My kids are on alternative vaccination schedule. They start vaccination at 5 years old, or later. One vaccine at a time. Half a year wait period between different vaccines. I’ve noticed several interesting facts:
- It is always possible to find a doctor that would agree to use alternative schedule (and to provide appropriate paperwork to your school). For every doctor, who tells that I have to vaccinate, it is possible to find a doctor who would agree NOT to vaccinate. Just look for the right doctors.
- Most nurses have very primitive understanding of vaccination. If your child is on an alternative schedule, nurses are often lost. They have no idea when the next injection is due, for example. It makes me wonder, how well are they trained? Do they really know something about vaccination protocols, beyond “every 2 months, starting with the birth”? Doctors are typically much more resourceful and knowledgeable.
- Scientific ideas tend to change over time. I don’t want to endanger my child’s health for the benefit of the society.
- Immunization records (the primary document) are often handwritten. If you relocate, especially, if you move to a different state, your pediatrician has no records of your prior immunizations, except the handwritten immunization record. If you immunization record is lost, you can always obtain a new one.
- For the benefit of the society, I’ll strongly suggest immunization of adults. Starting with prison population. Politicians would be scared even to propose such idea:) . As long as society values individual rights of felons more than rights of children … I would try to avoid mass vaccinations. Just my 2 cents.
<@TomSrOfBoston Mississippi requires proof of vaccinations from the health department before a child can be enrolled in school. Don’t want to vaccinate your kids - home school. >
Mississippi is at the bottom of health ratings. High obesity, high mortality.
Mississippi is at the bottom in educational ratings. In math, literacy - Mississippi is one of the last states. High unemployment rate, teen pregnancy, incarceration, poverty.
I mean … may be Mississippi should educate EVERY KID? For the sake of the state.
californiaaa, there is no way that your vaccination schedule works and I don’t blame the nurse for not knowing your personal schedule. If you can only give 2 vaccinations per year (you said 6 months between vaccinations), you’d never get them all in. I think a baby gets 14 in the first year and while I know if you don’t start them at before a year there are fewer, there is no way to even get the required ones, never mind the suggested ones like chickenpox and Gardasil or flu. My daughter was on the ‘first shot after age one’ program, and she was still getting 3-4 shots at a time of combo shots.
I had a friend who adopted who was going to do this ‘one shot at a time’ thing, no combo shots like DPT. Lasted exactly one visit to the doctor because she was going to have to go every month for years and years to get them all in.
Mississippi is happy to educate their citizens, but they have to be vaccinated to attend public school. Now California too.
The University of Illinois at Champagne has had recent mumps outbreaks among an virtually entirely vaccinated population.
Twice-vaccinated, as a matter of fact.
And can you imagine what the outbreak would have looked like if they hadn’t been vaccinated?
Actually, not all vaccines are really needed 
Flu vaccines are useless (unless you are pregnant or immunosuppressed). Some diseases are already eradicated in America. Gardasil is a great vaccine. I spend lots of efforts to convince doctors to immunize me with Gardasil. I am not against vaccines, I am against “one schedule fits everyone” attitude.
If somebody finds it difficult to arrange multiple visits to doctors for vaccination - I understand. I know that it is a pain. However, my kids have no allergies, (thank God). All cousins suffer from allergies or asthma. It is much harder for parents.
As a child, I had chickenpox. I remember it, because I had to stay away home for a month (school requirement). In reality, it was similar to a common cold, not a big deal.
My husband was immunized against chickenpox. However, he got it in his 40s. That was terrible! Especially, since doctors could not diagnose it, first. Because of childhood vaccination, his symptoms were atypical. He spend several days in intensive care unit 
Vaccines have to be treated with care and respect. Most childhood vaccine immunity is gone in 30-50 years. Why don’t we re-vaccinate older populations? It makes more sense than vaccinating newborns against hepatitis B (sexually transmitted disease)
Maybe better. Maybe worse. We have no idea at all.
I’ve seen people deathly ill with a vaccine or without. It’s all a crapshoot. Choose what you feel more comfortable with and do that. Stop trying to control everyone else and their decisions about their own bodily integrity. The irony of “get out of my womb” being screeched by generally the same people who simultaneously screech “I demand the government get into your veins to make ME more comfortable” is not lost.
It reminds me of those people who blather on and on when you are pregnant, warning you of all the dire consequences that will occur if you don’t give birth “their way” in their preferred location via their preferred method because “the doctor says…” only their way is safe. .
They believe that everyone is in danger of imminent death if they give birth at home, at a freestanding birthing clinic, or wherever they aren’t comfortable. It just isn’t true. People give birth in taxis and are just fine, but most of us wouldn’t prefer that. People die in all locations, no matter how highly medicalized the scenario is, or with or without some/delayed/or all vaccines.
The flu vaccine was 18% effective earlier this year, the CDC reported. Yet they still vehemently pushed it everywhere. Seriously?
Californiaa: “I am not against vaccines, I am against “one schedule fits everyone” attitude”
(Cannot quote for some reason)
THIS, totally this. Do what is right for you. We are all individuals. One size fits all rarely works for individual bodies, any more than one dosage of medicine/food/alcohol works the same for a person of 80 pounds as it does for a person of 300 pounds.
@californiaaa
That’s interesting. My 21 year old son got that shot when it was brand new. I didn’t realize there was a vaccine for chicken pox that an adult over 50 could have taken.
@TranquilMind You are correct that they were twice vaccinated but that happened when they were around a year old and around 7 or 8. Vaccines are not perfect, they wear off. Your immune system only maintains the recognition of the disease provided by the vaccines for so long. If anything, that outbreak was a sign that they should have gotten a third vaccination before the second one became ineffective not that vaccines don’t matter. http://thoughtscapism.com/2015/04/20/the-simple-math-of-herd-immunity/ for future reference if you still don’t understand why vaccines work and are important.
Furthermore, as twoinanddone stated, the outbreak would have been significantly worse if not for the herd immunity of the vaccination. The mumps vaccine works for 9/10 people for at least a decade meaning that of the 40k people at that school 4000 would have been at risk of infection but there weren’t even 100 people infected because most of the population was vaccinated and the disease was unable to effectively spread.
I’d say that is not an opinion shared by doctors, scientists or anyone else who actually studies disease and vaccines.
Throckmorten, true, but your body recognizes the disease forever if you actually fought it off instead of had a vaccination for temporary immunity (though I indeed recognize that temporary immunity may make sense in some cases).
My kids got chickenpox when I was in my 40s. I never had chicken pox at all, so the doctor titered me, because it can be dangerous when you are older. Yet even though I never had it, I had complete immunity and antibodies showed in my blood precisely because my antibodies mobilized again(sounds like a military operation) right when my kids got sick. If you try to titer when you are not exposed, it often shows no immunity.
The doctor explained I had complete immunity because EVERYBODY in my (our - he is a peer) childhood was exposed to it, even if they didn’t happen to get it, like me. I had much older siblings, so undoubtedly I was exposed.
That seems better to me. Lifelong immunity, vs immunity of several years.
So what about when the third one wears off? The fourth one? The fifth? How many times are people to get these temporary immunity vaccinations? When is enough enough? How many vaccines are ok? I think that has to be for the person to decide, not the government.
Why do we immediately jump to, “Well, we need vaccines more often!” instead of “Maybe vaccines aren’t working.”?
My generation got very few and almost no repeats. My parents generation got almost none and are just now dying off.
Anyway, my kids have lifelong immunity now.
Vaccines are not guarantees, but you can tip the crapshoot strongly in your favor by getting the vaccines. Sure, perhaps 10% or so receiving a given vaccine do not seroconvert to immunity, but it is far better to be 90% likely to be immune than very unlikely to be immune, particularly when entering situations where the risk of being exposed to the disease in question is elevated (including areas with high incidence of vaccine refusal).
Wow. Don’t any of you vaccine nay-sayers actually know people who had, say, polio? Don’t you know anyone who is unable to take vaccines and for whom these diseases could be extremely serious?
I suggest that if you don’t have training in medicine, virology, or immunology, that you refrain from giving poor medical advice on this issue to the public.
Yeah, you can still get deathly ill with vaccines. But you know what? I’ll take my chances with diseases that I can’t protect myself against and take very, very effective precautions against the ones I can. Why? Because I happen to value my life and, more importantly, the lives of those around me.
Anyone who refuses to get vaccines (for non medical reasons) should be required to go live in places without high vax rates. That’ll at least not allow ignorant, selfish people to lower the effects of herd immunity for the rest of us.
It’s not a crapshoot. There are whooping cough outbreaks all the time in populations where 100% of the patients are unvaccinated. Usually half of those are babies who were too young to get the vaccine… but where did they get exposed ? From an older, unvaccinated sibling whose parent decided it was a crapshoot, or decided “the government can’t tell me what to put in my body”.
I had chicken pox as an adult- had never been vaccinated for it (the vaccine didn’t exist) and had never been exposed. If I had been pregnant at the time-- or was undergoing chemo- I don’t know how I would have recovered. A disease which makes kids moderately ill for a couple of days is so dangerous for an adult…
If you’re an infectious disease specialist, or you are a physician or scientist who works in public health, or you have a similar large-scale view of vaccinations and the diseases that they protect against, then saying this carries the weight of authority. Otherwise, you’re seeing at best a few handfuls of cases. In public health, data is not the plural of anecdote.
“As a child, I had chickenpox. I remember it, because I had to stay away home for a month (school requirement). In reality, it was similar to a common cold, not a big deal.”
And my friend’s daughter died after having chickenpox. She was 3. I’d say my friend thought it was a big deal.
I had chickenpox when I was 2. When I was about 22, I had my first case of shingles. When I was about 25, I had another outbreak, this time into my eye. I have continued to have these since the 80’s, the worse case in 1996 when it took the entire year to control it.
I would do anything, including vaccinating my kids every year, to prevent them from going through the paid I’ve gone through.
It would be lovely for every single person in the US to be on a personal vaccination schedule, shots only given when convenient, when the patient didn’t have the sniffles, when the parents always remembered to be at the doctor’s office at 8 am exactly 6 months from the day of the last shot, when it wasn’t raining, and their are no children at the office who actually can’t be exposed to a live virus. That’s not going to happen. Schools and day cares need the paperwork on time. People move and change doctors and the new doctor can’t see the child for 8 months from the last shot.