I’m sorry but it’s really irresponsible. German measles causes birth defects - if your little disease vectors grow up and start their own families and get infected with German measles for the first time while pregnant it could be life ruining for your grandkids. The evidence that vaccines work is overwhelming but it’s passing beyond living memory - just look at Polio which crippled thousands up until the 1950s but which isn’t a threat today because it’s been vaccinated out of existence.
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Hmm,
A few posts earlier, bodhibrother mentionned his children are adults. How were the vaccine made when they were still kids (I don’t have the answer because I don’t know their age, but neither do you).
Appart from that, considering that even the most pro-vaccine doctore will never claim full immunity from a vaccine, that graph is a little misleading, I would say.
I know that even the older vaccine formulas never used elemental Mercury.
Thimerosal, the preservative which contained a compound that included a Mercury atom, hasn’t been used in childhood vaccines in the United States since 1999. It was removed not because there was any evidence it was causing harm to children but rather to address the concerns of the “OMG THEY’RE POISONING OUR CHILDREN WITH MERCURY” folks.
Obviously that attempt to quell concerns by the anti-vaccination crowd didn’t have the desired effect.
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Yup. The removed the thimerosal and autism rates are still increasing.
Because we’re getting better at diagnosing autism every year. Seriously, look at the research. Our changes in diagnostic procedures and standards 100% accounts for the “increase in autism”.
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No, polio declined because of improved sanitation. It is purely coincidence that the decline coincided exactly with the use of preventative vaccination.
/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s
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/s
I hope…
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Edit because I missed the sarcasm
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Hey, where did the original comment from bodhibrother go? Now I just look like a crazy person air-quoting for no reason.
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It’s what happens when morons fail to make a point. Sorry man. You’re a victim of @bodhibrother’s being wrong, and then not backing up his dumb and heavily disproven claims.
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Is there a “hey, I’m not crazy, it was there a minute ago, I’m telling you!” badge for that?
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So, couldn’t help but notice the bhodi in @bodhibrother 's handle, and I don’t know if it’s yoga related or just a general budhism reference, but my wife does web work for a yoga organization that her sister works for and they are definitely anti-vax. I mean, I guess it makes sense, fitting in with a culture of scepticism of western medicine, but is this a common link, yoga and anti-vax? Or is it my selection bias? Anybody in the Yoga world have any insight or experiences?
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Dunno. Maybe go to the Buddhist nations (pretty uniformly Southern Asian, predominantly Southeast Asian) to see if they’re anti-vax. I rather doubt it. The ones I know generally have very active epidemiology bureaus attached to their health ministries. In countries where there are large pockets of poverty and overcrowding, there is a large incentive to head epidemics off at the pass.
In the West? Maybe. Western practitioners of yoga, Vipassana, etc., can afford to have different attitudes to these things (especially as they get to ride on the coattails of herd immunity).
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Oh yeah, I was definitely referring to the American/Western Yoga scene specifically, sorry I should’ve made that clearer. I guess I take it for granted that we’re alwyas talking about anti-vax in the context of USians… The school that my wife contracts for was started by an American couple, and is now huge with a lot of international events, but is definitely L.A. (Los Angeles) based and styled…
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Yeah.
The silly thing here is that the reason @bodhibrother’s kids stayed healthy was that selfsame herd immunity - if the illnesses aren’t going around, unvaccinated kids aren’t likely to catch them. I was a very healthy kid in the '60s. I caught measles, mumps, chicken pox, and as a young man, rubella. So did most of the kids I knew. We didn’t have vaccines for any of these. Now my cohort is running across a rash of shingles cases because we all were exposed to varicella as kids…
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His sample size was 100%. Not kidding. Think about it logically, not ideologically.
Anti-anti-vaxxers typically argue completely orthagonally to anti-vaxxers. To popcorn-munchers like me it’s like watching Ancient Greek phalanxes charge at each other; tragic and absurd.
It is true that it is easy for an educated and concerned parent to avoid mercury in vaccines. It is not true that children are no longer given vaccines containing mercury in the USA. Flu vaccines that are administered to both pregnant women and to infants contain thimerosal, for instance, and according to the FDA’s website some of the diptheria and pertussis vaccine preparations shipped in 2015 (most recent available data) contained mercury.
I know this for fact because I had to order special vaccines to get ones without mercury for my kids (my youngest wasn’t born until 1999.) The pediatrician was quite surprised that I research medications before allowing them to be given to my children, but he was also very supportive and helpful. We had a nice conversation about how difficult it was for me to get a Red Book.
Absolutely correct statement! But they put it back in, just as soon as a specious excuse (bird flu, as I recall) was found.
More like watching a Roman legion forced to rely on a Greek phalanx to hold a flank facing the Huns: you know that the Romans can stop the Huns, but it’s going to be a lot bloodier than it needs to be because of those $^&#@ Greeks.
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Unfortunately school is not the only public sphere. How does one know there aren’t homeschooled unvaccinated kids running around at Gymboree or the playground or Chuck E. Cheese?
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There wasn’t a vaccine for chicken pox in the 1960s, but there was for rubella, mumps, and measles. I got those vaccines, along with smallpox and polio. I can’t imagine Canada was behind the U.S. in this.
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Liz, the question is when in the '60s. MMR vaccines arrived in the late '60s when I was starting into my teens and had already had these illnesses.
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I had them all by 1965 or '66. But maybe that was just enough time between us: I was still in elementary school then.
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