Vaccinate the Kids, Please

I’m vaccinated! Where’s my t-shirt?

While I’m glad “Jenny McCarthyism” can not be caused by vaccine, I wish more people would use sites like Hug me. I’m Vaccinated! to inoculate against it.

I’m a very strong supporter of vaccinations. It blows my mind that it needs supporters against a campaign against vaccinations. What’s worse is they think that the Center for Disease Control, the Public Health Agency of Canada and other medical bodies are being paid off by pharmaceutical companies so we can’t provide data they don’t think is corrupted. I have no idea how to reach these people. I did write a blog a heavily researched entry on it as well 🙂 http://extro1.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/vaccinations-part-1/ if anyone wants some information.

I laughed, but I don’t think this is really effective. People are genuinely afraid of vaccines, and there’s conflicting numbers out there. Yeah, when you inspect those numbers, its clear that vaccines are the way to go, but the average person doesn’t have the initiative and/or intelligence to do that.

I don’t normally get flu vaccines. They have the highest demand of any vaccine, and they’re designed to be cheap, unlike other vaccines. As a result, they have horrible quality control. I would only get a flu shot if I knew exactly what company was manufacturing them and what their track record and credentials are.

For new viruses, I try to avoid vaccines. I did get an H1N1 vaccine, after weeks of my mother’s pleading, though I think the best thing to do is take other health precautions and just count on the media to scare people into getting them. Wear a mask when using public transport or medical facilities, and wherever else is possible/practical. Stay out of crowded places, especially indoor ones. Avoid touching your face. Do NOT wash your hands in a public restroom unless you have actual waste on your hands. Do NOT use public towels either, and avoid fully touching the door handle if possible. Use disenfectant hand-sanitzer whenever exiting a public place…carry a bottle around your neck, so that you don’t have to contaminate your pocket. Wear gloves and masks and a designated set of clothing when caring for infected friends or family members. Avoid copulation if possible. If copulation takes place, use a facial mask and opt for rear entry positions. BATHE(not shower) afterward using soapy, warm water. Do not share ANY room with an infected individual. Use a gas station bathroom and sleep in the basement if you must. If an infected individual becomes cured, disinfect any rooms they stayed in, wash any infected clothing(use gloves and a mask) and dehumidify the room if possible, or at least open windows and doors(unless you live in a humid area).

If you do live in a humid area and are living with an infected individual or allowing potentially infected individuals into your home, purchase a humidifier and move it into the rooms where the infected indiviudal resides and/or into the room where potentially infected individuals will frequent the most. Spray all possible areas with disinfectant and avoid touching areas where potentially infected individuals may have contaminated for at least 15 minutes after the individuals leave.

When you force-march mass produce a new vaccine, fuck ups are a real possibility. If I ever have kids, I can’t really expect them to follow these procedures, but I’m fine with it, since the vaccines only reduce your chance, its important to take precautionary measures anyway.

Danny Wuvs Kittens,

Good advice. Avoiding people, especially children and the elderly is probably the most important thing. Not touching anything as well. I think I’d give up if living in the same house as someone infected.

Wear a mask when using public transport or medical facilities, and wherever else is possible/practical.

I’m skeptical about the use of face masks against the flu, possibly for the already infected. Respirators I feel are plausibly effective. You’d think there would be a wealth of studies.

Avoid copulation if possible. If copulation takes place, use a facial mask and opt for rear entry positions.

I think you mean approach from the back, rather than enter the rear.

There’s also the guilt trip they lay on parents of kids with autism.

My daughter works for Catholic Charities doing respite care for parents of kids with disabilities. One of the children is autistic and the parents blame themselves for getting her vaccinated. It’s not a good situation but they listen to all that Jenny McCarthy crap and kick themselves when they’re already down.

That’s too sad for words.

Well said, hoverfrog. Danny, I kept thinking a punch line was coming. You can’t be serious.

As someone with Aspergers, the anti-vaxers piss me off extra. “Better dead than autistic” is hardly a slogan I find worthwhile. Honestly, how awful do you think autistic people are that you would rather have your kids die of measles or whooping cough rather than be autistic?

I don’t see an anti-vax attitude amoung older people who have actually dealt with these diseases, unless they have a hard core anti-science/anti-technology attitude in general. I think that this anti-vax attitude amoung some people in developed nations is arising partially because we have eliminated or reduced these diseases for so long that these people have no idea what it was like to actually watch people die or be permantently injured by them.

Ugh, one year my mother left it up to my father to vaccinate the rabbits and he, in typical form, did not do it. They got tetanus. Anyone who has ever seen a case of tetanus will tell you, that is one horrible way to die. I used to have nightmares about that (though my mother killed the infected rabbits, vaccinated the rest, and took us all in for booster shots, so I was perfectly safe). Now that I know that tetanus is actually responsible for about 15% of worldwide neonatal deaths, I am even more appreciative of my having had access to the vaccine. It is one of the most frightening things about this anti-vax movement is that their political influence will impede vaccination in the developing world, where it would save millions from unnecessary, painful deaths.

*tiptoes past the zealots*

i wouldn’t say not to vaccinate, though seriously, injecting anything into the body, to bypass the natural defenses, can easily introduce materials the body will react quite strongly against.  if it’s a strong enough reaction to cause real harm to a noticeable percentage of the population, it should be investigated, and halted till those identified as ‘at risk’, are exempted.

there are several diseases, that if someone gets them in childhood, they shrug them off, and are lifetime immune, a vaccine to fend them off, may in a large number of cases, last only a few years.  so, people that don’t realise, will go through life, after neglecting boosters, catch this disease, and get seriously ill, or die, when they could have just caught it as a child and been safe.

so, the vaccine schedules, at one time were sufficient to make someone lifetime immune(for those diseases that worked that way), there were perhaps 10 injections, they provided protection from all the most common deadly diseases.  the modern schedules protect against the same diseases, plus a few more, yet have nearly 40 injections.  what’s wrong with modern vaccines that they can’t do the same as the old ones, with less risk of introduced infection?

the big point i want to make, is that there are ORAL vaccines available, and recently, some have been found to be, in children, -more- effective than injectables, while being safer from the anti-vax perspective.  so, no need to leave a child unvaccinated, there are other methods than injections, oral, eyedrops, powdered vaccine tablets.

my problem is the ‘need’ for injections to vaccinate, i see it much like the need for eucharist to make a good person.