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.
If you have to use fear instead of reason, then that can only mean you are not on the side of reason, and you're likely wrong.
“this is a good hill to die on if needs be.”
Bring your unvaccinated kids around me and mine and you may just get your wish.
L
In a somewhat similar matter, many years ago I diagnosed a patient with chickenpox (prior to the US vaccine IIRC.) His parents told me they were planning to fly to Florida for a vacation. I told them not to do that. I later learned they flew the extremely contagious kid there commercially in spite of me. It could have been fatal to some "Make a Wish" kid traveling to Disney. How would you like your kid invited to a chickenpox party without your consent AND against the "hosting kid's" doctor's explicit advice? If you were aware of the source and your child suffered serious consequences as a result wouldn't you be furious? Furious enough to enough to run it by a lawyer? Might not the well known nature of chickenpox be enough to argue that taking a child with known chickenpox on a plane was an irresponsible act for a lay person, much less a lay person who'd been explicitly warned against it by a doctor? Parents holding booze parties for underaged children get sued when a drunk kid gets in an accident driving home thereafter. Is flying with known chickenpox any less negligent? I'm not saying there should be liability for all anti-vax choices, but that there could be in some circumstances. Parents deserve broad, but not absolute and total deference for their parenting choices.
FR has them.
One was afraid that some vaccine had mercury. I linked to the Fed CDC where it plainly stated no vaccine contained mercury.
A poster responded, how anybody trust the CDC.
Amazing.
We have thousands of unvaccinated 3rd world types pouring across our border bringing mumps, whooping cough, measles,and God knows what else every month. America doesn’t need idiots like these anti-vaccination dimwits adding to the problem.
I’m fine with you not vaccinating yourself or your kids. That is entirely up to you. But society also has a right to protect itself from fools like you and not allow your unvaccinated kids access to public schools.
Pony up the medical records or home school. I’m fine with whatever you pick.
Have a nice day.
L
All the vax threads are like this. What’s funny is reading someone saying “even the liberal states...” when it is precisely the liberal states which do not believe in parental rights. Here in Texas, virtually every single Democrat in the State House is against Vaccine conscience exemptions. 75-80% of the Republicans are for them.
Science is science, but we don’t live under a scientific dictatorship. We have a right to apply science in our own lives (or not) as we wish. Why do these people have so much trouble with freedom?? As others have expressed, I have ZERO confidence in drug company “science”.
I wonder if some of these forced medicine proponents are overweight? Their obesity affects me by draining the health Care system with all their chronic health issues. How about the government imposes mandatory diet controls?
“I’ll keep my picks to myself and not be limited in public by what you find acceptable.”
Just keep your unvaccinated brood away from me and mine and we will be just fine.
Enjoy your evening.
L
I've paid for all of my calories myself and am paying a LOT for my own health care. If anything the government may save money if I die young from overeating and don't collect back all my SS payments. If the government got off my back in the practice of medicine I might have enough time and energy left over to work on shrinking. Now on the other hand I see loads of fat folks spending food stamps or the debit card alter ego at the grocery store. They may or may not need money, that I can't tell, but they certainly don't need extra food. More appropriate 'needs testing' —with scales, etc.—would either not give them as much food, or no food, or perhaps only individualized amounts of 'diet food' (cf. Michelle's school lunch menus). Such testing would save the budget money on the front end and more, as you point out, in health care expenses at the back end. Probably even save more once 'consumers' of the revised program responded like high schoolers to Michelle meals. Probably get some folks back in the job market so as to be able to buy their own beer and chips.
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Polio epidemics did not exist in the US prior to the Salk vaccine.
That is factually incorrect and frankly just idiotic. 15,000+ cases of polio were occurring per year around 1950. The Salk vaccine was started to be widely used in 1955. Sorry, but your ignorance should not be tolerated because if people listen to you, their kids could die. Badly. And it will be your fault.
“Government forced rail-car trips...government forced vaccines...government forced...”
speed law....education...non killing people...not stealing...
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1500 cases is nothing.
Salk may have caused 5000.
Read again. Was 15,000+ per year before Salk.
“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.”
I have been in the military, and am currently deployed as a contractor in an area that requires numerous vaccinations. My shot record is pages long, including having retaken ALL childhood immunizations due to the military having “lost” my records. (They were subsequently found afterwards). I’ve received smallpox 3X, had 4 series of Anthrax, including the first which even the government admitted caused harm.
The rate of autoimmune disease in the military is much higher than the general population. While correlation isn’t causation, the onset of many autoimmune diseases is incidental to immunizations and such health costs need to be included in the benefit analysis.
While I am not anti-vax, I firmly believe many mandated vaccinations are driven by profit. Anthrax hasn’t been a threat in theater for over a decade, and yet everyone is still required to subject themselves to a regimen that is proven hazardous. Chicken Pox isn’t fatal in most cases, and is more dangerous later in life. From an objective perspective, the limited immunity may increase risk. The Giardasil debacle, and the insistence on immunizations like hepatitis in a healthy child is sheer madness. (Hepatitis risk and mortality increases with age and is complicated by comorbidity.)
As far as flu vaccinations, they are basically a crap shoot due to antigenic drift and less than worthless in the case of antigenic shift. Years ago, when the Swine Flu “epidemic” was the health crisis de-jure, my children and I contracted it. It was no fun, but we survived. When I reported for duty, I ordered to receive the flu shot, despite having immunity and the reality that the vaccine was worthless.
While on the subject of flu, the truly virulent strains kill healthy people by cytokine storm—a deadly overreaction of the immune system—the very system vaccines artificially stimulate for health benefit. Cytokine storms are the pinnacle of immune response, but an increasing number of people who live with chronic, debilitating autoimmune diseases have valid questions about immunologic responses to vaccines that remain unanswered.
The (relatively) few who suffer harm from vaccinations still suffer harm. To insist that everyone subject themselves to an ever-increasing regimen of immune system stimulus for increasingly minor diseases at the behest of “experts” with a vested interest is to deny true science and human nature.
Not all who wander are lost.
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Nonsense!
Save this crap for your own kind.
Wow. Just look at the graph. Notice a slight difference between the left side and the right side? Must just be a coincidence.
Anti-vacers are idiots. And they get people killed. Period.
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