Stop antivaxxers. Now.

[Potemkin]

Stop antivaxxers. Now.

There are times when reality is so obvious, so clear, so rock-solid 100% amazingly in-your-face incontrovertible, that it is beyond belief that anyone could deny it.

And yet, antivaccination groups exist.

Let me be very, very clear: they are wrong. Vaccines save lives. Vaccines save millions of lives. And not just directly, like they did by wiping out smallpox, a scourge that killed hundreds of millions of people. But also, through herd immunity, vaccines save infants too young to be vaccinated, the elderly with weak immune systems, and people whose immune systems are compromised due to chemotherapy, genetic issues, or because they are taking immunosuppressants for other illnesses (like arthritis).

Vaccines don’t cause autism. Vaccines don’t contain dangerous levels of mercury. Vaccines don’t contain fetal tissue. Each of these – and many, many more — is misinformation spread by antivaxxers, statements that are easily proven wrong (like, in order, here, here, and here). But many antivaxxers continue to use them.

What does that say about their willingness to tell the truth?

More...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/12/29/stop-antivaxxers-now/

[MaxTheKnife]

It's a choice Pote. For 17 years of active duty military service, I took the flu vaccine. I had no choice. I got the flu numerous times during those 17 years. For the past 17 years I've never taken the vaccine. I've had the flu one time in the past 17 years and that was about a month ago. I'm getting older I guess. I don't like being tagged an antivaxxer. But I guess that's what I am since I will not take the vaccine. But you do the math and tell me again why I should take the vaccine. It's not going to happen...:tt2:

Edited to add: Now I did recently take a tetanus shot because I know those work so I have confidence in them. I've never had tetanus. It must work! I also had many, many vaccines as a kid. Too numerous to mention or remember. Typhoid comes to mind however. I got the typhoid vaccine when I was about 7 and almost died. It was a close call, but here I am. I cast a jaded eye at vaccines on the whole. But there are those that work. So I guess I'm not a total antivaxxer.

[CanadaSue]

It's hard to argue the numbers Max & in spite of many arguments, it's clear that the rates or most infectious disease that' are vaccine preventable dropped sharply after the introduction of vaccines.

A few points on that.

Do people who are anti-vaccine think so many parents would have happily lined up to have their children vaccinated against these diseases if they were worried about them? We're talking one or more generations of aprents who saw - first hand - the ravages of childhood & other diseases now vaccine preventable. These same parents could not have been stupid enough to think every single vaccine would prevent disease nor that every vaccine would be 100% safe for every child. They lived enough & saw enough to know better. Most had lost a sibling, cousin, friend or schoolmate to now preventable diseases. The risk of getting a vaccine compared to the risk of that disease is like the odds of filling an inside straight, (royal ANF flush!) compared to trying to pick up the third of a kind in any given hand.

Secondly, another common argument is that public sanitation was improving by leaps & bounds during that same era - certainly it was. But are we to believe that every municipality of any size coincidently put in better sanitation the same year there was a high enough uptake of any vaccine for disease rates to drop? And if say, (I'm making up the dates because I haven't checked them!) a pertussis vaccine was introduced the same year a new sewer system & better toilets were installed... lets say 1904 & consequently pertussis rates went way down - okay, it MIGHT be the swer system. But how do you account for a huge drop in measles numbers three years later when THAT vax was introduced - new & better toilets installed?

Okay, I randomly picked the diseases, dates & time intervals but I think you see what I mean.

No vaccines will NEVER be 100% effective or safe but tghey are much safer than the alternatives. If I knew my child had a high risk of serious illness due to a certain accine, of COURSE I'd skip it but few parents know ahead of tiem... just as most have no way of knowing if their child will have a normal course of measles or end up dying from a complication. Numerically speaking - the disease is far more dangerous & no, I'm not trying to reduce children to mere numbers but numbers are all we have to go by in judging the risk.

[Auburn Boy]

I just had a long drawn out debate with an wnti-vax proponent.

He's of the impression that ALL vaccines are only for the benefit of the "big pharma" capitalists, that modern sanitation is the answer to reduced disease prevalence.

CS, your arguments on the issue make total sense.

Sanitation may be a big part of the answer, but keeping outbreaks from gaining a foothold by having all susceptibles immunized must be a much bigger control.

Our generation has NOT seen firsthand how diseases ravage the population, and obviously it looks like no big deal. What happened to all the increased awareness the H1N1 swine flu caused? I guess it wasn't enough of a big deal..,

[flowerchild]

I have tried to talk to some anti-vaxers. They all say there is no such thing as herd immunity. The ones I talked to were pretty much snowflakes, who had no idea of history or the devistation these diseases can bring. I always wanted to say, let me introduce you to my former boss who had polio, but unfortunately she passed away a few years ago.

[flourbug]

Our generation has NOT seen firsthand how diseases ravage the population,

But they HAVE seen babies die or be left mentally retarded as a result of bad reactions to vaccines, and for almost a decade people worried that the MMR vaccine was the cause of our autism epidemic.

You can't fault people for being concerned about what is happening in the here and now, rather than horror stories from 100 years ago.

I had my children fully vaccinated, but I held my breath afterwards when they had mild reactions, hoping MY child would not end up a statistic like my friend's child.

.

[CanadaSue]

As did I. There is ALWAYS going to be a risk with vaccines. A memorable case for me was a young solider back in the 1980s - we were still vaxxing SOME troops for smallpox back then if they were headed off for certain deployments. He developed a fullblown vaccinia rash. It was diagnosed fairly quickly but with some measure of incredulity. I think over the course of 2-3 days, we had every medical specialist who might remotely be interested, come in & see this young man. He joked about retiring on what he could make if he sold tickets. BUT... it sure beat a fullblown case of smallpox.

Few today have seen serious consequences from a 'kiddy disease' gone wrong. They'd be horrified if they did.

[Cactus Az]

I`m old enough to remember the polio outbreaks.
Several friends got it,1 died. A few more faced a life in braces,and one in a wheel chair. One friend spent 8 months on an iron lung, she did recover, and had a successful career as a nurse.
My SIL`s father and aunt had polio. Parents were told the would never walk. But, thanks to Sister Kinney (?) they did. But, now they are in their 60s, aunt is in a wheelchair, and dad will soon be.

Whooping cough is making a comeback. It is a terrifying illness for the kiddos. Not so much fun for the nurses and parents,either.

Now, flu virii are so able to shift away from the vax, they they are iffy, but I get one anyways.

[Auburn Boy]

In researching my debate with my freind the "anti-vaxxer" I found a couple of very interesting cases on the polio front.

Two particular cases interested me.

In 1978 there was an outbreak of wild polio in an Amish community in the midwest. Most of the country had been put through the intensive vaccination program to control polio.

The outbreak did NOT spread outside the Amish community.

The outbreak caused the LAST KNOWN cases of paralytic polio ever recorded in the U.S..

http://www.virology.ws/2009/03/09/polio-among-the-amish/

Closely related was a later "mini-outbreak" in the same Amish community.

This particular outbreak was not wild virus, but viral material from the older OPV (Oral Polio Virus) wich is Attenuated Live Polio Virus.

Dr Tenpenny considers this outbreak to be of no concern, but it does point out that advances in vaccine science still were needed to be made. As it happens, this outbreak could only have come from outside the country because the U.S. had stopped using the OPV some years prior. Still the outbreak, although it caused no "serious" illness shows that the unvaccinated can catch polio.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Tenpenny/sherri3.htm

One place where Tenpenny was wrong is that OPV related virus CAN circulate and it CAN cause Polio.

Since February 2009, there has also been an increasing number of polio cases due to a type 2 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV2) in northern Nigeria (103 cases to date in 2009 compared to 31 cases for the same period in 2008). Both serotypes are at continued, and in the case of the cVDPV2 increasing, risk of international spread.

The second set of cases of interest were a Nigerian outbreak which started in 2009. These cases point out basically the same two issues with some additional amplification of the world situation regarding the anti-vax agenda.

A bad batch of polio vaccine got loose in Nigeria. This caused an outbreak of cVDPV2, a "circulating strain derived from the polio vaccine."

http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_07_17/en/index.html

This led to a fear that the west was targeting Muslim countries with poisoned vaccines intentionally. In turn, this led to an antivaccine mindset there. Of course, this "anti-vax" mindset then led to an outbreak of WILD TYPE Polio Virus in West africa.

http://www.globalhealthforum.org/poliooutbreak.php

So, what conclusions can you draw from these two events?

First, communities that decry vaccine programs derived from nearly 200 years of careful medical science to control diseases stand to be infected and lead to new outbreaks of these diseases. Until eradication of a disease can be confirmed, an adequate vaccination program is the best defense.

Second, In the case of the U.S. Amish cases, outbreaks can be contained outside the affected community by "herd immunity." In the Amish cases, the localized outbreaks served as a natural "experiement," one that medical ethicists would prevent having been done as part of a study. The Amish were a petri dish of naieve culture, waiting to absorb the attendant pathogen. The communities beyond the Amish WERE NOT AFFECTED. Herd immunity quelled the spread.

Thirdly, the Nigerian cases pointed out how misguided anti-vaccination propaganda could have deadly results. The spread of Polio to Niger in this outbreak showed how the international community could be also threatened.

It is too easy to point out how many other diseases there are that vaccination could prevent.

I myself have been affected by diseases that there were no vaccines for when I wa a child.

I caught chicken pox. In adult life, I later suffered an outbreak of shingles that almost took the sight in my right eye..,

Later, as an adult, I contracted Hepatitis B. (Don't ask, I haven't a CLUE how I caught it. My doctors are baffled!!) This was before the HepB vaccines came out. I wish I had had the option of being vaccinated for that shit rather than to have to suffer a wild type infection of it. Hep B is nothing you'd wish on anyone. I was not diagnosed with Hep B at the time of the infection, after all I had none of the pre-disposing factors, that's why my doctors ruled it out at first. Only after HepB became a denial factor in donating blood did I learn that I'd actually had the disease. :eek: I not am permanently banned from the blood pool, but I am also immune from any further Hep B outbreak.

So, I've got two personal experiences with serious disease that vaccination could have spared me from, and I give you two interesting examples of how vaccination and lack thereof can affect global populations.

Personally, I don't need any more evidence than that, but there is TONS of evidence out there.

Vaccines may equate to some miniscule number of VRI cases through the years, but they are NOTHING, NOTHING I tell you, compared to the suffering and death dished out by infectious disease run rampant..,

Anti-vaxxers are right up there, in my mind, with members of the "Support the preservation of the Guinnea Worm SOciety."

---------- Post added at 10:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:58 AM ----------

I`m old enough to remember the polio outbreaks.
Several friends got it,1 died. A few more faced a life in braces,and one in a wheel chair. One friend spent 8 months on an iron lung, she did recover, and had a successful career as a nurse.
My SIL`s father and aunt had polio. Parents were told the would never walk. But, thanks to Sister Kinney (?) they did. But, now they are in their 60s, aunt is in a wheelchair, and dad will soon be.

Whooping cough is making a comeback. It is a terrifying illness for the kiddos. Not so much fun for the nurses and parents,either.

Now, flu virii are so able to shift away from the vax, they they are iffy, but I get one anyways.

Whooping Cough in California..,

Upsurge is caused by influx of immigrants who don't live where vaccination for it is prevalent, AND an upsurge in the number of school kids who have been OPTED OUT OF VACCINATION PROGRAMS!!!!!

The parents who do opt their kids out, should be exposed to something nasty for their own good.

[Pablo Escobar]

I am pro vaccine for lethal diseases, and refuse to take a flu vaccine. Did everyone see the research from last week where if you got the flu vax, it made you more succeptible to H5N1? or something like that?

[CanadaSue]

I missed that one, Pablo - do you or anybody have a reference?

[Pablo Escobar]

here you go....

It's probably important enough for it's own thread. Sorry I didn't post it when I saw it...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111116192801.htm

[CanadaSue]

Thanx - just got home. Bookmarked it to read when I'm better rested & more awake...LOL

[LvDemWings]

I am not antivax but I hate that we vax against so many diseases at one time. Part of me wonders if that at least part of the reason why kids seem to be so sickly now. I was extremely happy when I learned that my neighbor talked with the ped and they put her child on a modified schedule and did a vax a visit 2 weeks apart instead of so many at once.

[flowerchild]

I know I was really upset with my son's new doctor. He absolutely insisted that he get the flu, pnumonia, MMDT, and one other one, all at the same time. He was sick and on antibiotics, too.

[Arianwen]

My great-great Grandfather's sister died at a young age of pleurisy. I am not sure what that is or if there is a vax for it - but it illustrates the fact that people regularly lost their children to measles, polio etc.

These anti-vax tards like to gloss that over.

Also, I am a proponent of attachment parenting, I'm vehemently opposed to circumcision but sadly, many of those in these camps are anti-vax. I've left facebook groups when the anti-vax blithering starts - they will not listen to reason.

eta: I am pro flu vax, I get it every year now. I have asthma and am prone to bacterial lung infections.

[Glockd]

Get the flu shot every year, as does the wife. Have not had the flu in years. If I feel any ills at all, it is usually a 1 day event, never more than that. I remember the flu when I was a kid, and one day down beats the hell out of a week of sick (on Christmas day one year, that blew ass, got a new bike and couldnt even muster the strength to ride) that I remember. Its free, takes all of two seconds, and I never feel bad after.

[Greta]

As long as the vaccines stay as a "choice", I have no problem with that. If people want to get vaccinated from whatever, then that is fine. However, I have a serious problem with forced vaccinations. For example, I interviewed for a job as an occupational health nurse. On the interview, I was asked my personal thoughts on vaccinations. The reason why this person asked me this question, the place of employment was requiring ALL their employees to get a flu vaccine for the upcoming flu season. She gave some bull sh*t reason that supposedly X number of people missed work the prior year because of the flu. OK, whatever. So apparently, that was going to be part of my job, to convince these employees to get a flu vaccine. :o I told her in the past when working flu clinics, I would present the information, and the folks could make the choice on their own whether or not to get the vaccine. Needless to say, she did not like that answer, and I did not get offered the job. That is fine with me because I really did not want to work for Nazi employer who feels they have the right to force vaccinations on people. WTF is that all about? :wtf: As Max stated, when people are in the military, they have no choice. However, civilians should not be forced to get vaccines of any kind. So therein lies the problem...

By the way, the person that interviewed me never said what the repercussions would have been if the employees simply refused to get the vaccine, and I never asked. But I suppose that would have also been part of my responsibility to turn those names into HR. :ohmygod:

[Cactus Az]

My DD has an egg allergy. Her reactions to flu vax have gotten worse over the years.
Last one she got,it`s a good thing she`s an ER nurse. She ended up with eppy,steroids,benedryl, and racimic eppy breathing tx.
No more flu shots for her.
Her current employer told her she would need to wear a mask the entire flu season. She objected to that idiocracy, and it hasn`t been brought back up.

[Feather]

My great-great Grandfather's sister died at a young age of pleurisy. I am not sure what that is or if there is a vax for it - but it illustrates the fact that people regularly lost their children to measles, polio etc.

One of my granmothers died from pleurisy. It's an inflamation of the sac that surrounds theorgans is the chest cavity. I have it also but it's kept in check by anit-inflamitory meds that I take for it and arthritis. In my case it felt like a severe asthma attack. My dr knows I have it but has never said anything about a vax so I don't think there is one.

[CanadaSue]

There isn't - pleurisy isn't a stand alone medical condition - not that I'm aware of. It's usually the result of chest infections, TB, certain cancers, asbestos related conditions, can be a symptom of lupus & some rheumatoid arthritis.

It can HURT & can certainly cause to people to breathe in a very shallow way because of the pain of breathing. Imagine shallow breathing in the presence of a chest infection & you can see the potential ramifications.

[CanadaSue]

There isn't - pleurisy isn't a stand alone medical condition - not that I'm aware of. It's usually the result of chest infections, TB, certain cancers, asbestos related conditions, can be a symptom of lupus & some rheumatoid arthritis.

It can HURT & can certainly cause to people to breathe in a very shallow way because of the pain of breathing. Imagine shallow breathing in the presence of a chest infection & you can see the potential ramifications.

[Pablo Escobar]

Congratulations, anti-vaxers..... You've killed another kid.

Whooping cough. You know, one of those "safe" diseases "pertussis".

http://heraldnet.com/article/20120109/NEWS01/701099925#One-familys-story-puts-a-face-on-whooping-cough-epidemic

[CanadaSue]

Where are you getting that this was due to an anti-vax issue? Mom was vaxed - on schedule & it's clear she had pertussis. That's a vaccine failure. And the point made is quite valid. The majority of young adults I speak to about this are NOT aware that childhood immunizations need to be updated as adults. Few GPs ever tell them this.

[Potemkin]

Maybe not directly in this case but Snohomish County is one of those free to be you and me, all natural, Mother Gaia kinds of places.

I would guess they are behind the Vax curve hence the out break.

[Mama Alanna]

Where are you getting that this was due to an anti-vax issue? Mom was vaxed - on schedule & it's clear she had pertussis. That's a vaccine failure. And the point made is quite valid. The majority of young adults I speak to about this are NOT aware that childhood immunizations need to be updated as adults. Few GPs ever tell them this.Yep. Our doctor had both of us get boosters after DH had recovered from his heart surgery, and that was several years ago. Also pneumovax.

There is a thread running on one of my other forums, asking if you would still be alive without modern medicine and surgery. (I wouldn't -- burst appendix at 24.) And I was surprised to see how many young people thought that they would have died without measles/mumps/rubella/chickenpox vaccines. Not the real killers, diphtheria, cholera, smallpox, polio, typhoid fever, etc. (Yes, some kids do die from one of the "simple childhood diseases", reasons enough to vax almost everyone. But most of us who got measles pre-vaccine survived unscathed -- my main problem when I had measles was my mother's insistence that I had to stay in a darkened room with NO READING for a whole week! Chickenpox only meant itching. I either never got rubella/mumps or had such a light case that nobody realized it.)

[Pablo Escobar]

A very, very large percentage of young parents are not vaccinating their children here in Western Washington.

When you have a large enough population of susceptible kids to keep an outbreak alive, passing person to person, then outcomes of dead babies is inevitable.

The mother wasn't probably the source of the infection.

[CanadaSue]

Okay, didn't realize it was an area that had a lot of anti-vax sentiment. And yes, it doesn't take a whole lot of people NOT vaccinating to lose herd immunity.

The darkened room thing - not sure if it's true or an old wives' tale but my understanding is that any 'strain' on the eyes during a case of measles might lead to permanent blindness. I'll look that up.

I remember one terrible winter in our household - I expect it was terrible for my parents. All three of us ended up with chickenpox, measles, German measles & my youngest brother had scarlet fever. I eneded up being sent south to live with my grandparents for 6 months - think my mother as beyond coping.

A lot of us wouldn't be alive today or would be doing poorly. I know my SO would be dead - burst appendix. I don't know what my benign tumour would have done. It stops being benign in my view when it grows from zero to 9 pounds in a very few months & you can barely eat!

[Catbird]

I also spent time in a dark room when I, my sister and my cousins all got the measles at the same time. We were fortunate that both my mother and my aunt were nurses so we got some good care. But the down side was that strictness of that care that required 10 days spent in a dark room!! I didn't want any the light the first 5 days or so because it made the headache much worse. But the last 5 days, not being allowed to read, or do much of anything, made me very cranky.

I have no doubt that I'd be dead if it weren't for modern medicine. My son was born via emergency C-section (placenta previa). And I have anaphylactic reactions to things that are severe enough to require epi.

But I think that most younger folks simply don't know enough about the deadly diseases like diphtheria, cholera, polio and typhoid to understand the difference between them and the typical "childhood diseases" like measles and mumps. I believe that vaccines have become the victims of their own success. Because they are successful at minimizing the incident rate of those serious diseases in this country, people don't know enough about those illnesses to realize how deadly they can be and how important it is to get vaccinated.

[Sysiphus]

The problem is that after a few generations with vaccines and antibiotics, some folks have forgotten how horrible it is to have a kid die or be crippled for life from an easily preventable disease. Unfortunately, it is going to take a number of tragedies before the anti-vax crowd gets this message through their thick, Neandertal skulls. Even more unfortunately, a lot of the dead and crippled are not even going to be offspring of said Neandertals because once you lose herd immunity, any unvaccinated 2-month old becomes vulnerable to things like whooping cough. If I had a newborn in daycare, I would be asking the operator hard questions about whether any of the anti-vax dumbasses' kids were enrolled before I enrolled my kids. It boggles the mind how stupid people can become in a "developed" country when they don't have to struggle to survive and have way, way too much fucking time on their hands. Obviously, developed is not synonymous with smart or educated in all cases. If only the anti-vax folks kids were at risk because of their stance, I would have nothing to say - Darwin at work and all that. But, that is not the case and these are simply a bunch of selfish motherfuckers.

[Mama Alanna]

Sister's husband contracted polio as a child, just a few weeks before the Salk vax was given the OK. He wears a built-up shoe and still has trouble walking, and one of his hands was also affected.

[CanadaSue]

Sysiphus, we're at a point where there's little collective memory of the horrors of outbreaks of nasty childhood diseases & therein lies the problem. A child acutely ill with a serious bout of one of these illnesses is a truly terrifying sight. And that's just the 'common' childhood diseases. Thankfully, I saw few cases of the REAL killers; I've seen one diphtheria & one cholera case & even as a supervised beyond belief, gloved, gowned masked & barely allowed to breathe student nurse... I was terrified at just how SICK these people were.

The decision making process shouldn't be complicated. Look at the STATISTICS of both the illness outcomes & vaccine risks. By all means avoid the vaccines if your child has other medical issues that make vaxes high risk but parents... THINK.

The ones that really get me torqued are those that walk around in some fuzzy dreamland about living right. If you 'eat clean' & take a gazillion supplements, latrch on to the latest New Age health kick - you can't possibly get seriously sick & neither can your kids. Stuff & nonsense. Our forefathers & mothers may have lived in a more healthy fashion, with good wholesome food, few vices & tons of exercise but they dropped like flies in the face of certain pathogens. Bacteria/virus don't give a sh*t what you eat or do - think of them as the honey badgers of illness. There they are & if you wander into view - there YOU are & certain pathogens have horrifying morbidity & mortality rates.

[Auburn Boy]

The problem is that after a few generations with vaccines and antibiotics, some folks have forgotten how horrible it is to have a kid die or be crippled for life from an easily preventable disease.

+1 Sysiphus!!!

Follow this with the corrolary:

"And therefore let the fear of the potential side effects or bbad reactions outweigh all common sense, when in reality the cure is certainly NOT worse than the disease."

---------- Post added at 09:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 AM ----------

The decision making process shouldn't be complicated. Look at the STATISTICS of both the illness outcomes & vaccine risks. By all means avoid the vaccines if your child has other medical issues that make vaxes high risk but parents... THINK.


+1 CanadaSue!!!!!


Honey Badgers!!! :rofl:

[Arianwen]

Congratulations, anti-vaxers..... You've killed another kid.

Whooping cough. You know, one of those "safe" diseases "pertussis".

http://heraldnet.com/article/20120109/NEWS01/701099925#One-familys-story-puts-a-face-on-whooping-cough-epidemic

Horrible. This was one of my worst fears. I breathed a sigh of relief when Roger was old enough to be vaccinated against Pertussis.

I wish the anti-vax crowd would believe and understand these kinds of stories - they seem to have denial issues and have excuses out the wazoo for why children die from preventable diseases etc.

[Arianwen]

http://www.naturalnews.com/022014_heavy_metals_childrens_health.html

Read the bit about the vaccines. Several of my acquaintances buy this entirely. I do not.

[PatS]

Thanks, Arianwen.

I didn't lose any siblings growing up and neither did either of my parents. Why? Vaccines and antibiotics. And now that so many diseases are becoming resistant to antibiotics and so many flaky parents are becoming resistant to vaccines, we may be the last generation able to make such a statement.

Today's article about India being close to eradicating Polio, thanks to vaccines:
http://news.yahoo.com/india-marks-milestone-fight-against-polio-100915950.html

[Arianwen]

I just went bezerk at some FB anti-vaxers. They claim people in third world countries aren't harmed by lack of vaccines - it's all the dirty water and lack of medical care. Medical care includes vaccines, doesn't it?

I freaked because when Roger was too young for the pertussis vax, I was terrified he would catch it (California has been having an outbreak.) Now I am fearful he will get Measles before he gets that vax. Just a month to go...

I went bezerk because these fools are putting their own children's lives at risk - but also pregnant women and their fetuses, newborns who are too young for vaccines and members of our societies that cannot receive vaccines for medical reasons. How is that the least bit ok or fair?!

---------- Post added at 12:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:20 PM ----------

As for me, I had pneumonia when I was 12 - I believe antibiotics saved my life. Now, I get a flu shot every winter due to my susceptibility to bacterial bronchitis.

Roger has never had more than a cold bug, I credit breastmilk (mine) and vaccines/medical care for this. I thank the Goddess I do not have the fears my Great-Grandmother must have had and her mother before her and so on...

---------- Post added at 12:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:24 PM ----------

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/story/2011-10-21/Unvaccinated-behind-largest-US-measles-outbreak-in-years/50852098/1

Ugh. Just ugh.

Do you know what can happen to an infant that contracts Measles? Degenerative, lethal, slow brain disease.

[Arianwen]

http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/outbreaks.html#ca

That made my blood run cold...I sweated every day until Roger could get his first Pertussis shot. I was adamant my mother get the shot before she came to visit (she did, she had to buy the vaccine on her own and get her Doctor to administer it) I made sure DH and my stepson were protected and then I was adamant that my MiL who seems to be a closet anti-vax type either be vaxed, or come way after he got his shot.