6 ms·

it breaks my heart to see so many "adults" making "informed decisions" about NOT vaccinating their children. They should really go live in undeveloped countries

it breaks my heart to see so many "adults" making "informed decisions" about NOT vaccinating their children. They should really go live in undeveloped countries where vaccines are scarce and unavailable to experience first hand what lack of vaccinations actually means, what the implications are for the general population. I grew up, fortunately with out any problems, seeing so many kids suffering from polio, handicapped for life, limping, wondering why they got this disease thats so easily controlled; saw many kids die from cholera, typhiod, TB, bed ridden for months with measles, viral fevers .... and here we are in the most advanced country in the world with access (ok ... I know healthcare in the US is not easy access to everyone) to vaccinations and parents CHOOSE to not vaccinate their kids .... and risk so many lives. sad does not begin to explain what I feel.

semperfaux 12y ago
Sad doesn't even begin to describe how people should feel. People should feel irate. Of course, that assumes people are or become informed about the nature of and reason for vaccination. Which should (and, at least as of my education, was) be a trivial part of US education. Granted: The fact that many people apparently considered Jenny McCarthy a reliable source of scientific information points to a far more basic stupidity than a failure to understand high school microbiology. It's hard to educate people in general; it's way harder to educate people who have left the compulsory school system and decided that Twitter and celebrity are reliable sources of valid health advice.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "and risk so many lives" This is the worst part in my opinion. By making this choice they are putting others (those who can't afford or haven't had the chance to get the vaccine yet) at risk.
stelonix 12y ago
While I agree I'd do anything to help my child, I also realize it's not up to me or most importantly, the government to dictate how other parents should raise their children. The right to raise your child the way you see fit, obviously without any major abuse is an universal right any parent has and it's above any social construct. Abuse, in this context, should be real abuse, which means physical or psychological violence. Abuse does not mean disagreeing with the ways a secular capitalist democracy is heading. As much as some people want to enlist "religious indoctrination", lack of vaccination, circumcision and other forms of non-western-conforming customs as "abuse", it is of my opinion that we should refrain from that and respect the inalienable right to have different customs from the globalized state. Governments are not supposed to be our parents and pass diktakts telling people what's the "correct way" to raise children.
- panopticon 12y ago
  The problem is that choosing to not vaccinating your children has an effect on the people around you. I'm all for raising children how the parent sees fit, but you're talking about a public health issue. Whether or not little Timmy learns about sharing is apples and oranges to spreading disease.
- stephencanon 12y ago
  It's (partially) up to the government to protect other people's children from your recklessness. Saying that not vaccinating is a choice is like saying that driving drunk is a choice. It's literally true, but the government has a valid interest in curbing both behaviors.
- skynetv2 12y ago
  agreed. but we live in a society ... not isolated from each other. if not vaccinating your child poses risk to everyone else around him, you NEED to take responsibility for it. Its like ... you have the right to raise the child as you see fit and if you feel its within your rights to teach the child to defecate and urinate wherever he/she feels like it, dont be mad when someone else objects to it. This is the biggest problem with vaccinations. By the time you realize what you have done, its already late. Compare that with the horror people see immediately when someone insists on teaching their child something like bad hygiene and say its their right.
- gambiting 12y ago
  circumcision is absolutely child abuse and I cheer for every country that bans it.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    Male circumcision actually does have health benefits when it comes to warmer countries with poorer hygiene.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- 12y ago
a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
Polio is about literal shit in the water in places like India, not so much the vaccines. Polio was eliminated in the developed world mostly by way of water chlorination. I'm not an "anti-vaxer" and am not well read on the subject of vaccination, but online discussions of this topic seem essentially religious. People who clearly have no particular expertise go on about how we will be damned if all are not vaccinated. Note in the article that nobody died from the measles outbreak. Some kids just got sick, like they still do from chicken pox. Please also note that people do in fact die every year from vaccines. They are not risk free. Might some calm discussions about statistics and risk assessment be in order? Maybe, maybe not, but the quality of discussion online I've seen essentially precludes it. Also consider that the essential problem here, as seems to happen over and over again with infectious disease outbreaks, is travel to and from the third world. People are ready to crusade for vaccines but apparently the highly effective 19th century technology of mandatory quarantine is totally out of the question.
- nsgi 12y ago
  Sanitation can make polio a more serious problem, since it increases the average age of infection, and the risk of paralysis increases with age.
- janlin1999 12y ago
  I'm not terribly well-informed about the evidence linking vaccines to death, so I briefly looked this up: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#cause http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#cause ("the risk of death from vaccines is 'extraordinarily low'" -- quoting a IOM 1994 report) Do you have links to more recent and more informative publications from widely accepted sources that I should look at?
shas3 12y ago
I grew up in India. It wasn't uncommon at all to see people of my parents' generation with pockmarks from Small Pox or handicaps (and stories of deaths) from polio. Their generation saw first hand the horrors of these diseases and recognized the importance of vaccines. They still speak fondly of how lucky it is that vaccines were available by the time their kids (my generation) were born. So developing countries are pretty serious about vaccinations. However, things are changing with the new generation. The new generation (born in 70s/80s) have been exposed to far less horrors and especially among the upper-middle class folks, there are strains of anti-vax there too. Let's not forget, in countries like India (in my experience), homeopathy and other pseudoscientific 'cures' are more popular than in the developed world (probably due to the fact that the average person in the developed world has better access to good modern-medicine care). The health problems in the developing world are in areas like maternal and neonatal health, where the consequences of poor care aren't as obvious or direct. Atul Gawande points out that this is a bit like how we aren't as afraid of the risk of auto accidents as we are of serial killers, even though the former is astronomically more likely to kill a person than the latter [1]. [1] Atul Gawande, "Slow Ideas," The New Yorker, July 2013: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas
- es09 12y ago
  I grew up in India as well and I can second this comment. There is something to be said for seeing first hand the effects of a disease. Speaking from personal experience, my brother developed a bad reaction to a polio vaccine and developed a mild form of polio that eventually went after a year of struggle. That didn't stop my parents from further vaccinations. It was understood that vaccines have side effects but getting the disease would have been far worse. I worry we need to see an actual measles death here in the US before people start seeing the actual benefit of vaccines in the cost/benefit calculation.
saalweachter 12y ago
Defecting on vaccination is perfectly rational if you expect everyone else to cooperate and never meet another defector. You get all the benefits of herd immunity while taking on none of whatever slight risk of complications there may be. It's pretty straight-forward game theory, which must be met with equally straight-forward strategies: defectors must be punished.
- mcguire 12y ago
  One of the few good things about the article is that it demonstrates that the simplistic game theory approach doesn't work: defection isn't uncorrelated. The year's larger outbreaks of measles are in groups that have all defected together. Herd immunity doesn't apply because the defectors have a closely related sub-herd through which the disease spreads quickly. (On the other hand, it does apply when the disease tries to pass out of the community and cannot. Hm.)
  - Ygg2 12y ago
    Hopefully, the measles spread and the defector groups get wiped out - either through acquired immunity, higher vaccination rates or death.
  - saalweachter 12y ago
    You could probably treat each defector-cluster as an individual. As long as they remain isolated and never shake hands with another defector (eg, an unvaccinated missionary visiting a country with a disease reservoir) they're fine.
Ygg2 12y ago
People that consider autism less favorable to encephalitis/mental retardation/handicap/death are idiots. My aunt's daughter wasn't vaccinated for small pox due to oversight, so when she contracted small pox there was a cyst on her brain that was inoperable due to her conditions. The cyst expanded and she lost some of her cognitive functions.

semperfaux 12y ago

Sad doesn't even begin to describe how people should feel. People should feel irate. Of course, that assumes people are or become informed about the nature of and reason for vaccination. Which should (and, at least as of my education, was) be a trivial part of US education. Granted: The fact that many people apparently considered Jenny McCarthy a reliable source of scientific information points to a far more basic stupidity than a failure to understand high school microbiology. It's hard to educate people in general; it's way harder to educate people who have left the compulsory school system and decided that Twitter and celebrity are reliable sources of valid health advice.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "and risk so many lives" This is the worst part in my opinion. By making this choice they are putting others (those who can't afford or haven't had the chance to get the vaccine yet) at risk.

stelonix 12y ago

While I agree I'd do anything to help my child, I also realize it's not up to me or most importantly, the government to dictate how other parents should raise their children. The right to raise your child the way you see fit, obviously without any major abuse is an universal right any parent has and it's above any social construct. Abuse, in this context, should be real abuse, which means physical or psychological violence. Abuse does not mean disagreeing with the ways a secular capitalist democracy is heading. As much as some people want to enlist "religious indoctrination", lack of vaccination, circumcision and other forms of non-western-conforming customs as "abuse", it is of my opinion that we should refrain from that and respect the inalienable right to have different customs from the globalized state. Governments are not supposed to be our parents and pass diktakts telling people what's the "correct way" to raise children.

panopticon 12y ago
The problem is that choosing to not vaccinating your children has an effect on the people around you. I'm all for raising children how the parent sees fit, but you're talking about a public health issue. Whether or not little Timmy learns about sharing is apples and oranges to spreading disease.
stephencanon 12y ago
It's (partially) up to the government to protect other people's children from your recklessness. Saying that not vaccinating is a choice is like saying that driving drunk is a choice. It's literally true, but the government has a valid interest in curbing both behaviors.
skynetv2 12y ago
agreed. but we live in a society ... not isolated from each other. if not vaccinating your child poses risk to everyone else around him, you NEED to take responsibility for it. Its like ... you have the right to raise the child as you see fit and if you feel its within your rights to teach the child to defecate and urinate wherever he/she feels like it, dont be mad when someone else objects to it. This is the biggest problem with vaccinations. By the time you realize what you have done, its already late. Compare that with the horror people see immediately when someone insists on teaching their child something like bad hygiene and say its their right.
gambiting 12y ago
circumcision is absolutely child abuse and I cheer for every country that bans it.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Male circumcision actually does have health benefits when it comes to warmer countries with poorer hygiene.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
12y ago

a8da6b0c91d 12y ago

Polio is about literal shit in the water in places like India, not so much the vaccines. Polio was eliminated in the developed world mostly by way of water chlorination. I'm not an "anti-vaxer" and am not well read on the subject of vaccination, but online discussions of this topic seem essentially religious. People who clearly have no particular expertise go on about how we will be damned if all are not vaccinated. Note in the article that nobody died from the measles outbreak. Some kids just got sick, like they still do from chicken pox. Please also note that people do in fact die every year from vaccines. They are not risk free. Might some calm discussions about statistics and risk assessment be in order? Maybe, maybe not, but the quality of discussion online I've seen essentially precludes it. Also consider that the essential problem here, as seems to happen over and over again with infectious disease outbreaks, is travel to and from the third world. People are ready to crusade for vaccines but apparently the highly effective 19th century technology of mandatory quarantine is totally out of the question.

nsgi 12y ago
Sanitation can make polio a more serious problem, since it increases the average age of infection, and the risk of paralysis increases with age.
janlin1999 12y ago
I'm not terribly well-informed about the evidence linking vaccines to death, so I briefly looked this up: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#cause http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#cause ("the risk of death from vaccines is 'extraordinarily low'" -- quoting a IOM 1994 report) Do you have links to more recent and more informative publications from widely accepted sources that I should look at?

shas3 12y ago

I grew up in India. It wasn't uncommon at all to see people of my parents' generation with pockmarks from Small Pox or handicaps (and stories of deaths) from polio. Their generation saw first hand the horrors of these diseases and recognized the importance of vaccines. They still speak fondly of how lucky it is that vaccines were available by the time their kids (my generation) were born. So developing countries are pretty serious about vaccinations. However, things are changing with the new generation. The new generation (born in 70s/80s) have been exposed to far less horrors and especially among the upper-middle class folks, there are strains of anti-vax there too. Let's not forget, in countries like India (in my experience), homeopathy and other pseudoscientific 'cures' are more popular than in the developed world (probably due to the fact that the average person in the developed world has better access to good modern-medicine care). The health problems in the developing world are in areas like maternal and neonatal health, where the consequences of poor care aren't as obvious or direct. Atul Gawande points out that this is a bit like how we aren't as afraid of the risk of auto accidents as we are of serial killers, even though the former is astronomically more likely to kill a person than the latter [1]. [1] Atul Gawande, "Slow Ideas," The New Yorker, July 2013: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas

es09 12y ago
I grew up in India as well and I can second this comment. There is something to be said for seeing first hand the effects of a disease. Speaking from personal experience, my brother developed a bad reaction to a polio vaccine and developed a mild form of polio that eventually went after a year of struggle. That didn't stop my parents from further vaccinations. It was understood that vaccines have side effects but getting the disease would have been far worse. I worry we need to see an actual measles death here in the US before people start seeing the actual benefit of vaccines in the cost/benefit calculation.

saalweachter 12y ago

Defecting on vaccination is perfectly rational if you expect everyone else to cooperate and never meet another defector. You get all the benefits of herd immunity while taking on none of whatever slight risk of complications there may be. It's pretty straight-forward game theory, which must be met with equally straight-forward strategies: defectors must be punished.

mcguire 12y ago
One of the few good things about the article is that it demonstrates that the simplistic game theory approach doesn't work: defection isn't uncorrelated. The year's larger outbreaks of measles are in groups that have all defected together. Herd immunity doesn't apply because the defectors have a closely related sub-herd through which the disease spreads quickly. (On the other hand, it does apply when the disease tries to pass out of the community and cannot. Hm.)
- Ygg2 12y ago
  Hopefully, the measles spread and the defector groups get wiped out - either through acquired immunity, higher vaccination rates or death.
- saalweachter 12y ago
  You could probably treat each defector-cluster as an individual. As long as they remain isolated and never shake hands with another defector (eg, an unvaccinated missionary visiting a country with a disease reservoir) they're fine.

Ygg2 12y ago

People that consider autism less favorable to encephalitis/mental retardation/handicap/death are idiots. My aunt's daughter wasn't vaccinated for small pox due to oversight, so when she contracted small pox there was a cyst on her brain that was inoperable due to her conditions. The cyst expanded and she lost some of her cognitive functions.