Measles & possible polio outbreaks on rise

[Stephanie66]

My husband and I both got whooping cough boosters because no way am I going to deal with coughing so hard I crap my pants because some entitled mommy thinks her children are going to get autism because of shots.

[PurpleSheepleEater]

I think it would be your responsibility as the parent to find out your child's pre-school vaccination policy. If they allow kids who aren't vaccinated and you send your kid to school there you are taking the risk of possible exposure.

Not to mention that some kids/adults can't get vaccinated for various reasons, and the vaccines don't take on everyone ( my daughter had to be re-vaccinated for certain diseases because when they tested her blood levels for a health care position she showed up with no immunity to those diseases, despite having had all her vaccines, and a booster for that particular set just a couple of years previously).

Would you sue the people who exposed your kid in those situations?

( although presumably your child would have what ever vaccines the other kids don't, so don't get what the risk from same age kids would be) .

Add to this, no vaccine is 100% and vaccine rates for adults are below 50% for every illness except tetnus.

[Cleopatra7]

Well how would that work? It's not illegal to not vaccinate, so how are you going to sue someone for having an unvaccinated kid? Presumably you would also have had to put your child in close enough contact to get ill from this unvaccinated child ( or adult) . Legally wouldn't the responsibility be on you, the parent, to keep your child away from the general public until they had their vaccinations? Or at least far enough away to not be sharing breathing space, being coughed on, touched, etc.?

I vaccinated my kids, but seriously, a lawsuit because someone else made a perfectly legal choice? That's ridiculous.

I could actually see this happening. Scientists can track down who gave what to whom when there is a serious outbreak of something. If a pregnant woman catches rubella or measles from an unvaccinated kid at a daycare or something and her baby ends up being disabled because of that, I can completely see how that could lead to a lawsuit.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

I do not see it meeting the criteria for a lawsuit at all. It's not an intentional tort and it doesn't meet the elements for a negligence tort either. Because no one really owes you a duty to keep themselves germ free. MAYBE if they knew their kid was sick and purposefully exposed you to it.

I'm not a lawyer just a paralegal student.

[halfheartedheroine]

Smallpox is the only disease that has been completely eradicated. A vial of the smallpox virus is kept under lock and key at the CDC in Atlanta. Polio is almost eradicated, but not yet. Polio outbreaks still occur in Islamic areas like Nigeria and Pakistan because there is an urban legend that the polio vaccine is a trick designed by the Americans to make Muslims infertile. It also doesn't help that the US really did use an vaccination campaign in Pakistan as a cover to find out where Osama bin Ladin was.

Both the US and Russia have smallpox vials, and while part of wanting to keep the vials is in case the virus ever re-emerges, then there are stores to research, another part of it is not wanting to give up an advantage (if one side uses the vial in bioterrorism, the other side has a vial to use for vaccination responses. not saying that this would happen, but that's what i've learned in virology classes fairly recently). There was a small outbreak in England in the 1970s because of a lab contamination, but since then there haven't been any cases since, IIRC.

[Lillybee]

I was born in the bad old days before most vacs. I got the measles, rubella and mumps and even though I was maybe only 5, I remember how sick I got with the measles. I also saw the results of polio on some of my friends. I do not want to see those days come back.

[Trynn]

Hmm, I'm not so synesthesiatic as to notice the colors most of the time, but once it's in my mind I can easily see the colors in many letters and words.

For me, though, 'smallpox' is mostly yellow (the 'small' is a mustardy yellow, while the 'pox' is red) and polio is almost the inverse, with most of the word being dark red and only the 'i' is yellow...

For me, small is yellow, pox is pink, and polio is pink. An I by itself is blue.

[keen23]

Ugh, mainstream anti-vaxxers. There's this blogger I read, and she's kind of an preachy better than everyone type of blogger, because she has a son with Down Syndrome (and six other kids besides), and everyone else doesn't. So anyways, she's a pretty rabid anti-vaxxer. Here's her latest- lisamorguess.com/2014/04/16/need-th-change-way-talk-vaccines/?utm_source=feedly&utm_reader=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=need-th-change-way-talk-vaccines.

She writes about vaccines a lot- lisamorguess.com/2011/03/20/vaccine-controversy/ and here too- lisamorguess.com/2014/01/14/in-defense-of-not-vaccinating/

[nana sew dear]

I have a 4 year old grandson in S. California. It may not be polio but they don't know exactly what it is either. There was a documentary on Netflix a year or two ago about the development of the polio vaccine. Very interesting. Whole families were effected.

I don't think most vaccines are risky for most people. If an on-going health issue or an allergy make the vaccine dangerous, I'm sure there are other precautions that can be taken. Certainly some mild side effects are better than the diseases.

My husband and I were born in then late 50's, only a few years after the vaccines for polio were available and I know my parents were grateful.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

Alicia Silverstone just came out today saying she

has not and will not be vaccinating her son. He's never had a drop of medicine and she says his vegan diet keeps him super healthy. She did say she wasn't against western medicine just that it shouldn't always be used as a first option.

[Jilli]

I have a 4 year old grandson in S. California. It may not be polio but they don't know exactly what it is either. There was a documentary on Netflix a year or two ago about the development of the polio vaccine. Very interesting. Whole families were effected.

I don't think most vaccines are risky for most people. If an on-going health issue or an allergy make the vaccine dangerous, I'm sure there are other precautions that can be taken. Certainly some mild side effects are better than the diseases.

My husband and I were born in then late 50's, only a few years after the vaccines for polio were available and I know my parents were grateful.

That's so scary.

My great-grandfather survived polio only to almost die because he couldn't swim well and got winded in the water due to life long complications from polio. Lucky for my family he was saved by another young adult friend of his at the time who saw him struggling and pulled him to shore. Then my dad doesn't remember 6 days in the 60s when he was a kid, because of the measles. I know I've never lost anyone to these specific diseases, and for that I am grateful, but I can't help but take it personally when someone doesn't vaccinate for anything but a medical reason.

[mypsychoticself]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. People who don't vaccinate are opening themselves up to a HELL of a lawsuit.

If my kid got a horrible disease because some idiot chose not to vaccinate (and my kids were too young) I'd sue them for everything they had. Then once the family recovered from my lawsuit I'd sue them again. My wrath would have no bounds.

Good luck with that. You'd have to prove that your kid got the disease from that particular family, rather than some random stranger. And there's always the possibility that your kid and the other kid got the disease from the same source.

[Toothfairy]

I don't understand why some parents won't vaccinate their kids. I bet they're vaccinated. Having chicken pox,shingles, the measles,etc are very serious. Why have a child suffer like that when there are things to prevent it. Parents in other countries who don't have these resources who love to have their kids vaccinated.

[Chowder Head]

http://pediatrics.about.com/od/measles/ ... breaks.htm update recents

A dumb ass woman with measle expose thousand - she went about her business every including a packed concert

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/ ... lexml.html

[Georgiana]

I don't understand why some parents won't vaccinate their kids. I bet they're vaccinated. Having chicken pox,shingles, the measles,etc are very serious. Why have a child suffer like that when there are things to prevent it. Parents in other countries who don't have these resources who love to have their kids vaccinated.

Because they live in a country/society/area where they are privileged enough to have never seen first hand the ravages of these diseases so they don't really know what vaccines spare children/people from.

Because they are self-righteous enough to believe a few questionably sourced articles on the interwebz makes them as educated as a doctor.

Because they are stupid enough to believe that it wont happen to them. It'll never happen to them.

Because they don't understand that vaccinations aren't about THEM. Vaccinations are about the whole society (herd immunity).

((many kids do not get vaccinated for chicken pox, btw. in my area, most are exposed intentionally, and having chicken pox for a normal child is not serious, certainly not on the level of measles or polio.))

[LainieR]

Dear Alicia Silverstone,

STFU :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:

Also? This. Healthy lifestyle means nothing. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/fami ... dhood.html (Not breaking b/c it's Slate)

A public health nurse

[DuggarsTheEndIsNear]

There's a family that lives near me. They have a 6 year old son they haven't vaccinated and they want me to take care of him. I take care of an 8 month old baby. There is no way in hell I'm getting anywhere close to an unvaccinated kindergartener.

[LainieR]

There's a family that lives near me. They have a 6 year old son they haven't vaccinated and they want me to take care of him. I take care of an 8 month old baby. There is no way in hell I'm getting anywhere close to an unvaccinated kindergartener.

Good for you!

[Toothfairy]

Alicia Silverstone just came out today saying she

has not and will not be vaccinating her son. He's never had a drop of medicine and she says his vegan diet keeps him super healthy. She did say she wasn't against western medicine just that it shouldn't always be used as a first option.

I bet she has all her shots. If she's so against western medicine, the I guess she shouldn't give her child medicine for a cold or sore throat or go to the doctor if her child has an ear infection.

[Feberin]

There's a family that lives near me. They have a 6 year old son they haven't vaccinated and they want me to take care of him. I take care of an 8 month old baby. There is no way in hell I'm getting anywhere close to an unvaccinated kindergartener.

Yeah I almost joined this crunchy playgroup until I found out many of them didn't vax. My daughter was less then six months at the time. I sent an email to one of them explaining that vaccinations and my baby's health was important to me and haven't seen any of the non-vaxers since.

[Chowder Head]

Yeah I almost joined this crunchy playgroup until I found out many of them didn't vax. My daughter was less then six months at the time. I sent an email to one of them explaining that vaccinations and my baby's health was important to me and haven't seen any of the non-vaxers since.

That is a whole lot of petri dishes :naughty:

[Clementine]

Polio, TB, resistant TB and measles are coming back to Europe thanks to the immigrants, especially from Syria and Somalia.

They don't have to do any medical exams or take any vaccines before they enter the country or get a permanent residence.

The first TB health central in the country since the 50's opened last month, in an area with a lot of Somali immigrants.

There have also been several where young children have been exposed to TB at their daycare and have been infected or have to take medicine to prevent TB from breaking out. It's scary.

[Ave Maria]

TB is super scary.

There is a vaccine for it, but it doesn't work the way we think of vaccines working -- it makes the illness shorter and less severe, but it doesn't really prevent it. My DH was born in a country that uses the vaccine (the US doesn't) and it messes with his ability to prove he doesn't have TB (basically gives a false positive on the skin test, so he needs a blood test or a chest x-ray).