Immigrants back then:
Immigrants today:
Posted on 03/04/2019 9:18:13 AM PST by rickmichaels
A baby in the midst of a whooping cough (pertussis) fit will appear to cry without making a sound. Her mouth will be open as she tries to cough to clear the mucus from her narrowed airway, but if she's really struggling, nothing will happen. Her lips and tongue might turn blue. She could seize. When the fit is finally over, she'll vomit.
It's absolutely terrifying to watch (and no doubt, to experience), and precisely the type of picture public health organizations need to paint to counter anti-vaccination propaganda. No more stats about the infrequency of adverse reactions, or sterile "myth vs. fact" pages on government vaccine information websites. Facts don't move people the way that an appeal to emotion — fear, specifically — does.
Anti-vaxxers know that. Their dispatches are compelling: Vaccine Choice Canada, a registered not-for-profit, posts devastating, detailed, first-person stories on its website by parents who report taking their perfectly healthy children in for their scheduled vaccines and leaving with sick, disabled or otherwise "vaccine-injured" children.
There are, of course, the requisite stories about children exhibiting autistic behaviours after vaccination — anecdotes that are easily dismissed by people who already know that there is no link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism.
But some of the other stories are harder to shrug off. They include tales of babies experiencing seizures, anaphylaxis and even paralysis after vaccinations. According to the parents' own accounts posted on Vaccine Choice's website, emergency room physicians dismissed their concerns, telling them that they were simply overreacting.
These are the critically dangerous stories from a public health perspective, in that they can't be flat-out rejected as false. That makes them potentially persuasive even to parents who know better. We know the chance of a serious adverse reaction as described above is exceedingly rare — about three in a million, according to the most recent data out of Ontario — but statistics don't stick in the mind the same way a single story of a mother's anguish does. And anti-vaccination groups tell those stories perfectly.
Right now, British Columbia is currently grappling with a measles outbreak, and so too is Washington state, Texas (where a lawmaker erroneously suggested that antibiotics could clear up the outbreak) and a handful of other regions mostly along the Pacific Northwest. Not surprisingly, the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified "vaccine hesitancy" as one of the top 10 threats to global health in 2019.
Vaccine hesitancy, however, is an umbrella term that really describes two distinct groups. There are the strident anti-vaxxers whose opposition to vaccination is entrenched and full-throttled — the organizers and proselytizers, who made up less than three per cent of parents surveyed, according to one study. And then there are those who can more accurately be described as vaccine-hesitant — those who are worried about adverse reactions, or autism, or the pace of the vaccine schedule, or about putting "artificial" medicines in their children.
The former group might be impossible to influence, but the latter group can still be reached, though bombarding them with stats about safety and sterile warnings about vaccine-preventable illnesses obviously isn't working.
So scare them. Show them what a child hospitalized with measles-induced encephalitis looks like. Tell stories like that of Jamie Schanbaum, whose legs and fingers were amputated after she contracted meningitis as a Texas University student. Let them see what it's like for a baby with whooping cough try to struggle to breathe.
Then let the anti-vaxxers try to counter with stats: But encephalitis from measles is rare! (True) Vaccines don't prevent against all kinds of meningitis! (True) You can still get whooping cough even if you've been vaccinated! (True) But alas, information about the relative infrequency of complications doesn't stick in the mind the way the image of a baby's blue lips and tongue does.
Some might be uncomfortable with pro-vaccination efforts using the same appeal-to-emotion, anecdotal tactics as do anti-vaxxers. But offending our collective polite sensibilities matters less than herd immunity and the suffering of children who have little to no say in their own health care.
Some regions have adopted or are considering adopting policies that essentially make life more difficult for anti-vaxxers; for example, by preventing them from sending their children to public schools unless they have been vaccinated or have a legitimate medical exemption.
But these measures just tend to galvanize the most militant anti-vaxxers, many of whom are convinced that there is a government and pharmaceutical conspiracy to vaccinate children. (In my day, the goal of government conspiracies were a lot more nefarious than trying to keep kids alive, but I digress.) It also does little to actually help the children of vaccine-hesitant or anti-vaxx parents, other than entrench their parents' beliefs. These sorts of prohibitions also do little to mitigate the risk of measles spreading at the grocery store or community centre or anywhere else these banned-from-public-school kids can still frequent.
The better way is to reach vaccine-hesitant parents before, or more effectively than, the anti-vaxxers do. Anti-vaxxers know how to turn suffering into propaganda: to use anecdote to stoke fear. Fighting fear with information doesn't work as well, unfortunately, as fighting fear with fear. Anti-vaxxers have graciously already given us the formula. All we have to do is follow it.
You are stirring up a hornets nest with this one.
Government forced rail-car trips...government forced vaccines...government forced...
There are vaccines and then there are vaccines. Accepting some long proven vaccines isn’t a blank check for any and everything the pharmaceutical companies are selling.
The overwhelming majority of vaccine skeptics I’d wager are primarily concerned about the complete lack of transparency and honesty in the system.
I’m sure a good fearmongering campaign is just what the pharma ordered for those folks. Bet it’ll work like a charm.
Personally, I go for the vaccine.
Scare me how?
If I choose not to take a vaccine I am clearly taking a risk that the disease could kill me. I am motivated in part by the fact that in many cases, the vaccine scares me more.
Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer.
It is not “easily dismissed.” The extreme speed of so many vaccines so early is NOT what we had when we were kids.
This reads like a global warming idiot wrote it.
LOL. So we’re supposed to use scare tactics? And people wonder why nobody trusts the 60-vaccines before age 3 lobby.
Well said.
We don’t do the flu shots for the reasons you gave, and would be very selective with infant shots for the same.
Exactly. This isn’t a topic that I follow much but I do sense that there is no middle ground.
It’s not just MMR and DPT any longer, is it?
The core issue here is ignored by most - illegal immigration.
The world is full of people approaching life as a place where reason is to be avoided.
In all cases their desires are indefensible using reason, so they make reason out to be a sin and tantrums or incoherent rhetoric out to be virtues.
There are vaccines and then there are vaccines. Accepting some long proven vaccines isn’t a blank check for any and everything the pharmaceutical companies are selling.
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I agree with this.
Everyone should adopt my friends policy for her baby girl...only ONE vax at a time...so you know if there’s a reaction...and to what.
Any medical procedure carries two risks. 1) the risk of performing the procedure and 2) the risk of NOT performing the procedure. Both need to be evaluated, considered and weighed - BY THE PERSON WHO HOLDS THE RISK - not the government.
No vaccine is 100% safe
No vaccine is 100% effective
There is always risk involved
When the government grows so powerful as to force people to have to get vaccines, how long before forced prescriptions / medications? How long before forced abortions or sterilization?
Vaccines, like ALL medical procedures, should be voluntary.
“Personally, I go for the vaccine. ”
Unfortunately, there are 36 vaccines compressed into the first 6 years in life... the most of any nation on earth.
Immigrants back then:
Immigrants today:
What was the rate of autism in the 20 years before and after 1980?
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