive a battery of vaccines at the same time. He said that a small child probably doesn't need to have that Hepatitis vaccination right now since it is a sexually transmitted disease, a parent can reasonably wait many years before such a vaccination.
So if Christie has a similar point of view then there may actually merely be clarification going on and not so much backpedalling.
Not all vaccines should be mandatory. For example there is an anthrax vaccine. Does everyone need to have it? As Christie said;
Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.
By the way, parents do have a choice. They can have their children get the required vaccines, they can home school or they can create their own school that does not require vaccines. I predict a non-vaccine school will last until everyone gets sick.
Rights are there to make sure that people have freedoms. The very idea of limits is part of the idea of rights. The basic idea is you should be free to do what you want to do with the limit that what you want to do doesn't do harm to others.
A certain segment of society has forgotten this. The most basic and important right is to live. Your rights STOP where you start interfering with others. If you don't want to vaccinate your kids you can do that, but maybe you shouldn't be allowed to send those kids to public school.
Personally, I think a lot of these people should find a desert island somewhere and live there. That way they can have all the unlimited freedoms they want.
"Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others... I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things"
I, for one, proudly agree with the wise governor that some vaccines shouldn't mandatory for children. Like the shingles vaccine -- expensive and marginally effective, and practically useless if you're under the age of 60. I don't know why'd I'd ask my parents to decide on this vaccine call for me when I hit the age of 60 but his point is valid.
But god, I hope he's not referring to Mumps, Measels, Rubella, and the like!
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Chris Christie weighed in on the public debate over whether or not parents should have a choice in vaccinating their children, telling reporters in the U.K., "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that's the balance that the government has to decide."
If parents are allowed to choose then that choice should not be without consequences. If these parents decide to not vaccinate their children for diseases like measles for any reason other than a documented medical condition that makes vaccination inadvisable for that specific individual, then those children should not be allowed to attend public school and those parents should be legally liable for that choice. If the child gets the disease then the parents should risk going to jail for child endangerment if there is an unfortunate medical outcome. They have the choice but that choice should not be consequence free because it isn't. They are taking a gamble that their child and those others who cannot get vaccinated will avoid the illness and if that gamble comes up snake-eyes then punishment should follow.
These statements from Gov. Christie follow President Obama commenting in an interview with NBC: "There is every reason to get vaccinated — there aren't reasons to not."
So Christie is endangering public health in order to pander to his political base. Make any decision about whether to vote for Christie an easy one for me.
Sure, there are some things that could be advantageous if they were mandatory, but as soon the lobby dollars get the legal right to force folks to inject their kids with stuff, do you think it will stop anywhere reasonable? If so, you've got a lot more faith in the basic humanity of pharma execs than I do. We can justify anything in the name of enhancing shareholder value.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics... I searched your italicized quote there. First result.
Vaccines are not 100% effective. If an average person is in sufficient contact to transmit to ten other people over the span of a disease, and have a 90% chance of passing something to them when they're unvaccinated, you've got an outbreak on your hands. If the transmission rate is 2% for vaccinated people, it might really suck to be in that 2%, but it won't cause an epidemic.
How about someone else who can't receive the vaccine? The whole point of herd immunity is to protect those who, for health reasons, cannot receive a vaccination. Once that herd immunity is compromised, it's not just the children of evil, repugnant, vile, despicable, moronic parents who deny decades of medical science that can be harmed, but the children of decent rational parents whose children have immunological conditions that prevent them from being immunized.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm going to bet he's referring to the HPV vaccine. Because obviously if you vaccinate your kids against an STD (even one that causes cancer!), you're just promoting sex. Never mind that the stats don't back that up at all.
This pause in Republican bashing brought to you by a mandatory vaccination proposed by Rick Perry, a Republican.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The absurdity of this argument is that even if it were true, is having a mentally ill child worse than death?
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Even the quote Slate cherry-picked to drive their click-bait headline is innocuous. Parents *do* have a right to decide what's best for their children. That right must be balanced with public health concerns, so it makes sense to make vaccination mandatory (or mandatory-for-public-schoolers) in some cases, but surely not *all* cases as you move down the scale of public health impact. In particular there will be cases where the public interest would be served (a little) by forcing everyone to be vaccinated, but that interest doesn't outweigh the additional dilution of parental rights. That seems to be all Christie said here.
Vaccinations do not prevent you from being infected; They significantly reduce the likelihood of you being infected from any given exposure to the disease. If everyone is vaccinated this results in the disease dying back due to the infection rate being too low to sustain the disease, meaning everyone is less likely to be exposed. However, if there are many who are not vaccinated the dieback doesn't happen because there are enough easily-infected people around to keep the disease alive. Even though you might be vaccinated and more resistant to infection than if you weren't, if you come into contact with infected people over and over you stand a chance of being infected yourself.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Uhhh, HPV is the cause of huge numbers of deaths each year. A quick google reveals that cervical cancer rates are 2.3 per 100,000 women per year, aka 3500 deaths a year in the US alone. HPV is the root cause of over 90% of those cancers.
Obviously! Kids dying of disease is all just a natural part of robust biological competition. Allowing the weak and mentally defective to live, on the other hand, inevitably results in some tax-and-spend bleeding heart coming along and demanding to expropriate the wealth creators in order to provide 'humane treatment' to such parasites.
Really, since parents own their children, they should just be allowed to abandon them in the wilderness to die(as long as they aren't trespassing on somebody else's property, or supporting the socialist national parks by doing so) if they suspect that kiddo's ROI isn't favorable. They shouldn't be allowed to abort them, of course; but postnatal headcount reduction is how freedom works.
I wonder if Gov. Christie could name some of the diseases he thinks we vaccinate for unnecessarily? What are these innocuous infections the government is forcing parents to prevent?
Whether their kid gets the vaccine in the arm or the thigh.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
What valid health concerns are those?
The only concern of any kind I've ever seen raised is autism, which is based on a report that failed to show a causal link, had too small a sample size, and was thoroughly debunked by peer review. It is not a valid concern.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
...to cover a waffle that big...
Talking out of both sides of his mouth -- his kids were vaccinated but parents should have the right to put their kids and others at risk -- oh, state's rights and the GOP party line... The only thing that would have made it better was if he was drinking a glass of water at the same time and spinning a plate on the end of a stick. This guy gives buffoons, clowns, and circus performers a bad name.
Every once in a while, rarely, a politician actually speaks his mind (McCain for example), and usually catches hell for it, not keeping to the party line.
I searched your italicized quote there. First result.
Thank you.
It looks like he's talking about Reye's Syndrome, a pathology that can cause substantial brain damage (and/or other things: Liver damage, death, ...) in children - adults generally recover fully after a couple weeks. (I wanted to be sure he hadn't signed on to the immunization/autism claims, which have been thoroughly discredited.)
Reye/Reye's is a reasonably rare side effect of several viral illnesses, including immunizations for them. Risk of it seems to be multiplied by a factor of something like five if aspirin is taken, but aspirin (or other salicylates) is not necessary for its occurrence. It seems also to be associated with pre-existing metabolic disorders, so some families might be at very high risk while others effectively immune.
It's clear from even the soundbite posted: Rand's claim is that the decision to risk a child's health is properly the parents', and the government should not be able to force the child's exposure to a series of these risks over the parents' objections - informed or otherwise.
Immunizations are partly about population immunity - reducing the density of people susceptible to a disease to the point that it peters out in a declining exponential rather than blowing up in an expanding exponential, thus also protecting those not (yet) immunized, for whom the immunization was ineffective, or who were at risk despite the availability of immunization (e.g. AIDS sufferers). So risk/benefit calculations are for populations as well. Accepting the risk of the immunization helps others as well as the immunized person, so being immunized is partly an altruistic act.
Rand's point is that he believes the government shouldn't have the power to FORCE people to risk their lives for the benefit of others, that these life-critical decisions are personal and should be left up to the people in question (or their guardians if they're too young to make the choice themselves).
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 kids who were not vaccinated who are grown now should get their shots. It helps with keeping group immunity high and rubella can cause birth defects if caught during pregnancy.
Not keeping up on even past events, i see:
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/0...
"However, pro-life advocates and conservatives reacted strongly to the mandate and said the only way young girls would get the disease is if they engaged in sexual activity — prompting a call for more promotion of abstinence education, which Perry favors, instead. After the outcry, Perry allowed a bill to become law that the Texas legislature approved to backtrack on the decision, making it so young girls are no longer required to get the vaccine."
Your pause in bashing "stupid fucking partisan idiots," which you mistake as bashing republicans (personally, i can see how those can easily be mistaken for each other), would have been good in ONE solitary instance prior to 4 years ago.... but because the "stupid fucking partisan idiot" caved in to a bunch of other "whiny stupid fucking idiots," your pause is no longer valid. Try to keep up on events.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
But that is part of the problem... really stupid people who think their ignorant, uneducated opinion is as valid as the accumulation of centuries of medical knowledge. You supposedly have a brain.. use it. Learn. Grow. Become a thinking person.
If your car breaks down, you take it to a mechanic; if you travel by airplane, you have a pilot fly the plane; if you get sick, you go to a doctor... not a mechanic, or pilot.... and certainly not a blonde brain-dead ex Playboy playmate who's biggest claim to fame is taking off her cloths so a bunch of horny guys can jerk off to pictures of her.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
It's funny you mention a rabid animal...
We now live in a country where if I choose not to get my dog vaccinated against rabies, not only am I fined, but am legally responsible for the medical care costs of anyone my dog infects.
But if I choose not to vaccinate my child and they get someone else sick, then it's OK, because it was my *choice*.
The inescapable conclusion in my mind is that we care more for the welfare of our dog population than we do our human one.
Mandatory kidney transplants?
Are you seriously trying to equate being poked in the arm with a small needle a few time with giving up a kidney? They are many orders of magnitude different. Calling it a medical procedure sound ominous but it is a very minor medical procedure.
Undergoing medical procedures to help other people should be voluntary.
Vaccines are not required but they are required to attend school. You can refuse to vaccinate your child and educate them somewhere else.
The Demagoguery over this issue is breath taking.
If you recall, Rick Perry mandated HPV vaccinations in 2007.
Lots of people totally lost their shit over this despite the fact that HPV can cause cancer and the vaccine is effective and not just because of donations. The term parental choice was thrown around a lot.
Many people in the news on their high horse about Christie 's comments are the same ones who were shitting bricks about Perry''s mandate. Hell, even Obama was on the fence about vaccinations in 2008.
So file all this under Complete and Utter Presidential Race Bullshit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Good health and hygiene is much more effective than any vaccine.
And we can all avoid cancer, transplants, AIDS, etc that compromise our immune systems. Also the recent outbreaks have occurred in areas where the incidence of non-vaccination has been high but hygiene has been good.
Remove the vermin which spread disease
Vermin do not spread measles, mumps or rubella.
teach people to wash their hands.
Which has no effect what so ever on the viruses in the air we breathe.
It was those practices which lead to the decline of infectious disease.
Possibly a decline but vaccines lead to a much larger decline.
not some government voodoo.
Would that be the "vodoo" that eliminated certain diseases from some countries?
The immunisation program has been quite successful. Cuba declared the disease eliminated in the 1990s, and in 2004 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that both the congenital and acquired forms of rubella had been eliminated from the United States.
We still get immunized because the disease can be imported from other countries.
No vaccine is 100% effective.
That's very clearly the case. We used to have a really useful and highly effective vaccine that gave protection against the root cause of the problem we are discussing here: ignorance. The vaccine was education. Sadly as this has been watered down it has become less effective with the result that we now see increasing outbreaks of ignorance worldwide resulting in new symptoms such as intelligent design and not having your kids vaccinated as well as some old symptoms, like astrology, re-emerging.
Sadly governments have not responded to this by once again strengthening the vaccine, education, that has protected us for so long. Instead they seem to prefer to treat each individual symptom of the disease by passing laws. This is simply not going to work: already new strains of ignorance, such as intelligent design, have proven remarkably resistant to this treatment and have started to attack the education vaccine directly weakening its effectiveness further.
Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.
"Are you feeling all right?" I asked her.
"I feel all sleepy," she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
Read the rest on https://roalddahl.com/roald-da...
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.