Posted on 02/04/2015 11:01:19 AM PST by Kaslin
This week, controversy broke out over whether state governments have the power to require parents to have their children vaccinated. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, no stranger to compelling his citizens to stay off the roads during blizzards, announced that he had some sympathy for the anti-vaccination position: "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that's the balance the government has to decide." Kentucky Senator Rand Paul doubled down on Christie's remarks, stating, "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental orders after vaccines. ...The state doesn't own your children."
Christie and Paul aren't the only politicians sympathizing with anti-vaccination fanatics; in 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama repeated widely debunked claims of links between autism and vaccination. Skepticism of vaccination crosses party lines, unfortunately -- although the most organized anti-vaccination resistance comes from the New Agey left in places like Santa Monica and Marin County, who worry more about infinitesimal amounts of formaldehyde in vaccines than about death by polio.
Unsurprisingly, older Americans believe that children should be vaccinated against diseases like measles, mumps and whopping cough, by a 73 percent to 21 percent margin. Americans 18-29, by contrast, believe by a 43 percent to 42 percent plurality that government should not mandate such vaccinations.
That's because young people don't remember a time when such diseases claimed lives. They don't remember a time when the vast majority of Americans weren't vaccinated. Older people do. Many of them lost loved ones to polio and measles and mumps and rubella. In 1952, over 3,000 Americans died of polio and well over 21,000 were left with mild or severe paralysis. Thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine, there have been zero cases of natural polio in the United States since 1979.
The same is true of measles. According to Dr. Mark Papania of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 90 percent of Americans suffered from the measles by age 15 before widespread vaccination beginning in 1962. From 1956 to 1960, he reports, "an average of 542,000 cases were reported annually." That included 450 deaths per year, as well as 150,000 cases of respiratory complications and 4,000 cases of consequent encephalitis per year, many of which resulted in later death. Then mandatory vaccination kicked in. Until a major upswing in 2014, we averaged less than 100 cases of measles per year in the United States since 2000.
The point of mandatory vaccinations is not merely to protect those who are vaccinated. When it comes to measles, mumps and rubella, for example, children cannot be vaccinated until 1 year of age. The only way to prevent them from getting diseases is to ensure that those who surround them do not have those diseases. The same is true for children with diseases like leukemia, as well as pregnant women. Herd immunity is designed to protect third parties.
But Americans have short memories and enormous confidence in junk science. Parents will ignore vaccinations but ensure that their kids are stocked up with the latest homeopathic remedies, Kabbalah bracelets and crystals. St. John's wort, red string and crystals all existed before 1962. They didn't stop the measles. Vaccination did.
That doesn't mean that all vaccinations should be compulsory, of course. There are certain diseases that can only be transmitted by behavior, like HPV. There are others that are too varied for effective herd vaccination, like the flu shot. But when it comes to measles and mumps and rubella and polio, your right to be free of vaccination -- and your right to be a dope with the health of your child because you believe Jenny McCarthy's idiocy -- ends where my child's right to live begins.
Whose definition of harm? Yours?
Whose definition of neglect? Barack Obama’s?
My husband has been getting a flu shot every year for the past 12 years or so. No flu for either of us in all that time.
Reyes is present in many cases where aspirin is not used [see the CDC website for details.] But even if it was, that changes nothing. The child would not have gotten chickenpox if his mother immunized him. He would not have been given aspirin related to his illness if he had no illness. Whether the proximate or indirect cause, her neglect caused his death.
Your statement about the varicella vaccine causing shingles is nonsense. If you have chickenpox, the virus is remains in your neurons and becomes dormant. The likelihood that this will happen is much higher with a live wild virus than it is with the weakened VZV used in the vaccine.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/varicella/ From the site: the risk of getting shingles from vaccine-strain VZV after chickenpox vaccination is much lower than getting shingles after natural infection with wild-type VZV.
Antivaxxers post baloney like this all the time. That's why people have bought into their claims. Please stop posting crap that isn't true.
Apparently, you've got a reading comprehension problem, which would be bad enough, but it also includes comprehension of the things you yourself wrote. Mandated vaccinations are not all vaccinations. You don't have to have flu shots, you don't have to have shingles vaccines, you don't have to allow an HPV vaccination, and, you can get an exemption for conscience in many cases. And, you will be responsible for the consequences to your child of doing that. If not now, then after you die.
The rest of your nonsensical rant is a wonderful exposition of why people who don't understand science shouldn't learn their immunology and possible side-effects from dimbulb crotch-shot models. There are no deaths BECAUSE of the vaccination regime, genius.
If you don't vaccinate, those diseases will make a comeback; we live in a connected world. One of our next door neighbor's kidS had pertussis. That was supposedly an eradicated disease. It is life threatening.
My great grand aunt contracted malaria, at the shore in CT during the first decade of the 20th century.
Those “wetlands” leftists are so determined to save are breeding grounds for all sorts of diseases.
Get your stinking paws off of me, you damned dirty apes...
Oh I see, Fred, you experienced some personal trauma from the vaccine issue? Really?
Then why do you consider the thousands of people who have experienced illness or death from receiving vaccinations “statistically acceptable”?
Why is your fear and pain more important than theirs? Why do you demand sensitivity and understanding, while spitting contempt at people who are concerned over their horrific vaccination experiences?
Why, Fred?
They supported [for example] quarantines, which existed in the US colonies more than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. One of the first quarantine hospitals on Earth was built in the late 1790's in Philadelphia, a city in which a Constitution was written that denies deprivation of "life, liberty, or property without due process."
Take up your belief that you're allowed spread your filthy diseases all over the countryside in the name of "liberty" with them.
I don't ask you for any sensitivity and understanding, and I want you to point to a post on this thread [or anywhere in my entire history of posting over the last sixteen years at FR where I have asked anyone for "sensitivity" and "understanding."] I ask for no quarter, and when it comes to brainless morons, I don't give any, either.
I ask that you be part of civilization, or GTFO.
See the post immediately previous to this, where I answer another numbskull, who thinks his personal "liberty" extends to a warrant to spread his filthy diseases over the planet. It doesn't.
The Founders didn't believe that.
When AIDS activists said their "liberty" entitled them to keep donating blood that might kill people, they were wrong.
When doctors and nurses exposed to Ebola claimed they had a "right" not to be quarantined, they also were wrong.
And when people say that their "liberty" is being infringed upon because they want the right to harm their kids, they're wrong as well.
Well said.
“When doctors and nurses exposed to Ebola claimed they had a “right” not to be quarantined, they also were wrong. “
—
My father was quarantined before his death from tuberculosis in 1938.
My mother,brother,and I were quarantined in 1944 because of my brother’s Scarlet Fever.
It was for the greater good-——and there was no complaining.
.
I don't see any difference between "conservatives" who think vaccines are unnecessary or harmful -- despite all the prrof to the contrary -- and HIV+ homosexuals who think they have a "right" to give blood, or Ebola infected Doctors who think they have a "right" to go bowling, or environmentalist-wackos who've outlawed DDT so that 100 million people have died.
That’s why we elect representatives, and have Constitutions to prevent them from crossing the lines.
Google chicken pox vaccine and shingles. It is all over the internet. I actually did not know of this link until I researched it yesterday. They say repeated exposure to chickenpox by adults who have had chicken pox creates a booster to the adults immunity against shingles. If everyone is immunized, there is no exposure and no booster effect.This was in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists predict there will be an increase in shingles as a result of the vaccine. I am not an anti vaxxer. . I do think chicken pox in most children is just a normal childhood disease. If you want your children vaccinated for chicken pox- go for it. If I had kids, I would want them to get it naturally, like I did. But I agree with the MMR,Tetanus, Diptheria, pertussis,polio vaccine. I also believe it is a slippery slope to force vaccines on people, then what is the next step our government will force on us? If I had kids, I would space out the vaccine schedule so they do not get blasted with tons of vaccines all at once.
Please be serious.
I read somewhere that vaccines for typhoid and diphtheria have only been available since the 1940’s, pertussis somewhat later.
The problem being seen with msny of these diseases is that drug and vaccine resistant strains are being seen, much like the tuberculosis in South America and other countries that has been brought here by both legal and illegal travelers. It appears that vaccines need to be re-engineered to prevent these new strains-otherwise, there is no reason to assume they convey immunity to these diseases.
I agree with many people who've said the problem is that you have millions of people illegally entering the country with no immunizations. But ... even with new strains, older vaccines do convey some immunity, because the pathogens are similar enough to the strains the vaccine was originally created for.
I also have a problem with using the influx of illegals as a reason not to immunize. Given that we have all these disease carriers in the country, wouldn't you want to make sure you kids had all the protections they could possibly have?
“Your statement about the varicella vaccine causing shingles is nonsense. If you have chickenpox, the virus is remains in your neurons and becomes dormant. The likelihood that this will happen is much higher with a live wild virus than it is with the weakened VZV used in the vaccine.”
You are not reading my post. LISTEN. The theory is once you have had chicken pox naturally, your immune system needs exposure over the course of your lifetime to boost the immunity. When you vaccinate kids, people who have had chicken pox naturally are not going to get the exposure from infected kids, because there will be no more chicken pox around. Get it? That means anyone before 1995 who had chicken pox. Since the average life expectancy is into the 70’s, we may see an increase of shingles to the year 2055. It has nothing to do with the vaccine causing shingles, it is the effect it has on people who got chicken pox naturally.Your CDC citation does not address this at all.
And we have not even discussed if the varicella vaccine longevity, because if the immunity is not lifelong, then adults will contract it and die. Chicken pox in adults can be fatal.
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