More anti-vaxers

[Stickers]

I feel terrible about being 7 years behind on my booster vaccines due to my fear of needles, I can't imagine bragging about having never gotten a single one ever or not vaccinating my kids :?

[Rachel333]

It's going to be interesting what happens if the vaccination rates go down and we see rebounds of these diseases. I wonder how many anti-vaxers will be changing their tune.

I think a lot will be. I remember reading about anti-vaccination movements in England in the 19th century. They pretty much died out for a while after a big smallpox outbreak where many, many unvaccinated died and all vaccinated children lived.

(laughs) arguing with me is a lost cause, my friends. I will just continue my life being an unvaccinated scoundrel :D

Well that's obnoxious. Good for you for being able to care about no one but yourself, I guess.

[llv]

Well that's obnoxious. Good for you for being able to care about no one but yourself, I guess.

If you're vaccinated, you can't catch things from me, right? :lol:

I've heard the "Blah blah you're putting (other) unvaccinated people at risk" - Perhaps so, but no more than vaccinated people are putting those people at risk, as I have roughly the same general illness rate, perhaps less

I'm tired, and going to go put my unvaccinated self to bed. Another day in the unvaccinated lifestyle has been lived, and it will probably be my last day as a healthy, walking, breathing human being. I can practically smell the polio emanating from my bed and I will be dead by morning. (In less sarcastic terms, I haven't had the pain or fear of harsh illness, so maybe I'll be less snarky about this in the future when I really do get something truly awful)

[Jessica]

http://apps.who.int/immunization_monito ... .cfm?C=USA Hmm...

[Jessica]

QFT. There's a reason there are 7 billion on the now and there were under a billion only about 200 years ago.

Don'tcha know, it's all because of clean water! :roll:

[Maul the Koala]

Don'tcha know, it's all because of clean water! :roll:

And people having superhuman immune systems without vaccines!

[dcmhejbl62]

And yeah, I can't stand anti-vaxers.

???

[bubbabearzle]

What are your opinons on delayed vaccination schedules?

I think the whole idea of them is silly, at best! I've never met someone who suported theidea of a delayed schedule who truly had a firm grasp on the number of potentially pathogenic microorganisms each of us is fighting off at any given time (here's an example: for every 1 human cell that makes up your body, there are 10 bacterial and/or fungal cells on or in your body!). I'm a microbiologist, and I can assure you that even if you were vaccinated versus even a dozen infectious agents in a day it's almost laughable to think that it would be enough to cause problems.

[dcmhejbl62]

And yeah, I can't stand anti-vaxers.

I'm trying to decide if I should get the gardasil vaccination. I know it can have some bad side effects (but not mental retardation!), and isn't completely effective, but it still seems like a good idea.

Wouldn't that make you at least partly an anti-vaxer?

[Sola]

If you're vaccinated, you can't catch things from me, right? :lol:

I've heard the "Blah blah you're putting (other) unvaccinated people at risk" - Perhaps so, but no more than vaccinated people are putting those people at risk, as I have roughly the same general illness rate, perhaps less

I'm tired, and going to go put my unvaccinated self to bed. Another day in the unvaccinated lifestyle has been lived, and it will probably be my last day as a healthy, walking, breathing human being. I can practically smell the polio emanating from my bed and I will be dead by morning. (In less sarcastic terms, I haven't had the pain or fear of harsh illness, so maybe I'll be less snarky about this in the future when I really do get something truly awful)

I can't catch the things I am vaccinated against from you. But my daughter, who cannot have several vaccines due to confirmed allergies, can. She can't fight things off easily either, due to her having chronic health issues. You know who else can catch things from you? Babies who are too young to be vaccinated.

Thanks for putting people like my daughter at risk, dickhead.

[Renting with Raggles]

If you're vaccinated, you can't catch things from me, right?

I've heard the "Blah blah you're putting (other) unvaccinated people at risk" - Perhaps so, but no more than vaccinated people are putting those people at risk, as I have roughly the same general illness rate, perhaps less

llv, do you accept the theory of evolution? Because you have a very shaky understanding of germ theory and viral/ bacterial herd immunity, based on statements like the one above. If you do believe evolution by natural selection accounts for the diversity and forms of life as we know it today, why do you accept some science but not its application to medicine?

Elsewhere, you attribute your current good health to diet and ubermenschen genes, stretching back a full 'few' generations. Are you aware that your recent family resistance to certain diseases without the aid of vaccination is based on selection process of mass death in previous centuries?

Maybe I have super immunity. I've done my family tree and nobody in the last few generations - child or otherwise - has died as a result of communicable disease. I think my great great grandma had a child that died shortly after birth, but I don't believe it was due to illness

How do you think smallpox was eradicated over the course of two centuries? Why do you think smallpox decimated the indigenous populations of the Americas and Australia over the course of 3 centuries, especially considering the superiority of many of these peoples' diets over those of their European contemporaries?

Ought we to let children like Sola's* die if they don't have your super-genes? Your blithe tone and your several self-congratulatory references to your own superior immune system indicate that this may be your stance. Your refusal to take some personal responsibility for public health smacks more of libertarianism ('I've got mine, Jack') than liberalism.

* Edited to add apologies to Sola for using her daughter as an example without requesting permission.

[Sola]

No worries Renting. It really pisses me off when people who CAN be vaccinated don't. Instead they rely on the herd immunity which they themselves are weakening for people who can't have some or all vaccines, such as tiny babies and people who have certain allergies.

But you know, it's all OK because llv has some superhuman mutant immune system and wont get sick. What she seems to forget is that she might not get sick but she WILL be infectious to people to get REALLY sick.

[Sola]

Hi GoJira.

[JesusFightClub]

Big vaccination fan here. My dad caught TB as a baby and spent a lot of time in hospital in isolation. And that's not the dim and distant past, I am 29.

Llv, by not getting vaccinated you could do to someone what happened to my dad. Although obviously he survived, all babies are not so lucky, and he and his mum were always sad that he spent his early life in an isolation unit, not with his family.

[mirele]

My mom had measles when she was a kid (about 65 years ago). She missed so much of first grade she had to repeat it and she has had issues with her hearing all her life. You betcha she loved her some vaccines for us kids. She got us vaccinated right on schedule for everything that was available (in those days, mumps and chicken pox were still childhood diseases and I had both).

Just to swing over to another subject, regarding deaths from H1N1, it was noted that during the 1918 influenza pandemic, the age cohort that was hit the hardest was not the babies or the elderly, but young people. That was partially due to the military mobilization going on during World War I, but it's believed the elderly probably had immunity from an earlier, similar flu epidemic and I don't remember why babies had immunity. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the deaths from H1N1 followed the same trend.

And, for the record, "Spanish influenza" was by all accounts horrible. People who are against vaccinating for the flu ought to read histories of the pandemic and how people died (basically in their own bodily fluids). And then think about, "gee, would I like to see my kid die that way?"

[Austin]

Ought we to let children like Sola's* die if they don't have your super-genes? Your blithe tone and your several self-congratulatory references to your own superior immune system indicate that this may be your stance. Your refusal to take some personal responsibility for public health smacks more of libertarianism ('I've got mine, Jack') than liberalism.

* Edited to add apologies to Sola for using her daughter as an example without requesting permission.

llv's blithe tone smacks of llv being a troll and someone who should be ignored.

[Little Miss Alien]

Wow, this post really does bring all the lurkers out. De lurking to respond...

I'm always fascinated by the non-vaxers. There was a mumps outbreak at several universities up here in Canada a while back. It was not pretty and some of the males who got it are unsure if they'll ever be able to have children. I've talked to people in the Romanian community and back in Communist Romania meningitis outbreaks were fairly common. One of the guys I went to school with had severe photophobia as a result. You know how fun that is? He and his brother spent over a year in hospital.

It's going to be interesting what happens if the vaccination rates go down and we see rebounds of these diseases. I wonder how many anti-vaxers will be changing their tune. Complications and death are very real with these diseases. Very few people I know that came down with meningitis didn't have complications. It was the same with the mumps outbreak.

I got Rubella (German Measles) when I was 5. Not only was that a really harsh illness, but I went on to develop meningitis (a complication of such illnesses). I was very unwell for several months and have been left with lifelong problems. I have partial hearing loss, have lost part of my peripheral vision, have had chronic fatigue ever since, and have visual processing problems. I've also been left with permanent photophobia and have suffered migraines ever since. The last 25 years haven't been easy, especially as I have other health issues too.

The year after my illness the MMR vaccine was licenced in the UK. You can bet my parents got me it pretty damn quickly. I also had a couple of boosters and am now (thankfully) immune.

My son gets all of his vaccines on time, so that he doesn't have to go through what I did. And I often share my story do that people can see there are actually consequences to not vaxxing.

The only thing that is weird to me it vaccinating against chicken pox. In the UK it's seen as a minor childhood illness, something to 'get out of the way' and isn't vaccinated against. My son had it just before he turned 3. He had it badly - spots around his eyes, on his palms and the soles of his feet, but he came through it absolutely fine. I think though, that if they did offer that vaccine in the UK, they'd do it for a reason, so I'd get it for him.

[pomology]

Wouldn't that make you at least partly an anti-vaxer?

Um, firstly she never said that she was entirely against it and in fact she said it seemed like a good idea and secondly a vaccination against HPV isn't even comparable to a vaccination against the measles or some such thing.

[Maul the Koala]

Ought we to let children like Sola's* die if they don't have your super-genes? Your blithe tone and your several self-congratulatory references to your own superior immune system indicate that this may be your stance. Your refusal to take some personal responsibility for public health smacks more of libertarianism ('I've got mine, Jack') than liberalism.

Unless SuperHuman has been exposed to mumps, measles, meningitis, etc. there is no way to know that SuperHuman has SuperGenes. We're warned of the outbreaks and if you were in x, y and z place during certain dates you were exposed to (insert disease here) by the local health region. There was a person who got on a plane with measles and that was all over the news for days where the person was in case of unvaccinated people being exposed. It was the same for the mumps. When you get that level of attention to a disease it's obvious that incidence is fairly uncommon (at least for now) and it's uncertain to tell if you have immunity/don't have immunity unless you are 100% sure you've been directly exposed.

I worry that the outbreaks will get more frequent though as less people vaccinate. Then again, if you're working in the health care sector up here you need to provide your vaccination history or a letter documenting allergies against vaccination. If you're not all caught up, you get to get caught up or be unable to take the job. I don't think they allow for any exemptions besides allergeries or potential allergies. It's too risky for the patients.

[GeoBQn]

I recommend the book The Panic Viris by Seth Mnookin. It's about the history of the current vaccine scare. Before the anti-vax crowd targeted the MMR vaccine, they were making claims about the DPT vaccine. There was a chilling account of a baby a few years ago who had whooping cough, but none of the doctors in the emergency room recognized it. The only thing that saved her was when the oldest doctor in the hospital was passing by and heard the characteristic coughing. She was the only doctor who was working during the last period when whooping cough was more common. On the PBS Frontline episode about vaccines, they had a doctor who made it her mission to compile videos of people with vaccine-preventable illnesses and show them to young doctors and EMTs, ones who are too young to remember when those diseases were more common.

This Jezebel article raises another interesting point. If vaccine-preventable illnesses become more common, the only way to prevent them spreading will be through quarantines. This worked back when women with small children were mostly stay-at-home mothers, but today most women work either by choice or by necessity. Are employers going to want to hire mothers if there is a good chance they will be out of commission for several weeks to take care of a quarantined child?

http://jezebel.com/5119830/who-needs-sc ... y-mccarthy

[llv]

I can't catch the things I am vaccinated against from you. But my daughter, who cannot have several vaccines due to confirmed allergies, can. She can't fight things off easily either, due to her having chronic health issues. You know who else can catch things from you? Babies who are too young to be vaccinated.

Thanks for putting people like my daughter at risk, dickhead.

So I should inject myself with 70 vaccines just to protect your daughter, even though vaccination could compromise MY health? I'm sorry about your daughters health issues. Babies get plenty of vaccinations, if they were "too young to be vaccinated", they wouldn't be jabbed straight out of the womb. But, it's not my job to protect everybody. It's my job to make informed health decisions for myself, the same way you make informed health decisions for yourself and your daughter. My informed health decision is that I will not consent to being injected with foreign chemicals, matter or material in the form of vaccines.

I get very bothered when people get angry (well, not when they get angry - when they gang up) when they hear that I'm non-vaxed. Most people, however, seem to be on the same side. Once a friend came over when I was younger, and they were complaining about a shot they'd had earlier that day, and upon hearing I never got them, stared quite seriously and asked, "How are you even alive?" I laughed pretty hard. :lol: "Well, I'm moving and don't appear to be dying!"

Supposing the fact that diptheria, polio, tetanus etc, are all but gone, it is not a miracle that I am alive.

I should add that I am not "anti-vax". I said that last night because I was tired and annoyed. I'm more pro-choice. I don't wail on people's informed medical decisions, so I'd like that people don't wail on my informed medical decision either.

I'm not saying that vaccines have not been useful. In diseases that cannot be treated successfully, they may be a good thing. I sometimes doubt their effectiveness, however. And I also doubt that they played such a huge role in modern health as people think they do.

How do you think smallpox was eradicated over the course of two centuries? Why do you think smallpox decimated the indigenous populations of the Americas and Australia over the course of 3 centuries, especially considering the superiority of many of these peoples' diets over those of their European contemporaries?

They had never been exposed to anything like smallpox, had they? It was totally foreign. These people would not normally be exposed to smallpox had they gone about their quaint little lives. The immune system isn't as well-equipped to handle things it has never seen anything like before. Like the Native Americans could have seen the ship's sails of the Europeans exploring the Americas and had no idea WTF they were seeing or dealing with.

Ought we to let children like Sola's* die if they don't have your super-genes?

Ought we to force everyone in the world to be injected because of Sola's child? I don't want to be harsh, as I empathise with having a sick child. When you force everyone to do somethings to benefit a small minority, you take away people's autonomy and right to choose.

Your refusal to take some personal responsibility for public health smacks more of libertarianism ('I've got mine, Jack') than liberalism.

Bingo, as I'm actually a libertarian.

Just to swing over to another subject, regarding deaths from H1N1, it was noted that during the 1918 influenza pandemic, the age cohort that was hit the hardest was not the babies or the elderly, but young people. That was partially due to the military mobilization going on during World War I, but it's believed the elderly probably had immunity from an earlier, similar flu epidemic and I don't remember why babies had immunity. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the deaths from H1N1 followed the same trend.

And, for the record, "Spanish influenza" was by all accounts horrible. People who are against vaccinating for the flu ought to read histories of the pandemic and how people died (basically in their own bodily fluids). And then think about, "gee, would I like to see my kid die that way?"

The Spanish flu freaks me out. Luckily, it's not around anymore. If there was a safe, effective Spanish flu vax I might actually get it. Supposing, though, that the flu is still out there making its rounds. ;)

I got Rubella (German Measles) when I was 5. Not only was that a really harsh illness, but I went on to develop meningitis (a complication of such illnesses). I was very unwell for several months and have been left with lifelong problems. I have partial hearing loss, have lost part of my peripheral vision, have had chronic fatigue ever since, and have visual processing problems. I've also been left with permanent photophobia and have suffered migraines ever since. The last 25 years haven't been easy, especially as I have other health issues too.

And to think I was considering finding a way for me to get exposed to the real thing as opposed to Rubella vaccine :lol: Was thinking about working in a field which requires rubella immunity. I've no interest in getting the MMR.

[Little Miss Alien]

I worry that the outbreaks will get more frequent though as less people vaccinate. Then again, if you're working in the health care sector up here you need to provide your vaccination history or a letter documenting allergies against vaccination. If you're not all caught up, you get to get caught up or be unable to take the job. I don't think they allow for any exemptions besides allergeries or potential allergies. It's too risky for the patients.

THIS. It's the same here across the pond. I had to provide my vaccination history when I took my healthcare job. I submitted to a blood test to check my immunity to mumps, measles and rubella (Immune!). The only vaccine I hadn't had was Hepatitis B. They were going to give it to me, but as I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (aka ME/CFIDS) and there was a known link between the Hep B vaccine and the development/worsening of CFS they let me off.

At the time I was about to start a job working with school aged children. The vaccines were more about infection control (ie. making sure disease didn't spread either way) than protecting anyone in particular,

[pomology]

I get very bothered when people get angry (well, not when they get angry - when they gang up) when they hear that I'm non-vaxed. .

The issue isn't so much that you aren't vaxed. The issue is really that you have an a huge superiority complex about it and don't seem to give a shit abut the rest of humanity. That combination makes you come off as a completely douchebag and tool and makes it so that nobody is very much in the mood to listen to anything you say.

If you weren't all "I'm superhuman and I don't give a shit about anybody" then maybe people would disagree with your choice about not being vaxed but they certainly wouldn't "gang up" on you in the same way.

[kayray]

Wow, this post really does bring all the lurkers out. De lurking to respond...

I got Rubella (German Measles) when I was 5. Not only was that a really harsh illness, but I went on to develop meningitis (a complication of such illnesses). I was very unwell for several months and have been left with lifelong problems. I have partial hearing loss, have lost part of my peripheral vision, have had chronic fatigue ever since, and have visual processing problems. I've also been left with permanent photophobia and have suffered migraines ever since. The last 25 years haven't been easy, especially as I have other health issues too.

The year after my illness the MMR vaccine was licenced in the UK. You can bet my parents got me it pretty damn quickly. I also had a couple of boosters and am now (thankfully) immune.

My son gets all of his vaccines on time, so that he doesn't have to go through what I did. And I often share my story do that people can see there are actually consequences to not vaxxing.

The only thing that is weird to me it vaccinating against chicken pox. In the UK it's seen as a minor childhood illness, something to 'get out of the way' and isn't vaccinated against. My son had it just before he turned 3. He had it badly - spots around his eyes, on his palms and the soles of his feet, but he came through it absolutely fine. I think though, that if they did offer that vaccine in the UK, they'd do it for a reason, so I'd get it for him.

Chicken pox can have pretty severe complications, and some deaths. It apparently causes up to 1/3 of stroke cases in children. Also, it can lead to shingles later in life which can be quite painful.

However, chicken pox is definitely more severe in adults (75% of deaths from it are in adults), so I think vaccination is a good thing even as a child in the event they do not get exposed as children and catch it as adults.

It is also very dangerous for unborn babies if their pregnant mother gets it. They can end up with brain damage, damage to vision, physical disability, premature delivery, etc.

I had chicken pox as a 7-year old, and I remember how miserable it was. Obviously I am fine, but there are people that don't end up so fine.

[Wolfie]

The only thing that is weird to me it vaccinating against chicken pox. In the UK it's seen as a minor childhood illness, something to 'get out of the way' and isn't vaccinated against. My son had it just before he turned 3. He had it badly - spots around his eyes, on his palms and the soles of his feet, but he came through it absolutely fine. I think though, that if they did offer that vaccine in the UK, they'd do it for a reason, so I'd get it for him.

It is one of those illnesses that most children do get mildly. But not all. It can be very serious and some children have to be hospitalized and some even die.