people who skip vaccinations are incredibly selfish

[Brainonska511]

But if you're immunized you have nothing to fear from them dirty others, right?

Hardly. You can be immunized, but the vaccine, in rare cases, doesn't produce an immunogenic reaction. There are also people who cannot be immunized (eg: babies, immune compromised individuals). It's not just about *you*.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Then you really weren't immunized as it was not effective semantics

I know it is not just about me, but I'm certainly going to take my personal well being into account (or the well being of my kids if/when I have any) when making such decisions.

 

[LegendKiller]

Some vaccines are perfectly fine and a good idea to get.
Some are questionable.

I don't blame people for avoiding the questionable ones.

I still highly question the process of bombarding a newborn's underdeveloped immune system with a bunch of vaccines all at once however like they tend to do. If you're going to vaccinate babies, stretch it out a bit. Getting hit with that many things at once has got to be a strain in their little bodies.

And qualifications do you have to judge what is perfectly fine, what is not, and whether you can "bombard" a baby's immune system?

What scientific evidence do you have for it?

 

[WelshBloke]

Some vaccines are perfectly fine and a good idea to get.
Some are questionable.

I don't blame people for avoiding the questionable ones.

I still highly question the process of bombarding a newborn's underdeveloped immune system with a bunch of vaccines all at once however like they tend to do. If you're going to vaccinate babies, stretch it out a bit. Getting hit with that many things at once has got to be a strain in their little bodies.

Babies immune systems are designed to be bombarded by a huge variety of new pathogens, that's how any of them manage to become adults.

 

[Imp]

Hardly. You can be immunized, but the vaccine, in rare cases, doesn't produce an immunogenic reaction. There are also people who cannot be immunized (eg: babies, immune compromised individuals). It's not just about *you*.

That's the one I heard a doctor say on the news. He mentioned people allergic to certain vaccines.

 

[twofastxtreme]

Terrible.

 

[darkswordsman17]

That's the one I heard a doctor say on the news. He mentioned people allergic to certain vaccines.

And people undergoing treatments (like chemo) or have diseases who's immune systems are compromised or suppressed. Hell just people getting surgery in hospitals even, since that's a major problem is them getting even simple infections can complicate things greatly.

 

[disappoint]

Babies immune systems are designed to be bombarded by a huge variety of new pathogens, that's how any of them manage to become adults.

Designed by whom?

 

[Balt]

Then you really weren't immunized as it was not effective semantics

I know it is not just about me, but I'm certainly going to take my personal well being into account (or the well being of my kids if/when I have any) when making such decisions.

Sigh.. I'm not sure you get it. The fact that vaccines don't work on a small percentage of the population makes it all the more critical that everyone else does get vaccinated.

If your kid gets the shots and it doesn't have an effect, it's unlikely that you're going to know it before you send them to school with all of the other kids. If some others kid's parents just decided they didn't want to vaccinate their children because of misinformation, your kid is potentially screwed.

 

[Ruptga]

Designed by whom?

Darwin.

It's an imperfect use of language, but there's no need to be a grammer nazi.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Sigh.. I'm not sure you get it. The fact that vaccines don't work on a small percentage of the population makes it all the more critical that everyone else does get vaccinated.

If your kid gets the shots and it doesn't have an effect, it's unlikely that you're going to know it before you send them to school with all of the other kids. If some others kid's parents just decided they didn't want to vaccinate their children because of misinformation, your kid is potentially screwed.

No I totally get what you're saying, and it makes sense. And I am not against every vaccine either. But I certainly will do my research before getting one (for my kid or myself) since they're not all perfectly safe, and some are even totally unnecessary if you're never going to be putting yourself in a position to contract and/or carry the disease in the first place.

 

[master_shake_]

i was really hoping to see some of those pictographs illustrating how close we have come to eradicating the diseases that used to be fatal...

i leave disappointed.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...d-measles-outbreak-hits-59-cases-and-counting

oh look a disease that is 100 percent avoidable through vaccinations that people didn't get their kids. and an outbreak ensues.

 

[KMFJD]

"Women in the developing world know the power of [vaccines]. They will walk 10 kilometers in the heat with their child and line up to get a vaccine, because they have seen death. [Americans have] forgotten what measles deaths look like."

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/26/7907067/melinda-gates-measles-vaccines

 

[Ruptga]

^^ That pretty well sums it up.

 

[TheSlamma]

Meh.. sorry we ain't all in this together.

time to go poke a hole in my SUV gas tank and floor it down the road now *yokel laugh* yuk yuk yuk it's my right not a privledge

 

[Ns1]

only in america. i want to punch these people in the face.

ry Monahan remembers his son's temperature spiking to 102 degrees when he was vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella. The child then landed in the hospital with what appeared to be whooping cough after his next round of vaccinations.

By the time the child was 3 1/2 , he was diagnosed with autism, Monahan said.

The experience reshaped Monahan's approach to raising his children. Now, the Costa Mesa city councilman, who is the father of six, has skipped vaccinations for his last four children.

Even the specter of the current measles outbreak, which spread rapidly from Disneyland after an exposure during the holidays, has not given Monahan pause.

"How do I say this without sounding crazy?" he said. "I don't want anyone to get measles … but you have to make it easier for the parents through the health system to do it the right way. Pounding three live viruses into somebody at 1 year old is devastating."
....
In the face of the state's worst measles outbreak in 15 years, many of those aligned with the anti-vaccine movement remain unbowed.

"What if they experience it," said Dee Klocke of the prospects of either of her two children contracting measles. "So what?"
......
Some parents who refuse to vaccinate their children said they know they've been branded as "wackos" but said they have thoughtfully considered and researched their choices.

"It's such an unpopular thing to not vaccinate," said Nicole, a mother of two from Mission Viejo who asked that her last name not be used to protect her family's privacy. "I don't want to be paraded through the mud for my choice."

Since the measles outbreak, she said she's remained focused on ensuring her children have an optimal nutrition level, including a vitamin-rich diet. Any sniffle, any cough, any spike in temperature is cause for concern. She looks for spots inside her children's mouths to detect measles, and said she is prepared to isolate them if they get sick or are quarantined by their school.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-measles-oc-20150126-story.html#page=1

Then there's this douche...

STUDIO CITY, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Studio City chiropractor Patrick Bennett has four kids ranging from 5 to 15 years old who have never been vaccinated, and the recent measles outbreak isn't changing his mind.

Instead of vaccines, Bennett believes in strengthening his kids' immune system through organic nutrition, a chemical-free lifestyle and chiropractic care.
....
"If you want a different way of how to promote healthiness within your body, we've got a proven track record of four kids that's holding pretty darn strong against any family's recommendations," Bennett said.

http://abc7.com/health/studio-city-chiropractor-defends-not-vaccinating-his-4-kids/495292/

 

[Ruptga]

Oh a sample size of four? Stop the fucking presses.

 

[rudder]

Jenny McCarthy says they are not safe. She has a high school diploma so I am listening to her advice.

 

[Imp]

Meh...

 

[OutHouse]

Darwin.

It's an imperfect use of language, but there's no need to be a grammer nazi.

Then we wouldn't need vaccines.

 

[Ruptga]

Then we wouldn't need vaccines.

:hmm: ... :\

Not sure if serious.

 

[Brainonska511]

What the hell is wrong with people? We have great ways to prevent disease, yet we spurn them for pseudoscience bs.
"Vaccine critics turn defensive over measles"

“Sometimes, I feel like we’re practicing in the 1950s,” said Dr. Eric Ball, a pediatrician in southern Orange County, where some schools report that 50 to 60 percent of their kindergartners are not fully vaccinated and that 20 to 40 percent of parents have sought a personal beliefs exemption to vaccination requirements.
...
Missy Foster, 43, said she had not vaccinated her daughter, Tully, who is now 18 months old, against measles because of concern that the M.M.R. vaccine — which stands for measles, mumps and rubella, or German measles — might be associated with autism.




“It’s the worst shot,“ she said, with tears in her eyes. “Do you want to wake up one morning and the light is gone from her eyes with autism or something?“


But as soon as Ms. Foster heard about the measles outbreak, she called her pediatrician and scheduled the vaccine, still with trepidation about possible side effects but with greater worries about measles. Now she is planning to stay home, leaving only to go to church, until the vaccine fully takes effect.

Even after total discrediting of that nonsense study, this myth sticks like glue. At least she's going to get her daughter the vaccine.

Some parents forgo shots altogether. Others split vaccine doses or stretch out their timeline, worried about somehow overwhelming their children’s immune system. Kelly McMenimen, a Lagunitas parent, said she “meditated on it a lot” before deciding not to vaccinate her son Tobias, 8, against even “deadly or deforming diseases.” She said she did not want “so many toxins” entering the slender body of a bright-eyed boy who loves math and geography.

Tobias has endured chickenpox and whooping cough, though Ms. McMenimen said the latter seemed more like a common cold. She considered a tetanus shot after he cut himself on a wire fence but decided against it: “He has such a strong immune system.”

What will happen when measles takes a large enough hold in the population? Can a beneficial mutation (to the virus) take hold due to the selective pressure of lots of people being vaccinated, which will then bypass the protective effect of the vaccine? It's been reported for polio:
Polio: mutation helps virus evade vaccine protection

Maybe we'll be lucky with this one and that scenario will be harder to play out with measles. link

Theoretically, selective pressure on measles viruses to mutate neutralizing epitopes and escape the protective immune responses induced by vaccines could be a biological obstacle to measles eradication. Estimates of mutation rates in measles virus range from 10−4 to 10−3 per nucleotide per year [34]. However, despite the high degree of genetic variation expected of a single-stranded RNA virus, mutations in the measles virus genome have not reduced the protective immunity induced by measles vaccines. Serum specimens from vaccinated persons and from persons naturally infected during the 1950s and 1960s had comparable neutralization titers to vaccine viruses and to more recently isolated wild-type measles viruses, although serum samples from persons infected in the 1990s had higher neutralization titers to the homologous wild-type virus [35].


As an example of how genetic changes have not significantly altered important antigenic epitopes, measles virus isolates from a genotype circulating in the Peoples Republic of China during 1993 and 1994 differed from other wild type viruses by as much as 6.9% in the hemagglutinin (H) gene and 7.0% in the nucleocapsid (N) gene, but did not differ significantly from other wild-type viruses in their anti-H monoclonal antibody binding patterns and were neutralized by human post-vaccination antiserum [36]. Thus, neutralizing epitopes on the H protein are highly conserved among measles virus strains, likely because of functional constraints on the amino acid sequence and tertiary structure of the surface proteins [37]. Measles virus remains a monotypic virus for which protective immunity is induced by vaccine strains first isolated in the 1950’s.

It seems like the measles vaccine builds immunity against a highly-conserved part of the virus (in other words, a part of the virus that's likely crucial for its function and does not tolerate large changes).

 

[Strk]

Jenny McCarthy says they are not safe. She has a high school diploma so I am listening to her advice.

I remember watching a video where she talks about curing her son's autism with diet and a hyperbaric chamber. The latter is more dangerous than any vaccine.

 

[Bob the Coder]

When I was a kid, you couldn't go to school without your shots being up to date. What the hell happened to that? Sounds like there's too many loopholes that the law needs to close toutsuite.

There seems to be a pretty hefty overlap between the anti-vax'ers and the home schooled.

 

[Brainonska511]

There seems to be a pretty hefty overlap between the anti-vax'ers and the home schooled.

It probably depends on where you are. From some of the articles I've read, in parts of California, there are some districts where only 50-60% of kindergarteners have their immunizations.

It's absolute insanity - a lot of these anti-vaccine pockets are located in upper-middle class neighborhoods. We have educated people utterly rejecting sound scientific evidence behind both the safety and efficacy of vaccines in favor of more 'natural' lives for their children.

California also has an additional 'philosophical-objection' opt-out for vaccination, which helps perpetuate the problem. NYS is a little more stringent (religious and medical (eg: allergy, immune compromised) exemption only), including winning some recent court battles where NY is allowed to continue its policy of barring unvaccinated children from schools if someone else comes down with a vaccine-preventable illness.