I’d honestly be much more concerned of the risk to my kids with guns in the house than unvaccinated kids. My kids are vaccinated so I can protect them with that. I have control over that.
I think I’m going to be that neurotic parent that needs to know these things. I will not let my kids go to a house with guns. I just won’t. I am irrationally afraid of them and I completely understand that I am irrational about it.
Whether I’d let them go to an unvaccinated house depends on whether or not I’m still immunsuppresed if/when the situation arises.
I hate that these are concerns that parents have to have. They’re are completely, 100% avoidable. There are risks that are unavoidable, of course, but guns and unvaccinated people should not have to be one of them!
romani, someone left a gun at my house, under a hat on a chair. It wasn’t loaded but the clip was right there and I’m sure that my best friend’s 7 year old boy could have figured it out in 5 seconds if he had been the one who found it instead of me. I still get nightmares…
I also found one when I grabbed an armful of moldy old wool coats that the previous owner had left in a wardrobe. I tossed the coats onto a trash pile and a rifle fell out with them!
This is how total BS accidents happen. You have to ask a lot of questions. And put one of those no gun stickers on your house so no visiting dip$hit brings their piece. And ask the kid’s friend’s parents if they have grandparents or uncles who come over or babysit who might be packing too.
Don’t assume that gun owners will tell you the truth about guns in their house.
My own father didn’t tell me the truth. He told me that he had a nonfunctional gun with no ammunition that he had taken off a dead German during World War II, but he did not say that he also owned a functioning shotgun and that the shotgun and its ammunition were stored on a shelf in his bedroom closet. Neither the gun nor the ammunition was in a locked cabinet.
My kids were in that house at least 50 times and were not necessarily supervised every minute. They had access to that bedroom and could easily have pulled over a chair, climbed on it, and gotten the shotgun and ammo from the closet shelf.
When my sister and I went through our dad’s house after his death, we were so shocked and scared to find that shotgun that we refused to touch it. To this day, we don’t know whether it was loaded. We had to get it out of the house because there was going to be a tag sale the next week, so we called the police. They promptly sent over an officer, who removed the shotgun, ammunition, and WW II gun from the house.
I feel as though I should have searched my dad’s house from top to bottom before ever letting my children enter it, but in the real world, that doesn’t happen.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: The thread has drifted off topic. Please get it back on track. Thanks!
This topic is impossible to discuss with the crowd who simply descends to knee-jerk name calling and launches ad hominem attacks toward unknown others without any evidence or knowledge of the particular case at all.
“Idiots”, “You can’t cure stupid”, “lunatics” “High school kids dying from exposure to unvaccinated peers”(it doesn’t work that way, as if you just drop dead when you come into contact with an “unvaccinated peer” by the way). Guess what…you are coming in contact every day with loads of people of every age group who have had various levels of vaccination from none to some to all the 60+ vaccines currently recommended.
Titers often do not show any immunity - though the person is immune- unless the person happens to be actively fighting the disease at the moment. People’s bodies are not one-size-fits-all in this, any more than in antibiotic response or chemo response or anything else.
These sorts of vitriolic ongoing attacks have no place in a rational discussion. One poster said a pregnant mother who declined a vaccine while pregnant should be charged with “child endangerment.” Geez. Another bemoaned the fact that everyone in her little illusory world isn’t mandated to take a flu shot every single year (last year’s efficacy was only around 21%, if I recall correctly). You weren’t “safe” anyway.
Another says she doesn’t know what she will do when the grandchildren come. Guess what, you will do nothing, unless you somehow acquire custody of the child. That decision, whether to do it all without question, be selective, to delay, or to decline some particular vaccination as many decline Gardasil rests solely between the parent of the child and the doctor. You, grandmother or grandfather, have no role and no say.
And there is no “chlamydia vaccine” yet someone insists that she “spend(s) a lot of time explaining to the moms of my son’s teammates why it’s important to get our kids the chlamydia vaccine so we can have herd immunity”.
There are some scary people here (and everywhere, I am sure) who feel they have an actual right to force invasion of others’ veins without consent, but by golly, you had better stay out of their wombs!
Some things really are inexplicable.
Oh, and everything isn’t automatically completely safe, as always stated. Of course, in the U.S., drugmakers have a sweet deal that exonerates them from all responsibility for any vaccine, no matter how damaging.
From the Japan Times today: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/13/national/crime-legal/64-women-to-sue-over-health-woes-from-cervical-cancer-vaccines/#.V4gGAaKLUxg
"Initially, the victims, mainly teenagers, will demand ¥15 million in damages each, for a total of ¥960 million, and increase the amount later depending on their symptoms. The victims’ health problems include pain all over the body.
The average age of the 28 planning to file their suit with the Tokyo court is 18. They received the vaccination when they were between 11 and 16 years old.
Noting that the cervical cancer vaccines have caused nerve disorders and other problems due to the excessive immune reactions they caused, the lawyers claimed that the government’s approval of the ineffective vaccines was illegal. The drugmakers bear product liability, they added.
Masumi Minaguchi, one of the lawyers, said, “We aim to clarify the responsibilities of the government and the drugmakers through the lawsuits so that the victims can live without anxiety.”
Cervical cancer vaccines were included in routine vaccination programs in April 2013. But the government stopped its recommendations for the use of the vaccines in June the same year after receiving reports on complaints of health damage."
Honestly, we’d do much better to keep vaccines and get rid of Teflon.
Vaccines, condoms, and antibiotics have done an enormous job in improving life expectancy and quality of life in modern times. Add anesthesia to the mix and you have comfortable surgery too. I don’t underestimate these things. Are they 100% without risk? Of course not. Should we constantly work to improve them? Yes!
Oh, and let’s add contraception to the list of medical marvels. My Great Grandmother had 13 children that lived to adulthood. You need less vaccines if you have less children.
Actually, as a grandparent who comes into contact with a grandchild during infancy, there are two very important things you can do in terms of your own vaccinations: (1) get a one-time immunization against pertussis (whooping cough), and (2) get vaccinated against the flu every year. This helps to prevent you from catching – and possibly passing on to your grandchild – two diseases that can kill an infant and that infants cannot be vaccinated against during the early months of life.
Well, sure, you can do what you want to yourself. No one is disputing that, but that isn’t the statement to which I was responding. You cannot control any health decisions for the child, unless you happen to acquire custody.
The flu vaccine is not particularly effective,by the way.
It’s better than nothing.
The flu vaccine is very effective, if the strains are predicted well and, most importantly, if people actually get it before the flu hits.
I like the new HPB vaccine commercials where young adults say they have cancer, and then ‘ask’ their parents if they knew there was a vaccine that could have prevented it. Not yelling or accusing, just asking “If you knew, you would have protected me, right Mom?”
The controversy re the HPV vaccine (its development and its side effect profile) was overblown and badly reported. Since the HPV vaccine, the incidence of infection with HPV has indeed declined. This will lead to a decrease in the incidence of cervical cancer in women and throat/oral cancer in men (up to 27000 cases per year). How wonderful-- we can get rid of a type of CANCER with a vaccine!
AMEN. Anyone who knows a parent of a 10 - 12 yo – urge them to get the HPV vaccine.
@twoinanddone I haven’t seen that one but kudos. Sounds like a great one.
Making sure YOU are vaccinated IS making a health decision for the child. You are making sure that you’re not unnecessarily exposing them is a health decision.
Plus I’m of the mindset that vaccines should be mandated by law and only opt out if there is a legitimate health reason…
ETA: People who try to justify reasons not to vaccinate infuriate me to no end. I’ve said repeatedly in this thread- your ignorance (and that is what it is since people who are anti-vaxx clearly have a willful ignorance of facts) puts the lives of me and thousands, millions of others at risk.
If you truly do not want to vaccinate, do the world a favor and never leave your house. You should not be able to benefit from herd immunity while at the same time lessen the effectiveness of herd immunity for those of us who do not have a choice.
@TranquilMind I don’t know what your background is, but it does not seem like it is science or public health. Your interpretations of the data and conclusions you draw are incorrect. The statements you make are not indicative of how public health science works. Examples below.
True. But an unvaccinated person poses no risk at all. You know what poses a risk? People who are infected with serious communicable diseases. The more people who have communicable diseases, the more people will get them. The spread is exponential. The point: Mass vaccination dramatically reduces disease acquisition—the fewer people who get a disease, the fewer people who will get the disease.
Actually, this season’s was 60%. You may be thinking of the 2014-2015 season, which was 23%.
Be that as it may, your interpretation is a misinterpretation of what the efficacy rate means. I don’t fault lay people for this misinterpretation because it would seem to be straightforward, but it’s not. The vaccine does not need to approach 90 or 100% efficacy—not even close o that—for it to be worthwhile. I forget the exact number (I’ll look it up and get back to you), but it only needs to be x% effective, with x% of the population vaccinated for it to significantly reduce the prevalence of influenza in a season. 23% is a low year, but it is not a reason to completely dismiss the flu vaccine. Again, the more people don’t get the flu, the more people won’t get the flu.
Breastfeeding babies has been shown to strengthen the immune systems of children. Anyone for mandating that?
@TranquilMind I don’t know what your background is, but it does not seem like it is science or public health. "
Thank you, Brantly. TranquilMind - this is a board devoted to higher education. Therefore we are science-based here. If you don’t wish to be science-based; this ain’t the place for you.
@albert69 - we can’t legislate breastfeeding, but the least we can do is stop supporting egregious violations of human rights by formula companies. (E.g. “samples” to poor uneducated women with less access to clean water…)
Fact: I breastfed my three children for a combined dozen years.
Fact: Breastfeeding is an essentially anti-women’s-equality choice in the USA, due to work schedules etc. (I had to plan nursing visits around my job because of pumping difficulties and supply problems.) It is obviously highly devaluing to women’s time to cite breastfeeding as “free” - it is very, very expensive in terms of women’s time and effort. However, it is completely worth it for the health benefits to the mom and child and for the attachment benefits as well, in my opinion.