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.
You guys are wrong.
Liberals and illegal aliens caused this with the liberals being more culpable.
Whatever snake oil you are pushing it doesn’t make sense and you sound paranoid.
Like, in fact, liberals who always think they are oppressed.
You bet!
You’re ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!
I only get vaccinated for the major stuff, (the bad diseases like Measels, Mumps, Rubella, polio, etc) I will not take a damned flu shot, I don’t like poking the beast too much that lives within me called my immune system.
Complications from vaccines or complications from the shots. Both can and do kill, just different children. If one believes the shots are more dangerous, and there is good reason to believe just that, than mandatory shots for what once were the childhood diseases that we all got are not justified. Shots for some other things are perhaps justified.
These anti-vaccine people against these vaccines for measles, mumps, whooping cough, etc ... ARE ABSOLUTELY CRAZY!
” 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. “
They are stereotyping SOME people with legitimate concerns about vaccines as LOONBATS, what a damned straw man builder this author is.
BEN, if you believe in the measles vacc, you will be and your kids will be FREE of measles so you won’t end up dead BEN and neither will your kids.(unless you are of the % that gets measles despite the vaccination or the vaccination makes you sick)
However, there are SOME children that should NOT be vaccinated and Govt. Should NOT be taking away the RIGHTS of Parents.
I have not seen any reports of anyone in the US dying from this outbreak of measles.
Never mind that vaccines are impure and contain Hg, Al, formaldehyde,SV40 virus.
Obama has come out in favor of taking vaccines.
That should tell you all you need to know.
I’m not opposed to vaccination as long as the vaccine has been shown to be effective and does not contain impurities.
Why is this so controversial? No one wants to take impure and unsafe medications and food.
Yes, you do have that right.
I had my children vaccinated but I question the right of the state to order parents what to do with their children. Either we believe in freedom or we don't.
[ These anti-vaccine people against these vaccines for measles, mumps, whooping cough, etc ... ARE ABSOLUTELY CRAZY! ]
ONLY the 100% ANTI ALL VACCINE people are the crazy ones.
The ones who have concerns about spacing the vaccines out, the ones who are concerned about the other crap they put in the shots, or the ones that think getting a yearly flu shot for a healthy person is a bridge too far....
In your opinion are THOSE people CRAZY?
Would not be a problem if our borders were closed
If we mandated vaccines before entry and had the border closed, it would reduce the risk much more.
Articles in the Media I have read are using: class warfare and calling those who aren’t vaccinated, “free riders”. Amazingly the same media won’t use that term for Illegal Immigrants that come here, break our laws, obtain benefits....
Hypothetical: what if the vaccine
for that were really a sterilization shot?
It would be a quick way to get virtually everyone in the country sterilized at once; would you put that past those who wish to establish one world governance?
Am I the only one who's totally turned off by being told to succumb to others thinking? I'd be much more likely to make an objective decision if I were given the facts, both pro and con, without bias, and asked to make an informed decision.
I like how CS Lewis put it:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis
The only problem with that is you can’t vaccinate children for measles until they are 6 months old.
This issue is Obama allowing millions of people into the country without health screening.
Remember, it’s how you frame the argument is wins the argument. I’m not anti-vaccine, but I am pro-freedom from government mandates.
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