My understanding is that the ultra-Orthodox do vaccinate at high levels, and I have no clue about the other religions. Anyone?
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the “big profits” to be made in vaccine production[/quote[
Why is that even an issue? If anything deserves to be rewarded, it’s saving the lives of our children.
Do newborns really meet many people outside the immediate family? Do they get sick by just passing by an unvaccinated person on the sidewalk? That sounds just as paranoid as antivaxxers about vaccines.
Just to reiterate, your post #76 is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. NO vaccines contain fetal tissue. None.
Your son is an adult now. Perhaps he would like to be vaccinated. But if you have so indoctrinated him into your erroneous beliefs, maybe college will enlighten him.
I’ll answer my own question -
It looks like the OP’s son was trying to decide between UIUC and Wisconsin.
Here are the UIUC requirements. They clearly give info about waivers and how to get them.
http://www.mckinley.illinois.edu/handouts/immunization_fact.html
For specific college info…Google…name of college immunization requirement
I did a few. Easy peasy.
And -
So that only leaves this one - anyone a member of the Dutch Reformed Church? …crickets…
Not paranoid at all. That’s how it happens. Very young babies come into contact with unvaccinated people in casual ways, little kids always touch and kiss babies. How do you actually think it happens, because you know it does. It actually, literally does happen.
Many newborns come in contact with people outside the immediate family. For example, the parent may need to bring the newborn while dropping off or picking up an older child at nursery school. And some of the diseases that vaccines prevent spread extremely easily. Measles is a classic example. It spreads to others through coughing or sneezing, and the virus particles can remain in the air, alive and able to transmit the disease, for as long as two hours after that cough or sneeze. People can spread the disease for as long as four days before the rash appears – when they don’t even know that they have measles. And 90% of the non-immune people around a person with measles will catch the disease themselves. http://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/transmission.html
Unfortunately, you can’t teach stupid.
@Iglooo I ran into a chic fil a yesterday which has a very popular indoor play structure and over heard a woman carrying a infant carrier tell someone her baby was 6 days old! She’d brought her older child in to play. We’re in Texas and I think vaccinations are very common but still I was shocked anyone would bring a baby that young around so many little kids and strangers but yes, new born babies meet people outside their immediate families.
When my babies all came home from the hospital, everyone and their toddler wanted to see them and admire them. That is a thing. Most pediatrician offices that I’m familiar with don’t have separate waiting or examining areas for the non-vaccinated. I chose pertussis in my example because it often starts out like a cold or other viral thing, and parents have no idea what’s being dealt with until much later.
The CDC provides an impressive search engine for vaccination requirements across the country: http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/schoolsurv/schImmRqmt.asp.
I don’t know of a religion which forbids vaccinations (maybe Christian Science?). Though clothed in religious/moral language, the objection is mostly ideological. Don’t want the gubmint tellin me what to do.
No, but newborns have siblings and other relatives who can easily bring germs acquired from a sick friend into the house. Newborns go to new baby checkups at the doctor’s office. All it takes is a new baby gift from a family with a not yet symptomatic sick kid or a pertussis cough in an enclosed elevator at the medical center to cause serious harm to an unvaccinated baby.
Years ago my SIL had her purse stolen and because her toddler seemed to be coming down with a mild cold and needed a nap the officer came to her house to take the report. That cold turned out to be the first stage of the chicken pox and the officer had never had them. He ended up in the hospital and was out of work for over two weeks. He never touched the child but must have picked it up from a surface in their very clean home.
As a person with a severe immunodeficiency, this conversation terrifies me. I don’t have b-cells and make no antibodies, so vaccines don’t work on me. I am absolutely dependent on herd immunity. And my t-cell function is all screwed up, so if I do get sick, the consequences can be severe. It frightens me that people choose not to vaccinate
One thing people don’t think about – immune deficient people like me and certain other immune compromised people who don’t make antibodies can get these diseases OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Since I don’t make antibodies, I could get the measles, chicken pox, meningitis, etc. 100 or 1000 times. It is very scary.
As far as risks of infecting others from being vaccinated, I am also in the small portion of the population who can get sick from people who have been vaccinated with certain vaccines recently. My old job offered FluMist – the flu vaccine that uses live flu virus. Every year, I had to stay home from work a couple of weeks after flu vaccines were administered as a precaution. And my daughter couldn’t get the polio vaccine with the live polio because that presented a risk to me. (She got an alternate polio vaccine.) BUT GUESS WHAT??? PEOPLE IN MY POSITION WANT OTHER PEOPLE TO GET THEIR VACCINES!!! WE UNDERSTAND THAT AN UNVACCINATED POPULATION PRESENTS AN INFINITELY GREATER RISK.
If you’re truly worried that you or your child will infect someone else after being vaccinated, then request vaccines that don’t use live bacteria or viruses. There are alternatives for the couple that do. Problem solved. There is NO risk of transmission from the other vaccines.
I don’t find it shocking. It may have been important to the family to let the older child get out of the house – and back to a somewhat normal life – despite the presence of the new baby. And new babies are extremely portable. Besides, the older child is going to bring home plenty of germs anyway. Is being out in public really any worse?
I started taking my second baby out in public at the age of 4 days. There was little choice. My husband had gone back to work and we had no extended family in the area.
I developed a suspicious and systemic rash a day after my 8 month pregnant niece’s baby shower. I’d met two of her best friends and their new babies so I rushed off to the dermatologist in a panic that I might have exposed them to something dangerous to pregnant women or infants. It turned out the rash was an allergic reaction to all the blue dye in the foods at the “It’s a boy!” party! Quite a relief. 
It’s amazing people eat blue dye to the point of developing a rash and don’t protest about that while up in arms about a minority group of people not vaccinating. I know I have a minimal chance to meet them.
Would students at UW (or other schools lenient about vaccinations) be allowed to request to NOT room (or be in a suite) with non-vaccinated students? Probably not…but should they be?