A measles outbreak in Minnesota offers a case study of how the disease is transmitted in the United States today: An unvaccinated person travels abroad, brings measles back and infects vulnerable people — including children who are unprotected because their parents chose not to vaccinate them.
That’s the conclusion of a report published online June 9 in Pediatrics that details the 2011 outbreak that sickened 19 children and two adults in the state.
It began when an unvaccinated 2-year-old was taken to Kenya, where he contracted the measles virus. After returning to the United States, the child developed a fever, cough and vomiting. However, before measles was diagnosed, he passed the virus on to three children in a drop-in child care center and another household member. Contacts then multiplied, with more than 3,000 people eventually exposed.
Nine of the children ultimately infected were old enough to have received the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine but had not.
In most of those cases, the child’s parents feared the MMR vaccine could cause autism, according to researchers at the Minnesota Department of Health.
I’d really like to know what the breakdown politically is for those who believe autism is caused by vaccines. Also, obligatory link.
Morzer
From the data I’ve seen, their ranks include far too many from the left of the political spectrum.
PIGL
Sad to say, the anti-vaccination woo is probably more widespread on the flakier, crunchier side of the alternoid left. With a fair helping of fundy authoritarian homeschoolers for “balance”. They should all be tied up together is a number of large sacs with all the uncastrated tom cats we can find, and flung naked into the deepest river.
Pogonip
I have 35 years of experience with autism, and I think it unlikely it’s caused by vaccines. Whatever it is, it’s clearly sex-linked; also, the rise in autism postdates widespread vaccination by many years.
Mike in NC
Kenya, huh? Must be Obummer’s fault.
/FOX News
Joel Hanes
A voluble anti-vaccination minority among the commenters at Firedoglake was the proximate reason I stopped reading the site.
srv
Have you ever considered that Republicans have gotten crazier since we took prayer out of schools?
Robert Waldmann
Ask Kevin Drum
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/06/sorry-daily-show-anti-vax-nuts-come-both-sides-aisle
“anti-vaccine lunacy has no special ideological valence. Liberals and conservatives share it in approximately equal numbers.”
Morzer
@Pogonip:
I think the study that supposedly linked autism to vaccinations has now been withdrawn and thoroughly debunked, but once this sort of extreme fantasy gets started, it’s almost impossible to quell it, even if the cheerleaders are a vacuous bimbo and that well-known scientist Bill Maher.
JPL
Hey my son drinks raw milk and he is concerned about vaccines for children. Fortunately, his SO already mentioned that if they have children, her advice rules. Okay, she does drink almond milk but does believe in vaccines. He knows that I think Louis Pasteur was a saint.
MattF
@Morzer: I think it’s a mistake to politicize this. Lots of people feel suspicion and hostility towards the health-care system, and often with good reason. There’s a journalistic genre of “Physician gets sick, encounters health-care system and is appalled”. Here’s a sample:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/hit-by-a-car-an-emergency-doctor-experiences-firsthand-the-shortcomings-in-er-care/2014/06/09/585f3556-c59e-11e3-bf7a-be01a9b69cf1_story.html
So, I can understand why people don’t believe what they are told. That said, I hold no brief for Ms. McCarthy.
Marc
There are plenty of lefties who buy the anti-vaccine myths, but those beliefs are spread pretty evenly across the political spectrum — with the most support coming from “independents” and “moderates,” actually.
You’d never know that to hear the media coverage, however (including St. Jon of Stewart), who need anti-vaxxer lefties to be the “both sides” balance to climate-change-denying right-wingers. When in fact, those principled moderates in the middle seem to be the most susceptible.
SatanicPanic
“an unvaccinated 2-year-old was taken to Kenya”
-strikes me as unwise
Morzer
@MattF:
Pointing out that far too many of the supposedly science-friendly left believe this anti-vaccination hogwash isn’t politicizing it at all. It’s a matter of empirical fact.
If you want to accuse someone of “politicizing” this, although you’d be equally mistaken in his case as well, you could look at our host who said:
“I’d really like to know what the breakdown politically is for those who believe autism is caused by vaccines.”
That was the point I responded to.
Steeplejack
@PIGL:
Why do you hate tomcats?!
WaterGirl
Why can’t we have some sort of regulation prohibiting travel out of the country if you and your children have not been vaccinated?
@SatanicPanic: My comment posted before I saw yours, but I agree with your assessment.
Pogonip
@Morzer: If only there were a vacuous bimbo who had experience with autism so she would have caught the media’s attention, instead of that other vacuous bimbo.
jayjaybear
Strikes ME as illegal. I thought you were required to have vaccinations to go abroad.
KG
@JPL: almond milk is a lie, i mean, almonds have no utters, where does the milk come from? WHERE DOES THE MILK COME FROM?!
@PIGL: luckily it seems to be an exception to the crazification factor.
Joel Hanes
I’d really like to know what the breakdown politically is for those who believe autism is caused by vaccines
Allow me to google that for you.
The data is apparently scanty.
This account says
Betty Cracker
13.5% earth muffins + 13.5% snake-handlers = (tada) 27%!*
*Just a guess…
Morzer
@SatanicPanic:
I’d say the kid was lucky, relatively speaking, to get off with just measles.
KG
@jayjaybear: my guess is that countries could forbid you from entering their territory if you don’t have vaccinations, but I’m not sure a government can tell you that you can’t leave their territory without vaccinations.
BGinCHI
Anyone know where Greenwald stands on vaccinations?
/hits the deck and quick-crawls away
Marc
I would add that those “independent” vaccine deniers in the Pew poll probably include a lot of libertarians, CounterPunch readers, and others from the political fringes. But the “moderates” in the Gallup poll, that screams totebaggers to me.
Morzer
@KG:
Can we hear your views on chocolate milk and harvey milk as well?
Trollhattan
@Morzer:
My observation is the infection began with Gaia-loving, Waldorf-attending, retro-hippie parents but snuck back around the chicken shed to infect the anti-gummint and home-schoolin’ prepper set. It is now a thing with them and I suspect that’s the cohort carrying the torch, so to speak.
SatanicPanic
@jayjaybear: I think it’s the country you’re visiting that decides. Anybody know?
Morzer
@BGinCHI:
No need to hide. You’ve got at least 30 updates and 5 enraged Twitter denunciations before The Great and Powerful One deigns to manifest his radiant presence in the most anti-Muslim comment section in the world.
opiejeanne
@PIGL: What do you have against cats?
cokane
im not sure i agree with the pro vaxer desire to make this always about mccarthy all the time. shes dumb and i dont think people have been persuaded to question vaccines because of mccarthy. the rhetoric kind of reminds me of wingers who blame Al Gore for belief in global warming. I dont think too many liberals were persuaded by his documentary…
the real problem seems to be there are health professionals out there making this recommendation.
BGinCHI
Where the hell does your kid go to school without vaccinations?
We had to prove everything before the boy could even get into daycare (half day, but not half as many germs, apparently).
Don’t all public schools require this??
KG
@Morzer: chocolate milk comes from brown cows, obviously. harvey milk seemed like a decent fellow, but died before my time.
Morzer
@Trollhattan:
I am so sick of the numbskulls who believe that “a parent always knows what is best for their child”. Fine, they can treat the next outbreak of Ebola virus with a combination of dental floss and peanut butter then.
Morzer
@KG:
But did harvey have udders? If not, where did .. on second thoughts, nice weather we are having.
WaterGirl
@Morzer: There is *nothing that chocolate cannot make better.
*almost
BGinCHI
@Morzer: I’m under a blanket so no one can see me.
/right wing science
Gin & Tonic
@KG: There is no immigration control when leaving the US, so this would be logistically impossible, too. But yes, health policy is for *entry*. Some countries take this more seriously than others.
Morzer
@BGinCHI:
Is that a blanket denial?
BGinCHI
@WaterGirl: The House of Representatives?
BGinCHI
@Morzer: We’re here all weekend, folks.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
Depends on the state. Here in California, Land of Fruits and Nuts, a parent can simply state that they oppose vaccination for moral or ethical reasons (if I recall the language correctly) and the school has to admit the kid. This is why we’ve had multiple outbreaks of both measles and pertussis (whooping cough) in the last few years.
Trollhattan
@BGinCHI:
Sadly, they can get a “religion” exemption.
As a parent, I feel as though I should know whether any such exemptions have been made in my kid’s school, and how many.
Gin & Tonic
@BGinCHI: There are religious exemptions. Which lead to some states (Oregon, IIRC) allowing exemptions for “sincerely held beliefs.” A loophole big enough to drive a truck through.
Starfish
@Morzer: You know nothing Jon Snow. Knowledgeable parents know that Ebola is treated with a combination of breast milk and essential oils.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
Herd immunity loses out to learned stupidity.
WaterGirl
@BGinCHI: I would be willing to cover them in chocolate to see if it would help. Maybe their chocolate-y brown coating would broaden their horizons a bit?
Edit: I will not give them the good dark chocolate, but I am willing to give them the sub-standard milk chocolate.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne: That is fucked.
BGinCHI
@WaterGirl: Chocolate plus fire ants?
I think we are getting somewhere.
KG
@Morzer: very nice weather.
J.D. Rhoades
I have quite a few liberal friends for whom vaccines=Big Pharma=SATAN. They’ll ask me “you don’t trust big corporations for anything else, why do you trust them with the health of your children”? I don’t really have a great answer for that.
Morzer
@Starfish:
I think you forgot the candles and positive thinking, led by a person whose cat sign is the Jaguar.
Trollhattan
@Morzer:
Think it was last week Samantha Bee interviewed a woman who said that, perhaps even to the very word.
Christ on a cracker, I can’t even explain how my cellphone works–like I know with precision how my child’s body works?
Joel
I couldn’t give a fuck about the ideology of antivaxxers, just that they are recognized as unilaterally awful, whatever their other saving graces may be.
WaterGirl
@BGinCHI: If you pass immigration reform, infrastructure bills and extend unemployment, we will let you shower to get rid of the fire ants.
Morzer
@J.D. Rhoades:
Because I am not trusting the big corporations, but the doctors who administer the stuff, plus decades of evidence that it works. Have these morons ever stopped to ask themselves what happened to tuberculosis and polio in the western world?
Roger Moore
@JPL:
What’s wrong with drinking almond milk? There are all kinds of valid reasons for drinking it, like being lactose intolerant or preferring the taste. Unless she’s expressed some crazy reason for drinking it, that seems like a pretty minor complaint.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl:
If she were my daughter, I’d…
What would you do daddy?
If she were my daughter, I’d…
What would you do daddy?
If she were my daughter, I’d…
What would you do daddy?
Smother my daughter in chocolate syrup
And strap her on again, oh baby!
Smother that girl in chocolate syrup
And strap her on again
She’s a teen-age baby and she turns me on
I’d like to make her do a nasty on the White House lawn
Gonna smother that girl in chocolate syrup –
And boogie till the cows come home
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl:
If she were my daughter, I’d…
What would you do daddy?
If she were my daughter, I’d…
What would you do daddy?
If she were my daughter, I’d…
What would you do daddy?
Smother my daughter in chocolate syrup
And strap her on again, oh baby!
Smother that girl in chocolate syrup
And strap her on again
She’s a teen-age baby and she turns me on
I’d like to make her do a nasty on the White House lawn
Gonna smother that girl in chocolate syrup –
And boogie till the cows come home
Morzer
@Trollhattan:
It’s a standard line among those cretinous bloviators. Hell, most of them can’t even figure out how to change the batteries in the remote, never mind vaccinations. They think polio is that weird game people play in the water and tuberculosis is something that happens to drains.
KG
@J.D. Rhoades: don’t trust big corporations? so, they don’t have a car? and their clothing is all hand made at home? and they all live on self-sufficient farms where they make all their own food? and they don’t own/use computers or really, any other form of technology?
Also, even if you don’t trust big corporations, do you trust the FDA and the CDC? because even if the big corporations were out to kill you (which, really, if you think about it, is stupid because eventually it’s going to hurt the bottom line when everyone who would buy their stuff is dead), why would the government want you dead?
Morzer
@KG:
Chemtrails, man, it’s all about the chemtrails, man.
Gin & Tonic
@KG: why would the government want you dead?
So they can take away your guns. Duh.
ranchandsyrup
♫Jenny I got your number
Of the dead kids so faaaar.
8,675,309
Davis X. Machina
@SatanicPanic: How else do you expect the kid to grow up to be president?
JPL
@KG: I know. IMO, the latest college education young “yuppie” adults, read some really weird articles.
Hal
I wonder this too. I’ve seen a couple of facebook posts from liberal friends that question the flu vaccine, but not vaccines as a whole. The anti-vaccine folks are rapid though, from what I’ve seen. Their dedication to junk sciences rivals people advocating the paleo diet. Comments I see at least online always seem to involve some version of how it’s just impossible for people to have that many vaccinations so young without side effects, but these people never seem to be able to say just why.
Oh, and Penn and Teller, whose libertarianism drives me insane, did cover this on bullshit one week, and they made a great point illustrating how even if vaccines did cause autism, the 1 in 110 diagnosed would be dwarfed by the number of children affected by diseases vaccines protect us from.
One other thing that strikes me is the difference in the perception of vaccines. In the early part of the 20th century vaccines were a miracle of science and millions, if not hundreds of millions of people were saved, either from disability and/or death. Now junk science has made at least a small portion of this country view vaccines as nothing more than a scam by big pharma to make money. It’s a huge disservice to the scientists who worked so valiantly on these vaccines to spare so many lives. What a shame.
Mnemosyne
@BGinCHI:
Yep.
KG
@Morzer: @Gin & Tonic: sweet baby buddha, i love the commenters here somedays.
opiejeanne
@BGinCHI: Some school districts allow parents to not vaccinate, can’t think what it’s called, but the JWs have been getting away with non-vaccinated kids attending public schools since I was a child. There is some declaration they make, religious or something else, that allows them to opt out, and some districts are a lot more flexible than others on that subject.
When my middle child was entering middle school I was sitting in the bleachers at the cheerleading tryouts next to a woman who started bitching that she couldn’t enroll her kids in the district until they had been tested for TB. She had moved to SoCal from Texas, and at that point both places had a big problem with TB exposure from children whose parents were undocumented*.
I wanted to hit this woman for her stupidity; my daughter had had a skin test that came out positive the previous year and had to be x-rayed before she could return to school, we all had to be tested, and it was a really touchy subject because my beautiful daughter had had a brush with TB.
*It was explained to us that TB was viewed as something shameful within the Hispanic community (not sure if that’s true, exactly) and a lot of people went untested mainly because they were undocumented but also because they worried that that coughing issue Tia Rosa had might be something worse than bronchitis. The skin testing program allowed health agencies to find and treat all of the Tia Rosas, when the nephew produced a positive skin test and the rest of the family was tested.
JPL
Since I changed the subject, a friend recently complained that chocolate milk is no longer allowed in schools. Her sons are thirty something like mine and I said you gave your sons chocolate milk? Her answer was no but… I mentioned that I had no probably funding school lunches but wasn’t thrilled about my taxes going to chocolate milk. She then agreed.
srv
Unvaccinated hordes! Thanks, Obama!
Baud
A measles outbreak and no one has blamed the gays.
The times really are a’changin’.
opiejeanne
@Morzer: Is there a vaccine for TB? I didn’t think so, but what do I know?
JGabriel
Marc:
I suspect those “independents” and “moderates” are largely just reactionaries who believe all politicians are bad and refuse to identify with either of the major parties — however: reactionaries tend to lean pretty heavily to right when it comes to actual voting patterns and political beliefs.
Of course that’s is just speculation on my part. I’ve got no data to back it up, and I’m not even sure how you would survey it. But it tracks with my general experience. Scratch a supposedly lefty hippie conspiracy theorist and you usually find a libertarian.
Morzer
@opiejeanne:
Yes, BCG, although it isn’t generally used on children in the US. There has been quite a bit of discussion about whether it’s time to develop a new vaccine. Outbreaks of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, mostly among HIV-infected people, have been reported in the U.S. These tuberculosis cases respond poorly to treatment and have very high death rates.
opiejeanne
@Morzer: Thanks. And Oh, Lord!
Did you read my slightly long post above, about my daughter being exposed to TB in 1990?
Trentrunner
@cokane: Just so you know, I never read uncapitalized anything. It’s a bad, bad trend I intend to strangle in its overpadded crib. Please stop it.
beltane
There are lots of anti-vaxxers in my neck of the woods and they definitely skew left. It is the height of fashion among young hippie-ish parents to not vaccinate their children and then preach on the benefits of contracting childhood diseases i.e. culling the weak ones from the herd. Last year the high school had to be closed for two days after an immuno-suppressed student was exposed to whooping cough from an unvaccinated classmate.
Anti-vaxxers are the ammosexuals of the left. Both groups have some kind of death fetish that should really be kept to themselves.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
It’s a little bit more stringent than that. Parents can opt out for reasons of personal belief, but they have to get a waiver signed by a medical professional saying they’ve been warned about the consequences of doing so. FWIW, California is in the medium low range for vaccination. The lowest levels are in Colorado, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and North Dakota, while the highest are in Mississippi, Maryland, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. If you can see a consistent political pattern there, I’m all ears.
Morzer
@opiejeanne:
I did indeed. I really think schools have to say that if you want your kids to enroll with us, you play by our rules, which means vaccinations and modern medical treatment. If you don’t want to play by our rules, you may make alternative arrangements.
beltane
@JGabriel: There is a definite overlap between liberatrians and neo-hippies. Both groups are very white, very privileged, and very, very selfish. The generation that produced the teabaggers also happened to raise an generation of spoiled, entitled brats who are now in their 20s and 30s.
peej
Damned kids should just have to get measles like we did when I was a kid!!! Most of us survived. And what’s with the bike helmets anyway. We never wore them and managed to survive mostly intact. And get off my lawn!!
Roger Moore
@J.D. Rhoades:
The correct answer is that vaccines are not Big Pharma. They’re something that’s so unprofitable that the government has to subsidize research and development. They’re also proven to be effective, which means they’re a good idea no matter who is telling you to use them.
Morzer
@Roger Moore:
It might be interesting to see whether the vaccination frequency varies by district, rather than by state. You might get some granular information out of that.
Morzer
@Roger Moore:
I am not sure that Big Gov is regarded much more fondly than Big Pharma by the anti-vaxxers.
Splitting Image
@Morzer:
The free market made them obsolete as new diseases were developed.
boatboy_srq
@Mike in NC: “And if they’d taken their kids to the ‘free’ ObummerCare clinic, they’d be DEAD!!11!1!”
/snark
Seriously. Can the US afford this level of spite and ignorance?
@SatanicPanic: Darwinism at work, IYAM. That, or some Xtian Missionaries out to bring Jeebus to the places that never heard of him (like Italy, Spain and Israel) who think their Little Gem will be protected because s/he’s with them on their mission. But I repeat myself.
Morzer
@peej:
Your generation had it easy. Mine had to go through the Black Death three times before we were considered eligible to vote, drink or smoke.
Baud
@Morzer:
Yeah, plenty of anti-government people on the left.
beltane
@Roger Moore: I love how the same people who rail against big pharma have no problem dishing out thousands of dollars on supplements and a variety of alternative therapies administered by providers who are allegedly acting on only the most altruistic of motives.
KG
@JPL: as a kid, i remember drinking chocolate milk in school on occasion, at least through jr high. by high school, they had soda machines on campus and so it was that or gatorade… but if i stopped for donuts, i’d grab milk (and occasionally chocolate milk).
opiejeanne
@Morzer: I agree. I wasn’t comfortable with the JW kids not being vaccinated when I was in school, long before I understood herd immunity, and I have only a general understanding of it.
When my kids were being vaccinated for things I became really uncomfortable with that religious exception for Jehovah’s Witnesses, especially since it was based on a deliberate misinterpretation of an Old Testament rule.
Morzer
@Baud:
Among the anti-vaxxers, yes. The left overall is a different matter, although we could do without some of the “left-libertarians” and New(ish) Democrats.
opiejeanne
@beltane: Uh, I thought teabaggers were in their 50s and older: Baby boomers. That would make the neo-hippies the grandchildren of the Greatest Generation.
Talentless Hack
@Joel Hanes: FDL and quite a few others. Sometime between 2007 and 2009, they all started getting into competition with their right-wing counterparts to see who can be the most shrill. I’m all, “people, please. Obama can’t even get the public option. What makes you think he can just shit out whatever pie-in-the-sky you want?”
Roger Moore
@opiejeanne:
There is, but it’s less effective than most vaccines, and people who have been vaccinated test positive in the skin test. The US has deliberately chosen not to require TB vaccinations because infections are rare here and we’ve decided it’s more important to preserve the value of the skin test for figuring out who is infected than to give a marginally effective vaccine.
boatboy_srq
@J.D. Rhoades: I think we need to come up with an answer. Big Pharma is nearly as far from sainthood as Big Oil, and giving it a pass doesn’t wash. OTOH, not going along with some Big Pharma includes this antivaxx nonsense.
The best answer I can come up with is “unless/until there’s free 100% effective holistic medicine, Big Pharma has a place” – a bit like “until the US goes all solar/wind//geothermal for electricity and everyone has an electric car, Big Oil is a necessary evil.” Not especially palatable but I can’t come up with anything better.
Morzer
@Talentless Hack:
If Obama could shit pies, the GOP would impeach him for shitting strawberry rather than peach. FDL, of course, would regard the lack of boysenberry pie as an epic betrayal.
beltane
@opiejeanne: I was thinking the offspring of the pre-baby boom Silent Generation, the 60+ group that makes up the core of Fox’s audience. The most strident anti-vaxxers I know are in the 35-42 age range, oldish first time parents with a college education. Younger, less educated parents tend to listen to their pediatrician.
currants
@Morzer: Yep. Irrationality is not just for the rightwing. One problem is that it’s a ‘belief’ and beliefs are–well, you can’t reason logically about a belief.
Talentless Hack
@cokane: Who’s dumber? McCarthy, or someone who listens to her and takes her seriously?
opiejeanne
@beltane: Ugh.
And the anti-vaxxer wannabes who don’t happen to have children are doing the same thing with their pets: leaving them unvaccinated. I have a neighbor that I love but she’s all into the woo, all about the woo. One of her dogs was really sick, kidney or liver ailment, and she chose to have him treated by some quack who lived in a yurt, and the living in a yurt was cited as the reason she was a genuine healer.
Trollhattan
@beltane:
The entire supplement industry has carved out a niche of essentially non-regulation by not being considered drugs. Our ol’ buddy Orrin Hatch gets our fervent thanks for protecting them from the iron fist of The Gummint.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/us/politics/21hatch.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Wanker.
boatboy_srq
@opiejeanne: Never mind TB. We need a vaccine for Teh Stupid.
opiejeanne
@beltane: I’m 64. Born in 1950. My husband is 67, born in 1947. Both of our fathers were in WWII, and we are well within that Baby Boomer age group. The Boom began in 45/46, so the pre-boomer children would have been born before or during WWII, which would make them at least 69/70.
Our son, the child of two Baby Boomers, is nearly 44. Our daughters are 35 and 31.
chopper
@Morzer:
you were lucky!
Roger Moore
@Talentless Hack:
Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?
chopper
@Morzer:
if obama could shit pies, the GOP would impeach him for eliminating bakery jobs.
chopper
@opiejeanne:
oh, jesus. watch a dog die from parvo and you’ll be into vaccines right fucking quick.
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
Good luck getting wingnuts to vaccinate their kids.
FlyingToaster
One of the reasons my daughter is in private school is that her school only allows medical exemptions for vaccinations. Her preschool was the same way. The kids with egg allergies have to order a special flu vaccine, and it’s a pain in the ass (and not available at the beginning of the H1N1 outbreak a few years back).
The Commonwealth, in it’s infinite wisdom, does allow “personal belief” exemptions (Christian Science is headquartered in Boston, after all), but also requires an affidavit from the pediatrician that the parents have been informed. GRRRRRR.
beltane
@Roger Moore: The fool laughs on her way to the bank, those who follow the fool are robbed by passersby after they faceplant on the curb.
@opiejeanne: My husband and I are in our mid-40s. Our parents were born from 1937-42. A lot of our childhood friends had parents older than ours. It’s not a black or white thing.
WaterGirl
@JPL: What’s with the chocolate milk hate? If there hadn’t been chocolate milk at my grade school, I wouldn’t have had any milk at all.
FlyingToaster
@boatboy_srq: Never happen. Like rhinoviruses, Stupid evolves too rapidly for any vaccine to be effective.
opiejeanne
@chopper: I did.
I asked her about Parvo in particular and for some reason she didn’t have an answer, but there is an insane argument about how it’s transmitted from the mother so the vaccines will do nothing, and I’m no expert but I think that’s nonsense. Her dogs were vaccinated for it by the kennel, before she was allowed to take them home.
Another neighbor lost a beautiful dog to parvo, an older pup about 5 months old. The conclusion by the vet was that the vaccination for parvo was given too late, after she had adopted him.
WaterGirl
@chopper: My puppy had parvo before I adopted him. One of his litter mates didn’t make it, but the rest did. Thankfully.
ruviana
@Hal: People don’t have any experience with epidemics and serious illnesses. I’m old enough that I remember polio, polio shots, going to take the oral vaccine (everyone went! It was like a party!), people who wore leg braces. I had a cousin who died of polio in my lifetime (don’t remember him, I was too little). Since now much of this is ancient history and outside people’s experience, they only see the seeming drawbacks. Probably will change when the antibiotics finally quit and most things will kill us again.
Pogonip
@Morzer: I prefer chocolate but will drink harvey if nothing else is available.
tybee
@Trentrunner:
ee cummings weeps
chopper
@ruviana:
this is why my parents (and i’m sure the parents of plenty others here) would scoff when, as kids, we would bitch about the shots. i can just see my dad shaking his head. what, you’d rather have smallpox? fuck you, dummy.
ruviana
@chopper: Yep.
David Koch
but she has such killer boobs
Mnemosyne
@beltane:
That would be my (late) dad — born in 1938. My mom was the same age, born in 1939, but she died in 1977. My stepmom who raised me is a Boomer — born in 1946.
I don’t actually know any anti-vaxxers personally, even late-in-life parents who are my age. My coworker was a little wary because there is autism in her husband’s family (his brother) so they did a slightly slowed-down schedule just in case.
RSA
@SatanicPanic:
I don’t know for sure, but my wife and I traveled through Kenya and Tanzania on vacation maybe 25 years ago. We had to get travel visas and a slew of vaccinations and boosters. I don’t remember whether they were recommended or required by those countries, but they were the source of information for which to get.
Hal
The answer to the Big Pharma question is really simple. You need people to live past childhood so that they can develop diabetes, high blood pressure and erectile dysfunction, and then spend a fortune on medications.
It makes no sense for pharmaceutical companies to endanger their future profit margins.
JW
@JPL: WTF is wrong with chocolate milk? Sugar?
I’d say the problem wasn’t whether the milk was chocolate or not, rather that it came from the wrong animal. Should be givin’ those kiddies chocolate goat’s milk.
SFAW
@efgoldman:
No antibiotics? Paradise! When I was a kid, we considered ourselves lucky to get …
Oh, wait, that was Morzer with the Yorkshiremen.
Never mind.
SFAW
@JW:
I’ve heard of dwarf goats, pygmy goats, and mountain goats, but never chocolate goats. Where are they found?
Sly
Not sure. State laws granting philosophical exemptions for school immunizations requirements are fairly bipartisan, though. There are 19 states that allow for such exemptions, and that list includes California, Vermont, Texas, and Utah. In state’s without such exemptions, more and more parents are trying to exploit the religious exemption to beat the requirement (the number of exemption requests has basically doubled throughout the country over the past decade).
Also, only two states have no religious exemption for school immunization requirements: West Virginia and Mississippi.
cokane
@Trentrunner: correcting the grammar of internet comments is the mating call of someone with no life. when’s your english phd coming out bruh?
jonas
@J.D. Rhoades: I don’t like oil companies, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think their gasoline will make my engine go.
CanadaGoose
@jayjaybear: The requirements for vaccination depend on the country you’re GOING to. Different countries have their own requirements.
sinnedbackwards
@cokane:
You might note that Trentrunner was not correcting your grammar.
They (as a gender undetermined third person singular pronoun which could be criticized because it is evolving grammar) merely stated what their (ditto) reaction is to your writing style.
It is based on a suggestion that you might care if they (ditto) did or did not read your posts, although the context suggests you are right that it is mostly a criticism of your writing style.
It is hard to dispute the statement of Trentrunner’s intention.
It is also very hard for folks (not referring here to Trentrunner) to make their (referring to antecedent “folks” so unassailably correct) case when they do not understand the meaning of the words they use.
Meaning it is clear you don’t understand the meaning of “grammar”, which does not mean “anything to do with writing style.”
You may violate stylistic conventions if you have a clear purpose, and the violation communicates that. Otherwise, to many you just look twitty. It is up to you to present who you want to be, but everyone else has the right to interpret it.
As to vaccination truthers, they are just idiots, no matter where they pretend to bel on the political spectum.
David Koch
—
Tata
@JPL:
Since I changed the subject, a friend recently complained that chocolate milk is no longer allowed in schools. Her sons are thirty something like mine and I said you gave your sons chocolate milk? Her answer was no but… I mentioned that I had no probably funding school lunches but wasn’t thrilled about my taxes going to chocolate milk. She then agreed.
Many lactose-intolerant kids can’t drink milk but can drink chocolate milk. My understanding of this is loose, but there is a genetic factor at work. You can argue the sugar’s poison, but we’re still talking about growing bodies that need calcium and protein. Maybe soy or almond milk would be better, I can’t say. Still: for some kids, chocolate milk is better for them than plain.
A quick gazoogling produces: http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/040212p14.shtml
Pee Cee
@cokane:
Got a HS acquaintance on Facebook who is anti-vaccination because all three of the chiropractors he uses recommend against vaccination.
“Crank magnetism”, I believe they call it.
Said HS acquaintance is also a conservative Republican.
johnny aquitard
@beltane:
Boomer. Boomer. Bo-boomer.
Banana-fana fo-foomer.
Fee-fi mo-moomer
Boomer.
slag
The only polling data anyone’s has offered shows that this problem spans the political spectrum. And yet some among us persist in the gratuitous hippy punching. What’s that you ask about being immune to evidence?