I don’t have time right now except to throw this out there. The Palladium-Item had a story on Richmond Community Schools’ push to get students caught up on their vaccinations. There were 1,500 who weren’t in compliance. There wasn’t anything nefarious in this – a lot of parents apparently thought they were up to date when they weren’t.
What caught my attention, however, was a comment to the story (my own fault – nothing good ever comes from reading a newspaper’s comment section). The commenter was on about the dangers of vaccinations.
I will grant you that vaccinations are not without risk. However, the risks of vaccination are far outweighed by the risks of non-vaccination of the entire population. Now, what is pernicious about the movement is that they are attempting to be free-riders on the fact that the bulk of the population gets vaccinated. They can perceive the risks of vaccination as comparable to non-vaccination because the diseases against which we are guarding are not tearing through the population because of the prevalence of vaccination. The more this movement catches on, the more I and my family are at risk. Because vaccinations aren’t guaranteed effective for all individuals – but the less a disease can spread, the less risk for everyone.
This is yet another real example of the long term effects of a under performing education system. It doesn’t seem to occur to these people that a LOT of the population gets vaccinated and, if it were a problem, everyone around them would be dropping like flies, or be mentally retarded.
There is an undercurrent of distrust about science in this country, and I don’t really understand WHY. I’m not sure if people just don’t understand exactly how the scientific process works, or if “someone” is actively working against it, or if people are just generally crabby about everything. We’ve become so jaded about how good we have it that we have time to bitch about things that are really, really dumb.
I say this a lot: I’d like some of the whiners to have to go live a year in Somalia, Rwanda, or Zimbabwe and see what poverty, lack of medicine, desperation, and REAL government failure looks like.
I bet they wouldn’t last a week.
I would be more sympathetic if the vaccination resistors were basing their arguments on the right of free human beings to say “no” when the government says “you must put this in your body” or “you must not put that herb in your body.”
I don’t intend that as an argument in favor of (currently) illicit drugs. But it avoids the freeloader problem and doesn’t invoke anecdotal scare stories about the horrors of vaccine in the face of truly scientific evidence (which may prove in the end to be mistaken, but it’s the best we’ve got today) to the contrary.
I definitely agree with Doug, but with one exception. I refused to get the swine flu vaccine last year. I was not thrilled about injecting myself with a drug that had JUST been developed, and rushed through at that. For me, since swine flu is not generally deadly (if you’re healthy, which is my case) then I thought the risks were too great. Plus, I am a stay at home person so I didn’t have to risk missing work or infecting my co-workers. I am also generally anti regular flu shot as well, but only for me, I have no problem with others getting it, I just know that people in my family always seem to get sick from the flu shot and me being generally healthy I haven’t had the flu.
What really bothers me is the parents who practically sanitize their children the second they touch the floor and never let them go outside to play because of germs. The second your kid is able you need to let them roll around in the dirt as much as possible, that’s how you become immune to so many germs, diseases, and whatnot. In an attempt to keep their kids healthy, these parents are actually making it worse for their children….
I agree with Jackson. In some cases, it’s better to become naturally immune. I also avoid vaccinations for the flu. I got very sick the last time I got it. But I urge my elderly patients to get it b/c the flu is much more dangerous to them.
Remember when we all got chicken pox? Now there’s a vaccine for it. So the kids aren’t getting it. But guess what. That’s how we kept our immunity. By being exposed to kids infected with it after we had already had it. We’re told you can’t get chicken pox twice but it’s not true. It comes back (herpes zoster) in the form of shingles. People get shingles b/c they have been exposed to the virus after losing their immunity. So now many more people are getting shingles. It’s very painful and leaves nasty scars. Much worse than the chicken pox. In response to the increasing number of shingles cases, the govt created a vaccine for it. Another vaccine that we will be bullied into getting.
That being said, I do get vaccinations for life- threating diseases. I just got a hep B vaccine. But I think sometimes it’s better to just get the illness and become naturally immune.
Clarification: shingles vaccine was developed by Merck & Co. not the government. CDC does recommend vaccination for persons over 60 years of age.
Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
You want to stay in society and accept its protections, then you have to pony up and accept its strictures too.
We used to have several “shots for tots” Saturdays in our community.
The county Health Dept and some local nurse volunteers would set it up
and work it at schools and fire stations. You’d be surprised that there would be people living in $250K housing neighborhoods who brought their kids in for shots, along with those who lived in the $15K neighborhoods. The key word was “free”.
Well, free, and maybe also publicized and convenient. Everyone drives past the fire station or whatever, on the way to somewhere. But remembering to make an appointment and then sitting in the Doctor’s waiting room, seemingly forever, when your kid is not otherwise ill, is just not a fun way to spend time.
Doug: I don’t know how frequently you read the Palladium-Item, but there have been other stories about this issue over the last few months. There have also been, quite predictably, many off-the-wall comments made in response to the stories.
While I’d like to chalk up the fear of immunizations to poor understanding of science among the uneducated, skepticism of expertise, etc., I know lots of people who ought to know better who have a fear of vaccines that is far disproportionate to any real risk of harm. I think that one problem we have is that many Americans say 60 and younger have virtually no memory or experience of how things were before immunizations were common. Other than chicken pox and perhaps measles, most of us who are middle-aged and younger in the United States were never threatened with polio, whooping cough, and other diseases that were at one time fairly common and sometimes devastating and deadly.
A woman I used to work with was among the last generation of people to get polio before the vaccine became available. She survived, obviously, but is now having health problems directly related to her bout with polio. I was shocked to hear her story, because I’d had no idea that survivors of polio could have complications later in life. (It just so happens that the New York Times ran an article on the topic a couple of weeks after my colleague told her story to me.) Something tells me that if my co-worker could have taken a vaccine to prevent polio complications, she would have gladly done so.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that Shots for Tots has any particular income requirements. I thought that the program was targeted toward counties where immunization rates were low, regardless of income. If someone knows otherwise, please correct me. Keep in mind also that the people in the 250K neighborhoods may very well have lost jobs or insurance recently. Or, like the people in the 15K neighborhoods, they may have jobs that make it difficult for them to get their kids to the pediatrician during office hours. As long as there is no shortage of vaccines, I don’t really have a problem with people who appear to be well off participating in Saturday public health clinics.