An Open Letter To Parents Who Don't Vaccinate #2

Jane Seward is the deputy director of the division of viral diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  ScientificAmerican.com's David Biello interviewed Seward. (Emphasis adde)

SA: How dangerous is measles?

JS: Anyone with a rash illness that's compatible [with measles] needs to be isolated the minute they are seen. People have forgotten what measles looks like and have forgotten how infectious it is…

Back in the early part of the century, it killed thousands of people a year. The biggest year was 10,000. Over the years, those deaths declined but in the 1960s, right before the vaccine was developed, it killed 400 to 500 children every year out of 500,000 reported cases at that time. Three to four million cases actually occurred, because not all cases get reported.

Of those 500,000 reported cases, there were 4,000 cases of encephalitis a year. That's brain infection and can have some serious sequellae, like retardation and things like that. Measles can also cause pneumonia…

Some parents think that American medical care is such that it can treat any complication on measles. They're not right on that. Medical care is the same as the 1960s in terms of encephalitis. There's very little that can be done to alter that outcome. And there is no treatment for measles as such. There are no antivirals to use.

From my previous post, An Open Letter to Parents Who Don't Vaccinate:

UPI reported that up to 50 children are quarantined, including the Baldwin Academy students, the SDCC students, and unvaccinated students at the Murray Callan Swim School (which has classes for infants as young as three months).

You parents who were so afraid of vaccination -- how do you feel about the illnesses your fear caused?  How about the financial hardship for parents whose children are excluded from school?  If I were a parent in the infant program  at the Baldwin Academy, I'd be furious.  I am sure that the Baldwin Academy isn't rebating tuition for the weeks the infant program is closed -- the parents of those infants are either suffering financial loss by staying home from work, or paying double for child care.

Jennifer Margulis has not vaccinated her children against measles, mumps or rubella.  She exhibits the arrogance of ignorance of the promoters of vaccine-preventable diseases:

“I would love for my children to have measles,” Margulis said. “Please get me chicken pox and get me measles.” She rejects the idea that her decision endangers others. “People say, ‘You’re putting my kid at risk, but that doesn’t make any sense at all,’” she said. “If the vaccine works, I’m just putting my child at risk.”

I’d like to see the promoters of vaccine-preventable illness — Jenny McCarthy, Barbara Loe Fisher,  Talk About Curing Autism, Age of Autism, Generation Rescue;  their media stooges such as Julie Deardorff and Sharyl Attkisson;  the band of venal attorneys enriching themselves on "vaccine-injury litigation", like Clifford Shoemaker,  and non-vaccinating parents like Margulis-- be required to establish a fund to compensate families who suffered financial or health losses from others'  failure to vaccinate.

Comments

[Bryan]

Rock on, Liz.

[isles]

That seems only fair.

What is it with the antivaxers that they can't acknowledge that they're endangering others? As if everyone else *can* be successfully vaccinated? There are people who have no choice but to depend on herd immunity. Everyone else, roll up your sleeve.

[Fielding J. Hurst]

My kid is vaccinated and their are safer schedules to vaccinate your kids, but this boils down to that this is still America and the good of the many does not trump individual liberty.

This is not about measles, it's about stirring up fear for the sake of trying to regain some confidence in the system.

Forced vaccinations are the first step towards forced medicine.

Whether you like it or not, it is not our duty to be a part of any herd. There is zero doubt are 2 or 3% of the public who have issues with vaccines. The drug companies admit this and the vaccine court is proof of this. If this is America, you don't have the right to tell me what must be put in me or my child.

Just like with Gardasil and the talk of forced vaccinations. The government apparently sees a % of the public as expendable for the greater good. Can you can fascism?

If this is America, where individual liberty is kind of important in theory at least, so you are just going to have to live with it. No good solution here that doesn't involve giving up that which makes us free.

In my case, my daughter was vaccinated at 4 months and immediately had a seizure. No more until the 6 month vaccine, when she started having LOT of seizures and eventually 300+. From the first millisecond, they all said "no way" the vaccines are related. I am sorry, but you are not going to change my mind about the cause of our autism or seizures. Do we understand what is going on? No. Does that mean the case is closed? No.

With that said, I am not against vaccines and there are safer schedules like those outlined in Dr. Sears' Vaccine Book where vaccines are spaced out more and given individually. There are ways to resolve this conflict without the all or nothing approach on both sides. If this were really such a health crisis, how about readily providing a measles only vaccine which is well within the power of the drug lords.

I understand everything you are saying, but this is not so cut and dry.

[Squillo]

Fielding Hurst:

If you believe your child's seizures were a result of vaccination, I assume you have not continued to vaccinate her, nor will you/did you vaccinate any future siblings.

If that's the case, then your children are exactly the people herd immunity is intended to protect. I agree with you about individual liberty, but liberty comes with responsibility. Most of us who have no history of vaccine reaction have a responsibility to families like yours not to be swayed by anti-vaccination rhetoric that is not based on science.

Serious question: Assuming one believes vaccines are risky, how can we assume that the Sears schedule is safer if we don't know whether it's the challenge to the immune system or the "toxins" that cause the problems? I hear both concerns from vaccine skeptics. If it turns out to be the latter, doesn't splitting the MMR, for example, potentially expose children to more toxins? If so, how do we know that spacing them out ameliorates that problem?