Also interesting that poor people and Hispanics are more in favor of mandatory vaccination . . . hmmmmm
Hey we know what it’s like to be sick and how much a doctor’s bill can cut into our lives. We’d take any kind of precaution we could, TYVM 
I also think (going back to your original point) that children of immigrants are much more likely to be vaccinated. Even if those of us can’t remember these diseases (even my dad can’t remember anyone with MMR, polio, etc) our immigrant parents will tell us horror stories. Even if I wasn’t a public health person, I’ve heard enough about my mom’s life growing up overseas to never want to chance that happening to my kids.
"We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate,” Obama said in April 2008 at a rally in Pennsylvania. “Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included.”
Just to clarify: if you see the video of these remarks, the reference to “this person” is a reference to the person who asked the question to which Obama was responding. In the video, he gestures to the questioner when he says “this person”. It was not Obama referring to himself. I cannot link to the video as It was on TV.
The good news for common sense is that the vast majority of mainstream leaders in our country support vaccinations. I thought Sen McConnel was particularly moving when he related his own bout of polio.
Thank God smallpox has been eradicated in the world (it has, right?) since almost no one gets vaccinated for that anymore. Can you imagine what a catastrophe that would be.
Also, I thought this piece from Sanjay Gupta was just spot-on: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/03/health/measles-gupta-fact/index.html
It’s easy to get an exemption if you know doctors and have the wherewithal to doctor shop. For those who just need to get their kids into school, it’s easier just to go to the mass inoculation sites and get it done. It’s no cost to get done at Public health. if you meet the criterion, which include low income as well as having an immune compromised member of the family, you can go to public health and get it done for free–I had that privilege for years, as well as an exemption if I chose not to get my family innoculated.
As Marie wrote, if there were not so many non vaccinated children around, that someone had measles at DW would likely have not mattered. That it spread made the likelihood that someone with health issues could get exposed, ranging from those with health issues, elderly, infants and the unlucky. It’s all a matter of reducing mortality here. When you see that these diseases can be fatal, as I have, it changes your perspecitve.
As I mentioned earlier, I watched a healthy young man suffer for half a year with pertussis and he had been vaccinated. It’s nasty. And my son’s classmate died from Swine flu. The service was held wihin a mile or so at my house. He was a Cornell student, no health issues. Just hit him the wrong way. The same strain of chicken pox that my oldest got at a year old, killed an infant in a neighboring apartment building in 1984. I knew these children personally, and it hit hard. I also was scared of the possible loss of immunities, while my son was undergoing chemo, and have endured the waves of fear when mumps, measles and chicken pox outbreaks occurred. Elderly remember the polio outbreaks and fears–I know peers who are still showing signs of having the disease, before the vaccines were developed.
We aren’t going to get everyone vaccinated. But when there is an anti vaccine movement that catches on, the crucial numbers are not reached to get the immunity needed for the population as a whole. That’s where the danger is.
USA not only country having problems with flu vaccine.
" . . . even my dad can’t remember anyone with MMR, polio, etc"
Wow, way to make me feel ancient. I actually had whooping cough as a toddler, measles, and mumps. Not the shots - the diseases. I still remember the whooping cough which I had when I was around 3 with horror. I can’t hold my breath to this day without feeling some anxiety.
I don’t know why I didn’t get the vaccinations. Maybe I’m so old the shots had not been formulated yet. But I can’t for the life of me understand parents risking their children getting those horrible diseases.
My main hobby is genealogy. Have these anti-vaxers ever read through death certificates from the early 1900s? It’s heartbreaking.
I clicked through some of the CDC links embedded in those Sanjay Gupta pieces and found it interesting that while oregon doesn’t have a philosophical exemption they just make up for it by having a comparable number of religious exemptions (3k+). State that offer both seem to have far fewer true religious and many more philosophical. In all cases the medical are quite small.
LOL Hayden, I’m sorry. You have to understand that my dad is not the most observant individual and likely did know people with these illnesses and just didn’t realize it. My point was that it didn’t factor into his decision about whether or not to vaccinate his kids. And if anyone had a reason NOT to trust the government, etc it was his mom (a Holocaust survivor) and yet he has the vaccine scar (smallpox?) same as everyone else.
THE most important statement in that entire article, EK:
Elderly people die (not to be crass). It is tragic but it’s not uncommon for an 83 year old man with multiple medical conditions (as stated in the article) to suddenly pass away. The fact that it happened within 48 hours of the vaccination means nothing unless a causal link can be established.
** Correlation is not equivalent to causation **
My dad lost his oldest brother to tetanus. His brother crashed his motorcycle (late 1930s I think). He was relatively uninjured in the crash but contracted tetanus through a scrape and died from it.
Smallpox has been eradicated in the wild since 1979, but the virus exists in research laboratories in the US and Russia. There have also been two recent (2004 and 2014) incidents in the US when “lost” smallpox material was found.
I remember my sister having whooping cough, my brother had mumps, and I had rubella.
We all had chicken pox. Both our parents were hospitalized with meningitis, and I had several friends in high school, who had residual affect from polio.
Flu never seemed to be much of a problem, neither was chicken pox as it certainly was not as contagious as advertised.
Mumps was certainly uncomfortable for my brother however, and it is a concern that Merck falsified the reported efficacy of their mump vaccine.
It’s also easy to get crack, that doesn’t mean that it is a good thing or should be encouraged.
My mother’s health had been fragile for a number of years, but this is the first year she did not get the flu vaccine, as she was in hospice and on so many meds, expected to die any time this fall. All of us got the vaccine, however, and she did not get any cold or flu, nor has she, or any family member for years. Whether it was the vaccine, don’t know. No adverse reactions for us, including my mother who was in frail health even the years she was getting the vaccine. I’ve known a number of elderly who did get flus and died. Several did get the “flu of the year” and died of complications. My close friend’s mother did, and caught it from a family member who was infected. Neither got the vaccine. No big deal for the young family member, but it killed the grandmom. She did not get the vaccine because she was frail anyways, and the family felt that the prior year vaccine got her ill. All possible, but the actual flu was the final axe blow. All sorts of talks of possibiities, and that was the bulls eye.
My mom, in frail health, got the flu shot this year as she does every year. Last week she got the flu anyway, followed closely by double pneumonia and a MRSA infection in her lungs. She was in ICU for 6 days and today was released to long term pulmonary rehab. On Tuesday of last week we had a huge blizzard and I was unable to go to the hospital. That was the day she crashed and ended up in ICU. I had to have conversations on the phone with her doctor about whether to resuscitate her if she bottomed out.
My point is that flu cannot always be prevented. This years vaccine proves that. Illness can be like a runaway train. I watched this with my mom this week as this illness took charge of her body. The doctors had to work very hard to stay one step ahead of a crisis. I was on that runaway train when, at 32 I came down with Chicken Pox. You have very little control once the virus takes hold. Asserting control where and when you can is the beautiful thing allotted to us by the advancement of science and technology. The antivaxxers think they are taking control of their children’s health but they are really tossing their control away.
EPTR, I’m so sorry. my best wishes to you and your family.
Whats mommy-woo?
Thank you, Romani. She seems to be doing a bit better today. Truly a miracle.
@pizzagirl was referencing @dietz199 who commented thusly:
“The irony being …the above individuals will encourage both the religious, off the grid Waco nuts and the raw goat milk drinking, I raise my own soybeans and pick them during the light of the full moon so that I can press my own soy formula for my special snowflake crowd. Just about pulls 'em all into the ring of crazy.”
My take is that “mommy-woo” is the shorthand that she used for the group mentioned above.
Woo = pseudoscience.