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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
not doing your part makes it worse. The proper rational calculation is that we all have to participate. Any other choice is simple total antisocial selfishness.
Measles is rarely fatal either (0.1% before 1963 according to CDC). But the analogy is to someone who makes an unnecessary choice that endangers the life of someone else, regardless of whether they intend to hurt someone. Taking unnecessary trips in your car creates some tiny risk that you’ll hurt or kill someone who didn’t really have a choice about being in their car (e.g. traveling to/from work). So does having a swimming pool. So does not getting vaccinated.
I guess we differ on the definition of rational. People may be misinformed about some of the risks, but that doesn’t make them irrational. Neither does going against scientific consensus automatically make them irrational.
Calling people nuts and irrational is not ridicule? Then I guess the first hit on Google for “anti-vaxxers” is not ridicule either:
“telling anti-vaxxers they’re stupid won’t fix it“
I didn’t read the article, but I think they’re right. Calling people stupid, nuts, or irrational is not a good way to sway opinions. Especially when the people are genuinely trying to make the right decision for their children. But I’m not even sure there’s anything to be fixed. Individuals are making decisions based on individual assessment of risk. As the risk of disease goes up, those decisions will change. Some people who didn’t have a choice will get sick in the meantime. That’s tragic, but I don’t see this as any different than someone getting killed in a car accident by someone who was driving somewhere they didn’t really have to go.
Stupid is stupid. I don’t care if they change, They are stupid
From the CDC again:
It would seem that you can get 97% of the benefit without participation from anyone else.
I’m all for vaccinations, and did so for my first set of twins according to the proscribed schedule, but at UC San Francisco, doctors were okay with letting parents choose a “modified schedule” spreading the shots out more, reducing what was given. It just made for a few more (2? 3?) appointments in 18 months. My real disagreement, however, centered around the Hepatits B vaccine, which is given as three shots-the first two, one-month apart, the third six months later. The original CDC guidance reflected on the fact that the populations who were most susceptible to Hep B at the time (IV drug users and homosexuals) were also groups who did not do a great job coming back for their second or third shot, making the vaccine much less effective in those populations. Therefore the CDC guidance suggested the HEp B series be bundled in with all those other vaccines during the first year of life. In fact, why not give the first one AT BIRTH?
I had two babies who were premature and in NICU, and I didn’t want to assault their immune system with the Hep B series because demographic groups were not compliant. UCSF respected that decision and didn’t push it. I fully desired to get them immunized for Hep B (as I have had the series, working in the operating room for years) but later in their life—six or seven years old.
When I moved to a less progressive part of the country (Reno, Nevada) I was forced to comply or not have a pediatrician. I was pushed into the anti-vax category, and even with my reasoning above, I was not allowed to choose a different schedule. Still furious. I am against compulsion in any form with this, especially by the government. People are stupid in myriad ways, not just in refusing vaccinations. Let’s not be part of the nanny-state.
I agree completely. We have to respect parents and listen to them.
Here is another “mandated vaccine” that same pedi office wanted to give my girls at 9 or 10. Gardasil. So they don’t get cervical cancer. But does gardasil really protect women from cervical cancer? Well, kinda. It protects against about seven strains of human papilloma virus, or genital warts. Some of these cause most cervical cancers, but it does not protect against all HPV strains, and it may not last more than four years or so.
So the government decides that this is a good idea for everybody. Public health and all. So now as a parent, I don’t have a choice in this? It’s not as if there aren’t lobbyists from pharmaceutical companies hobnobbing with the CDC or with anyone at health and human services, trying to get reimbursement for their drugs? I know because I worked for a consulting firm who did just this thing. Medical science marches onward, more vaccines are brought to market. Who gets to decide which are mandatory? Me or Kathleen Sebilius, or AOC, or whomever will be leading CMS when we switch sides?
Just so we know how many we are talking about. It’s not just MMR…
Jesus H Christ.
I once (1982) rounded in an iron lung unit, but it was nothing like this.
What did these poor people DO all day?
Something I have not seen mentioned–what is the vaccine rate for “children” coming from Central and South America?
Thanks to the uncontrolled influx of illegal aliens, old diseases are making a rapid comeback, making vaccination more important than ever . . .
This is my question, too. Illegal border crossings have been happening for decades, so this factor may not be as big as I think. However, the nature of illegal immigration seems different today, and the greater dispersion of immigrants more broadly throughout the nation could have a greater impact than in past decades.
Ridiculous. But, I’m sure the nannies (and the pharma companies) think it’s just a good start.
Fight to breathe.
When I was a med student in 1981 we were all dragged into the Peds unit to see a kid from Cambodia who had the measles.
“Take a good look at this, you will probably never see another case in your career”….
Thanks to the anti vax crowd, and to illegal immigration we now have a resurgence of diseases we thought were gone, among them measles, TB and typhoid. And thats’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There is a difference between being stupid and behaving in a stupid way. Under the right circumstance any of us may engage in the latter without being the former.
One way to cause the latter is through misinformation provided through a trusted source. But that does not imply that the person is, in fact, a stupid person. There are several examples in this conversation about people that are decidedly not stupid but yet behaving in a stupid way.
I understand Ilhan Omar’s district is a hot spot for TB. Seems the disease can lie dormant for a decade or more which allows all those Somali immigrants to be carriers. But, nah, no immigration emergency in this country. At least, not on the coasts where it matters.
Wrong and wrong. If it is 97% effective and only I take it, and their is an outbreak my chances of getting them go up. Even worse, as there keeps being outbreaks, the chances of mutation into something I can get goes up. Not taking a vaccine puts you and others at risk.
People not taking them should not be around me or my kids.
I understand the concept of herd immunity. My only point was that the vaccine still has a substantial benefit even if you are the only one getting it. But my response was snarky so I apologize for that.
I’m going to start a new post to delve into this a little more.
I’ll look forward to it! You’ve contributed a great deal to this conversation, @jawesoftx.
More evidence that vaccines help rather than harm. Research is finding that vaccines for one disease also provide protection against others.
Some “vaccines have the very broad benefit of going much further than protecting just against the targeted disease.”
Wow! And that was on NPR! Thanks for sharing this, @eb!
Dang! Well, putting a happy face on it, at least it’s not Ebola.
When I started my career in medicine we had almost completely eliminated TB in the US.
Thanks to our immigration policies and HIV it’s now a big problem. Again.
Why do you suppose Libya has an incidence rate similar to the Anglosphere/Europe?
I’m not sure. But Bastard though he was, Khaddafi did spend money on the Libyan people in public works. They had much better access to clean water, immunizations, and health care then most of the rest of Africa. That’s all collapsed since the Libyan revolution….