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Mississippi - the Nation's Leader In Vaccination Rates
HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that Mississippi — which ranks as one of the worst states for smoking, obesity and physical inactivity — seldom is viewed as a leader on health issues. But it is one of two states that permit neither religious nor philosophical exemptions to its vaccination program. Only children with medical conditions that would be exacerbated by vaccines may enroll in Mississippi schools without completing the immunization schedule, which calls for five vaccines. With a vaccination rate of greater than 99.7%, Mississippi leads the national median by five percentage points and has the country's highest immunization rate among kindergarten students.
However, in recent weeks, the nearly unbending nature of Mississippi's law requiring students to be vaccinated has been in jeopardy, with two dozen lawmakers publicly supporting an exemption for "conscientious beliefs" turning Mississippi into one more battleground between medical experts who champion vaccinations and parents who fear the government's role in medical decision-making. "We have been a victim of our success, and people don't realize how bad these diseases are," said Mississippi state epidemiologist, Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III, before lawmakers met to consider a bill that would have expanded exceptions to the vaccine requirement. Members of the education committee for the House of Representatives, in effect, endorsed the state's current approach. By a voice vote, they advanced a heavily amended version of the bill that now calls for only technical changes to Mississippi's law, which has been largely untouched since the late 1970s. The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests. "If a medical professional thinks it's wise not to vaccinate, then that will be the gospel," said House Education Committee Chairman John Moore, R-Brandon.
However, in recent weeks, the nearly unbending nature of Mississippi's law requiring students to be vaccinated has been in jeopardy, with two dozen lawmakers publicly supporting an exemption for "conscientious beliefs" turning Mississippi into one more battleground between medical experts who champion vaccinations and parents who fear the government's role in medical decision-making. "We have been a victim of our success, and people don't realize how bad these diseases are," said Mississippi state epidemiologist, Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III, before lawmakers met to consider a bill that would have expanded exceptions to the vaccine requirement. Members of the education committee for the House of Representatives, in effect, endorsed the state's current approach. By a voice vote, they advanced a heavily amended version of the bill that now calls for only technical changes to Mississippi's law, which has been largely untouched since the late 1970s. The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests. "If a medical professional thinks it's wise not to vaccinate, then that will be the gospel," said House Education Committee Chairman John Moore, R-Brandon.
well, someone had to post it.
srsly.
Coincidence or Medicaid?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Parents are granted a tremendous amount of leeway over what to do with their children. But at the end of the day, children are not "things" for parents to do with as they wish. They're people. A parent may have a sincere and deeply held belief that children don't actually need to eat, that if they meditate enough they can gather the energy they need from the sun. But that doesn't mean that Child Protective Services aren't going to get involved if the parents refuse to feed their child. No, there's no easy definition for where the line between parental rights / belief dominate and where child abuse begins should be. But there must be a line.
And ignoring the fact that the person we're talking about here is too young to make informed decisions, even if that wasn't the case, it still wouldn't be a reasonable argument. Even if we were talking about adults, while you're free to endanger yourself to your heart's content, you don't have the right to endanger others. You may feel that drunk driving is perfectly safe and it's just your personal choice and drunk driving laws are an infliction on your freedom of movement, but the law sees it differently for damned good reason, and you will be punished if caught. Want to endanger yourself? Fine, go do it. Want to endanger me? Nope, and thank $DEITY that there are laws and law enforcement to stop you. You don't have an inalienable right to put your neighbors at risk of mowing them over with your car, and you don't have an inalienable right to walk around them as a disease vector.
I would have you sign my banana, but it's on the roof.
Does Mississippi have more Autistic children than other states with lower vaccination rates? I think that should be looked at so maybe we can show that this is not the cause of Autism.
Its because they don't have internet, so don't know they should be scared of vaccinations.
In ancient Rome the children where legally the property of the father until they where old enough.
Some states in USA do the same, they allow the parents to make choices for their children that are scientifically proven to be deadly in certain circumstances. Thereby the USA are legally stating that in the eyes of the state, children are the legal property of their parents in certain cases.
Except for the "science deniers" in this case would have to be the physicians themselves. But don't let the facts stop you from spouting off.
I'm cool with the public schools only admitting kids who're vaccinated. Imposing the same approach on private schools seems like overreach. Also, HepB shouldn't be in the schedule of required vaccines to enter kindergarten given its method of transmission.
You need to tell that one to conscientious objectors.
So it's anti science to not want to kill people ?
con- against, anti
No, "contra-" means against. "Con-" means "with".
Your "conscientious" rights don't include the right to put other kids who *can't* get immunized at risk (or adults who weren't immunized as kids). If you want to conscientiously object to getting your kid immunized, then a school should have the right to conscientiously refuse to admit your kid. Create a special conscientious school or something and keep the fuck away from the rest of us.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I think medicaid could be a factor. I'm from Canada, so I really like my tax funded healthcare. I think that specifically funding certain things like vaccinations to assure that everybody can receive them without cost is a huge advantage to the entire country. I can see why some people wouldn't want to pay for somebody else's knee surgery, or heart transplant if they brought it on themselves by their own lifestyle, but things like vaccinations help the entire population, are just about every person is born susceptible to these diseases. So it makes sense to make sure that as many people as possible are immunized. If somebody isn't immunized, then even the rich people who are insured are at risk in the event that their infants are too young to be vaccinated, or couldn't be vaccinated because of medical complications.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Constipation - Antipack
Conquest - Antihunt
Yep. It works.
Its because they don't have internet, so don't know they should be scared of vaccinations.
Seems like a 99.7% vaccination rate would be the perfect data pool in which to prove or disprove your paranoia.
What say you, Mississippi statistics? (taking into account the McFood Pyramid that is quite popular in the south of course)
I grew up in the 80s and although I'm not American I looked up to America as the greatest country on the face of the planet. I dreamed of ways of one day making it to the States. I'd've signed up for a 10 year hitch in the military; anything to be an American. Now you look at the US and you give your head a shake because it's one of the most embarrassingly paranoid, crazytown countries there is. It's no different than Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. And the quality of life there is also about the same as in those countries. You can see glimmers of hope once in awhile in terms of science or something but it's quickly snuffed out by the nutjobs who are infinitely louder. I'm following the run up to the 2016 election and you've got presidential candidates *arguing* over vaccinations. Are you fucking serious? Jenny McCarthy was able to create this much confusion? Dudes what in the fuck are you guys up to? Cut your defense budget by half. You'll still have all the weps you need. Pull your military back home from places like Germany, Japan, and Italy. That war's over. Triple NASA's budget. Fund healthcare like every other civilized country. Get back on the right track. Sadly, I don't think it'll ever happen. No matter who gets elected he'll just be shouted down by the other side. The States is sunk and it's really a tragedy. I think it can be traced back to the JFK assassination. The States was on the right track and then 24 hours after he's killed LBJ signs the order to invade Vietnam. It was ALL downhill from there. I realize that now. Well, good luck "convincing" your population that vaccines are safe and beneficial. Even Nigeria was laughing at you today saying maybe they'll have to screen Americans for measles. :(
I'm a moderate anti-vaxxer -- one of the many who separate, delay and select. When I read the Slashdot summary that said "5 vaccines", I thought, "oh, that's not so bad." But I just now looked it up and it's really between 7 and 11 (11 for those of us who separate, as two of the 7 are triple-vaccines):
Vaccines cause smoking, obesity and physical activity in addition to autism? Why does anyone get them?
Guess which two states have the lowest rates of autism. Yep, it's Mississippi and West Virginia at .04 and .05.
http://graphics.latimes.com/usmap-autism-rates-state/
But underlying all this, it seems that the US American belief that you should have the complete right as a parent to decide how to raise your children, even if it is against their well being, is not new. I clearly remember 'Huckleberry Finn', and the description of his father who falls in the same category as those people that are opposed to vaccination (for whichever reason). And that was written 130 years ago.
(Google it) Therefore, only dumb people get their kids vaccinated
I think GP means the 'conscientious objection' that would basically allow any parent to refuse the vaccinations for any reason they see fit.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I'm no antivaxxer, but do they have the lowest rates of autism, or merely the lowest /diagnosed/ rates? Given their poverty one can imagine fewer people going to the doctor in those states.
Don't be ridiculous. It's obviously because of vaccinations and not:
*having one of the highest premature birth rates in the nation *obesity during pregnancy (Mississippi leads the nation in obesity too) *widespread poverty *an incredibly high rate of teenage birthsWhen someone says, "Any fool can see
You make a valid point, but when foreign invasion is substituted for immigration, it presents your argument in a poor light.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If you bother to look beyond the surface numbers, I will bet that you will find that poverty correlates much more strongly with infant mortality than rates of vaccinations. And MS is pretty poor.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Even more so, it's not just at school where infection can be spread. There is no reasonable way to keep someone out of all areas of public life.
Brilliant!
Damn. I guess a list of two is too damned large to publish.
Mississippi has long had a policy among both private and public health care providers of "sitck'em when you get'em", meaning that every time a child was seen by a physician, their vaccination records would be checked and any missing vaccinations or boosters administered. (Same thing if a mom or dad came in and had children with them.)
Actually Mississippi's rate is a bit lower since all vaccine manufacturing decisions were taken over by DC during the Clinton Admin., making it harder for both public and private health care providers to keep stocks on-hand.
...with the lowest vaccination rates is to stick as pin in the map at every Whole Foods location. I would bet most anti vaccers real reason is not so much autonomy when it comes to their kids but more an anti scientific stand. These types are very good at justifying exactly which science they want to believe and what they don't.
Everywhere I've lived in the US, vaccinations are provided gratis by the local health department.
People with insurance usually go to a doctor and get their vaccinations through them, but the health department will also do it for free. (That's the same health department that will run free STD tests.) Often, the real battle is communicating to people that these resources are available, fighting the stigma associated with getting free services from the government, and the practical issues of getting a working person over to a busy government office.
As many childhood vaccinations are practically mandatory in the US, as they're required for attending elementary school (which is also mandatory), it makes sense that they're freely available.
As a result, I think, of Obamacare, all childhood vaccines and most adult vaccines (including flu) are free to anyone with insurance.
Although we may agree on the need for less porous borders, the CDC actually has solid data on the causes of outbreaks like the current one. And, they don't typically start with "foreign invaders" - They start with unvaccinated legal US citizens going on vacation and coming back infected.
So yeah, idiots choosing not to vaccinate, whether because Jenny or Jesus said so, do count as the entire problem.
Lowest reported rates. Diagnosis isn't that simple. Not saying that it is certain, but they could ignore or misattribute any problems.
The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests.
In other words, this allows the anti-vaxxers and religious nuts to go to their chiropractor, osteopath or other quack to get an exemption. Hell there are plenty of MDs that will write a prescription for anything you want for $50.
Useless statistic. 99.7% of the children in the sample forced to be vaccinated are indeed vaccinated.
So how many parents opt out of public school because of Mississippi's vaccination policy? A much more relevant number would be the number of kindergarten AGED children vaccinated.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If somebody isn't immunized, then even the rich people who are insured are at risk in the event that their infants are too young to be vaccinated, or couldn't be vaccinated because of medical complications.
The self-indulgent rich are actually a huge part of the vaccination problem. Check out where some of the latest outbreaks have been- Hollywood, Disney world, etc- not places for people with no money.
A journalist named Seth Mnookin wrote a book, "The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear", and was Interviewed recently:
Further:
There's also a great comment attached, by a poster named 'Tom Billings (qualifications unknown)', that gets into the causes of autism: Genetic
Actually, it's simpler than that. It's just very unpopular, because it says things about humans we don't like to hear. You don't need government subsidizing something for it to increase. That is only one cause of some increases in some things.
The genes associated with autism are mostly SNPs and single folds. Single nucleotide polymorphisms and single folds are single mutation events. You would expect those to be just as common throughout history as a result. So, why don't we see in the past the same rates of autism we see today? It's brutally simple. The children born with such genetic differences mostly didn't survive to reproductive age. They were murdered.
His comment goes on and it's worth a read.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Lets analyze the process of having a baby in a hospital.. it must be related to the age of the parent... or their obesity.. Premature birth rates maybe..., but double the infant mortality rate of states with similar premature birth rates? ... I am just saying, you should get out of the bubble to realize that our healthcare system has some issues.. vaccination area is one of them. High, vaccination rate is great..., but poor vaccination administration process that scares away educated people who saw that it can work in 30+ nations above us in the healthcare ratings with almost no casualties
no, but children are legally mandated to receive an education. kids who can't get vaccinated, their parents could decide that a camping trip might be safer than one to a theme park, and they're free to make that decision. they can take measures, not so much with schooling. educating a kid is a full time job... you know what teachers do.
If an MD writes the request I can go along with that. Not a damn chiropractor or a therapist or some other silly shit.
Unfortunately, today in state like GA and Mississippi, if your kid or you as an adult cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons, you will be denied admission to school already. If you do get vaccinated with an autoimmune issue, chance are you would be disabled for life. Options: disabled for life or go to school....
Guess which two states have the lowest rates of autism. Yep, it's Mississippi and West Virginia at .04 and .05.
http://graphics.latimes.com/usmap-autism-rates-state/
No, you are wrong. .1% rate. .4% and is tied with Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, South Carolina. .5% and ties with 5 others at .5%
Look again at your map. Iowa is the lowest at
Mississippi has
West Virginia is higher than any of those states at
Here's another set of maps, although from an anti-vax site: http://vaxtruth.org/2012/04/when-1-in-88-is-really-1-in-29/
It's still not Misssissippi.
I'm no antivaxxer, but do they have the lowest rates of autism, or merely the lowest /diagnosed/ rates? Given their poverty one can imagine fewer people going to the doctor in those states.
Mississippi does not have the lowest autism rate. The OP is wrong.
Note that the measles vaccine is only 97% effective.
Note further that the national vaccination rate is ~94.7%.
Which leaves us with 5.3% of the population vulnerable due to lack of vaccine, and 2.8% vulnerable due to failed vaccine.
In other words, the odds say about 35% of measles come into the country from vaccinated people going on vacation and coming back infected.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/26/the-biggest-myth-about-vaccine-deniers-that-theyre-all-a-bunch-of-hippie-liberals/?postshare=1051423147010955
We vaccinate. I"m old enough to remember measles, mumps and chickenpox. You don't have a up to date vaccination card your kid doesn't go to school around here. We call those antivaxers in California idiots and for good reason. I have a autistic child and I never blamed the vaccinations. Our modern society freaks out when kids walk home from a park on their own.
Why aren't they freaking about the little plague vectors walking around spreading disease to those to young to vacinate and those with weakened immune systems?
No, you're blatantly wrong. There are three potential reasons for an exemption: religious, personal, or medical. Let me put this in capitals so you can understand:
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE GODDAMN 50 STATES ALLOWS A MEDICAL EXEMPTION FOR VACCINATIONS.
Source: CDC
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/laws/
Is it not nice to find something that jerks and idiots of all political stripes can agree on?
People are good at nagging doctor. So they will get them write off the exemption, for no medical reason whatsoever. And if that doctor refuse, there will be another one which accept. They pretty much gutted the law.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The recent cases of measles in the US were introduced by people who came across the border and brought measles in with them. The measles vaccine is not 100% effective. We would still have measles cases here in the US even if everyone was vaccinated. How about we stop allowing and encouraging people to cross the border and bring in diseases with them?
Your math is very strange.
Except for the "science deniers" in this case would have to be the physicians themselves.
Which will be easy enough to find - especially if they don't want to face liability issues for going against the will of the parents.
Expect a huge influx of "child is allergic to all vaccine" reports from Mississippi doctors in the near future.
We've detected a program that is, apparently, enforced by Mississippi law and that appears to be working. Please take measures to make this stop. It's going to make it that much more difficult to be able to drown government in the bathtub if this is allowed to continue.
Remember: Government is the problem.
Thank you,
GOP Platform Committee
If Mississippi and Arkansas didn't suck so hard...Louisiana would fall off into the Gulf.... probably pushed by Texas.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
There is one ongoing whistle blower vaccination lawsuit in the state of Pennsylvania. The full case is available via Google.
School aged vaccinations for this type of stuff are generally available for free (there's usually a local government-run "Health Department" that will administer them).
Basically all the mandatory vaccinations are that way. The yearly flu-shot isn't completely free, though almost all insurances cover it if you elect to take it. At work they'll bring a nurse in for a day or two and you can just stop in and get one if you'd like.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Perhaps the people suspicious of preventive medical treatment might turn their focus on the over-used antibiotics so that when somebody really needs antibiotics in the future, they might actually work.
I've found very few MDs who have any kind of listening skills. I've known some brilliant ones. But many of them are shills for the drug companies, pushing unnecessary drugs and just all-around being ineffective. We're told to revere doctors, but the reality is that MDs are not scientists -- they're technicians, and often not terribly skilled ones. These facts are not lost on their patents. People just don't trust doctors. Vaccines are just one more dubious thing that MDs push on us.
This distrust of the medical profession totally understandable, and you shouldn't call people morons for feeling this way. Most people are not scientists who can do their own research. Their only source of information is these doctors they don't like. If we want to fix the vaccination problem, we have to fix the doctors and get them to stop doing stupid things like prescribing antidepressants for autoimmune diseases. [*]
The science of vaccines is solid. As with anything, it's not entirely risk-free, but the risks are worth the benefits for protection against some serious diseases. It's also irresponsible to put other people at risk. IF (huge IF) there is any correlation with autism, that correlation is miniscule compared to the effects of the other shit we put in our bodies (horrible American diet, pollution, etc.). But people are much more willing to skip a vaccination appointment than not eat that Big Mac.
Incidentally, I heard recently something interesting about flu shots. If those who decide which viruses are being innoculated against predict them correctly, then flu shots work great. If, on the other hand, their predictions are too far off the mark, the flu shot may actually make you MORE vulnerable to viruses that they missed. Of course, you should verify this claim before deciding not to get a flu shot. This isn't a matter of effectiveness of vaccines but rather an issue of getting the right ones.
[*] In medical school doctors are expliclty taught that if someone comes in with a constellation of symptoms, especially if they have them written down, then that person is a hypochondriac. The thing is, auto-immune diseases are not exactly a 1-in-a-million phenomenon. Hashimoto's and Lupus are quite well understood. They come with constellations of symptoms, and they also come with brain fog, which basically forces people to write down their symptoms. My wife had to perform her own differential diagnosis based on the symptoms to determine (abductively) that Hashimoto's is the clear best explanation, but nevertheless, she had to fight with one of the few endocrinologists in the area just to get tested. Of course she tested positive, but even in the face of the evidence, this doctor still doesn't want to engage in any kind of treatment plan. Why? Because endocrinologists make all their money from pushing drugs on diabetics and have no interest in anything else.
That's amazing. What an amazing story. Get this out to the scientific community pronto, they've been pissing about doing studies of tens of thousands of people for decades, but fuck that, because you got sick a bit as a kid and now that you haven't been vaccinated you don't get sick. So yeah let's chuck the vaccines, based on what you think you experienced.
TLDR anecdotes count for precisely fuck-all.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The Onion as usual got right to the core of it :)
"Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I fully stand behind my choices as a mom, including my choice not to vaccinate my son, because it is my fundamental right as a parent to decide which eradicated diseases come roaring back."
Vaccine refusers are some of the most odious, self-entitled pricks on this planet.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Those with insurance no longer have to pay for childhood vaccinations. It's covered 100% by insurance as required by law, as are the well baby(child) check ups for I think the first 5 years.
I think people who don't have vaccinations should have to wear arm bands so the rest of us know to avoid them. They are petri dishes of infectious disease.
The anti-vaccine people are the most selfishly stupid people on this planet. Citing a discredited report linking vaccines to autism, taking medical advice from a media whore that appeared on Oprah over that of scientists and doctors, quoting conspiracy theory websites, and claiming "special knowledge" that is being "kept hidden", they put the very young who have not been immunized at risk of completely preventable diseases.
They also put those who are on anti-rejection drugs after a transplant at risk. And those who are chemotherapy. And those who are on retroviral drugs.
All they think about is their own paranoid delusions of a grand conspiracy "out to get them."
John Cleese describes them better than I can:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Are there really people who say "your particular combination of luck, genetics, circumstance and choices are so much more influenced by choice than anything that unlike other people with health conditions, fuck you" ?
Are those people worried that the lack of financial incentives will be the tipping point?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
This sort of comment makes it clear how misinformed the news has kept the world with regard to the state of US healthcare. Free clue; it's not like the media portrays it. In this case, anyone who wants their child vaccinated can get it done somewhere, and it's been so for decades.
Essentially, they have a prophylactic to protect them from the virus that is vaccination denialism?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I have a friend who, in her thirties, just got measles from one of her son's friends, and now she's lost her hearing -- a fairly common, and often permanent, complication of measles. She's trying to sue the parents, on the basis of one of them posting about how they didn't vaccinate their child because they didn't believe in it. She figures that if a person who has AIDS and has unprotected sex with people can be charged with murder -- a criminal act -- she should be able to win a civil judgment for at least negligence.
If it works, it could be an interesting new chapter in the vaccination story, and does raise the question of why AIDS is handled differently than measles.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
This report in the main post above was absolutely guaranteed to inflame the condescension so inherent in the liberal coastal mentality that afflicts so many /. posters. No human society can be found that is not riddled with irrational pieties and unfounded self-congratulation. This is not to say that any human being not otherwise non-compis mentis would prefer to live in San Francisco over Peshawar. But, condescending to the rubes who live in Dixie is not only rude, it is foolish. Sometimes they really are smarter than /.ers.
"Why the 'Prius Driving, Composting' Set Fears Vaccines By Greg Miller at ScienceMag.org on 31 January 2011
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I do agree. The state would be a great pool to determine the efficacy of vaccinations. Are measles still contracted? What about chicken pox?
When I was a kid I got a lot of vaccines. My income was zero. Now I get almost no vaccines and my income has skyrocketed.
Play Command HQ online
The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests.
Normally, I would agree that this would be fine.
However, the irrational anti-vaccine hysteria has become too widespread.
What is going to happen, is there are going to be improper waivers given in the name of a "health issue" constructed for the purposes of avoiding vaccination.
Inevitably, there are going to be some medical professionals who are persuaded. They should be students of science, but there are plenty in the industry who are not scientists and could be persuaded by some specious arguments.
Therefore, I would say that their waiver should be subject to review. If there is any doubt; it should not be adequate just to find one professional to sign off on something. There should have to be a documented basis that would be accepted by the industry or by the average professional.
Well said. And I can agree with a lot of what you said.
I don't know how widespread this is in Canada but every september, my son's school insists on seeing each student's vaccination booklet. If your vacc's aren't up to date, you don't go to school.
People should go further and refuse to let their children play with other children who have not been vaccinated.
That would either cause the idiots to grow a clue or force them into tight little enclaves that will eventually take care of themselves.
Thank you so much for this... you're right... most people in the U.S. don't realize that people from Latin America are mandated by the federal government to keep track of their MANDATORY vaccines, so we have an even lower rate of non-vaccinated people in our countries, or, at least, in Mexcio, your friendly southern neighbor.
I've been reading a few right wing reports where silly right wing people (Not all right wingers are this stupid, I know, I have a few friends who are really awesome republicans in the U.S.) who want to blame illegal immigrants so that poor "religion belief anti-vaxxers" don't have to feel the blame...well...the joke's on them, I guess... if kids don't have their vaccines, and the government finds out, you can say goodbye to your kids.
So yeah, it was most probably those "personal belief" people who created this outbreak. A few of my friends who have been planning trips to Disney for more than six months are quite angry about this.
I've found very few MDs who have any kind of listening skills. I've known some brilliant ones.
Yeah, I know what you mean. In talking to several doctors, I get the distinct feeling that I'm on the flip side of what happens when my mother-in-law has a computing problem: she hands me the computer and starts offering endless way-off-the-mark suggestions which I have to forcibly ignore while trying to concentrate on troubleshooting the real problem.
Being listened to makes us feel better (in pretty much any human situation, but especially when our health is on the line). However, we as patients are generally dumping a load of crap on the doc when it comes to listing a "constellations of symptoms". It takes great patience and integrity for a doctor to diligently listen through all of that verbage for the 1-in-a-million gem, and most docs don't have that sort of time.
I'm still learning how to use doctors effectively, and the best thing I've learned over the past few years is that... if you've got a disease that's poorly understood, find the docs who have the expertise on that condition. (And hope they aren't just pill-pushers, I guess.) My general internist thought I needed a pacemaker, the cardiologist controlled the worst symptoms with drugs, and the dysautonomic disease specialist knew what my problem was and established a treatment plan to fix it. Something that was a complete mystery to the first two doctors was a routine case for the third.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I have a young relative who's an anti-vaxxer. A lot of my relatives are science fans and natural history geeks, so its putting a lot of stress on the family.
Here's the thing about anti-vaxxers. It's a stupid position but the people who take it aren't necessarily stupid or uneducated. What they are is rabidly anti-authority. "Question Authority" was even a popular left-wing slogan in the 60s and 70s. And it's a good idea, along with believing in your ability to decide for yourself, which is another value my generation worked hard to inculcate in our kids. But like anything else you can go overboard with these things; you need countervailing virtues to work them against. I think where many parents in my generation missed the boat was that we failed to inculcate a respect for the value of rational self-doubt. Constructive self-doubt is something our Depression era parents had by the bucketful, and so many of us saw it as a natural state to be overcome, not a positive virtue to be cultivated.
The places you see the most knee-jerk anti-authority mindset are the places that were historically most full of free-thinkers and radicals. Places where people were taught to respect authority and institutions don't have this particular form of insanity (they have their own forms). So anti-vaxx is blue-state birtherism. But this kind of mindless anti-authorarianism has also increasingly become a feature of modern "conservatism", too. Violently emotional anti-establishment views are a feature of radicalsm whatever flavor that radicalism takes.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Flu shot hoax admitted
GMO front man exposed
Mercury still in flu shots
Vaccines sterilize women
CDC scientist confesses to vaccine fraud
But wait! Let's not limit ourselves to just their headlines...
Essential vocabulary for the medical police state descending upon America
Six preventable disorders America has manufactured, perpetuated, and propagated
Tetanus vaccines found spiked with sterilization chemical to carry out race-based genocide against Africans
And my favorite,
Gun-free schools in America now training children as resistance militia forces armed with cans of soup
Great site you've found there, friend! I've added it to my "humor" bookmarks folder!
Stupid assholes who actually believe ONE massively-debunked and retracted paper by ONE doctor who has since been stripped of his license to practice medicine, are going to catapult us into the next dark age.
People who refuse to vaccinate (either themselves or their children) are also not allowed:
Airbags, ABS, and Seatbelts in their cars
Smoke detectors or fire extinguishers in their homes
Insurance of any kind (that's socialism, right?)
Chlorinated water from their water service
Flame retardant furniture
Any other safety device mandated by government ever
The problem will take care of itself rather quickly when all of the anti-vaxxers have died off.
When I got vaccinated as a kid, I always ended up sick at some point that same year.
So as a kid, you got sick with polio, mumps, measles, and whooping cough, and lived to tell about it?
I got sick a lot as a kid too. As an adult, I don't get sick much at all. It's normal for kids to get sick a lot: they're in school with hundreds of other kids, and catch it from them. There's a reason some people call kids "disease vectors".
The live, attenuated virus found in MMR vaccine does not cause autism, children anymore than a vaccinated child catching a disease from an unvaccinated child. The hysteria associated with this ongoing story is probably nothing more than news hype to sell newspapers.
When I was a kid and got vaccinations, I could not fly an airplane. Now I don't get any and know how to fly. If we just stop with the vaccines, the Air Force can save a TON of money and get rid of pilot training!
I had all of those, except for polio. I remember when a whole lot of kids from my grade school had the measels. I had whooping cough multiple times as a kid. This was before the vaccines had been invented.
Hey, I don't care what the entire medical profession says. Jenny McCarthy says they cause autism. She's a celebrity so obviously she knows more than all of the doctors in the world right? And my next door neighbor's cousins best friends college roommate's sisters daughter had a tummy ache right after getting vaccinated so they must be bad right? /snark
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Do we have a map of which states cover mental health care with autism spectrum children?
yes. absolutely. Don't exercise. Smoke. Eat shitty food. Become 100 pounds overweight. Then expect me to pay for your diabetes medicine and lung surgery. Fuck no.
California is in the toilet when it comes to vaccination rates. Wealthy Progressive areas are the worst, followed by poor Progressive areas. Coincidence or Medicaid?
http://cdn.pjmedia.com/instapu...
Doesn't everybody have insurance, now that it's mandatory?
No one expects you to do shit. I do expect insurance companies to take care of those they ensure. And I do expect the government to help poor people.
I don't know why your panties are in a bunch. What the fuck you expect. You want every health insurer to charge you a premium increase everytime you have sex outside of marriage? Every time you eat red meat? Everytime you don't eat red meat if the head of the company starts believing in Atkin's?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Jenny McCarthy says they cause autism. She's a celebrity so obviously she knows more than all of the doctors in the world right?
Her child wasn't even autistic. She couldn't even get that part right. He has Landau–Kleffner syndrome, and now that he doesn't show autism symptoms, she says that chelation therapy cured her son. Every statement she makes just gets worse.
yes. absolutely. Don't exercise. Smoke. Eat shitty food. Become 100 pounds overweight. Then expect me to pay for your diabetes medicine and lung surgery. Fuck no
No one expects you to do shit. I do expect insurance companies to take care of those they ensure
In other words, you DO expect us to pay for them. If you're asking someone other than the person who gets sick to pay for the treatments, then you're asking all of us to. Neither insurance companies nor governments are pools of magic money, that money comes from insured folks and tax payers.
Isn't that pretty much what it all comes down to? Religion is the reason people decide to avoid the treatment, and the government forcing it on people against their religious beliefs, gets it done.
It seems like a simple question of which thing (public health vs freedom) is most important. Note when I say a "simple question" I don't mean to imply it's easy for a politician to make a decision that everyone will like or that we can't have a good flamewar over it. I just mean for each person, there's some kind of absolute public-good-vs-freedom thing going on in their head, and the individual ends up deciding one way or another. (And I have a hunch that each person decides pretty quickly and easily, but maybe I'm wrong.)
I don't think society is ever going to get rid of religion (i.e. 1000 years from now, lots of people will still make up answers to questions rather than actually trying to figure the answers out), so you can't really dodge the issue. It's not going to get obsoleted.
One issue is that you can not tell whether life style caused a particular case of heart disease or not. There is reason to believe that genetics as well as infections cause heart disease and perhaps more so than diet or exercise cause the same problems. For example a clogged heart valve may be mostly fatty material or calcium deposits or a mixture of both. Yet we have no idea of whether drinking a glass of milk causes calcium deposits in the heart in most people nor is fat intake tied to fatty accumulations in the arteries. The most northern tribes of native people have diets that are super high in fat and it does not appear to harm them.
In 1951 and 52 I had compulsory vacinations in Tunica Mississippi in the third and fourth grade. They would line us up a hundred or so at a time and give us our shots. They took off the needles and tossed them in a pan of water which turned pink from the blood. The sick part is that they sterilized the needles and used them over and over again. That creates a one in seven thousand death rate due to contaminted needles. For some reason it struck me as nasty and I threw a fit and refused to let them vacinate me. I had it done by my private doctor to meet school requirements. Back then the big fear in the delta was typhoid and the schools really did need to be certain that all the kids were vacinated. That region had a long history of typhoid outbreaks due to high ground water levels and use of home wells and outhouses for many homes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mexico is now keeping track of vaccinations for every illegal that crosses the border into the US? The ones from Honduras? The ones from Yemen?
See that "Preview" button?
Your rights don't include injecting whatever the hell you think you should into my body or my child's. Now personally, my child is vaccinated against pretty much everything. At the same time, I'm very strongly against having public schools. Every private school should have the right to refuse service to any unvaccinated child. Also, while my child is vaccinated, I still fill out the conscientious objection form, because it's none of the state's business.
Frankly, what I've been seeing from the latest outbreaks is it's overwhelmingly the unvaccinated who are getting sick with a very small percentage of the ill being those who have been vaccinated. With results like that, I don't think the argument that the unvaccinated put the rest of the population at risk holds that much weight.
Once a few children get sick and die from these preventable diseases, a lot of people will decide that vaccination is the right course of action. It won't take any government mandate, either.
Doesn't everybody have insurance, now that it's mandatory?
I don't. I'm unemployed and my state's Republican governor refused the Socialist Federal Handout from President Hussein Medicaid expansions that came along with ACA. Because I have enough money to buy ramen and Campbell's soup this week, and I don't have any children, I don't qualify for any insurance reimbursements whatsoever.
Once the governor finally noticed that hospitals are closing down statewide and hundreds of of thousands of Tennesseeans are still uninsured, he realized the error of his ways and tried to get it done through a special legislative session. That failed this week because despite the Republican governor seeing the light and reversing his position, the Republican state legislators still refuse to accept a Socialist Federal Handout from President Hussein. They're all rich and half of them are physicians; why in heavens would anyone need help from the government to pay for healthcare, they wonder.
As an unemployed, white, non-parent, male resident of Tennessee, the cheapest healthcare.gov option available to me is $197 a month (that would be ~$12 a month had our state accepted federal Medicaid expansion). I was paying $220 a month when I was comfortably employed; $197 a month is no bargain and for now that money is going towards food and a roof. They can penalize me on my tax return all they want.
Vaccinations stunted my growth - when I was a kid I was less than 5ft, now that I've stopped getting vaccinations I'm 5ft 11. Coincidence? I don't think so.
I'm not expecting you to do anything, individually. I do expect society to take care of people who are sick. I expect insurers to live up to their obligations as well.
I have, quite literally, no idea why you oppose that. You seem upset. I'm not sure why. Why is helping sick people such anathema to you?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Thus fully answering the question of, "What sort of moron are you?" Congratulations.
I bet that it's really all just a plot by the military industrial complex to inject tracking devices into people, so they know where to drop the chemtrails. That's why they crashed the planes into the Twin Towers, you know, because the terrorists were about to reveal all of the secret chemtrail equipment. It all came from the Roswell crash, of course. The chemtrails, and the vaccines, and the Apollo space program. The moon landings were faked, because they couldn't let the Russians know about the alien rocket technology. The aliens are responsible for HIV too, or at least the ones in our government. It's how they keep control, don't you see?
I have to go. They're watching!
Strange, most of the doctors I've visited were good at listening. There have been exceptions (one in particular would say something, I'd contradict it, and he'd go on without paying attention), but you'll also get exceptions. The doctors I've seen have also been good about making sure I understand what's going on and what I can do about it.
BTW, is it stupid to prescribe antidepressants for people who come in with the symptoms of autoimmune disease? Modern antidepressants are fairly safe drugs, for adults anyway, and if most people who come in with those symptoms tend to be depressed, it may be a useful way of approaching treatment.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You might want to deal with academic-type doctors if you suspect a rare condition. Some of them tend to blow off common problems as uninteresting, but are great at finding the rare ones.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Everywhere I've lived in the US, vaccinations are provided gratis by the local health department.
Organisation may be a serious problem there.
With Australia and Canada. Nationwide you can go see a GP for your childs immi and receive it. Basic adult immunisations like a tetanus booster are free for life.
You dont have to search for a clinic that provides the free vaccines, it doesn't change if I move states, your records move with you easily.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
And? Medical exemptions are not some sham to provide an "out" to the religious and personal exemption crowd. From the article:
"For kindergartners that year, Mississippi approved just 17 medical exemptions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Neighboring Arkansas, which had about 3,100 fewer kindergarten students than Mississippi that year, recorded 24 medical exemptions."
This strikes me as honestly kids who might seriously have a condition that makes certain vaccinations dangerous. I mean 17 out of 45,000+ is a damn small number.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
pro means with, con means against.
The science clearly demonstrates that vaccination works, period. To deny it is idiocy. Anyone can be an idiot, including some physicians. They are in the minority (and wrong) among physicians.
Moreover, every time researchers examine the political outlooks of vaccine deniers through representative surveys, it seems that they fail to find a significant leftwing bent. Consider two major studies on this from the last two years:
* In a 2013 paper in PLOS One, Stephan Lewandowsky and two colleagues studied what makes people reject vaccines, and got a complicated result. Namely, they found that while political conservatism made people somewhat more pro-vaccine, having a free market ideology led in the opposite direction — towards having more vaccine skepticism.
“Opposition to vaccinations involved a balance between two opposing forces, namely a negative association with free-market endorsement and a compensatory positive association with conservatism,” wrote the authors. “The different polarity of those associations is consonant with the notion that libertarians object to the government intrusion arising from mandatory vaccination programs, whereas people low on conservatism — who, by implication, are liberal or progressive — may oppose immunization because they distrust pharmaceutical companies.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
So people who would jump to the conclusion of "liberals" because of the geography involved probably are ignoring the *other* major demographic in those areas.
The main takeaway from the article is that denial of medical care is starting to spread beyond the usual ultraconservative religions and groups like the John Birch Society.
"Gov't Vaccination Agenda" LOL
You dont have to search for a clinic that provides the free vaccines, it doesn't change if I move states, your records move with you easily.
Here, you don't have to search for a clinic that provides free vaccines, either. It's a local government department.
All local services change if you move states. You certainly don't see the same GP after you move, no?
Measles vaccines kill more people than measles, CDC data proves
Measles outbreak likely caused by vaccinated children, science shows
Measles and death?
Well, that's just stupid. It is like saying that automobiles are no longer a major cause of dyslexia.
The problem with measles in the pre-vaccination years wasn't death; the problem was that measles was a leading cause of blindness.
It still is a huge problem: http://www.surveyophthalmol.co...
it's because they are largely funded by public dollars that Mississippi's law may very well be watered down, a lot..... 'religious beliefs and objections' will get tossed squarely at the 'separation of church and state' front, which loses virtually everywhere except 'in god we trust' on our currency and coins.
but.. lets throw some teeth into the revision..
fine. but if that medical professional is wrong or is bribed (e.g. is just doing what the patient's parents say and is 'paying for'), take away his license to practice.. permanently.
In a lot of cases, SSRI's aren't going to work. Celiac disease, for instance, tends to be associated with leaky gut, where the mucosal lining is eroded, and the gut is more permiable. The mucosal lining is a major location where serotonin is stored. If your serotonin storage bank is nonfunctional, then there's not enough serotonin to selectively reuptake. Therefore, such people need to supplement it more or less directly by taking something like 5HTP. This converts to serotonin (and also permiates the blood-brain barrier better than tryptophan).
In case you find this informative, and you also need to supplement norepinephrine, consider tyrosine and dessicated bovine adrenal gland. Tyrosine is precursor to several neurotransmitters.
burn the strawman.
I've never seen anyone claim that vaccinations are THE cause, simply that they can/do cause, but not in everyone. It is widely understood, in circles where people take more than 5 minutes to do some research, that there is more than one trigger for autism and that it is even reversible in many cases. Yes, it has been cured, time and again.
No cites here, Ill let you do your own homework.
Here's a hint though: why would a child who is not on any medication test positive for opiates?
I was vaccinated at birth, and was so traumatized I didn't talk for two years.
That's amazing. What an amazing story. Get this out to the scientific community pronto, they've been pissing about doing studies of tens of thousands of people for decades, but fuck that, because you got sick a bit as a kid and now that you haven't been vaccinated you don't get sick. So yeah let's chuck the vaccines, based on what you think you experienced.
TLDR anecdotes count for precisely fuck-all.
Certain vaccines should be compulsary. Polio, Measles, diphtheria the Poxes. If your kid does not have any of those he should not be allowed in schools or where he is in contact with healthy kids.
Want a vaccine for the flu, thats not the same.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The fact that a troll posts such assholery doesn't bother me, but that this gets a +5 for Insightful is pathetic.
Maybe its just that some folks can't see the humor, nor the point.
The point is your and others desires to condescend. The internet is essentially ubiquitous in Mississippi, but you wouldn't know that as you've probably never been to the state. Whatever horrible reason there is that Mississippi has something right, it can't be good, can it?
Lighten up there. Just having a little fun with stereotypes, don' t tell me you've never done that, and throwing in a hint about how internet fodder feeds fears like the vaccination thing. Maybe you just didn't catch on.... guess you are from Mississippi! (jk).
If it hadn't been done to death. Like I said, one troll, no problem, but +5 for insightful? It's not just you that makes me bitch. Try living in MS for a while, and you'll find more genuine people than anywhere else you go. At least that's been my experience. Except Ole Miss. Ole Miss sucks.
OK...sorry for taking the cheap shot. Most marked it as funny, but the some were more tuned into the internet point than any thing to do with Mississippi. I grew up in the Appalachian mountains, I've heard it all as well.
Does that mean I'm against fused or with fused?
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Its not so much paranoia as it is common stupidity :)
This is neither the time nor the place for pragmatism and logic. If you can't bring an inflexible ideology based on fear and ignorance to the table, nobody's going to listen to you.
"We have been a victim of our success, and people don't realize how bad these diseases are," said Mississippi state epidemiologist, Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III,
"We have been a victim of our success, and people don't realize how bad these diseases are for the pockets of the pharma gaints. Lifelong immunity against measles could kill our business!" said Mississippi state epidemiologist, Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III,
There, FTFY.
If you qualify for the federal exchange, the medicaid expansion would do nothing for you. How much do you pay for internet every month?
They have the highest rates of autism in the Country. http://www.dmh.ms.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/MAAC_2014_Report_KS_Final_2014.pdf