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Anti-Vaccine Moms are Risking Children’s Lives
In 1956, an infant contracted whooping cough. It was agonizing for the family to watch a child suffer through this illness. She was so sick one day that her parents had to call the fire department; they were able to revive her and likely saved her life. This incident took place just before the whooping cough vaccine came out.
That infant was my sister.
We are now experiencing a serious measles outbreak in this country, primarily because so many parents still believe the myth that vaccines cause autism. Even though the study that made this claim was debunked, the lie has remained alive. Now we have children coming down with measles currently at alarming levels, because so many children have not been vaccinated:
The Centers for Disease Control said so far this year, there are 101 cases of the measles in ten states and 58 cases of the mumps in 18 states. As these outbreaks grow, experts said vaccines are the key to stopping them.
‘It’s incredibly effective; 97 percent effectiveness with two doses of the vaccine, which is what’s recommended for children – and it’s inexpensive,’ Clark County Public Health Director Dr. Alan Melnick said.
The MMR vaccine is for measles, mumps and rubella; there is also an MMRV vaccine which also covers chicken pox.
Although people downplay the dangers of these childhood diseases, the CDC doesn’t :
Measles can be dangerous, especially for babies and young children. From 2001-2013, 28% of children younger than 5 years old who had measles had to be treated in the hospital.
For some children, measles can lead to:
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Pneumonia (a serious lung infection)
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Lifelong brain damage
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Deafness
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Death
So refusing to vaccinate children has serious implications for all children. If we want to see what happens when vaccination levels drop, we only need to look at the Philippines:
The Philippines is in the midst of a growing measles crisis, with at least 70 deaths, mainly of children, in the past month. In January, there were 4,302 reported cases of measles in the country, an increase of 122% on the same period last year. The outbreak has been blamed on a backlash against vaccinations. The outbreak has continued into February. Last week, a measles outbreak was declared in Metro Manila – populated by 12 million people with many living in poverty-stricken slums. This follows 196 reported cases in January, compared to just 20 recorded in the same period last year. In Manila, 55 children under the age of four have died of measles since the beginning of the year.
In addition, there is a worldwide increase in cases:
The outbreak in the Philippines follows an alarming wave of measles cases worldwide, which has been blamed mainly on conspiracies and misinformation around vaccinations, particularly in Europe and the US. There has been a 30% increase on measles cases worldwide since 2016, according to WHO.
Overall, south-east Asia is one of the few regions where measles vaccinations are on the rise but other countries in the region have seen recent outbreaks similar to the Philippines. In November last year, a measles crisis was declared in the majority-Muslim southern regions of Thailand, which have high levels of poverty, even though the disease was said to be almost eradicated in Thailand. There were 4,000 measles cases reported in Thailand last year, causing the deaths of at least 22 children.
In a global society that travels a great deal, we are going to be exposed in this country to those in Europe and Asia who come here and bring this highly contagious disease with them.
Due to the drop in immunizations in the U.S., we are also losing our “herd immunity.” That provides resistance to a contagious disease if a high proportion of the population is immune to the disease, i.e., has been vaccinated. With so many parents refusing to immunize their children, this mass protection is disappearing.
What can be done? Many people understandably do not want the government to step in and legislate a requirement for vaccinations; I agree. I also think that using a rational approach to a highly emotional issue has proven to be less than effective. I recommend that we take a dramatic approach.
Have you seen the whooping cough advertisement for a vaccination? I think the times call for this type of approach.
Any other suggestions?
Published in Healthcare
This is probably a point that’s been brought up before, but I wonder if the reason people are less likely to vaccinate their children now is because they haven’t experienced any of those diseases. I think either my mother or one of her siblings had measles, so it wasn’t hard to decide that my brother and I should get vaccinated.
It may be callous, but perhaps these outbreaks of infectious disease are what’s needed to get people to understand the threat. And if not, well, they probably weren’t going to learn anyway.
I’m all for vaccination. However, I do question combining more than one vaccine in a mega-shot. The infant’s body should be allowed to respond to whatever is introduced one at a time, in case there is some kind of negative reaction.
I am sorry, but this is just nuts.
We have it too damn good. We are soft and don’t understand that nature is dangerous.
Interesting points, @mattbalzer. I hadn’t thought about how people might respond whether or not they’d had a disease. Sounds foolish enough to be true! It sure could be a tough lesson, though, if a child dies.
Another interesting point! Maybe, too, we just believe (like teenagers) that we are invulnerable, that nothing can hurt us. That would be the kind of naivete I would expect from people nowadays. Thanks, @bryangstephens!
I forgot to say that a friend of mine had recently seen the whooping cough ad and went for her shot, since she had a new grandchild. But then, she’s a smart lady, too!
The irony is, we expect to be able to win against nature all the time, and it get us!
Andrew Wakefield, the author of the study continues to maintain his innocence of any medical fraud based on his ‘study’ or any other of many accusations. There are allegations that he had developed a single shot measles vaccine and tried to malign the MMR (combined measles, mumps, rubella vaccine) for his own financial benefit.
I viewed a webinar from the U of MN about 2 years ago which stated that Wakefield had been visiting immigrant communities (such as the Somali, here in MN) and continues to maintain that the MMR vaccine is dangerous. According to Wikipedia, in 2015 he was a featured speaker, with corresponding continuing education credits, for Life Chiropractic College West in California. A firing squad would be too good for this animal.
Even when the lie is exposed, there are too many people who are willing to believe that vaccines are nothing but a government conspiracy to control your life and the lives of your children. There was a measles outbreak in MN in 2017. My daughter would not take her infant son out in public until given the all clear because he was too young to be vaccinated. This is serious stuff.
How to counteract it? I don’t even know if it is possible. People will believe what they want to, regardless of evidence. Fortunately, doctors are pounding the drum for vaccinations, and some communities that have suffered outbreaks get a lot of media attention with the message that the disease is worse than the vaccination. We can only hope the message sinks in.
There should be a way to shut up Wakefield. I worry about our little ones. I’m glad to know that you are clear on the problem; I just wish we could figure out how to wake up everyone else. Thanks, @juliana.
Yes, living off the safety created by more responsible decisions of previous generations, people feel free to indulge in conspiracies and myths, assuming nothing bad will happen, or that a quick trip to the doctor will fix anything that happens if they were wrong.
Get a shingles shot if you’ve had chickenpox.
The solution to the problem I think is simple and obvious. Simply don’t allow children without proper vaccinations to attend public schools. That is where all of this spreads. Parents dead set against vaccinations can either home school their children, or find a private school that will take them. Frankly though if I were running a private school I would also not allow children without vaccines to attend. No one has a right to attend public schools without any prerequisites, it might not even be such a bad idea to offer free vaccinations to children who wish to attend. I guess though for small children (pre-school age) this doesn’t serve as a proper deterrent, but again day care centers should demand vaccinations. And frankly I’m not sure I would consider a day care facility that doesn’t to be properly run.
I am on board with this.
I don’t want them in any public spaces though.
Oh yes! Just go to the doctor, even for a sniffle, and he’ll take care of everything. Except measles. And other serious infectious diseases. Sigh.
Yeah, but it’s ghastly expensive and I believe it has a limited time frame and of course it doesn’t always work. And now there’s a new one, also expensive.
@kozak
I remember lining up at the local high school for oral polio vaccines in the 1960’s. This was a mass inoculation – everyone in town was expected to participate, and due to the scene in the picture you posted, there weren’t many complaints. The high school was chosen as a convenient, central location with a gym that could accommodate the number of people and nurses. Entire families were given the polio dose – if I remember correctly there were two doses, so you had to go twice. My parents were out of town for the second dose, so we went with other family members, but my parents had to get the second dose at the doctor’s office when they got back.
@valiuth, an excellent suggestion! I don’t know if the “free” will be much of an incentive, though. It’s not the money that matters to the anti-vaccine types. It’s the big lie about vaccines. Maybe we can bribe them? I do think it’s serious enough that schools should require vaccines to attend. Thanks!
Kozak, one powerful photo. Wow. Polio.
My family did the same thing–at school, as a family. Easy.
I’ve had idiots argue with me that “tetanus doesn’t exist anymore” and that rabies isn’t a threat.
I can grow tetanus in any shovel full of dirt from a yard, and people in the Third World die of rabies all the time.
We don’t see it in US because, vaccines.
I was working in the ER one night ( at military hospital so the kids can get all their vaccines free) when I picked up a chart that said “worried about Whooping Cough”. So mom with her kid at 3 am concerned because he had a bad cough. “Well that shouldn’t be a problem, he’s vaccinated right?”. Dead. Silence. So my comment was ” Let me get this straight, you didn’t vaccinate your child and now you are concerned it could be pertussis“? Mom was, “I’m not going to discuss that right now”. OK. The problem is we had no way to diagnose the kid. Our lab did not have the correct culture medium, and they didn’t do the PCR test because the demand for it was so low. The child was older, not an infant, so we had time to treat. So I referred them to the PEDS clinic in the morning, and they could work with the lab to try and confirm the diagnosis.
How did you keep from screaming at her? Thanks for weighing in, @kozak. You’re so knowledgeable on health-related issues. The more I hear, the more frustrated and concerned I become.
I agree entirely, but don’t stop at schools. Any business should be allowed to turn away the unvaccinated, including insurance companies, doctors and hospitals. The clinic my wife works at had a confirmed measles case. As a result, every hospital in the Austin area had to take extra precautions. For my facility, that required extra training on measles during preshift, flyers posted at all intake areas, mandatory masking for every patient with any illness, special care for immunocompromised patients, and an isolation room on hold at all times. Why do the the responsible people have to bear those costs?
The anti-vax people can go to one of the many facilities that accept unvaccinated patients.
Oh my gosh, @josepluma! And you have to work right in the middle of this craziness! (You are a nurse, true?) People have no idea how their poor decisions create a web of difficulties and dangers. Just imagine a person walking into a doctor’s office, too, and having to wait while everyone is exposed. It’s completely unfair.
Being an ER nurse is 12 hours of crazy anyway. This just added a dollop of stupid on top of it.
There are a lot of myths circulating about the anti-vaxxers:
Most of these people are simply delaying them, not withholding them completely.
I think there is a fair amount of fear mongering about this group of people. I say that because the children who live in religious communities who do not vaccinate their children are not dying from these diseases.
Nor are these communities seeing a lot of autism either. Which is one reason why I’m not convinced yet, having spent hundred of hours reading on this subject, that there is absolutely no connection between autism and vaccinations. The timing of the occurrence of autism symptoms and the vaccinations is troubling to me. Until someone establishes the actual of cause for autism, I’ll still wonder about the vaccines. I don’t question the theory of how vaccines work. I do question the pharmaceutical companies’ ability to create these formulas perfectly. (Good grief, one year the flu vaccine manufacturers targeted the wrong flu.)
Most importantly, when my kids were of vaccination age, I had a single pediatrician I trusted. Parents today are on their own. Every time they go to the doctor, they get a different doctor. There’s no relationship there. I think the practice of pediatric medicine needs an overhaul.
And there are so many more vaccines today than there were when my kids were little. In Massachusetts, there are something like 35 now. It was 15 for my kids. I have three kids. If I had had to sign those indemnity forms 105 times, by the 50th, I’d be on the Internet too. I’d be worried.
I think the CDC needs to do a better job of addressing the fears of these parents. Don’t get mad. Calm down and address their fears and concerns. I’ve spent hours reading the CDC web pages that are supposed to allay parents’ fears. In my opinion, they are dodgy, condescending, and poorly done.
Exactly.
I’m just now reading “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry about the flu pandemic in 1918-19. Millions died worldwide, but obviously there was no vaccine then. Just the chapter describing how the virus invades the body, mutates and does its work was amazing. As a side issue, Woodrow Wilson was a disgusting, fanatical dictator.
The article you cite is from an anti-vax website and relies entirely on cherry-picked anecdotal evidence-in other words, it is just anti-vax propaganda. Has there ever been a study of the incidence of autism of unvaccinated vs. vaccinated persons in the same population?
Secondly, the incidence of autism increased just about the the time that the definition of autism was broadened diagnostically. I guess that was just a coincidence. Meanwhile, children have been vaccinated since the ’50’s and ’60’s. Why the delay? By that logic, autism could have been caused by rock’n’roll music. Or the Vietnam war. I’ve got! It was water fluoridation! The Birchers were right all along!