Posted on 11/04/2011 4:28:40 AM PDT by surroundedbyblue
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Chris Barnes, 11, is getting his latest round of vaccinations for measles and tetanus.
“It doesn’t really scare me as much as other people, it’s just a shot,” he said.
Without regular immunizations, Chris would be turned away at his pediatrician’s office.
Dr. Wayne Yankus refuses to see patients unless they follow the government recommended immunization schedule.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburgh.cbslocal.com ...
Like these kids or these or these .
Being vaccinated does not prevent you from carrying and/or spreading a virus. It does not create some super secret aura that the virus cannot penetrate.
I never said that herd immunity protects by magically conferring immunity to unvaccinated people. It works by having enough people vaccinated to break the chain of transmission. If you cannot be vaccinated for some reason, but everyone around you is vaccinated, you won't get the disease because no one around you will get the disease.
Um...wow...I feel like I'm in the middle of an Abbott and Costello comedy schtick. You've just made my point about herd immunity. It doesn't exist because the vaccine only protects the vaccinated. Herd immunity suggests that everyone else must be vaccinated in order for each individual vaccination to be effective. Thus you get comments like this:
I never cease to be amazed by willfully ignorant FReepers. Keep your un-vaccinated self and un-vaccinated child away from my family.
Now, I realize you yourself did not make this comment, but your herd immunity argument suggests you would be in agreement with it.
Once again - get your child vaccinated if you think it's right, but let me decide what is right for mine. My decision does not effect yours and vice versa.
The vaccinated children have not "contracted" pertussis because their own antibodies destroy the antigen when it is introduced into their system. But a vaccine does not create a giant super secret shield that prevents them from harboring the pathogen in their nose, mouth, on their hands, etc.
With your second paragraph, you addressed your own objections brought up in your first paragraph.
Vaccinated people who come into contact with a pathogen kill the pathogen, so will not be spreading it to the unvaccinated.
Uh, no.
If I vaccinate my child, and he is unfortunate enough to be the 5-10% who does not develop immunity to the disease, and then he comes into contact with your kid who has the disease becuase you didn't vaccinate him, your decision directly affects me and my child.
What in the world are you referring to?
Peanut oil in children’s vaccines.
Oops, I meant to address this in my previous post.
Yes, this is a free country. Except in the case of public health, which our government has always placed above individual freedom. Your freedom ends where it endangers the health of other people. And, if your particular religious beliefs prohibit medical intervention, and your kid gets sick, the government can step in and force you to have your kid treated, or take the kid away from you and place it in foster care where it will receive treatment. When we talk about vaccinations, it's not just your tenuous right to expose your kids to dangerous diseases that's under discussion, it's also about your right to endanger other people's kids. Some kids really do have medical issues that contraindicate vaccination, like compromised immune systems or cancers. Do you really have the right to endanger the lives of those kids because you're afraid of the one in one hundred thousand chance that your kid will have an allergic reaction to a vaccine?
Mild: low-grade fever, localized swelling or tenderness at the shot site, 1 in 4.
Moderate: seizure (1/14,000), prolonged crying (1/1000), high fever (1/16,000)
Severe: Long-term seizures, or brain damage, less than 1 in one million (and it is unclear that these are related to the vaccine)
Risk of death from contracting diphtheria, 5 to 40% (risk changes with age); from contracting tetanus, 48 to 73%; from contracting pertussis, about 1 in 500 with good hospital care, about 50% without hospital care.
“Your freedom ends where it endangers the health of other people.”
My only response to that statement is ‘Thank God the founders codified my right to own a firearm’.
There’s nothing that can’t be done to you in the name of ‘public health’.
And the CDC is the ‘honorable’ organization that includes adult gangbangers in their gun violence stats to justify gun control.
Not that they have an agenda. Or anything. Or conflicting stock investments. Or anything.
And you did not read my post correctly. I said the vaccinated person can still transmit the pathogen to another. A vaccine does not prevent transmission, therefore how can vaccination break the chain of transmission?
I noticed in previous posts that you are a medical researcher. If so, then please humor me and explain what you mean by "getting the disease"? I refuse to believe you do not know how a vaccine works. You inject a known antigen to stimulate the production of antibody to that antigen. Then if said antigen is inhaled, ingested or otherwise introduced the antibodies attack the antigen and the vaccinated remains unsymptomatic. The vaccine does not prevent the pathogen from entering the body or being carried in the nose, saliva, or even on the hands, etc. Those pathogens, while unable to wreak havoc on the vaccinated, can still be transmitted to others who are or are not similarly protected.
The herd immunity theory implies the effectiveness of the vaccine improves with the number who are vaccinated, as if the vaccine destroys the pathogen so that the more people vaccinated the fewer pathogens will exist. It simply doesn't work that way.
Vaccinate your children if you believe it's the right thing to do - but please do not attempt to guilt anyone else into following your example using false premises such as herd immunity.
The Constitution was written at a time when sanitoriums for sick people were common. People with tuberculosis were locked up. Same with leprosy. If you caught a communicable disease, you could literally be quarantined in your house for weeks, with notices posted around your property warning other people not to approach your house. Typhoid Mary was imprisoned for over 30 years, because she kept infecting people and would not believe that she was contagious, because she was an asymptomatic carrier. The framers of our Constitution specifically included the duty of the government to provide for the general welfare of the people—as much against infectious disease, I believe, as against malicious human enemies.
The vaccine age has brought us an unprecedented amount of freedom of movement that our ancestors could not imagine.
Even now, if you get an infectious disease, you can be quarantined. Whole towns can be quarantined, if it comes to that. No matter how much you value your freedom, you do NOT have the right to go around infecting other people.
Once again, whether or not I or mine get immunized has no effect whatsoever on what happens to anyone else. An immunization protects ONLY the individual immunized.
Do you really have the right to endanger the lives of those kids because you're afraid of the one in one hundred thousand chance that your kid will have an allergic reaction to a vaccine?
I don't remember claiming to be afraid of an allergic reaction to a vaccine. Perhaps because I never made such a claim?
Since my children are grown I am a disinterested bystander with only the thought of the folly of those who believe they can cure every malady with a pill or a shot and end up creating more and worse problems than they started with.
Now you have already argued that people who are vaccinated may carry the disease, but what you've not noted is that tranmission is often related to symptoms (coughing, sneezing, etc.). Asymptomatic individuals are less likely to transmit many diseases than those who are are experiencing symptoms of the disease.
Forcible vaccination and quarantining aren’t the same thing. I can be prevented from carrying a firearm in a federal courtroom. Or an airport. It’s not the same thing as sending the jackboots to my house and physically taking my gun away.
I have had, in the course of my life, FIVE rubella vaccinations. For one reason or another. Imagine my surprise when I had my titer checked and it was ZERO. No antivaccine person here. I resemble a pincushion.
Unlike you, my first choice isn’t to demand my neighbor who has an objection to the vaccine to get it or else. I have no desire to send the jackboots to a dissenters house to physically sit on them and inject them with something which they have have a genuine religious or philosophical objection.
Why is there no ‘Plan B’? Ie, TREATMENT for the disease. Why, after FIFTY YEARS of a Rubella vaccine is there NO plan B? And no research in that direction! Why is the only apparent ‘Plan’ ever increasing uptake of Plan A, the vaccine? Why have we wasted FIFTY YEARS of chance with this? Chasing diseases of ever decreasing epidemiological benefit? Because we think the vaccine strains will never mutate and smack us in the behind? Because well educated (at our expense, btw) terrorists will never, ever, in a million years mutate any of those strains in the lab? Measles would make a *great* bioweapon. With only a few mutations easily accomplished in a college lab. In Saudi, or Pakistan, or...
Fear of your neighbors naieve immune system is no different than fear of their loaded gun. Both of which cause you no danger right now, possibly ever. But make you FEEL unsafe. So government needs to do something about that. RIGHT NOW. Or ELSE.
Because it looks, to me (and I worked in the industry for years, unlike Jenny McCarthy, Playboy would have paid me to keep my clothes on!), like Plan A represents an endless guaranteed income stream, times every citizen. Possibly with boosters every 15 years for the rest of their lives. And Plan B doesn’t. Maybe it’s a matter of the bottom line. Because, unlike some posters on the board, I’m aware of the fact that vaccine divisions are BIG business at pharma companies. It never hurts to be both mandated and indemnified, does it?
Oops, I guess I answered my own question :)
What I mean by "getting the disease" is the process of receiving an infectious dose of the pathogen, going through an incubation phase in which the pathogen colonizes target tissues within the host's body, and then the symptomatic phase, which gives way to the convalescent phase as the host's body mounts an immune response and starts to kill off the pathogen. Specific details of these phases vary widely among different pathogens, but all pathogens go through the same basic process.
When you receive a vaccine, you commonly receive an isolated antigen or antigen mixture from a pathogen. These antigens are selected on the basis of their ability to induce effective antibody formation. By "effective", I mean that the antibody must be able to bind that antigen as it is naturally presented on the pathogen, and that, when bound, the antibody is still active and able to signal the immune system. An antibody, shaped like the letter "Y", holds the pathogen with its arms, while its tail sticks out like a little flag. Components of the immune system "see" the tail, which tells them to attack and kill the pathogen. The pathogen simply does not get a chance to colonize its favorite tissues, and, therefore, never gets the chance to become contagious from that host. Even in the unlikely event the host spread some pathogens, since they would also have host antibodies stuck to them, even an unvaccinated person's immune system would recognize them as invaders to be killed, and they would not cause disease. In addition to targeting the pathogens for destruction, antibodies can also disable or inactivate the pathogens, for instance, by blocking a protein that the pathogen normally uses to tether itself to a tissue.
With some diseases (e.g. rabies), administering antibodies after a known exposure protects a person, because the antibodies attaching to the virus particles signal them for destruction.
And now, my caveats: I have given here a very basic and general idea of how vaccines work, and limited my discussion strictly to antibody-based (or "humoral") immunity.
What if your child is immunized but is still carrying the pathogen in his/her nose/saliva and exposes my child to the pathogen? What if my child is immunized but was unfortunate to be in the 5-10% who does not develop immunity? Explain the difference in the effect to your child or mine in these three scenarios. Hint: There is none.
I repeat again - an immunization protects only the immunized. Please address this issue directly. Does an immunization somehow create a zone of protection around an individual that prevents a pathogen from entering/residing on etc. said individual? I know you know better than that. It's like you all believe this fairy tale about vaccinations that your common sense knows is not true but you just don't want to let go of.
I'm not afraid of vaccines. I'm not anti-vaccine. I just don't like bullies. Especially bullies who use specious arguments to guilt others into their point of view.
Do what you think is right for your family. I will do what I think is right for mine. If your child does not develop immunity, well, that stinks for you and your child, but immunizing my child will not lessen his susceptibility to the disease. The pathogen will still be out there - carried by those immunized and not immunized. That's just a fact, your herd immunity guilt trips not withstanding.
So are you merely mocking, or are you saying you don’t believe it?
No, it's not done in the manner of armed thugs showing up at your house and forcing vaccinations. But it's a requirement for going to school, traveling, and some employment. Since I work in medical research, for example, I have to have a Tb test every year, and I have had the Hep A and B vaccines. I know that parents are allowed to use "religious objections" as a reason to get their kids exempted from vaccinations, but with as many as 27% of parents claiming such exemptions in some areas, and the concurrent rise of disease cases, I wonder how long claiming such an exemption is going to be allowed. Herd immunity is probably non-existent in a 73% vaccinated population.
I have had, in the course of my life, FIVE rubella vaccinations. For one reason or another. Imagine my surprise when I had my titer checked and it was ZERO. No antivaccine person here. I resemble a pincushion.
When I was in Navy boot camp back in 1980, they checked everyone's rubella titer. I was one of the three lucky people who tested negative, and was sent to the clinic to receive the vaccine. To this day, I don't know if I received the vaccine as a child and didn't respond (in which case I have no guarantee that the vaccine given in boot camp worked), or if I was just lucky and never got exposed to rubella. Either way, I have never had that disease.
Why is there no ‘Plan B’? Ie, TREATMENT for the disease. Why, after FIFTY YEARS of a Rubella vaccine is there NO plan B? And no research in that direction! Why is the only apparent ‘Plan’ ever increasing uptake of Plan A, the vaccine? Why have we wasted FIFTY YEARS of chance with this? Chasing diseases of ever decreasing epidemiological benefit? Because we think the vaccine strains will never mutate and smack us in the behind? Because well educated (at our expense, btw) terrorists will never, ever, in a million years mutate any of those strains in the lab? Measles would make a *great* bioweapon. With only a few mutations easily accomplished in a college lab. In Saudi, or Pakistan, or...
Actually, there is a lot of research into treatment of infectious disease. But treatment is far more expensive and less effective than vaccination. If we were to take the approach of treating disease instead of preventing it, our medical system could soon be overwhelmed. Our research resources are better spent researching those diseases for which we don't (and may never have) a vaccination. I'm not so worried about those diseases mutating--the flu mutates almost on a yearly basis, and there seems to be a vaccine for it every year. Some of the other diseases haven't shown quite the adaptability of flu, and I have no doubt that, having already developed a vaccine against those organisms, it wouldn't take long to develop another.
Less likely but not impossible, correct? And even those who become symptomatic are contagious before those symptoms present themselves, correct?
your decision to not vaccinate your child certainly does impact people. It impacts immunocompromised individuals, unvaccinated infants, and those who are unreceptive to the vaccine.
You would have to then assume that no vaccination=absolutely contracting the disease. And then after contracting the disease, that person would be out and about rather than homebound or quarantined.
One could argue that an asymptomatic, immunized individual is more of a threat, since they would be unlikely to realize they were infected. As opposed to someone with obvious symptoms of an illness who would be more likely to remain at home and be more aware they are contagious.
You would also have to assume that the only diseases that could compromise these individuals are the ones generally vaccinated for.
Look, I said previously that my children are grown so I'm kind of a disinterested bystander. I'm not afraid of vaccines. I'm just looking forward and I'm not convinced that trying to immunize against every disease imaginable, regardless of their prevalence or mode of transmission is in society's best interest in the long run.
Do we really think we've eradicated polio, for instance? Or did we just cause the virus to mutate into some other virus more virulent than the original? Not too many years ago we had Hepatitis A, B, and C, now we're working our way through the alphabet.
Mostly I am just wary of an attitude that we all must comply and the method of coersion, the spurious arguments used to guilt into acceptance. Let's just say the "government knows best" argument should not get a lot of traction on a conservative site like this. And that, after all, is the crux of this entire thread, since the doctor refuses to treat patients who have not had the required government vaccines. I believe he's free to do as he wishes, but I would personally seek another physician.
I never cease to be amazed by willfully ignorant FReepers. Keep your un-vaccinated self and un-vaccinated child away from my family.Not all vaccines are the same, none of them are completely "safe", some are safer than others and some of them are frankly not necessary.Vaccines are safe.
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