It's not just Measles coming back

March 8, 2019 10:51 AM

A 6-year-old boy who didn't receive childhood vaccinations nearly died after contracting tetanus in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is Oregon's first pediatric case But, even after contracting a life-threatening infection that might have been prevented by a vaccine, his family stood firm on their anti-vax stance. "Despite extensive review of the risks and benefits of tetanus vaccination by physicians, the family declined the second dose of DTaP and any other recommended immunizations," the case report states.

Tetanus is a serious disease caused by a bacterial toxin that affects your nervous system, leading to painful muscle contractions, particularly of your jaw and neck muscles. Tetanus can interfere with your ability to breathe and can threaten your life. Tetanus is commonly known as "lockjaw."

Thanks to the tetanus vaccine, cases of tetanus are rare in the United States and other parts of the developed world. But the disease remains a threat to those who aren't up to date on their vaccinations. It's more common in developing countries.

There's no cure for tetanus. Treatment focuses on managing complications until the effects of the tetanus toxin resolve.

posted by Homo neanderthalensis (74 comments total)

There is also an article in the Washington Post, but it's behind a paywall so I linked the fpp to USA today.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:52 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

Somewhere in Diseaseville, bacteria and viruses are having drinks, toasting the unexpected and welcome wave of stupidity sweeping humankind.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:57 AM on March 8, 2019 [23 favorites]

You know it's reached peak stupidity when even video-game companies are trolling you.

Related: Disease sim Plague Inc. will add anti-vaxxers after player petition [Polygon]

“Earlier this month, Plague Inc. players petitioned developer Ndemic Creations to add the anti-vaccine movement to the game, in which players work to spread different pathogens worldwide. A Change.org post demanding an anti-vaxxer update made it to the developer, which soon acquiesced. “OK, fine!” the studio tweeted. “If this petition gets to 10k, will add a specific new anti-vaxxer scenario to Plague Inc.”

Ndemic Creations acknowledged the goal earlier this week when the petition neared 11,000 signees. (At time of writing, nearly 21,000 people have signed the petition, which simply reads, “Anti-vaxxers are stupid.”) “Alright, alright! You spoke, we listened. Neurie’s very happy to hear that we’re going to start figuring out anti-vaxxers soon. He’s dying to try and get inside their heads,” the studio tweeted, referencing the game’s mascot.”

*sighs*
posted by Fizz at 11:01 AM on March 8, 2019 [19 favorites]

the wound was cleaned and stitched at home

Unless one of the family is a medical professional, which would be horrifying on another level, it sounds like refusing vaccinations isn't the only way this family is neglecting this child.

I still don't understand why parents are allowed to make these sorts of decisions for their children and why, after the child has suffered such serious trauma, there are no consequences for the parents' dumbassery. Parental rights should not include declining basic medical care.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:01 AM on March 8, 2019 [80 favorites]

I hope they're stuck with the reported $800K+ treatment cost.
posted by aclevername at 11:06 AM on March 8, 2019 [24 favorites]

Unless one of the family is a medical professional

Not only do we have the normal, garden variety anti-vax loonies here in Oregon we have christian extremists that shun non-prayer based medicine. some of the latter will eventually bring their sick children into the hospital if it get bad enough. more kids are being treated now that we have passed laws that hold the parents accountable for their children's death from medical neglect. It's not clear from the article which type the family in question is.
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:15 AM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

They are entirely welcome to make the decision not to vaccinate for themselves.

Unfortunately they are also acting as a survival pool for the diseases so that everyone else's attempts to eradicate those diseases World Wide become nigh on impossible.

It is a shame that society as a whole cannot isolate these purely selfish, moronic idiots on a island or two of there own.

We should, as a society refuse, to spend any money on supporting them when they catch the diseases.
posted by Burn_IT at 11:20 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

This is straight out of Tara Westover's Educated except somehow none of them ever got tetanus in spite of spending most of their time getting horribly injured while working in the family's junkyard (which was really just a bunch of old cars out behind their house).
posted by hydropsyche at 11:21 AM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

Unfortunately they are also acting as a survival pool for the diseases so that everyone else's attempts to eradicate those diseases World Wide become nigh on impossible.

The good news is that this is not true for tetanus, which is found in soil and is not communicable--we will never eliminate tetanus by vaccination. The bad news is that they didn't vaccinate him against communicable diseases either.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:22 AM on March 8, 2019 [41 favorites]

Straight-up neglect. Maybe abuse -- stitching up a wound without anesthetic is akin to torture. How did they even close it, with a darning needle or something? I'm guessing they didn't have actual surgical sutures with dissolvable material.

And god, you should never close a dirty wound; that's how you seal bacteria in and get tetanus. First aid 101, people.
posted by basalganglia at 11:23 AM on March 8, 2019 [25 favorites]

I'd be curious to know whether ideas like this are less common in nations with socialized healthcare.
posted by clawsoon at 11:27 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

$#@!$#@! antivaxxers.
But that poor kid!
posted by doctornemo at 11:34 AM on March 8, 2019 [5 favorites]

Ugh, turning down DTaP. I’ve actually had pertussis - even the presumably milder version you can get when you’ve been vaccinated is fairly immiserating.
posted by eirias at 11:37 AM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

We also have a measles situation here in Vancouver, Canada thanks to anti-vaxxers. I've never made the association with socialized medicine, just with an embrace of naturopathy and other woo-woo stuff. Unfortunately these beliefs seem to run the political spectrum from left-wing hippies to anti-government conservative Christians.
posted by noxperpetua at 11:37 AM on March 8, 2019 [7 favorites]

But, even after contracting a life-threatening infection that might have been prevented by a vaccine, his family stood firm on their anti-vax stance.

I agree that at this point it’s child endangerment or neglect or something. The family is actively preventing this kid from growing up healthy.
posted by Monochrome at 11:40 AM on March 8, 2019 [9 favorites]

A 6-year-old boy. They can watch their 6-year-old barely survive suffering all the agonies of the damned and still refuse to prevent it happening again.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 11:41 AM on March 8, 2019 [52 favorites]

I think when they declined the second dose of DTaP is when you file a charge of child neglect. He's already suffered so much and they just don't give a shit. Because of some stupid conspiracy that they care more about than their own child.

He deserves a better family. And if he has siblings, they do too.
posted by emjaybee at 11:41 AM on March 8, 2019 [30 favorites]

Fizz: Earlier this month, Plague Inc. players petitioned developer Ndemic Creations to add the anti-vaccine movement to the game, in which players work to spread different pathogens worldwide

I Don’t Vaccinate My Child Because It’s My Right To Decide What Eliminated Diseases Come Roaring Back

The decision to cause a full-blown, multi-state pandemic of a virus that was effectively eliminated from the national population generations ago is my choice alone, and regardless of your personal convictions, that right should never be taken away from a child’s parent. Never.

(The Onion, 2015)

Meanwhile, As anti-vax movement gets weirder—and dumber—Facebook announces crackdown -- Anti-vaxxers falsely claim measles prevents cancer and can be treated with antibiotics. (Beth Mole for Ars Technica, March 8, 2019)

Facing scrutiny for allowing anti-vaccine lies and conspiracy theories to fester and spread on its pages, Facebook announced Thursday a set of steps it will take to rid its platform of misinformation—which has seemingly become even weirder and more idiotic recently.

The move follows a letter sent to Facebook from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) last month, raising concerns that anti-vaccine information spread on the site could corrupt anxious parents’ views of safe, life-saving immunizations. Schiff also questioned the popular social media site about accepting payments from anti-vaccine advertisements.

Facebook wasn’t the only media giant questioned; Schiff sent a similar letter to Google, too, raising concerns about content on YouTube specifically. Still, Facebook has taken center stage on the issue.

In a Senate hearing last week exploring the rise of misinformation about vaccines (titled Vaccines Save Lives), a now-high-profile Ohio teenager made a point to single out the site. Ethan Lindenberger, the 18-year-old who famously got himself vaccinated despite his mother being fiercely against vaccines, said his mother’s false beliefs came from one place: Facebook. When a Senator asked Lindenberger where he got his information on vaccines, Lindenberger, chuckling, responded, “not Facebook.”

“From CDC, World Health Organization, scientific journals… accredited sources,” he added.

Which reminds me of a Facebook discussion my wife read to me, where some college student was trying to write an anti-vax paper, but having trouble finding credible sources. To which everyone replied "maybe you should rethink your anti-vax stance."
posted by filthy light thief at 11:41 AM on March 8, 2019 [23 favorites]

I went looking for some data, and here is some good news: In 1980, only 20% of the world's children were vaccinated for the most common preventable diseases. Today, it's 85%.

So we've got that going for us.
posted by clawsoon at 11:59 AM on March 8, 2019 [15 favorites]

Partway down that page - which I didn't realize has so much information - there's a map showing that France, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Russia are the hotbeds of vaccine distrust.

What means this?
posted by clawsoon at 12:05 PM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]

If you love your kids, vaccinate them.
(If you don’t love your kids, vaccinate them anyways.)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:16 PM on March 8, 2019 [12 favorites]

Jesus, when I was his age I was terrified of tetanus. I was afraid I could take one bad scrape on the monkey bars and never be able to move again.

I want people to go to fucking jail.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:42 PM on March 8, 2019 [8 favorites]

How did they even close it, with a darning needle or something? I'm guessing they didn't have actual surgical sutures with dissolvable material.

I know people who swear by superglue for closing-up wounds and cuts.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:55 PM on March 8, 2019

I know people who swear by superglue for closing-up wounds and cuts

"Dermabond" as used in surgery is just a standard cyanoacrylate. For many wounds, glue can have a lower severity of scarring than sutures, and less chance for wicking of bacteria. But irrigating and sterilising the wound before the glue is necessary.
posted by meehawl at 1:02 PM on March 8, 2019 [15 favorites]

In the last thread there was a long conversation about "anti-vaxxers" vs people who are "vaccine hesitant," and I do think it's really important to distinguish the two (I speak as a public health professional with a history working in immunization).

There aren't a lot of anti-vaxxers out there.

There are a lot of people who have heard "something bad about vaccines" and who want the best for their child, and have a slight distrust of an authority figure who dismissed their concerns and tells them they're dumb while holding a needle.

We need to fight the former, and connect with the latter. Empathy and patience can go a long way, here.

Fortunately the "vaccine hesitant" aren't as outright fucking negligent as these awful people who let their child die.
posted by entropone at 1:08 PM on March 8, 2019 [21 favorites]

And the tab was $800,000.

We live in such a stupid country. Appallingly stupid. And anti-vaxxers are very high on my list of people I want to punch.

I also don’t understand how this isn’t automatically child neglect and abuse.

Have social services been called for this case? I see absolutely no difference.

Aren't most anti-vaxxers fairly well-off white people?
That's your answer.
posted by NorthernLite at 1:09 PM on March 8, 2019 [9 favorites]

Asshole parents.

Cowards that don't have the courage to eschew science except where they deem worthy or fashionable.

Zealots of the worst kind.

There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery.
--JRRT

The rage and astonishment at their behavior of antivaxers with children should know no bounds.

I don't know the solution but when a song from the 1920s mentions the symptoms in fearful, fatal tones then we should fucking well be glad that we can protect the innocent from the ravages of disease.

Now Death, oh Death, how can it be,
That I must come and go with thee?

Now Death, oh Death, if this be true....
Please give met time to reason with you!

From time to time, you heard and so
I'll close your eyes and lock your jaw.

I'll lock your jaw so you cain't talk.
I'll fix your feet so you cain't walk.

I'll dim your eyes so you can't see.
This very year, come go with me.

Now Death, oh Death, consider my age
and do not take me at this stage...

The old, the young, the rich, the poor
they, alike with me, will have to go

No age, no wealth, no silver, no gold,
nothing satisfies me but your poor soul.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:11 PM on March 8, 2019 [11 favorites]

In related news, Medieval diseases are spreading through California's homeless.
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:33 PM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

Child abuse.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:35 PM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]

If a parent actively refuses to vaccinate their children (ie is not waffling/ambivalent/seeking guidance etc) they are terminated from care full stop. Entire family. This is becoming the norm in many places. They are told unequivocally we will not have our clinic name associated even tangentially with that ethos nor will we ever put existing patients at risk when they bring in their family. It is the easiest decision we have ever made as an organization. This is also the norm policy-wise among the pediatric clinics in our community, more and more.
posted by docpops at 1:36 PM on March 8, 2019 [38 favorites]

The reason this jumped out at me, besides the obvious, is that tetanus is pretty personal to me, as I am at high risk of contracting it. Gardeners in general can get tetanus from the soil easily, clumsy folk like myself who always seem to have a cut or two on their hands doubly so. A few years ago I cut myself while gardening and ran not walked to my GP and demanded a new Tdap despite my old one not being up yet, and she gladly gave it to me. I wear gloves when I can, but sometimes you need to be able to feel the soil and plants so you have to take off your gloves. It's one thing to eschew a measles vaccine, which is also nuts, but I can see the logic of it "just" being a childhood disease. (It's not but ok) But tetanus is just a horrible horrible possible fatal disease that is just awful awful awful so the idea that someone would be against the vaccine for it is just straight up bonkers. I feel very strongly in this particular case that the child should be removed from the parents. Not so much in all anti-vax cases, but in this one 100%
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:39 PM on March 8, 2019 [17 favorites]

Gardeners in general can get tetanus from the soil easily

Oh, gosh, a couple years ago I stuck myself with a needle while drawing a soil-solution sample I am a klutz but the person with me should not have screamed quite so loudly at the sight of a wasp and there was a good comedy moment when I explained to the nurses that I had stuck myself with `a dirty needle. No, the other kind'. Different protocols, of course.
posted by clew at 2:03 PM on March 8, 2019 [15 favorites]

We need some kind of Planned Parenthood-type clinic except for vaccinations. If kids need to sneak out of the house and get their shots behind their parents' backs, there should be a place where they can do it confidentially. That won't help these poor kids who aren't old enough to be able to do that, but it would help some, at least.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:15 PM on March 8, 2019 [20 favorites]

We need some kind of Planned Parenthood-type clinic except for vaccinations.

We need a forcible vaccination campaign ala early 20th c. New York - these fools are a public health menace and should be dealt with quickly and harshly.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:27 PM on March 8, 2019 [13 favorites]

This is horrible of course, but, unlike many other diseases, tetanus is not transmitted from human to human. In this one case at least, there is no herd immunity issue.

It's still a dreadful disease that is easily preventable, so shame on parents who deny it to their children, but it is not quite like some of the other diseases out there.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:27 PM on March 8, 2019 [6 favorites]

With measles, at lease you can make the (very wrong) conclusion that it's just a mild fever or rash or whatever.

Tetanus is viscerally horrifying. This kid was having so many muscle spasms he couldn't breathe so they cut a hole in his neck so that he could breathe.

Also, consider that one of the ways that modern medicine helps people survive tetanus is by pumping 3,500 to 4,000 calories into them by IV or feeding tube because they may not be able to eat through the mouth due to the seizures that gave tetanus its old name of lockjaw. 3,500 to 4,000 calories a day is comparable to what an Olympic aerobic athletes eat in training. That's how much your muscles spasm with tetanus during the acute phases. It took the kid a month of physical therapy to recover once out of the hospital, because tetanus destroys the ends of your nerve axons.

Herd immunity does fuck and all. Modern sanitation, that thing that anti-vaxxers say is the real cause for the decline of childhood illnesses, will do fuck and all.

And this kid's parents looked at all that and were like, nope, we're not giving him the rest of the vaccine.

What do you want to bet they have other kids, who they let play in dirt without vaccination?
posted by joyceanmachine at 2:32 PM on March 8, 2019 [30 favorites]

I wonder if this is standard cognitive dissonance stuff: on some level maybe accepting the vaccine would feel too much to them like an admission of culpability in this horrible thing that happened to their child. The door that you can’t open because you can’t bear to look at what’s inside. I don’t say that it’s okay, but maybe we need to try to understand it anyway.
posted by eirias at 2:38 PM on March 8, 2019 [6 favorites]

I want to be clear that tetanus is truly horrible and easily preventable. This is a thing any reasonable person would do for their children and, franky, they should be compelled to do it. But, OTOH, herd immunity is very real for other diseases and that makes the moral calculus even more demanding.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:52 PM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

Where do you draw the line on what constitutes child abuse? Denying your children access to modern medicine, when you can afford it, should be classified as abuse.
posted by Gwynarra at 2:59 PM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

Do we know if the parents stitched him up themselves because they don't have health insurance and couldn't afford an expensive hospital visit? That they are anti-vaxxers is odious, but I have a lot more sympathy for those stuck in the gears of the American health system.
posted by zardoz at 3:54 PM on March 8, 2019

Anti-vaxers originated in the UK.

There is however a sufficiently long and disgraceful history of anti vaccination movements dating back to just about the first vaccines ever, that this isn't a useful reply to the preceding comment. It predates social medicine in the UK in the form of the NHS by a hundred years or something.

It's a persistent problem in many countries that takes root in multiple political and economic circumstances.
posted by edd at 4:35 PM on March 8, 2019 [6 favorites]

A long single page comic about the origins of the modern anti-vaxxer movement by Darryl Cunningham. I have started posting this on social media whenever some idiotstick posts crap about vaccines.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 4:45 PM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]

Medieval diseases are spreading through California's homeless.

On the plus side, if leprosy comes back it'll provide some protection against tb.
posted by meehawl at 4:54 PM on March 8, 2019

I am also stuck on how unlike the Measles vaccine this is.

From a public policy standpoint, it's a huge difference. Once society has achieved herd immunity, the cost/risk of getting the vaccine is necessarily higher than the individual benefit. It requires social or legal norms to ensure compliance. The problem is that people likely to opt out aren't statistically random. They cluster, which can destroy herd immunity pretty easily.

So I can understand the argument to call it child abuse, to force compliance. But the real risk is all the other people who didn't vaccinate their kids, not your individual decision.

But tetanus? That risk is everywhere. That risk is especially everywhere for rambunctious kids playing outdoors on a farm. It's the equivalent of wandering into a contagious epidemic with no protective gear.

The risk is limited to the unvaccinated child, but it's also such a higher risk, it boggles the mind.
posted by politikitty at 5:01 PM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm not shocked by cleaning and stitching the wound at home... getting someone else to do it is $$$ in the US and depending on how rural you are, could be a long journey as well. Do it at home and it's done fast.
posted by inexorably_forward at 6:07 PM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

Every time a video says the world is flat. or a pundit says that there's a conspiracy under a pizza joint, or a podcast says we never went to the moon, it contributes a little bit to the mistrust of intelligence. When the president lies about why we invade a country, or a senator builds a bridge to nowhere, some start to think that you just can't trust anybody. When your teachers try to teach critical thinking, but your preacher says that all you need is faith, it's hard to know who you can trust. These are all symptoms of the same category as anti-vax. I don't have any answers for how we can escape this downward spiral, but I think that if we don't figure it out, it will get much worse before it gets better.
posted by ambulocetus at 6:12 PM on March 8, 2019 [19 favorites]

The anti vaxxers are vainglorious narcissists. They get their ignorant thrills by fantasizing they are smarter than doctors, and research scientists. This is because they can turn on a computer and read it, what ever is there, like some sort of magic, super, smart pill. The buzz they get is worse than heroin or meth, because it is free, and they don't suffer, only their children do. They also get a club membership, friends who back up their miraculous smartness. Friends who back up their super, compassion, for their children's well being. The naturopaths who advocate for this, get to make money on delivering health care to sick kids, and old timey remedies.

But, before the chicken pox vaccine became available...when chickenpox broke out at the end of summer, my neighbors had chicken pox get togethers so all the kids would get it, and be over it, before the start of school.
posted by Oyéah at 6:20 PM on March 8, 2019 [10 favorites]

But, before the chicken pox vaccine became available...when chickenpox broke out at the end of summer, my neighbors had chicken pox get togethers so all the kids would get it, and be over it, before the start of school.

So before the vaccine this was actually really smart. See, chicken pox *can* be fatal, but the complications are pretty rare, the younger you get it. (Still can happen tho.) but if you were unlucky enough to get it as an adult it could be mega-fatal or have complications that could cripple you etc. So before a viable vaccine, making sure you got an inevitable disease before the risks of complications were sky high was really smart.

BUT: you can die from chicken pox as a kid- it’s just rare. Less rare if you have other health problems. Also! Every last one of us that got the chicken pox now has the virus living in us- waiting to become shingles! Shingles is a terrible disease of older age painful and debilitating, that thankfully the very young will never get as they age- because they were vaccinated against the chicken pox and therefore the virus does not live within them. So while a “measles” party is insane back in the day a chicken pox party actually probably wasn’t stupid. (Rubella also, if you had a womb it was imperative you get rubella as a kid rather than as a pregnant adult because of the tetragenic effects of the virus- but now we have a vaccine so yay!)
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 6:51 PM on March 8, 2019 [14 favorites]

I don’t understand. These people don’t believe in science enough to give their child a vaccination in the first place but they do trust science enough to save him from their poor decision making later when the kid is essentially dying from it. I mean, is science a crock or isn’t it? If the medical bills don’t send them bankrupt, I hope they child emancipates himself ASAP then goes back and sues his parents for neglect.
posted by Jubey at 8:45 PM on March 8, 2019 [6 favorites]

I don’t understand. These people don’t believe in science enough to give their child a vaccination in the first place but they do trust science enough to save him from their poor decision making later when the kid is essentially dying from it.

Cynically... if a 6 year old kid dies of a preventable illness those parents are going to jail for neglect. But if they hoof him to the doctors at the last minute and his life is saved through modern medicine... then they get him back to abuse some more and there is very little the state can do to remove him from their care or put them in jail for their actions because they did the bare minimum to save his life.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:17 PM on March 8, 2019 [5 favorites]

About 7 weeks ago I was easing down the window blinds and managed to SLICE the tip of my finger on the lower metal bar. I’m disabled and was a week away from a hysterectomy so I was taking no chances. Plus it hurt like hell and I assumed I needed it flushed and probably stitched. It struck me later - after 4 sutures and trying to explain how I managed to slice myself on a window treatment - just how grateful I was to have access to the TDaP shot. Vaccines are amazing advances that so many people in the world and even this country lack actual access to. And they’re desperate to get it. And now we have so many people rejecting these life saving things and putting others in danger. I felt very privileged to just get a shot and a bandaid. That poor child. I can’t imagine their pain.
posted by Crystalinne at 10:26 PM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

Someone once wrote that the bottom line with anti-vaxxers is that if you take them at their word then they're so terrified of having to raise a child with autism that they will roll the dice on having their child die of a preventable disease. Like autism makes a child subhuman or something.
posted by um at 7:26 AM on March 9, 2019 [11 favorites]

One would think that if you do not love your child, the opportunity to stand in an office and laugh at their tears as people in white coats stab them with needles at intervals would be reward enough.
posted by delfin at 7:35 AM on March 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Do we know if the parents stitched him up themselves because they don't have health insurance and couldn't afford an expensive hospital visit?

Well, if that's true, it's pretty ironic that they ended up with an $800,000 bill. (Which will probably end up being written off by the hospital, which will then try and recoup its costs by charging everyone else $50 for a single Tylenol until the next outrage piece on Buzzfeed that fails to acknowledge the trickle-down effects of medical care.)

But honestly, the intersection of "can't afford health insurance" and "anti-vax" is slim. The vast vast majority are affluent, white, and suburban. They just choose to spend their money on jade eggs to stick up their vaginas rather than on their children's health.
posted by basalganglia at 7:38 AM on March 9, 2019 [6 favorites]

When will Gwyneth Paltrow start selling jade eggs you shove into your children to protect them from infectious diseases? That's got to happen pretty soon, right?
posted by Spathe Cadet at 7:55 AM on March 9, 2019

I wonder—can insurance companies decline to take you on if you're not vaccinated?

That would seem to be the game/set/match solution to this stupidity. Many, if not most, of the anti-vax morons are people with insurance. They are not vaccinating precisely because they feel that they can fall back on the medical system if their kids get sick.

What I'd like to see is a rule that lets insurance companies deny coverage to anyone who voluntarily opts out of vaccination. No vaccines, no insurance. Enjoy your market-price medical bills, fuckos.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:25 AM on March 9, 2019 [5 favorites]

If you're a listener to podcasts, I want to recommend the Behind the Bastards 3-parter on the history of antivaccination. Part One covers the earliest days of vaccination, a time when vaccines were not easy, safe, or reliable and antivaccination sentiments actually had a few good points and reasonable sources. Part Two covers the career and impact of Andrew Wakefield, who took money to falsify data and invent a fabricated risk to the MMR vaccine in order to profit. And the shorter Part Three covers the work of Robert Sears, who peddles antivaccination now.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:40 AM on March 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

if you were unlucky enough to get [chickenpox] as an adult it could be mega-fatal or have complications that could cripple you etc. So before a viable vaccine, making sure you got an inevitable disease before the risks of complications were sky high was really smart.

This x 1000. My mother somehow never got chickenpox when she was a kid, but she got infected when she was in her second trimester with my brother. It was extremely stressful because no one could tell her whether or not the baby was going to be ok or have congenital varicella syndrome, which is up there with congenital rubella as Things You Really Really Don't Want Your Child to Have. Thankfully, he's ok, and also got chickenpox himself as a toddler, before the vaccine was widely available.

She was also badly scarred by the pox, to the point where people would get off the elevator when she got on. It took years for that to resolve; thirty years later, there are still faded pockmarks on her cheeks if you look closely. She opted to deliver at a bigger hospital because they had a neonatal intensive care unit, just in case, but the whole delivery experience was traumatic, and I think contributed to the development of unrecognized post-partum depression and a persistent heightened anxiety around the health and safety of family members, especially my brother. She also had used up all her sick leave when she was contagious, had no maternity leave through her employer, and this was pre-FMLA, so she had to go back to work when my brother was 2 weeks old.

So yeah, I get fucking angry at people who knowingly endanger their child and everyone around them, and then even after watching their kid nearly die in front of them, still refuse Tdap. Abusers.
posted by basalganglia at 10:33 AM on March 9, 2019 [17 favorites]

Thank you to everyone who has talked about how horrific tetanus is and how easy it is to contract through gardening, etc. I am pro-vaccine but also lazy and my doctor’s office wasn’t sure if I was current on my tetanus shots since I’ve moved a bunch and have essentially no medical records and they’ve bugged me about it but I keep forgetting to get it done and it just wasn’t a priority for me.

Going to see it I can go in tomorrow. If not, Monday. I guess it just didn’t seem like a big deal but holy shit. (Autocorrect just made that “holy shot”). Consider it done.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 7:45 PM on March 9, 2019 [8 favorites]

By the way: you can get a TDAP at places like Walgreens, if your doctor can’t fit you in.
posted by Comrade_robot at 3:05 AM on March 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

In 1980, only 20% of the world's children were vaccinated for the most common preventable diseases. Today, it's 85%

Dunno, that's definitely progress, but it sounds bigger than it is I think.

In 1980 the world population was somewhere around 4.4 Billion (so that's about 3.5 Bn. un-vaccinated), and it's somewhere around 7.7 now (~1.15 Bn. un-vaccinated), plus global travel and travel of goods is exponentially more frequent than it was in 1980.

I'm not super-comforted.

On the tetanus side, I get constant cuts, scrapes, etc. and haven't had a tetanus shot since I was a kid; should I be more worried? I've never had a doctor suggest one, even when getting stitches.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:51 AM on March 10, 2019

I know people who swear by superglue for closing-up wounds and cuts

"Dermabond" as used in surgery is just a standard cyanoacrylate. For many wounds, glue can have a lower severity of scarring than sutures, and less chance for wicking of bacteria. But irrigating and sterilising the wound before the glue is necessary.


More important than that, the glue must not get in the wound. For the wound to heal it must reattach the closed wound, and it can't do that if there is superglue coating the insides of the wound. You end up with a much worse situation than you started with, more than likely leading to a nasty infection. The superglue must only act like a surface bandaid on top of the skin.

Because of the dangers of doing it incorrectly, I would never attempt using superglue on a wound.

You've been warned.
posted by eye of newt at 9:21 AM on March 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

I've used regular superglue on a bad stitch-requiring cut on myself once, and it turned out great; agreed, the trick is to close the wound entirely and apply glue to the surface to hold the skin flaps together.

But yeah, using a few butterfly closures as a temporary fix until you can get professional stitches/ dermabond is generally a better idea.
posted by porpoise at 2:49 PM on March 10, 2019

On the tetanus side, I get constant cuts, scrapes, etc. and haven't had a tetanus shot since I was a kid; should I be more worried? I've never had a doctor suggest one, even when getting stitches.


There is no harm in getting your tetanus booster every 10 years (though when I have had cuts/bites/whatever that needed a doctor, they gave me a booster once it had been 5 years), and tetanus is a pretty nasty disease. If you can afford it, I say get the shot. (It's tetanus, pertussis and diphtheria.)
posted by jeather at 7:06 PM on March 10, 2019

There is a horrifying painting of a soldier dying of tetanus by artist and surgeon Charles Bell from the 1800s. It's included in the disturbingly graphic article below. If you are sensitive to either disturbing pictures or descriptions don't go there. I can't even imagine someone putting their child through that and then refusing to do anything to prevent it from happening again.
Tetanus, The Grinning Death.
posted by BoscosMom at 10:14 PM on March 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

FWIW, getting a booster for pertussis is something you should be thinking about. In the 90s there was a strain running around was resistant to the older vaccines and, although it's not clear since I found out about that after the fact, I came down with something that had similar symptoms and caused me to crack a rib coughing. If it was pertussis and if I had taken the booster, I would not have had to suffer a cracked rib (while coughing, ugh) and risked infecting my family. (Their immunizations were more recent, fortunately.)

So here's a shout-out for booster shots. You may already be behind on your vaccinations and not know it! Medical records are a mess and unless you ask you may never be offered the boosters.
posted by sjswitzer at 11:15 PM on March 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

A friend of mine who is an anti-vaxxer shared a virtual stack of documents with me, trying to convince me that her position was a reasonable one. I just searched it, and interestingly there's nothing about tetanus in it. I wonder if it's one of the vaccines some people would still get, or if they just didn't think about it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:50 AM on March 11, 2019

You can't be a free-rider by not taking the tetanus vaccine, so you have to *really* not believe they work to avoid it.

(OTOH, trying to free-ride can't be a conscious goal for many unvaccinated people, or they wouldn't be trying to convince other people to not vaccinate. But I hear people *say* they won't expose their child to any risk to reduce risk to everyone, so they are trying to defend free riding. Maybe not believing vaccines work at all reduces the cognitive tension between these things.)
posted by clew at 10:39 AM on March 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

It just breaks my heart that the parents watched their child suffer so terribly and refused the vaccine. I cannot even get into the mind set for that. There is not enough empathy in the world to understand it.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 11:53 PM on March 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

> trying to free-ride can't be a conscious goal for many unvaccinated people, or they wouldn't be trying to convince other people to not vaccinate. But I hear people *say* they won't expose their child to any risk to reduce risk to everyone, so they are trying to defend free riding.

According to the "Behind the Bastards" episode about Dr. Bob Sears, he suggests not getting vaccines for your children but encouraging your neighbors to do so for theirs. I'm not seeing a transcript, but it's at 14:15.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:26 AM on March 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

They don't want to vaccinate, and when there's an outbreak they fight about not being allowed in school.
posted by jeather at 12:10 PM on March 18, 2019

Her son died. And then anti-vaxers attacked her
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:11 PM on March 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

Her son died. And then anti-vaxers attacked her



Obviously it goes without saying that the cruelty and idiocy of the anti-vaxxers that commented on her FB page is beyond the pale.

However, and it’s been about 10 years since I ditched Facebook, so I don’t remember, but...how are non-family and non-friends able to see and/or post on her Facebook page anyway?

Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of “friending” someone, if any militant nutjob rando with a FB account can read your posts, and then dump a load of vitriol and bullshit on your page?

I don’t remember that being the case. Is this some fresh Hell by Facebook that allows morons and trolls and other complete strangers to see/post on your FB wall?
posted by darkstar at 1:20 PM on March 19, 2019

It depends on your security settings. You can have it locked down so nobody except you can see your page or post to it, or you can have it open to the entire world, or various levels in between. It's been that way for a while.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:12 PM on March 19, 2019 [1 favorite]