Vaccination & epidemic

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Tiki

The anti-vaccine people that I refer to in my OP are against vaccinating their children at all. They don't do it. I'm not talking about delaying vaccinations or spacing them out, I'm talking about not doing it at all.

Perhaps the "people" you refer to don't, but the link you gave (www.generationrescue.com,) identifying them as "the anti-vaccination lunatics" says the following:

Consider delaying vaccines until your child is 18-24 months old.
...
Consider no more than one vaccine per doctor’s visit.

It seems rather evident that you didn't click on your links, Tiki...

[Griff]

Turns out we're all on the same side. Nobody wants a measles comeback, nobody wants another child to develop autism, everyone wants to space out vaccines better... It is fun to tweak each other with magical thinking comments, but we don't progress without challenges to received wisdom. The present vaccines are good enough for the life or death throw-down we are in and they have bought us time, but now that something equally horrific to a minority of children has asserted itself free inquiry is not to be opposed under the guise of science. After all, those children could be the canarys in the coal mine. Once upon a time, flushing our shit directly into the Susquehanna was vastly superior to having a city full of out-houses but thankfully we kept looking for a superior solution.

[jinx]

Originally Posted by Griff

Nobody wants a measles comeback

This is absolutely true, but at the same time... is it the bogeyman that some make it out to be? I don't know. It's certainly worth looking into.

Keep in mind that (in the US) we do not vaccinate for typhus, typhoid, TB, and one of the biggest pre-vaccine era killers: scarlet fever. Yet, their prevalence decreased right along with the diseases we do vaccinate for.

The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, and as the CDC points out, it reduced measles deaths from about 400-500 per year to 1 or 2 - although there were epidemic years in 1970-72, 1976-78, and 1989-91.

According to the Vital Statistics of the United States, in the 63 years prior to the measles vaccination introduction, death rates declined from 13.3 per 100,00 to 0.2 per 100,000.

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Perhaps the "people" you refer to don't, but the link you gave (www.generationrescue.com,) identifying them as "the anti-vaccination lunatics" says the following:



It seems rather evident that you didn't click on your links, Tiki...

I posted that link for the reference to Jenny McCarthy.