Refusing vaccination makes you a danger to yourself and others.
Well…
While I’m not quite ready to jump on the screw-personal-freedom-mandate-vaccines bandwagon, I will say you all have given me a lot to think about. I want you to know that I plan to research it more effectively (beyond just a superficial Google search) before I have children and strongly consider it for them, and perhaps for myself in the future. I suppose that blindly not vaccinating is as unreasonable as blindly vaccinating.
There has been talk about me being “brainwashed” by my parents regarding vaccination. I will not attempt to give you their views on it because they are largely based on religion and anecdotes you wouldn’t care about because they haven’t affected you. That being said, while they obviously made the decision when I was a baby, my mom told me when I got older that if I wanted vaccines she wasn’t going to stop me from getting them. There was a time we were considering it because I was thinking of joining the military, but I stopped looking into it after I decided I didn’t want to do that. Any blame of my current unvaccinated state lies with me.
As for the abortion vs vaccination, why don’t we try this as a compromise: ban abortion, except when medically necessary to save the life of the mother, and mandate vaccines, except when you medically cannot have them (like Romani)? That way we can save the most children’s lives. Just a thought for the hypothetical perfect world…
If you are female, please consider getting the MMR before you have children. Congenital Rubella Syndrome (once the most common cause of blindness and mental retardation, until, uh, the vaccine) is coming back because of Andrew Wakefield’s despicable crimes against science in 1998. The issue (MMR/autism) has been put to rest multiple times, but the damage is done. Measles, mumps and rubella are back. Rubella is a mild disease but in pregnant women the damage to the fetus is devastating. Depending on where you live (if in a pocket of MMR nonimmune people-- parts of the US, parts of Canada, parts of the UK), you best protect your future babies.
A little more than 30 years ago, when my husband and I were planning to start a family, I went to my doctor to discuss whether I needed to change or discontinue some prescription medications I was taking, and also to discuss rubella vaccine, since I had never had the disease.
The doctor’s response: How old ARE you?
That was not the most tactful comment I’ve ever heard from a doctor, but it turned out that I was just a little too old to have been vaccinated routinely.
I got the shot and was told to wait three months before discontinuing birth control. I don’t know whether there’s still a requirement for a waiting period.
I’m not planning to get pregnant anytime in the immediate future, but I’ll take that into account.
Albert, what you don’t understand about the life of the mother argument is that it is not an on/off switch - where it’s either a) mother is not going to die or b) mother is absolutely going to die if this pregnancy is continued. It’s all various risks - this might happen, this might not. It might just be kidney or liver failure, but it’s not guaranteed death.
I was induced (delivered) at 31 weeks because I developed a complication that made me very ill - HELLP (you can look it up). I started to go into kidney/liver failure. But it wasn’t “guaranteed” that I would have died without ending the pregnancy. I would be at high risk for developing it again if I had another pregnancy - but no guarantees, I could have wound up with an uneventful time or I could have had a stroke. Your side has a very incomplete understanding of women’s health (which is, of course, why ACOG isn’t on your side) if you think that there are big screaming signs on a mother’s forehead that she will or will not die. It’s all shades of gray. But you don’t get to tell me that I need to wait until I’m actually in intensive care with kidney failure again to “let” me and my doctor handle my reproductive needs as we see fit. I don’t need to come to the brink of death just to please you.
Here’s a concept. Listen to the experts - immunology for vaccines, obstetricians for how to handle reproductive needs.
I’m guessing that making PG the poster child for abortion would be about as logical as making Romani the one for unvaccinated people. You are the exceptions, not the norm.
This not a thread about abortion and I’d prefer it stays open.
^^^I agree. Please cease and desist with the abortion hijack. This is a VACCINATION thread.
Responding to albert’s post (which he changed after I responded and his original post was nothing like what it is now), if I am the poster child for why you need immunizations, then let me smile big for that poster.
I don’t want the stupidity and ignorance of others to kill me.
I am going through intense, painful, and debilitating treatments to help keep a condition under control. I have to worry about there not being nice enough paths for my wheelchair, about making sure that I’m able to afford my meds, making sure that I prepare adequately for all my infusions and hospital stuff, and so on. I’ll be damned if I have to worry about the tinfoil hat crowd on top of that.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta has the best soundbite on vaccines, imho. He was responding to a question about some anti-vax film and was asked if it wasn’t useful to have an open debate. Paraphrasing, he basically said “There is no debate. There’s simply a right side and a wrong side.”
^^^ Although both sides feel that they’re on the “right” side :((
Forgive me if I’ve said this before in the 189 pages of this thread, but science is not a democracy.
There’s a side that has better factual support and one that doesn’t. The side with the better factual support wins, unless and until new evidence is developed that contradicts the current conclusions. How people think and feel about it doesn’t change the scientific conclusions.
The best evidence says that the benefits of those vaccination overwhelmingly exceed the risks, except for a few individuals who cannot tolerate the vaccines.
This is my last post on this thread, for which I’m sure you will all send up a cheer. I will take what you say into consideration.
not getting involved much with this thread; except to say that i will never get another tetanus shot again. Had one last week - and had a violent reaction to it. Horrible! now considered allergic to it. Just because of that reaction i’m not sure i would ever do a booster on any other vaccine.
The tetanus shot is known for being painful. But A- you only need to get it every 10 years and B- I mean, it’s better than the alternative.
Some people are allergic to certain vaccines. They fall under the category of “can’t be vaccinated” and rely on herd immunity. I’m sorry you’re one of those people, welcome to the club.
But let’s apply this logic to other things: “I ate at a restaurant and got food poisoning, guess I’ll never eat out again.” It’s just ridiculous. Sure, you might never eat at that restaurant again, but you wouldn’t write off all restaurants, would you? A couple of months ago, I was eating On The Border and found someone’s chewed mint in my beer. Haven’t gone back there since but I just came back from a different restaurant.
@bgbg4us That’s awful that you had such a reaction. But to not ever have any other vaccine is like saying if you are allergic to peanut butter you’ll never eat any food ever again. Find out the specific component that you reacted to.
I don’t think the tetanus booster is given alone. It would be wise to find out what specifically caused the reaction, if that can be done. It might have been the diphtheria or pertussis component. Since I do a lot of gardening, I wouldn’t want to skip a tetanus booster. It is in the soil.
I definitely prefer boosters to getting the condition–tetanus and all those other conditions. I would never want to skip a tetanus booster–it’s just too easy to get and nasty to treat.
It’s rather odd that the more conservative states have a better way of handling vaccines, but I think the southern states do a better job of having everyone vaccinated than the more liberal ones. No opting out, get vaccinated. Florida has a very good handle on it - no vaccines= no school, no rec center participation or teams, no getting to participate in anything that the health department can control. No living in dorms without a fair number of vaccines, including meningitis. They wouldn’t even let my kids go to school until I took their records to the health department, had them all transferred to the Florida system, and gave them whatever shots they were missing (none, but there were some they questioned). For my daughter living in a dorm, the vaccinations are very important as about 30% of her school are international students from all over the world. Lot of new germs being introduced.
Colorado lets people make a ‘personal choice’ and guess what that leads to? Whooping cough. Measles. Chickenpox.