thanks!
My older sibs and I HAD measles, rubella, mumps and chickenpox. Our kids both had chickenpox. D also had shingles as a young teen and was miserable. I have had our kids get all their shots and we will see her MD to see whether or not she should get any boosters. Have not read any recommendations that most folks should get a booster if they had shots as scheduled previously & she has had all but she will be returning to SoCal soon.
Infants and adults having these disease can be struck especially hard. I really cannot understand the logic these anti-vaxxers are using–just seems so obviously flawed to me based on the science I have been exposed to. I don’t personally know any anti-vaxxers and think their stance is quite unreasonable and dangerous to society and our most vulnerable.
I found @ucbalumnus’ chart interesting (#1977). Interesting that Hispanics were most in favor of required vaccinations, and people with the most education, and people with either the highest or lowest income. It’s scary how much the Republicans decreased their desire for required vaccinations. Maybe someone was listening to the Michelle Bachmann crazy talk.
It is truly astonishing that people would become so much less rational in only five years. Now the newest North Carolina senator is suggesting that restaurants can opt out of making their employers wash their hands after using the bathroom. That’ll be GREAT for public hygiene/disease transmission.
Seriously…you just can’t make some of this stuff up.
Thats absolutely DISGUSTING. Is there any change he is saying this to make a point in support of vaccinations? In other words, making the analogy that not washing after using the restroom and then interacting with the public is as unsanitary as not vaccinating??
Maybe it’s just his extreme faith in the Hep A vaccine 
He seems to be suggesting that the free market will sort it out. If people get on yelp and report a rash of intestinal disorders then customers will stay away.
Do you think the parents who aren’t vaccinating their kids were vaccinated themselves? Both of my parents had lifelong effects from childhood diseases contracted before the vaccines were available, so they made sure my siblings and I were all vaccinated and we did the same for our children. I can’t imagine denying my children access to the protection my parents gave me.
Do anti-vaxxers think vaccines can cause the disease they’re designed to prevent or is their main concern that the vaccines will cause conditions like autism? The people I know of (on an email list I belong to) who don’t vaccinate have what they call “pox parties” (if one kid gets chicken pox s/he sucks on a bunch of lollipops and hands them out to friends), but since they seem to assume that once a kid is older s/he can tolerate a serious illness, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t think the kid could tolerate the vaccine. I try to understand other people’s point-of-view, but this one escapes me.
It’s amazing how people can rationalize irrational behavior.
What seems clear is that we have really reached a low point in this country in terms of people’s ability to process information and make intelligent decisions. I have no words for the “pox parties” or any of this ridiculousness. It makes me sad for our kids and future grandkids (and not just regarding their physical health).
I think the freshman senator was using hyperbole – he was suggesting that government regulation for hand washing is overdoing it and that the free market will sort it all out. Of course he immediately says there should be a government requirement that restuarants post signs that their employees are not required to wash their hands. I think he realizes the irony in what he’s saying, since there is laughter at the end of his 37-second clip.
Do people who take their kids to chicken pox parties realize that their kids will now be vulnerable to shingles? Unless those kids get a shingle vaccine when they grow up…
I don’t know if people are even aware of shingles without having heard of it. I had no idea what it was until well into adulthood. I was bless, I guess, in that I never knew any who got it, the reference never stuck with me. My husband, by contrast, was very aware as his grandmother and other family members got very painful, debilitating shingles.
The problem with chicken pox is that there is no control at all on how severe the case can be in a child, plus there is no telling when (or even if) the exposed child will get the pox. One is contagious for about 24 hours before one gets the outbreak, and it takes about 2 weeks to get the outbreak, but there is leeway there. Unless you keep your kid away from others for that incubation period, you risk exposing those who might be particularly vulnerable to chicken pox. I saw first hand how virulently contagious chicken pox can be and also how deadly to, say new borns.
My grandmother had younger siblings who were boy/girl twins. They both died as young children from the 1918 flu epidemic.
And thank you for that clarification, Hayden. It’s pretty amusing to see the grasping-at-straws political agenda of someone who was flailing around at a desperate attempt to show Obama as anti-vax / anti-science.
My H administers flu shots. Every year he has patients who won’t get them because toxins, and every year some of them get the flu and wind up in the hospital - yet still don’t get the shot. These people are stupid and sadly you can’t fix stupid.
I remember how, before the vaccine, parents used to expose their children intentionally to others with chicken pox. Back then everyone eventually got chicken pox (half my school class broke out and went home on just one day) and the danger was greater for adults, so it actually made sense to go ahead and “help” your child get chicken pox before he/she grew up.
The thought of “pox parties” now, though, among the anti-vaxxers makes me shudder.
Oh, the free market would sort it out… at the cost of illness and death* on behalf of innocent people. If there is a solution that DOESN’T make people sick, why not go with that one?
**: yes, death - do this on a national scale and then imagine how many illnesses get passed around! *
Me too. Looking back on it, it feels as if I had chicken pox, measles, rubella , and mumps back-to-back-to-back. My mother tells me that I missed all but three weeks of kindergarten due to the diseases that swept through our school - personally, I just remember being miserable and itchy most of the time.
I think that for some people, the memories of these vaccine-preventative diseases DO color our beliefs about vaccination. None of my friends in my age group opted out of vaccinating our kids (and of course, that observation may also be influenced by socioeconomic factors.) And it’s not just my own personal experiences with scratching and suffering that influenced me - the sister of a high school friend had polio as a baby and wore leg braces for the rest of her life.
We tend to forget how deadly viral and bacterial infections can be, I had a great-great-grandparent who died of an ear infection.
I consider this a self-inflicted misery and people will stop being against vaccines as soon as they realize what’s at stake. Too bad, some people will suffer to get there.
Except they may inflict misery and death on OTHER people as well.