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.
Essentially the only difference between the two, at the time Jenner introduced the latter, was that the former used real smallpox virus and the latter used its cousin Cow-Pox virus. It was not the same as chicken pox parties! While you were using your feeling regarding Patrick Henry I was researching the facts on him. Prior to Washington ordering the entire army variolated they’d tried a variety of tactics more akin to chicken pox parties. They hadn’t succeeded and smallpox threatened to cost us the war. It had already cost us Quebec. Variolation caught on earlier in the north, notably pushed by Cotton Mather who’d learned it from his slave. Time had convinced convinced many there it was the better strategy. The south had less experience and likely was partially against it just because the north was for. Virginia had outlawed it. Washington, fighting in the north, became convinced variolation for the entire army was the best strategy. His own state’s law currently blocked that. So Geo. wrote his governor and friend and convinced Henry to change the law and let Geo. do exactly what you doubt!
Common sense back in that day was that smallpox WOULD kill 10-20% of people and that a tactic that offered 10-20 times less risk in greatly reducing its spread was GOOD for all. They knew smallpox was contagious and was thus NOT a purely individual matter. Your ‘right’ to be an idiot doesn’t go as far as getting me or my kid killed as a consequence.
We don’t have to guess how Henry would have chosen, we can learn from how he historically chose. And stop falsely tarring the reputation of a great man with modern nonsense. Yes Henry was a stubborn, ornery advocate of freedom, even to becoming a leading anti-federalist, but he was more than that. He was practical enough be be elected governor more than once. I honor the great men in our past. My college roommate was Cotton Mather’s multigreat nephew. My third cousin was surgeon general of Washington’s army during the time in question. They made choices from which we all still benefit, from the best information available to them.
“We have medical doctors, scientists, engineers, and other educated people on our side.”
Yeh, you mean like the global warming pukes? That statement exposes you as a bit nonsensical.
“keep your kids away from mine” Why are you worried? Didn’t your kids get the vaccine? Arent they protected?
Skipping certain vaccines IS a good idea in some situations. I hold up the fact that my parents did not consent to small pox vaccine when I was a child due to a skin condition.
On this point I will agree. But when intelligent and educated folks refuse to disabuse the ignorant it leaves the Impression that the educated have left the site. It’s sad when people who know the facts refuse to participate because they don’t want the grief.
First of all the states mandate vaccines.
Secondly, it is a proven fact that when some people don’t get vaccinated it hurts herd immunity thereby threatening everyone.
So, in reality, the mandate is based in reason and science.
Get an education.
Herd immune requires about 96% to remain effective.
I have an education. My education and skill set leads me all over the world. Though I don’t travel as much in my current job, I have been every continent on this planet except Antarctica.
As a result, I have FAR more vaccines in me than 90% of the WORLD. Go down the list and I have them - anthrax, rabies, Hep-a, Hep-b, Polio, small pox, yellow fever, typhoid, etc. As well as boosters of childhood vaccines such as shingles, MMR, pneumococcal, etc. This is due to my time in the military and global travel on behalf of IBM to many remote regions on this planet. I believe the only vaccine available that I have not yet received is Japanese Encephalitis.
But my vaccines are MY CHOICE. I got them because I evaluated the risk and decided that my actions (travel) represented a greater risk to not have the vaccine. I could have easily NOT traveled and NOT received the vaccines. But again, it was MY CHOICE. Not some unaccountable bureaucrat getting between me and my doctor.
The kind of response you give reminds me that we have our own Nazis here on FR.
Funny that every single doctor and legislator who agrees with me, is a conservative Republican.
It doesn’t matter which government level mandates it. Medical freedom, and the right to consent, is a fundamental God-given freedom.
You don’t like it, too bad.
You believe your “science”, vaccinate yourself. I don’t believe it, and it’s not happening. Not ever.
Yes, and autism can be reversed, following a protocol which removes the vaccine trash these Nazis want us forcefully injected with. One of doctors I know who treats vax injury has a one year backlog. It is an effective protocol if done early enough.
Well if you are educated then I certainly don’t need to remind you of the importance of herd immunity and how vaccines have largely eradicated many debilitating and deadly diseases.
Voluntarily deciding to take immunization for travel is different than mandatory child hood disease vaccines.
And vaccines are not mandated by some “unaccountable bureaucrat “. A person with your vast education would know that elected state representatives decide the vaccine laws for each state and do so primarily to protect children who do not yet have a natural immunity. So if you don’t like the law, then blame the representative that you elected.
What I do know is that, in reality, there is no such thing as “herd immunity”. It is only a lack of exposure. The diseases that are listed as “eradicated” still exist, and still pose a threat.
An uncountable bureaucrat DID mandate that I receive the childhood vaccine of smallpox. Thank God that my mother was in training to be a nurse and saw that my skin condition plus the vaccine would have likely resulted im my contracting small pox. It took notes from two doctors stating their approval to forgo the vaccine AND the threat of a lawsuit in order for the school to back off their position.
Herd immunity is a scientific medical fact. Research it. It’s not a theory.
“If I choose not to take a vaccine I am clearly taking a risk that the disease could kill me.”
You could also transmit the disease organism to your kids, grandkids, or other folks. If you want to risk your own life, I’m fine with that. But you have no right to risk the lives of others.
L
The fact is that “herd immunity” is not .... immunity. Expose the herd to the disease that they are not immunized against and those that are not immunized, get sick. There is no immunity.
From Wiki:
“... The greater the proportion of individuals in a community who are immune, the smaller the probability that those who are not immune will come into contact with an infectious individual.”
Note the term “probability” - not immunity. Research basic math probability - you will see that no immunity is provided.
see the definition of immunity:
Definition of immunity
: the quality or state of being immune especially : a condition of being able to resist a particular disease especially through preventing development of a pathogenic microorganism or by counteracting the effects of its products
It’s been done with smallpox. Its been done with, 1 and probably 2 of the 3 polio strains (1 of which crippled my grandfather c. 1905). Would have been done by now for all three except for jihadi antivaxers. Has been done for the cattle version of measles, which was worse for ungulates than smallpox was for humans (look up Rinderpest). Jimmy Carter has nearly done it with dracunculosis which recently infested millions. We don’t know how to do it for most infections, but what’s wrong with doing it when we know how?
>controlled manner
If only it could be controlled ideally, then i’ be more receptive to the philosophy. If those that thought like you and those that thought like me could all live on big separate islands with no contact except Free Republic we’d be no bio threat to each other. But that isn’t realistic. There will be some content eventually, even with a stay at home mom whom home schools. Kids will someday interact with the wider world, be it academically, in sports or other extracurricular activities, joining the military, etc. If they do so closely sequestered, so the risk of infections spreading is high, my side is not going to let your children near our well loved children until yours reach some minimally vacinated standard.
This may strike sooner than you’d think. Some pediatricians are refusing children as patients whose parents refuse standard vaccinations. They, correctly, see your kids as a threat to their other patients, Their right to deny you care is at least as great as your right to ignore their advice. I look forward to someone whose unsafe to vaccinate (by our standards) child either incurred a lot of medical expenses, or worse died, from an infection that could be traced back to a vaccine eligible but refused kid. I can imagine a good tort case for negligence in some circumstances. American citizenship comes with plentiful rights, but it also comes with responsibilities.
“I look forward to someone whose unsafe to vaccinate (by our standards) child either incurred a lot of medical expenses, or worse died, from an infection that could be traced back to a vaccine eligible but refused kid. I can imagine a good tort case for negligence in some circumstances. “
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Negligence? No! No! No!
I am NOT anti vaccine but never want to see any parent who decides not to do it be accused of negligence in a court-of-law.
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