Just like Mississippi. The legislature takes up a bill a bill to make it easier for parents to keep their children from getting vaccines while California experiences an outbreak of measles. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning:
Health and school officials in California are racing to stem the spread of a measles outbreak that began at the Disneyland Resort last month and has renewed a debate about a growing trend of opting out of vaccination.
Students lacking measles vaccination are being sent home from schools where the disease has been identified, and health officials are sounding the alarm about the importance getting immunized.
“The safety of students on all of our campuses is our top priority and we will follow all recommendations and necessary guidelines to guarantee their safety,” said Greg Plutko, superintendent of the Huntington Beach Union High School District, where unvaccinated students were sent home until Jan. 29 after a student was diagnosed with measles earlier this month.
The latest outbreak has affected at least 59 people in California and seven others elsewhere in the U.S.
State health officials cautioned on Wednesday that people who haven’t been immunized should avoid public spaces with large crowds, such as theme parks or airports, as part of efforts to control the spread. It is standard protocol to send unvaccinated children home from school when there has been a measles case there, they said.
Officials believe those with vaccinations are safe to go to such places.
Seven of Disneyland’s 27,000 or so employees have been diagnosed with measles, park officials said Thursday, and four of them have been cleared to return to work. Staff have been offered free vaccinations and immunity tests. Attendance at the Anaheim, Calif., resort hasn’t been affected, officials said....
Measles, a highly contagious respiratory disease that begins with a fever, cough and runny nose and evolves into a red rash, can be more disruptive to daily life than other infectious diseases such as chickenpox. In some cases it can lead to severe complications like pneumonia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Vaccination rates are high nationally; 94.7% of kindergartners in the 2013-2014 school year were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, according to a survey by the CDC in 49 states and the District of Columbia. The vaccine is more than 99% effective, according to California health officials.
But public-health experts are concerned about communities where many families opt out of immunizations for their children. One case of measles can spread quickly in such groups.
These parents fear vaccines can have harmful effects on their children, with some believing that they are linked to autism—concerns that public-health officials and most scientists reject as unfounded.
Most states allow parents to opt out of vaccination for their children for reasons of personal belief or religion.
A study published this month of the electronic health records of roughly 154,000 children in northern California found that vaccine refusal by parents, or the choice not to have all 17 recommended shots, has risen in recent years and occurs more frequently in certain pockets of the population.
The percentage of children who didn’t receive all recommended shots in the study climbed to 12.4% in 2010-2012, up from 8.1% in 2002-2005.
“There’s pretty good evidence that where there are clusters of children who don’t receive all their vaccines, those communities are at higher risk of preventable diseases like measles than other communities,” said Tracy Lieu, director of Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in northern California.
While measles was eliminated in the U.S. in 2000—meaning it is not circulating regularly—there have been some severe outbreaks in recent years. From 2001 through 2011, there were 16 outbreaks with more than 10 individual cases each, the largest topping out at 34 cases. In 2013, there were 58 cases in one outbreak in New York; and in 2014, an outbreak among an Amish community in Ohio totaled 383 cases, according to Jane Seward, deputy director at the division of viral diseases at the CDC.
“This California instance is a fairly large outbreak in the post-elimination era,” said Dr. Seward, who described the number of cases nationally in recent years as alarming......
Meanwhile, the Clarion-Ledger reported a bill was introduced in the legislature that will make it easier for parents to withhold such vaccines from their children:
Mississippi already allows medical exemptions requested by a state-licensed doctor, but it sometimes has denied them, prompting politicians to get involved on parents’ behalf. “What we really have is a political waiver,” said state Rep. Mark Formby, R-Picayune, who introduced the bill.The co-founder of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, Mary Jo Perry, said
In its opposition, the state Department of Health cites the overwhelming success of immunizations in worldwide disease reduction and lack of scientific evidence that they cause autism or other serious issues.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Thomas Dobbs said he understands parental concerns but called the effort led by Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights misguided and dangerous. “We are sympathetic to parents, and we certainly are willing to work with everyone,” Dobbs said. “But in states with weaker laws, the public pays the price.”
Dobbs pointed to a recent resurgence of diseases that had all but disappeared until parents stopped vaccinating their children. He noted a rise in whooping cough cases in Michigan and said Mississippi could be next if it allows more exemptions.
All states have medical exemptions that allow an unvaccinated or under-vaccinated child to attend daycare or school, but only Mississippi and West Virginia lack either religious or philosophical/conscientious waivers, according to the National Vaccine Information Center.
Michigan allows medical, religious and philosophical/conscientious exemptions.
On denial of medical exemptions, Dobbs acknowledged the Health Department had exempted only children with specific contraindications to vaccines and denied the rest.
But that recently changed.
“We have made the medical exemption process easier lately, leaving decisions between patients and doctors,” he said. “No request was denied in 2014, and we had a 140 percent increase in vaccine exemptions since 2007.” Article
she hears countless similar stories. Immunizations can trigger not just autism, she said, but Type 1 diabetes, asthma, heart problems and other lifelong complications.No scientific proof. No doctor's reports. Just an assertion not backed up by anything but what she hears from others. The article includes one heartbreaking story about one mother whose child developed autism:
Lauren Lynch helplessly watched her happy, healthy toddler transform overnight into an inconsolable stranger who stopped talking, shunned affection and spent hours just rolling on the floor.
Eight years later, Lynch’s son, Wiatt, still hasn’t fully recovered from the symptoms she believes childhood immunizations caused.
“He was perfect when we took him in there,” Lynch said, “and he was not when we left.”.....
Lynch has read the medical research and heard the reassurances from doctors like Dobbs, but she can’t shake the haunting memory of what happened to her son. To her, that trumps everything.
“I never once questioned anything — nothing — until I saw it happen with my own eyes,” she said. “Prove to me that vaccines didn’t cause this. You can’t.”
Flip the question in reverse: Can anyone prove the vaccines did cause this? Maybe we should give them what they want: No vaccines. Maybe we need a new generation of kids becoming paralyzed, dying, or merely suffering from polio, measles, and other diseases. Then everyone can be happy. This post will end with a chart from today's Journal:
43 comments:
Thank you for injecting some sense into this. A family friend of ours in his 60's had polio as a child and was left with a bad leg for life. Is this what these people want? I have already asked my representative to vote against this. We have vaccinated our children as soon as they are recommended. I read about it before I did it and I'm glad we did it. I also don't want unvaccinated kids to be able to go to school or use school clubs or programs if their parents refuse them to be vaccinated. Stay home and homeschool them all you want, but keep your unvaccinated kids away from my kids, and babies who are too young to be vaccinated yet.
Are you saying Kingfish that vaccines are infallible? I think the physician acknowledged near-complete failure of this season's flu vaccine casts sufficient doubt.
We don't know, yet, the cultural and/or national origin composition of those in California who have contracted measles and I've read elsewhere that Patient Zero has not been identified. I'd be willing to bet you that we're not talking about a new outbreak among the Amish. I'd also bet that if a large part of this outbreak has occurred among those in this country illegally you won't hear about that either.
I'm not anti-vaccine. Not at all. My children have received all of them. But I also am not convinced about the efficacy of every damn vaccine that comes down from the drug companies who need to create+hype "new" public health problems in order to sell their solutions (and thus recoup the Zillion$ in high risk R&D they spent).
So let's pose this question. Can anyone in government or in an official capacity to protect the public health prove those streaming across our southern border have had ANY vaccines, even the most basic and time tested, at all? I think we already know the answer to that question.
You are using this California outbreak about which we know very little to gang tackle Mississippians who have some legitimate concerns about vaccines. AND you have NO children.
If you are truly worried about "... a new generation of kids becoming paralyzed, dying, or merely suffering from polio, measles, and other diseases ..." then you better get your ass all over this illegal immigration story because the public health risks of that disaster are already being felt in Mississippi and nationwide.
According to this:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/01/23/254104/measles-cases-not-limited-to-the.html
These measles outbreaks aren't limited to just the non-vaccinated either. People with just one shot of the vaccine are still 5% (roughly) susceptible and can transmit the disease too.
Okay, I've just gotta ask the guy at 9:47. If you don't trust the people making the vaccines because they are just trying to 'recoup the Zillions' they have invested, and you don't trust the government that tests them, and you don't trust the docs doing tests of these vaccines, then who the hell is the authority you'll listen to?
9:47am Illegal immigrant kids coming here ARE vaccinated. Because it's free and they have to be in order to go to school. Vaccination rates in most Central American countries are higher than in most US states. Except for MS.
The parents who are pushing this need to move somewhere else like California and join the paranoia brigade.
http://www.texasobserver.org/disease-threat-immigrant-children-wildly-overstated/
My son was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 7 months. Because of the chemotherapy treatments he had to do, he isn't able to receive his immunization shots until he is a little bit older. It makes me mad that some parents would risk the health of the public all because they believe everything they hear on TV. Also if a kid with a compromised immune system were to catch one of these diseases they could possibly die. The first month we were at Batson one of the little kids with cancer caught RSV and passed away a few days later. I think he was only 2 years old.
Do you have a link 10:32 that shows what percentage of the actual children who have immigrated to this country illegally have been vaccinated? Did they present their country's equivalent to Mississippi's Form 121 when they crossed the border?
Read under "Background" and Q5. Either they receive vaccinations while in shelters or they must receive vaccinations before they enroll in public school.
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/unaccompanied-children.html
Go walk through a historic cemetery and look at how many kids used to die in epidemics in Mississippi before mandatory immunizations.
States with Religious and Philosophical Exemptions from School Immunization Requirements
11:50 What percentage of children here illegally were processed through a HHS shelter?
Doesn't really matter if they were illegal aliens as it just proves what happens if someone is not vaccinated and then exposed to various diseases.
A very good read: Hollywood's Vaccine Wars
And: Dismissing vaccine skeptics as crazies or idiots won’t solve the growing public health problem their choices present
I can respect those who don't want to stack vaccinations, particularly if their child is prone to allergies, but not to immunize at all is just plain stupid!
The risks associated with all these illnesses are far greater.
Did they stop teaching how dangerous these childhood diseases can be when they were thought eradicated?
Has the AMA and Health Departments and CDC in this country become that politicized that they can't do their jobs or are they just staffed by cowards or the incompetent?
With measles, you risk , not only killing infants exposed who are too young to be vaccinated, but also the complications of deafness, blindness, and a pneumonia.
I remember the measles and chicken pox and small pox ( which we risk having show up again and polio and mumps. Aside from the complications sited for measles, horrible scarring and sterility and paralysis and death were not uncommon in my peers who had those diseases.
Quarantines were common for me. Panic in parents during outbreaks were common.
Your child is not your property but your responsibility!
And, I have even mentioned what happens when an unimmunized pregnant woman gets some of these " childhood" diseases!
But, even if you believe you have a right to inflict your ignorance or stupidity on your child, you don't have a right to endanger the infants too young to be immunized!
If we can track the source of contagion, and any child has died, as far as I'm concerned these parents should go to jail and their children removed from the home.
And, any legislator who has voted to harm the public with their stupidity should go right along with them!
The law that should be passed is one requiring immunizations!!!!!!
You have a right to be stupid, but by God, we used to have enough sense to know you can inflict your stupidity on me so as to cause me and mine harm!
This graphic is based on CDC statistics. (Morbidity=death.)
https://www.behance.net/gallery/2878481/Vaccine-Infographic
Please read this article. Measles is not a minor illness. It used to kill 2.6 million people per year, and now still kills 145,000 per year. This should not be happening in the US. The parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should get reported for child abuse if their child ends up catching measles as a direct result of their refusal!
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/the-new-measles/384738/
Please learn to hotlink instead of continually expecting readers to cut and paste. We know you are slow to grasp new concepts but it isn't that hard. Not reading any more of your links until then.
And what about the pregnant teachers exposed to rubella if this bill passed?
Ok!
Sorry!
I didn't realize the few seconds to drag and drop was such a major impediment to your JJ experience.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/2878481/Vaccine-Infographic
More idiot tea partiers. Let's ban penicillin too, it's a rhino conspiracy. Close the public schools and give all kids guns. It will work itself out.
Is there an idiot vaccination for legislators? Next thing you know they will be bringing in leaches.
Hey world! The gentleman fron Picayunne says we don't need no shots.
This vaccine hysteria is ridiculous and baseless.
ALL medicines and vaccines carry possible side effects. There will always be a small percentage who have adverse reactions.
There are people who shouldn't take an aspirin, for goodness sakes!
We've too damn many people who don't know what they don't know and assume themselves " experts" in every damn thing despite never studying the subject at hand! And the gullible listen to some of these idiots as if they are experts.
The flu vaccine this year is effective against the viruses anticipated. There was nothing wrong with the vaccines, just the prediction of the most likely viruses this season. That was a stupid analogy!
If you didn't do well in school, if you aren't succeeding in your life, if you always scored badly on IQ tests or reading comprehension tests, if you have had problems with mental illness and have few friends, please face that you might not be smart enough or mentally sound enough to weigh in on public policy!
"The flu vaccine this year is effective against the viruses anticipated. There was nothing wrong with the vaccines, just the prediction of the most likely viruses this season. That was a stupid analogy!"
The example shows that the most distinguished experts anticipated the wrong strains of virus, and millions (billions?) were spent on making the wrong vaccine this year.
Has anyone heard the "experts" explain how they anticipated the wrong strains would be prevalent this year? They are usually correct in their guesses for the next year, so what happened this time?
This is right up Chris McDaniel and Mike Watson's uneducated talking points. Will Chris and Melanie's love child be vaccinated ?
What about pul@$$o? Isn't he an anti vaxxer?
At 12:21, I don't know for sure...just guessing here...but I'm willing to wager a bet that the experts aren't 100% correct 100% of the time simply because they are just human. Even the smartest men can do no more than make an educated guess as to what the future will bring. And, occasionally, they will guess wrong. If you are looking for perfection, you're not likely to find it.
8:11 I didn't claim anyone was perfect (at 12:21). I just asked if the experts had explained why they were so far off in their predictions, at great loss of money for society and apparently some tragic deaths for some families.
We can't prevent a similar tragedy next year unless we learn why it happened this year. An explanation the laymen can understand would be a tremendous first step - has anyone taken it?
Constant Quality Improvement is not the same thing as claiming something or someone is perfect - it's trying to improve what obviously is not working currently.
As to the concern expressed about the right to withhold consent to treatment: All freedoms have limits. When one person's freedom exposes others to unreasonable risk of harm or interferes unreasonably wth the rights of others, society can, and does, limit those freedoms. So when one chooses unreasonably to refuse to vaccinate and causes substantial risk of serious harm to others, society has the "right" to limit the freedom. No freedom is absolute. Public welfare and safety has always operated to provide boundaries to the exercise of our freedoms. The challenge is for society to understand how to balance to maximize freedom with risks of harm to others.
Would you favor forced treatment of someone with a highly contagious and deadly disease or say it is that person's right to move freely among others and expose them because it is his right ro refuse treatment?
When one person's freedom exposes others to unreasonable risk of harm or interferes unreasonably wth the rights of others, society can, and does, limit those freedoms.
And, oddly, according to many of the left these days that includes the freedom of speech.
January 16, 2015
Canadian Government warns Canadian Travelers:
The United States is currently experiencing [measles] outbreaks due to imported cases.
7:57 In support of your argument it should be noted that all 50 states allow or require treatment of active tuberculosis to protect society at large, and consent of the infected patient is not needed. There is also mandatory notification of partners of those with STDs, although fake names can be given for those partners.
"The Constitution is not a suicide pact" - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Founding Fathers had no problem with quarantines and recognized an essential function of government was public health.
8:46, while I share your concerns about the attempts to control speech (and religious expression) by many on the left, even free speech has limits, such as illustrated by the famous statement by Holmes that one doesn't have freedom to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater. We also have laws against defamation, giving false testimony, etc. So while we must be on guard against those who would restrict speech for ideological purposes, we also must recognize that there a limits even to speech.
People keep bringing up the example of the missed "flu vaccine" strain as an example to invalidate the measles vaccine.
This is a red herring and not even comparable, as the process for developing a yearly vaccine for a constantly changing virus like the flu is very different from a more static one like the measles.
It doesn't even make sense. This vaccine has existed for years and years.
To put it in non health terms, it would be similar to saying,
"Those new Ford Sedans that came out this year were very unreliable. How can you trust the quality of any car sedan that is made?"
Shouting "Fire" in a theater may be enjoined but satirizing the Prophet Mohammed for having personal relations with feral pigs is not.
For those who still don't get it, predicting what strains of flu are likely in the US is based on those strains that are active world wide and most likely to spread to the US when it's time to make the vaccine each year.
For the simple minded, I'll over simplify. Let's pretend there's one strain in Madagascar and those are people unlikely to travel and flu strains haven't spread from Madagascar in the past. This year ,however, two families from Madagascar who are coming down with the flu get on a plane and head for two different places in the U.S. and the hundreds of people they expose on the plane are going other places in the U.S. Or suddenly, Madagascar is a hot US tourist destination and the tourists bring it back. By the time all those people start exposing others, the flu vaccine is already in production and even if you stopped production and tried to include the Madagascar strain of flu, it'd be available too late.
There are only 3 basic types of flu viruses but some estimate a new virus happens ever 32 seconds.HIV and Ebola are viruses, but they aren't the flu. The flu viruses evolve and are airborne so they spread quickly and evolve quickly so immunity doesn't last even when you get a flu shot. You can have the flu many times in your life. You will not get the flu that you had but one that has changed and evolved.
The measles is a virus but, is not like the flu. There are two types ( German and Red) and once you have either or the immunization. your immunity lasts. You don't get the measles over and over. Once you have the measles or the vaccine you are immune.
I didn't have the MMR vaccine as it'd hadn't been developed, I had the measles. I had the mumps I had the chicken pox. I survived. I am now immune.
My children had the vaccines and are just as immune as I am ( as they had the booster as well).
The vaccine builds up an immunity the same way.
I had one of the first polio shots. It was given at school. It was required. We couldn't do that today because of stupid people who can't admit ignorance in some subjects and those who think the government has NO role in society.
For those simple minded who still don't get it you're reading the JJ Pontificator's daily crap @ 7:57 AM.
8:40am, 1-26,
Apparently you lack the sense to understand the comment about the limits to rights. The simple truth is when your exercise of your "rights" puts me at risk of actual harm, your rights end. That is how rights have always worked. If you don't get that, there just isn't much more I can say.
What do you mean that all the tests say I am not Gluten sensitive? All my friends in my chatroom and the helpful folks in the center section of Whole foods keep telling me I have all the classic symptoms: fatigue, insomnia, fleeting joint pains, avoidance of sex, vague and never present rashes when getting examined, headaches, and weight gain. Moron.
6:54 Gluten is not mentioned anywhere in this thread. Are the voices telling you something the rest of us can't hear or see?
I read that over half of the children that contracted measles at Disneyland HAD RECIEVED the 'vaccine'. If the shot is all it's hyped up to be then why did so many children get it. Could it be the illegals (future democrats) are bringing new strands in with them?
Death to Gluten!
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