A friend of mine is a scientist whose son is dating a new-agey type. She doesn't believe that fluoride is beneficial for teeth. I had misremembered what she was opposed to and thought that it was vaccines. He could tolerate her not accepting the scientific evidence for fluoridation but the thought that she might be anti-vaxx really spooked him.
There was some guy who was injured by the oral polio vaccine whose family campaigned against it. They were still very pro-vaccine despite his getting polio. I think they just pushed to stop the use of the oral vaccine in the US.
I have heard some people make the claim that getting chicken pox as a child is better than getting the vaccine. I never got it and had to get vaccinated as an adult -- twice. First time, it didn't take.
The extent to which almost all those anti-vaccine people's arguments tend to boil down to "no, those illnesses are for little people" is incredible to me. It's a whole bunch of people getting high on the feeling of thinking you're more important/special than everyone else (they did a lot of research into this! their children are healthier than other children because they're better people nourished with organic foods! etc. etc.).
I really do think that it might be a good idea to just start having child protection go in and put kids in foster care if their parents do this kind of thing (at least briefly, so they can get their shots). We'd certainly do it if their kid had a serious health condition and the parents were preventing them from being treated.
I'd been thinking about posting the real reason kids don't get vaccinated which says basically that poor kids are often behind on their shots because of cost and logistics.
1: the group against fluoride here in town is weirdly huge and well-organized.
3 - From what I've heard it's true that getting chicken pox is a more reliable sort of immunity because it's actually the virus itself rather than a weak/fake/dead/whatever one. But the vaccine won't hang out in your body for the rest of your life and maybe give you shingles later on, which is a pretty massive bonus because that can be seriously nasty.
The fucked-up thing is, I don't think even losing herd immunity will be enough to get through to some of them. I mean, the woman in the Times article... there's no herd immunity against tetanus!
8: The people at the front of the herd will step on all the rusty nails, protecting the followers.
5: A former classmate is now a pediatrician and posted on Facebook that parents who don't vaccinate their children should not be eligible for health insurance, which I think is ludicrous on a lot of levels. I merely said that I've dealt with some of the outcomes of medical neglect and don't think it's anything to encourage. No response, of course.
It was nice that one of anti-vaxers was a chiropractor.
"I said, 'No, absolutely not,' " Ms. McDonald said. "I said, 'I'd rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot.'"
I'd rather that child missed every semester. Well, I'd rather he got the shot, of course. But if people insist on refusing vaccinations for their children, let them move to some sparsely populated corner of the state of Alaska, or some place like that, where they can feel all virtuous and alternative as they homeschool.
And that mother who refused a tetanus shot for her son because "he has such a strong immune system"? Total eejit.
My anti-vaccination relative has referred to diseases like measles as obsolete and took their kid to a chiropractor starting when he was only a few months old. During a long, drawn out custody battle, the other parent got the kid semi-secretly vaccinated. I think it may have been revealed as part of the court proceedings, but I could be wrong.
Democracy doesn't work. Under the Flip-Order, the children of hippies, CrossFit douchebags and Stevie Nicks-listening California twits will be given vaccines, candy, toy guns and drums. All power to Flippanter.
16: I knew there was a reason you liked Jünger.
that parents who don't vaccinate their children should not be eligible for health insurance, which I think is ludicrous on a lot of levels.
I wouldn't say these children should be ineligible for health insurance, I would never say that (since I support universal, single-payer health insurance, no minimum income required, no questions asked).
But I can certainly sympathize with the position of pediatricians who do not want to treat unvaccinated children. Those who refuse to vaccinate their kids are putting not only their own children but also many other children at risk. They are morons. And why should doctors be asked/expected/required to accommodate this idiocy? As a pediatrician, would you want your waiting room to become a potential site of infection for highly contagious but entirely preventable diseases?
16: My relative seems to have picked up anti-vaccine belief in NYC.
But if people insist on refusing vaccinations for their children, let them move to some sparsely populated corner of the state of Alaska, or some place like that, where they can feel all virtuous and alternative as they homeschool.
Not Alaska, please. We have enough crazies already and don't need any more.
I'm fine with anti-vaxxers as long as they accept the alternative, living as if there were no vaccines, which includes mandatory involuntary quarantine during outbreaks. Embrace the 1950s, assholes.
Not Alaska, please.
O, I knew you would object to Alaska. Well, okay, the Yukon territory, say.
Fair enough, although JM might object. One of the more sparsely populated parts of Alaska might be fine from a public health perspective if they live totally off-grid rather than in an existing community, but I still don't want to encourage the crazies to come here.
OP: that the dire consequences of what we do, rather than fail to do, weigh much more heavily upon us
I have an acquaintance who uses this reasoning explicitly. He doesn't vaccinate his kids because, he says, he couldn't live with himself if his positive action caused them harm. His inaction causing them harm is somehow preferable.
In my less charitable moments when I think of this: well, no, don't live with yourself. You can solve the problem of living with yourself.
24: crimes, I hope he doesn't live here. We have trollies!
16. Halfordismo is dead. Long live the Flip-Order!
The author had to be dancing a jig inside when the woman made that tetanus comment. What a perfect illustration of the idiocy.
I had a childhood friend who died of chickenpox. She caught chickenpox meningitis, which caused brain death at age 3. Her parents were Laotian immigrants and devout Buddhists who believe in life support in all cases, so she spent 27 years on life support before succumbing to pneumonia at age 30.
My most uncharitable response to people who don't vaccinate is "I hope your kid dies of [measles, mumps, polio, rubella, etc]" but then I realize I am a monster, and stop thinking that. But yeah, the vaccine movement is a victim of its success. I just interviewed a Chinese peasant in his late 50s who was permanently crippled at age 18 by polio. He now makes baskets to support himself, but it's a hard life. That parents would willingly risk that on their kid boggles the mind.
Anyways, I'm slightly drunk so this comment is a bit rambly.
P.S. I grew up in a place where the water wasn't fluoridated, and at at my über-socialist liberal-fascist nanny-state elementary school we had to eat fluoride tablets every morning.
mandatory involuntary quarantine during outbreaks
I'm okay with this from a punitive standpoint, but it wouldn't help with something like the initial outbreak from the Disney measles incident. Isn't one of the scary things with measles that it's contagious before you have clearly identifiable symptoms?
From what I've heard it's true that getting chicken pox is a more reliable sort of immunity because it's actually the virus itself rather than a weak/fake/dead/whatever one.
This is likely true, but the advantage is outweighed the the fact that then the kid has to have chicken pox, which are fucking miserable.
Also, a kid in my Elementary School had chicken pox that led to Reye's Syndrom. And he died. So, yeah, vaccination is the way to go there.
The picture of the McMenimens in that article is also pretty great. I can't help but suspect that the paper went out of its way to get a picture that made that poor kid look as sickly as possible.
5: he real reason kids don't get vaccinated
Hmm, the real reason kids don't get vaccinated is because whooping cough was not found on the server*?
The study found that an astonishing 49 percent of toddlers born from 2004 through 2008 hadn't had all their shots by their second birthday, but only about 2 percent had parents who refused to have them vaccinated.
To be fair, the percentage of "refusers" would presumably be higher for older ages. And of course high dudgeon is so much fun.
*The requested URL /archives/www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/05/vaccines-whooping-cough was not found on this server.
My wife has become a viciously scornful anti-anti-vaxxer, and, although she won't really admit this, I'm fairly sure the viciousness of it comes from residual embarrassment that when our kids were young, she herself somewhat unexpectedly became an anti-vaxxer, a perspective she picked up on some poisonous internet discussion boards for new mothers (where she also picked up other insane beliefs like like fairly strong libertarianism, an affliction from which she has not yet been as thoroughly cured as she has of her anti-vaxxism, although her libertarianism has at least softened significantly to focus mostly on areas of overlap with liberalism (wars on drugs, police militarism, etc.)), although the interesting thing is that if you ask her today she won't even really admit to ever having been an anti-vaxxer, just a proponent of a delayed vaccination schedule (which is what our kids in fact received because I did not have the energy in those days to fight that particular fight), although if you try and get an answer for why exactly anyone sane would favor a delayed vaccination schedule she will not have one, although in fact quite a few people who've been half-taken by the anti-vaxx nonsense do land on exactly that answer, something about older kids with more delayed spacing between vaccinations mitigating the risks of bad side effects, which is of course just plain vanilla anti-vaxx nonsense at its heart.
If you're asking me for an explanation, I'll give you one that I think is both charitable and accurate, at least in her case: we had two children who were insanely, insanely poor sleepers for the first 18 months or so of their lives*, with those two 18 month periods occurring more or less in succession, and we were both suffering from what in retrospect was really quite severe sleep deprivation, hers worse than mine.
* The fact that our children were miserably colic-y day and night--screaming and screaming, and screaming without end (our first much more so than our second, but really both of them)--with doctors not really able to suggest anything at all that might help, was part of what led her in desperation to start looking into alternative practices and natural remedies and is-there-anything-out-there-somewhere-please-that-will-make-this-child-stop-screaming and eventually led her down the rabbit hole of internet discussion forums where things like anti-vaxxism and libertarianism were being peddled.
35: My sister's dentist prescribed those in central NY.
37: Reye's syndrome can be avoided if you avoid aspirin, right?
Anyway, I should get my antibodies checked again sometime. I'm scared that I have no immunity. I only found out before because my job tested me.
In support of 40, she also spent about two years on extremely restrictive elimination diets (e.g., I recall a few weeks at one point of eating nothing--nothing--except plain potatoes), hoping it might make the baby stop screaming.
I think the part about poor kids is complicated, but WIC asks about immunizations at every visit and the ER checks too. Sure, there are parents missing out on that, but there are a lot more failsafes and pressures to comply than a UMC family would probably have.
"If my kid can't bring peanut butter to school, yours shouldn't be able to bring preventable diseases.". Seen on fb. Glib, but it does ring my bell.
36: My thinking is that it's an extension of what they're doing now. Some schools won't let unvaccinated kids attend for three weeks. Make that everywhere, and cabin fever will make sure the parents get them vaccinated.
Reye's syndrome can be avoided if you avoid aspirin, right?
That was what I always heard, but apparently some kids get it without taking asprin, also.
Reye's syndrome can be avoided if you avoid aspirin, right?
Also, this is for some definitions of "you." It can also be avoided by being over the age of 19 or so. Its a pediatric disease.
Retro Star Wars vaccination poster.
45: "He was stridently opposed to vaccination. She had a lethal allergy to peanuts. Can they find love in a world trying to tear them apart? Ann of Phylaxis. This movie is not yet rated."
49: They made C3PO the spokesman? Fucking lame. If you are going to scrape the Star Wars barrel, why not just get Jar Jar Binks for the gig.
I mean, aside from the obvious timeline problems.
Also, I don't think C3PO ever said "May the force be with you" in any of the movies. They wan to use that phrase, they should've put Yoda in the ad.
I'm just sayin.
Become a Jedi Warrior against disease. Midi-chlorians, vaccine antibodies are.
I'm confused about how a new mothers forum became a vector for libertarianism. I'm having trouble even thinking of an issue that overlaps. The first 3-4 years of life feature very few state interventions. (Though, come to think of it, I had a very displeasing interaction with the Social Security Administration when my son was an infant. He still doesn't have a SS card.)
I'm having to suppress a tickle of hysterical fear at having an unvaccinatably-young infant within two hours' drive of one of those woo-woo ass-pockets.
54: The word "Earth" is not spoken in the movies, for obvious reasons. C-3PO is not Kang.
My kid heard about this from somewhere, and he reaction was to spend yesterday asking to go to Disneyland because it won't be too crowded.
I've been preaching "one Dr Sears, one bullet" as a mantra here for a while. This does really seem like the end for the quasi-respectabity of this nonsense, and I'm hoping it will taint by association the entire attachment woo-woo parenting industry.
58: Didn't the last measles epidemic in SoCal start in his waiting room? Or maybe the patient zero kid was just his patient. Anyway, hope springs eternal!
58.1 is awesome. I do think urple is right, though, that lot of this arises from desperation. I see a lot of magical thinking in foster/special needs parenting circles. And then that spirals because you've got people who don't want to vaccinate their children wanting to foster....
56.1 definitely not true over here - the State is all over young kids and their parents.
I'm confused about how a new mothers forum became a vector for libertarianism. I'm having trouble even thinking of an issue that overlaps. The first 3-4 years of life feature very few state interventions.
For people who aren't particularly political, I think it may be easy to elide "the hospital wants to put ointment on my newborn's eyes" with "the state wants to control me and limit all these decisions that are mine to make." It's about staking out a claim to your own decision-making power.
61: What are they doing? Short of having CPS called on me or failing to put him in a child car seat, I'm having trouble thinking of one thing the State would have to say to my kid before I have a truant officer ringing my doorbell.
62: I thought about the ointment. Is that a legal requirement or standard hospital protocol. It can be hard to tell one from the other once you've been admitted. For example, my kid was basically held hostage in the NICU for some bullshit; once you're in there, the standard of evidence is unreasonably high to get you out. I would have had to raise a huge stink to get him out. It definitely felt coercive. But the authority of the Chief Resident is not that of the State.
I'm confused about how a new mothers forum became a vector for libertarianism.
I think The Onion pretty much nails it with "I Don't Vaccinate My Child Because It's My Right to Decide What Eliminated Diseases Come Roaring Back".
I suspect the libertarian stuff would develop pretty quickly out of the "a mother knows her child better than anyone else" type stuff that those boards foster in people (to the point where it's a kind of competition, practically). It doesn't take long before even minimal government activity, like recommending that children get vaccinated or trying to offer facts to people, feels like a kind of threat to the sense that they really do know their child better than anyone else including basic medical facts and how dare you suggest otherwise by pointing out some basic medical facts to me anyway.
This is my best guess, but it makes sense to me that it could develop out of the weird insular mommy-competitions you see on those sites. Once you've put something really important to you at stake admitting that maybe you don't know better than everyone else around you can start to feel like a direct threat. And anyone saying "all children should..." impersonally sounds like they're saying they know your unique special child better than you do, and so on.
There has always been a cliché about how people become more conservative when they have kids. Libertarianism just happens to be a fairly popular strain of conservativism these days.
We need to find some way to hit the anti-vaxxers where it hurts. Like maybe a joint statement from Stanford and the Ivy League saying if you chose not to vaccinate your precious little child said special snowflake is never going to an Ivy League school.
I've had all those fucking childhood diseases including polio and none of them were any fun at all. Guantanamo is mostly empty, have HSS do something useful by rounding up the antivaxxers and their little death spreaders and shipping them there.
Fully endorse 69. They all make you feel worse than you can possibly imagine, for days on end.
that lot of this arises from desperation
I'd say a few people get into it out of desperation, but far more are in it because they revel in their perceived virtuousness and godamn social media provides an unprecedented level of enabling for that kind of thing.
Here's the expert on communicable childhood diseases writing on measles:
http://momsincharge.org/blog/fear-factor-the-measles
56.1 -- What are we going to do when Uncle Samuel comes around?
(I hadn't listened to this song for a long time. What a wonderfully optimistic take from soon to be new parents. Especially after the verses of the song are done, and we're just having those Kantner, Crosby, Slick exchanges.)
72: Here is the worst blog in the world on the subject.
72 is a very special link. serious complications from measles are rare in the US, she says, neglecting to mention that vaccines have something to do with that.
Here's the sequel, for those of you not familiar with the canon. Still pretty optimistic.
74: Of *course* it leads with a Gandhi quote.
The comments at the link in 74 are something else.
The link at 72 strikes me as worse than the one at 74. Leaving aside using the death rate for measles in a largely vaccinated population to saw that measles isn't dangerous, it seem to be borrowing from Creationism literature. As in:
Vaccine-induced herd immunity," however is only a THEORY based on the "true herd immunity" that occurs naturally.
The person who wrote that is a very special kind of half educated.
79: The local news had quick clip from the owner of MomsInCharge a couple of days ago. The doc (Goodman, I think the name was) who is turning away NoVaxxers is "bullying" them.
I get accused of bullying when I insist my son goes to sleep. I blame the schools.
Or it really is just not fair that he doesn't get to stay up as late as he wants, you big bully.
A bully made me make all the typos in 79.
Funny how it turns out that serious complications are rare when everyone is vaccinated.
It would be even more funny if herd immunity worked differently for vaccines than for naturally acquired diseases (except for the part with the lower rates of death and disability). Maybe there's a disease offset program. You get vaccinated and, to prevent herd immunity from allowing the unvaccinated to benefit, the vaccine company pays a carrier of the disease $50 to ride Space Mountain all day.
Maybe there's a disease offset program. You get vaccinated and ... the vaccine company pays a carrier of the disease $50 to ride Space Mountain all day.
Maybe not directly, but I wouldn't put it past Big Vaccine to be using some of their profits in this way. Call it part of their budget for "viral marketing". The more fear of the disease spreads, the more of their vaccines they sell. It's capitalism 101.
44: There was an article I read about how doctors actually lose money when they vaccinate. In the early 80's they made a small profit, but the prices are rising like crazy.
One woman in Texas had so much trouble finding a pediatrician in Texas who had the vaccine that she lied to the county clinic and said that she had no insurance just so that she could get the vaccinations, because they wouldn't take her insurance.
58: Didn't you have to fight your ex to get her vaccinated?
79: using the death rate for measles in a largely vaccinated population to saw that measles isn't dangerous
That's how John Roberts would see it.
89: That was exactly the parallel that came to mind.
As someone pointed out online, God forbid that if the CDC starts getting more involved that the asshole right feels obligated to oppose it out of their usual kneejerk rejection of all things Obamish.
We saw a pretty good feint in that direction during the recent ebola epidemic. We're just lucky that Mitch McConnell was able to stop the epidemic in its tracks with one stern (if turtle-like) glance on November 5, 2014.
86 sounds a bit like the setup for Jennifer Government.
91: Maybe we can get Joe Arpaio to set up a tent city for those traitors willing to spread diseases previously conquered by our totally excellent health care system.
94: I'm sure Chris Christie would be happy to oblige.
63 - midwife will visit at home after the birth, hands you over to the Health Visitors at 10 days. They'll do follow ups at about 8 months and 2 years. There might be a clinic (it's called a clinic, it's usually a drop in thing in a church hall/village hall/library) to go to to have the baby weighed, have a chat if you want - probably on weekly, but no one would expect you to go every week. Every baby has a red book. Everyone signs up for Child Benefit *. Once kids turn 3, they are eligible for 15 hours a week free busy provision.
That sort of thing.
* Higher rate tax payers have to either not claim it, or pay it back, now, so I don't actually know if everyone does sign up for it these days. But most must register to get the National Insurance credits.
My home educating/ex-home educating *friends* are the rational, evidence-based types, but I've met a fuck of a lot who have some really idiotic ideas.
I've also known two children end up seriously ill in hospital from chicken pox (not a routine vax in this country) which I always point out to anyone who says it's a trivial disease!
Every baby has a red book.
If they tried to give every new child a Maoist tract here, I think very few people would get vaccines.
My daughter had to be delayed on her vaccinations for a year due to an immune disease (the reason I missed last unfoggedcon for those who remember) so fuck all those self entitled assholes.
The anti-vaxxers, that is, not the unfoggedcon attendees.
Maybe not directly, but I wouldn't put it past Big Vaccine to be using some of their profits in this way. Call it part of their budget for "viral marketing". The more fear of the disease spreads, the more of their vaccines they sell. It's capitalism 101.
I wouldn't put it past them in theory, but aren't margins for vaccines usually pretty low? That marketing dollar can go a lot farther promoting the latest me-too.
Vaccines are barely profitable, yeah. The government has a separate court set up for vaccine related lawsuits in order to keep the costs down for pharmaceutical companies because a lot of them were just throwing up their hands and saying "screw this" in the last OMGVaccines! hysteria.
99 and 100: Doesn't it depend on the vaccine? Gardasil is pretty profitable.
It's not just misinformed mothers. Here's a father and a doctor (?!) who believes vaccines cause leukemia. His comment combines a New Age-y concern with purity with a libertarian unconcern for anyone else in society:
Wolfson, an Arizona cardiologist, refuses to vaccinate his two young sons. He said the family that didn't vaccinate and endangered the Jacks children did nothing wrong."It's not my responsibility to inject my child with chemicals in order for [a child like Maggie] to be supposedly healthy," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's very likely that her leukemia is from vaccinations in the first place."
"I'm not going to sacrifice the well-being of my child. My child is pure," he added. "It's not my responsibility to be protecting their child."
Yeah, the people with the purity myth of how their children will never need doctors anyway because not being vaccinated is the key to health totally enrage me.
It's like Christian Science, but without the commitment.
71: I think this is one of those places where I travel in different circles online. I absolutely know that what's brought up here exists but I also see people whose children have major mental health diagnoses or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or autism decide that essential oils or some magic diet will solve all their problems and then lose it when the child gets a cupcake at school or whatever. What I've personally seen is that sort of desperation mindset leading into anti-medical hysteria that may culminate in rejection of vaccinations, etc. But obviously plenty of people get at it from UMC special snowflake directions too.
But obviously plenty of people get at it from UMC special snowflake directions too.
I think gswift gets it exactly right in 71. The anti-vax movement, as a movement, is predominantly UMC special snowflake, with some kooky, anti-state and anti-society, Christianism thrown in for good measure.
105: Fear crosses all lines, and so does the search for magic. Near as I can tell the only real differences are in the complexities of the rationalizations. Look at the whole toxins and cleanses craziness for example.
in twenty years some employer will be insisting on unvaccinated candidates who've never had major illnesses. Because `lucky is better than smart'.
I'd rather take my chances with a deadly space measles outbreak than definitely turn my child into an autistic government zombie cyborg.
The mouseover at the link in 109 may explain a good deal.
96
That sounds a lot like China, except, ironically, the books aren't red. It's part of the "Better Birth" campaign,* which is an attempt to provide free or low-cost prenatal and infant care to all women. Every neighborhood has a local clinic where parents go for free vaccination and a well-baby check-up. Immunization coverage is 99%, according to UNICEF.
*The Chinese term can also be translated to "eugenics," but the term and the public health campaign don't have the same unsavory connotations. It's primarily about promoting best practices for pregnant women and young mothers** and about eliminating birth defects or preventable conditions caused by things like iodine deficiency or syphilis.
**"Breast is best" is part of the campaign, or at least educating people on the importance of either breast milk or formula. A lot of older people still think rice porridge is an acceptable substitute for small babies, especially after the melamine scandal.
97: "Protect the interests of the youth, women and children" would work pretty well as a mumforum sig
67: Having to deal with medical bureaucracy, public and private, as well as parents, in laws, random strangers being experts on how to look after your kid aka how you are doing it wrong, plus a nice slew of new family costs, and sleep deprivation, can tend to bring out libertarianism in people ...
It can also bring out a certain needy selfishness where people start obsessively maximizing the benefits and rebates they are eligible for ...
Not uncommonly in the same person. This kind of seemed to be be what the Tea Party turned into.
94: Speaking of Chris Christie:
Hunt tweeted: "I asked Gov. Christie if Americans should vaccinate their kids. He says his kids are -- but says approach should be "balanced".
97: If they tried to give every new child a Maoist tract here, I think very few people would get vaccines.
Because no discipline. Possibly apocryphal story I heard form someone who was an athlete in another sport at OSU back in the day. Before the first coaches meeting for the upcoming season, Woody Hayes sent all of his coaches a copy of Mao's LRB and told them to study it. at the first meeting he passed out a test on the book, graded them in front of the room, announced the results, and said "This concludes the meeting, the subject was discipline."
Mao totally would have run Lynch from the 1..
If you intercept a pass against one of his teams, the discipline was a straight-up beating.
If you're from Clemson. Don't think of it as sideline violence, think of it as a Civil War reenactment.
94, 114: And right on cue the ignorant know-nothings are on it. Laura Ingraham this morning:
"Measles is fairly manageable... Measles is not generally a deadly disease. I'm not saying anyone wants to get measles but I know a bunch of kids in our school growing up had measles, and chicken pox, measles. I mean we just got this! It wasn't a big end of the world... I mean we're making it out to be this big deal. I just don't think it's that big of a deal."
Ingraham (I checked wikipedia) was born a year after the vaccine was developed, of course. By the time she was in school it would have been far less common and may well have been easier on the people who got it (depending on whether they were vaccinated or whatever). But it's probably more likely that she's just making stuff up since, I mean, it's Ingraham.
My brother and I had measles when we were about 2 and 3, and then immediately got mumps, and my dad got mumps too. My mum basically didn't leave the house for about 3 months, and my nan had to bring us food. It always sounded like a big enough deal that I was very glad to have avoided that scenario with my kids. (And not remember it when it happened to me.)
120. "...except when it kills you, but then it's probably your fault for being an untermensch."
I had measles, mumps and chicken pox as a kid, and they sucked. Could have been worse though; I had two friends who had had polio.
Here I associate anti-vax with anti-government, anti-science types. Utah County, mostly. I fear it's the one issue on which the loony left and loony right can agree.
TBH I think the antivax thing is one part squee - vaccination is a counterintuitive concept, like Keynesianism - one part poorly understood greenism, and one part the rhetoric of empowerment, which acts as a sort of delivery mechanism for the rest.
It's also important that by definition you come to it having just become a parent, a massive formative experience, and one that often goes with a big change in your social network (e.g. not seeing your dodgy mates any more but getting integrated into the mums' mafia). That accounts for the weird internet vector bit.
That said, the intellectual genealogy is interesting; the Germans have a huge problem with Green-voting bildungsbürger types who adore Rudolf Steiner and all. that. jazz, and refuse vaccines. In fact there are good epidemiological studies showing how Steiner schools act as measles reservoirs when they have an outbreak.
The weird bit is that the whole Steiner-y, early hippy but kinda conservative, philosophical movement that moved into greenism in the 1960s also had some seriously ugly pre-war associations with Nazism, which might explain why it's so compatible with teabaggers/'kippers as well as SWPLers.
125: Oh, Waldorf schools! I didn't realize that was German in origin. Yeah, I recently looked at California school vaccination data, and 38% of Waldorf kindergarteners have personal belief exemptions this year.
I didn't realize that was German in origin
Waldorf, Montessori and Suzuki are the Axis powers of alternative education.
There's probably some Romania version nobody but specialists ever heard of.
We thought that Dewey was American: nope, Georgian.
We thought that Dewey was American: nope, Georgian.
75, 84: serious complications from measles are rare in the US, she says, neglecting to mention that vaccines have something to do with that.
Yeah, that's really it. Apparently polls are showing that anti-vaxxers tend to be younger people -- people whose reality has involved an absence of measles, so duh, what's the big deal?
I had measles, mumps and chicken pox as a kid, and they sucked
I didn't have the real measles, just the German kind. I remember having the mumps -- everyone thought I looked particularly triangular (and thus funny) -- and had chicken pox, but don't have a specific memory of it. By God, I'd trade having all three again for this stupid broken ankle.
My son must have started reading here. He came home from the school today with the Warrior Cats book. It's been at least six months since we read any of it and we didn't finish. So now, we have to finish.
I had chicken pox as a child (it seems the vaccine for that wasn't introduced until 1995, and I do wonder from time to time whether I should get the vaccine now to protect against shingles*), but cannot for the life of me remember whether I had measles. I feel as though I did, but my mom's not around any longer to tell me.
Let's see, according to wikipedia, measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, I was born in 1964 but then moved almost immediately to Panama for a few years; mumps and rubella vaccines introduced in '67 to '69; and what we now know as the MMR vaccine introduced in '71. Did I have it? Probably? (My mom was a nurse, so maybe probably?) I know I had to get an MMR vaccine in the '80s before I entered college, which is kind of weird, so maybe I hadn't had it. I suspect that my mom passed along to me my vaccination record somewhere along the line, but I surely have no idea where it is.
* Anyone have any feedback on this? The shingles (zoster) vaccine is recommended for those over 60, it seems, so I have a ways to go, but I'll probably talk to my doctor about it.
I got shingles a few years ago and got the vaccine as a treatment (!?!?). I had to be extra careful because I was around a lot of 20-somethings who had never had it *or* been vaccinated.
Because they came up on plain skin (not genitals or an eye) it wasn't so bad only being treated in the event.
I am afeared of shingles, I do admit. A friend came down with a variant on the herpes zoster virus, Ramsay Hunt syndrome when he was merely 45 years old; it's a version of shingles that affects the ear canal, facial muscles and so on, and he now has partial facial paralysis. He's doing absolutely fine, happy life with wife and kids, which is the way he would be, it's just his way; nonetheless, I'd rather avoid the pain he experienced.
Parsi, I'm you're age, and I got shingles last year. Around the left side of my chest (T3 dermatome, most common occurrence), and I can't imagine having it in the face or genitals. It felt like having a nest of fire ants in my armpit for a good three weeks. Get the vaccine.
Okey-doke. They say it's advised for those over 60, though, so I guess I'll have to have a conversation with my doctor about it.
But if there's anything this whole episode has shown us, it's that doctors don't know shit.
The shingles vaccine is basically the same thing as the chickenpox vaccine. It's just as safe and it's more important because, as you point out, shingles in adults is a worse disease than chickenpox in children. I sometimes wonder if the chickenpox vaccine is really a good thing, and the reason for wondering that is that I fear that adults will be more likely to end up with shingles if they are never exposed to kids with chickenpox anymore.
I had the pox. Not looking forward to any shingles. Hope that can be avoided.
I'm pretty sure "Advised for people over 60" means it's only gone through conclusive clinical trials in that population. There's no reason to think it won't work on younger people as well, or to expect more side effects in younger people.
Maybe, but have you considered the possibility that it's a slow-acting Logan's Run-type Carnival in a shot?
I have no idea how one would hyphenate that.
The nerve pain you can end up with in the aftermath of shingles can be fucking horrible. If nothing else, the shingles vaccine can reduce that pain and the incidence of that pain even if you end up getting shingles. Basically, you should vaccinate the hell out of yourself for everything; vaccines are great.
141: How, more risk of shingles? Does exposure to poxy kids bump up immunity? Shouldn't the shingles vaccine suffice?
I'm also perplexed that adult vaccines are often recommended at 50 or 60. Is that when we get feeble, or are there 20-year horrible sequelae, or do they only want to recruit postmenopausal women into the trials?
141: I am glad that I dodged the bullet of chicken pox as an adult. I made it to 29, but apparently I was at risk until 38 (last summer), and chicken pox in my thirties would have been horrid.
The shingles vaccine (while worth getting) doesn't seem super effective, as vaccines go.
So, I'm glad that I was able to get a vaccine, because I don't want to get chicken pox at my age.