This is an encouraging trend: “Pediatricians Are Increasingly Dismissing Anti-Vaxxer Patients”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/09/07/new_pediatrics_study_says_doctors_are_disimissing_anti_vaxxer_patients.html
I know if D was still a baby we’d probably have a very strong preference for pediatricians that didn’t take anti-vaxxers in order to reduce our risks.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/health/rubella-house-zika-babies-future/index.html
A CNN report on the damage done in utero to the children of mothers infected with rubella before the vaccine was developed.
Last year was the first tetanus booster I received that was Tdap Each decade prior I received just the tetanus.
Tdap (tetanus, diptheria, pertussis combination vaccine) only became available around 2005. Prior to that, boosters for adults were typically Td (tetanus and diptheria only, no pertussis).
Science is not a la carte. I wonder how many anti-vacciners believe in global warming. Also how many pro-vacciners are global warming deniers.
Science is science!
^^^ I always wonder how many anti-vaxxers ask for antibiotics when they get sick.
^^^^ A LOT.
They don’t trust healthcare providers to try to prevent illness (it’s a conspiracy don’t you know!) but man they want them a Zpak QUICK at the first sign of the sniffles.
Or alternatively, they will treat a cough for about 6 weeks with essential oils.
There seems to be no in between sometimes!
If I had a dollar for every person who suggested essential oils to cute my Lupus… lol
I hope this kid’s parents are getting him medical care. He’s already suffering from their stupidity… no need to make it worse 
It amazes me when people say things like “Science is a belief system, too, so if others believe vaccinations are a bad thing, it should be equally valid”, as if science was a religion. Without getting into problems with science (being something human beings do, it has its problems with orthodoxy, with refusing to entertain new ideas, the science establishment at times has shown itself to be as rigid as the Medieval Church or the Calvinists and the like), science is based on facts, on provable hypotheses, not on belief. More than a few of the anti vaxxers I have run across were religious fundamentalists , others were people just as equally looking for simple answers to complex problems (like the parents of autistic children looking for someone/something to blame), and their cherry picking ‘facts’, their claim of ‘studies’ that turn out to be basically self serving surveys or raw statistics that seem to imply causality, when all they seem to show is a correlation, which is not proof of anything.
The difference between vaccinations and other things people can choose to do (donate organs, or moral choice issues I won’t mention) is that those don’t directly affect the general public. With donating organs, you could argue that if people are required to donate organs if they die, there would be a lot more available for transplant, but given that transplant patients are not the entire population, and that potentially a large percent of organs gotten this way likely may not help (not in good shape to be transplanted, diseased, or not a genetic match), it isn’t a public health issue.
When someone doesn’t vaccinate others have pointed out the problems, the person in question, if they even don’t get sick, can be a carrier, and if there are enough unimmunized people it can allow the target disease not only a foothold, but also to mutate and change and potentially sicken people who were immunized against the original strain. Not to mention that those with compromised immune systems can pay the price for their stupidity.
I agree that those who go this route don’t care about others, whatever the root cause. It amazes me religious people can go a route like this that can seriously harm others, if you love others as you are supposed to in any belief system I know of, how can you knowingly not vaccinate and put others at risk? (and that is just my puzzlement,it makes no sense to me).
That is a good point about mutations and possible infections of vaccinated people, @musicprnt - I bet that is part of what we’re seeing with vaccinated people getting sick.
Has anyone seen if flu shots are available for this season yet??
Many anti-vaccination activists are not particularly religious. Also, claiming to be religious does not necessarily mean that one cares about or is friendly to others, since counterexamples of that (generally, not specifically with respect to vaccines) can easily be found around the country and world.
They’re available. I was advised to wait until October though.
Non vaccinated people cause multiple community health issues. On top of the obvious, I’m now on a prophylactic antibiotic because of my exposure. Like we don’t already overuse antibiotics enough…
They’re available and I was vaccinated already at my local CVS. Different folks have different recommendations on whether to wait to get vaccinated for flu or get it as soon as the vaccine’s available. There have been some flu cases showing up around the nation already.
Some examples of ‘the science is settled’
What was once accepted as consensus among the knowing is now laughable in light of present knowledge and understanding.
Big difference. A round of antibiotics is tailor to a specific state of illness. It is prescribed when there is a problem.
A more appropriate comparison would be the majority of the population being encouraged or legally required to take ongoing doses of prophylactic antibiotics. But, the long range problems of this approach are well known.
It’s not a big difference based on the common arguments I’ve heard from anti-vaxxers. For example, vaccines aren’t necessary and big pharma just wants to make money off them, medical researchers are in the pay of big pharma and recommend vaccines that aren’t necessary, your personal doctor is either fooled or also paid off, vaccines are poison that will cause all kinds of problems that aren’t reported due to big pharma, the government is colluding with big pharma, the science behind vaccines is flawed, studies are flawed, researchers are hiding the truth, the diseases aren’t that bad, catching and overcoming the disease on your own is better, etc.
All of those arguments should also apply to all prescription medications (and medical procedures) because those medications are produced by the same medical industry, the same researchers, the same oversight, the same scientific methods, and recommended by your same personal doctor.
More specifically to your antibiotic example, it’s an invalid comparison as vaccines are not an ongoing prophylactic requiring daily shots indefinitely. Antibiotics also work very differently from vaccines; if anything anti-vaxxers should be more concerned with antibiotics than vaccines but that would require a basic understanding of how medicine works. I personally am quite wary (wary, not skeptical) of antibiotics but not of vaccines.
When scientific consensus shifts, it’s because of new science. Engage in – or help to fund – all the new research you want. Prove the consensus wrong. I’m listening to the people who climb the tower and drop the balls, not to skeptics on the couch.
Just about what I was going to say.
I completely agree. And the science dealing with the combined effect of the additional vaccines, and the science dealing with the effect of combining a number of vaccines into a single dosage is still ongoing.
Remember…Phentermine was considered safe. … dexfenfluramine was considered safe…Fen-Phen…eh…not so safe.
What used to be:
Tetanus
Diphtheria
Pertussis (whooping cough)
Polio
Measles
Mumps
Rubella
Is now:
Hepatitis A
Hepatitis B
Rotavirus
Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis (combined DTaP vaccine)
Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b)
Pneumococcal
Polio (inactivated vaccine)
Influenza
Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (combined MMR vaccine)
Varicella (chickenpox)
Hepatitis A
Meningococcal (certain high-risk groups only)
HPV
Annual flu variation
The cumulative effect on a system simply will be different under the two different vaccine schedules.
My son had a horrible reaction to his second DTP…given that it was a combined dose…it was unclear to which component he reacted.
On can be neither anti-vac nor 100% accepting of combined vaccines, accelerated schedules and increasing the number of vaccines. Calling those concerned about the cumulative effect names and assuming they are stupid is not helpful.
But…maybe the vaccine discussion mirrors our political discussions.
My way or the highway.