California anti-vax parents are having a tough week. Senate Bill 277 went into effect on July 1, barring unvaccinated children from public schools unless they have a medical exemption. Personal belief exemptions will no longer be allowed.
According to The Sacramento Bee, Scores of students without vaccine proof sent home on first day of school:
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Surely, if liberty is good for thee, it is equally good for me.[/pullquote]
In the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, 145 students out of about 3,200 starting kindergarten and seventh grade were sent home Tuesday on the first day of school for lack of immunization records …
A new state law that took effect July 1 eliminated personal- and religious-belief exemptions for families that opted to avoid vaccinations for their children. Under the new law, students entering the two checkpoint years of kindergarten and seventh grade are now required to show proof of vaccination…
Anti-vaxxers are appalled. It’s an issue of freedom! According to the Foundation for Economic Freedom, Mandatory Vaccinations Are Incompatible with Liberty.
Mandatory vaccinations involve a supreme violation of liberty, where agents of the state inject substances into someone’s body against his or her will. On the other side of the ledger, even in principle, mandatory vaccinations do not offer much benefit in enhanced public welfare, relative to a free society. When we throw in the realistic worries of government incompetence and malfeasance, the case against mandatory vaccinations is overwhelming.
And according to No on SB277, which opposed passage of the bill:
SB 277 eliminates a parent’s right to exempt their children from one, some, or all vaccines, a risk-laden medical procedure including death. In 2016, California parents will be forced to give their children more than 40 doses of 10 federally recommended vaccines. This open-ended vaccine mandate allows the State of California to add any additional vaccines they deem necessary at anytime. The only exemption available is a medical exemption that doctors deny to 99.99 percent of children under federal guidelines.
During their campaign opposing passage of the bill, they articulated a fundamental principle:
Where there is a risk of injury or death, no matter how small the perceived risk may be, there must be a choice.
I, too, am big believer in liberty. So anti-vaxxers, help me out. There’s something I don’t understand.
If you believe that you should be able to avoid vaccinating your children because you consider vaccines dangerous, shouldn’t everyone else in California be able avoid your unvaccinated children because they consider them dangerous?
Children who haven’t been vaccinated pose a risk because they can carry and spread vaccine preventable diseases.
How big a risk? That doesn’t matter, right? If it doesn’t matter how small the perceived risk of vaccines must be in order for you to refuse then, it shouldn’t matter how small the risk your unvaccinated children pose to their classmates, right. You insist there must be a choice.
The beauty of SB277 is that it allows you to exercise your right to protect your children from vaccines no matter how small the perceived risk may be and it allows the rest of us to exercise our right to ban your children from schools no matter how small the perceived risk may be.
Wait, what? You disagree??
Families that do not comply with the one-size-fits-all vaccine mandate, will lose their State Constitutional right for a free and appropriate education in public and private K-12 schools. The use of licensed daycare facilities, in-home daycare, public or private preschools and even after school care programs are also included in SB 277.
Duh! That’s the whole point of SB277. Since education is compulsory, without SB277 parents are forced to expose their children to the health threat of your unvaccinated children.
Any attempt by anti-vaxxers to force our children to be exposed to unvaccinated children is a violation of our liberty, right?
And surely, if liberty is good for thee, it is equally good for me.
I feel so sad and discouraged right now. I just watched a TV host interviewing a family with a child they believe was paralyzed by a vaccine and a leading doctor in the field of infectuous diseases.
It was a lesson in what not to do.
First, the father was very honest about describing how they sank into a cult after their child got paralyzed. He was convinced but he was polite. He wasn’t a rabid anti-vaxxer foaming at the mouth and cursing all things medical.
The doctor wasn’t a camera man. Frankly, his behavior was downright inadequate. He said that he felt sympathy and I have no doubt that he did but he didn’t convey it well at all. FFS, he called the father “this man”! He came across as an incensitive jerk. AND he had a speech defect that made it look like he was grasping for excuses – any excuse that could redeem the vaccine. Of course, he was given far less time than the family to present his side and in his rush to say the important thing he looked unfeeling. I didn’t watch from the start, so I am not aware of many of the details but he only had the father’s words to make his judgment on what might have happened to make the child so ill. And I think he got those on screen, without any time to consider them in advance. I have no doubt that his stuttered explanations about a possible CP – looks like some time after receiving the shot, the little boy underwent a surgery normally done for CP – or another condition that the child might have been born with sounded contrived to many. He came across as dismissing the child and the family’s suffering. The father lost it and unleashed a torrent of hate speech on all doctors here.
For fuck’s sake, anti-vaxxers are a problem! And if being right was enough, we would have left this problem behind long ago! I really feel that the pro-science cause lost a lot tonight by sending someone clinically experienced but not great at interactions, especially camera interactions.
And of course, there is a little boy who is paralyzed. I hope and pray he recovers. I will be donating for him. God, I feel so helpless!
I suppose it MIGHT have been due to the vaccine, after all. But if so, I know for sure that tonight did nothing to show that such reactions are rare.
So my dad died of lung cancer…so when he was younger doctors pushed cigarettes. Very normal back then.Look it up. Do your research. Try the new Drugs! With only a few side effects. Death may occur. 🙁 If there is a risk there should be a choice.Right?….. So why can’t we sue vaccine manufactures??? https://vaers.hhs.gov/index wow you can’t.. but the Government has there own site.Weird must be a problem. Maybe vaccines are not 100 percent safe……Don’t forget to report.Good luck proving your case….if your doctor believes you. And if vaccines are so good. Let me know who in this stream of comments are up to date with there shots?? I think parents should have to get there shots first before they give it to babies/children! All 69 doses! I am not anti vax. I am pro choice, It’ my body 🙂 And I have had enough drug reactions for a life time.I think that Pharmaceutical companies are greedy. I think this country is being run by greedy people. follow the money. I wonder…. if vaccines didn’t have a billion dollar price tag on them would they be so important? Wake up… Doctors love there drugs. Do your research. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/insys-therapeutics-conspiracy-charges-bribing-doctors-fentanyl-subsys-opioid-addiction-painkillers/ so… I love my Doc BUT she knows about nutrition and simple natural health remedies that WORK. And if you want to give your children drugs then at least research it. I have no problem staying out of public schools. I will gladly give my last penny to a school of my choice.
You what the key difference between medicine and quackery is? Medicine changes with new evidence; quackery does not. 70 years ago, doctors may have recommended cigarettes but after the Surgeon General’s report in the early 1960’s they stopped recommending them. 70 years ago, anti-vaxxers said vaccines were unnecessary. In the interim new vaccines have been invented and vaccines have been improved, but anti-vaxxers still say vaccines are unnecessary.
Anti-vaxxers have a perfect record. In the nearly 200 years since the anti-vax movement started, they’ve never been right even once!
People got hooked on smoking.hard to quit. My Dad is dead because he got hooked from a doctors recommend daily dose of just another drug. I am pro nutrition. I am pro health. I just don’t like drugs.
So what? Don’t take drugs. Just don’t push your disease vectors onto other people. Keep them isolated as the walking danger they are.
I am not even saying “Vaccinate them!” although I’d like it if you do. Since it’s herd immunity and whatnot. You don’t like drugs? No skin off my nose.
It’s pathetic, really, that you consider yourself some kind of champion for simply not liking drugs. No one cares.
Still, are you someone who profits by pushing “natural”? You write like the type.
Wow there a lot of bullies in these comments. Insults and all. Wow.
So much to unpack here, so very little time.
1) Yes, doctors have erred in the past. I’m sure they’re wrong about some stuff now too. That does not mean everything they say is wrong. This is why have the ability to read and understand the studies, and the math behind them, is so important. That said, vaccines are one of the most-studied medical treatments/interventions in human history, so we’ve got a good grasp on what they do and do not do.
2) Who told you vaccines are 100% safe? Of course they aren’t. They’re just 99.999% safe. Severe vaccine reactions are 1 in a million … literally. The chances of dying or being maimed from the diseases the vaccines protect you from are much, much higher. That being said, since bad things can happen, the government has chosen to promise pharmaceutical companies to cover those bad reactions in order to incentivize them making vaccines.
3) Speaking of pharmaceutical companies, you think they’re greedy? You’re right. But vaccines are not the evidence of that, because they don’t make very much money at all. It would make a lot more money for Big Pharma if they let us get sick and then sold us treatments- IV fluids, antivirals, and hospital beds are way, way more profitable than vaccines.
4) I’m up to date on all my shots, including the flu shot, except for my TDAP booster, which just ran out this year. Not that this matters- it’s perfectly possible to know that something is a really good idea and still not do it. That’s not a great thing to do, but it is a very human thing to do.
5) Public schools are one of the very best social innovations we’ve had for society. It ensures that people who can’t afford private schools and tutors still get adequate-to-good education, and it would be so much better if everyone had to participate. But, that aside, if you’re willing to put your children and all children around you at risk of dying, it’s probably better that you’re also a libertarian snob who thinks you’re too good for public school. This country only cares about dead rich kids, so maybe if/when measles or whooping cough kills someone in a private school, we’ll get serious about preventing it.
????I am confused. I’m not rich. I just don’t like drugs. My body body my choice. Rich kid.far from it.when I said every last penny I meant it. But I guess you will just spin what say… Did you listen? Probably not. I just don’t like drugs or the company that pushes them. My Dad is dead.
You write like someone who really likes drugs. I’m just saying – it’s damn hard to understand your free-form grammar and punctuation.
So now its down to just insults? I remember from school what kind person you are. Bully. My spelling may be bad but at least I’m not a bully.mean old bully.
Nope, not insults – reality. You’re trying to communicate with us, yes, to convince us of your position? Communicating clearly is an integral part of that.
Additionally, unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking.
Ah yes, all of the devotees of proper grammar and clear expression were the bullies in school, rather than the bullied… heh.
No.your a bully
Have you seriously ended up at “No, you are!”? Are you trying to convince anyone of anything at all? Or is this like a rite of passage for you?
Just wanted to clear that I feel bullied.Oh yes I didn’t post something you agreed with. So you must strike me down. I get it. You want me to like what you like and I don’t.
I have friends who like beer. I think it’s the nastiest stuff. I’m still friends with them even though we like different things. That’s how adults work.
You can like whatever you want in terms of music and recreational beverages. This isn’t a matter of ‘like.’ You’re peddling dangerous misinformation, and you’re going to have to get used to people being agog at what you think you know and don’t, and people asking you to back up what you’re saying with facts and evidence instead of nodding and being amazed at what a brilliant independent thinker you are. Because you’re not.
Telling you you’re highly misinformed isn’t bullying, it’s reality.
As someone who was bullied, if I could have avoided being bullied, I would have done it. But I had to go to middle school. No one is bullying you, but regardless, you came here and you can leave at anytime.
I was bullied too. I remember I really wanted to take a certain class but I knew there was a bully in that class she had a very mean spirit very cruel. It would have been nice to take that class. But I did not feel safe. Guess there are places on the web that are like that too. And you don’t get to say how I feel. So don’t. If I feel bullied. Then that’s that.
Yeah there are unsafe places on the web. However people pointing out your inconsistencies and not agreeing with you is not making you unsafe or threatening you or even bullying you, regardless of whether you feel bullied or not.
Its not that. She started insulting. Accusing someone of doing drugs. Poking fun. Teasing. And again if felt bullied then I felt bullied.
So this is just all about how you don’t like drugs? I am confused as to why you are wasting your time here then. Don’t take drugs. And sure, your body, your choice so long as it doesn’t affect other’s bodies. But not being vaccinated starts to cross that boundary. I can’t go shoot someone, and say, hey I wanted to pull that trigger with my body, my choice so you gotta respect that! If my son didn’t gain immunity from his first MMR vaccine he got yesterday, he could be at risk of getting a potentially deadly disease from your unvaccinated children. I especially didn’t want him around unvaccinated by personal choice individuals before yesterday. If he’s only around vaccinated people, the chances of him getting measles, mumps or rubella are considerably slim. I don’t want you or your unvaccinated children around my body or my child’s body and that’s our choice to make. Our choice to vaccinate is supported by science. Your choice isn’t so I think it’s only fair your choice faces the negative consequences such as not getting to attend public school.
I wonder what she means by ‘drugs.’ Caffeine? Alcohol? Marijuana? Supplements? Melatonin? It’s a broad umbrella.
Aspirin?
Pharmaceutical companies that kill 200,000 people a year. Those ones.
Citation needed.
Roadstergal: “I wonder what she means by ‘drugs.’ Caffeine? Alcohol? Marijuana? Supplements? Melatonin? It’s a broad umbrella.”
Cathy: “Pharmaceutical companies that kill 200,000 people a year. Those ones.”
That doesn’t answer the question, though. Pharmaceutical companies make everything from pain killers and chemo to vitamins and herbal supplements – we are wondering if you include all of those things under the broad heading “DRUGS!” and swear them all off or just the ones you consider “bad”.
Pharmaceuticals are drugs. And if vaccines are not drugs then what are in them? And don’t some vaccines shed? Wouldn’t that make vaccination a risk to me?
Seriously, your reading comprehension isn’t up to par. Are you sure you aren’t under the influence? I made not one comment about whether vaccines were drugs or not.
By the way, if you are unvaccinated you are at higher risk of getting diseases but not because of shedding, silly. But hey, please do stay away from me! I don’t care if you think it’s because I’m going to shed on you.
“And if vaccines are not drugs then what are in them?”
Wait. Seriously. You don’t even know what’s in vaccines, and you’re vehemently opposed to them?
No I do
You just said you didn’t. This is why you’re so confusing. You say something in one post, then pivot around and say just the opposite.
No, they don’t shed. But vaccination is always a risk, albeit a small one for those who are not medically extempt. So no one is going to force you to vaccinate.
You, however, want to risk other people’s wellbeing by not vaccinating and still being a part of society. Reaping the benefits without any contribution. And that isn’t acceptable.
Don’t take any drugs, no one cares. Don’t vaccinate. Don’t force your unvaccinated children on others using public benefits.
See? It’s simple.
How’s your son doing? My daughter got a raging fever a week after her MMR/chickenpox jab, but my son had no reaction at all. (I think it’s a minority of kids who get that fever; my daughter was prone to ’em.)
So far, he’s good. It’s just been a week today. With the chickenpox vaccine, 8 days later he had got a fever and a runny nose, which happened to be on Christmas Eve. By Christmas morning, he was completely fine.
So is my mother, of pancreatic cancer, and she was the biggest hippie on the block.
Sorry about your mom
Well, for one thing, vaccines aren’t drugs. There’s not a bit of drugs in them. They’re made of other things. For another thing, your children and you exist in society. We all follow rules we don’t like very much in order to do so. You cannot be forced to get vaccinations yourself, but we can (and will) force you to do things like feed, clothe, and provide health care for your children, because they can’t do it for themselves. Vaccines are part of health care. And for a third thing, I’m sorry your father has passed away, but how is that relevant exactly?
Who is we? No one has ever told me my to feed and cloth my child. Actually I tell him that. Nutrition is very important. He has never ate fast food. I do my best to buy clean food.if I can afford it farm to table.I would say I go above and beyond. I guess my point is every time I see an ad I see someone trying to sell the latest “cure”. I just don’t trust the companies. I have seen what pharmaceutical drugs do. My mom also died from a new drugs. She was told the risk.and died. She was having gut issues and doctor never changed her nutrition. Or suggested it.I tried to tell her. I just don’t trust them. Our the promised cure..its all very sad to me. And why I talk about cigarettes is because not long ago it was suggested by doctors, dentists and nurses.
LOL. I like clean food, too! I got some pre-washed, pre-chopped up slaw mix and a couple of containers of sliced and washed mushrooms in the produce drawer right now so I don’t have to chop up ‘shrooms, carrots and cabbage for a pot of soup. Unlike those other moms who don’t go “above and beyond,” I like to spend my precious time with my precious child. Ugh, I can’t stand moms who would waste time at the cutting board instead./s
“I guess my point is every time I see an ad I see someone trying to sell the latest “cure”.”
Like “natural health remedies.” I don’t trust those, true, because they are exempt from efficacy and safety testing requirements.
No one has told you to feed and clothe your child? That’s good, it means you are doing it! But if you weren’t, we have CPS for a reason. If you neglect or abuse your child, they can be removed from your care. If you fail to provide health care to your child, they can be removed from your care or you can be placed under court supervision to ensure your child can access needed health services. If your child dies from medical neglect, you can be charged with murder (in most states in the US, anyways … Idaho is an exception).
Again, there are a lot of drugs being marketed that shouldn’t be marketed. We do turn to drugs too fast for some things that can be fixed with diet and exercise. I am not going to say that pharmaceutical companies are all wonderful, because they absolutely aren’t. That said, vaccines are wondrous inventions that are cheap, safe ways of avoiding deadly diseases. Have you actually looked into what vaccines are and how they work? Have you looked at the diseases they prevent and what the diseases do? Have you read the studies that show that vaccines are safe, over and over and over again?
I’m sorry your mom is dead too, but without knowing more about her situation (and I am not asking), I simply don’t believe you. While diet and exercise can help with some conditions, there are an awful lot of things that they don’t fix. Diet won’t solve a massive strep infection, and exercise doesn’t fix cancer. We need pharmaceutical companies and the drugs they provide- not all the drugs, not all the time, but modern medicine is still a fantastic thing that should be applauded, not condemned.
I don’t take cough medicine and the only time my kids get any is when my son’s tendency to croup kicks up. (He’s got one that helps open his airways). I am deaf and my husband blind from what I’ve heard called common childhood diseases. You think a vaccine is expensive? Try 4 decades+ of ophthamologists visits and surgeries to try to keep that last little bit of your sight.
You think that just because doctors recommended cigarettes and to avoid peanut butter before science told us those were foolish ideas that they must be wrong about vaccines? Why? Vaccines are highly studied. There are few things in medicine as well studied or as safe as vaccinations.
And then there’s the personal anecdote. I don’t personally know *anyone* who has had a negative reaction to any vaccine worse than a sore arm or a fever. Considering how much worse the fevers and aches in these diseases usually bring, those smaller complications are well worth it to me, and that’s without the permanent damage I live my life with. Vaccines are not part of the pain med debacle.
At least your alive.my dad is dead. Mom too.she had allergies to a “new” treatment. Dead! Your alive. I don’t do drugs.I will not support those companies. What ever drug they push.
Yes, I’m alive. So are you. I didn’t say my parents were.
??? Did they die from drugs
They didn’t die from vaccines, and neither did your father.
There are drugs (made by those ebul pharmaceutical companies, OMG!) available today to treat what my mom died of. She just got it 30 years too soon.
There are drugs (made by the same Ebil Pharma) that saved my grandmother from dying of colon cancer 20 years ago. And breast cancer 5 years ago. Still alive and kicking – well, not really. There us some trouble – big trouble – with her mobility. No doubt due to toxic environment.
*raises hand* all up to date with vaccines here
“Let me know who in this stream of comments are up to date with there shots?? ”
Their shots, you mean? Me. In addition to my childhood vaccinations, I’ve had all of my adult boosters, HepB (not standard when I was a baby, but a great idea and I got it ASAP) and my seasonal ‘flu vax.
I’m going to be working in Switzerland this summer, and I’m going to talk to my doc about possibly getting an MMR booster, because the anti-vax crowd over there is making infection a real possibility. My mom (PhD in molecular biology) made sure I was protected when I was too young to take care of myself, and I’m doing it for myself now.
Are you seriously saying vaccines are a money maker for Big Pharma? Oh, LOL, you are funny! Vaccine profits are diddly. They don’t measure up at all to the profits from, say, treating disease that would otherwise be prevented by vaccines, or even the profits of the supplement industry, which doesn’t have to do any safety/efficacy work at all.
BTW, ‘natural health remedies’ are drugs. Anything that goes into your body and has an effect is a drug. ‘Natural health remedies’ are just uncontrolled, unproven, unregulated, random and variable doses of drugs.
“I think that Pharmaceutical companies are greedy.”
That’s nice. I think purveyors of ‘natural’ and homeopathic ‘remedies’ are greedy. No work, all profit. If you want to make money, why go into an industry where you actually have to do some work on efficacy and safety? Just make some crap up about ‘supporting your immune system’ and sell bottles of sugar pills.
So food is a drug? Good nutrition? Clean water? Fresh air? Vitimin c from foods? Iodine? My doctor studied nutrition and not just how to sell drugs. Make sure you ask for package inserts on vaccines your taking.that way you know the side effects 😉
So you’re visiting a naturopath or some other kind of quack, not a doctor. Can’t say I’m surprised.
My doctor is an MD plus she studied nutrition. Quacks are the doctors that let there patients become drug addicts
vaccines are not addicting.
As I said, another kind of quack. The world is a big place, there are quacks among MDs among other professions and the ignorants like you somehow always manage to find them.
Most MDs have studied nutrition and metabolism these days. It’s just that most don’t come away with the notion that food is magic. There is no one ‘magic’ diet and there are variety of ‘good enough’ ones.
I think she has studied beyond the normal required classes of a Medical Doctor. Every doctor has a specialty. I don’t think she just took cooking classes 🙂
I’ve never seen someone so smug about such a lack of understanding since… well, since the last time I talked to an anti-vaxxer. 🙂
I noticed you didn’t address the issue that vaccines are not a money-maker for Big Pharma, but treatments for the diseases they prevent are…
The well-nourished died in the pre-vaccine era. From measles, less than the poor; from polio, at least as much.
If I thought it was her business, fine. I’m up to date on all my shots. But really, I don’t expect her to believe me because it would shatter her fantasy.
No doctors ever pushed cigarettes. I’ve done “my” research on this. Some didn’t think cigarettes caused cancer until the evidence became overwhelming. This was in the middle 1960s.
Yes, I am up to date with my “shots”. What’s your point? Most adults do not need anything other than a Tdap booster (1X EVER) and then a Td every 10 years, and a yearly flu shot. Health care workers, workers in some other occupations, and travelers to third world countries may need some others.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc52d67dd539f587eaf48f2aa8d9c8c8befb686c16c12d89ce1d50d5a5d54181.jpg
Again…what year was this?
That ad, by the way, doesn’t prove doctors pushed cigarettes. That ad says more doctors smoke Camels than other brands. Heck, more doctors still might smoke Camels than any other cigarette! I haven’t surveyed them myself. You know, some doctors still smoke. That doesn’t mean they are encouraging their patients to smoke. I’ve had overweight doctors and never once has an overweight doctor encouraged me to be overweight or obese. I can’t even find a statement in that ad that claims cigarettes are healthy.
I would not see a doctor for my health if they don’t take of themselves.
Well, what a privileged thing to say.
No I am not rich. http://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/new-prescription-drugs-major-health-risk-few-offsetting-advantages
I didn’t say you were “rich.” There are people who can’t see any doctor. I am not financially disadvantaged and I don’t have the privilege to make sure a doctor meets my opinion of “taking care of themselves.” I don’t know about you but there’s a list of doctors I can choose from that are within a reasonable distance of where I reside. Who is going to keep my child while I doctor shop? My insurance doesn’t pay for multiple checkups a year until I find some unicorn doctor.
I can’t believe she actually said that. Yikes.
As Heidi says, the statement that more doctors smoke Camels than any other brand, may, as far as I know, still be accurate _today_ – because that statement is fully consistent with “Most doctors don’t smoke.”
The actual story of the discovery that smoking causes lung cancer is very interesting, and I would go more into it if you had any genuine interest – it’s a success of science, not a failure. But you’re just trying to score cheap conversational points to justify endangering your children’s health.
“But my Dad’s DEAD from lung cancer because he had a dumbass doctor tell him to smoke during the Korean war” doesn’t carry that much weight in a vaccine debate. I’m sorry her dad died. It sucks, I know. But her example isn’t really an example of whether vaccinations work.
Its a new miracle drugs.a new vaccine or what ever there pushing. The best part is the side effects on the commercials. Some are worse then the actually disease. The point is the promise of health that actually kills 🙁
I’d be interested in reading the story, if you’d be inclined to point me in the right direction.
I think The Emperor of All Maladies did a good overview – and is a dizam good book overall.
So would I.
You can’t tell the difference between advertising and science?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470496/
” At the same time, there was rising public anxiety about the health risks of cigarette smoking. One strategic response of tobacco companies was to devise advertising referring directly to physicians. As ad campaigns featuring physicians developed through the early 1950s, tobacco executives used the doctor image to assure the consumer that their respective brands were safe.
These advertisements also suggested that the individual physicians’ clinical judgment should continue to be the arbiter of the harms of cigarette smoking even as systematic health evidence accumulated. However, by 1954, industry strategists deemed physician images in advertisements no longer credible in the face of growing public concern about the health evidence implicating cigarettes.”
Plus much more. A long article, which you should read.
Yes I can. I know its an AD. Just like all the ads I see all over the place selling Pharmaceuticals. http://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/new-prescription-drugs-major-health-risk-few-offsetting-advantages
I don’t think you read your own link. It’s not about advertising.
The Germans did research on cancer and smoking during WW2 (Hitler hated smoking), but it all got lost in the aftermath and had to be rediscovered.
So a doctor “pushed” cigarettes on your dad…back in the 50s? It would have to be, because the surgeon general’s report linking smoking to cancer came out in the mid 60s. Everyone has had the correct information since then, and no doctor would have been pushing smoking after that.
I’m not seeing the connection. Vaccines do not cause cancer. (They actually prevent it, in the case of HPV vaccine). And strictly speaking…vaccines are not “drugs.” Pharma companies do not make any money from childhood vaccines at all.
HPV vaccine and HepB vaccine. Babies and young children have the highest incidence of chronic vs acute infection, which is the sort that can lead to liver cancer.
Yes, my mother was encouraged by her doctor to smoke in the late 1940s or early 1950s. He thought it would make her “less nervous.” All I can say is, I can’t imagine her being more unstable than she was, so if it worked I guess I should be thankful. We all (born in the 1950s) got all our vaccinations, and I am up to date with all mine including TDAP and pneumonia. So there. Not really any connection.
Every parent should have a choice whether to vax their child or not. Just because someone has decided against a certain vax, it’s their wish.
They do have a choice; and the rest of us have the choice to ban unvaccinated children from schools, daycare, etc.
I’m not pro or anti. Just the way I see it. It’s never going to change because people value their freedom.
What about valuing the health of their children? They’re not a simple extension of the parents, but human beings with needs of their own.
What matters is mum’s freedom to feel smug. Kid’s freedom to avoid suffering preventable disease – meh.
Here in GA it is not so steep. Kids must be vaccinated to go to public schools, but there are exemptions…such as if a child is going to be 5, and in a month lacking the prevnar, it is not needed because that child has the immunity against it. Just an example. People do homeschool their kids, and some are anti vax too. We haven’t had big outbreaks here.
Actually they do value….except the ones who lock their kids in a hot car.
Totally with you. I’m not pro or anti sober driving – I just respect people who value their freedom to drive drunk.
Exactly. I choose not to drink…:) Same with choosing to smoke or eat poorly, too.
The smug is strong with this one.
So, to her, driving drunk and opposing vaccines are simple exercises of personal freedom that should be respected. My Libertarian-sense is tingling.
I’m actually trying to figure out this phenomena why such controversy and the insults and the such. My kids are vaxed by the way.
And yet you crow about not “choosing to eat poorly”. Regardless of what you are trying to do, you come off as someone here to rub in how much better you are than we poor little bad choice makers.
Not really. Truly you are mistaken.
The situation was drunk *driving* vs sober *driving*.
*stealing*
Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins, as they say.
And they have that freedom. However, society has the right to say if you do that, your kids cannot attend public school.
Homeschooling the kids and no one says anything. However, when you hope to benefit from the things our society has to offer, you need to participate.
With the benefit of public education comes responsibility to the public. You choowe to opt out, and that’s your right. But you are opting out, which means fully out
It’s as fair as it can be
Laura J “people value their freedom”
I value the freedom to send my children to public schools where there is low chance they will contract preventable disease.
“How can you work on a day like this?” Ferris Bueller.
Every parent should have a choice whether to buckle their child up or not. Just because someone has decided against a restraint system, it’s their wish.
It’s a law here. People still choose not to even though they should. Same with vaxes.
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of an “analogy”?
The right of the parent, the choice of the parent… Let’s not forget, parents do choose, but here they don’t choose for themselves, they have do decide in the best interests of the child.
Let’s pause a moment to consider that.
Of course. That’s why you’ll hardly find a voice here advocating for mandatory vaccinations. Right isn’t the issue here.
But then, every parent should shoulder the burden of the consequences of the decision not to vax their child. That’s what ant-vaxxers have a problem with. They want to utilize their rights to the max and avoid the consequences for doing this to the max. That’s the issue.
I find it interesting is all. Consequences to any choices we make. I think that is for the most of life anyways.
Yet you didn’t mention consequences at all. You only sympathize with anti-vaxxers’ wish not to vaccinate. You seem to regard them as some kind of victims because not everyone thinks they should be given a free pass as far as consequences are concerned.
Like most of those who rush to defend them, you conflate the disapproval of certain actions and the wish to make people face the consequences for them with the desire to deprive people of the right to make them. Which no one here ever did. Anti-vaxxers are still allowed to go on as they wish. They simply won’t be treated as if they should escape consequences.
not siding with either.
Then perhaps you should try to discuss the real issues instead of the imaginary, “But they have the right!”?
There will always be a collision between science and personal beliefs. Science cannot answer all questions.
But it can answer the scientific ones. Like what medical treatments are safe.
There are certain questions that it can answer, those. What you’re saying is that because anti-vaxxers don’t like the answers, they should be allowed to move the goalposts, making sure that there is always a new question and meanwhile placing the entire herd at risk without facing any repercussions because rights.
An advocate of science should be careful to explain how science gives us a method to test only a part of our beliefs (that part we can subject to reproducible observation). Science cannot completely replace our personal beliefs, but it can demonstrate what part of our beliefs we can subject to a test, and use the results of tests to reach a consensus, even among those with different personal beliefs.
Once again, how do you imagine this consensus can be reached when anti-vaxxers howl, “It’s my right not to vaccinate and it’s infringment on my rights to keep my unvaxxed child from public schools, and you’re meanie for telling me that I’m freeloading?” All I’ve seen of you this far is meaningless words, bragging of your own healthy choices (guess what? I don’t smoke, I rarely drink and I don’t eat poorly either but I don’t feel the need to point it out as a great choice. It’s just how I live. It isn’t some great sacrifice.) and of course, your opening post defending anti-vaxxers’ right to refuse vaccines when no one ever said they should be forced into vaccinating.
I really can’t understand the purpose of your posts. If I was to go by their content, I’d say you were trying to derail the thread but they aren’t this numerous. What is your position, as a parent of vaccinated children, about unvaxxed (by choice) kids being allowed to attend public schools? We’ve already established that the rights aren’t the problem.
Without drifting off in general musings, if you please. Do you have a problem with unvaxxed by choice kids being forbidden to attend public schools or not?
We cannot force people to think our way merely with the power of our words and definitely not if also seeming to be wielding a delusional sense of having authority over what people should believe. The best we can do is explain why WE think the way we do. Lay it out for them gently and very, very patiently so that they can make up their own minds.
Never smoked and our family doesn’t drink. Vaccinated kids or not it doesn’t really bother me. Our kids are though. Hope I don’t get the flu before I get the shot…lol! I think I did 3 weeks ago.
The law is not concerned with what you believe, only with what you do.
So you’re for them not having to meet any consequences. Good to have this one cleared.
Priorities, priorities. Baby & family come first. Happy commenting.
Why, thanks. Happy dogding the issue and using your baby-free time for whiteknighting for leeches.You know, between worrying your pretty head about what healthy, conscientious choice of great eating you should make today since it seems to be very trying on you.
Not really Get lost in a maze and find something useful to do. Go take your Latuda, you missed a dose.
That’s rich, coming from someone who passive-aggressively trolls discussions here. Your posts are all posture, no substance.
But they make her look good in her own mind. Just like her non-drinking habit. Cause you know, Laura is one of the few chosen ones who don’t succumb to this vile habit.
For Irene;
sub·stance
NOUN
a particular kind of matter with uniform properties:
the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence:
proteins compose much of the actual substance of the body”
off target honey, poor vocab context
It’s pretty rich, too, you accuse someone being poor at context when clearly, you couldn’t figure out which meaning of “substance” Irene was referring to based on context.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1237212389671431&set=p.1237212389671431&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1237212389671431&set=p.1237212389671431&type=3
I wonder if you would be okay with gentle persuasion if your 1 month old was coughing so hard they turned blue and threw up for THREE MONTHS, because someone like Heather Dexter deliberately brought her sick kids around yours.
Other people get literally sick at the idea, but your need to put personal vanity on a pedestal is more important than the life of your child, right?
She’s probably be just OK. As she said, all she cares about is being gentle and patient with the DANGEROUS loons.
I’d like to ask her if she’s be fine with a little disease vector sitting in the same class as a classmate of mine who died of a heart disease before we turned ten. I don’t actually know if he was medically exempted but I know my mom would have never forgiven herself if I gave him something that he’d have had harder time with than most children. And she sure as hell wouldn’t have said, “oh vaxxed or not, doesn’t really bother me”.
But I won’t ask Laura. I’m afraid that she’s actually reply. And as far as I can remember, his mother wasn’t making as great lifechoices as Laura does. She was a little obese. Sure, they sold their house to assure that he’d get the best treatment abroad but I guess she chose to eat poorly. For some reason, Laura decided that this part of her bragging was very important in a vaccine debate.
I wish I had time tonight, too much going on at the house and this week. Baby goes to ENT tomorrow and getting shots on Thursday.
Of course it can’t. We look to the law to do such things.
Yes science is never 100percent. The earth would still be flat.
Do you honestly think that widespread belief that the earth was flat actually made it so? The earth isn’t flat and never has been.
The knowledge that it wasn’t flat was one of the earliest discoveries of science, period. Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the planet to a high degree of accuracy in ~200 BC.
Flat-earth-ers have always been a fringe group that deny the science. Like anti-vaxxers.
Sorry you misunderstood. I do not believe the earth is flat. The poi t is the majority of people did believe that. Science can never be 100 percent fact. We have to be open minded to new discovery’s. I want to always hear both sides.
Science can never be 100% fact, but it is always more and more accurate as time goes on. Scientists knew, back in the days of the ancient Greeks, that the earth wasn’t flat. They thought it was round – which wasn’t 100% correct, but very close. We’ve revised our model as we know more and our measurements get more accurate – it’s not perfectly round, but round was a good model for the time, and not as blatantly inaccurate as flat.
And I think you’re overstating popular opinion. Columbus wasn’t mocked because he thought the world was round – all sailors who could get anywhere knew it was. He was mocked for thinking he could sail to India directly by going west. And he was rightly mocked, because if the Americas weren’t in the way and a very hospitable place, he would have been screwed.
You’re basically saying “See! Ancient scientists thought the world was round, when it’s actually a bit flattened around the equator due to spin, so science doesn’t have all of the answers and I can make up whatever sounds best to me!”
Snort! “Is all” is never “all” with anti-vaxers!
Yes. Choice. We cannot give our bodies over to corporations and government. They do not care about people. Profits unfortunately are what our society cares about.
I love this!
you can trust them when they admit something that’s not in pharma’s interest. who reads inserts anyways? doctors?!?
apparently, many anti-vaxxers tell people to read the inserts as “proof” that vaccines are harmful.
There are nerds everywhere, and some read such things out of pure curiosity.
luckily. meanwhile check out the definition of anti, none, and a. as in asocial as opposed to anti social. most get that wrong.
ditto regarding
vaccines and vaccination.
Huh?
do you know the difference between asocial and anti social?
same applies to this issue.
can’t make it plainer than that.
Do you know the difference between “come here” and “sic’em”? Or maybe the difference between your ass and your elbow?
I understand the difference between the prefix anti- and the prefix a-. That does not help me to understand your previous post or your stance.
Are you claiming to be an a-vaxer rather than an anti-vaxer? If so, how are you defining those terms? Again, I understand the meaning of the prefixes, so you might need an entire sentence or two to answer this one.
brava/o!
i define terms as they are defined.
Unambiguous, obtuse troll is unambiguously obtuse.
you don’t have to explain yourself. it’s obvious.
That is generally the goal of communication…making one’s meaning obvious. You seem to be reaching for some other goal.
If multiple people can’t understand a word you are saying, the problem is you. You’re the bad communicator.
a and anti are defined and can be found in a dictionary.
Yes. We’re aware.
What we’re waiting for is evidence that sabelmouse is an avaccinator (as in “personally is without vaccines””) as opposed to sabelmouse being an antivaccinator (as in “spreads nonsense about vaccines”)
Let’s start with a simple question:
“Sabelmouse, is there mercury in vaccines?”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ed214a578907859bf503b29df9717e6c7df26291bd993bfa0b0d5a3387d8175e.jpg
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6)
Except you are quite clearly against vaccinations in their entirety, not simply personally abstaining from them.
and you surmise this how?
Le’s see, lying about vaccines, from making up side effects to misrepresenting their effectiveness, and upvoting those who do the same.
i really do need some laughs today, thanks.
You lie about chemistry … or the other alternative is that you have an 8th grade understanding of chemistry and thinks it’s sufficient to overturn the decades-long medical and scientific consensus. It’s not.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9391344a71c9f8b790bc84869a0e646f18f2d2aed272b2516642463851233e63.jpg
more laughs,thanks.
That’s the point of edutainment.
Still holding to your obvious lie that you are not anti-vaccine?
You might have a point if you just told people that “I don’t take vaccines.”
I’m afluvaccine, for example. Because I’m a lazy sod.
What I don’t do is go around ignoring basic chemistry to make people fear it – that would make me anti-flu-vaccine.
and what might your actual point be?
That you don’t have one.
are we doing kafka?
Only if Franz consents to being done.
Vocally and enthusiastically. (Sorry, late to the party, but couldn’t pass that one up.)
I guess Thomas Johnson felt his statements weren’t worth standing by.
When I first glanced at his posts my mind misread his name as Thomas Jefferson. (My mind does that a lot, often with hilarious results.). Which made me want to form a response based on the first cabinet rap battle from Hamilton. Damn, that would have been awesome!
His first and last names are slang terms for a penis. My sense of humor is stuck in kindergarten.
“Children who haven’t been vaccinated pose a risk because they can carry and spread vaccine preventable diseases.”
So can vaccinated children, there are some in every outbreak. Are you really an MD??
Gee, and if we compare the vaccinated children to the unvaccinated children during an outbreak, the ones in which group are more likely to come down with the illness (and therefore infect others)?
The group which as you say includes “some,” or the group which includes many?
Implicit in the author’s statement is that vaccinated people will not get sick and infect others. This is totally irresponsible and misleading.
What’s irresponsible and misleading is ignoring the fact that in most vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, the unvaccinated are the majority of the sick.
Vaccine failure is relatively rare. The problem lies in failing to use the vaccine.
Don’t blame us (the vaccine protected) for the problems and outbreaks you cause.
I’m not blaming you for anything, I’m saying the doctor is either seriously misinformed or incompetent, probably both.
You make sweeping statements, but have offered no sources to support them.
So Thomas Johnson “I’m saying the doctor is either seriously misinformed or incompetent” – do you define “misinformed or incompetent” as “does not agree with me, Thomas Johnson”?
And you are qualified to judge this how, exactly?
Statistically speaking, they are far, far less likely to.
So vaccines partially work, but they also partially damage people, so where do we go from here?
Back under your rock? That’s a good place to go.
What basis do you have for your claim that they damage people?
Damage? How so?
*is agog*
You never heard of vaccine injuries?
Yes, I have, but TRUE vaccine injuries are relatively rare. Crap people like to blame on vaccines is what runs rampant.
Have you never heard of natural immunity injuries?
Well…normally, we start with risk/risk analysis – how much damage does the disease do? Then we compare them and see which is safer.
Then we set up compensation funds to ensure that people who do the right thing or have ill fortune aren’t financially ruined by doing the right thing or just plain bad luck.
Who’s talking about “partially ‘damaging’ people”, other than the AVers?
No. You’re reading into her statement in order to argue a point that wasn’t made. Some people would describe that as a strawman.
Whether or not other children for whom getting a vaccine did not in fact provide protection exist, the fact remains that those who were never vaccinated are likely to contract and spread disease — and that increases the risks for everyone.
I agree with Box that you’re reading into the statement. However, vaccinated kids do have a much lower chance of getting sick and infecting others.
Bull.
They get the common cold as often as unvaccinated, but they don’t catch measles, mumps, or rubella at nearly the same rate.
Both sober drivers and drunk drivers can have accidents. You won’t mind if I drive drunk, right?
I’m sure Thomas does not wear seatbelts in cars, because belted people die, too.
He also does not use carseats, because infants die in carseats. Some have injuries in crashes that are specifically caused by the carseat.
Speeds too? People driving at the speed limit can have accidents.
I’m sure he’s happy if his food servers don’t wash their hands after they poop, because proper hand-washing does not fully eliminate disease, only reduces it.
And he doesn’t mind if I drive drunk and over the speed limit whilst texting since even the driver who does everything right can have an accident.
I am sure he doesn’t mind if little kids run out in front of the road in front of him either since even sensible little kids can be run over.
Nor does he mind if bigger kids listen to music whilst crossing the road since even kids paying attention can be run over.
Nor does it matter whether daycare pays attention to his kids near water since kids can drown even when supervised.
Nor would it matter if I fed his child at all if I was babysitting for him for a month or so since even fed kids can die.
He also refuses to use any kind of birth control, because contraceptives are not 100% effective.
Or use an umbrella, because you can still get wet.
@sabelmouse We can all see you lurking. Is there no claim so stupid, no lie so baldfaced, that you won’t upvote it if it conforms to your bullshit biases?
oh sweet! no idea what you’re talking about by i looove the attention.
why lurking? aren’t these threads meant to be read?
We know you’re an attention wh*re!
Well, seeing as how you are now upvoting not just Dee’s lies, but Slammo’s aggressive aggrandizement of belligerent ignorance, I’m guessing the answer to my question is “no”.
lol! checking who upvotes whom and then running after them and commenting on it ?!?
I don’t take kindly to people cheering on liars. Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
well, i don’t. have you noticed me upvoting any shills?
Yes.
You have been notorious for upvoting fellow antivax shills, Sabel.
Not just the ones here, but your track record on the past shows it.
wow mikey, what happened? you’ve forgotten the definition of the word shill? to uncomfortable?
You get paid by AOA to post antivax comments we gather. That’s shilling.
oh mickey!
That’s what all the girls say.
Not THE definition, no.
I am not entirely clear on YOUR definition, however.
Just last week I took all 6 kids to my son’s freshman orientation at the high school. One of the teachers stopped me and was chatting. She’d raised 5 kids, so seeing a big family perked her interest. Somehow we got on the subject of vaccines and she said she didn’t think it was necessary because the dirt from a household with 5 kids boosted their immunity. I was shocked that this woman was a high school teacher in a public school and didn’t vaccinate!! I told her that I had 6 kids, a messy house*, 2 dogs, a cat, a bunch of chickens AND the kids were all fully vaccinated, including the flu shot. I said believed in giving them EVERY tool at my disposal to build their immunity.
*my house is not that messy. Yes, I could do more, but I can’t relax in a dirty house.
A dirty house is not going to boost your immunity to the measles virus.
God, when I type it that way, it pretty much is obvious that it goes without saying.
I’m trying to connect A to B, and they’re just on such different planes of relevance that I can’t even come up with a halfway legitimate-sounding rationale.
I bet she’s heard about the hygiene hypothesis of allergies and is confusing it with “boosting your immune system”. Because obviously, of something is good for one aspect of the immune system, it’s good for everything in the immune system… Sigh.
Although, kids living together do tend to catch each others’ illnesses and pretty soon all of them become immune to what one of them got. But they still need to catch it before they can even start to mount an immunity. It’s OK if we’re talking about colds and other benign, self-limited diseases. With measles or pertussis, mumps or varicella, with the potential for death or life-long sequelae, she’s taking a really big gamble with the health of her kids. And mostly riding on the coattails of the families who vaccinate.
My neighbor is the youngest of 6 kids. She was the only one of her sibs not to get chickenpox as a kid. She got it from her son, who got it from a guest at his 2 year birthday party. By then she had two kids to take care of.
Right…this is why childhood illnesses throughout history have left the poor untouched, because their dirty houses were protecting them…
My mom and dad both came from families with 5 kids each. My paternal grandmother wasn’t know for her house cleaning to say the least! Both my mom and dad got mumps and measles because there was no vaccine yet. I’m pretty sure my grandparents who lived on farms and came from families of 12 and 13 got it, too.
i’m praying she’s not in science or social studies…
Me, too! I should’ve asked what subject she taught, but I was just so floored by her views on vaccines (and I was trying to keep my toddlers from tearing down the posters in the hall), that I just didn’t ask. Neither of my high school kids have her this year and I hope it stays that way!
Our state doesn’t allow personal vaccine exemptions and the biggest and best pediatric practice in town won’t see anti-vaccine families, so it’s rare to run into an anti-vacc advocate in a mainstream setting.
CPS needs to be on her now! Seriously I know that going overboard with being clean isn’t good and all, but this is down right nasty and unhygienic
She was in her late 50’s-early 60’s. I think she said her youngest child was 27, so they’re all grown and gone at this point.
Also, aside from the fact that her kids are grown, Cookiebaker didn’t say THAT woman had chickens, etc. running around the house that she never cleaned up after. The woman simply said that she thought the regular household dirt in a home with five kids boosted their immune system. She didn’t say she never cleaned, or that the house was filled with trash. She was stupid about vaccines, but christ, DON’T call CPS just because someone says their house has household germs in it.
I teach with someone in the math department who did not vaccinate his children, and there are other staff members in our district who did not, either. (It came up in my Anatomy and Physiology class two years ago.) These individuals were all babies at the time of the fraudulent Wakefield paper. I just kind of sighed and said, “Well, when you’re 18, you can make your own decisions.” (As in, make up for your parents’ neglect.) I am in Oregon, very lax on laws.
What happened to sanitation eliminating these illnesses?
Whatever fits!
PSA
If you have kids who are going to college, or planning to take a year and go travelling, or who are going to any big music festivals, or sports events or conventions, make sure they get any boosters for meningitis and MMR they might need.
Public Health England is having a bit of a nightmare because several people with measles went to Glastonbury and various other festivals this year. At east some of them KNEW they had measles and KNEW they were infectious, and went anyway.
Glastonbury is festival with about 500,000 people in a small area, with minimal hygiene facilites, and it tends to be popular with the alternative/hippy crowd who are less keen on vaccination. It is basically worst case scenario for VPD.
Oh good lord!
Hmmmm…I’m going to a big music festival next summer. I’ll look into meningitis before going. Thanks, Dr Kitty, for the PSA.
According to all I’ve read, you should look into your measles immunity, too.
I didn’t even know we had a meningitis vaccine! (I mean, I just get all the vaccines offered to me, so sometimes I don’t remember what they were actually *for.* )But I did know that college students living in dorms are a high-risk group.
The U.K. Is currently offering everyone starting university in September a meningitis ACWY vaccination for the second year running as there has been a sharp increase in the previously rare strains.
It’s also a highly recommended vaccine for anyone going on hajj.
Meningitis C and B are in the UK routine childhood vaccination programme ( B was added last year).
Meningitis vaccinations are very hard for anti-vaxxers to argue against, there is no “natural immunity” or “mild illness” here. These are diseases which maim and kill even the healthiest kids, often too quickly to be stopped by everything modern medicine can throw at them.
As far as travel is concerned, for those in the US the CDC offers country-specific recommendations for immunizations needed and suggested for travel. (It also includes whether or not malaria prophylaxis is required).
The UK has http://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk, which is an excellent site.
Country and disease specific advice, general advice about avoiding illness and travelling, and up to date info on things like Zika. I think it is a bit easier to navigate than the CDC page, but that’s a personal opinion.
Yeah, when a member of a sports team dies two weeks after having been doing fine during a game, it’s really hard to pass them off as “weak”.
Healthy young college man died in the dorms in 1970. His roommate survived only because the other guys physically carried him to the hospital.
Holy sh…..
My little brother got it when he was 9. Thank fully my mother noticed something was “off” very early on and took him straight to the ER. He was just complaining of a bad headache but when he sat up she said she notice something strange about how he held his head and neck really stiffly. He survived but it damaged his brain in such a way that his short term memory is almost non-existent.
Had a college acquaintance who got meningitis. Can’t recall which kind. I just remember she was told there was a vaccine for it.
My doctor had insisted I get the vaccine before I left for college, thank God. It was not required at our university at the time, because my acquaintance was not vaccinated. She wasn’t anti-vaccine, she was just a 19-year-old girl who didn’t know she should get the shot.
She was incredibly, incredibly sick. Fortunately, she survived without major repercussions. It could have be much worse.
Is that the same as pneumococcal vaccine? I got it when I moved from Canada to the UK.
No, that is a different vaccine, (although pneumococcus is another possible cause of meningitis)
The main causes are meningococcus, HiB (notw virtually unheard of thanx to vax) and pneumococcus. E.coli, other gram negative bugs, Staph, Strep etc can rarely cause meningitis too.
ACWY is given at age 11-12 and then again at 16 in the US. B was just added as “permissive” (not recommended) last summer for older teens.
When I went to Russia, I also got Hep B and C boosters, and TB booster I think.
I think you mean Hep A and Hep B. There is no vaccine for Hep C. It was also probably a Td booster, hopefully Tdap if you’ve never had it. We don’t vaccinate for TB in the US.
Just for clarity. I’m glad you got your shots.
No problem – I figured I might not remember everything. I focused more on remembering my actual trip, which was AMAZING!
Great!
Sometimes I think about writing a book about it, but I want to go back there first. This should give you an idea, though. I was interviewed about my trip because of me having cerebral palsy: http://www.sras.org/stephanie_briggs_disabled_russia Russia, at least from appearances, seemed a daunting travel destination because of possible accessibility issues.
It wasn’t as difficult I’d thought it would be. 😀 Fodor’s had all these warnings: mostly about cultural mores in Russia.
It was completely inaccurate. Fortunately, neither Mom or I committed any social gaffes. But if anyone took the book’s advice literally, they would have come across as a mean, nasty and patronising tourist.
Dr. Tuteur has supplied us with a splendid retort to the anti-vaxers! I’m sure it will get plenty of use.
One of the things I would like to see the State of Colorado enforce is their law that allows belief exemptions only if some one is opposed to the practice of vaccination. Note this does not say opposed to any particular vaccines, so being picky about which vaccines you want your child to have or not would not warrant a belief exemption.
Screw that. Belief exemptions need to be eliminated entirely.
I never heard of that in Colorado and I worked peds /public health in CO for 30 years. AFAIK, you can be opposed to vaccination, vaccines, or a specific vaccine.
They do now require the parents to submit an exemption form every year instead of just once; the schools will no longer carry the forms, either
The above is as of this school year.
Apologies if this has been answered already but I keep seeing antivaxxers saying, “Are you up to date on your vaccines? Most adults aren’t.” as if it’s some amazing gotcha against mandating vaccines for children. I don’t get the logic. What are they trying to argue with that? How do you respond?
i guess they figure its hypocritical of anyone to advocate vaccinations for others (children) but not get any new ones themselves. I tell them the truth; i’ve had all my boosters and i shall get this year’s flu shot at my appointment.
No, it’s a “gotcha” question.
There is no right answer. If you say no, you’re a hypocrite, but if you say yes, you’re a sheeple.
Ding ding ding. I believe you hit the nail on the head
Wait, I think I have an answer! “Oh, I try to keep them up to date when I remember or am reminded by a doctor. Speaking of preventing disaster, are your smoke detector batteries under six months old? Because most people don’t keep those up to date, it’s terrible! We should clearly just stop mandating smoke detectors.”
LOL, that’s a very good parallel.
It seems to me like that makes vaccinating kids more rather than less important!
They think that is proves that since most adults grew up with a vaccine schedule that had far less on it and look! Nothing happened, they are ok, that is proves you don’t need to be fully vaccinated according to today’s recommended schedule. My parents got immunity from catching mumps and chicken pox. They have terrible stories about how much they suffered during these so called “mild” diseases.
Yeah, it’s weird to me that people get all crazy over the pain of the job but disregard the pain of mumps and the itching and scarring of chickenpox.
I always wonder what they would do if they had to give themselves or their kids insulin shots.
My husband and I both have a couple facial scars from chicken pic. His is much less noticeable than mine (I had chicken pic at 13). We joke that our son is going to be so much better looking than either if us based on him being vaccinated against chicken pox.
I had the anti-vaxxer’s ‘perfect’ episode of chicken pox. No hospitalization, no scars. It was still weeks of misery and quarantine that I would happily have avoided. I remember the joy and family hugs when I was finally allowed out of my bedroom again!
Yes, all those who are adults now survived those illnesses.
ETA: Snide comment. Survivor’s bias is a well-known fallacy.
It’s a little hard to get feedback from those who actually died from the diseases… (/snark)
Sometimes I want ghosts to be a thing, just so we can figure out how to hook up an Ouija board or something to the internet.
I want them to be real too. Halloween is my favorite holiday!
From TAVS:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94a3b3a8e4704034c9fcf5f065e1979ef400571520dbcb2b00ef96eb93accaa6.png
They won’t get it!
Lurkers might, though.
I died! But I got better.
Make a page as Jesus and troll them? *nonchalantly whistles*
No thank you! It’s hard enough getting some privacy around here without invisible, intangible people hanging about.
I only want them to be able to haunt facebook and disqus to be honest. 😛
Does it make you feel better to know that physics says all ghosts are blind?
It would, if they weren’t already violating physics.
And biology and chemistry. But not necessarily a good story!
It’s true. Sure, we have family members who had polio and didn’t up in an iron lung and grew to adulthood. We also put flowers on the graves of the ones who died from polio. The anti vax reasoning doesn’t take reality into account at all.
They’re trying to be snide.
Ask them where their smallpox vax scar is.
I got the vax (born in 1960, we all did) but I have no scar. I have been told this means I didn’t react and thus get immunity. Good thing smallpox is gone!
Possibly. My scar is just about gone (born in 1962 in the US). My sister never had to get it – born 1967. I was incredibly jealous.
I had the vax-born 1963-and also no scar.
My memory is quite hazy about this, but IIRC, you were supposed to go back to the doctor some days after you got the smallpox vax to see if it “took”. I sort of remember my mom not taking us back because it was obvious it had taken. I have a scar, it fades with age. Got the vax about 1954.
If they are military or former, they might have one. Mine from 2008 is still hanging on.
I have one, but I was born in 1969.
I almost died of mastoiditis (ear infection spread t mastoid-bone? Process?) as a child and was quite happy for my kids to get pneumococcal vaccine. A statistician told me she refused that one because we have antibiotics. Antibiotics of course are not risk free! Presumably greater risk than the vaccine and of course we do know serious problems from overuse of antibiotics.
Oh, but antibiotics are OK. Vaccines are evil, because they are mostly shots. (Wonder how they’d react to an antibiotic shot? Those suckers HURT!!!)
I got the antibiotic shot in the ass when I was in the ER with a broken bone that was leaking marrow. Vaccines hurt less.
The last time I got a penicillin shot was for strep throat. I started to wonder if it would be worth it to just take my chances on the strep. That thing hurt. Good news is 12 hours later I was already feeling 90% better. I guess it was worth it.
6% of infants with pneumococcal meningitis die.
16% of survivors have brain damage.
14% of survivors have epilepsy or seizures.
25% of survivors are hearing impaired.
That doesn’t count the pneumococcal sepsis and pneumonia morbidity and mortality.
“We have antibiotics” is not a good reason not give pneumococcal vaccination.
My sister-in-law is part of the 25%: she’s deaf in one ear due to meningitis as a toddler. When our pediatrician offered the pneumococcal vaccine to our twins, we fucking JUMPED at the chance.
Good grief. After our family’s brush with viral meningitis, I’m terrified of my toddler getting meningitis. It is horrible, horrible horrible. My husband is still suffering headaches, photophobia and small memory lapses *months* afterwards. So much for fully recovering in a few weeks.
I don’t understand people who think they are smarter in regards to vaccines than the agencies and doctors who put out the vaccine protocol. Unless my pediatrician recommends not getting something and can give me a good reason why, I’m getting it for my child! And as someone who dealt with a potentially deadly delayed allergic reaction to sulfa after I got a skin staph infection, I know if I ever contract MRSA, I’ll probably have to be hospitalized to receive a vancomycin IV. You just never know what antibiotics you might be allergic to and what the consequences that will be!
By the time you become infected and diagnosed so that you can get said antibiotics, you’re suffering some pretty nasty symptoms. Why endure that?
When I was working in “little” pharma, I had a co-worker refuse the flu vaccine because she “didn’t trust the government.” I couldn’t wrap my head around that one, since we saw DAILY what all is required to take a drug to market and keep it there.
As someone who is allergic to two classes of antibiotics, and who has a loooooong list of health problems, I am very, very glad that I was allowed to get the pneumococcal vaccine/booster a few years early a few months before I was put on an immune-suppressant.
Vaccines are easy; especially since my heart surgery so they no longer send me to hospital. Certainly easier than having to inject myself with anti-TNF every fortnight; more like the pricks for my blood glucose testing (type 2 diabetes) and I’m not complaining about that because one of my daughters-in-law has type one diabetes and has to inject herself several times a day in addition to the finger pricks.
A statistician told me she refused that one because we have antibiotics.
Did you remind her that prevention is better than cure? Or would that have been too obvious?
Yep. Including smallpox (post 9/11 hysteria) and anthrax (clinical trial). And I haven’t missed a flu shot in two decades.
I’m up to date on all my vaccines. I don’t know about “most” adults, but don’t pretend like this is a gotcha against me.
And I advocate as well that all adults should get up to date
I missed a flu vaccine once, about a decade ago. It happened to correspond with the year that my daughter’s flu vaccine was delayed due to a shortage at her pediatricians. Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. Plus post-influenza pneumonia. We get our vaccines early in the season now.
IN my line of work, I get a review every six months and a reminder of when any of my vaccines expires. Apparently I have until December to get Japanese encephalitis shots. I’m getting it tomorrow.
I respond with the truth: “Yes, I am up to date.” And if they harp on their idea that most adults aren’t, I follow up with more truth: I encourage all adults to get yearly flu shots and keep up with their boosters. As someone in a high-risk group for life-threatening flu complications, it’s important to me.
The more I think about it the more stupid the question becomes. Adults not up to date on their shots is a public health issue to be dealt with by funding it and launching a campaign to get doctors to routinely offer boosters when they see their patients (as they already do with flu shots). It’s not a reason to stop mandating children get the shots to attend school. So stupid.
It’s a way that they’re saying that people are hypocrites if they push vaccines for kids but aren’t up to date themselves. But as you note, the solution for that is to get the adults up to date too! Jeez. Helping get adults up to date on their vaccines is literally my job, as a pharmacist, and I’m happy to do it! And I am up to date myself as well.
I get the flu vaccine every year but now I’m wondering about Tdap booster. I thought I got one a few years ago but I don’t remember. Need to follow up on that.
Currently, you’re only supposed to get one Tdap per lifetime unless you’re a pregnant woman; they you’re supposed to get one each pregnancy.
That doesn’t sound right. First, the tetanus booster has been suggested every 10 years for a long time. Then they repackaged it with the pertussis and diphtheria. My parents were encouraged to get a booster for that by their HMO even though they were not pregnant or planning to be around newborns. My pediatrician insisted that everyone who would be around the infants get a booster – not just the pregnant mother. WebMD (not my favorite source, but whatever) currently states that “the current recommendation is that everyone needs a booster shot for tetanus and diphtheria every 10 years after first being immunized.”
It’s right. Td (tetanus -diphtheria )every 10 tears with one of those a Tdap. Pregnant women should get a Tdap in the third tlrimestler of every pregnancy, no matter how close they are. See the CDC. I’m in the car, can’t post a link right now.
Right, for tetanus and diphtheria, without the pertussis component. Td, not Tdap.
Booster every 10 years on the US schedule.
Also I bet some adults not up to date have some immunity? Maybe not much for flu, but they probably are more likely to have more protection against the TDP set of bugs than someone who never had a vaccination.
Yes, and adults born in the US before 1957 are considered immune to measles and mumps by right; those born in the US before 1980 are considered immune to chickenpox. About 85% of adults born before 1957 have had rubella as well. Prior to universal Hib vaccination for infants (1991 in the US) about 100% had had a Hib infection by age 6, and 100% had had rotavirus infection before the vaccine in 2006.
Which campaign is in the works from my reading.
I think it’s a good question generally, but not how anti-vaxxers use/abuse it. Asked in more of a general population, it can serve as a great reminder for us to check our vaccination status.
My response is that yep, I’m fully UTD. Two babies in the past four years = two TDAP boosters. Titres checked for MMR prior to this most recent pregnancy, and our whole family makes an annual event out of our flu shots. Then again, I also have a shirt that says “Hug me, I’m vaccinated.” …
I have a shirt that says, “Ask me why I vaccinate”. I used to wear it to work. That’s a little different, I realize.
You can brag when they’re in college. Meanwhile, the verdict is still out…
My children are adults. What’s your point?
I didn’t think I was addressing you….oh, that’s right, I wasn’t. ..
Explain the concept of a public forum, will you?
Ahem…I’ve seen the doctor’s bio photo so it comes as no surprise that she’s raised children to adulthood. Why she would address me after it was I had responded on this thread to a young and rather brashly sophomoric mother of small children instead, remains a mystery.
If by chance I was too subtle in my meaning when responding to the young lady, let me suggest again that once this young mother who has bragged of seeking out vaccines while her children were inutero and whom it is continues to actively seek all available vaccines for her children, raises those children to adulthood, we can then compare the well-being of the children we’ve all then raised.
Meanwhile, she hasn’t yet raised healthy children and has a long way to go before it can at all be said she’s made all the right choices or is at all in a position to criticize the parenting choices of others…
i’m 40 and i raised my baby brother before i had my own. I agree with Bugsy, who by the way is too old for “young lady”. Just because you have a newborn doesn’t mean you aren’t middle aged.
Quite, and just because you are 40, no matter how many little ones you may have supervised, does not necessarily mean you have raised any of your own children to adulthood or that any of them are a healthy, or intellegent, talented, personable, or emotionally balanced examples of your parenting skills either. I suggest parents save their judgements of other parents until they can show they haven’t phuqued up their own kids before criticizing the parenting choices made by other parents.
You should take your own advice.
And as an aside, the word is “fucked”. Misspelling it so that you avoid swearing on a technicality looks incredibly childish.
Never EVER will you see writing of mine, in which I’m explaining to others how to parent, or how to spell, or how others should be sanctioned if they don’t agree with my opinions for how they should raise theIr children………….that would be YOU.
Except for all the smugly condescending posts you’ve made about people’s vaccinated kids, you mean?
Nope, I don’t think that’s correct. Now I might reserve the right to sometime in the future make a remark about somebody like YOU, who has never once for even one moment had to agonize over the future well being of one’s own child. I might however still want to insult you since it is you like to belittle people who have been in such a position to need to make vaccine choices, unlike you…
..but ummm…nope, I don’t think you’ll have found me picking on moms and dadsfor whatever vaccine choices they’ve made…That would be YOU.
Suppose Bob doesn’t feed his child. What do you think should happen to Bob?
”
Never EVER will you see writing of mine, in which I’m explaining to others how to parent, or how to spell, or how others should be sanctioned if they don’t agree with my opinions for how they should raise theIr children………….that would be YOU.”
Oh, you think “kids, lme aside should be vaccinated” is just our opinion? It’s one backed by every major health org in the world – is yours?
As for opinions about how to raise children, I don’t even have kids and though it isn’t my place to tell you what brand of formula to use or whether to breastfeed or not, I am confident of a few things:
-Children need to be fed.
-Children need either toilets, potties or diapers/nappies.
-Children need protection from the elements.
You will however imply that vaccinating one’s child could lead to consequences such as that child not going to college and you will take it upon yourself to tell the blog’s author that she should not reply to a comment you made in the public comments section of her blog.
In case you are not clear on this, commenting publicly does carry with it the possibility others will respond to both the content and the presentation, grammar and spelling of your comment. If you cannot handle that or will be offended by it, you should avoid commenting in public forums. Perhaps a handwritten journal would be a good place for your thoughts?
You are of course free to infer what you will, but by no means did I state that vaccinating one’s child would prevent the child from getting into college…I find you assertion that I have done so to be ludicrous.
However, I will forever so quickly admonish a childless person with no experience as well as a new parent with very little experience in raising children, should such a critic attack someone else’s decision making or execution in child rearing. I do so because they, such critics, have never actually struggled with the responsibility of making medical decisions on behalf of another human as parents do for their children, or the 24/7/365 dilligence required for the minimum of 18 years as necessary in raising a child without bungling the job.
If you haven’t done it, you aren’t an expert….
And of course anyone is free to comment on my comments, including you. Again, as for Dr. Tuteur, she apparently hastily assumed I was addressing her in the imperative, which I was not. A simple misunderstanding, I’m sure. I quite doubt she finds any of this former matter at all troubling while I’m most sure it is otherwise she certainly would be quite capable of defending herself against me should she feel some burning need and so without any help from you.
And if you have done it, you are an expert only on the specific experience you had, not on doing it in general.
Right, and making hysterical claims against others as being child abusers or some such nonsense when the kids are in fact perfectly unharmed is just absurd. Yet it happens all the time.
I haven’t seen any hysterical claims lately, but I’ll keep that in mind.
Raising a kid doesn’t give you a medical degree. I don’t care how many kids you have or haven’t raised, your personal experience does not trump medical consensus.
Most of the parents at my job have a medical or science degree (or both). They vaccinate their kids.
Only in a rarity of the world’s countries, and 3 out of 50 if these United States, does governmental representation of medical consensus override individual choice in this matter or can medical interventions be performed without the free consent of a patient or the patient’s guardian. Even then and most of the time it still can’t be forced but instead sanctions or punishment is all that ensues but not forced vaccination.
The same goes for China’s one child policy; they pretty much just fine you rather than killing an unborn fetus or force sterilization.
I’m not here to argue that vaccines are bad or that I think people should never get them or that I don’t think they don’t work. And I haven’t actually said any such thing.
I’m instead here pointing out that most everyone else here like you, likes to stick their noses in other people’s affairs and when it is they shouldn’t and when it is they most certainly do not have the right to do so.
I’m here to point out that people like you who think that buracracy should dictate what medical procedures people should undergo and when, think just as fascists do.
I don’t like fascism. I’ll always speak out against fascism. And I’ll always point out to people like you when it is you might adopt a fascist mindset whether you are conscious of it or not.
Public health is not “sticking my nose in other people’s affairs”. You’re not allowed to shit in the street, you can’t dump your garbage in the watershed, and now you can’t send your kids to school without vaccinations or a medical reason they cannot be vaccinated. Because it’s about more than just you.
And if you think that’s fascist, your knowledge of politics is just as laughable as your knowledge of medicine. Mere exercise of governmental power does not fascism make. Hell, outright authoritarianism is not sufficient to make a policy or government fascist.
Edit: Just noticed this juicy tidbit:
I would love to see some evidence that this is happening. Go on, I’ll wait.
Exactly right medical interventions are not happening without the free consent of a patient or a patient’s guardian. Your know damn well I’ve been saying exactly that all over this very thread. Perhaps you might go back and reread a bit if yoi think you think ive been claiming needles have been jabbed into arms while parents protested….Of course many families are being COERCED to give that consent while it also is some of the folks on this thread are calling for kids to be force vaccinated and wide for it to happen but that of course is not me making such claims of there being a right of the public safety for such to be forced.
But hey Skippy, why don’t you go ahead a school me on fascism and tell me what the indicators are…
Sure, lets talk about fascism and its indicators (says the person with a BA and MA in politics and political economy).
It’s usually populist, taking root in times of economic turmoil by promising a return to a mythical, idealized past. It’s associated with violence- Brownshirts or the like, rallies that are violent and hate-filled, and often orchestrated riots. Fascism is also associated with oligarchy as an economic system; friends of the government are given free reign to make lots of money very corruptly, and only a small coterie of businesspeople is counted in that group. These people control the economic means of production, though in the end all production is for the use and benefit of the state. It’s not a controlled economy per se because the government isn’t calling the shots on what factory makes what, but government needs do drive economic output.
Fascism is also strongly correlated with all sorts of bigotry- misogyny, racism, xenophobia, that sort of thing. It’s a pretty militaristic and nationalistic ideology as well, focused on military strength and meeting international goals through threat and use of force instead of diplomacy. The military, especially a very machismo-filled variety of it, is held up as beyond reproach no matter what. Combined with this is denigration of women, who are relegated to raising sons to turn into soldiers for the homeland. All this aggression is turned towards the Other, who is usually of a different race and/or religion; fear of this Other stokes the nationalistic fervor and paranoia inherent in fascism.
Something you might note is a distinct lack of forced medical care … because that simply isn’t a hallmark of fascism. Oh, that’s not saying that forced medical care is good! It’s not. But it’s also not fascistic.
I like that answer.
I caught myself wanting to criticize you for too much focus on fashion and dichotomy as it may have uniquely accompanied previous renditions of fascism in their respective places and times, and which as features, are generally mentioned too much i think, and weigh too heavily upon most other people’s discriptions.
However yours was quite well balanced in also alluding to the heart of the synergy formed between favored private enterprise (oligarchy) and government, working toward a mutual goal of expanding the scope of influence for each other and doing so all the while justifying the requisite corrupt centralization of authority to the people as some grand cause toward a greater efficiency. I very much agree with most all of what you wrote.
Well done.
Now, may I tell you about special interest money in Sacramento influencing the former director of the US Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, who for some time now runs the California University system which has within it UC Davis, which had until recently an outrageously corrupt leadership which actually ordered physical assault on protesting students..as Davis has and further stands to bring in significant funds from vaccine research…Davis from its endowment contributed an entirely lopsided amount of campaign funding in electing to office a brand new California Senator who was also overwhelmingly supported by pharmaceutical companies which coincidentally have worked with Davis previously. This brand new Senator, having brought no other notable legislation prior to SB277, got this, the most controversial legislation in recent California history passed within months of taking office.
No brown shirts, no shiny black boots but still a tiny 2 or 3 percent subgroup who maybe passed on only but one vaccine on the schedule has been singled out and vilified and their beliefs described by the very same narators as are signing the checks (they don’t vaccines because they all believe some Playboy Bunny who says vaccines cause autism)…so the story goes and the press parrots the same story ala Goebbols…
So now California lives with a degree of coercion that exists in only a very few countries of the world and in this country, just only otherwise within those intellectual bastions known as West Virginia and Mississippi.
Oh and the new law has provisions so that should a new product for preventing Vaccine Preventable Disease get developed at say, UC Davis, that new vaccine can be mandated for all of California’s school kids too without need for public debate….efficient, eh?
But nah, that’s prolly not a synergy between corporations and government working to expand the scope and influence of each other or anything…..I’m prolly reading too much into that to think it’s fascist.
Considering that vaccines don’t actually make much money, and Big Pharma would make waaay more money letting people get sick and then treating them, nope not seeing any synergy whatsoever between them.
Also considering that there isn’t actually any coercion involved, because it’s a simple trade: want to be involved in the public and interacting with it, you have to do your part to protect said public, and you don’t have to do either … nope, still not seeing it.
Glad we had this talk. Conspiracists are funny.
You are not just implying, but outright stating, that in 3 states, medical interventions can be performed without consent.
As for fascism, the main tenets are ultra-nationalism, a single central authority figure who is seen as the embodiment of the nation, a one party state, totalitarianism, third way economics with a mixed market economy, and militarism.
Actually I quite clearly stated that those 3 states incorporate extortion. The extortion they employ mainly involves the withholding of valuable state services. California is now going even further and restricting the 1st Amendment right to free assembly by not even allowing private schools to admit these students.
That’s not extortion, and if you have to pay for it, it’s not free assembly, it’s a business and it can be regulated.
No, not for profit organizations are by their very definition, not businesses as you claim; you are flat wrong. Your cognitive dissonance is showing…
This law (CA SB277) oversteps freedom of assembly even in instances whereby a non-publicly funded not for profit school charges no tuition or any direct fees to students.
There is no magical barrier that prevents legislation of unconstitutional laws.
Just because the California constitution states that the legislature “is to write no law” that violates the California and US constitutions, does not actually then mean the California legislature can’t ignore that directive and pass unconstitutional laws ANYWAY.
History is full of many many accounts of unjust laws getting passed and enforced in violation of the rights of people who usually stand in a minority as folks in a majority like you cheer on such injustice….I could name several such instances off the top of my head right now.
Usually and eventually, bad legislation the likes of SB277 gets recinded.
I never so much as implied there was such a barrier. Please put down the strawman and back away.
I made no strawman argument; you were the claiming private schools are all businesses. I’ve explained how not all private are alike..nothing I said could be LESS of a strawman argument.
It also is neither you nor I was at all even making any mention or critique of any authoritative body BESIDES the California legislature. How it is you take it that i was somehow figuratively pointing to a ‘strawman’ makes no sense. I instead assume you’ve only just noticed the term bandied about without ever actually taking the effort to undetstand what it means, and just used it here in hopes that I too do not understand the term ‘strawman argument’ but that i just might be dazzled by the usage of a term I don’t understand….It’s instead just that much more apparent you were desperately projecting in your lame attempt at deflecting; and it was an epic failure.
No, I used it because it is a term meaning that one is attacking a weak argument or preposterous position that their opponent didn’t take in order to make your own claims look stronger, rather than addressing the actual statements made by their opponent. And that’s exactly what you did with your “magical barrier” tirade.
Further, regardless of whether the school in question happens to be a for-profit or non-profit institution, there are regulations on both. Further, there are regulations on schools that apply to all of them: public, for-profit private, non-profit private, or any organizational classification not already stated. In no way does any of this violate freedom of assembly.
Ummm I in no way offered up any other examples of any other arguments or in any way suggested anyone else’s flawed position was analogous. I can think of many that ARE, but I didn’t cite any…
It might be easier for everyone if you just admitted that you used the term ‘strawman argument’ without any meaningful pertinence. I’ll then happily pardon the faux pas and we can then just move on…
1905 is the first “bad leglisation” of the kind….so when is it getting repealed?
By the way, it was passed in the first place because people like you insisted on trampling on the rights of the majority.
If you’re talking about Jacobson v Mass. Nobody in the Jacobson family was ever forced to take the shot. Jacobson was then fined five whole dollars. Jacobson refused to pay the five whole dollar fine on a matter of principle. He then sued. The court ruled that the state had the right to fine him afterall….That was all the matter involved and again, no vaccine was ever successfully forced on any members of Jacobson’s family.
That authoritarians like you claim the case stands for anything in precedent beyond just the state having authority to fine people who are ‘difficult’, is a bit of a stretch.
No, I’m not talking about Jacobson vs Mass. I’m talking about the fact that there was a court case in TWENTY-FIFTEEN that upheld the right of states to set school mandates citing Jacobson vs MA as precedent and its limits on religious freedom.
Please do try and keep up – this is a subtle distinction, I realize, but you’re so much smarter than the global scientific and medical consensus it should prove no trouble for you. Freedom of religion does not include the liberty to expose the child nor the community to communicable diseases. Additionally, quarantine has been a responsibility of government since…oh, at least biblical times.
“Five whole dollars.” That was in 1905 – today, that same fine would be $486.16.
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
Name the case please.
There have been quite a few really horrible rulings using Jacobson as a reference besides whatever vague 2015 case you don’t seem to be able to actually cite….Such as ‘Buck v Bell (Virginia 1927) in which Jacobson was used in claiming power for the state in protecting the public from ‘the mentally incompetent’ and so hundreds of thousands of people were forced against their will to undergo surgical sterilization.
There really is no end to the ‘solutions’ people with too much power will inflict in the name of ‘public safety’.
WHEN is this going to happen?
The 2015 case is Phillips Vs New York.
Hahha! This case has been settled over a hundred years ago, upheld just last year.
Oh wow. I’m sorry I didn’t see just how highly you think of yourself before commenting. Got it now.
Raising a child is irrelevant to the science on vaccination. If you believe it is somehow relevant or that one who has not completed this task cannot or should not state the facts you are sorely mistaken.
For the record, even if you have raised a dozen children, you still aren’t an expert. Expertise isn’t even required in parenting. I cannot imagine even my great-grandmother who raised, to adulthood, 10 children would have the hubris to believe that experience somehow made her an expert. Of course, her kids were raised to become good men and women, but not one went to college at 18, so I suppose she wouldn’t qualify as an expert.
The only expertise required in vaccination is that of the scientists creating the vaccines and the health care professional giving the vaccine. Those involved in the manufacture and distribution should meet the standards necessary to produce and distribute the vaccine, but expertise is likely not needed at all steps. The person receiving the vaccine requires no expertise at all.
I am doubtful Dr Tuteur misunderstood you. I agree she does not need my help. I just hate watching yet another commenter act as though she controls who may comment here.
I dunno. I can see becoming a sort of “local expert” in normal parenting-questions. Like….this is obviously not good as anything other than a thought experiment but there’s a neighbour in one of the classics who’s raised x number of children and buried y number of children so if there’s a situation where kids are “Not sick enough to need the doctor but too sick for new parents to handle it”…they take the kid to the relevant neighbour or have the neighbour come in for a cup of tea and have a look at the child.
That kind of expert makes sense. Not the kind SlammoFandango is talking about, though.
Yes. If you wish to only talk to parents….start your own blog and have the captcha for registration involve simple questions about their kids and don’t allow guest commenting.
In the same way that you saved your judgment, I’m sure.
How do you know whether I *literally* raised my brother? THere’s 20 years between my mother’s eldest and youngest children
…we are all duly impressed by your creative writing degree.
I just encountered this on Facebook this week. I thought the subtext of the question was: I’ll bet you’re not up-to-date because you’re afraid for yourself but you don’t mind harming your kids, you bad mother!
At least I think that was the implication. I don’t speak Wingnut so I might have misinterpreted. This person was batshit insane even by anti-vaxxer standards. I wouldn’t have gotten involved, but my niece wandered into the fray and I felt obligated to support her.
I think that’s what the implication is, too.
Sometimes it seems like they (or the climate denialists or the creationists) all have the same talking points. They are doing their best to implicate you as someone who is weakening the herd and therefore play on your guilt and derail the argument to vaccinate. I think it is called a “tu quoque” fallacy – or a “you too!” fallacy in argumentation. You can point that out to them.
They have lots of “gotchas” that really are not.
Pro Vax are always raving about the importance of herd immunity. But newborn are surrounded by people who where vaccinated 20 to 30 years ago (doctors, nurses and family. The protection from those vaccines has been reduced significantly. The herd is not immune and therefore no herd immunity.
Dr. Tuteur: I’m happy to oblige and “help you out.”
It’s interesting that when it comes to medicine, it’s the one area where the majority of people blindly trust the corporations to act in their best interest. Scientific fraud is rife and always will be so long as there is compensation and stock options tied to bringing these products, including vaccines, online.
And so it is not “science” that we take issue with, but fraud and misrepresentation within the scientific community. The numbers speak for themselves.
http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e377
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.list/tagNo/2642/tags/scientific-fraud/
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005738
“A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Meta-regression showed that self reports surveys, surveys using the words “falsification” or “fabrication”, and mailed surveys yielded lower percentages of misconduct. When these factors were controlled for, misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others.”,
So you think you’re smarter because you blindly trust quacks and charlatans? Surely you’re joking.
By the way, quoting a few studies isn’t going to convince us of anything. Science is about the PREPONDERANCE of the evidence and you don’t know what that is unless you have read the bulk of the literature.
Where did I advise that I “trust quacks and charlatans” or that I “think I’m smarter?”
Please refrain from speculation, as it does not further the dialogue or get us closer to producing science evidence that is unencumbered by fraud.
I’m here as an advocate against scientific fraud and misconduct.
If data is corrupt for any reason, or studies are flawed, they must be eliminated from the larger body of collective research. They are unreliable. Surely you agree, as a practitioner, or former practitioner, of evidence based medicine.
So you agree with Hooker’s study being retracted, and Wakefield’s being retracted, right? They were full of flaws.
I agree with any study that is fraudulent or corrupted being retracted.
That’s good, because the only fraud has been on the antivax side.
If only you really meant that!
Spare us! You’re here as an arrogant, ignorant fool trying desperately to justify your nonsensical beliefs. You’re wasting your time.
Nice articles. Most of them have to do with other forms of science than just medical studies. And we aren’t saying there isn’t fraud in medical science – after all, Wakefraud managed to get published (oh, and then retracted for misconduct and falsified data) and Hooker’s study was published and then retracted for bad science and an undeclared conflict of interest.
BUT – science is self-correcting. Other people do the studies and either confirm or don’t confirm the results. More people test. That’s how we know vaccines don’t cause autism whether they are the MMR or had thimerosal in them. Lots and lots of studies done all over the world, by independent researchers, universities, drug companies.
No one blindly trusts (unless you are one of those who prefere SCAM like homeopathy) instead of science-based medicine.
Yup! If any woo-meisters try to convince you that turmeric is a treatment for cancer – or for inflammatory conditions – tell them that all seven papers of the guy who was promoting that were retracted due to falsification of data, and he was dismissed from MD Anderson.
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/02/22/journal-retracts-7-papers-by-md-anderson-researcher-long-under-investigation/
Science is good at correcting. Vaccine science is some of the most-examined – and therefore sturdiest – science out there.
Yes, there are frauds like Wakefield.
Do you have a point relevant to the discussion?
You need a few courses in statistics, anon.
If vaccines work why the need to avoid anti Vaxxers. Outbreak will happens even in highly vaccinated populations. Measles s hardly a dead sentence in the USA.
I’m getting sick of having to debunk this ridiculous statement, but here it goes again.
Firstly vaccines do not work in 100% of people – and before you say it, no that does not make them useless. Protecting most people from disease is a hell of a lot better than protecting none. Secondly people can lose their immunity by becoming immunocompromised. Thirdly some people cannot receive certain vaccines, such as people who are allergic, certain immunosuppressed people and young infants. So i vaccinate not just to protect myself but to also protect those around me.
Outbreaks happen less commonly in highly vaccinated populations. As far as I’m concerned, the fewer VPD outbreaks the better.
And people can still die of measles in the USA. Immunocompromised people and those at either extreme of age are particularly vulnerable. Again, I happen to care about those people, even if you don’t.
Vaccines are so effective polio has been eradicated. Measles had been nearly eradicated in Brazil before the Disneyland outbreak. I don’t understand why this is so hard to believe… Cholera has no vaccine, the disease comes and goes in cycles around the world and is never completely eradicated.
Minor correction: polio is only very nearly eradicated. Smallpox on the other hand, is gone.
Why would one not avoid anti-vaxxers? And I’d think they’d be delighted to avoid the rest of us.
Sigh.
1. Vaccines are not 100% effective.
2. Immunity can wane for a number of reasons, especially in people who are immunosuppressed for any reason.
3. Some people can not be vaccinated for various reasons. They strongly overlap with people who are immunosuppressed.
4. Measles, specifically, causes immunosuppression and vaccination has been associated with a drop not only in deaths from measles but also in deaths from pneumonia and other infectious diseases.
5. Unvaccinated people are better vectors for the disease and increase the risk for everyone, including and especially vulnerable populations (old, young, immunosuppressed).
Along with the answers below: just keep your kids at home, then we don’t need to avoid you.
You only need to avoid infected children. Sick kids stay home. Uninfected go to school why is that so hard.
Because many illness, among which measle, are contagious BEFORE the first symptoms.
You know really nothing do you
Actually with measles, infected individuals are contagious before symptoms begin.
Why is it so hard to understand that many illnesses are contagious BEFORE they cause symptoms?
I suspect repitition is not a bad thing here.
And so did I…I should read ALL the comments before replying.
Incubation period.
Disneyland measles outbreak.
It wasn’t antivaxxets and it wasn’t at a school
Do you think that unvaccinated children’s contact with the outside world is only through school?
It was antivaxxers.
It only takes one irresponsible family who doesn’t keep their sick kid home even when they begin to show symptoms. One sick child can start an epidemic, or kill one immunocompromised child, or one infant, or one person whose vaccine didn’t take.
Or one dumbass who thinks sharing is great because it gives everyone the opportunity to develop “natural immunity.”
Yes. That’s the height of irresponsibility. And anti-vaxxers never seen to recognize that if more people “woke up” and “did their research” as they implore, you’d eventually end up with a kid who is sick with measles, whose low-income parents can’t afford to take off work so they send the kid to school sick (not knowing it was measles, perhaps, but knowing the kid was sick). They’re only doing with that anti-vaxxers told them was best, but BOOM: epidemic. Anti-vax is such an obnoxiously privileged philosophy. It makes me sick.
I never understood the logic of preferring natural immunity. “she got the disease, now she’s better and she has natural immunity!” Um, the whole reason we want immunity is to avoid getting the disease. It’s sort of like saying “hey, my house burned to the ground, it’s safe from fires now!”
And not everyone gets natural immunity from the disease, either. Or, the immunity wanes. Or you get long term sequelae like SSPE or shingles.
My mother is a teacher and, last year, she caught pertussis from a child in her class whose parents sent him into school when he was obviously miserably ill. If she’d caught it just six months later, she could very easily have passed it on to my newborn baby, which isn’t something I even want to think about. It’s also very lucky that the child didn’t start an epidemic at the school, as it’s an SEN school and a number of the pupils have very fragile immune systems. But I guess they’re the kind of kids anti-vaxxers are talking about when they say that infectious diseases aren’t a big deal because they only kill imperfect kids with pre-existing health problems, huh?
What they mean, but are usually too chicken to type, is that these diseases cull the herd, leaving the magnificent specimens such as themselves behind.
Somehow their Badass Immune Systems™ are always good enough to defeat measles and polio, but a shot with weakened strains of the same diseases scares the heck out of them.
Oh, Diet dee was quite willing to type that out.
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/skepticalob/if_anti_vaxxers_are_allowed_to_avoid_vaccines_shouldn8217t_the_rest_of_us_be_allowed_to_avoid_anti_v/#comment-2845007482
many viruses are contagious before you show symptoms
I had chicken pox with virtually zero symptoms apart from a couple of spots. My parents thought I had a couple of midge bites until I left an outbreak of chicken pox behind me. They certainly didn’t think I was sick enough to not to go to school.
I had German Measles with virtually zero symptoms apart from a couple of spots. Luckily my next door neighbour/tutor who happened to be pregnant didn’t get infected but I could have done serious if not fatal damage to her unborn baby. That’s lot of guilt to lay on a young child.
(I had my first febrile convulsion shortly after I was vaccinated against measles so my parents stopped vaccinating me).
Are you really that stupid? Ever heard of the incubation period? You know, that bit before actual symptoms emerge?
Every heard of an immune system apparently everyone has one.
Which is the point of vaccination, to train that immune system.
It also trains it to overreact and autoimmune disease develop
Bullshit. Source your claims or shut up.
OK…so vaccines, with very small amounts of antigens in them train the immune system to over-react but the actual diseases, with tons of antigens, doesn’t? That doesn’t even make any sense!
Except, no, it doesn’t. ‘Epitope’ is not a word that has meaning in your world, does it? Or ‘adjuvant’? Except as a synonym for ‘ooga booga bad thing.’
Citation needed.
https://healthimpactnews.com/2012/autoimmune-disorders-caused-by-vaccines/
A site that can manage basic school-level concepts, please. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef56c7be48faa67583dd988fd59579745da5b706fcad64a99e5ec00be0c85a05.jpg
https://healthimpactnews.com/2012/autoimmune-disorders-caused-by-vaccines/
That’s not a citation. Or rather, it’s bullshit. Healthimpactnews is a scam site trying to swindle people out of money.
Try again. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef56c7be48faa67583dd988fd59579745da5b706fcad64a99e5ec00be0c85a05.jpg
Everyone has eyes, too, so obviously blindness is not a thing.
Some people have ones that are less effective. People with cancer, with CVID, with crohns, with cystic fibrosis, with HIV, the very young and the elderly – to give you just a few examples. But screw them – you don’t care about those people.
my immune system is marvelous; i totally kicked scarlet fever’s butt. So long as you ignore the permanent hearing damage. But that just proves i’m inferior, amirite?
What’s SCIDS, then?
And yes, your immune system will eat wild polio for breakfast and you’re scared of the weakened, pieces or dead pathogens? Give over
Dead pathogens with an unhealthy mix of Mercury and/or aluminum.
Sigh. There is tons of evidence that the tiny amounts of mercury and aluminium in vaccines are safe.
Nope, that’s not SCIDS at all. Are you even trying?
I wasn’t even looking SCIDS up
So? You’ve done your research so you should be able to answer the question.
Once more:
1)What’s SCIDs?
What’s SCIDs?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef56c7be48faa67583dd988fd59579745da5b706fcad64a99e5ec00be0c85a05.jpg
Nope.
sounds safe to me
http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9925236
http://traceamounts.com/ten-lies-told-about-mercury-in-vaccines/
https://www.aap.org/en-us/Documents/immunization_vaccine_studies.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X14006367
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275444
http://www.jpeds.com/content/JPEDSDeStefano
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17928818
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22184954
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa071434
http://www.diet-studies.com/open/Andrews2004.pdf
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=197365
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17168158
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=1239
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(98)24018-9/fulltext
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10376617
http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/reports/2004/immunization-safety-review-vaccines-and-autism.aspx
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2013/autism-risk-unrelated-to-total-vaccine-exposure-in-early-childhood.shtml
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/3/793.short
http://nationalacademies.org/HMD/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
http://nationalacademies.org/HMD/Reports/2011/Adverse-Effects-of-Vaccines-Evidence-and-Causality.aspx
Ever seen the MSDS for sand? Citric acid?
Nope.
I’ve tried to tell her about that before, but. . .
Many infectious diseases have a prodromal period where the person is contagious but asymptomatic. In some cases, that can be the most contagious period. In addition, some parents may not keep their child at home if they feel that they are only a little sick. (Especially if they have limited time off to spend with a sick kid, etc.)
And what about the kids who are infectious but don’t appear sick? Remember, many diseases are infectious BEFORE a parent knows the kid is sick. Keep your disease vectors at home.
That works if you’re not counting carriers. Given that there is an incubation period, and a contagion period where the virus is not detectable, there is plenty of chance to spread measles as it’s airborne, and it takes 7-10 days for symptoms to appear.
“sick kids stay home”
And that’s exactly why through the 1970s, in age of stay-at-home moms, school classrooms were never ever ever emptied by infectious disease outbreaks.
/sarcasm.
Folks like Diet Dee need to learn some history.
Do you even know anything about measles? That people get sick first and then develop a rash? That someone can be spreading the illness for days even a week or more before they know they have measles? That many people, including doctors, have never seen a case of the measles and don’t know how to diagnose it quickly?
You act like a person gets sick with this virus and ding, ding, ding a measles alarm goes off and they know they have it. You have to be a blithering idiot to think it’s as simple as get sick, stay home.
For one thing, Dd, kids can be contagious before they have symptoms. In addition, the early symptoms of pertussis are similar to the common cold.
If Natural Immunity works so well, why are anti-vaxxers afraid of shedding? I can post nonsense too.
Viral shedding is more of a danger to the immune comprised. If the disease is relatively rare then mass vaccination increases the exposure/risk to the most vulnerable. Anti Vaxxers not so much
Well, it would be if viral shedding actually happened…
Exactly. Viral Shedding, not vaccine-shedding.
“If the disease is relatively rare.” Go and thank your responsible neighbours.
So where are all the sick kids from vaccine-shedding in Mississippi?
Viral shedding happen with live virus vaccines
So….once again: where is my vaccine-related measles epidemic in Mississippi?
Surely, you can answer this with your research.
probably to busy dying of SIDS induce b all those vaccines. MI is practically a 3rd world country
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17400342
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d7a0eddd469d70f442fc9138566d6c4bb8c4ef72dad3f9fcb1be19987a0e16c9.gif
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/33e1b37eb7b5e8eb7232b71222fe95848215e84c12f4a4622d4e22251b14aba9.jpg
Your concern about the “immune compromised” is touching. It’s too bad there isn’t anything else you could do to help protect them.
Oh, wait….
a vaxxers aren’t afraid of shedding. just explaining how it works.pro vaxxers are afraid of illnesses that they’re vaccinated for. no sense.
We can count from 0 to 100.
i’m happy for you. brains still working somewhat, eh?!
sabelmouse, what would you know about it? YOUR lot can’t count from 0 to 100.
so predictable.
“Of course it’s the same old story. The truth usually is.”
Surely, with all your research, you have come across the basic concept of an incubation period?
I might have ebola since I never got the vaccine, doesn’t mean you can keep me out of school for it.
Sigh. Vastly differing R0 numbers.
1)Have you come across the concept of “incubation period” in all your research?
2)With all that research, surely, you can count from 0 to 100 without skipping any of the numbers in between?
3)I’d love to read your research – which journal is it published in?
Yes, it does. Try sending your kid to school naked and see what happens.
If you had been to an area having an ebola outbreak, you absolutely would be quarantined for observation.
Well gee wiz, that makes sense doesn’t it?
There’s no point in having a quarantine against the extremely deadly ebola virusunless there’s actually an outbreak.
However, we’re going to now have a standing quarantine against measles in California even though there are no measles in California.
Meanwhile, if there actually were an actual measles presence in California, the parameters set forth by California’s new law wouldn’t actually keep California school kids away from measles since school kids wouldn’t and couldn’t be ordered to remain at school.
By far the smarter way to go about it would NOT have been to reject unvaccinated school kids into unsupervised home school situations where they can and do go anywhere without supervision
The smart thing is to keep unvaccinated kids in the school system and reporting to their physical school sights every week day Then, if there is an outbreak, those kids can be far more efficiently found and quarantined.
Think about it: It’s 11 o’clock on a Wednesday in California and you want to quarantine all the unvaccinated kids. Well, all that needs to be done is send maybe one school bus to each school and you’ve got a quarantine in place that very day.
Instead, this new stupid law scatters all the unvaccinated kids all over the city and where it is they are free to roam in God knows how many public locations that are otherwise filled with everybody BUT school kids during the day.
No, the smart thing is to vaccinate the kids. Measles is contagious days before it display any symptoms, and the earliest symptoms are similar to those of a cold.
Also, you’re not very bright if you think that because of this law, they are just roaming the streets. They still have to receive some form of education or run afoul of truancy laws. Which means that the parents that absolutely refuse to vaccinate will have to send them to private schools or homeschool them, not just let them run wild.
The CA law applies to private schools too. The parents will have to home-school, online school, something like that.
Even better!
Again, you don’t know what you’re even talking about.
Private schools are also prohibited from taking unvaccinated kids.
You also clearly don’t know the first thing about homeschooled kids as it in fact is home is hardly at all where they spend all their time.
I noticed you didn’t rebut the main point, that vaccination is better, since it prevents the disease, rather than playing catch up after the disease is already in the middle of an outbreak.
Is that last sentence, ignoring the slam about Nick not knowing anything about homeschooled kids (good one, really), supposed to be saying homeschooled kids don’t spend much time at home?
Personally, I would assume they spend roughly as much time on instruction at home as children attending public and private schools spend in school. At least the ones being properly homeschooled, rather than raised by parents who say they are “homeschooling” when what they are really doing is deliberately avoiding an education for their kids, such as members of things like the quiverfull movement and other groups that reject modern society outright.
I would then assume that the rest of their time is similarly proportioned to other kids “out of school” time. Some at home, some with with their friends, some out with their parents as they run errands, etc.
I wouldn’t make that assumption. As a teacher, I have to manage a class of 30 or so kids. Transitions between activities and classes take up a more time than one might think. At the elementary school level, the teacher transitions from one subject to the next, the kids have to put away materials, get new ones out, and then settle back down. Then there’s whole class bathroom breaks, lining up to go to specials (music, art, PE), lunch, etc. At the middle and high school level you spend time allowing them to pack their stuff up in order to get to their next class, and then settling them down when your new class comes in. There’s traditions between activities at those levels as well, which take time.
In addition to all that, again, the teacher is managing 20-50 kids (depending on age and school district…up to 60 if you’re in a situation similar to a friend of mine who wound up leaving teaching over class sizes). The teacher has to teach to the whole class. That means she’s going to go too fast for some students and too slow for others. There’s going to be time she’s spending with a single student or a group of students while the others aren’t doing much of anything. When you’re just teaching your own kids, you can cater lessons to that child’s pace and not be distracted by 30 other kids.
All that combines to the ability to get a “full” school day in just a couple hours if you’re just teaching two or three kids.
Most states have laws about how many hours a day must be spent on homeschool instruction. In Colorado (I know, not the subject) it’s 4 hours a day. Dunno about Cali, don’t care. But of course, the kids are mostly going to be at home, especially the younger ones.
SOME states do. Many states do not- Texas, where I live, has literally zero regulation of homeschooling. You tell the district you intend to homeschool and the kid basically disappears from any official records. No rules on curriculum, hours spent on school, no testing or follow-up requirements, nothing.
“Homeschooling” is how a lot of abusers get away with it, because a teacher will call CPS, the kid will get yanked out of school, and now no one is around to report anything.
To be fair, I think there are actual homeschoolers who perhaps spend more time on fieldtrip equivalents than the school system would tend to.
As BeatriceC said, you’re forgetting the time taken to “wrangle” 15-30 kids versus 3.
Families like the Duggars….yeah, you may have a point there.
I can’t believe anti-vaxxers claim to have done their research and yet keep asking the same stupid questions.
So far, every single outbreak has been in undervaccinated populations.
An outbreak occurred in Brazil a few years ago when people came back from Disney parks with the virus. Vaccination is mandatory here (you can’t enrol in school without it, and it’s illegal to home school). Measles had been nearly eradicated before that. It did kill people, mostly very youn babies and people we were immunocompromised.
Vaccine refusal is not even an issue here… They are mostly free and provided by the federal government.
I’m sorry that happened, and I hope the cause was remedied. Sadly, I know far less about vaccination protocols, vaccines used, and outbreaks outside the USA than I do about the domestic (for me) ones.
Oh geez, not this person again. Not these same tired arguments again! (To say nothing of the typos and atrocious grammar, but maybe this person’s first language isn’t English.)
The Computer Ate My Nym addressed your question, and the only thing I have to add is: What sort of heartless sicko dismisses measles because everybody doesn’t die of it in the U.S.? Some people (especially babies) do die of it, and for many who don’t die there’s significant suffering–several days of severe illness, sometimes hospitalization.
Don’t forget the potential for lasting sequelae like deafness or brain damage. And of course, thanks to the possibility of SSPE, it’s actually not until several years after you get the measles that you can say it didn’t kill you.
I got measle twenty some years ago, as did my sister. In the subsequent year we both came down VERY HARD with viral illness that almost killed us. In retrospect, it likely was the measle’s fault.
The docs still have no idea about what almost killed us.
My mom and uncle had measles (well, my mom had mumps THEN measles) one year. That whole winter they were constantly sick – colds, viral illnesses. My mom missed nearly 3 months of school, all told. If my grandmother could have had them vaccinated against those diseases (as well as the other terrors – polio, pertussis, etc), she would have dragged them to the ends of the earth for the vaccines.
Indeed. Just popping in on coffee break to point out that SSPE is fairly often a complication of children who got measles as babies and young toddlers and that wording is intentional.
Of course, if the measles DOES kill you then you’re not here to tell us about it.
I thought about this conversation as I learned that my poor 18-month-old may have mono. It’s unlikely to be serious, he’ll most probably be fine in 7 or 10-more days, but after seeing him utterly wretched with fever and a sore throat I am the more confused by people who want to expose their children to preventable illnesses.
Because vaccines aren’t 100% effective, because my sister has cancer and my newborn can’t be vaccinated yet, because the death rate for measles is far higher than the one for the MMR vaccine even in the US, because going deaf or blind sucks. Sheesh
Your newborn and your sister are not going to school.
My cousin with brain cancer is going to school. And you are an idiot who win the prize for the most idiotic answer ever.
Viruses can live on surfaces for periods ranging from hours to weeks. All it would take is the wrong person coughing or sneezing on you and you are now bring home a dangerous potential infection.
…to months, if we’re talking about HebB. Yeah, the one that you don’t have to vaccinate your kid against unless they’re an IV drug user or a prostitute. Except, no.
Her older child may be. And her sister (and newborn) go to doctor’s offices. And to stores. And to lots of other places.
No, but my nephew does, and i’m a teacher