A very interesting case is moving through the Federal Courts. A college student who was left partially sighted and hearing impaired by measles is suing his parents as they were “anti vaccine” and refused to have him vaccinated. He is claiming child endangerment and a violation of his civil rights. Changes to the law in the EU would also classify such cases as constituting evidence of child abuse.
@exlibribris97, can you post a link to that? I googled but couldn’t find anything.
Wakefield’s books, documentaries, speaking fees etc are paid for by devastated, concerned parents whose children have autism…that is what is so sad. He is making quite a nice living on the backs of these families. But I also feel like “Big Pharma” is just as guilty at times…follow the money!
Germany goes after non-vaxxers:
Measles outbreak in Minnesota surpasses last year’s total for the entire country
Our pediatrician was in a ‘no vaccines, no care’ practice. It wasn’t really the type of practice that would cause no coverage at all if parents didn’t want to do vaccines (suburbs, everyone with insurance). A problem did arise with having such a small waiting room and so many germy kids in there that they opened another waiting room just for sick kids. When my older daughter was first being seen, right from the hospital, we never waited in the waiting room because there were too many germs and we were special (micropreemie).
I had an online friend who was adopting from China, and swore up and down that she was only going to give her child one vaccine at a time. No DPT all in one shot, no multiple shots on the same day. I think her daughter was about 18 months at adoption. Well, the one shot at a time thing lasted about one week. She would have been at the doctor’s or health department constantly for a year to get all the scheduled shots in, never mind the blood draws, well baby check ups, sick baby visits. She decided doctors really did know what they were doing.
Wow–made a date with my pharmacist to get a MMR shot later today. Our state has 81 cases of mumps and the pharmacist says many of the cases are folks like me who already had the mumps when they were younger. I am pretty sure my kids are up on their MMR vaccines but will text them a reminder since mumps is a very contagious respiratory virus currently making the rounds.
There are several thousand mumps cases in the US currently.
No doubt this has already been said a million times after 204 pages, but I don’t understand, with medical exceptions, people who don’t vaccinate. It’s irrational to be worried that your child is going to be the unfortunate one out of hundreds of thousands to have an adverse reaction, when the likelihood of getting the disease is so much higher.
I have a friend who was worried about Gardasil. She didn’t want her D to have it, even though her D was heading to college soon. Her D wasn’t sexually active, etcc… I said “heaven forbid she is sexually assaulted by someone with HPV.” Her eyes opened wide. It had never occured to her. My son and daughter have both been vaccinated.
I have a different perspective on Andrew Wakefield. He is a charlatan and worse. Both my children were born in the hospital where he conducted his dubious research. The whole story was beginning to break when my first born was a baby. By the time my second came, it was a huge issue. We were right there in the middle of it, and having an autistic relative, it seemed far too risky. We bowed to pressure from the mother of the relative. We decided to hold off on the MMR for my youngest. We investigated getting single vaccines in France, because single doses were not available in the UK. Supplies ran out. There were waiting lists at French clinics for British parents trying to get their children vaccinated. It wasn’t quite hysteria, but people were worried sick anytime there was news of a measles case anywhere nearby.
We then found out we were relocating to the States. My son had his single vaccines when he was three. Of course, Wakefield’s story was unravelling and then he was discredited. I intend to ask the pediatrician if my son should have a booster, even though he was given the full course of single injections. Interestingly, this pediatrician’s office no longer even provides single vaccines for the MMR.
I find it crazy that Wakefield is still blathering on, and part of the anti-vaccine movement. I actually think his actions were criminal, and that what he started has undoubtedly cost lives. I am baffled as to why intelligent people give in to paranoia, even more so because he has lost his medical license and can no longer practice. And yet, I was so close to being part of that myself. I sometimes feel sick if I think about what might have happened if my son had come down with measles.
^ Because people would rather have dead kids than autistic kids. That’s their logic.
Probably nothing would have happened, just like the majority of kids who had measles in the pre-vaccine days survived with few or no issues. But the problem is the few who die or do suffer problems. My brothers and sister and I all survived the full run of measles, chickenpox, mumps, but that doesn’t mean I want my kids to have to roll the dice for those illnesses. My daughter was a preemie when the chickenpox vaccine came out, and her doctor just said “She’s a kid who needs this. It would be bad if she got the chickenpox” although at the time the doctor wasn’t recommending it for all her patients. By that time I was so used to doctors making the decisions I just agreed and I’ve never regretted going with modern medicine.
A private school in our area just had a pertussis case. In the course of reporting this, it was revealed that this school only has a 77% vaccination rate! Our state has, I think, the highest vaccination rate in the country.
Because of this, the school is going to have to impose quarantine regulations on kids with signs of respiratory infection.
This is a very nice, progressive kind of school that goes from pre-school through 8th grade. Apparently the upper-middle class crunchy-granola mommy population that is all too likely to reject vaccination. 
I really hate the term “special snowflake,” but in this case it seems to apply. Apparently the snowflakes are not protected sufficiently by the immunity of hoi polloi.
I should add that I considered sending my S there at one point, and he did go to their summer program when we first moved here.
Well, some of you may remember the Whooping Cough case that hit Mr R’s pre-school several months ago.
Early this week, a kid went home with a fever and a rash. We feared the worse. Got word today that it was NOT measles. Whew…
And now our state government want to roll back the already VERY loose vaccine reqs. New reqs went in last year and our un-vaxx rate fell by over half. Now they want to roll them back.
It’s one of those weird things that the far right and far left seem to have teamed up for
For any who are curious, here’s the link to the CDC page on the MMR vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and German measles.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/mmr.html
Now I’m wondering if I should ask my D to get her measles titres checked again after the last MMR in January. So far with repeated shots she was still not showing immunity. It’s not something I usually worry about but when there are big outbreaks…
Our D got a booster because her titre levels were low. I suspect they may still be low. Some of us don’t have robust immune systems.
Mississippi actually has the highest vaccination rate, @Consolation. It probably has the lowest rate of ‘crunchy’ parents. Whooping cough cases are highest in areas like Boulder Colorado and San Francisco because kids aren’t vaccinated. In Florida, kids aren’t allowed to do anything without proof of vaccination - no school, no rec center, no league sports. All vaccinations are free at the health department so there are no excuses. Chickenpox vaccinations are not required, but recommended.
At our grade school we had one case of Whooping cough and a family where all three kids had the worst cases of chickenpox you can imagine. All had been immunized. The whooping cough kid’s mother is a nurse and she couldn’t believe he had it. The chickenpox kids had been OOS visiting cousins, and I think the cousins also came down with it.
Those of us with weak immune systems really do need to hope that herd immunity helps minimize these outbreaks. I saw very little downside for getting a MMR booster and good potential benefit, so got it.
Neither I nor anyone in my house can get the MMR because it’s live. I can’t get it because of my immune suppression meds and they can’t get it because it’s live and can shed to me
I have no choice but to rely on the good decisions of others. It sucks.
Even those of us with strong immune systems benefit from herd immunity. My fully vaccinated kid caught whooping cough from (we think) her roommate’s boyfriend. It was a royal pain, and months after she was treated she still had a nagging cough so bad it was keeping her up at night. She’s had pneumonia twice this year alone and I can’t help but wonder if her lungs were scarred by the pertussis, making her more susceptible.
Excellent point, @Sue22 . Not everyone has vaccines that seroconvert in their system. It’s another reason why we ALL need herd immunity.
I’m sorry about the pneumonia. Have you asked her doctor whether not she’d benefit from a pneumococcal vaccine? I had pneumonia at least yearly when I was a young teen (this is way before I had any kind of immune system problems) and they gave me the vaccine and voila- no more. I know it only works for some kinds of pneumonia though.