Boom!

Props.

There should be an app to show a community's herd immunity. That's not a bad idea for a bit.

(Definition for herd immunity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity)

But Jenny McBoobie's kid got vaccinated, and was then diagnosed as autistic! Isn't it obvious?

Seriously, what happened to the requirements for kids to be vaccinated (and have their 'papers') before they could start school?
One government 'intrusion' I agree with.

Speaking of Polio... 47min10sec+

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD-JoIsydpo

NOTE FROM AMY: UTTER CRAPTHINK THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT. I'm not going to remove this post or the other crapthink posts from FoodForThought because I think it's better to expose flawed thinking so it can be disputed than to simply disappear it.

Its a little scary how many different issues there are now that people think should be reason to out citizens and publish their home addresses. The last I checked, this was a free country and while I am not an anti-vac parent, I have concerns over some of the government's recommendations when it comes to health and healthcare. It isn't always about understanding the science as it is understanding our rights.

I agree Kristen. Everyone deserves privacy even stupid people or people with legally owned guns or people with minor crimes in their past or bloggers who disagree with other people/government. Naming and shaming does have it's place at times but it can so backfire.

I could support awareness and consequences of peoples actions. IE rather then publishing addresses. Just let people aware there is a threat.

Or basic consequences of no vaccine sorry child will then be prevented from government services like Education. Or health insurance is refused or priced highly.

John, it is a privacy issue but there is also a distrust of the government. We also cannot complain about living in a nanny state and but then people who question the government are outed. It isn't so black and white.
Our government does not always give us the correct information regarding health and Amy writes frequently about the government giving the wrong diet information. Its apples and oranges but I think we've been given enough misinformation in enough areas that I can understand the fear some people have when it comes to vaccinating their kids. Again, I don't agree with them not vaccinating, but when do we decide some rights are ok, just not the ones we disagree with?

*****Or basic consequences of no vaccine sorry child will then be prevented from government services like Education. Or health insurance is refused or priced highly.*****

This I can get behind. Your choice, your consequences.

Then of course you have anti-vaccer doctors that will squirt the dose you should have gotten into the sink and sign off the on your paperwork.

I personally know an anti-vaccer that had this done because the hospital he works for was requiring him to get the flu shot.

Of course the whooping cough epidemic is a government conspiracy.

Publish their addresses? For what purpose? So some other mentally unstable idiots can harass or intimidate them? Or vandalize their property? Or harass their children? Or attack them? Oh no, of course not! We our holier-than-thou selves would never condone such actions; we just think everybody should know exactly where people with such unpopular points of view can be found. But you can't blame us if some other unstable individual goes too far.

The movie A Child Is Waiting (1963) is on TV today. The plot summary is:

Jean Hansen comes to a school for disabled children to work there as a teacher. She becomes particularly interested in young Reuben, an autistic boy whose parents have not visited him for several years. But the school principal, Dr. Clark does not appreciate her keen interest. Written by Mattias Thuresson

I just mention it because aren't the vaccines related to autism and it just started recently?

I just mention it because aren't the vaccines related to autism and it just started recently?

It's been around for a while. I doubt the big increase in the last 20 years is coincidental.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism

NOTE FROM AMY: THE BIT ABOUT VACCINES SUPPOSEDLY CAUSING AUTISM IS UTTER CRAPTHINK THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT. I'm not going to remove this post or the other crapthink posts from FoodForThought because I think it's better to expose flawed thinking so it can be disputed than to simply disappear it.

Two words FoodForThought: "Over Diagnosis"

Once there is broad awareness with a condition, diagnosis of that condition shoots up.

My little boy was recently diagnosed with autism. A diagnosis that makes very little sense to me, if he is autistic, he's so high on the functioning scale that it almost doesn't exist at all.

20 years ago who even really heard of autism? If you knew about it, odds are it was because you knew somebody with it or who had a child with it. And I'd wager good money it was obvious that they were very different from their peers.

A decade a half and ago it was all about ADD & ADHD, and you had (and still do have) diagnosis for that for what is really nothing more than normal boy behavior. (South Park did a very good parody on that, as did King of the Hill years before)

Now with broad knowledge of Aspbergers existance, you have diagnosis for that left and right, someone previously assumed to be just quirky or weird or socially awkward, is diagnosed with aspbergers, a high functioning autism.

Bottom line, people are overreacting. Vaccines don't cause Autism any more than thunder causes milk to sour.

Its understandable to want to blame something else, but the whole antivac movement is grounded in fear and backed by no reliable or trustworthy source.

If there appears to be a correlation (which remember does not imply causation), it is because autism symptoms becomes apparent when vaccines start to get administered.

One might as well claim that the French increase in the consumption of ice cream causes crime to rise in New York. There is a direct correlation between those two unrelated events. Why? Because crime peaks in summer, which is also when the Frence consume more ice cream.

Just because two events share a common timeline, does not mean that they impact or cause one another to occur.

Let's all go full-Alinsky. Punch back twice as hard. Publish everyone who does anything we disagree with. I'm not being ironic, I'm serious.

If you didn't vaccinate your kids, you're far more serious a threat than people who have firearms permits.

I want to see every voter in my neighborhood who actually contributed money to Obama's re-election. (I feel safe contributing to Romney, since I listed my name as SuckMe Barack and my address even more scatologically. I can't wait for the FEC to pry my guns out of my cold dead hands.)

We're not close to civil war, but we're very close to suburban insurrection.

@ Robert, true, not one single factor can be singled out. That's why I lean towards this guy's opinions (environmental engineering background) for a multi-variable point of view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=213sfHfQCuI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW4q48sERDM

NOTE FROM AMY: THE NOTION THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM IS UTTER CRAPTHINK THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT. I'm not going to remove this post or the other crapthink posts from FoodForThought because I think it's better to expose flawed thinking so it can be disputed than to simply disappear it.

Food, Jim P. was being sarcastic.

CD,

Thanks for that. You got it in one.

I'm so tired of the liberal left that comes up with a one size fits all approach with junk science.

Considering they have found like 3 or 3 gene variants prevalent in autistic children, it seems idiotic to me that people keep blaming vaccines, food, and chemicals for it. A mother in my internet due date group was strongly anti-vax and said vaccines were far more harmful than anything her daughter might catch from not getting the shots. Her daughter died last year from pertussis. Yep, clearly a caccine would have been much more damaging to her baby than death! Oh, and she wouldn't take her to a doctor until it was too late to stop it. She didn't want to use antibiotics and other medications if she didn't have to (chemicals) and instead used herbs and homeopathic shit that did nothing.

She planning on getting the next vaccinated?

Hi, bloggy friends!

Tonight I wrote a letter to a new person in my life! Would you like to read it? It looks like this!:

(Ahem.)

      +-----------------------------------------+
      |                                         |
      |                         Saturday Nite   |
      |                                         |
      |                                         |
      |                                         |
      |   Dear "FoodForThought" —               |
      |                                         |
      |   GFY.  Use a stick.                    |
      |                                         |
      |                                         |
      |                         I Mean It,      |
      |                                         |
      |                         - Cridmo        |
      |                                         |
      +-----------------------------------------+
 

So there's that! To get us started.

Here's more information for the anti-vaxxers! —

You have waived your right to modernity. You've relinquished your claim to electricity, commercial foods, healthcare, transit, education, finance, literature, communications, and government protection of any kind and at any price. All these things are the product of human community, and you've decided to go with something — and some PLACE — else.

You don't wanna hafta inoculate yourself from communicable disease? Fine; take yourself and your rodent-shitball children to the North Pole, or to the concentric center of the Takla Makan, and set up shop. Communicate with no others. Trade nothing. Live in your own goddamn biological nightmare, and to Hell with you.

Y'know, kids, I'm in my middle fifties, I think of how great it is to have lived with essentially zero fear of polio… And my heart breaks to consider the very real dangers which terrorized the lives of recent ancestors. But I literally can name just a single living human being who's been wounded by the disease (Itzhak). Just one! How fantastic is that?

Well, not fantastic enough for 'FoodForThought', who knows little of thinking (and probably nothing of food, which is after all a biological consideration). Fuckers like FFT are so narcissistic as to imagine that their social incompetence excuses the suffering of those their advice will maim and kill.

Listen, the basics of epidemiology are profound, but they're not that challenging. Coming to grips with how we protect our species requires an eighth-grade education and maybe two weeks of serious reading each for biology and statistical science. No matter how slow and shallow any of us may be, all of us can understand modern miracles when we do the work.

If you don't want to make that effort, and you've decided not to trust those who have, fine. But—

☞ YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE STUPID. ☜

There's just nothing to admire about the primitives who make these arguments. FFT and Jenny McArthy are enemies of modernity, enemies of civilization... Every bit as much as were Mohamed Atta and Osama Bin Laden.

And Amy...

I regard the antisocial motives of commenters like FFT as kissin' cousins to those of the anti-circumcision zombies who show up every time you mention it. (I think those obsessives monitor you through Google or RSS to see when their topic appears; this very comment may wake them from their monomaniacal slumber.) See also, diarrheal commenter Orion from your post about the IcelandAir incident.)

No, I suppose we probably shouldn't literally "[post] addresses of those who refuse to vaccinate their children."

But I understand the question, and am grateful your correspondent for the seriousness implicit in it.

Or maybe we should. Let's talk!

{Disclaimer: the following is satire}

Lumos!

You may not know this. It probably hasn't occurred to you to connect the dots...

The story of Harry Potter is TRUE.

What else could explain the rise of a single mother on the British dole becoming the world's first billionaire author?

The real Hermione Granger reasoned that as Muggle technology advanced, it would be more and more difficult to hide the wizarding world from them. She found a skilled writer with little to lose and told the story, actually assisting JK Rowling in the generation of her ten thousand pages.

Now, think about autism vs. the Harry Potter story. The book series followed a rise in autism diagnoses, just as would be the case if modern Muggle medicine finally noticed MoM actions.

The parents of autistic children go on at length about how gifted their offspring really are - and they are! They're being held under a spell by the Ministry of Magic, so that they do not perform unauthorized spells!

The story makes sense when compared to the Bible, too. We are routinely told that Jesus apparated, that he rose from the dead, that he performed all sorts of magic - and for many, this isn't even questionable.

So. You can look forward to more revelations about autism, Asperger's Syndrome, et al, soon, as the Ministry gradually reveals their presence!

Nox!

My 8th grade shop teacher had polio, weak vaccine didnt protect him well enough. His left arm and left leg were literally HALF the size of his right side apendages. And he was "lucky"

I'm pregnant and every time I see the doc they push me for the flu vax. I don't even know the last time I had the flu and now I work from home-I'm not exposed to too many people. I haven't even had a cold in over a year while my husband and his 4 kids all have.
Then they mention the baby will have the benefit, but the baby will have the benefit of THIS year's flu when born NEXT year. I don't see how that is a benefit. When they tell everyone to get vax-ed every year.

My child will get vax-ed against deadly diseases (pertussis, polio, etc).

WHY are they vax-ing newborns against Heb-B? I think I will have a few years before my child is having unprotected sex and using IV drugs.

A few thoughts. First, how would one get, aside from Facebook/similar a list of who was wasn't vaccinated? That information is medical and subject to HIPPA regulations. I'm not positive, but I think that schools are required to keep that information private & are subject to HIPPA (especially if they get federal funding).

Secondly, this would likely include people who don't vaccinate because they CAN'T. I personally know a family where one of the children can NOT be vaccinated for medical reasons. They'd love to, because the medical reasons make illnesses much riskier. But then there's the more obvious cases (which only the doctors would likely know about) such as prior reaction to a vaccine or egg allergies.

As for why vaccines for Hep-B for newborns... I was totally against it until I asked my pediatrician why she recommended it. The response was that we are in an area with lots of people who did not grow up in the US and generally aren't vaccinated for things and often have higher prevalence for disease. That makes the risk of infection should one be, say, in a car accident much higher than elsewhere. Mind, I'm in the DC area and there are pretty much a good half dozen bad accidents a day, so that's not as crazy as it sounds. Now, I'm not saying that's a GOOD reason, because there are a lot of assumptions in there, but it makes more sense than anything else I've heard.

Shannon-
Thanks for the additional info. My therapist also mentioned the overall public health benefits since once an individual gets into IV drugs and such, they are not likely to get the vaccine. Just easier for them to say everyone should get it.

Neither reason convinces me to change my mind (as a newborn). If he/she gets precocious later...maybe I will consider it (I'd like to think I shouldn't have to worry until at least double digits).

Plus, I live NYC, almost never in a car and lately barely go more than 5 blocks from my house. The majority of my docs are within that 5 block radius too (as is where I will give birth). My biggest risk now is not getting enough exercise. I used to bike 10 miles to work a couple days a week (probably would be slowing down anyway due to the belly).

I have mixed feelings about chicken pox too, my generation survived it and my husband is naturally immune (never got it even when his kids had it, only 50% of which ever caught it-so the other 2 may be immune also).

I have mixed feelings about chicken pox too, my generation survived it and my husband is naturally immune (never got it even when his kids had it, only 50% of which ever caught it-so the other 2 may be immune also). -- Katrina at January 13, 2013 5:59 PM

I survived chicken pox as well. But here are a couple of thoughts to keep in mind. Shingles is related to chicken pox, and can cause excruciating pain later in life. There is also a relation to Herpes I and II (oral and genital). The anti-virus may extend some protection.

Just throwing it out there.

"Environmental engineering background."

Piss

My father's extended family was devastated when one of his cousins had three of their four children die from polio six years before I was born. They all contracted and died within a week. I have a first cousin who caught it, and has been confined to a wheel chair since she was very young.
Researches know the almost everyone got it before there was a vaccine. If you encounted a mild strain, you would not even know that you had it, a really virulent one and you would be lucky if you didn't die, or end up in a iron lung for the rest of your life.

Polio is no joke.

Katrina, I work in health care and they require all health care providers to have the hep B vaccine (as well as take an infectious disease training every year). You get hep B from infected bodily fluids, not just sex and IV drugs. You can pick up hep B from a wet sink if someone with hep B used it to wash up and you had an open pathway into your body. Small children can catch it from their usual exploration of sticking everything in their mouths. Hep B can live on surfaces for a long time so it can be contracted accidentally without engaging in high-risk behaviors.

Shingles is fucking hell, I swear to god, the time I got hit by a truck, the time I fell off that cliff, the time I flipped a motorcycle and the time I had half my lung cut out and was on oxy for almost 3 months

NONE of that hurt so fucking much as the time I had a two square inch outbreak of shingles on my abdomen.

That shit is crazy.

Damn near everyone in my family has their first outbreak before the age of 30, one of my aunts had a case covering her entire back over the sholder and on to her chest. I dont know how people deal with larger rashes.

I dont know if the chicken pox vaccine outweighs the risks but I'd definitly look into it if you have a family history of shingles

One thing that has never been clear to me is - can you get shingles after having the chicken pox vaccine? (To my recollection) Chicken pox is a retrovirus - meaning it kindly takes its genetic material, and inserts it into YOUR cells. So, even after the virus itself is killed off by your body the genetic code is waiting around and, like so many zombies, can jump back into some form of action (aka shingles) later.

Also, nice comment about other methods of contracting Hep. I forgot to mention the issue of hospitals. Yes, they are supposed to follow protocols that should eliminate risk, but nothing is perfect and people make mistakes. So, in highly populated areas, if you ever find yourself in a hospital (say, being born or with a bad flu) it's best to be vaccinated. Again, that's the argument - don't necessarily agree with it in all cases, but much better than "because the board said so."

As to the "I survived" thing. Many people survived the plague (or we wouldn't be here). That doesn't mean that it would have been great to have antibiotics back then!

I survived chicken pox, but have some really bad scars. I actually got it twice, but the first case was VERY mild and I got a more typical case later. The scarring is bad in some places. Thankfully, the only bad ones on my face are at my hairline and in my eyebrow so they aren't very visible!

All that said, there are people who (while many likely wouldn't have survived very long 200 years ago) are alive now but have weak immune systems. Being vaccinated helps protect them because the more resistant people there are, the less something can spread. Think of newborns, the elderly, cancer patients, regular folks recovering from surgery (trust me, a regular virus a few days after surgery is enough to keep you in the ER for a day - been there), and people with autoimmune conditions like Chrone's. Chances are, you've got at least ONE of those types of folks in your family!

BunnyGirl-
*That* is the best argument thus far that I have heard for it. I will take that into consideration.

RE-polio
Doing polio vaccine. No question.

RE-Chicken pox and shingles
I will look more into it. Like I said I was undecided. I don't know of anyone on either side of our family whose suffered shingles.

Shannon-
I understand the "I survived". The plague though was a far bigger deal. I didn't know anyone with a serious case except when they got it older. Still point taken.

No one in our immediate family is immune compromised but that is something to consider.

I don't buy the anti-vaxers autism link but I also don't plan to blindly follow what the government tells me to do (since the government is often wrong on so many health issues).

Same with doctors. I had a cold (and I was pretty sure it was just a cold) and the ENT I was seeing for another reason and prescribed me antibiotics diagnosing me with bronchitis. I never took them. The cold resolved itself (had it not and I got worse, I would have reconsidered).

One last thought on chicken pox. This is going to sound trivial, but to a teenager it probably isn't. I got some BAD scars from chicken pox. Fortunately, the ones on my face are covered by hair (right at the hairline and in my eyebrow) so they aren't very noticeable.

However, the worst are on my ribcage area. I didn't think anything of it until my first homecoming dance. I couldn't wear half the dresses because they either hit scar tissue very uncomfortably, or made me EXTREMELY self conscious. Obviously, I did find something and life went on, but to this day I HATE shopping for dressy clothes. It was upsetting.

Shannon,

I understand, and one of the considerations I had was that if he/she didn't catch chicken pox young, then he/she could get the vaccine around 10-13 (or whatever the cut-off is for it to be more severe).