Bear in mind it’s high-dose usage over years, occasional users don’t need to panic.
Boy finishes chemo and can’t get vaccinations until his system fully recovers. He has to depend on herd immunization to help protect him. Unfortunately for his parents, he goes to school in Marin County, CA which has one of the highest rates of non-vaccination opt-out filings for the state.
Carl Krawitt has had just about enough. “It’s very emotional for me,” he said. “If you choose not to immunize your own child and your own child dies because they get measles, OK, that’s your responsibility, that’s your choice. But if your child gets sick and gets my child sick and my child dies, then … your action has harmed my child.”
Krawitt is taking action of his own. His son attends Reed Elementary in Tiburon, a school with a 7 percent personal belief exemption rate. (The statewide average is 2.5 percent). Krawitt had previously worked with the school nurse to make sure that all the children in his son’s class were fully vaccinated. He said the school was very helpful and accommodating.
Now Krawitt and his wife, Jodi, have emailed the district’s superintendent, requesting that the district “require immunization as a condition of attendance, with the only exception being those who cannot medically be vaccinated.”
Carl Krawitt provided me with Superintendent Steven Herzog’s response. Herzog didn’t directly address their query, instead saying: “We are monitoring the situation closely and will take whatever actions necessary to ensure the safety of our students.”
If I were the superintendent, I would arrange for all the non-vaccinated kids to be combined into a single, cross-grade class. And if possible, I would hold that class in a trailer outside of the school.
Better, they could set up a special “non-vaccinated” school somewhere in the county for parents who choose to opt-out… if you want your kid to be special, then surely driving an hour across the state is not too much of a burden?
The parents would complain, of course, and probably sue. But I bet that type of “voluntary segregation” would hold hold up, especially if you can prove that not taking such steps would be life-threatening for other students.
The idea of a “belief exception” is bullshit.
You can believe in God or whatever you want, that’s totally cool. But you don’t get to opt out of vaccinations because you “believe” something.
Except, you do.
Yeah, but you shouldn’t.
No argument here. I’m normally all for personal liberty, but there are limits and this is one of them.
There’s a difference between forcing vaccinations (nope) and not allowing unvaccinated kids to attend school (fine).
(Bearing in mind I’m talking about i.e. highly infectious diseases and not say the HPV vaccine…which while kids should get it, isn’t the same kind of risk)
Also, with a very few exceptions (in, as usual, hardline Haredi communities and believe me we’re fed up with them too!), the ruling from Jewish Rabbis is you must vaccinate your kids.
Like letting a child die because “I don’t believe in blood transfusion”. Fuck that noise.
I never really spent any time trying to delve into the anti-vaxxer mindset, but reading Amazon reviews of Melanie’s Marvelous Measles and their comments earlier today was certainly enlightening. There’s an entire catechism of absolute bullshit shoring up this paranoia, it’s f’n surreal reading some of the comments.
I’ve never heard of this until now. Well, I guess I’ll be going down the rabbit hole…
Actually, studies don’t seem to find much correlation with political ideology at all:
- In a 2013 paper in PLOS One, Stephan Lewandowsky and two colleagues studied what makes people reject vaccines, and got a complicated result. Namely, they found that while political conservatism made people somewhat more pro-vaccine, having a free market ideology led in the opposite direction — towards having more vaccine skepticism.
“Opposition to vaccinations involved a balance between two opposing forces, namely a negative association with free-market endorsement and a compensatory positive association with conservatism,” wrote the authors. “The different polarity of those associations is consonant with the notion that libertarians object to the government intrusion arising from mandatory vaccination programs, whereas people low on conservatism — who, by implication, are liberal or progressive — may oppose immunization because they distrust pharmaceutical companies.”
But really, political ideology didn’t have a large overall impact on vaccine denial in the study. The study found that the really big contributor to distrusting or disliking vaccines was not political ideology ideology at all, but rather, having a conspiratorial mindset, which can occur on both the left and the right.
- In 2014, meanwhile, Yale’s Dan Kahan published results from a nationally representative survey which led him to conclude that the idea of vaccine fears being driven by leftwing ideology “lacks any factual basis.” In fact, Kahan found, “respondents formed more negative assessments of the risk and benefits of childhood vaccines as they became more conservative and identified more strongly with the Republican Party.” However, as in the prior study, this was a very slight effect.
And by “having a conspiratorial mindset” we mean “stupidity”.
Which is what I said, lol. The anti-vax crowd comes from both the right and the left. The key is a mindset that rejects science in favor of fear or belief.
Just want to point out that since I work in Healthcare, I am almost required to have these shots. It’s not actually forced, but you do have to sign and explain your reason for refusing your free shot, and it goes in your employee record. Now my desk is not actually in a patient care building, but I do no go there now and then. Now I’ve never got them before i started working in a health care system, and now I get them every year. What is strange is the number of people that die from the flu dwarves the number of people who die from all the other freak out diseases, ebola, west nile, i am sure there will be something else in a year or two.
There are no guarantees ever. It’s also sad seeing so many articles quote the deaths of those who had the vaccine… as if it was ever 100% which it was not. It never was and this years effective rate is so, so low.
Sometimes a bullet isn’t stopped by a bullet-proof vest, so obviously I would be better off without the vest.
That sort of mentality boggles the mind.
http://wtnh.com/2015/01/29/66-high-school-students-told-to-stay-home-over-measles-scare/
66 students sent home for being unvaccinated due to possible measles exposure.
The Desert Sands Unified School District says the students were released from class at Palm Desert High School Wednesday. They won’t be allowed to return until Feb. 9 or until they are medically cleared by providing proof of immunity.
Yea, looks perfectly reasonable to me. They’ve got a duty to their other students, of course.
In my daughter’s school, she can’t bring a peanut butter sandwich because some kids in the school have an allergy. However, it’s okay for unvaccinated (by parental choice) kids to be in her class. Which one is the greater threat again?
Turns out I don’t believe in peanut allergies any more, so it’s my choice to send her to school from now on wearing a peanut butter suit. After all, my choice for my kids can only affect them.
This is brilliant.