3,900 serious reports annually. This is only 0.001% of the US population, but it still matters… to those people.
Also: pre-vaccine, we also had worse (FAR worse) sanitary conditions. Do we really want to believe those conditions had NO effect on health?
“Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.” George Bernard Shaw
“The anti-vaccinists are those who have found some motive for scrutinizing the evidence, generally the very human motive of vaccinal injuries or fatalities in their own families or in those of their neighbors. Whatever their motive, they have scrutinized the evidence to some purpose; they have mastered nearly the whole case; they have knocked the bottom out of a grotesque superstition. The public at large cannot believe that a great profession should have been so perseveringly in the wrong.” Dr. Charles Creighton, MD
I am shocked that there are still educated people in this world who do not understand/believe in the science of vaccinations.
I did not have the chicken pox vaccine when I was young and had a mild case as a child (as was much the norm). As an adult, I contracted shingles (from a student in my class who had chicken pox and was not vaccinated – came to school for several days knowing that younger sister at home was infected and she was running a low grade fever) — I had only been back to work for a few weeks from my maternity leave.
It was horribly painful like nothing I have every experienced. The outbreak lasted a long time and i had to miss a huge amount of time from work (several weeks after symptoms has disappeared and I was feeling better). I had young children (7 months and 3 years old) at home and could not physically care for them - I have no idea what I would have done if i didn’t have family nearby as my husband had to travel for work. It was a truly miserable time. I can’t remember being so physically pained for such a long time. It was a financial, emotional, and physical hardship and I carry the physical scares. I would not wish that on anyone.
I teach and it makes me very angry that I can not refuse to teach a student who has not been vaccinated - and there have been a few in my years teaching. We require vaccinations but there are parents who get waivers and as I learned I was just collateral damage to that family.
It had never crossed my mind to check the immunization policies of colleges – I don’t know if i want my children at a school that allows parents to choose to endanger everyone else.
Of course, it is then explained on the VAERS website that many of the adverse effects might not be cased by the vaccines, but could be coincidence or caused by such factors as other medicines taken around the time of the vaccination:
Are all adverse events reported to VAERS caused by vaccines?
No. VAERS receives reports of many adverse events that occur after vaccination. Some occur coincidentally following vaccination, while others may be caused by vaccination. Studies help determine if a vaccine really caused an adverse event. Just because an adverse event happened after a person received a vaccine does not mean the vaccine caused the adverse event. Other factors, such as the person’s medical history and other medicines the person took near the time of the vaccination, may have caused the adverse event. It is important to remember that many adverse events reported to VAERS may not be caused by vaccines. Although VAERS can rarely provide definitive evidence of causal associations between vaccines and particular risks, its unique role as a national spontaneous reporting system enables the early detection of signals that can then be more rigorously investigated.
When the border crossings were happening last year, the first thing the government did was vaccinate them. All of them. No opt out option. There were still many outbreaks of measles and chickenpox at the camps because there were a lot of people in an enclosed place. Gee, sounds like a dorm to me.
I was a little bent out of shape because those sent to Florida were immediately registered in schools without vaccination records, while it took me several days to get my 100% vaccinated kids into school when we moved there because the state required I take their records to the state health department and have them reviewed. I was a little calmer when I learned they had been vaccinated, they just didn’t have to go through the health department.
My kids have had all the vaccinations (even the very expensive Respigam to prevent RSV discussed several pages ago). One came to the US at age 2.5 and got all the vaccinations again because we didn’t trust the foreign given ones.
We all have the horror stories that don’t impress the anti-vaxxers. I know a family that lost a child to chickenpox. A neighbor of a friend died the first semester at college from meningitis, and she’d been vaccinated, so the parents had done all they could (and imagine the guilt if they hadn’t). The chickenpox vaccine is only 85% effective. So what? I’ll take those 85% odds.
But really…in this thread we are talking about an 18 year old getting vaccines. I don’t think the concerns with a very young child are there at all.
The only folks I know who don’t do vaccines are folks who are convinced that a vaccine caused their child to develop autism…and have not vaccinated since (despite the research showing that this is not the case…and the original study refuted).
For those of us who have moved to the grandparent stage…Doctors are asking that grandparents and other relatives who will come into contact with a newborn have the Dtap shot. . Whooping cough has become increasingly common the last few years and the immunity we got from shots we had as children wears off. http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/downloads/matte-grandparents.pdf This is causing blow out fights in some families as some grandparents think their kids are overly protective when they announce that if you don’t get the shot, you’re not seeing your grandchild.
My new internist is currently pregnant. She asked if I had grandchildren. When I said yes, she said “You are getting a Dtap shot.” I sort of thought it was silly.My grandchild is a toddler and vaccinated. I went to visit last weekend and a good friend with a 3.5 week old baby met us at the playground with her two older kids. I was glad I had just had the shot.
And, @CharlotteLetter, how many people in the United States suffered adverse effects from vaccine-preventable illnesses before the advent of vaccines? Unless you can tell me that the number was under 0.001% of the population—which you can’t, because it wasn’t—then your appeal to the numbers fails, and fails spectacularly.
As for your appeal to sanitary conditions, no, there is no claim those had no effect on health. (Though it is, I think, quite possible to think that conditions were worse in the 1950s than they were—we’re not talking open sewers and such in most of the country by that point, or even the 1920s.) However, it is possible to look at what happened upon the introduction of vaccines to an area and see the curves over a short period of time, during which there was minimal if any change in sanitary conditions—basically, the positive health effects of vaccines stand on their own.
Who the heck said sanitary conditions had no effect? No one.
The 50s were a time of extreme sanitation.
I highly recommend Gregg Mitman’s Breathing Spaces to anyone who wants to know the history of allergies and asthma and how they were affected by what we do to our built and “natural” environment- including homes.
My daughter had the varicella vaccine when it first came out. Her titer a year ago came back…negative. So she had two more chicken pox shots last spring.
And nobody has claimed that vaccines never have adverse effects, either.
You, @CharlotteLetter, however, seem to be claiming that because <0.001% of the US population faces adverse effects from vaccines, that we should ignore the fact (yes, fact!) that the positive effects are much, much greater.
Seriously—even if you’re trying to be selfish and do what’s best for your own non-immunocompromised children, by not getting them vaccinated due to fear of adverse reactions, you are putting them at unnecessary risk and therefore doing what’s worst for them.
@choirsandstages yes, children should get 2 varicella vaccinations. The usual schedule is a booster around 5 years old but older children can still get the booster if they never received it.
They start vaccinating adults with a “booster”/shingles vaccine around age 60.
@CharlotteLetter do you ever put your children in a car? You do know that the odds of being hurt in a car are way, way, WAY more than having an adverse reaction to a vaccine, correct?
You probably do 1,000 things a day that put your children more in harm’s way than getting a vaccine… and these 1,000+ things won’t protect your child and others and yet they’re risks you still take.
If one is truly worried about risk, they would never go in a car. Never allow their child to swim. Never leave their child with a babysitter or close family friend. The list goes on… so let’s be honest. Anti-vaxxers aren’t being risk-adverse. They’re just being paranoid.
The problem, @CharlotteLetter, is that what you’re searching for is a moving target. The degree of risk depends on the proportion of the population that doesn’t vaccinate.
This is an interesting article that theorizes that vaccines are, in a way, a victim of their own success. Here in the US, because most of us are vaccinated, we rarely see someone suffering from measles, mumps, polio, etc. and thus are able to “forget” the horrors of these diseases. But since we do all (mostly) get vaccinated, you do hear anecdotal stories about so-and-so who had a reaction to the vaccine.
I’m guessing that the same posters who are anti immunizations also dont believe in global warming…right?
I’ve put those who seem to be “immune” to being educated about the history and science of vaccinations on ignore. I suggest others who are interested in discussing the facts, rather than dealing with those who indulge in uneducated, ignorant, magical thinking do the same, if they want to stay sane and save themselves a lot of time…