What anti-vaxxers display is an utter incomprehension of risk assessment and mathematics, as well as lack of critical thinking ability. Real risk assessment tells you that the chance of getting a serious reaction from the vaccine is far smaller than the chance of serious complications from the disease it prevents.
We do not naturally have a small risk of being exposed to these diseases. The only reason the risk is so small is that we have very good vaccine coverage. Take that away—throw too many idiot anti-vaxxers into the mix—and we lose that. We see the effects of anti-vax kookery whenever a measles (polio, pertussis, etc.) outbreak occurs. In the not-so-distant past, outbreaks like that occurred so frequently that they weren’t even newsworthy.
Keep in mind that the vaccine side effects are caused by the pathogen component of the vaccine. Thus, whatever those effects are, they mimic what would be seen with the disease, except far less severe.
The parents who choose not to vaccinate their children don’t just endanger their own children. They endanger OTHER children. Babies die of pertussis because some older child who was never vaccinated and has asymptomatic pertussis comes too close to the baby before it is old enough to be vaccinated. They also endanger people with weak immune systems, who absolutely depend on herd immunity to protect them from disease.
I don’t care how much anti-vaxxers profess to care about their children’s health—the bottom line is that they sure choose a dangerous and irresponsible way to show it. In addition, I think it is way too easy to get “religious” exemptions. Either such exemptions should not be legal, or the parents claiming such should have to produce a letter printed on letterhead stationery signed by a genuine pastor/imam/rabbi/whatever from a recognized religious institution (e.g., not some fly-by-night cult).
exDemMom - I think you should drop the “ex” from your screenname.
I’m glad you mentioned pertussis.
Not long ago, I asked my Doc for a tetanus booster (lot of rusty wire around here) and mixed in was a pertussis vaccine. Not because I had small children at home, but because I could come in contact with small children. Sounded fair. ‘For the kids’, right?
Healthy kids may ride out measles pretty well; but pregnant women and the elderly won’t. Places like shopping malls and amusement parks seem to have a pretty equal mix of ages.
Since adults are encouraged to get vaccines ‘to protect the kids’ I’m a little confused as to why parents of kids don’t reciprocate and vaccinate their children against communicable diseases. Unless children live inside a spacesuit, it’s a given they would have contact with the pregnant and elderly, and, in the case of measles, with catastrophic results to the unborn and immunocompromised.
I guess it’s a dilemna - does the risk of vaccine side effects, which are statistically tiny, supercede the certainty of stillbirth or miscarriage of another person’s child or the death of another person’s grandpa from complications after exposure to an unvaccinated and infected child/adult? In a nation with wide open borders is being unvaccinated still an acceptable gamble?
According to ABC local news, the Disney-associated cases have almost tripled, from 7 to 19, now including an individual from Colorado Springs, CO. Of the 19, only two old enough to be vaccinated were vaccinated/partly vaccinated.