Mickey has the measles
January 22, 2015 7:22 AM   Subscribe

 
Parents Who Shun Vaccines Tend To Cluster, Boosting Children's Risk

I guess they cluster at Disneyland.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:24 AM on January 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


I would like to hope that this will make people realise that, yes, really, herd immunity is important and just because no one in your general area has seen measles in years, it doesn't mean that there are people out there with it...

But yeah. Unlikely.

Also, before I went to college in 1995, I had to get an MMR booster shot because, yeah, 1977, got one, didn't get a second, but then they changed the recommendations.

Now I have this urge to get all the booster shots. I got chicken pox out of nowhere when I was in my 20s, I really don't want to get anything worse.
posted by Katemonkey at 7:31 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


GODDAMMIT.

We had this shit beat. What in the actual fuck are we doing to ourselves, people.

I cannot keep from slamming my fists on the keyboard in rage with this shit.

WHARRGARBL.
posted by Etrigan at 7:31 AM on January 22, 2015 [107 favorites]


I wonder if Disney will give Jenny McCarthy any work after this is all said and done. One does *not* fuck with Disney's theme park revenue stream.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:31 AM on January 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


I'd just like to take a moment to thank Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Dr. Jenny McCarthy M.D. PhD...
"If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their fucking fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's shit. If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism."
Of course, they wouldn't have gotten anywhere without Oprah.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:32 AM on January 22, 2015 [14 favorites]


Students who are not vaccinated should be staying home from school, permanently.

...as a parent of young children, I have to admit that this is not my full opinion. My full opinion is that the parents should be FLOGGED AND DEPORTED TO DUMB ISLAND.

Aaaand this is why I can't go on Facebook anymore.
posted by selfnoise at 7:39 AM on January 22, 2015 [75 favorites]


i wonder how many anti-vax idiots have known people with polio...blah blah blah history blah blah blah repeat it. humans are so dumb as a group.
posted by nadawi at 7:43 AM on January 22, 2015


I think Oprah (or a similar TV show host) could be the one who helps turn this around. If someone's kid and their neighbor's kid die of a preventable disease and they're brought up on some sort of endargement charge I can see the guilty party and the neighbor doing a teary interview on Oprah.

We had no idea, he/she died so horribly, nothing doctors could do at that point, etc etc.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:53 AM on January 22, 2015


If we did real quarantines, I bet people would get themselves vaccinated quickly.
posted by jeather at 7:57 AM on January 22, 2015 [10 favorites]


Nah, as Pogo_Fuzzybutt notes above, Oprah is part of the problem.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:57 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


You know there's that new "delayed schedule" of vaccinating, because people are worried about giving their kids too many shots at once for some cockamamie reason? I want to swing crazy the other way- give my kid every single shot for every single disease ever on the day he is born. Give my kid 30+ vaccines all at once. It might fry his brain (maybe? someone should do a study) but at least he won't get stupid shit like the measles. I seriously think this could work.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:58 AM on January 22, 2015 [16 favorites]


As one of the pushers of #thanksJenny on twitter, I'm all for getting Oprah back into this fight as well. She's managed to clean her hands of all of this and I'm betting she'll avoid all futher discussion on vaccination just to avoid controversy at this point.

But she could really do the world a favor by correcting the damage she did.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:01 AM on January 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


I want to have kids just so I can vaccinate them now.
posted by longdaysjourney at 8:03 AM on January 22, 2015 [12 favorites]


A California health official advises the unvaccinated to avoid going to Disneyland, "for the time being".

A Disneyland spokesperson notes, "it’s absolutely safe to visit if you’re vaccinated."
posted by notyou at 8:05 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


humans are so dumb as a group.

Largely because most of them are dumb solo.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:06 AM on January 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Ugh, antivaxers.

Disney should charge more for unvaccinated kids to visit their parks. They could call it a discount for vaccinated kids, but it would amount to the same thing. They're a private company, and a very rich one, they can do what they want. Let a huge corporation use their power to do some good for everybody. And it actually does cost them money and bad publicity when stuff like this happens. When infectious diseases like polio were more common, people were told to avoid amusement parks during outbreaks. This is a threat to Disneyland's profitability.
posted by Anne Neville at 8:07 AM on January 22, 2015 [10 favorites]




It will be interesting to see if this outbreak makes a significant dent in vaccination refusal over the next year or two. I think it might. I've been interested in the media coverage the outbreak has received; at long last the media have pretty much given up playing "Some say vaccines cause autism...some say it doesn't" and are straight out referring to the vaccine-autism link as "debunked" (which, God knows, it has been for a very long time). And you'd think that anyone listening to/reading this stuff would be a little more impressed by "very real risk of catching measles" vs "entirely fictional risk of autism."

Still, I worry. There are so many studies showing that news reports about "debunking" some urban legend or other actually tend, in the long haul, to increase the spread of the urban legend. A couple of months out from now, when this outbreak has receded into the past do we have a whole new bunch of parents vaguely remembering hearing something about a link between vaccination and autism and thinking "well, measles isn't all that serious a disease in the vast majority of cases and if I have to choose between a risk of measles and a risk of autism..."?
posted by yoink at 8:18 AM on January 22, 2015


On behalf of the infants who are not old enough to get vaccinated, or to speak yet, but who got saddled with fighting this disease because of some selfish assholes: Fuck you, anti-vaxxer parents. You all are a boil on the butt of humanity.
posted by weeyin at 8:20 AM on January 22, 2015 [21 favorites]


Schools in Southern California are asking unvaccinated students to stay home for two weeks.

Make them stay home until they are vaccinated.

Now I have this urge to get all the booster shots. I got chicken pox out of nowhere when I was in my 20s, I really don't want to get anything worse.

You can get a scabies vaccination, that covers any adult rebound of your chicken pox. As I understand it, that vaccination is mostly intended for the elderly.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:21 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Eh, I can see this. My kiddo freaks out as soon as we enter the doctor's office because she's terrified of shots.

The first dose of MMR vaccinations should be given long before the child is old enough to be able to recognize whether or not s/he's in a doctor's office or have any anticipation of what a needle might be for.
posted by yoink at 8:21 AM on January 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


I recently made a donation to Trappist Caskets for their child casket fund. I asked for the money to be used for victims of school shootings or to offset the cost of making tiny baby caskets for unvaccinated children. Seems if we're going to keep sacrificing kids to preventible causes I should at least do some small part in mitigating this cost.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:23 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


because of some selfish assholes: Fuck you, anti-vaxxer parents

Does this kind of rhetoric really help, at all? They're underinformed, fearful and, in most cases, genuinely--if entirely wrongheadedly--doing what they think is in the best interests of their children.
posted by yoink at 8:23 AM on January 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


Does this kind of rhetoric really help, at all?

I honestly think the only thing that would "help" is to quarantine them. Get rid of religious exemptions for public schools. Mandate that their unvaccinated children not be allowed in public places.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:26 AM on January 22, 2015 [25 favorites]


On the plus side this cluster cannot be due to vapor trails since planes are not allowed to fly over Disney resorts due to Mickey's vital role in America's national infrastructure.
posted by srboisvert at 8:29 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]




"It shouldn't be polio versus autism."

This is the thing about anti-vaxxers that I have never understood: even if you believe it's a choice between polio and autism (despite the complete lack of evidence that isn't faked), why the heck wouldn't you still be more worried about polio? Autism doesn't kill people, autism doesn't paralyze people, the stuff they're choosing not to get their kids vaccinated against can.
posted by mstokes650 at 8:33 AM on January 22, 2015 [10 favorites]


You can get a scabies vaccination, that covers any adult rebound of your chicken pox.

I think you mean shingles? Scabies is different, caused by a mite.
posted by dammitjim at 8:34 AM on January 22, 2015 [19 favorites]


Fuck it bring on the Ebola suits and let's get this party going!

/end times

I often wonder if we could improve society radically by teaching risk assessment and management (alongside better math and science in general) starting in kindergarten.
posted by spitbull at 8:35 AM on January 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


They're underinformed, fearful and, in most cases, genuinely--if entirely wrongheadedly--doing what they think is in the best interests of their children.

this describes parents that drive their queer children to suicide and parents who arm their kids to the teeth - i'm not going to be nice about them either. you don't get a pass for doing what you think is right for your kid especially if it puts your kid and a bunch of other innocent victims in grave danger.
posted by nadawi at 8:40 AM on January 22, 2015 [68 favorites]


It seems they want a normal child, dead or alive.

Children with autism are normal.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:42 AM on January 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


I don't understand how unvaccinated kids are in the school in the first place. I thought it was a requirement for going to public school. It's not! All 50 states have exemptions. WTF, Humans? WTEverlovingF?
posted by dejah420 at 8:43 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


From the Post piece linked above:

"A 2014 AP-GfK survey found that only 51 percent of Americans were confident that vaccines are safe and effective, which is similar to the proportion who believe that houses can be haunted by ghosts."

And that's all you really need to know to understand the problem.
posted by photoslob at 8:44 AM on January 22, 2015 [18 favorites]


I will never understand how you can have a religious or philosophical exemption to public health.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:44 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


roomthreeseventeen: It seems they want a normal child, dead or alive.

Children with autism are normal.
Yes, and gilrain knows that. They simply forgot the [sarcasm] tag.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:45 AM on January 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


Haha yeah unvaccinated kids suck, amirite? Shoot 'em down! Oh wait.

Can we remember that the kids are not to blame here? They have no choice in the matter. Hate on their parents if you like. It's not like the kids are not also suffering and dying when they get the diseases they aren't vaccinated for.

Spacing out vaccines was recommended by many kid books when my kid was small because so much stuff hitting his system at one time might give him side effects. Many more shots had been added at one time than what a lot of us got as kids, and it made sense from a "this is my child and I will take this extra precaution" front. As I've mentioned before, the "autism might be caused by thimerosol" thing was still being talked about by people who seemed credible at the time, and we agonized over getting him vaccinated because of that. Parenting sucks sometimes, when you have full responsibility for possibly screwing up a kid's life. Or letting them get/pass on a disease. We decided that the risks of not vaccinating were too high, and went with that, keeping our fingers crossed the whole time that we weren't making a mistake.

(We actually ended up spacing them out because we lost our insurance haha sob, but he did get them all eventually and is now on schedule.)
posted by emjaybee at 8:45 AM on January 22, 2015 [10 favorites]


LET'S ALL TAKE A BREATH. We're all on a pretty high horse about this.

Anti-vaxers are definitely putting lots of kids in danger of contracting illnesses they shouldn't be exposed to.

BUT, let's remember why people are afraid of vaccines. If you heard that something caused your child to have a serious, permanent mental disability, wouldn't you consider not exposing your child to that thing? Until further info came out (and was battered into my head), I'd probably err on the side of NOT risking creating an autistic child and skip the vaccines. Do you believe everything that gov/media/Internet tells you? Hard to know the truth.

Have some compassion, acknowledge the error, then help solve the problem. Also try to use hard data.

PS: Let's talk about what really causes autism (ASD):

"Proximity to organophosphates at some point during gestation was associated with a 60% increased risk for ASD."

Hard data from NIH: http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1307044/
Media: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/265857781.html

Now I'd probably err on the side of organic food and not living anywhere near a farm.
posted by RavenHouse at 8:46 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


I have said before, I think the solution to this is to force the unvaccinated to bear the costs of injuries related to failure to vaccinate, the way the vaccinated bear the costs related to injuries from vaccination. They free-ride on the rest of us both in terms of our herd immunity AND in terms of what it costs. They should lose one free ride or the other; if they refuse to vaccinate, make they pay the actual costs of that decision.

Katemonkey: "Now I have this urge to get all the booster shots. I got chicken pox out of nowhere when I was in my 20s, I really don't want to get anything worse."

Doctors LOVE it when you ask if you should get boosters. LOVE IT. They're like, "Wow, public health campaigns are working and this person is proactively taking care of their health instead of making me argue with them about tetanus!"

yoink: "The first dose of MMR vaccinations should be given long before the child is old enough to be able to recognize "

My kids aren't thrilled about it but by age 3 both of them understood why they needed shots and that it would only hurt for a second but would keep them from getting sick. There's the terrible phase between about 12 and 24 months when they're old enough to be TOTALLY FURIOUS and remember that they're angry, but not old enough to understand WHY they have to get shots. I'm not saying my kids meekly line up and submit calmly, but they don't panic about it. I also take them with me when I get my yearly flu shot or any other booster so they can see me getting shots too. I'm scared of needles so I make horrible squinchy faces and look away and everything and they think it's HILARIOUS and their thing is always to see if they can be braver than mommy.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:47 AM on January 22, 2015 [33 favorites]


A lot of why they fear vaccines more than autism is that they believe the threat of communicable diseases has been exagerated by Big X (Pharma, usually), and that there's other ways of preventing disease, so that the choice to them is not vaccination or disease but vaccination or a better way to avoid disease (hence a lot of talk in those circles about "natural" ways of boosting your immune system, avoiding "toxins", etc.). Plus, they tend to have the mistaken belief that measles and the like aren't big deals -- a childhood annoyance that rapidly passes, which seems much worse than a lifelong mental disability.

It's a package deal of mistaken beliefs that needs to fully understood if you want to combat it.
posted by Palindromedary at 8:47 AM on January 22, 2015 [19 favorites]


I'm totally up for holding Oprah accountable, but the first time I heard anyone promote the anti-vaccination conspiracy was ten years ago when Robert Kennedy Jr. went on The Daily Show. John Stewart bought it 100%.
posted by riruro at 8:49 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


The fear of living with a major outbreak of a serious disease like this or polio has faded from living memory among the generation having kids. Instead, they've grown up in an era of medical wonders.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:50 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


All 50 states have exemptions. WTF, Humans? WTEverlovingF?

Because they're usually categorized as "religious exemptions" and good lord that's the last thing a jumpy school administrator wants to question when talking to a parent. There's literally NO investigation once you make a request for exemption under these circumstances.

There is hope, however, in recent court rulings that allowed a district in New York to keep unvaccinated kids out of school during outbreaks of diseases that are vaccine-preventable. Parents can do whatever they want to their children on religous grounds, but schools also have a right to protect the rest of the kids.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:51 AM on January 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Does this kind of rhetoric really help, at all?

I mean, I do honestly appreciate the heart of what you're getting at here, in that we need to continue to educate and, I don't know, kill 'em with kindness, but I've really just had enough of the bullshit. The typical anti-vaxxer *is* educated, middle-class, and white. I have three children. I delayed my first baby's vaccines because I was scared and unsure. Guess what? I fucking LEARNED. Caught that first baby's shots right up and everyone else is on schedule. While I was at it, I refused to allow any family to see my babies until I had proof they were up to date on their boosters, too. (You're welcome, vaccine companies). Knowledge dissipates fear. The folks who are doing this aren't short of privilege or information--it's because they HAVE loads of privilege that they do it. "Hey, you vaccinate YOUR kid, I'll just let herd immunity work for my precious snowflake." And then that attitude insidiously trickles down and grrrrr.

Perhaps the medical complex needs stronger arguments and better communication with parents about why to vaccinate. Perhaps celebs who endorse anti-vaxxing should be jailed for Fearmongering and Mass Public Harm. Perhaps we should just keep throwing our hands up and calling people stupid, or raging incoherently or starting flamewars on FB or avoiding Disneyland or or or

I'm done giving a shit about some person's pearl clutching/dependence on herd immunity privilege. The infants (and elderly and people with compromised immune systems) depend on people to be smart, compassionate members of the human race and I am 110% on their side.
posted by weeyin at 8:57 AM on January 22, 2015 [39 favorites]


What weeyin said. I think I'll trust the combined opinion of medical science worldwide above some dickhead celebs etc.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:59 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


LET'S ALL TAKE A BREATH. We're all on a pretty high horse about this.

Righteous indignation is a helluva drug.
posted by yoink at 9:01 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


The current strain of flu is nasty, and infants have died from it. My insanely adorable grandson isn't vaccinated because he's too young. It's scary. So many vaccines so fast? Hell, yes, bring that fabulous protection on, keep that child safe. As a bonus, you get to protect other children, like those in chemotherapy, so you and your kid are heroes.
posted by theora55 at 9:01 AM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I think you mean shingles?

Oops, you are correct. I apologize for inadvertently spreading misinformation in a thread that is about correcting misinformation. It was a hasty edit during the edit window, I should have verified it.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:05 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


You can get a scabies vaccination, that covers any adult rebound of your chicken pox.

I'm concerned that you think there is a connection between scabies and chicken pox.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:06 AM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


The typical anti-vaxxer *is* educated, middle-class, and white.

Exactly. Marin County has the highest rates of PBEs (personal belief exemptions) in the Bay Area, for example. Marin is not exactly lacking in wealthy and educated people. This is a handy lookup where you can see which schools in California have the highest rates of unvaccinated kids.

The highest rates of unvaccinated kindergartners can be found at the region's mostly private Waldorf schools, where more than 40 percent of students have not been immunized.
posted by rtha at 9:07 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


I asked two doctors so far for a shingles vaccine, and I was told by both that I have to wait until I'm 60 to get it.
posted by "friend" of a TSA Agent at 9:08 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


This all makes me feel just GREAT about taking our 5-month old to Orlando in February.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:09 AM on January 22, 2015


There's some serious bioethical arguments to be made about this issue moving forward. At what point does allowing exemptions infringe on the common good? How do we educate the children of people who don't allow vaccinations, if we don't allow them in common schools? Where should the line be drawn on what is societally allowable under the umbrella of religious exemption?

By the same token; where is the line drawn on vaccines? Do we as a society mandate every vaccine the pharmaceutical companies develop? HPV vacs, for example, still have no peer reviewed research/agreement on long term effectiveness or the need for boosters...and it's been a mandated vaccine in some states for years. It makes some parents feel like their kids are being used as test rabbits for the pharmacy companies, because the pharmacy companies have done little to endear themselves to people.

And "trust" is the key component of the anti-vaxxer argument. They argue that pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted to put public health over profit...and man, that's a hard thing to argue against; because the pharmaceutical companies do a really bad job of public relations when it comes to believability.

That said, my kid is vaccinated, and now I'm wondering if I should ask my doctor about boosters for things like measles and whatnot.
posted by dejah420 at 9:11 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


The problem with the shingles vaccine is that it's about $220. I wonder if the doctor that refused is part of an HMO (I'm not sure how costs get passed around in those). I'm in my 40s and was paying cash and my doctor was fine with me getting one, but I canceled that idea after seeing the price.
posted by crapmatic at 9:14 AM on January 22, 2015


I'm wondering if I myself need a booster since I had the MMR back in the 80s and did actually end up getting the mumps like 12 years ago. I can't imagine my insurance company is going to be interested in covering that.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:14 AM on January 22, 2015


righteous indignation: worse than your kid catching the measles because Kep & Pep Pengle in some other state heard of a website that mentioned a radio show where someone said vaccines could maybe make their baby autistic
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:16 AM on January 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


And yet if you go tho the Dr they ask if you've been to W Africa or know someone with Ebola, not... Have you been to California or have had contact with someone with measles
posted by edgeways at 9:18 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


I'm wondering if I myself need a booster since I had the MMR back in the 80s and did actually end up getting the mumps like 12 years ago. I can't imagine my insurance company is going to be interested in covering that.

Isn't it cheaper for them to cover the vaccine than treatment for any of those illnesses? I don't know why I'd give insurance companies the benefit of the doubt, though, mine is currently giving me the run around on a completely run-of-the mill issue.
posted by JenMarie at 9:18 AM on January 22, 2015


A friend was considering taking her baby somewhere at about 9 months, pre-MMR vaccine, and when she asked the pediatrician about it, she was told that even if she vaccinated at 9 months, it wouldn't be effective and she'd still have to do the regular vaccine schedule. (Apparently even 12 months for the first is possibly too early.)
posted by jeather at 9:19 AM on January 22, 2015


If you're wondering if you need a booster, check with your primary about scheduling a series of blood titers. At the very least you can ask for tests on: Hepatitis A and B, MMR, Chickenpox, and Rabies.
posted by endotoxin at 9:19 AM on January 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


The typical anti-vaxxer *is* educated,

Yes, but education, despite our fondest wishes and continued teaching mission statements issued from on high, does not result in learning how to think critically. This means that one can be thoroughly educated, but have no idea how to evaluate competing claims. So we have people who confuse education for intelligence and intelligence for wisdom, and the result is a fundamentally silly argument, where all the evidence supports but one side, and yet the argument continues and lives keep being lost. The skills to understand what separates a good scientific paper from a talk on Oprah are just that--skills, and can't be just absorbed from the air. We have to stop assuming that critical thinking is simply a function of "intelligence", as loaded and bankrupt a term as that is, and start treating it as we would medicinal or engineering or writing skills--something that needs to be fostered and practiced and developed.

Saying that you learned is admirable, but not evidence that anyone can do it as easily as you could, no more than arguing that one guy making it to the top through sheer bootstraps-pulling, which also happens, validates Objectivism. Some people will never have those opportunities and some will never have those abilities. Our best hope is to try to reach those that have the ability but not the opportunity, instead of alienating them with insults, while simultaneously doing our damndest to defeat those who have the opportunity but not the ability.
posted by Palindromedary at 9:21 AM on January 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


righteous indignation: worse than your kid catching the measles

If the righteous indignation locks people into enjoying the sweet, sweet rush of feeling superior to people and prevents them from actually engaging usefully with anti-vaxxers so as to do something effective to decrease the number of unvaccinated children then righteous indignation could actual cause your kid to catch the measles.

I know it's enormous fun to think "I'm so right and they're so wrong, the stupid poopy heads!!" but it just seems to me to be a discourse that locks everyone into their positions and gets the anti-vaxxers to dig in their heels (see similar arguments over religion etc.). Given that this is a case where changing the anti-vaxxers' beliefs has real consequences for everyone else it seems to me to be worth trying a different kind of engagement.
posted by yoink at 9:22 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Hey `errybody wondering about their own immunity!

If your insurance is nice enough (or your doctor cunning enough to write it at your yearly physical as required lab work, slash you live in non-America) you can get your immunity tested! Ask your provider for MMR titers. Say you're around kids and people you'd rather not get sick, including yourself. Throw Varicella in there while you're at it, and allay your shingles and chicken pox fears. If you're deficient in any of those, you can get a booster.

Some might be more willing to just get a booster, vs titers. I think it's nice to know for sure if you're immune or not, considering some small percentage of the population may not get immunity from one or even two doses. Since we're no longer playing the "herd immunity" game, your individual immunity counts much more.

My insurance covered it at my normal lab work co-pay. If you've got an ACA compliant plan, vaccinations are covered at no additional cost to you.
posted by fontophilic at 9:25 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


Right, but what is that engagement, seriously? What kind of engagement can be beneficial when showing actual proof that the studies they are basing their beliefs upon were falsified and deeply flawed?
posted by poffin boffin at 9:25 AM on January 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


I'm wondering if I myself need a booster

I also got my MMR series back in the 80s. I had to show proof of immunity recently though, so got titers drawn. I'm still immune, but if you did get mumps it might be worth it to you (and your insurance) to check up on. The vaccine (or vaccines, if you did not get the combined shot) do have failure rates. Or maybe your body just loves the mumps, the mumps, the lovely viral mumps.
posted by Panjandrum at 9:26 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I mean I can just stick to my lifelong plan of avoiding all children forever too, right.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:30 AM on January 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Have some compassion, acknowledge the error, then help solve the problem. Also try to use hard data

There has been some suggestion that trying to educate people with actual verifiable facts has the opposite effect from the one desired, i.e., that when presented with facts contradicting their opinions, people become more convinced that they're right and everyone else is wrong.
posted by holborne at 9:34 AM on January 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


prevents them from actually engaging usefully with anti-vaxxers so as to do something effective

What is the useful way? What is the effective way?
posted by rtha at 9:35 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


The hell of it is, things like the Dalkon shield and thalidomide babies did actually happen. Received medical wisdom has been wrong before. There are drug recalls all the time, still. Antibiotic resistance is a thing, and doctors have been complicit in letting it happen.

I don't think medical wisdom is wrong in this case, but the "how dare you question medical wisdom, you fool!" argument is a losing one. That just leads to people taking the flipside view of "All doctors are pharma-shilling quacks!"

Neither is true, which leaves parents at the painful spot where they are trying to manage risks for their children. You don't have to be sympathetic to quackery, but you can talk about your own decisions, and what has/hasn't happened. "I vaccinated my kid; no autism," is a verifiable thing. Talking about how Wakefield took advantage of people and tried to profit off autism scares can help. Talking about the times medicine has saved your life and your loved ones' lives helps, also. Get people thinking about how much they actually do rely on modern medicine, as flawed as it is, and how it has helped them, and can help their kids. That seems more effective to me.

In the meantime, I have no problem with not allowing non-vaccinated kids in public schools, or any other public event, including Disneyland. I think that should be the standard. Most states allow homeschooling. If you want to not vax, you need to keep your kid home. Just like if you want to smoke, you can't do it inside around other people. Because then it's a risk to them. I think that would lead to a lot of people giving it up; it would become way too much of a hassle.
posted by emjaybee at 9:38 AM on January 22, 2015 [16 favorites]


People are needlessly endangering my family because they think they know more about science than actual scientists, and/or freeload on other kids vaccinations. You're god damn right I'm indignant.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:39 AM on January 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


I'm wondering if I myself need a booster

There was a measles outbreak in NYC last spring, and I was freaked because it was being diagnosed at my workplace and I was pregnant. So I emailed my OB and she said that my blood tests were showing a rubella immunity, which would suggest the MMR I had 10+ years prior was probably still good. YMMV.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:43 AM on January 22, 2015


I had a minor case of chicken pox as a child, and had a full set of titers done before I went to college, to determine if I needed the vaccine.

Surprisingly, the titers indicated that I needed an MMR booster. Totally a random chance that led to me finding out that I hadn't held onto the immunity. Catching measles would have sucked.

It's an easy test, and your doctor won't blink if you ask about it during a physical. If you've never had the test done as an adult, it sees like a very reasonable preventative measure to take.

Also, for the love of God, if you think you might not be immune to the chicken pox, go see a doctor. There's a vaccine, and you do not want to catch it as an adult.
posted by schmod at 9:49 AM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


BUT, let's remember why people are afraid of vaccines.

Because some people are spreading lies. No one has shown a connection between vaccines and autism, the one study that did was found to be fraudulent. Not just wrong, fraudulent. There is a difference.

Do you know what IS a cause of autism (not the only cause, of course)? Congenital rubella syndrome. That can happen when a pregnant woman gets rubella. Any guesses as to what prevents that?

The hell of it is, things like the Dalkon shield and thalidomide babies did actually happen. Received medical wisdom has been wrong before. There are drug recalls all the time, still. Antibiotic resistance is a thing, and doctors have been complicit in letting it happen.

Problem is, received medical wisdom has also been right before. Reflexively distrusting it isn't any better than trusting everything your doctor says.
posted by Anne Neville at 9:52 AM on January 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


When are we going to hold the people who started and popularized this responsible for spreading this fear? Some of these kids are not the children of anti-vaxxers and there are babies being exposed who are younger than the vax age.

If I didn't love the mouse so much, i'd threaten to boycott ABC/Disney until they gave Jenny the boot.
posted by Fuka at 9:57 AM on January 22, 2015


This is a handy lookup where you can see which schools in California have the highest rates of unvaccinated kids.


Just taking a look at some of the local schools around me, it seems like the more affluent areas have a higher rate of unvaccinated students... my school is 9% unvaccinated and our population is very educated and affluent, and the schools around me that are at 1% or 0% unvaccinated are in very economically depressed areas.

Having taught in both extremes, I can tell you that highly-educated parents are much more likely to think they know more than anyone else about everything, regardless of how much they actually know... and they're not afraid to tell you all about it. Some people actually choose to teach in poorer areas because of this.
posted by Huck500 at 10:01 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Why We Didn’t Vaccinate Our Child

I gotta say he makes some pretty good points.
posted by hydrophonic at 10:04 AM on January 22, 2015 [36 favorites]


I've had a cough all week, and now I'm terrified that I have whooping cough (because of all the unvaccinated kids), even though I don't actually have the symptoms. I am living proof of what happens when you fail to inoculate someone against baseless paranoia. But then, so are the anti-vax people, I guess. I'm not putting kids' lives in danger, so at least I've got that going for me.
posted by teponaztli at 10:13 AM on January 22, 2015


dejah420: "At what point does allowing exemptions infringe on the common good? "

I feel like we've found it!

dejah420: "if I should ask my doctor about boosters for things like measles and whatnot."

You totally should, but you may have had your MMR titers taken when you were pregnant, usually during the initial blood draw when they check for all the stuff -- that is fairly standard these days. (I know I don't need a booster because I had a good titer.) New parents are also now counseled about DTaP boosters (they want you boosted if you haven't been boosted within about five years, because pertussis is so deadly to babies and currently epidemic almost every winter), although I think that's within the last five years that that's become a thing.

poffin boffin: "I can't imagine my insurance company is going to be interested in covering that."

Your US health insurance now covers most preventative vaccinations if you're within a target population! Adult MMR is specifically on the list. THANKS OBAMA!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:18 AM on January 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


In fact since insurance completely pays for everybody's immunizations, not just lucky people with good insurance, I can now get most adult-necessary booster shots at my big-chain pharmacy -- including flu, shingles, Tdap, and MMR. They already have my insurance information from filling prescriptions; they just print out a form with my info already on it, I sign it, and they bill insurance. I pay nothing and it takes five minutes. Ten if the pharmacy is busy. Which shots they're allowed to give varies by state, but more states are allowing more shots all the time. Insurance is delighted when you do this as it costs them less than if you have your doctor do it.

Unfortunately you mostly can't get your kids done at the pharmacy (unless it has a health clinic with a nurse practitioner), but if you're over 18, they will stick all kinds of needles in you! Most big drugstore chains (Walgreens, CVS, Rite-Aid) and supermarket chains (Kroger, Safeway) with drugstores do pharmacist-vaccinations, as do many big-box stores like Target, Wal-Mart, and Costco. Some of them make you pay for it and file your own insurance reimbursement, but plenty of them just jab you for free and handle the paperwork themselves.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:36 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Also, for the love of God, if you think you might not be immune to the chicken pox, go see a doctor. There's a vaccine, and you do not want to catch it as an adult.

Holy god yes. I was the freak who had chicken pox twice, once at eight abc once at seventeen. It wasn't fun at eight but it was awful torment at seventeen.
posted by winna at 10:37 AM on January 22, 2015


Yeah, I got an MMR titer recently because I needed to document my immunity for a client and it seemed easier to just go to the doc-in-the-box than to track down my childhood immunizations records. The results came back that I was still immune to mumps and rubella, but was not immune to measles, so I got an MMR booster. My insurance covered the whole thing with nary a peep - I'm a little surprised they covered the original titer, but once the results of the titer came back, they had to cover the immunization.

That said, I think the evidence-based-medicine best practice is to treat having been immunized as a child as presumptive proof of immunity if records are available rather than doing a new titer, but I definitely feel better for having done it now that measles epidemics are actually a thing again.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 10:41 AM on January 22, 2015


This is a handy lookup where you can see which schools in California have the highest rates of unvaccinated kids.

Huh. There's a school in Napa, the Kolbe Academy, that has a 100% personal belief exemption rate. The entire student body is unvaccinated? Is it like a criteria for admissions or something? It's a Catholic school, which is interesting to me, because I think of the anti-vaxxers being more from the evangelical-ish wings of protestantism.

From their website: "The school is dedicated to forming the whole person—mind, body, and soul—in order to renew the world through children and young adults who possess the highest educational, moral, civic, and spiritual values.... Our objective is to form well-rounded individuals with high educational, moral, civic, and spiritual values who are capable of transforming our society and world through faith in action. We desire for all of our students to develop into life-long learners and critical thinkers who can grow to their fullest potential, both intellectually and spiritually."

Yeah, good luck forming those unvaccinated bodies! And instilling those moral and civic values of basically screwing the community because you refuse to get vaccinated!

I try to be open-minded and accepting of others' beliefs, but this kind of shit really pisses me off. At some point you have to recognize that you're a citizen of the world, and with that comes a responsibility to your fellow citizens. There should be no exemption from that for any person's or any religion's beliefs.
posted by mudpuppie at 10:44 AM on January 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


At what point does allowing exemptions infringe on the common good?

At what point does allowing everyone in the country to have a third-world-country’s stockpile of weapons infringe on the public good? At what point does dropping mandatory driver’s ed training and letting anyone step behind the wheel of a two-ton vehicle … At what point is voting for anti-climate-change Tea Partiers ... etc.?

And telling people to keep their kids home from school doesn’t help the issue of disease spreading precisely because this country also is filled with people wild about homeschooling and getting a diploma from fly-by-night online “school” industry. (Yeah, you don’t want to get me going on that topic, either.)

I’d like to see stats on the overlap between homeschoolers and anti-vaxxers. Because homeschoolers spend their days not at home but out in public, at ice rinks, swimming pools and libraries, nature centers, playgrounds and malls. And amusement parks.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:45 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Also, for the love of God, if you think you might not be immune to the chicken pox, go see a doctor. There's a vaccine, and you do not want to catch it as an adult.

I never had the pox (neither did my dad), and when the vaccine first came out I thought I heard that adults shouldn't get it. In any case, this thread has scared me into emailing my doctor to find out whether I should. Thanks, stupid parents who are causing the measles outbreak!

posted by mudpuppie at 10:53 AM on January 22, 2015


The highest rates of unvaccinated kindergartners can be found at the region's mostly private Waldorf schools, where more than 40 percent of students have not been immunized.

Rudolf Steiner - whose writings and beliefs are the pedagogical foundation of Steiner-Waldorf schools - actively discouraged vaccination in favour of homeopathy, believed suffering measles was spiritually important for children, and in fact denied the germ theory of disease in toto.

He also believed in the spiritual supremacy of "the Aryan race", the existence of gnomes and Atlantis, the efficacy of clairvoyance and astrology, that children should be prevented from learning to read or write for as long as possible, that the British Isles float on the sea, that blood moves around the body by spiritual forces rather than the heart pumping, and that crops can be protected from vermin by the ritual burning of mice or stuffing the skull of a cat with oak bark and burying it in peat. He was also clear that Steiner-Waldorf "teachers" should conceal these Anthroposophical foundations of their methods from parents because they would "break the neck of the Waldorf School" if the truth was known.

Anyway, this is just to say it isn't that Steiner-Waldorf schools are simply new-agey happy-clappy places which tend to attract non-vaccinating parents but that they actively encourage such child-endangering nonsense.
posted by sobarel at 10:56 AM on January 22, 2015 [24 favorites]


This is reminding me to get titered and get my DPT booster. I did have to have the MMR before college in 1990, but someone younger than me just found out she needed a booster so I should check.

I think what we need is a good old-fashioned return to shunning, since these assholes refuse to self-quarantine. Don't use daycare providers who take unvax'ed kids, don't go to pediatricians who file exemptions, ask other parents about the vax status of their children and do not invite little Snowflakita to the birthday party. Stop going to Disney properties until they decide on a policy. Put your local trampoline gym and public pool on the spot until they declare a policy.

I think the 100% no-vax school is a much better idea than them being allowed in public school, if we're not going to declare this child abuse and remove the child from the home, or make them wear a red vest in public. Parents want to play Survival of the Fittest with their kids, and we're going to let them, so let's limit the damage to people who welcomed it. I get that kids are going to suffer from it, but it's what their parents want and as a country we're okay with that so far.

Make these people actually take a stand for their beliefs if they want to make such a bold statement about the worthlessness of other children's lives. I'll bet if we stopped babying this bullshit, a lot of it would go away.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:57 AM on January 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


It's a Catholic school, which is interesting to me, because I think of the anti-vaxxers being more from the evangelical-ish wings of protestantism.

There are a couple of vaccine derived (long long ago) from fetal stem cell lines, and some of my Catholic acquaintances have a moral objection to those. I could see that becoming an objection to any vaccine pretty quickly, since people don't really do nuance.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:02 AM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I just found out during a casual conversation with one of themthat members of my synagogue aren't vaccinating their kids. In a congregation where 20%+ work in healthcare and there are numerous, well-known immunodeficient members. I wanted to scream aloud a lot of unprintable words.
I'm getting an MMR booster next week.
posted by Dreidl at 11:03 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Cough! there, Puke! there, Hack! there

You're as sick as one can be!

M-E-A-S-L-E M-O-U-S-E
posted by Renoroc at 11:24 AM on January 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


As far as I'm concerned it's not righteous indignation so much as screaming terror.

But I have a baby girl still too young to get her MMR shot, so what do I know? Maybe if I just try to understand the anti-vaxxers' motivations hard enough my daughter won't catch anything otherwise preventable.
posted by lydhre at 11:29 AM on January 22, 2015 [11 favorites]


This is willful ignorance, not a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding can be cured by rationally explaining why vaccines are important. Willful ignorance requires a change in attitude in the antivaxxers and clearly attempts have been made to reason with them. Those attempts have failed.
posted by Twain Device at 11:33 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


In a congregation where 20%+ work in healthcare

i just found that a pretty large group of the people who work at one of the local hospitals are anti-vax. the mind boggles.
posted by nadawi at 11:50 AM on January 22, 2015


> Aaaand this is why I can't go on Facebook anymore.

Like most people, my online life is largely lived within a bubble of people who more or less agree with me about more or less everything. But last night a thread about this news story that one of my friends had commented in popped up in my feed, so I clicked on it. Turns out he was one of the (outnumbered) pro-vaccine voices in the middle of a massive, ugly argument that included people physically threatening each other, quoting the Bible, wishing bad things (autism or disease, depending on which side of the debate they were on) upon other peoples' kids....and it just went on and on and on.

The stupidest are full of passionate intensity, I'll give 'em that.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:58 AM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]




at long last the media have pretty much given up playing "Some say vaccines cause autism...some say it doesn't" and are straight out referring to the vaccine-autism link as "debunked" (which, God knows, it has been for a very long time). And you'd think that anyone listening to/reading this stuff would be a little more impressed by "very real risk of catching measles" vs "entirely fictional risk of autism."

Even if it wasn't debunked, autism is not a plausible cause of death, but being unvaccinated and succumbing to an easily preventable disease is. These anti-vaxxers act like autism is the worst thing in the world, and it's not. I much prefer the fact that I didn't die of viral infection when I was 3.
posted by jonp72 at 12:11 PM on January 22, 2015


I'm pretty sure the only policy Disney could make would be to demand employees are vaccinated. I don't think it's possible for them to demand -guests- be vaccinated. There's just no way to reasonably track or verify that.
posted by FritoKAL at 12:11 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


A misunderstanding can be cured by rationally explaining why vaccines are important.

Sometimes. As has been posted above, preliminary studies seem to show that, in some, facts actually push people harder towards the opposite (false) conclusion; I trust that most here can recall a time when they've experienced this themselves. You cannot reason someone out of a position that they have not at all reasoned themselves into in the first place. All you can do there is marginalize them as best as possible.

However, bad reasoning is reasoning still. You appear to be looking at it (and correct me if I'm wrong) as truth bombarding anti-vaxers from one direction and falsehoods from another. From our outside perspective (and a reality perspective) this is true. But since most people have never been taught or otherwise picked up critical thinking skills, the kind that would let them weigh arguments, to them its simply two masses of conflicting information, each of potentially equal weight. But then you look at the source, and where one might see peer review and reasoned authority, the anti-vaxer often sees trusted sources like Oprah and their friendly neighbour next door telling them that distant faceless scientists and pharmaceutical executives, who have done so much Bad Stuff and Have Been Wrong Before, are lying.

I see two groups: those you can convince (the victims of misinformation), and those you can't (the willfully ignorant, to use your terminology). I don't believe that attacking the victims of misinformation is any more fruitful than locking up more of the poor is in the war against crime. In both cases it's missing the forest for the trees. We can't complain about the pernicious influence of media and then blame the victims when some of them fall prey to it, and taking the time to try and convince someone that they're wrong doesn't stop one from fighting the bigger fight. Talk-and-otherwise-surrender or actually-accomplish-something is a false dichotomy.
posted by Palindromedary at 12:13 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Perfect timing, since we are planning a trip to DisneyLand next week with our 2yr old. We've all been vaccinated, but...
posted by blue_beetle at 12:27 PM on January 22, 2015


Depakote, the behavior controlling drug, they use on bad girls and boys, and adults, yeah, Depakote has strong links to Autism. The reaearch showed 15% of children born to women taking Depakote, developed Autism.

I had every one of the childhood diseases, except polio.

Just proir to the development of the chickenpox vaccine, we would make sure all the neighborhood kids got exposure to chickenpox in the summer, if someone came down with it, then we didn't have to deal with it during the school year. We could all co-babysit our poxy kids.

My kids got their shots. I think I"ll get a couple more. My tetanus is out of date, by a decade.

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/depakote/interview-depakote-lawsuit-side-15-20247.html#.VMFd_3ZlBdZ
posted by Oyéah at 12:29 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


well, here's something we can empirically blame on arrogant wealthy white people...

"...(82%) had incomes higher than $100 000."
posted by j_curiouser at 12:32 PM on January 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Depakote, the behavior controlling drug, they use on bad girls and boys, and adults, yeah, Depakote has strong links to Autism. The reaearch showed 15% of children born to women taking Depakote, developed Autism.

If by 15% you mean 2.5% in one study then yes.
posted by Justinian at 12:43 PM on January 22, 2015 [12 favorites]


i just found that a pretty large group of the people who work at one of the local hospitals are anti-vax. the mind boggles.

Yes, one of my FB friends is a registered nurse and a rabid antivaxxer. I don't understand how they're allowed to practice medicine in a real hospital.

I've had to block them to prevent a rage blackout keyboard smash that would catch lots of our mutual friends in the crossfire...
posted by TwoStride at 12:52 PM on January 22, 2015


Some slapdash googling suggests that the shingles vaccine costs about 200, and that insurance covers it for people and over. My doctor suggested I get the pneumonia vaccine (I did), and get the shingles a year or so later. I have an autoimmune condition, so insurance will cover it, even if I'm not an official geezer at that point. I know lots of people who've had shingles, and I'm kind of terrified. Chicken pox was no fun, either.
posted by theora55 at 1:00 PM on January 22, 2015


...It's a Catholic school, which is interesting to me, because I think of the anti-vaxxers being more from the evangelical-ish wings of protestantism.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:44 PM on January 22


From what I can tell, religion doesn't seem to be much of a factor in whether or not you're anti-vaxx. I read somewhere--I think it was Mother Jones--that if anything, your typical anti-vaxxer was going to lean to the religious left, and be more likely to be Liberal Christian/New Ager/Agnostic/Atheist than Evangelical Protestant. Certainly most mainstream religions have no problem with vaccination.
posted by magstheaxe at 1:30 PM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


It seems frustratingly obvious to me that it will take either Dr. Oz or Oprah or some other very-trusted-by-a-wide-segment kind of person to change the anti-vaxxers' opinions. Dr. Oz would be best.
posted by kitcat at 1:48 PM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


There's a BBC.com article online right now: 'How to Debunk Falsehoods'. It's got some good advice on how to present facts in such a way that the person you're talking to doesn't feel defensive.

The book referenced in the article, The Debunking Handbook, is available as a free PDF. Maybe some of the techniques in the book would work with the anti-vax crowd.
posted by magstheaxe at 1:50 PM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


Huh. There's a school in Napa, the Kolbe Academy, that has a 100% personal belief exemption rate. The entire student body is unvaccinated?

Delayed or partial vaccination counts towards the PBE rate, so a high rate doesn't mean the same percentage is unvaccinated. Rather it means that that percentage received permission to deviate from the standard vaccination schedule in one way or another, which can be anything from delaying a single vaccine to being completely unvaccinated.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:53 PM on January 22, 2015


Anti-vaxxers generally are not afraid of vaccines giving their kids autism, they are afraid of Vaccine Injury, which is a real enough issue that there is a government program dedicated to compensating people for it. Granted, the number of people who have had an adverse vaccine reaction sufficient for compensation is vanishingly small (PDF), but some parents have decided they'd rather expose their children to the risk of catching a non-fatal but unpleasant disease versus the very small chance of having a serious reaction.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:55 PM on January 22, 2015


risk of catching a non-fatal but unpleasant disease

Except measles and whooping cough (and others) can be and are fatal.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:08 PM on January 22, 2015 [17 favorites]


From what I can tell, religion doesn't seem to be much of a factor in whether or not you're anti-vaxx.

Might be that the less educated you are, the more likely you're going to let the doctor make the call for you on vaccines.

Obligatory "He's got to have his dip tet"
posted by Chuffy at 2:22 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


At long last, the persecuted measles germ responds! Please stop vaccinating your kids. I want to go to Disneyland.
"There's more measles now," you say. "That is a bad thing." Maybe it's a bad thing. Or maybe it's a GREAT thing. Maybe a beautiful specimen that was hunted almost to extinction is making a surprise comeback, and you should be a little more supportive!
posted by nicebookrack at 3:51 PM on January 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


That was written by Alexandra Petri. Epystonerical.
posted by Justinian at 3:57 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Alexandra Petri, like Jenny McCarthy, is "definitely a human person, not a large number of measles viruses cleverly disguised as a human person by standing on each other’s porous membranes under a big coat."
posted by nicebookrack at 4:06 PM on January 22, 2015 [12 favorites]


Have some compassion, acknowledge the error, then help solve the problem. Also try to use hard data.

Hard data means nothing to these idiots. Said it once, saying it again: refusing to vaccinate your children is child abuse (and a crime against society at large) and should be punished appropriately: your children removed from your control, and you in court on child endangerment charges. Your stupid and uninformed beliefs do not trump science.

(With the caveat, of course, that if your child is immunocompromised or allergic to an ingredient in the vaccine, that's a different story. But that needs to be supported by actual medical evidence without financial interest, which brings us to the problem in US healthcare, both in terms of evidence and financial interest.)

Perhaps celebs who endorse anti-vaxxing should be jailed for Fearmongering and Mass Public Harm.

They should be jailed for child endangerment. Already exists on the books and that is precisely what they are doing.

People are needlessly endangering my family because they think they know more about science than actual scientists, and/or freeload on other kids vaccinations. You're god damn right I'm indignant.

Yeah. This. Herd immunity only works if the herd is immunized. These people are idiots and they need to be prevented from causing further harm. Rugged individualism is "fuck you, I got mine" all over again.


I'm pretty sure the only policy Disney could make would be to demand employees are vaccinated. I don't think it's possible for them to demand -guests- be vaccinated. There's just no way to reasonably track or verify that.

Disney could easily require to see vaccination records (in my province, a handy little booklet) before allowing anyone in. Any loss in revenue from anti-knowledge idiots would be more than made up for by revenue from people who accept reality.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:24 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've never had a proper conversation with my parents about, but I never had an MMR or chickenpox vaccination, and did in fact get all of those diseases as a child. It's possible I predate them being part of the regular vaccination schedule in the UK (I knew at age 13 only the girls in my class were given rubella vaccinations).

But what I most remember is how being laid up in bed with those things was a big rite of passage every few years from age 4 upwards. Until I was 14 and got very ill with Crohn's disease (I've certainly heard measles mentioned as one of the possible triggers for Crohn's, a humongous millstone around my otherwise very privileged life), they were my only illnesses. It's weird how much of a dent those entirely pointless weeks of fever during childhood have left in my mind. Especially the unrealistic perception I have of illness being something discrete, mildly unpleasant but tolerable, short-lived and entirely separate from day to day life. In actual fact, real life illness is mostly chronic and relapsing-remitting or debilitating in various other ways, and I've been poorly served by not understanding recovery from non-infectious illness is an altogether more complex process than waking up to find that the red spots have gone and you feel hungry.

So maybe that's part of why these idiots minimise the harm of these illnesses: because they're so much more tangible than the messy 95% of the world's sickness burden, their existence can be reassuring. Of course, that's all bullshit, the risk is very real and unacceptable to bear, but people are well known to take big risks in order to fit the world into a simple reassuring mental model, and that's one that fits the bill and is complementary to the more recognised big pharma is evil narrative.
posted by ambrosen at 4:52 PM on January 22, 2015


Any loss in revenue from anti-knowledge idiots would be more than made up for by revenue from people who accept reality.

Except for j_curiouser's mention further upheld that "82% had incomes higher than $100 000", which makes it seem that the few people who actually do stay away because unvaccinated people are accepted there are unlikely to be worth as much to them as the anti-vaxxers who can all afford lots of holidays there.
posted by ambrosen at 4:59 PM on January 22, 2015


If that were the case, ambrosen, I doubt that Disney would do anything but deny deny deny.

What ever else they may do well, they are a moneymaking venture in the first place. And maybe this is anecdata, but every single person I know who has gone there has made less than six figures.

So while perhaps the unvaccinated kids' parents may be abusive idiots who make six figures, seems to me like they're in the minority of overall park attendance.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:51 PM on January 22, 2015


risk of catching a non-fatal but unpleasant disease

This is pretty much the anti-vax issue; someone (called Mr. Encyclopedia of all things) is so detached from the reality of illness, a detachment achieved by decades of hard work on vaccines, that they can say chirpily that no one dies of of measles, or pertussis. Hell, even the much joked about chickenpox has a small mortality rate. And for every actual death, there likely a number damaged -- left with brain damage from measles encephalitis, etc.
posted by tavella at 6:38 PM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


If you want the rest of your day to go very bleak very quickly, Google "whooping cough death" and read from those top-ranked descriptions of tiny babies slowly choking to death in hospital ICUs. Tiny babies, plural.
posted by nicebookrack at 6:52 PM on January 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


I've started using the term "community immunity" instead of "herd immunity," because the non-vaccinating parents I know are more likely to want to think of themselves as part of a community than a herd (maybe, not sure about the vegans).

Yes, that is stupid, but: see above.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:18 PM on January 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


Huh. There's a school in Napa, the Kolbe Academy, that has a 100% personal belief exemption rate. The entire student body is unvaccinated? Is it like a criteria for admissions or something? It's a Catholic school, which is interesting to me, because I think of the anti-vaxxers being more from the evangelical-ish wings of protestantism.

It looks like they also run a home-schooling curriculum, which as far as I can tell is a national program. So I wonder if the numbers for anti-vax home-schooled students is just overwhelming an accurate number for the students physically attending the school.
posted by jaguar at 7:30 PM on January 22, 2015




I was visiting a friend who lives a few hundred miles away this fall who is a semi-retired MD and we were discussing how the internet is changing peoples access to info and I mentioned that the starkest divisions I'd seen as far as arguments between groups pushing competing information were the vax/anti-vaxxers and she immediately got started on an anti-vax diatribe which I was completely unprepared to hear from her. Not having kids and being vaxxed up myself I don't really have a horse in this race (she doesn't have progeny either), but I was intrigued that she of all people was taking up the anti-vax crusade with all kinds of balls-to-the-walls gusto.
posted by telstar at 10:33 PM on January 22, 2015


I lived in the middle of a measles outbreak in 1988 in NC. A couple counties actually closed their schools for a week, and sports and other inter-school events were cancelled for some period of time to try to stop the spread. And we all got MMR boosters ( this may have been something peculiar about the vaccines or vaccination schedule of late 1970s kids).

Then, when I started college in 1995, they required me to get another MMR booster. Luckily I still had proof of that one when I started successive grad schools in 2001 and 2005, or I would have had to get another one. I'm impressed by all of you who have somehow avoided ever getting a booster.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:46 AM on January 23, 2015


There are a couple of vaccine derived (long long ago) from fetal stem cell lines, and some of my Catholic acquaintances have a moral objection to those. I could see that becoming an objection to any vaccine pretty quickly, since people don't really do nuance.

I favorited this comment since I agree that this is the reason cited by increasing numbers of religious people for avoiding vaccines.

But I want to clarify for anyone reading this page who doesn't already know:

None of the cells from the two cell lines which were used to develop a few vaccines remain in the vaccines. There are no fetal cells in any vaccine.

Those cell lines are derived from fetal material dating back to 1962 and 1966 (before Roe v. Wade!) and the abortions in those cases would have happened anyway, for other reasons. No abortions are ever done today for the purposes of producing vaccines, and if abortion were completely banned, it would not affect the supply of vaccines.

The Catholic church officially does not object to the use of vaccines which were developed using fetal cell lines when they are the only vaccines available for the diseases they prevent.

Here is a page with citations for those facts. I recommend sharing it with people who are uncomfortable with vaccines because they think they are linked to abortion.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:11 AM on January 23, 2015 [9 favorites]


(Just a warning -- that page starts from the premise that abortion is bad. The point is: it does NOT follow from that premise that vaccines are bad. I think that is a good line of argument for a lot of people, who can't be talked out of their beliefs about abortion but can be convinced that their beliefs about abortion shouldn't affect their use of vaccines. But I do not personally agree with that premise as stated and don't want to unconditionally endorse that site.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:32 AM on January 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


yoink: "If the righteous indignation locks people into enjoying the sweet, sweet rush of feeling superior to people and prevents them from actually engaging usefully with anti-vaxxers so as to do something effective to decrease the number of unvaccinated children then righteous indignation could actual cause your kid to catch the measles."

I'm immunocompromised and would like to see my (completely healthy) children grow up. Fuck these people sideways.
posted by scrump at 9:47 AM on January 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


If you want the rest of your day to go very bleak very quickly, Google "whooping cough death" and read from those top-ranked descriptions of tiny babies slowly choking to death in hospital ICUs. Tiny babies, plural.

According to the CDC: "During 2012, 48,277 cases of pertussis were reported to CDC, including 20 pertussis-related deaths."

That's a very, very low mortality rate. Measles, similarly, in first-world countries with adequate medical care, has a very, very low mortality rate: "US and UK case-fatality rates were ∼1 per 1000 reported measles cases from the 1940s through the 1980s."

Yes, there are other, non-fatal, complications associated with some of these diseases, but it's stupid to float a pro-vaccination campaign on a deeply untruthful attempt to equate the severity of pertussis and measles to, say, polio. The vast, vast majority of kids who get pertussis or measles survive and are not in any way lastingly traumatized by the disease. There are excellent and, in my view, profoundly compelling arguments to be made in favor of universal vaccination, but if you peddle unfactual alarmism you gravely weaken that case. Anti-vaxxers who read over-hyped accounts of measles and pertussis etc. that describe them as if they're second-cousin to ebola just think "oh, the whole case is based on BS."
posted by yoink at 9:48 AM on January 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


I think Disney needs a new ride, "The Wonderful World of Polio (presented by GlaxoSmithKline)." Something like the old "Adventure through Inner Space."
posted by malocchio at 10:54 AM on January 23, 2015




Please don't use my comment as a jumping-off point for your argument in a way that puts words in my mouth. I did not at all compare pertussis to polio or Ebola, nor did I write that whooping cough is bleak because it kills 20 patients a year (even though that number should be 0). Whooping cough is bleak because the children who die from it still die horribly. That's horrifying enough for me, regardless of the number of deaths.
posted by nicebookrack at 1:08 PM on January 23, 2015 [8 favorites]


Penn and Teller explain vaccination. Really hits it hard.
posted by spitbull at 2:41 PM on January 25, 2015


'They're called "measles" not "yousles" so maybe y'all should mind your own damn business!'
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:17 PM on January 26, 2015


I'm failing in my googling to find a source for this, but in a contemporary outbreak, where vaccinated childhood diseases become endemic in the US again, it has been modeled that the death rate would be higher than the normal mortality rate because the vulnerable populations are the immunocompromised and young infants whom are more likely to die than your average general population, in addition to the opting-out non-vaxxers.

So basically, today, the people getting sick are already less able to get over the illness, so the mortality rates will be skewed higher because of the group selected to get the illness.

You'd see child mortality rates and the life expectancy of those vulnerable populations regress. Because in the past, they would have already been sick and lived, or sick and dead, instead of being alive and able to get sick and then die. So all of that dying would happen at once, and then you'd have a more immune population going forward, and you'd see a more normal mortality rate.

Which is why public health, and statistics at large, are not based on individual choices but at population level policies.

It's like saying "we never wore seat belts as kids and I turned out fine!" but you don't often have the ghosts of car crash victims walking around giving testimony...
posted by fontophilic at 9:46 AM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


That may be a low mortality rate, but it is a completely avoidable mortality rate. 20 deaths did not need to happen because we have a vaccine that prevents these deaths.

Sure. But there are lots of preventable deaths out there. The vast majority of deaths, in fact, are "preventable" in one way or another. The calculation is never "if preventable, we must do everything possible to prevent them" it is always "what is a reasonable trade-off between risk and efforts to ameliorate that risk?" If we passed a law requiring every single person in an automobile to wear a crash helmet at all times we'd save thousands of lives and significantly reduce serious injuries every year. It's an affordable, relatively easy step with an obvious pay off in reduced harm. But it would also be a bit of a pain and while the aggregate effect would be enormous, the individual payoff would, in most cases, be null (most people don't get involved in an accident at all, most of those who do don't suffer serious head injury etc.). So we don't do it.

To insist that in order to eliminate a very, very small number of deaths from measles we need to implement draconian restrictions on individual rights simply on the basis that this would result in some non-zero number of reduced deaths is absurd.

I'm terrified about a future where all of the diseases we had eradicated successfully are back


Measles was never "eradicated." And the fact that a few, mostly-non-vaccinated people are catching the disease now doesn't mean that the vaccination which the vast majority of people receive will suddenly become ineffective. The vast majority of Americans have nothing to fear from measles, the vast majority of those with reason to fear measles are those whose parents have made a choice--a poor choice, but one that is within their rights to make--not to have them vaccinated. Yes, there are some people in each case who fall outside of those groups, but--again--you cannot found a reasonable argument for instituting coercive policies simply on the vague appeal to the absolute elimination of risk. There must be some proportionality between the risk faced and the measures taken to combat it.
posted by yoink at 10:08 AM on January 27, 2015


yoink, I am totally bewildered. Are you actually saying it's okay to not vaccinate?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:16 AM on January 27, 2015


draconian
posted by edgeways at 10:21 AM on January 27, 2015


yoink, I am totally bewildered. Are you actually saying it's okay to not vaccinate?

No, I'm saying that there is a limit to the reasonable steps we can take, as a society, to maximize vaccination. We need very compelling reasons before, for example, we strip a parent of their right to determine what medical treatments their children do and don't receive. "The child will die if this is not done"--that's a really compelling reason. "The child has a very slight chance of developing an illness which, in turn, has a very slight chance of seriously harming that child"--that's not a compelling reason.

I'm entirely in favor of programs of education, widespread free vaccination etc. I think an argument can be made (though it's debatable) for refusing access to public school for unvaccinated children. But the hysterical "burn the witches!! Shun them! Shun them!" tone of much of the commentary in this thread which implies that there is no step too far to ensure 100% immunization is absurdly overblown given the actual level of risk that the relatively small number of refusenik parents pose to the wider population.
posted by yoink at 10:26 AM on January 27, 2015


We need very compelling reasons before, for example, we strip a parent of their right to determine what medical treatments their children do and don't receive.

You mean compelling reasons like preventing the spread of deadly or debilitating diseases through the population? Herd immunity doesn't work if people can opt out on a whim--and we see that in the climbing rates of new infections of preventable diseases.

As someone who knows more than a few seriously immunocompromised people, you are telling my friends that they have to be on constant vigilance in case they run into unvaccinated people, that they are responsible for amoral asshats shirking their societal responsibility.

Then again, I don't think parents should have complete control over medical decisions for their children, because many parents make stupid and abusive decisions based on superstition and lies.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:33 AM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


> The vast majority of Americans have nothing to fear from measles

We ought to care about the US not becoming another reservoir for fatal, preventable diseases. The fewer of those on this planet, the better.

And contact tracing is very, very expensive. How much should we budget to track these epidemics? How much of that should come out of the shrinking pool of public health money? How much should come out of the budget for education and enforcement?
posted by rtha at 10:46 AM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


You mean compelling reasons like preventing the spread of deadly or debilitating diseases through the population?

And, again, putting it in absolute terms like that simply fails to grasp the necessary risk/reward calculation that we have to make in all cases about social policy. Yes, "preventing the spread of deadly or debilitating diseases through the population" is a Good Thing. So is preventing deaths in car accidents, right? Are you out there lobbying for mandatory helmet laws in passenger vehicles? Why not? Don't you care about the lives destroyed by those preventable deaths?

Or take your immunocompromised friends. You know what would really, genuinely cut down on their rate of illness? Mandatory facemasks for everyone whenever they leave the house and mandatory cleaning of the hands with Purell whenever they, let's say, pass through any doorway or take any stairway or escalator. That really, really would save thousands of lives (the blow to the spread of norovirus would be enormous).

If you stand in the way of making those into laws where people are fined if they fail to comply does that simply prove that you don't are about immunocompromised people and "tiny, tiny babies" etc. etc. etc.? Those policies would save orders of magnitude more lives than anything anyone is proposing here about measles (which, again, is not threatening to become a serious illness among those who do elect to get vaccinated).

No, you're simply making a reward/cost trade-off calculation which involves people's freedom to wear what they want and freedom to choose whether or not to use a hand sanitizer against the extra deaths that impinging on those freedoms would cost. And, of course, when you put it that way it sounds horrible and selfish, but it's not. You're intruding into millions and millions of people's lives, impacting their social interactions etc. etc., and for the vast majority of those individuals the benefits of that intrusion will be small.

I'm trying to make you understand that this "won't somebody think of the children" form of argument ("even ONE excess death is one too many" etc.) is just gross emotional blackmail, and not in fact the basis of any sensible public policy. "Zero tolerance" for death is just as stupid as every other kind of "zero tolerance." The question is always what are the rewards, and what are the costs: how many lives will we save and at what cost.
posted by yoink at 10:46 AM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


What's the cost of the children who die?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:48 AM on January 27, 2015


I don't think parents should have complete control over medical decisions for their children

I'm not the one making totalizing arguments. I already said that "if the child will die without this treatment" that's reasonable grounds for taking the decision away from the parent. But that doesn't mean that all or even most medical (and other) decisions should be taken away from parents.
posted by yoink at 10:48 AM on January 27, 2015


What's the cost of the children who die?

So you are lobbying in favor of car helmets and compulsory facemasks for everybody whenever they're outside their own homes, right? Because that will save children's lives. Many, many more than upping the percentage of children in the US receiving measles vaccination.
posted by yoink at 10:49 AM on January 27, 2015


Or take your immunocompromised friends.

Or what about my immunocompromised family under the age of 5? Kids not washing their hands isn't going to kill them. Not wearing facemasks won't kill them. You know what could kill them? Some kid who is otherwise healthy but whose parents decide to not vaccinate for nonmedical reasons. That kid could kill my family.

You act like this rage is just a stirrup for people to get on their high horses. I assure you it is life and death for many of us.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:50 AM on January 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


That's a dishonest way of putting words in my mouth.

Vaccination is noninvasive and has societal benefits--the benefits accrue to everyone, not just the person wearing your putative car helmet.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:51 AM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Kids not washing their hands isn't going to kill them. Not wearing facemasks won't kill them.

Of course it will! How do you think the vast majority of infectious diseases are spread? A rigorously enforced law demanding that people wore facemasks whenever they left the house and also requiring them to disinfect their hands before entering any building, using any stairway or escalator would prevent countless thousands of illnesses (including, ironically, most cases of measles).

If these "one preventable death is too many" arguments held water then how could you possibly say the minor inconvenience of wearing a facemask and disinfecting your hands 10-20 times a day outweighed all the preventable deaths that would thereby be avoided?

That's a dishonest way of putting words in my mouth.


No, I'm pointing out that you're being a hypocrite. You're imposing one standard when it comes to vaccination and, arbitrarily, another when it comes to car helmets and compulsory facemasks. And you do so simply because an enjoyable moral panic argument has grown up around vaccination (one where we get all the fun of feeling intellectually superior to the "bad" people who are doing the Wrong Thing), but no such moral panic has yet grown up around car helmets ("how could anyone be such an idiot as not to wear a helmet when they're driving? Do they just not care about their children's brains?") or compulsory facemasks ("oh, yeah, your right not to look a bit silly is SO much more important than the right of my immunocompromised friends not to die!!").

I'm pointing out that in most cases you recognize that "but some preventable deaths will be avoided" is not, in fact, the end of the discussion--that in most cases we do make trade offs between individual rights (even such ill-defined rights as "the right not to have a minor inconvenience") and slightly increased risks of total mortality.

Vaccination is noninvasive


By no one's definition of noninvasive, ever.
posted by yoink at 11:50 AM on January 27, 2015


Not in the slightest. Car helmets, apart from being ridiculous, protect only you. Vaccination protects everyone. You keep ignoring that.

Vaccination is like taxes, you don't get to opt out.

By no one's definition of noninvasive, ever.

As medical procedures go, it's on the noninvasive end of the spectrum.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:54 AM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


1980. 2.6 million deaths by measles per year globally.

2000: 562,000
2012: 122 000
13.8 million lives saved between 2000-2012, attributed directly to vaccination.

I kinda think anti Vaxers should shut the hell up, their soapbox has burned down to the ground.
It is not draconian nor unreasonable to expect people to be required to be given vaccinations unless medically unable to receive them.
posted by edgeways at 11:57 AM on January 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Car helmets, apart from being ridiculous, protect only you.

That's an argument we dismissed long ago when it came to compulsory helmets for cyclists (motorized and others). There are social costs to personal injury and we, collectively, as a society, have an interest in reducing those costs.

And why "ridiculous"? Why any more "ridiculous" than cycle helmets? All race-car drivers wear them. Is that "ridiculous"?

Vaccination protects everyone. You keep ignoring that.

I'm not ignoring it in the least. I'm pointing out that in the case of the measles vaccine the vast majority of people who choose to get vaccinated remain protected, regardless of what others do.

If the vaccine became utterly ineffective without 100% participation then you'd have a case. As it is, all you're doing is repeating the same tired argument. Yes, in the case of some measure of noncompliance there will be some additional avoidable deaths. But--as you are in fact conceding by your refusal to endorse car helmets and compulsory facemasks--you do, in fact, agree that "this policy will prevent some otherwise preventable deaths" is not a slam dunk argument.

Forcing people to take medical treatment against their wishes is a very, very serious infringement on their rights. Heck, we all agree that forcing people to eat if they choose not to is an infringement on their rights, and I think you'll agree that putting food into a stomach is less "invasive" than sticking a needle in someone's arm. If we are going to coerce (as oppose to persuade) people to vaccinate their children, we need to show an extremely compelling case. When it comes to measles, that case simply cannot be made (as this thread demonstrates, in spades).
posted by yoink at 12:04 PM on January 27, 2015


and I think you'll agree that putting food into a stomach is less "invasive" than sticking a needle in someone's arm

You think absolutely wrong there.

When it comes to measles, that case simply cannot be made

1980. 2.6 million deaths by measles per year globally.

2000: 562,000
2012: 122 000

Case made.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:09 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


13.8 million lives saved between 2000-2012, attributed directly to vaccination.

I kinda think anti Vaxers should shut the hell up, their soapbox has burned down to the ground.


Yes. Notice that those lives were saved despite the fact that anti-vaxxer parents continued to be allowed to refuse vaccination. In other words, the measles vaccine is terrifically effective even when vaccination rates are below 100%.

The argument here is not about whether vaccination is the best course of action--of course it is. I would strongly argue that any person choosing not to vaccinate is making a bad decision. The argument is about people's right to make bad decisions. I think smoking is a bad decision. That doesn't mean I would support a law that banned all smoking even in private homes. I think drinking excessively is a bad decision. That doesn't mean I favor a return to Prohibition, or locking people up if they break a certain state-ordained threshold (outside of the context of driving, of course). Etc. etc. etc.
posted by yoink at 12:09 PM on January 27, 2015


Of course it will!

What the fuck do you know?

Immunocompromised kids who cannot get vaccines run a very real risk of death from being around normal kids who voluntarily do not get vaccinated. The sniffles aren't going to kill these kids. But many diseases preventable from vaccination will.

ou do, in fact, agree that "this policy will prevent some otherwise preventable deaths" is not a slam dunk argument.

Compulsory face masks have a high social cost. Compulsory helmets have a high social cost.

Compulsory vaccinations have a low social cost, and only a high cost for dumbass parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids because of Oprah.

QED. Your argument is invalid.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:09 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


There are social costs to personal injury and we, collectively, as a society, have an interest in reducing those costs.

But not, apparently, if that means vaccination?

The argument is about people's right to make bad decisions.

You can make bad decisions for yourself. You can't make bad decisions for other people.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:12 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Especially, on reflection, when those other people are incapable of making decisions for themselves.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:17 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


The argument is about people's right to make bad decisions.

Chopping "on behalf of their children." off the end of that sentence really changes it, doesn't it.
posted by Etrigan at 12:17 PM on January 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


> Yes. Notice that those lives were saved despite the fact that anti-vaxxer parents continued to be allowed to refuse vaccination. In other words, the measles vaccine is terrifically effective even when vaccination rates are below 100%.

Vaccination rates don't have to be perfect in order for epidemics to be prevented, and no one argues that (so I don't know who you're arguing against here). We have a confluence of dropping vaccination rates (of children) and waning of immunity in already vaccinated people (because they haven't gotten booster shots). A rise in measles cases costs money even if it doesn't kill "too" many people: work hours are lost; school hours are lost; public health dollars that could have been spent on something besides tracking a preventable illness go instead to tracking measles. This is all enormously wasteful.
posted by rtha at 12:19 PM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


What the fuck do you know?

Considerably more than you, evidently, given that you think the only diseases whose transmission would be mitigated by facemasks and hand-sanitization are "the sniffles" and that these pose no threat whatsoever to immunocompromized people.


But not, apparently, if that means vaccination?


Are you actually reading anything I'm writing, or just carrying on an argument with some imaginary anti-vaxxer. I'm pro-vaccination. I believe everyone should get vaccinated. So far as I know I'm up to date on all my vaccinations. I get the flu vaccine every year. I'm going to get the shingles vaccine as soon as I'm old enough. Etc. etc.

The argument, once again, is not about whether getting vaccinated is a good idea--the argument is about what are the reasonable measures we should take to close the gap from a (say) 93% vaccination rate for measles to a (say) 99% rate. I am very happy with spending state resources on education campaigns and other attempts at persuasion; I'm much less happy with any coercive measures. While it is certain that those measures would save some (although not many) lives it is not clear to me that the cost of infringing on people's rights is worth it.
posted by yoink at 12:19 PM on January 27, 2015


And what about the rights of children to be healthy? What about the rights of immunocompromised people to be healthy?

You're trying to say we're arguing from emotion while you're using cold hard logic, but " I'm much less happy with any coercive measures" puts the lie to that.

I'm pro-vaccination. I believe everyone should get vaccinated

Good. So stop minimizing the damage caused when people don't, ta.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Chopping "on behalf of their children." off the end of that sentence really changes it, doesn't it.

No. People do have the right to make bad choices on behalf of their children. Again, you all want to make this a simple yes/no, black/white thing ("won't somebody think of the children")--but it simply never is. We let people choose what to feed their children, for example. That has enormous health consequences (infinitely greater than the paltry number of measles deaths we face because a few yuppies choose not to get their kids vaccinated for measles). Do we think it would be a good thing for the state to monitor and control all children's meals? No, that would clearly be too invasive, even if the health benefits could, potentially, be enormous.

Again, in any real world decision about public policy we necessarily weigh rewards against costs (and "it infringes on people's rights" is a cost). In this thread we're pretending that "it could save some children" is simply an unanswerable argument, but it's not and it should not be.
posted by yoink at 12:24 PM on January 27, 2015


"it infringes on people's rights"

Funny how you think infringing on the rights of parents to deliberately put their children at enormous and 100% preventable risk, but screw the rights of everyone else.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:26 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Good. So stop minimizing the damage caused when people don't, ta.

I'm not 'minimizing' it--I'm describing it as accurately as I can, using the statistics provided by the CDC. Because I'm interested in actually trying to figure out what the real "costs" of vaccination refusal are rather than pretending that we around the corner from a new Black Death.

I'm sorry that the real numbers don't match your catastrophic imagination.
posted by yoink at 12:26 PM on January 27, 2015


People do have the right to make bad choices on behalf of their children.

Why do you hold this as a societal good? Why is counteracting that bad?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:28 PM on January 27, 2015


enormous and 100% preventable risk

If the risk were "enormous" (as opposed to what it actually is: extremely low) that would change the cost/reward calculation.

Funny how you think infringing on the rights of parents to deliberately put their children at enormous and 100% preventable risk, but screw the rights of everyone else.


Funny how you think your right not to wear a facemask in public and thereby put everyone at risk from contagious diseases is so important that it means you can screw the rights of everyone else.

You see how that's actually a crappy argument?
posted by yoink at 12:29 PM on January 27, 2015


Then why are you ignoring the 10X decrease in measles deaths over 30 years, if statistics are so important?

Or do you think that decrease has nothing to do with vaccinations?

Why are you ignoring the increases in infections of lots of preventable diseases, statistics also available from the CDC?

You see how that's actually a crappy argument?

One of us is talking about things that actually happen in reality. So no, my argument isn't crappy.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:33 PM on January 27, 2015


People do have the right to make bad choices on behalf of their children. Again, you all want to make this a simple yes/no, black/white thing ("won't somebody think of the children")--but it simply never is.

When an argument is literally about children, then "Won't somebody think of the children" isn't a scare tactic, it's the point of the argument. And let's try not to delve too deeply into what we all "want" to do, m'kay?

We let people choose what to feed their children, for example.

Speaking of absolutism: no, we don't. We generally let people choose what to feed their children, but our society has decided that we want to intervene in extreme cases.
posted by Etrigan at 12:33 PM on January 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Its a crappy argument because wearing a facemask in public has a high cost and isn't that effective.

Vaccinations have a low cost and are extremely effective.

I mean: duh.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:33 PM on January 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Why do you hold this as a societal good?

For all the same reasons you do, in fact. Or do you think that you'd, in fact, like it if, say, the current Republican controlled congress passed a whole bunch of laws saying what choices you were and weren't allowed to make for your child? Hey, there's some pretty strong evidence that people of faith live longer and lead happier lives than atheists. Let's make it illegal for parents to choose to raise their children outside of a religious context. Yay!

Etc. etc. etc.

We preserve people's rights to make bad decisions because we don't all agree (and shouldn't all agree) on what constitutes a "good decision" and a "bad decision." On those occasions when we take those rights away (and no rights are absolute) we need very compelling reasons. The relatively tiny number of annual measles deaths in the USA does not constitute such a reason.
posted by yoink at 12:33 PM on January 27, 2015


You seem to think this is some abstract exercise. It's not. Whatever, continue your anti-vaxx crusade--supporting anti-vaxxers is no different than being one, no matter how o'ermuch thou dost protest.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:36 PM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Hey, there's some pretty strong evidence that people of faith live longer and lead happier lives than atheists.

This isn't causally identified. Its also irrelevant.

There's a reason that no one is argueing for mandating the flu vaccine: because it isn't nearly as effective as other vaccines and it bears a cost. MMR vaccines and others are EXTRAORDINARILY effective and have almost no cost.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:37 PM on January 27, 2015


Then why are you ignoring the 10X decrease in measles deaths over 30 years

Where did I "ignore" it? What part of my argument requires me to diminish that achievement? Again, you're really failing to pay attention to the case I'm actually making here. Vaccination is an inherently good thing. Everyone, in my opinion, should get their children vaccinated. It would be great if the vaccination rate reached 100%.

All I am arguing is that people have a right (not an absolute right, but a right) to choose which medical treatments their children get and that when we choose to abrogate that right we need a very compelling reason to do so. The very small number of additional measles deaths caused by the small (and, in fact, shrinking--not growing) number of vaccination refusers does not, in my opinion, rise to the level of such a compelling reason.
posted by yoink at 12:38 PM on January 27, 2015


If we don't push back against the pro vaccination camp then our rights will be taken away: rights like my right to go to college without vaccinations. Can you imagine that totaliatarian state!!!!

/hamburger
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:38 PM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Whatever, continue your anti-vaxx crusade

Or you could, you know, learn to read.
posted by yoink at 12:39 PM on January 27, 2015


All I am arguing is that people have a right (not an absolute right, but a right) to choose which medical treatments their children get and that when we choose to abrogate that right we need a very compelling reason to do so. The very small number of additional measles deaths caused by the small (and, in fact, shrinking--not growing) number of vaccination refusers does not, in my opinion, rise to the level of such a compelling reason.

It's odd how you're so scared of the slippery slope on the "Taking away rights" side while being so dismissive of the slippery slope on the "Fewer vaccinated people lead to more disease" side, especially when the latter is being proven by this FPP.
posted by Etrigan at 12:40 PM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I can read quite well, thank you. And what I am reading is you defending anti-vaxxers, which is indistinguishable from supporting them.

All in the name of the rights of parents to put their children and lots of other people at risk.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:43 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


If we don't push back against the pro vaccination camp then our rights will be taken away:

Sigh. And, once again...I'm entirely in favor of people getting vaccinated. Yay vaccination. Yay for all the lives it saves. Only an idiot chooses not to get vaccinated.

But people have a right to be idiots up to a certain point. Smoking is, again, an excellent example. Do you think smoking should be banned (i.e., total prohibition)? It would, obviously, save a huge number of lives if it were (again, vastly more than pushing up the measles vaccination rate from it's currently already-high levels). It's obviously a "bad decision" to smoke, and one that doesn't solely impact the health of the person who makes the decision. So, if you argue in favor of people's "individual right" to make that "bad choice" does that automatically mean you're some kind of libertarian nut job?
posted by yoink at 12:44 PM on January 27, 2015


Smoking--and I'm a smoker--affects more or less only yourself these days, now that in so many place it's something we can't inflict on others.

Vaccination affects everyone. What part of that is unclear?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:47 PM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


"Fewer vaccinated people lead to more disease" side

More, yes, but not very much more, as I demonstrated by linking to the CDC statistics earlier in this thread.

Again, I'm making an entirely non-absolutist argument. If the threat posed by the vaccine-refusers were higher I'd be willing to accept a more intrusive action on the part of the government. But the facts simply aren't on your side. Pushing the vaccination rate up by another 6 or 7% wouldn't save many lives at all and would impose a real social cost in terms of stripping people of rights which, in fact, in most cases you and pretty much everyone else actually think are very important.
posted by yoink at 12:48 PM on January 27, 2015


Smoking is, again, an excellent example.

It is! You shouldn't be allow to smoke in a school. You also shouldn't be allow to send your fucking kids to school unvaccinated for no reason.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:49 PM on January 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


I'm a smoker

Oh God, that's hilarious. Just fucking hilarious. I think I'll bow out on that note and try to get some work done.

Seriously, though, fffm, you smoke? Won't you think of the children?
posted by yoink at 12:50 PM on January 27, 2015


Mod note: Thigh deep into this exchange and positions not really budging in either direction, it's probably time to let it drop and let the thread be not just one intractable argument.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:50 PM on January 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


I don't smoke around children, so...
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:51 PM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


It is! You shouldn't be allow to smoke in a school. You also shouldn't be allow to send your fucking kids to school unvaccinated for no reason.

Yoink, in fact, voiced possible support for this policy towards the start of this bizarre argument. I think everyone here could be chummily agreeing with each other instead of arguing past each other if this had gone just slightly differently, which made this weird to read.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:20 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


The point is, it's not possible to separate unvaccinated kids from society.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:23 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I used to give a lecture on immunizations for adults in the program where I was faculty and I always led with Figure 1 from this article, which shows what happened to the diphtheria rates in the countries of the former Soviet Union once the USSR disintegrated and their universal immunization program fell apart.

Basically, diphtheria rates went from negligible, similar to the US, to nearly 50,000 cases a year just a couple of years later. The only reason the rates didn't keep going up was because there was an immediate and massive WHO-led vaccination campaign that was very successful, because vaccines work!

I have never seen a case of diphtheria, measles, mumps, or rubella. I have met one person recovering from tetanus who had been bitten by a dog in Nepal, didn't get a booster, and almost died. I am frankly very pleased by that because it is a triumph of public health that these diseases are no longer endemic. But the reasons exist in the first place is that they are infectious as fuck and they WILL come back the second we stop vaccinating aggressively, and it really bothers me that people don't take that risk seriously.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 7:29 PM on January 27, 2015 [12 favorites]


I used to give a lecture on immunizations for adults in the program where I was faculty and I always led with Figure 1 from this article,

That was a broken link, I could not locate it by searching. I kind of wanted to see it.

I had both measles and mumps as a kid, they were both absolute misery. I got measles shortly before there was a vaccine, but some quick research indicates there was a mumps vaccine widely available (but apparently not very effective long term). I have a vague recollection of receiving an oral polio vax that was distributed in elementary school. Now I'm wondering if my family had poor medical care.

The point is, it's not possible to separate unvaccinated kids from society.

But it's possible to keep them away from schools, where communicable diseases spread like wildfire. That's where I got measles and mumps.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:56 PM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's not possible to keep them away from my immunocompromised friends, or MisantropicPainforest's immunocompromised family. Therein lies the problem with their abusive and stupid parents.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:16 PM on January 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


I was delighted to hear the public health officer for Orange County on NPR yesterday say that all unvaccinated students have been required to stay out of school for 21 days. It seems like the only reasonable option at this point to protect both the unvaccinated students and everybody else, and perhaps it will force these parents to reconsider their (mis)handling of their children's healthcare.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:36 AM on January 28, 2015 [2 favorites]




That's a great article, edgeways. Pull quote:
Krawitt has been speaking up about vaccination for a long time now. He told me about going to a parent meeting at his daughter's school just before the start of the school year, where a staff member reminded parents not to send peanut products to school, since a child or children had an allergy. "It's really important your kids don't bring peanuts, because kids can die," Krawitt recalls the group being told.

The irony was not lost on him. He told me he immediately responded, "In the interest of the health and safety of our children, can we have the assurance that all the kids at our school are immunized?"
So, yes, we can and have banned peanuts from many public spaces because some people are allergic to them. But, for some reason, we can't require vaccination?
posted by hydropsyche at 8:58 AM on January 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


There's not really any irony there -- there's not even a perceived possibility of harm to someone not eating a PBJ for lunch, while there is definitely a (wrongly) perceived possibility of harm to someone getting vaccinated.

I don't agree with people who leave their children vulnerable to disease, but it's not the same thing at all.
posted by Etrigan at 9:05 AM on January 28, 2015


But there's no harm to getting a vaccine, either. In fact, there is a benefit to you in getting a vaccine, in addition to the benefit for society. So yes, it is the same thing. Some people are just willfully ignorant. I'm not sure why other people have to suffer for their willful ignorance.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:16 AM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


hydropsyche: But there's no harm to getting a vaccine, either.
Of course there is possible harm in getting a vaccine. Hell, there's harm in getting anything injected into your body. But the benefits massively outweigh those risks, in this case.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:22 AM on January 28, 2015


I put perceived in there for a reason.

And even beyond that, there is a potential harm in getting a vaccine. There is a non-zero chance of side effects, while there is no chance of side effects from not eating peanuts.
posted by Etrigan at 9:23 AM on January 28, 2015


hydropsyche: I was delighted to hear the public health officer for Orange County on NPR yesterday say that all unvaccinated students have been required to stay out of school for 21 days.
Besides the daycare/worries about leaving them home alone/falling behind in school, what other burdens would this place on parents? Presumably a parent who believes they are saving their child's life wouldn't begrudge them being a few weeks dumber than their classmates. Are there truancy fines? Possibility of parental imprisonment, if they don't meet homeschooling requirements? I'm not asking for pie in the sky; there certainly are strict punishments for not educating children.

And Etrigan, I was replying to hydropsyche, not you
posted by IAmBroom at 9:25 AM on January 28, 2015


I was responding to hydropsyche as well, IAmBroom. Our comments crossed in the ether.
posted by Etrigan at 9:32 AM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


A non-zero chance of side effects from vaccines, yes. From your link, from a range of vaccines, some people have a sore arm, a few people have sniffles, diarrhea, etc. (remember that all side effects are self-reported and that kids have these things a lot anyway).

For the MMR, there is a 1 in a million chance of a more severe side effect. And even then, as the CDC says "These are so rare that it is hard to tell whether they are caused by the vaccine."

I actually think there is a bigger risk in denying a picky kid peanut butter if that's the only thing they'll eat for lunch. That kid is going to be hungry and feel bad and could even lose weight. But I'm okay with denying that kid their favorite food to save the life of a peanut-allergic kid. Many ill-informed, willfully ignorant parents are not willing to protect kids like Rhett (or immuno-compromised adults) from pneumonia, encephalitis, or even death from measles, and they hold those beliefs for no particular reason.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:36 AM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm not asking for pie in the sky; there certainly are strict punishments for not educating children.

That applies to the State too. Just wait til some antivaxxer sues the School District for failing to provide an education. But I have a solution: segregation. Make all the unvaccinated kids go to a separate school, where they are more likely to spread diseases amongst their own herd. There is no constitutional impediment to separate schools, since there are plenty of legal precedents for involuntary medical isolation.
posted by charlie don't surf at 1:58 PM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why this baby’s mom is so angry at the anti-vaxxers

Earlier this month, Simon and her husband, Dave, took their 6-month-old daughter, Livia, to the doctor. Both Jennifer Simon and her infant were battling runny noses, so she wanted to be a “good parent” and get their child checked out. It was just a common cold but, just two days later, the couple got a call from the doctor’s office that made them afraid it could turn into something much worse.

Simon said they were told that an unvaccinated child had come into the doctor’s office with the measles — and their daughter might have been exposed.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:46 AM on January 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


And unfortunately, this is why you need to make sure your pediatrician's office does not accept unvaccinated patients.

And encourage more practices to use a "cell phone waiting room" for unvaccinated infants, where you can hang out in your car, and skip the waiting room entirely. Though this is normally for well-baby visits, not sick visits like in the WaPo story.
posted by fontophilic at 10:37 AM on January 29, 2015


> cell phone waiting room

That wouldn't help much with measles, though. It can linger for two hours in an examination room or the hallway.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:39 AM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


Right, but the practice would probably cancel all remaining well-baby appointments for the day, and tell that baby in the car to come back tomorrow, if a diagnosis of measles was made in their office before their appointment.

They'd hopefully also close that exam room, and get a face mask on the sick kid.
posted by fontophilic at 10:49 AM on January 29, 2015


The corpse in the library: > cell phone waiting room

That wouldn't help much with measles, though. It can linger for two hours in an examination room or the hallway.
It would actually help a lot. The chance of infection is related to how long the exposure is present; merely passing through the waiting room on the way to the appointment will shed much fewer germs than a sick child coughing and sneezing for the entire wait period. Infection risk isn't a simple yes/no issue.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:50 AM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]


Related thread.
posted by homunculus at 12:29 PM on January 29, 2015




Not vaccinating your children isn't just child abuse of your own children, it's killing other people's kids too.

Anti-vaxxers are some of the worst human beings in society and should be shamed and persecuted as such and shunned by all decent people. Don't just sue them, charge them with negligent homicide. Take away their kids and never give them back.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:16 PM on January 29, 2015


My friend's 3-year-old has been in the hospital for 12 days now with influenza. She could not be vaccinated because of some anti-seizure meds she takes. She had to be transferred to a bigger-city medical center two days ago. I'm desperately afraid she's dying. Even if she recovers, there is brain damage from seizures she suffered while ill and probably permanent lung damage. They have had to restart her breathing six times so far.

I'm so scared for her I feel like my brain is lurching. I don't know if higher flu vaccination rates would have protected her. But I can't stop thinking about that.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:28 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]


Forbes?! Christ on a cracker when Forbes makes sense something is askew... anyways from that artilce: In parts of California, the vaccine exemption rate for young children is at least 13% — higher than in Ghana, where it’s 11%.
Parsing that just a little reveals the weasel phrase "parts of" which can literally mean almost anything from 1/2 the state to a few neighborhoods in outer idiotville CA. But, being kind towards what is trying to be said. Ghana is doing better than parts of fucking California.
posted by edgeways at 8:16 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


Amid measles outbreak, anti-vaccine doctor revels in his notoriety

...Wolfson actively urges people to avoid vaccines. “We should be getting measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, these are the rights of our children to get it,” he told the Arizona Republic. “We do not need to inject chemicals into ourselves and into our children in order to boost our immune system.” He added: “I’m a big fan of what’s called paleo-nutrition, so our children eat foods that our ancestors have been eating for millions of years…. That’s the best way to protect.”
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:00 PM on January 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wolfson actively urges people to avoid vaccines. “We should be getting measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, these are the rights of our children to get it

WTF does that even mean? The children have a right to die young because of their parents' bad decisions?

You know, there used to be a time when the FDA just stomped hard on quacks. They used to yank your medical license and put you in jail for peddling Laetrile. People died because they believed in these quack cures. They ought to yank the medical license of antivaxxers on the same principle, people are dying of preventable diseases because of their quackery.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:49 PM on January 30, 2015 [5 favorites]


Vaccine Critics Turn Defensive Over Measles

..Ms. McDonald said she and her husband, a chiropractor, decided to raise their four children without vaccines. She said they ate well and had never been to the doctor, and she insisted that her daughter was healthier than many classmates. But when the school sent her home with a letter, Ms. McDonald’s daughter was so concerned about missing two weeks of advanced-placement classes that she suggested simply getting a measles inoculation.

“I said, ‘No, absolutely not,’ “ Ms. McDonald said. “I said, ‘I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot.’ “


You are ruining your children's lives and they have more sense than you. Those two weeks of AP classes might be the difference for her between Harvard Medical School and community college.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:42 AM on January 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


I know that for certain things (treating sexual-health concerns, treating injuries likely caused by child abuse), minors over a certain age don't need permission from a parent or guardian for medical treatment. I wonder if that's ever true for vaccinations? I realize many kids would still have problems getting themselves to a doctor, though.
posted by jaguar at 8:52 AM on January 31, 2015




It would be interesting if kids of antivaxxers would start suing their parents for child endangerment once they turn 18.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:50 AM on January 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


I stumbled across something interesting, the US Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare used to advertise vaccinations directly to the kids.

I Want My Shots!
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:30 PM on January 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


Parsing that just a little reveals the weasel phrase "parts of" which can literally mean almost anything from 1/2 the state to a few neighborhoods in outer idiotville CA

It's the Bay Area and areas around Sacramento.
posted by MikeKD at 2:15 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Cartoon from the 1930's
posted by blueberry at 7:00 AM on February 4, 2015


Students at Queen's University complain that their teacher is teaching anti-vaccine stuff (including that the polio vaccine caused AIDS).
posted by jeather at 5:06 PM on February 4, 2015


(including that the polio vaccine caused AIDS).

what the fucking what
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:19 PM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anti-vaccine doctor Jack Wolfson goes silent

Why the about-face? It may have something to do with the investigation that the Arizona Medical Board has opened against him.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:15 AM on February 5, 2015 [3 favorites]






charlie don't surf: Is The Anti-Vaccination Trend Now Moving To Dogs? Pet Owners Refuse To Immunize Their Puppies
Now THAT is something the Constitution won't protect the idiots on. If your dog is a threat, the state can take it away from you in a moment's notice - and serve you up a stiff fine to pay for it, too.

As a dog owner, I'm good with 4-digit fines for unvaccinated dogs.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:58 AM on February 9, 2015


That story is a little unclear; it doesn't indicate whether they are skipping rabies vaccines, which is both illegal and hideously stupid, or some of the other potential vaccines, which may be valid depending on the animal and the conditions. For example, my cat had a bad reaction to one of the non-required shots a few years back (a lump that took over a month to reduce), so we don't do that one anymore, since injection-site tumors are a known thing for cats. Similarly, if your cat is indoors only, it may be better to skip vaccines like FELV, as the risk of contracting is nearly nil and there's a small but real chance of fatal complications.
posted by tavella at 12:29 PM on February 9, 2015


I'm An Anti-Braker

Guys, I wanted to let you know about a personal decision I recently made. I don’t really feel like discussing it, but I want to put my position out there. Please be respectful. This is a really long post, but please read the whole thing.

I’m taking the brakes off my car. This isn’t a rash decision, so please listen up.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:22 PM on February 9, 2015 [6 favorites]


As a dog owner, I'm good with 4-digit fines for unvaccinated dogs.

I don't own any pets, and I'm good with 4-digit annual taxation for dogs. But you never know about these things. I remember once I was watching my local City Council meeting on Cable TV. They passed resolution after resolution in rapid succession with no discussion, just a voice vote, dispensing millions of dollars in taxpayer money. Then a resolution came up to add 25 cents to the one-time dog license fee. All business came to a halt while one councillor denounced the tax as regressive, and would not relent until the resolution was permanently tabled. And then they went back to dispensing millions of bucks like it was water.

Anyway, I don't think you will ever get significant herd immunity with domesticated cats and dogs. Diseases like rabies will always have a reservoir in wild animals. And oh how many sickening tales of this I have heard from my grandfather, who was a USDA veterinarian and researcher, his specialty was literally herd immunity. He used to ride the ranges on horseback, inspecting animals and taking statistics, trying to wipe out livestock diseases like Hoof & Mouth Disease, Anthrax, Brucellosis, etc. Those stories are one reason I do not want to own pets. Cats and dogs can be a vector of diseases for humans. My grandfather always told me that livestock and domesticated animals have some similarities in their physiology that allowed transfer of viruses etc. to humans. The closer their physiology (virologically and bacteriologically speaking), the more likelihood of interspecies transfer. After hearing way too many of these sickening tales, I will just reduce it down to one thing: don't eat lamb.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:10 PM on February 9, 2015


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