Posted on 02/11/2015 6:47:51 AM PST by Kaslin
There has been much debate recently over vaccination mandates, particularly in response to the measles outbreak currently taking place throughout the country.
At this juncture, there have been 102 confirmed measles cases in the U.S. during 2015, with 59 of them linked to a December 2014 visit to the Disneyland theme park in Southern California. (It is important to note that 11 of the cases associated with Disneyland were detected last year and, consequently, fall within the 2014 measles count.) This large outbreak has spread to at least a half-dozen other states, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently requesting that all health care professionals "consider measles when evaluating patients with febrile rash and ask about a patient's vaccine status, recent travel history and contact with individuals who have febrile rash illness."
One must understand that there is no specific antiviral therapy for measles and that 90 percent of those who are not vaccinated will contract measles if they are indeed exposed to the virus. This explains why Arizona health officials are monitoring more than 1,000 people after potential exposure to measles. These are pretty staggering numbers that should concern not only parents and children, but also the general populace.
I have been asked many times throughout the past week for my thoughts concerning the issue of vaccines. The important thing is to make sure the public understands that there is no substantial risk from vaccines and that the benefits are very significant. Although I strongly believe in individual rights and the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, I also recognize that public health and public safety are extremely important in our society. Certain communicable diseases have been largely eradicated by immunization policies in this country. We should not allow those diseases to return by forgoing safety immunization programs for philosophical, religious or other reasons when we have the means to eradicate them.
Obviously, there are exceptional situations to virtually everything, and we must have a mechanism whereby those can be heard. Nevertheless, there is public policy and health policy that we have to pay attention to regarding this matter. We already have policies in place at schools that require immunization records -- this is a positive thing. Studies have shown over the course of time that the risk-benefit ratio for vaccination is grossly in favor of being vaccinated as opposed to not.
There is no question that immunizations have been effective in eliminating diseases such as smallpox, which was devastating and lethal. When you have diseases that have been demonstrably curtailed or eradicated by immunization, why would you even think about not doing it? Certain people have discussed the possibility of potential health risks from vaccinations. I am not aware of scientific evidence of a direct correlation. I think there probably are people who may make a correlation where one does not exist, and that fear subsequently ignites, catches fire and spreads. But it is important to educate the public about what evidence actually exists.
I am very much in favor of parental rights for certain types of things. I am in favor of you and I having the freedom to drive a car. But do we have a right to drive without wearing our seatbelts? Do we have a right to text while we are driving? Studies have demonstrated that those are dangerous things to do, so it becomes a public safety issue. You have to be able to distinguish our rights versus the rights of the society in which we live, because we are all in this thing together. We have to be cognizant of the other people around us, and we must always bear in mind the safety of the population. That is key, and that is one of the responsibilities of government.
I am a small-government person, and I greatly oppose government intrusion into everything. Still, it is essential that we distinguish between those things that are important and those things that are just intruding upon our basic privacy. Whether to participate in childhood immunizations would be an individual choice if individuals were the only ones affected, but as previously mentioned, our children are part of our larger community. None of us lives in isolation. Your decision does not affect only you -- it also affects your fellow Americans.
> Do we have a right to text while we are driving? Studies have demonstrated that those are dangerous things to do, so it becomes a public safety issue. You have to be able to distinguish our rights versus the rights of the society in which we live, because we are all in this thing together. We have to be cognizant of the other people around us, and we must always bear in mind the safety of the population. That is key, and that is one of the responsibilities of government.
The author has sloppy thinking.
If I text and drive and you don’t I pose a danger to you.
If I am not immunized and you are I do not pose a danger to you.
I was vaccinated against smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and a whole bunch of other diseases as a small child in Hong Kong back in the 1960’s.
Amazing how these ‘vaccination’ threads always seem to attract FR’s ‘house liberals’...
Indeed. As I noted on another thread, Mexico and Central America may be poorer than the US, but they have the advantage of not having a large population of granola-brained hippie nincompoops.
Vaccinations are "only" about 98% effective.
Would it be OK with you if I pointed a fifty-chamber revolver with one bullet at your head and played Russian Roulette? I doubt it.
Because even a 1%-2% risk of death or permanent injury (blindness, deafness, mental impairment, etc) is unacceptable when it can be easily avoided by the application of modern science.
(We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men)
Your sigline just broke my irony meter.
I never was vaccinated against measles or mumps because I had them, and therefore was immune to them. Also at that time there was no vaccine for them available. I also never had Scarlet fever even though I visited a school friend who had it when I visited her.
Both my sons were immunized against small pox when they were babies and had the measles when they were 10 and 7 years old. That was before measles vaccine was available.
My daughter on the other hand was never vaccinated against small pox even though the vaccine was still available when she was one year old. She came came down with Meningitis when she was seven month old and could not be immunized against it until she was two years old (I knew that and no one had to tell me) By the time she had her second birthday small pox got eradicated
The mercury out of what?
or if you had the measles
The only time I did not like wearing a seat belt was when I was pregnant with my daughter
My father got the flu every year when he was older and died from it. (Actually he bled to death because the hospital was negligent) He had to go to the bathroom and called the nurses station to notify them. No one came so he tore his IV out of his arm and went to the bathroom. The next morning they found him laying dead on the bathroom floor.
As explained above, vaccines are not 100% perfect. By your "logic", an armed opponent does not pose a danger to me if I am wearing body armor.
> As explained above
Where? Your unsourced statistic posted after my post?
It could not be given to babies before they were one year old. Also it could not be given if the baby had a serious illness during it's first year (See my post#47) or if the baby or child had a serious skin infection. You had to wait an extra year
Actually you are, because you are not paying attention to your surroundings
If I am not immunized and you are I do not pose a danger to you.
But you do to those that are not immunized and they do to you
Isn’t 98% effectiveness better than getting not vaccinated at all?
re-read: “I pose a danger to you”
> But you do to those that are not immunized and they do to you
MY choice. THEIR choice. NOT YOUR CHOICE TO IMPOSE.
Some are, some aren’t.
The people who put out the recommendations have done a very poor job explaining the difference between MMR and polio on the one hand, and Gardasil and Hepatitis B on the other (not to mention Zostavax).
By hitching their wagon to vaccines for lifestyle diseases, or to vaccines that do not always prevent the diseases in question, they have misused their authority and allowed distrust to grow up.
MMR, polio, and DPT vaccines have saved literally millions of lives. The role of other vaccines in one’s life, or the life of one’s children, is less clear.
One size does not fit all.
The point is that nitwit anti-vaxxers (but I repeat myself) do pose a danger even to those who got their shots.
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