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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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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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.
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 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.