Vaccination & epidemic

[orthodoc]

Just be sure that when you make your risk assessment, you do it with the best information available. Don't settle for random internet sites. Search Pubmed and Scopus, even though it means a subscription. Then make your decision.

Clod, I believe you want the best for your children and are willing to sacrifice to accomplish that. Your devotion and investment speak for themselves. Anything I've said in this thread wasn't meant to make you feel invalidated or stressed.

[tw]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

Just be sure that when you make your risk assessment, you do it with the best information available. Don't settle for random internet sites.

Many make that statement but rarely say how it is done. Recommending a responsible publication is suggestion. But more important is how to separate many ill informed sources from the few that actually have facts.

The information must always say why. And must always provide perspective (ie the numbers). Any source that makes a subjective claim is probably better considered propaganda. No perspective (the numbers) is a first indication that the source is probably useless.

Statements make by Jenny McCarthy clearly and without doubt met the criteria for 'useless'. Her statements could not have been more subjective; clearly were only wild speculation. That much should have been obvious to everyone. Unfortunately, a majority never learn how to separate chaff from fact.

[DanaC]

There will always be a few people and famillies for whom vaccination is inappropriate or for whom the individual risks associated with vaccination outweigh the social benefits. Unfortunately, a lot of people make their decisions based on flawed science as presented in the popular press.

Clod: you are clearly not the latter and may very well be the former. You've certainly done a lot more research and learning, in general and specific terms, than most people ever will when faced with this decision. You've had to be, in order to get your head around the very specific risks your children have faced and will face.

You are not the problem. The rest of us have a duty to be vaccinated*in order to protect families like yours.




* that said, my vaccinations as a child had to be abandoned halfway through as my baby eczema pretty much exploded after the first lot. I didn't have any of the later shots like rubella and so on,. As an adult I've had specific vaccinations for specific risks (tetanus, flu), but I am very cautious. because of my particular history I would be wary of vaccinations if I had kids, but would want to discuss in some depth with my GP, who specialises in dermatological conditions.

[Undertoad]

I learn something new every day: a wildly horrible case of eczema can be a rare adverse reaction to the smallpox vax. The vax is no longer generally given, because the disease has been eradicated world-wide. A safer version of the vax cannot be developed because it cannot be tested.

wikipedia on exzema vaccinatum

It is thought that the smallpox vax protects against HIV transmission.

[DanaC]

Interesting. That isn't what I had, thankfully. But something went drastically wrong somewhere around the time of my first vaccs.

I can attest to the horribleness of chicken pox with eczema though...

[monster]

Court Orders MMR

[jimhelm]

Why don't they just get the measles vaccine then? Why all 3?

If there was a measles outbreak nearby, I think I would be OK with my kids getting one. I wouldn't go to court and try to force them to though. We chose not to do it because they were not at risk, and the vaccine was more dangerous than the diseases to an infant.

My friend Rod's baby died shortly after getting that shot. SIDS, was the 'cause' of death. The mother, Dawn was lying on her back with Parker on her chest. They both fell asleep. Parker had been crying and uncomfortable and they had both been up all night. Died while she slept.

Dawn and jinx went to the same birth classes. Spencer and Parker were 2 weeks apart in age. Fucking horrible.

Neither of my kids has gotten chicken pox or mumps or measles.

[orthodoc]

Measles is a horrible disease.Its transmission is airborne, meaning that if you're in the same room with someone who's shedding virus, or if you enter the room that person left 30 minutes ago, you'll get it. Measles kills. It also causes SSPE, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which is Latin for your brain just died - although the rest of you didn't. It also causes blindness.

Mumps is painful and miserable in kids (besides reading the literature, I had it), but in males it causes orchitis. Which means inflammation of the testes, leading to scarring and inability to produce sperm.

Pertussis kills, period. It's a bad actor. I had it too, fortunately when I was old enough to just cough myself blue in the face and then throw up for weeks on end. Did I lose weight and fail to thrive? You bet. But I was one of the lucky ones that didn't die of hypoxia.

Chicken pox are miserable for small kids, and serious for a minority. They're serious for older kids, though - think viral encephalitis, the possibility of never regaining normal neurological function - and, if nothing else, they leave scars at that point, a bit like small smallpox scars. Not funny. In susceptible adults, chicken pox is a virulent, serious disease that has complications in the majority. In pregnant women, chicken pox is an unmitigated disaster.

All three vaccines are necessary because we need herd immunity. The more of us that are immune, the lower the chance that the disease will manage to propagate in our population.

Jim, I'm sorry to hear about the death of Dawn's child, but SIDS has NO association with vaccines. I understand that it would be an easy association to make in this instance, but it's not true, any more than saying that roosters cause the sun to rise by crowing.

The coming tragedy will be the resurgence of these truly awful diseases as more and more people refuse vaccines, seeing no need for them because they have no experience with the diseases due to pre-existing herd immunity, and they've fallen prey to the downside of the internet: charlatans whose heads are up their asses, preaching doom and quoting (unsubstantiated) anecdotes as a scare tactic, without any substantiated proof of their assertions. These charlatans should be held accountable for every vaccine-preventable death and life disaster that occurs as a result of their deliberate perpetration of falsehood.

Vaccination was one of the immense steps forward for the human race. And now, because it was SO successful, many are declaring that we have nothing to fear from the diseases it prevents, and making it the scapegoat for problems that have other origins.

[lumberjim]

SIDS is not a specific cause of death. Who are you to say that the two events were unrelated? Also, using that rooster and sun analogy is like calling me stupid.

And you don't need 100% herd immunity to eradicate a disease. All you need is perimeter immunity. My kids are unlikely to come into contact with either disease. They are definitely not going to spontaneously generate them.
I don't disagree with the concept of immunization. I do disagree with giving kids 20+ shots before age 2.

Neither of us is going to convince the other about this. I don't care if you give them to your kid, just don't tell me I have to do the same.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

SIDS is not a specific cause of death. Who are you to say that the two events were unrelated? Also, using that rooster and sun analogy is like calling me stupid.

And you don't need 100% herd immunity to eradicate a disease. All you need is perimeter immunity. My kids are unlikely to come into contact with either disease. They are definitely not going to spontaneously generate them.
I don't disagree with the concept of immunization. I do disagree with giving kids 20+ shots before age 2.

Neither of us is going to convince the other about this. I don't care if you give them to your kid, just don't tell me I have to do the same.

LJ, I was not calling you stupid. I was pointing out that association is not the same as causation.

This is the difficulty that epidemiologists live with. They report associations. Sometimes the increased risk that they report is associated with the exposure in a causal relationship, and sometimes not. When they report an increased risk, smart people don't ignore it; they investigate it.

No, you don't need 100% herd immunity, but you need more than perimeter immunity. You need more than 95% immunity, so that the chain of transmission breaks at every possible point. When more than 5% decide that they or their children don't need immune protection, the herd becomes vulnerable. Given the rise in vaccine refusal in the US, chances are very good that at some point your children will come into contact with one or more of the diseases to which they have no immunity, and most likely at the most vulnerable time of their lives - as adults.

If you disagree with many 'shots' before age 2, would you be willing to immunize your children against the major killers of the 20th century? Meaning: Diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella. Quite a few more immunizations have been recommended, and all recommendations are backed up with clinical evidence.

Conventional doctors have no dog in the fight about immunization, except that they are aware that the more people who believe charlatans and refuse vaccination, the more vulnerable the population becomes. Charlatans are the ones preaching doom and reporting anecdotes, rather than controlled, reproducible studies.

[DanaC]

As much as I agree with vaccinations in the main, I also know that they were almost certainly responsible for the severe chronic eczema that has blighted my life and wrecked my childhood. The timing of the jump from ordinary little bitty baby eczema rash to full blown horror was too damn close.

Mum didn't want to continue after the first one. I was flared and uncomfortable. She was bullied and cajoled and made to feel like a bad parent and hysterical mum for wanting to cease the shots. They persuaded her to do the next and bang: full blown eczema within a day.

When i say bullied and cajoled, I mean properly ganged up on by several nurses at the clinic, the doctor, and even a consultant from the hospital. I don't know why. Maybe they had targets.

My cousins meanwhile, who also had some baby eczema, weren't given the shots until they were better. Their doctor advised against.

[Adak]

Originally Posted by DanaC

As much as I agree with vaccinations in the main, I also know that they were almost certainly responsible for the severe chronic eczema that has blighted my life and wrecked my childhood. The timing of the jump from ordinary little bitty baby eczema rash to full blown horror was too damn close.

Mum didn't want to continue after the first one. I was flared and uncomfortable. She was bullied and cajoled and made to feel like a bad parent and hysterical mum for wanting to cease the shots. They persuaded her to do the next and bang: full blown eczema within a day.

When i say bullied and cajoled, I mean properly ganged up on by several nurses at the clinic, the doctor, and even a consultant from the hospital. I don't know why. Maybe they had targets.

My cousins meanwhile, who also had some baby eczema, weren't given the shots until they were better. Their doctor advised against.

Eczema is caused by a genetic predisposition, (among other things), and stress definitely makes it worse.

Which is what vaccinations are - stressors which induce an immune response. Your cousins doctor was quite right, imo.

Perhaps your doctors knew of an outbreak of a childhood disease in your area and at that time, and had received instructions to vaccinate everyone they could, to prevent it's spread.

The outbreak may have disappeared by the time your cousins saw the doctor.

Handling outbreaks of highly contagious diseases, is never perfect. Doctors can be damned if they do over-vaccinate, and definitely damned if they don't.

[Undertoad]

Why do you people hate clodfobble?

[Clodfobble]

Heh. I actually thought you'd moved this thread to a hidden forum, it went quiet so quickly before. It's cool though. I've been way, way, (WAY) less depressed in general since going on my kids' diet. I feel awesome for the first time in who knows how long, maybe ever. The thread popped up and my only thought was, "Huh, I can see it after all."

Still not going to participate in it, but I also don't feel compelled to, so that's good. You guys carry on if you want to.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Heh. I actually thought you'd moved this thread to a hidden forum, it went quiet so quickly before. It's cool though. I've been way, way, (WAY) less depressed in general since going on my kids' diet. I feel awesome for the first time in who knows how long, maybe ever.

....

Still not going to participate in it, but I also don't feel compelled to, so that's good. You guys carry on if you want to.

I was just wondering recently how it was going for you, Clod. So do you think you are allergic to gluten as well, or is their diet just that much better for everyone?