Hey, America, vaccinate your damn kids!

[MrScorpio]

[violetpastille]

1. I have done

and I have also listened to the anti-vaxxers.

They are afraid of auto-immune epidemic among children. We need to find an answer to that problem before we can get them on-board or we just legislate mandatory vaccinations.

[BadgerKid]

10. Afraid based on real data? Nt

[violetpastille]

13. Data

While they have statistics and theorists I'm don't know if you'd call it "real data".

My data was my pediatricians telling me to do it.* I didn't read any white papers about the pros and cons. I just did as I was told. *Very old school and did not always fall in line with the AAP. "Peanut butter is fine and being Jewish we believe in circumcising boys." For instance.

(I'm certainly not going to pin medal on myself for critical thinking on that one.)

[deurbano]

28. Critical thinking is always good, and "best practices" change...

I wouldn't let my son have the live polio vaccine (he was born in 1998), and his doctor thought I was being a bit woo woo (especially since it it took more effort to get the alternative vaccine)... but the best practices changed right after that, and inactivated polio vaccine is the only polio vaccine used in the US since 2000. I also declined the rotavirus vaccine, and it was subsequently withdrawn. (And I also had to resist over-prescribing of antibiotics when my son got ear infections.) I firmly believe in vaccines, just not in the infallibility of doctors/medical science. I did think they might be loading my son up with up too many vaccinations at once (at such a young age), but that schedule was probably to prevent missed vaccinations in kids not brought into the doctor as regularly.

I let my husband decide on the circumcision! (My husband is circumcised, but we aren't Jewish...and he decided no.)

[violetpastille]

35. Critical thinking is always good, and "best practices" change...

I like the way you wrote that paragraph.

[dawg day]

32. Well, if you did investigate, you'd learn that pre-vaccination,

thousands of children die or were very damaged by measles every year.

And many many millions missed weeks of school, and also ended up with scars.

It's better now.

(And, btw, I never got vaccinations -- too old-- and ended up with auto-immune diseases. Just saying. These diseases ARE vaccinations-- that is, if you get the measles, you got lifelong immunity from the measles. The diseases themselves have an effect on the immune system.)

Critical thinking includes deciding that the recommendations of experts are more likely to be right than the recommendation of Jenny McCarthy.

[violetpastille]

36. Well, if you did investigate, you'd learn that pre-vaccination,

That I did know

And that was the terminus of my investigation.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. best graphic illustration I've seen

Thanks for posting!

[irisblue]

3. And someone recently came through NJ

source--https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/12/28/measles-outbreak-newark-airport/

Second source--https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/health/2018/12/28/newark-airport-measles-ewr-people-may-have-been-exposed-christmas-eve/2432334002/

People at Newark Liberty International Airport might have been exposed to measles because a passenger who was on a flight from Brussels on Christmas Eve had the disease.


I'm safe, I had both types in the past. Are your kids? Your grandkids?

[Cairycat]

4. If you want more children vaccinated

make both the immunizations and any examinations required before the shots are given, totally free. Take a look at what countries who have a reasonable health care system, like Canada or Great Britain, do, what their schedules are.

[Ilsa]

6. I think the ACA mandates no cost

for the public good for those who have insurance. I'm not certain how CHIPs or Medicaid handle it.

[yellowdogintexas]

31. CHIP covered my daughter's vaccines when we needed it

She was past the Texas mandate age for vaccine coverage, and her doctor submitted them to CHIP.

[AllyCat]

23. ACA mandates these are free.

This anti-vax stuff started way before ACA, but I sometimes wonder if the insurance companies are somehow behind this nonsense so they don’t have to pay. Then again, there really are a lot of stupid people.

[Hulk]

7. We seem to encourage "stupid" in this country...

Bad enough the repuKKKes and reich wing media propagandists have perpetuated the lie that "government IS the problem"...but today we have a large number of idiots who don't trust anyone.

Nice going ronnie, you g'damned 3rd rate actor/liar.

[Mr.Bill]

21. I've always thought it was interesting

that he thought government was the problem, and he wanted to be in charge of it.

[cureautismnow]

8. We need to educate ourselves on the Cell Danger Response

Especially when it comes to live vaccines.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256187876_Metabolic_Features_of_the_Cell_Danger_Response

[violetpastille]

17. What do you think of probiotic therapy as a cure for Autism?

I'm only just hearing about it.

[TNNurse]

26. Not sure there is any real evidence.

My autistic great nephew has been on probiotics for digestive issues. He will soon be 10 and he has taken them for years.

[violetpastille]

37. Any improvement

with his autism though?

[TNNurse]

51. There have been changes but no proof of correlation.

He still is extremely sensitive to sound and too much stimuli. His speech is much improved but that has been seen in other autistic kids with age. So there has been no study and he is just one kid. Trust me I wish there was some proven treatment.

[FreeState]

29. Junk science at this point n/t

[cureautismnow]

30. I'm not sure, different strains through the years...

...didn't do much for my child. OTOH, saccharomyces boulardii is a godsend for keeping his bowels solid. He never had a solid stool until he was given diflucan at age 5. At age 6, we discovered he had (likely congenital) borrelia, bartonella, and babesia. So, we treated with different abx for years and the sach. b. kept his stools intact throughout, for the most part.

The cure will hopefully come out of Dr. Naviaux's work with suramin, but it will probably be years before it becomes available. The Cell Danger Response perfectly explains my son's descent into autism with the mmrv at 1 being the final nail driven into his ASD coffin.

[violetpastille]

44. Thank you

I'll do some reading.

[Joe941]

9. We should make a law requiring vaccination.

It is child abuse not to.

[mcar]

11. Anti vaxxers are threatening thousands,

if not millions. For woo.

[Joe941]

12. Well it should only put those who didn't get the vaccine at risk.

[violetpastille]

15. Nah. You can still get stuff if you're vaccinated.

It protects the herd. Not the individual.

In the short term anti-vax worked on an individual level.

[AllyCat]

24. That is true, but the graphic shows the difference

Between vaccination and none. I’m not a gambler but I know good odds when I see them.

[violetpastille]

39. Same n/t

[mcar]

22. Oh, well, that's OK then

You do realize that some cannot be vaccinated because they have some kind of illness, immune disorder, etc? IOW, they already are vulnerable and depend on the vaccinated here to protect them.

[TNNurse]

27. The kids too young or too sick to get the vaccines

are at huge risk.

[Mariana]

34. Wrong. Vaccines aren't 100% effective.

You know, just like literally every single medicine, treatment, or preventative. They don't work for everyone all the time. Plus there are people who can't take the vaccines for valid medical reasons.

I was vaccinated for measles and it didn't take for whatever reason - it wasn't a bad batch or anything like that, I just didn't get immunity from it. I got measles from an unvaccinated person. One of my classmates did as well, but because enough of the other kids were immune, our little epidemic stopped there. I got measles and it was supposedly a mild case (the vaccine did help some, most likely), but it still zonked my immune system so when I got chicken pox right afterward it took me weeks to get over it. It was a long time before I was healthy and strong again.

[erronis]

14. Two great sites about the anti-vax, disease purveyors

Almost all anti-vaxxers are in it for money and speaking fees. Many are failed doctors who promote "naturopathic" remedies.

https://respectfulinsolence.com/

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/category/vaccines/

[pnwmom]

16. Your damn kids?

Isn't exactly a pro-kid way to refer to them.

[StarryNite]

54. I didn't like that either.

[Rory McRory Fitzrory]

18. But, but if we can't trust Jenny McCarthy...

[Codeine]

19. Just hold onto their tax refunds until

they get it done. I imagine a sudden surge in vaccination rates in such a situation.

[mnmoderatedem]

20. we live in an Alex Jones world

just throw out whatever crazy conspiracy theory you want. No need to support it factually, just scream and stomp your feet long enough and it magically becomes fact. In this case, it was the "MMR vaccine causes autism" that was the main culprit.


A happened. Then B happened. Therefore A caused B. This is what passes for sound analysis these days.

[mahannah]

25. What's the source of this data?

[demigoddess]

33. yes, a few kids are going to have catastrophic results and that is tragic,

but a larger percentage of kids are going to be damaged if we don't immunize them. Just as with other diseases. My children have never had leukemia for example, and others have but that and bad reactions to shots are out of our hands. Catching measles, mumps, rubella, diptheria, polio, are much more likely and can be equally dangerous. The anti-vaxxers are just people who do not understand science or life.

I have been vaccinated against everything and a few more things than normal. So have my kids. So have a lot of military members and their families. Biggest danger in our world is from nuclear power and plastic in our oceans and streams.

[KPN]

40. The problem with the few kids vs the whole pack

argument is if one of the few is your kid, yourself or another family member. Better to not use that argument with non-vaccers.

[hunter]

46. "Natural" gas is destroying the world we know and love...

... and kills more people every year than nuclear power ever has.

Fracked natural gas is every bit as awful as coal.

Gas scares me more than nuclear power.

[KPN]

41. This is a problem for sure. Why should we trust

the pharmaceutical industry? They’ve provided plenty of reason why not.

[Docreed2003]

42. Please provide a single peer reviewed journal article

Which shows a link between autism and immunizations, because the one article that anti-vaxers have loved for nearly twenty years has been thoroughly debunked again and again.

[GulfCoast66]

48. But they read it one the internet! There is no convincing a woo believer. I have given up.

It’s like a religion.

[Docreed2003]

55. You're exactly right

I usually steer clear of these threads because they tend to be infuriating.

[KPN]

43. My kids are adults. But when they were minors,

we declined to have flu shots as a result of a personal bad experience within our family. My oldest son came down with something called Guillain-Barre Syndrome which results in him being paralyzed for a few months and from which it took about 2 years to recover (and even then not 100%). GBS research has shown that it follows on the flu, flu shots and pregnancy. We have since known 3 other people in our town who contracted GBS following a flu shot. It is an auto/immune reaction that occurs in some people.

[StarryNite]

53. A good example of how

One size does not fit all.

[Gothmog]

45. The concept of herd immunity is an important concept

[GulfCoast66]

47. Both the far right and left love this woo!

I am now convinced that we will eventually have to return to the days of kids dying and being crippled before Americans of all political leanings learn that the internet is not always your friend and science is real.

Smallpox was the greatest killer of humans in the world. Way more than all wars combined. Vaccines eradicated it.

But now vaccines are bad! Your young kid is exposed to hundreds of new bugs a day and the immune system deals with them. It’s what our bodies do. A few added ones won’t harm them.

But this won’t change anyone’s opinion. Cause the internet said...

Hell, on this thread there are those still blaming vaccines for autism. Enough to make a believer in facts give up.

[Hekate]

49. Public health science should be required in middle school and high school, complete with graphic...

...photos. Pediatricians should be required to have informational brochures in their offices, likewise with graphic photos of victims of the diseases.

I am over 70, and my generation had personal experience with many of these deadly and crippling diseases, as did our mothers. We all had one smallpox vaccination scar on our arms instead of faces and bodies covered with terrible scars. When the Salk vaccine became available the parents in my town literally lined up around the block to drag their kids in for the vaccine, because absolutely everyone knew someone who had been crippled for life from polio.

We had an incredible public health victory in the 20th century, followed by the abysmal ignorance of two generations who believe fairy tales and not science, simply because they cannot see these things with their own eyes.

My personal experience is that I cannot get through this wall of wishful thinking backed up by intense disinformation on Facebook. There is a looming public health disaster in this country, and all I can think of for a solution is education, starting in 6th or 7th grade and reinforced through high school.

[ck4829]

50. K&R

[GoneOffShore]

52. Had there been a flu vaccine, I might have known my grandfather who died in 1918.

On the other hand, if there had been a polio vaccine there's a good chance that my dad would have been able to enlist just after Pearl Harbor, gone into the Navy, and would have never met my mother.