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.
I agree with you to a point, but I also recognize that older people cannot fight off influenza as easily as a young person can. So at some point I believe it becomes reasoned to get vaccinated against the flu each year. I’ve had about three flu shots in my life. Now at 63 I’m looking at the shots a little differently. I’ll probably start getting the shots each year in a few years.
From one of my perspectives is, how much Govt. regulation will we allow? How much of a living, breathing, Constitution?
On certain religious issues that effect for example a group that CAIR advocates for, the “rights” of “one” outweigh the “rights” of many.
Has nothing to do with Christians or Jack the Ripper.
Apparently, according to some people on this thread, a parent can do whatever he wants.
With Obamacare all we can do is keep our family and ourselves as Healthy as possible. Medical care will be rationed and they will use the excuse that some are expendable for the ‘good’ of others.
[ I agree with you to a point, but I also recognize that older people cannot fight off influenza as easily as a young person can. So at some point I believe it becomes reasoned to get vaccinated against the flu each year. I’ve had about three flu shots in my life. Now at 63 I’m looking at the shots a little differently. I’ll probably start getting the shots each year in a few years. ]
I agree with you, but I have seen the flu shot being pushed on young children via advertising and young people, and whatnot. I have even had someone at a pharmacy try to convinvce me into getting one.
If you need it, get it, but it feels to me they are pushing it like those drugs they push on TV commercials that have a bazillion side effects that only make you skin look a bit better....
Hell no and I would hope that no doctor would perform it. I see people with all sorts of bizarre cosmetic surgery that I had thought a Doctor with the oath of “do no harm”, wouldn’t perform, but obviously still performed. I’m not equating that with vaccines, but how far do we go? Recommend vaccinations and keep the unvaccinated out of school in case of outbreak. Okay, but don’t allow Illegal Immigrants because of PC to not have to follow the same rules, and the Media/This Administration ignore that risk. They won’t address this at all, why? An unvaccinated kid from Central America is certainly as risky as an unvaccinated kid in Santa Monica.
[ “When did this anarcho-libertarian strain infect conservatism?”
I’d rather be much closer to anarchy than we are today to tyranny. ]
Plus it depends on WHAT government one is talking about.
Federal Government should have little to NO say about such decisions, the state governmetn should have more and the local even more.
It should be a “pyramid” when t comes to influence on your personal life, with the base of the pyramid being the local gov, then the state a little higher then at the top the federal, with just a teeny bit of influence over your daily life.
Progressivism wants to literally turn that “pyramid of influence” UPSIDE DOWN.
I take as little as possible. I have to take one medication daily. I never intend to be a person that takes 12 medications daily. I avoid antibiotics because I don’t want to expose my body to them so often that medication resistant infections become more likely.
For pain, I can take only one medication. It’s Vicodin. Nothing else works for me, out of the general household variety of meds. I probably have an incidence where I need it about once every five years.
I’m not convinced getting flu shots for children is that great an idea. For kids, getting the flu is like a right of passage. It just happens. In general they fight it off and are back at school in time.
I will say that a big outbreak can be very disruptive at the school. It does put a dent in the program, some kids missing a fair amount of education time.
Honestly, I too object to the way they try to get everyone to get a flu shot.
When I come down with it, I drink lots of fluids, and try to keep my food intake pretty much limited to fluids as well. I figure making it easier for my body to digest food so it can put more effort into fighting off disease makes sense.
Side effects. I believe everything you take has them. That’s why I limit what I take. I do believe we have to keep this in perspective though. Some vaccines are very important. We shouldn’t lose sight of that.
I agree with your take on things.
I was not talking about polio-which was not considered completely eradicated in some areas of the US until the late 70’s-I’m pretty sure everyone is well acquainted with the effects of that disease-and we certainly can’t equate it with measles-they are apples and oranges.
I was talking about things like diphtheria, typhoid, yellow fever-already eradicated in the US-and a host of tropical diseases we never had here. There are/were military bases all over the world, and if you were going to one of them in a country where those diseases still infected people, you most assuredly would be exposed.
No civilian would unless they were going to that country for a stay-a civilian in the US had just about zero chance of exposure to that stuff unless they were exposed abroad.
The point, which you resist with insults and avoidance, is that there are two kinds of rights... Individual rights, and societal rights. Does an individual have freedom of choice or does society have the right to force people to act in certain ways, be they tracking chips, or vaccinations. If you agree that the individual has that freedom, which used to be the American way, then you must accept the fact that some will make the wrong choice. If you feel that no-one has that right to act wrongly, and that society has the right to compel by brute force decisions about health care and other private matters, then you are socialist. Now you’ve heard my argument.
You do know that you run a higher risk of getting shingles when kids are immunized against chickenpox? Kids with chicken pox provide a booster effect and increase immunity to shingles in adults who have had chicken pox.
The Reyes syndrome you mentioned was most likely due to aspirin given to the child because of fever. It probably was not due to the actual chicken pox.
Crippled and dead from measles? Really?
It's not about polio, smallpox, or diphtheria.
“’You consider skipping any vaccination to be neglect and harm.’
Go back through this thread and point out to me to where I said that.”
You made the statement that parents do not have the right to neglect their children or harm their children in support of mandated vaccinations. Are you now backing off that stance?
Driving is a privilege, your entire rant has nothing to do with the government power grab of required vaccinations. Vaccinations are not currently required, stating that they should CONTINUE to be the parents choice is not an anarcho-libertarian, it is the status-quo. Your stance that they should be is the change.... it is a change for more government, so once again... if you support making vaccines required then you support a big government power grab by your own words.
And for what reason do you support this big increase in the nanny state? By CDC numbers, zero deaths from measles... so the current system is working. So either you don’t support mandatory vaccinations (and agree with the stance you ridicule), or you support big-govt power grab based on a reaction to a non-existent problem. If you want to claim the anti-vaccination people are silly for not following the science... then where is your numbers to justify a govt power grab. Zero deaths = zero reason for nanny state.
As soon as the debate is viewed from the perspective of what the current laws are, your position looks silly.
[ The point, which you resist with insults and avoidance, is that there are two kinds of rights... Individual rights, and societal rights. Does an individual have freedom of choice or does society have the right to force people to act in certain ways, be they tracking chips, or vaccinations. If you agree that the individual has that freedom, which used to be the American way, then you must accept the fact that some will make the wrong choice. If you feel that no-one has that right to act wrongly, and that society has the right to compel by brute force decisions about health care and other private matters, then you are socialist. Now you’ve heard my argument. ]
Any “Needed Socialism” is best kept at a local level where if it starts screwing with people and their lives, it can be easily remediated by the people it affects or abandoned by people moving away.
ANY Socialism at a FEDERAL level is ALWAYS a DISASTER.
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good rant :)
I know Fred doesn’t.
not saying vaccination is a bad idea, only that do we want the government dictating this? and if we allow this to continue, how long before they mandate all sorts of ‘good ideas’?
When I was in grade school fifty-sixty years ago, kids with polio-affected limbs were common sights. Now you never see them. Anybody who doesn’t have their children vaccinated and a kid comes down with polio ought to be whipped and imprisoned.
Your choice. But I didn't get the flu shot for many years. Last winter I caught the flu from one of my grandkids and was laid up for two months. This year I got the shot. No flu so far. The shot is nothing. In and out in a few minutes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.