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.
A lot of vaccines are shown to be “effective”, but they never claim to prevent anything. What effective means (in the parlance of this discussion) is that the body’s response to the vaccine causes antibodies to form. Effective doesn’t mean it prevents the disease being vaccinated against - it just means the body should create the correct antibodies (they think) to fend off the disease.
There are a few people among the population in the most recent outbreak in FL that had the MMR vaccination prior to getting sick with the Measles from said outbreak.
Measles is rarely if ever fatal and it is treatable with cod liver oil (high concentration of vitamin A) among other easily acquired items. A 0.015% or lower fatality rate and a vaccination that does not confer protection will never convince any reasonable person that they should rush to get stuck in the arm to placate the fears of some hair-brained mediot that calls them epithets.
The polio vaccine was widely available well before the late 50’s-I had it in maybe 1954-55 before beginning school-there were the DPT shots, too. And I didn’t suddenly have any friends disappear, and don’t remember hearing about kids dropping dead from any of that, or my mom being in a panic in late summer-we lived on a ranch far from any big city, but we did have a TV, and my parents did watch and discuss the news with us...
Not the media, just science and statistics.
If you use those numbers and the 40K kids that came in. At least 4000 of them are not vaccinated. But again, how do we know they are vaccinated or not? They come in with no paperwork and are here illegally, many without their parents. All 40K of them could be un-vaccinated for all we know. That is as much a problem if not more, especially if PC prevents the schools from making them leave school if there is an outbreak.
Sometimes it’s easier to change the subject than to admit you overreached with your original argument, isn’t it?
12 months or older, not 6 mos.
When my oldest son received his first polio immunization, my mother was dying from cancer. We opted for the killed strain version, for that series, which is always available; you just have to ask for it.
So according to the “settled science” folks, Measles was apparently basically eradicated in 2000 and sustained as such until 2011. During that period there were around 60 cases/year. This year there are 600+....hardly, an outbreak or epidemic in a nation of 300+ million people. Additionally, the anti-vaxxer movement did not just start in 2011....but something else did happen that has much more impact on exposing us to this and other types of diseases...anyone want to hazard a guess? And this is the fault of parents that choose to be more cautious, critical, suspicious and inquisitive about their children’s health, how?
You have no right to tell someone how to raise their children. You nanny-staters are a piece of work with your emotional arguments. You can’t even address any valid points that I made. I’m truly sorry for you and glad that I’m not a MSM sheep. Hillary thanks you for embracing her vision.
If the government mandates a chip be placed in all children, will you argue that he has no right to refuse the chip, because if his child gets lost, he would be harmed by not being able to be tracked?
I think what some of us are thinking, is what then next will the Fed Govt force us to do? What “rights” the Fed. Govt. “grants us”, they can take away.
I had my kids vaccinated. Not the new for every darn disease vaccination. The standards. After reading of a friend from high school whose son got encephalitis in college, the vaccine wasn’t required (is now in high school), but the benefits outweighed the risk (she was living in a dorm) and she got the vaccination.
I think that every parent and adult should be informed of the risks of not getting the vaccine and the risks of getting the vaccine. It’s your right to be informed.
Your experiences are fine, but they are not representative of the rest of the country. Parents feared polio for good reason. The President of the United States was paralyzed by the disease. Maybe you heard about that on your ranch.
GOOD GRIEF...no one in the world is suggesting that people with health problems or situations where a vaccination would endanger their lives should get one...we are discussing EVERYONE else...get vaccinated so that your idiocy will not endanger anyone else nor yourself....sheesh!
How about addressing my point? Can't do it?
Again:I didn't see them saying this about the latin american enterovirus D-68 that's been imported and killing children. How many have died from measles in the last week? Hm?
By your argument the government has the power to interfere in any/all aspects of child-rearing.
All they have to do is convince you (and people like you) that doing some certain thing (or NOT doing some certain thing) constitutes “harm” or “neglect”, and they can pass whatever laws they wish control our behavior.
And you’ll stand behind them 100%.
far as you are concerned, our children really DO belong to the government and not to us.
It’s good to know that about you. I’m glad you told us.
Please go post to some moron who thinks you have an argument.
From the ceded South West, gracias!
You must be wrong! Vaccines are safe! /s
You don't have the right to neglect your children. You don't have the right to harm them.
Anybody who tries to extrapolate that into a claim that the government has a right to do whatever they want with my kids is a moron.
Bugger off.
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