After reading throughout these comments, I have to say that I am shocked by the hatred and vitriol directed towards “anti-vaxers”. Reading through suggestions including their names being published just like sex offenders, being charged with child abuse, excluded from all aspects of public life, shunned. The hysteria is unsettling and frankly scary. Big Pharma, job well done! Your advertising dollars are paying off handsomely! PS According to published reports yesterday, Merck had record breaking profits this quarter, thanks to sales of its HPV and MMR vaccines.
6
@M - No, this isn't anger fueled by Big Pharma. This is anger fueled by us members of the herd, mightily ticked off that some people decide to put other families, other children, at risk because of their non-validated reasons. Personal decisions that might pan out by depending on everyone else vaccinating to lessen their child's risk from the risky parental behavior.
PS - here are the awful things Merck has been paid to do - help prevent preventable cancers and prevent dangerous diseases in the growing human population. Are you angry when food companies make a profit, too?
"Growth in vaccines was driven largely by higher sales of ..., vaccines to prevent certain cancers and other diseases caused by Human Papillomavirus (HPV), primarily due to the ongoing commercial launch in China. Higher demand in Europe, driven primarily by increased vaccination rates for both boys and girls, as well as the timing of customer purchases in Latin America, also contributed to sales growth. Growth was partially offset by lower sales in the United States reflecting public sector buying patterns.
Growth in pediatric vaccines was driven by ..., a vaccine to help prevent chickenpox; ..., a combination vaccine to help protect against measles, mumps, rubella and varicella; and ..., a vaccine to help prevent measles, mumps and rubella, reflecting government tenders in Latin America and higher demand in Europe and the United States."
6
One of these days, someone will die because of an anti vaxer.
4
I’m sitting in a leukemia ward while reading this. I’m Imagining these very vulnerable patients having to contend with some idiot anti vaxxer spreading disease with every breath in such a room. Such willful ignorance is not far from committing an act of deliberate spread of pestilence. Life is risky enough. None of us should be put in such a terrifying position.
12
I (very cruelly and unfairly) hope that some innocent children who are unvaccinated (solely because their parents are anti-vaccines and not for age/health-related reasons) end up dying from a preventable disease like the measles. I have no sympathy for these parents and I feel bad for innocent kids who aren’t at fault, but I think we need some human sacrifices to wake the stupid people up. I am fully aware that I am a horrible person for thinking this.
5
This is what happens when “religious freedom” trumps proven and verified science. I had a daughter who battled a dangerous oncological disease as an infant, and her immunizations were medically delayed until she was symptom-free long enough and the doctors felt her immune system could handle it. She was safe from measles, diphtheria, mumps and all those other childhood diseases because of NYC’s herd immunity. Having a compromised child was stressful then, but now it must be a total nightmare.
Nothing is more frustrating than such willful ignorance that deliberately and selfishly adds more stress and danger into this crowded city in the name of fake personal freedom/religious freedom ideologies that can sicken, damage and even kill other people’s kids.
The wrong kids are forced to stay home: the weak, the sick, those too young for the immunizations but who have every intention of immunizing for the common good. That ignorant people can rely on debunked, false and absurd information and put the health of millions of people at risk is selfish, stupid, wrong and cannot be tolerated.
This public health challenge must be dealt with in the strongest manner possible. Deliberately unvaccinated people must stay away from public places and schools that allow students to shun vaccination requirements must be shut down. Pediatricians, school staff and all other mandated reporters must report this child abuse to the state just as they must report malnutrition and neglect.
14
This isn't about measles -- it's about the fear that we all face, especially parents, and where we direct that fear. Right now, the fear of the day is measles, in large part because of constant and repetitive fearmongering in the media. It's almost as if it's scripted. And when you toss in some censorship and removal of comments that don't fit the narrative, it's no wonder people are so fearful.
All of us feel fear, but we're also prone to cognitive dissonance. Every year, hundreds of children die in car crashes, while riding in approved and properly used car seats. But most of us don't live in fear of driving. Or we smoke, despite the statistics. Yet, when I wade into the water at the beach with my 6 year old, I can't help but stop him from going farther for fear of sharks. Why? Because seeing "Jaws" as a child had a big impact. But what are the chances?
Thousands of people die every year from the flu, so knowing that, how could anyone take their child outside? Our flu shots never seem to have high efficacy. Do we worry that our children might be roughhousing with a classmate who is HIV positive or has hepatitis? There used to be a time that people panicked over such things. What about a taxi hopping the curb? Or a construction crane falling on you?
Fear and sex sell. They're great motivators. And any time you see such an intense focus on one issue that is disproportionate to the reality, we all ought to wonder what's being sold.
6
It's this type of illogical logic that is responsible for this current outbreak. And is getting worse daily. It's a simple fact: The MMR vaccination is responsible for near eradication of measles. Before the vaccination 40,000 to 60,000 Americans contracted Measles. 4000-6000 of them developed serious, life threatening conditions. 400-600 died.
As of last count 700 cases reported, in toto, throughout the US. Versus 40K-60k contraction rate before the vaccination, I'm going with vaccinations as something that's necessary. Figures are from the CDC.
12
So let’s not report outbreaks of diseases we thought were eradicated because life is inherently deadly. And any reporting is really just mind control, fear mongering. An outbreak of measles isn’t unique, even though it spreads easily and is deadly. And we have a cure. I suggest if you feel this way to stop reading the news. Will solve your problems.
6
@BarbaraJames - too many parents lost their very healthy fear of polio, measles and many other preventable diseases entirely because prevention has been so successful. Fear-mongering about the enormous death toll from unsafe cars and from drunk drivers has succeeded in helping us protect ourselves from those very preventable deaths. Fear-mongering about long, expensive, painful deaths from smoking has benefited society, too.
I know some of the last in our country stricken by polio in childhood, and when touring a hospital for work some years ago saw the basement corridor lined with their iron lungs - thankfully no longer commonly used.
I know many who have suffered from shingles because they had chicken pox - which some parents now blithely ignore as a future gift when they let their kids catch a preventable disease.
And I've read about fear-mongering from "moral" people who argue that vaccinations that could prevent deadly cancers is wrong because it will encourage promiscuity in their daughters.
The risks of flu are based on the extraordinary mutability of the virus - HIV is also a very difficult one to fight. Not so for many many other vaccines, so nice try but no cigar - a cigar would increase risk of lip and throat cancer anyway.
5
I'm originally from the Bahamas, and there it's standard for children to have their first measles vaccine at 6 months. i suspect it's because most mother's stop breastfeeding between 3 and 6 months, and doing the vaccination then allows for the baby to benefit from both the passive immunity provided by breastfeeding, and the added vaccination protection before the passive immunity wears off.
Had the worrying mothers of the "too young to be vaccinated babies" have had the measles, the babies would have been protected through maternal antibodies in breast milk. That's how true herd immunity works.
@Syl you are making a lot of assumptions. 1) Not every mother has the ability to breast feed and pass on those antibodies and this can happen for a variety of different reasons. 2) While breast milk may have some protective antibodies, that is not a guarantee of protection. 3) Measles is a painful and potentially life threatening illness. In a time of vaccines. no one, especially infants, should ever have to experience it.
9
Drugs, including vaccines, are addling our brains. Mostly these childhood xanthems are mild. If you remember having a difficult experience, your base health was probably compromised. Vaccines are not benign, especially not when tripled up and applied to infants. Decades ago the vaccine manufacturers negotiated release from ANY liability from vaccine injury, which is significant and well documented, including on the CDC website. No other pharmaceutical enjoys this lack of liability. It’s a travesty. I resent being told how to manage my child’s medical care. I am a highly educated family physician who chose to vaccinate my daughter on a much slower, saner, schedule. If she had reacted badly to the first vaccine, I would likely have stopped further vaccinations. We have differing genetic abilities to clear foreign materials inserted into our bodies. The principle of vaccination is good. However, science shows that 1) they confer harm in a significant number of cases and 2) they are not particularly effective. Why are our citizens, by and large, sicker, fatter, more diabetic and with so much more serious GI disease, auto-immune disease, neurodegenerative disease (PD, autism, MS, Alzheimer’s etc) than 50 years ago before heavy vaccination became normalized. Mandated vaccination, without consideration of the individual’s capacity to tolerate them, sounds like a police state. Do we want to protect BigPharma profits, or our children’s health? Do your research. Go slow
4
@Emily Kane: Just to be clear, when you say that you are a "highly educated family physician," you do not have an M.D. degree, correct?
I would have said that, among family physicians, the more "highly educated" are M.D.'s....
4
@Emily Kane - so tell us, how did you prevent your child from being exposed to all the diseases your "saner" schedule while waiting for YOU to be ready?
How many years of your education were spent studying epidemiology, virology and other specifics to immunization, its benefits and its risks?
One risk in society is when someone thinks their education extends farther than they think.
"I'm a doctor" is something you do want to hear when seeking medical help, but if someone's going to be opening me up and cutting my heart, you would not get my business, "highly educated family physician".
Neither would a good friend of mine who is a highly educated, practicing pediatrician with a full MD. By the way, her opinion about vaccines is that people who willingly avoid vaccinating their children should have insurance cancelled and their families should be aggressively quarantined when ill. The first part to protect the finances of others for their choice, the second to protect the health of those who actually can't be safely vaccinated.
5
@Emily Kane -- Google reveals all. You aren't truly a "family physician," a medical doctor (MD or DO) who has completed a 3-year residency and has achieved board certification by Family Medicine's governing body. You are a Naturopathic Doctor and Acupuncturist. Stop falsely advertising yourself.
9
This story hits close to home for my family and I from first hand experience. Our son, at 3 weeks old, got a direct exposure from someone who had a confirmed case of measles. I was also exposed but I am vaccinated so I didn’t need to worry, but for our son, being a newborn has not received his vaccinations yet, his saving grace was that he received a post exposure vaccination and even then from week 3-week 7 of his life (28 days), he had to be quarantined at home and we had to watch him diligently for signs and symptoms of the measles. It was one one of the most grueling times of our lives, so many emotions of frustration, upset, and anger. It was like being forced to watch paint dry and not guaranteeing if it will or not. I’m relieved to report that our little guy, who is almost 3 months old,did not develop the measles. This experience has left me really anxious but with time and taking it day by day, we’re starting to take him out more cause we can’t live in fear.
11
I also predate the vaccines and had all the now covered diseases. I can still remember the days in bed in a darkened room with measles, the incredible itching with chicken pox, the pain of the mumps and coughing so hard I cracked a rib with whooping cough. I don't understand why parents would take the chance to inflict all this pain on their children. And measles can be fatal to a baby or to a child who contracts it,
There should be a way to make the anti-vaccine parents and people like Robert Kennedy Jr. who proclaim false science responsible for the anguish and possibly deaths they inflict on innocent bystanders.
At the very least, schools need to publish names of the families who do not vaccinate their children. Yes I know that sounds draconian and yes, I understand why, for medical reasons, some children cannot be vaccinated. But many dangerous things in our world are labeled as "Hazardous to Health". If a child, or an adult can spread a disease that might kill someone, that is information that should be easily available to their communities.
264
@MB
It's an interesting idea. The names, addresses and phone IDs of people who got religious or philosophical waivers could be public record, like voting rolls or child sex abusers.
Then parents could download the list onto smart phones and get a map that displayed anti-vaxers, to avoid them. If anti-vaxers had been in a supermarket within the last 2 hours, you could stay out.
Or maybe anti-vaxers could be required to wear bells, like cats.
32
@MB
Religion is separate issue. There is a lot of evidence of serious side effects. That should not be ignored.
Problem is, there is no requirement for follow up by the dispensers & manufacturers of the vaccines.
1
@Norman
You must be longing for the days of putting people in the stocks. Who knew what this topic would unleash?
4
I am not anti-vaxx (my one year old is fully vaccinated, and I am grateful for it). But the medical community needs to ask itself why people are so quick to lose faith in it. Bear in mind this is the same community that for decades insisted that women use formula instead of breastfeed (and only now are we beginning to appreciate the full importance of breastmilk!), have imposed c-sections on women for their own sakes/convenience, the list goes on and on.
Trust starts with accountability and transparency.
17
@JKR Unfortunately social media has amplified the spread of 'fake medical news', whether the damnable autism accusations or conspiracy theorists peddling "Big Pharma" chestnuts. Too many people take this all without question and then their own children, and by extension ours (two grandkids in that under-1 group) suffer as a result.
12
@JKR - the vast majority of adults do have trust and faith in vaccines. An inflamed minority do not. They are encouraged to doubt, they set up bubble chambers to help them doubt, they follow celebrities who, through complete lack of qualifications, encourage doubt.
19
@JKR Why? Because a "doctor" faked results of a study and said it caused Autism.
18
What ever happened to breast feeding your baby to give your child your immunity system? I know it sounds awful to have to put your phone down to relax enough to breastfeed but it really works best.
4
Not entirely. While exclusive breast feeding does confirm some immunity (but of course only if mom was vaccinated or had the disease) it is not complete immunity. For that even breastfeeding moms rely on the “herd immunity “ that happens when families understand their social responsibility and stop hiding their ego centric whims behind rumors and pseudo science.
29
You mean the breastfeeding that may or may not confer temporary immunity, and is SPECIFICALLY DISCUSSED in this excellent article?
37
No, it does not. It is NOT a replacement for vaccinations.
34
Please stop with the fear mongering. Vaccine or no vaccine measles has a .00002% mortality rate. That compares with a 3.2% mortality rate for influenza which has become the eighth leading cause of death in America. No one is being frightened into shutting themselves in and avoiding friends because of the flu. What is the source of this measles histeria?
How can we talk to vaccine skeptics and convince them if we don’t have honest discussions about the diseases? Histeria breeds a backlash. We risk losing credibility if we stop basing our actions on facts and give into fear.
12
@Randolph Rhett The measles is much more contagious than even the flu, and even if the mortality is less, the morbidity can be devastating. I agree that hysteria isn't a great response, but the concern that these parents feel for their infants isn't unreasonable.
55
@Randolph Rhett
When my son was born in the middle of the H1N1 flu, I was advised by his pediatrician not to take him out at all for two weeks, and after that to avoid any crowded places until flu season was over or he was old enough to have the flu shot. So yes, pediatricians really do advise new parents to shut themselves in and avoid crowds because of the flu.
39
@Randolph Rhett
Your statistics are incomplete perhaps. the CDC lists 1-2 deaths per 1000 for those without vaccination. The rate data for 1963, just prior to availability of the vaccine includes 400-500 deaths/year, 1000 cases of encephalitis, an 48,000 hospitalizations. The years following showed in the CDC graphs sharp declines in all three areas following the introduction of the vaccine.
29
700 cases out of a population of 320 million. Honestly this is a joke. The rights of parents of children and their children too young to be vaccinated do not outweigh my right to reject having a foreign substance injected in to my body. Mandatory vaccines go against a persons right to choose and has no business in a free society. You want mandatory vaccinations go to China or some other autocratic state.
12
@Rob How old are you? Chances are you had vaccinations or "foreign substances injected into your body" as a child. Most people did back before this anti-vaxxer hysteria began.
My 11 month old daughter's right to be healthy outweighs shoddy research and unproven propaganda being passed around through social media like its factual information. Why should children have to suffer because a small group of people have decided to believe everything they see on Facebook?
9
The only reason it's currently only 700 is because everyone else did the right thing, took whatever slim risk there was, and got themselves and their kids vaccinated.
Please learn a bit more about epidemiology and highly contagious diseases before commenting further.
And consider how you'd feel if your infant or your parent with compromised immune system were among the 700 and suffered and died, or became profoundly deaf -- as did someone I know who wasn't adequately immune from measles.
16
Fine, if you refuse to be vaccinated despite decades of credible data saying the "foreign substance" is safe and actually protective, then just quarantine yourself and family and advise anyone who may come in contact with you of your vaccination and health status before you meet them.
You do and should have the right to refuse medical treatment/procedures (including, by the way, having to undergo childbirth), but when it's a highly contagious and often disabling or deadly disease, you do not have the right to expose the general public to it. Just ask those who came in contact with Typhoid Mary.
11
Per the National Health Service (UK) website:
“During the last 3 months of pregnancy, antibodies from the mother are passed to her unborn baby through the placenta.
This type of immunity is called passive immunity because the baby has been given antibodies rather than making them itself.
... Breast milk also contains antibodies, which means that babies who are breastfed have passive immunity for longer...Passive immunity to measles, mumps and rubella can last for up to a year, which is why the MMR vaccine is given just after your baby's first birthday.”
Interesting that the author of this article failed to mention the protections offered by breast feeding during an infant’s first year. Also interesting that in googling ‘breast fed babies immunity’ the top several articles are British in origin. This information was passed along to me as routine by my OB/GYN after my son was born. It makes one wonder why in the US this isn’t part of routine conversation concerning babies’ immunity.
In sum, Breast feeding an infant for the first year of life offers many protections bottle-fed babies don’t have.
3
@TY In humans ingested antibodies can't get into the bloodstream. So, breastmilk is protective against gastrointestinal diseases, but is irrelevant for respiratory diseases. Assuming mom is immune, breastfeeding may help protect baby against polio, but not measles.
15
What about women who are unable to breastfeed. My son was unable to drink milk. It’s ok for him to suffer or starve because of the irrational, irresponsible, immoral, misinformed “choices” that parents make? Being able to proactively protect your child, and by extension mine, shouldn’t be a choice, regardless of the questionable benefits of breastfeeding. Re-read the part of the article that discusses immunity from breastfeeding. It’s by no means a guarantee, and it’s markedly less of a guarantee than vaccinating.
13
Just wish we could have the same public health response, media scrutiny, and public outcry to the preventable deaths by guns that have killed, and continue to kill our children on a daily basis, at an increasing alarming rate. Also wish the same type of media and public shaming of parents who make difficult, and maybe even questionable health choices for their children, could be put on every public official, health official, and citizen who continue to turn a blind eye to what is actually threatening and killing our children. The constant shutdown of conversation about gun safety is similar to the shutdown of discussion about vaccine schedules and vaccine health. Both are spearheaded by the profit making industries, and government involvement trying to eliminate any questioning and dissent of any kind.
17
Nailed it. Measles outbreaks have happened in this "small" number dozens of years since vaccines eliminated measles. And somehow 1000 kids getting an ancient disease that millions of our grandparents had is worse and more important than Flint's water crisis that is damaging far more than 1000, gun violence which kills thousands upon thousands, or medical injury which kills hundreds of thousands per year. Where is the article on how medical injury is now the third leading cause of death, killing 250,000 people per year. That is an emergency!!! Quantitative reasoning tells me that's somehow far more important.
7
@Mary Ann
We do have exactly the same coverage. It just hasn’t convinced the NRA and consequently the politicians that cave to their demands. As with vaccinations, we have to keep on protesting until we get heard.
6
Mandatory vaccination is not a infringement on the rights of anyone, but a protection for the rights of everyone else. Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and mandatory vaccination protects that right to life that we all have.
6
It’s like a recurring nightmare. Another day, another dose of measles hysteria. I think this is the 57th article or editorial in the Times so far in the young year. The great rebranding of measles: the new PLAGUE! Or, the realization of Jack London's century-old tale of "a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by plague." I am in awe at the size and scope of this very orchestrated campaign. Of course measles deaths in this country remain stubbornly at zero. That’s 0. The last person to die from measles in the U.S. was a middle-aged woman in Clallam County, Washington five years ago. All this fear, outrage, and accusations and not a single death.? Censors invoked. Constitutional rights revoked. Time to microchip. Because zero deaths? What is going on?
5
Maybe people shouldn't be allowed to get a passport without having all their vaccines? I mean, that's not going to help with the current situation but maybe it would keep people from bringing back diseases from other countries.
7
@H This is the first time I've heard this suggestion, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been mentioned before because it's, at least in theory, a smart way to prevent the virus from entering the country. I've heard people blame illegal immigrants for the outbreaks when in fact Mexico and many other countries have higher vaccination rates than the United States. The vast majority of cases have been brought in by American citizens who traveled abroad.
4
I’m the mother of a 5 month old who lives in brooklyn. At the brooklyn bridge park over the past week, there were many orthodox Jewish families out celebrating the holidays. In New York, the measles outbreak is concentrated in orthodox Jewish communities. Despite my own best instincts, I felt scared sharing the park with the families. I felt sad and ashamed for this, especially given the rise of anti-Semitism. At a time when we should we showing Jewish communities of all types the most love and acceptance, I am also afraid to be around communities of Jewish families that don’t vaccinate their children. I want to end this comment by saying that I love sharing my parks with the orthodox Jewish families, and hope that those amongst them take steps to keep their children, and other children, safe from preventable diseases.
9
It sounds like Santa Monica, where it’s certainly not the Jewish community.
3
@BW
It's a small minority of Hasidic Jews who aren't vaccinating. Most certainly do so. If you were in CA you'd best avoid Waldorf school families as their vaccination rate is appallingly low. They just don't stick out as much so you wouldn't realize who they are at the park.
6
@BW
This comment made me feel better. I am not Hasidic but come from the Satmar community so many friends and family there, and the bulk of the comments on the outbreak have been so hard to read. Calling THEM ignorants, cult, liable for all the rest of our suffering, fated for a deserved Darwinian end, the people to avoid at all counts... it is almost gleeful and so painful - how nasty are we humans really when we have permission to say it all because we can hide behind the guise of “self protection”?
Life contains risks. We have all learned that profiling whole groups of people because of the actions of a tiny minority is a dangerous path. It doesn’t matter if there is a risk. Profiling minorities is not okay. We as a society have realized that it is better to live with a bit of risk (tiny here, mind you) than get carried away on “preventive” measures.
I get your fear. But I appreciate that you are trying to keep your moral center as you experience these fears.
What many of you fail to realize is that we have SO MANY immunocompromised kids now that herd levels cannot be maintained. We have the highest rates of childhood cancer, leukemia, auto-immune disorders, hashimoto's, palsy, autism, peanut allergies, egg allergies etc etc all which put kids on either a delayed vaccination schedule or exempt all together. We are the sickest we have ever been so vaccines aren't going to reach the rates everyone is demanding. This witch-hunt of blaming all the anti-vaxxers is counter productive. There are quite a few poeple in these outbreaks that were vaccinated, contracted the disease, and then past it on. Should we publish their names too? And if you haven't had your adult boosters than you are absolutely equal to an anti-vaxxer.
5
Nonsense. Just because some people can’t get vaccines for medical reasons doesn’t mean that others should opt out for no reason at all. If anything, your argument about “so many immunocompromised people” (putting aside that most of the conditions you list aren’t contradictions for getting vaccinated) is an argument FOR everyone else getting vaccines. It’s simple: the more the better.
These anti-vaxx theories are getting worse and worse.
19
@Tani Mississippi has the highest childhood vaccination rate because it doesn't allow exemptions other than medical exemptions. No religious exemptions, no philosophical exemptions. There also doesn't seem to be the problem of parents paying doctors for exemptions that parts of California are seeing.
In Mississippi, 0.3% of children have a medical exemption. That suggests that the baseline of kids who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons is around that, leaving 99.7% medically able to be vaccinated. That's more than enough for herd immunity.
9
I wasn't aware that autism includes immunosuppression. Or that peanut allergies do. And I doubt that they do. I think you are mixing and matching and conflating various conditions and symptoms, and I wish knowledgeable public health doctors would clarify this for us fellow readers.
As for having the highest rates, what, exactly, are your sources for such a claim, and even if you're correct, how do you know that (a) the rate is per capita and not just higher because we have, or have tested, more people generally; (b) the rate isn't higher because we have better screening and diagnostic tools and protocols and better access to those things?
7
I am older, and few vaccines were around when I was a kid, so I've been fairly amazed by the brouhaha over vaccines. A friend who is more than a decade older than me contracted measles a few years ago after traveling to a touristy spot in the U.S. on vacation. She had had measles as a child but got it as a senior nonetheless.
I had most of the illnesses on the long list of vaccines required or recommended now, but one thing always strikes me as I peruse the list: Would it not be more attractive to parents who object to so many vaccines to simply administer the measles vaccine separately? All of the vaccines that are fighting truly dangerous illnesses seem to be paired with more lightweight illnesses. I assume this is for the sake of convenience.
I ask simply because it is well known in veterinary science that giving vaccines singly, a week or two apart, is easier on an animal that giving an onslaught of vaccines in a combo. I have done this before with pets who seem especially sensitive to vaccines, and I would do it for all my animals if I could afford it.
I understand the governmental interests in public health care, but I also understand the protectiveness of some parents. Is splitting the measles vaccine off from that for mumps and rubella (and now chickenpox?) not a live option? If not, why not? They are all childhood illnesses, but why not stick to emphasizing the ones that are potentially fatal or otherwise devastating? Is no compromise possible?
5
the reason for it is because parents don't bring the kids back that often. think about what it takes and costs to take a child to the clinic, doing that every 2 weeks for a year is not reasonable. it is very safe to give combo shots, and is much more comfortable for the kids who get fewer needles.
3
@m.RN
I understand the thinking, and I certainly understand an RN having your point of view. I was just trying to think of what the objections might be and arrive at a compromise. I'm certainly aware of costs, but I doubt that is what holds parents back. And although I am not anti-vaccine, I was entirely floored when I saw the long list of things little kids are vaccinated for these days. It just seems to me that getting the list down to the basics might be the way to persuade a skeptical population. As I indicated, I've in fact done this for beloved pets with good success. If I were a young person with children, I would likely take a hard look at each of the combo vaccines. I'm not sure why the pro-vaccine/anti-vaccine dichotomy has to exist. Might it be that something in between (some vaccines, leaving off others entirely) is more reasonable?
2
Great job finding 1 dad to talk to. As I was reading, I was thinking, "Why does the writer keep referring to 'parents' when this is clearly just about the concerns of moms?" But you totally balanced that out with the 1 guy who wouldn't give his name. For a little while there I was afraid that this would be another one of those pieces that perpetuate the stereotype that it's the women who do the child-rearing, make the childcare decisions and have the concerns, while men exist only in the background as theoretical presences in their families' lives.
And on another separate but related note with respect to chickenpox:
Don't forget about exposure via elders! If you are a grandparent over 50 who watches grand babies, make sure you get your booster against shingles! Unvaccinated children who come into direct contact with the rash can contract the chickenpox.
https://vaxopedia.org/2018/02/04/what-to-do-if-your-child-is-exposed-to-shingles/
https://www.cmsschicago.org/news-blog/when-grandparents-should-stay-away-from-the-grandkids/
6
If we won't let terrorists into the country, why do we allow unvaccinated people who can cause an epidemic into the country?
2
@MNDoc The vast majority of cases have been brought in by American citizens. I'm not sure you can legally ban them from the country.
7
Just wait until they start saying polio isn't so bad.
19
The selfishness and willful ignorance of the anti-vaccination crowd never ceases to surprise and anger me.
18
My cousin was left paraplegic by a vaccine, while he did get compensation, no money can ever fix what happened.
Remember, you can vaccinate, but you can never unvaccinate.
6
I went back to work 45+ years ago when my child was 8 weeks old. Thank goodness that was before this anti-vax stupidity. How many people will end up on public aid because they can't find safe baby sitters and can't return to work. Exposing children to the measles should be criminal.
8
this outbreak of measles is the worst in 25 years.
2
I’m immune to measles, and I don’t have kids, but I still avoid having anti-vaxxers as friends. I totally support all kinds of discrimination against them because they are a threat to society.
6
And then there are all those folks who are fully vaccinated who may have been exposed to measles by someone and while they don't get it they pass it on to others insofar as they are asymptomatic carriers of the disease. No one reasonably argues whether or not the average body can develop antibodies against the disease for which they were vaccinated against, but that does not necessarily stop the disease from spreading.
This fear of going out with a baby who has not been vaccinated against is a result of the irresponsible fear mongering by the stampede of the so-called herd. The panic, confusion, hysteria and scare are all derived by propaganda that the herd responds to just like a bait ball in the ocean or a flock of birds in the sky.
This is just more of the same fear-based messaging that came out of the "terror" campaign following 9/11: be afraid, very afraid. Code yellow, then orange, now red. When they refer to the "herd," it cuts both ways, and the masses are indeed a herd because they are acting like one.
I am never amazed by the lack of individuals to think for themselves, nor am I amazed at what the herd does to those very few who do think for themselves. The NYT, like much of the other media, corrals its audience, and just because its readers are elite and erudite, does not mean they aren't also capable of being subject to elite and erudite messaging.
3
Gee, Chris, piece of advice: always be careful when you taunt the intelligent and erudite.
We may just check up on you. And so, I checked up on your “Typhoid Mary,” measles theory...you know, the one where you suggested that you could carry measles around forever and forever, without ever getting sick yourself.
Nope.
It’s possible for one to be exposed, not get sick, and pass the virus on for maybe three days. Far more dangerously, you can be infected, and in and asymptomatic or subclinical incubation stage, and pass the virus along before you yourself get obviously ill.
Perhaps that’s what you meant; benefit of the doubt. But if you did, sloppy, sloppy phrasing. Or was it deliberate?
In any case, an observation: nobody, but nobody, is more sheeply than the guys who thump their chest about their rugged individualism, their lonely eyrie standing boldy ‘gainst the crowd.
17
@Robert
I know your comment will be very popular because you are on the side of the trendy opinion, but I don't see that you answered Chris's comment here with anything useful. You are snarky and defensive and you bring up rugged individualism for no reason (who said anything about that?), but you don't examine to which degree the fear created by the Times is irrational or not. A reasoned, open-minded thoughtful assessment of the question would show us that the reader thinks for themselves. I dislike rugged individualism, liberterianism, or anti-vaxxers who put us at risk, but I still don't want to buy whole anything that purports to indict these groups - what if the stats are wrong or incomplete? Herd immunity is good, her mentality not.
@Robert
I know your comment will be very popular because you are on the side of the outrage of the day, but I don't see that you answered Chris's comment here with anything useful. You are snarky and defensive and you bring up rugged individualism for no reason (who said anything about that?), but you don't examine to which degree the fear created by the Times is irrational or not. A reasoned, open-minded thoughtful assessment of the question would show us that the reader thinks for themselves. I dislike rugged individualism, liberterianism, or anti-vaxxers who put us at risk, but I still don't want to selectively believe in the outrage of the day. Herd immunity is good, her mentality not.
Why is autism seen as such a horrendous thing? Obviously vaccinating does not cause autism. Those who choose to believe it are not only ignorant and selfish but are also insulting a large percentage of our fellow citizens. Are they really not aware that most autistic people lead normal productive lives albeit while seeing the world a little differently than the rest of us.
14
These irresponsible parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids have put my baby at risk as this article mentions. I had to vaccinate my baby early against the measles and even then vaccinating at six month aka not full proof.
6
Your freedom to swing your fist ends at everyone else’s nose. Your freedom to be unvaccinated for measles ends at everyone else’s air.
Vaccines need to be mandatory on a schedule, with only medical exceptions validated by public health MDs.
After that, you’ve hit an infant in the face, and should be charged accordingly.
11
"The concern is upending family routines, leaving some parents of infants steering clear of public places and anti-vaccine friends."
Everyone should permanently steer clear of anti-vaccine "friends" until they decide to stop putting the rest of us in danger.
8
Congress should allow a law to be passed that enables business establishments to refuse service if you are not vaccinated. (Unless you cant be). I know too many people with compromised immunity who are at severe risk of dying if they catch this. Movie theatres for example should be able to turn away people to protect the members of our community who are vulnerable not out of choice but out of scientific medical compulsion.
2
My daughter's in-laws are anti-vaxxers. She and her husband told his family that they would not be allowed in the door, they would not be allowed to hold the baby, they would not be allowed to see the baby except via Skype until they got their vaccinations and two weeks had passed for those vaccinations to be in full effect. Sorry. No.
Note that I, the other grandma, got measles as a kid and lost some of my hearing permanently to it, not to mention I was so very, very sick and was lucky to have survived it.
After her in-laws discovered they really did mean it, they did go and get their shots. Which means my daughter and her husband protected not only their baby but his family from harm.
17
When the seatbelt laws were passed, my mother started out opposed to this and refused to put on her seatbelt because she said it felt constraining. 30 years later it’s so automatic in my family none of us would dream of starting the car unless we were all seat belted (also, the car beeps to remind you like crazy) Funny thing is, if you ask my mom she’ll deny she ever objected to seat belts. As a physician, I know you can also get injuries from the seatbelt itself, but the number of lives it saves makes arguing this point ridiculous.
This is why mandatory vaccination laws should be passed.
15
I’m a pediatric oncologist and take care of a lot of kids who can’t be vaccinated because of ongoing chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants. The parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids are literally risking my patients’ lives out of ignorance. I vaccinated children should be banned from all public accommodations including schools, libraries, parks, etc. we should shun their parents instead of all this “two sides” garbage.
27
Let me remind the readers that during this outbreak, Hasidic mothers of young babies lived with the same fear. Yet the only stories the Times ran were about the tiny minority of ultra-orthodox women who refused to vaccinate. The readers were left with the impression that Hasidim don't mind that their babies are constantly at risk, their schools closed by the city, the county/everyday people discriminating against where they can go, etc.
Now that the general population is feeling the fear, we hear that the at-risk population is suffering. Hasidic mothers were depicted as self-inflicting, but the population at large we can see as helpless, trapped, angry, confused, etc. None of that about Hasidic women.
8
How can one maintain friendships with parents who are both selfish and willfully ignorant to the harm they are inflicting on infants and the immuno-compromised? I had two friends that didn’t immunize their children after having all of the facts and we are no longer friends. My toddlers are now fully protected but I would find it difficult to maintain friendships with people that I find morally repugnant.
32
These parents, those who fear for the worst for their unvaccinated infants, must blame the ignorant ones that have caused this crisis. Yes, it is appropriate here to really place blame for blame is due.
Parental abuse of a child occurs when a parent knowingly causes harm to their child. Non-Vaxer’s are, based upon overwhelming evidence spanning many decades, child abusers; not merely for their own children but for those who will suffer as a result of a disease which should be extinct. We are not talking Ebola here; we’re talking measles and every parent who has ever taken their child to a responsible Physician has been told of the consequences of non-vaccination.
Yes, I am outraged. Non-Vaxers are a public menace. I have no sympathy for them but much for those they sicken due to their negligence. Sorry, but you SHOULD feel great guilt and you SHOULD do everything in your power to prevent this from ever happening again. Life is enough of a crapshoot without Polio, Measles, Mumps, Rubella and all the other diseases that we have succeeded in controlling.
GET OUT THERE, YOU SCOFFLAWS AND NEGLIGENTS AND CAMPAIGN for disease prevention. Your efforts may very well save your own child’s life some day.
20
"People have gotten a little selfish"? A lot of people have turned into selt-centered babies themselves--I don't want to and you can't make me.
9
People you know who don't vaccinate their children are not your friends.
Just because they abuse their children should not mean that you give them permission to infect and possible cripple yours.
And others.
By not shunning them you give them tacit approval for their
anti science beliefs.
These fools don't have the right to harm those with compromised or non existent immune systems.
Asking someone if their kids shots are up to date is no different from asking someone about their history before becoming involved with them. Because your family is about to be involved with theirs.
No clear answer, pass.
17
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews are against vaccinating their children. This is the result of their meager education in math and science. New York State has allowed their schools to downplay secular education to focus on religious studies. People with scant understanding of math and science are more gullible to the anti-vax movement.
10
@ann
I know it is fashionable for the mob to turn on the ultra-orthodox, but your information is incorrect. Most of the ultra-orthodox vaccinate. In fact, they are very very often more deferential to doctors because they feel like they don't know better. (That's not to defend the education they get - it's to correct your comment)
We have seen that anti-vaxxer sentiments don't discriminate by education. Case in point: Silicon Valley's high vaccine rejection rates.
3
Naturally people who aren’t knowledgeable about medical necessities depend on their physician; that is rational behavior. What apparently needs to be added to the school curriculum is the decades old medical publication that concluded autism is not linked to vaccines
2
This article is most interesting because it is from the area I was born, raised, and raised my family in. I am of the age, 61 when there were no vaccines. Mumps, measles, chicken pox, we just got the diseases. Moms used to bring all the kids to play when one got chicken pox so we all got it to get it over with. Vaccinate your kids but don't freak out if they get one of these diseases.
5
I had an older nanny when my daughter was young. She was old enough (born in the 1920’s) to remember not having vaccinations available for the preventable diseases. She was as pro vaccine as you could find. The oldest child of a large family, she had suffered through many quarantines and even held her baby sister while she died. Her mother had given her the baby to tend while she went to rest after being up all night. She was of the opinion that the anti-vaccination folks were lucky to have not enough experience to know better, but quite wrong nonetheless.
11
@Jerry What you're describing is called "survivor bias." It's a type of logical fallacy.
You survived, and so did everyone you know about.
Because the kids who became deathly ill or had long-term medical problems or even died due to these diseases are unknown to you, you are telling the world they didn't exist.
They did.
8
@MLChadwick: I agree that we should be aware of when survivor bias enters into our reasoning. Still, I think I would have known if other kids my age were dropping like flies from measles, mumps, and chicken pox, and I would remember it now. The question is whether a parent should freak out if their child gets one of these diseases. Maybe you think Jerry is mistaken about this, but is the level of moral disapproval you give to his opinion really warranted?
These articles forget the babies that can’t get vaccinated because of other issues in their lives. My son had to delay some vaccinations because his father was dying of brain cancer and of my son had the live vaccinations, I’d have to separate them for 2 weeks. Two weeks was a substantial amount of time when someone is dying. Days after my husband died, my son had his catch up appointment in the middle of my grief. Because I knew it was what I needed to do.
16
There are thousands of vaccine injured children and over four hundred deaths from the MMR reported to the VAERS system established by the Federal Government. Over four billion dollars has been awarded to vaccine injured persons and families. The CDC website explicitly states that no one should get the MMR if they have a parent or sibling with autoimmune diseases. Many people who refuse to vaccinate already have one vaccine injured child. These people were once pro vaccine. We should all be pro safe vaccines. But we need to acknowledge the very real risks that they pose to an infant. There are side effects. Many can be devastating. But the vaccine manufacturers are protected from lawsuits by the Federal government. They therefore have no incentive to produce safer vaccines.
5
@Lisanne If that were even true, which it is not, then four hundred deaths is far, far less than the number that would die of those diseases.
Stop threatening the lives of my baby grandchildren.
13
People who refuse to vaccinate themselves or their children should not be allowed to participate in society - no schools, no government benefits, no health insurance, no air travel, and on and on. This is how we treat criminals because criminals, like anti-vaxxers, are a danger to society. I know this isn’t enforceable, but as a physician and a pregnant woman, this is how I feel.
13
If you have to take your infant somewhere, cover their face. You can find surgical masks for infants but it's probably better to just cover their face with a light blanket or cloth.
I will wear one when visiting someone in the hospital for my protection and for the patient's protection.
Do you know what the size of these viruses is? And if you don’t know why I’m asking, no, a blankie or paper mask is zippo protection.
5
@Christine How well does that work for these viruses?
2
No one should have the right to maintain colonies of dangerous disease-causing microbes, unless they are researchers trained in a acceptable safety precautions.
Exposing the public to those colonies in the name of personal freedom, freedom of religion, or just plain selfishness is unconscionable.
8
One of the projects i'm working on for finals this semester is on vaccination and policy analysis. Its a shame we have so much misinformation that is causing people to put themselves and their families in harms way. I got into public health because I wanted to protect and help people live healthy lives. However, it seems that people are determined to send us back to when there were no options but to get sick and die. There was a huge drop in deaths from infectious diseases in the 20th century. Seems like we want to go back to that. I shouldn't be an epidemiologist that is working on combating measles that was declared eliminated from the US in 2000. We could be continuing to improve our health but instead its the same battles for no good reasons
10
I wouldn't want my infant to get sick, but parents should put this in perspective. When I was a kid there were no vaccines and we all caught chicken pox, measles and mumps. No one died, and far more kids caught it than the total affected by this entire outbreak nationwide. I just don't think this is the biggest risk facing infants, or anyone.
5
@Roberta. While you’re right that it has to be put into perspective, kids actually did die of these diseases when you were a child. And, those children who cannot be vaccinated in current day are the children who are most vulnerable to complications.
What should be put into perspective is that we still have a very low incidence of measles in this current outbreak compared to Influenza. And Influenza definitely kills. I wish some of the hysteria over measles would translate to Influenza and encourage people to get their flu shots.
7
@Roberta No one died? Then you and your circle were lucky. Measles is a potentially fatal disease.
7
@Roberta -
"No one died,"
That is not true. People died, and are dying, from such diseases. Some who survive have permanent handicaps as a result.
Please don't spread such lies.
12
Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children are committing child abuse, not only on their children, but on others’ children as well. They should be fined at minimum and referred to social services for evaluation of their fitness to be parents.
11
Maybe it is worthwhile to point out that as per CDC travel recommendations (https://www.cdc.gov/measles/travelers.html) it is considered save to administer the measles vaccine at 6 months. Maybe this is interesting to parents that live in areas with active outbreaks. The only caveat is that a second dose is necessary at 12 months. The reason why the vaccination is typically done at 12 months, is that immunity may not be complete or long lasting. I had my 8 months old vaccinated before going on a trip abroad and the pediatrician recommended it.
3
Children as young as six months of age are eligible to receive their first measles vaccine in an outbreak.
Parents who do not vaccinate their children should be shunned and avoided and ridiculed.
1
People are making no sense and acting like hysterical people crying, "the sky is falling, the sky is falling".
People scream vaccines are safe. That is not true. They are relatively safe. If they were safe they would be sold over the counter and would not require any medical training ro come with a list of possible side effects that include death. Go to the CDC website and read all about the vaccine related deaths just in my lifetime and it gives one pause.
Now, how many kids die every year from peanut butter? Are we screaming to shut down Skippy and fine a parent who makes peanut butter cookies?
The greatest threat to your child will be someone texting while driving. More people die from auto injuries than anything else in this country. Maybe we should quarantine anyone who uses a phone? Or has a driver's license?
But its more realistic to think that a parent will be texting about measles vaccines while driving their kids around.
4
@tom harrison -
"If they were safe they would be sold over the counter and would not require any medical training ro [sic] come with a list of possible side effects that include death. "
You're kidding, right?
I take multiple medications. They are safe. But they require a prescription from my doctor. All medications will have some side effects, and those lists must include ALL, no matter how rare.
11
@tom harrison "Whataboutism" isn't a valid argument, Tom.
Peanut allergies are not communicable. It's apples and oranges. Yet you keep bringing it up, as if it has anything to do with they subject at hand.
10
That’s a terrible analogy. Refusing vaccinations isn’t like eating peanut butter. It’s like running through the streets, jamming peanuts up the nose of everyone you meet and not caring that some of them will be allergic.
8
My son had his three year checkup this week and his pediatrician recommended he get his booster shot a whole year early, just in case this outbreak continues to grow "the way we think it will." I'm in disbelief of the blatant disregard for science in this debate... there is NO scientific link between autism and vaccines. There is plenty of scientific data about how contagious and dangerous measles can be, especially for the vulnerable populations. All of you anti-vaxxers think you're so much smarter than everyone else, and you're actually just risking people's lives.
14
Has anyone here ever seen a six month old baby get measles and die of it?
The old and the young are the most likely to get a pneumonia.
I have.
I’m a pacifist by nature, I forgive a lot, and what I can’t I simply forget, and as I have grown older, I’ve learned that hate has no room inside of me.
But... anti-vaxxers provoke the worst form of contempt inside me for their perfidious behaviour.
I, as a physician, find this perpetuation of ignorance and what their choices are doing to the general population, abhorrent.
26
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I have also seen children die of measles pneumonia and hemorrhagic varicella (chicken pox) and have treated severely disabled kids and young adults with post-measles encephalitis. As a physician I am amazed to see the amount of comments based on lack of knowledge -- to put it mildly. As a parent, I am outraged that these people voluntarily choose to increase dramatically the risk of their children suffering from these devastating infectious diseases.
9
It's called criminal child neglect. Not too different from something like leaving your child out among a bunch of bears -- perhaps unlikely the bears will attack, but if they're super hungry bears, watch out, 'cause your baby will make a tasty and quick meal for a starving adult bear.
5
Strict quarantine. That's the answer. Outbreak? You don't want the vaccine? We'll assume you may be a carrier then, please stay in quarantine. If this we Ebola we wouldn't be messing around. Measles is still serious, for all ages not protected.
5
My elementary school would not enroll children who did not provide proof of vaccinations (I still have my vaccination booklet.) There was no exemption, although I am sure that arrangements were made for children who could not be vaccinated due to medical reasons.
It’s pretty straightforward. No vaccination, no public school. I doubt that very many anti-vaccination parents are willing to homeschool.
12
Cool that you saved it. If you don't want to hand it down to your family's next generation, consider donating it (perhaps with a tax write-of?) to an appropriate museum or university library.
5
I have worked in many healthcare systems. In every system, all direct care employees (nurses, medical students/MDs, therapists, etc) needed to prove that they were immune from measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella among other diseases. We don't take your word for it--a positive blood test must be produced. If you do not have evidence of immunity, you must accept the vaccine(s) or you don't work. It's a condition of employment. It's a public health issue. As healthcare professionals we need to protect the public. Period.
I imagine many of these anti-Vax parents would want their kids to go to medical school /work for top flight hospitals. Won't happen if they don't get vaccinated.
34
And in order to volunteer at some public schools and non-profit agencies, such as those that care for children or elderly or provide counseling, one must prove no active TB, which requires a test that introduces "a foreign substance" as one anti vaxxer commentator called it, into one's arm. That or undergo an x-Ray, which exposes one to sometimes damaging radiation.
8
Let’s do a little “Epidemiology for Dummies”.
Let’s define an infectious contact as a contact between an infected person and another person - transferring enough infectious material to infect that person (unless they are protected from being infected).
Let’s define a non-protected person as someone who can indeed become infected from such contact because they are not protected by vaccination or natural protection (such as having been previously infected).
An epidemic occurs when every infected person has an average of more than 1 infectious contact with a non-protected person.
If 50% of the population are non-protected an epidemic will occur as long as infected persons on average have more than 2 infectious contacts (before they die or are cured). If 5% of the population are non-protected an epidemic will occur only if infected persons on average have more than 20 infectious contacts (before they die or are cured).
You fight epidemics by reducing the number of infectious contacts. That is done by identifying and isolating infectious people (reducing infectious contacts) AND by reducing the number of non-protected individuals in the population (to increase the number of contacts needed for the epidemic to initiate/continue).
There are individuals who have no choice but to be non-protected (including babies). Those people depend on the rest of us ensuring that we are protected. The current epidemic of Measles is the result of sociopaths who choose to be non-protected.
33
I'll never forget our first pediatrician's visit. A mom walked in with her little ones and told them - "See that - that's a brand new baby and you are going to keep your germy selves away from her." She them gave me a big smile. People who don;t vaccinate - not so much. Frankly, they should be excluded from society as much as possible.
14
We're talking about a group of people helping a nearly eradicated disease wreak havoc on an incredibly vulnerable population in the name of their "religious beliefs". If this were being done by ISIS, we'd call it biological warfare.
55
I recall assertions that Putin's Russian government had a hand in spreading misinformation about vaccines and in destabilizing Ukraine to the point that ensuring sound public health practices were consistently and widely followed and thus it became the source of much of the current outbreak. If this is in fact true, perhaps it is indeed a form of indirect biological warfare.
7
Gullibility in the case of antivax zealots is akin to gullibility in the case of those religions pushing divine beings, spirits and saints. Belief in unproven claims in one sphere sets one up for a too easy adherence to belief in unproven claims in another. Both can be dangerous to physical and social health.
3
Anti-vaxers are selfish. They are causing real harm and injury to babies too young to be vaccinated and to those who are immunocompromised. If you don't believe in vaccines, stay home. Don't subject others to your foolishness.
We shouldn't have to be paranoid about being in public places.
16
Our culture emphasizes individualism to such a degree that some people may not appreciate how their choices impinge on the health of others. This is one of the reasons why some prioritize their own personal beliefs over the science that protects the community. Herd immunity keeps our children from getting sick. It can only be achieved through sound public health policies like the elimination of personal belief exemptions for vaccines. Lawmakers have a duty to protect their constituents and keep them safe, especially children. Fear does not give people a right to make the world a more dangerous place for our children.
SB276 currently before the CA Legislature is an opportunity to reinforce California’s leadership in public health policy and protect California’s children, expectant mothers, babies, and those people in our communities with suppressed immune systems. Lawmakers have an ethical imperative to allow science and factual discussion to guide the policy process. Vaccines save lives.
16
Just retired from teaching elementary school after 20 years. Our policy was: no school until vaccine records were submitted. People may choose, but there should be appropriate consequences for dangerous choices. Same thing for child care!
21
These parents ARE trapped by the non-vaccinated. The law needs to come down really, really, really hard on non-vaccinators. Enough with this whole "rights" thing. Your rights end when your actions (or lack thereof) threaten the very lives of others. Welcome to the cost of being in a society.
27
Not defending anti-vax ideas, but what you end with is also not without qualifications, and the crafting of any legislation or government rule requiring vaccination (not just requiring it for participation in a particular job or school) should carefully navigate around certain unintended consequences or implications of such laws.
Hyperbolic, maybe, but what if by driving your car across an intersection would stop an out-of-control bus or semi from running into and over a group of people -- should the government require you to drive your car into that intersection? Or, (too much) closer to home for a growing number of Americans, if a student or teacher (or person attending a religious service) happens to be standing on the inside of a closed classroom or prayer hall when a would-be mass-murderer starts shooting at the door, should our laws *require* that student/teacher/worshipper to remain at the door, perhaps absorbing multiple bullets, in order to help save others in the room? It would be a phenomenally courageous and loyal and highly laudable thing to do, yes; but would we want the law to require it and to penalize someone who failed to stay and block the entrance of the gunman and/or all those bullets?
Should the government require people to use contraceptives or to be sterilized in order to keep population in check? Or mandate sterilization or abortion for people with intellectual disabilities (which happened in US not long ago)? Or require maintaining a pregnancy?
2
This is a classic tragedy of the commons situation which an individualistic society is never good at, especially when the costs of personal decisions are not borne directly by the decision makers.
One way to solve this is with an anti-vax tax. You don't get vaccines? You pay.
And the money can be then redistributed to either everyone who does get vaccines or in a fund to pay for the treatment of those who got sick because they can't get the vaccines for medical reasons.
10
I’d love to see a story from the Times about the anti-vax communities. Is their position changing now that nearly 70 kids have been hospitalized with the measles? Do they still believe the dangers of vaccines are greater than the dangers of these illnesses. How do the anti-vax parents of the most vulnerable (infants and those with compromised immune systems) feeling living in communities with large unvaccinated populations?
8
@Julie Unfortunately, when people feel attacked, they usually double down. California had a fatal whooping cough outbreak a few years ago. Studies showed that it did not change the minds of any anti-vaxxers.
6
@Julie - they would never admit they are wrong. Just like those who voted for Trump but now regret it will never admit it.
8
@A @Igr - sad that egos Trump (pardon the pun) progress.
2
Never forget that pretty much all anti-vaxxers were vaccinated themselves (because vaccine non-compliance wasn't a "thing" 25+ years ago). And pretty much all of them suffered no ill effects whatsoever, on top of being fully protected by diseases that until very recently were eradicated entirely.
Hey anti-vaxxers, want proof that vaccines are safe? Look in the mirror.
48
@Igr I am not sure this is true. I'm nearing 40, and a lot of my cohort of children of hippies were not vaccinated.
Working in childcare, I have had many parents who are very nervous in even bringing their infant children into the centre, while dropping off their older child for day care. One parent, a physician on maternity leave, stated it is safer to leave her 3 month old child alone in the car, then to bring her in the centre and risk exposing her to a harmful illness. She was very much annoyed that she could not at least glimpse the number of children in our centre who are not vaccinated. Although to not vaccinate your child, is your right, the fact your child isn’t should be made public knowledge. ... also perhaps a much longer and paid maternity leave system should be encouraged in America. Here in Ontario the physician worried about exposing her 3 month old is still able to stay home with her child until 12 months of age, limiting the child’s exposure 100 fold over the 3 month old child in New York being brought to a childcare centre daily.
14
Not sure the doctor was correct about leaving infant alone in car. She could have been charged with child endangerment in the US, where young children left alone or with legally incompetent others (young sibling, adult with marked dementia) have been kidnapped from the vehicle, exited the vehicle without the adult's/parent's knowledge, been disabled or died from heat stroke or hypothermia, or, had the vehicle start rolling away (slipped out of gear, parking break fail...) with only the young child in it and obviously not able to control the vehicle.
1
@Caitlin B If people's vaccination status were made public, it would be a violation of HIPAA laws AND a slippery slope!
3
@Caitlin B Maybe thing are different in Canada. When I was pregnant, I called doctors offices and was able to find out if they saw anti-vax families. I would only bring my newborn to a waiting room where they wouldn't be sitting with a bunch of urchins who had no immunity to whooping cough or measles. Every doctor's office I talked to was sympathetic, forthright, and informative.
The same with daycare. I called centers and chose one of the ones that said, "Oh no, honey. We don't let those people in here."
I encourage all parents to do the same. You can protect your family and - as an added bonus - hopefully bankrupt any doctor or other business that caters to the anti-vaccine crowd. (Of course, medical exemptions are another matter. Kids who can't be vaccinated have even more of a right to safe medical care and safe child care!)
5
I had measles (pre-vaccination days) at 10 months, and my 24 month-old brother got them at the same time. We both developed severe ear infections (among other complications), and it was apparently an awful time for my poor mother. I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to inflict that on their kids.
22
Vaccination should be legally required of all who can be. Medical requirements should be the only reason for exemption.
19
This article reminds me of what a terrifying experience it is to contemplate the health of your own child in an imperfect system. I hesitated to vaccinate my own child because some advice published by the CDC indicated that she shouldn’t be vaccinated because of her medical conditions and previous adverse reactions yet other more recent advice contradicted this.
It’s not always clear what is a medical exemption and what is not.
2
@Robbie
THAT is EXACTLY why you do NOT take your child’s medical health into your own uneducated hands. THAT is why you trust a doctor who went through years of rigorous training and who is actually qualified to determine if your child should or should not be vaccinated. YOU don’t know. You are not a medical professional. How can you really be sure you accurately understood what you read on the CDC site? If you are concerned, by all means be concerned, but for god’s sake, get an educated answer from someone who is qualified to give you real, scientific, professional information. And then do what they say. If I believed everything I read on the web, I’d already be dead from a flesh-eating, inoperable brain tumor that made my eyes pop out of my face and my head explode.
6
The most perverse abuses of any individual’s “freedom,” are those which, by their very nature, cause an innumerable number of other individuals to be deprived of the same freedom initially sought.
If everyone were actually free to do what they wanted, we would be living in an even more dystopian nightmare.
Vaccinate your children, for the love of God. It’s not crazy to want to maximize the number of children who can enjoy their childhood.
23
Some commenters are recommending that anti-vax parents should be financially liable for illnesses caused by their irresponsible choices, or that their insurance shouldn’t cover their child in the event that he/she gets sick from a preventable disease. I completely agree. However, personally, I would take it one step further: if it can be proven that a child of parents that “choose” to not vaccinate infects another (through DNA identification of disease strains, or some other method)—a child too young or medically unable to be vaccinated—resulting that child’s death or disability, those parents should be held *criminally* liable for their irresponsibility. The idea that parents can blithely ignore the real facts and science of vaccination and rely on everyone else to take their “perceived” risk for them is socially unconscionable and abhorrent. They should be held to account.
29
@Ms. Cat - I used to think vaccines were safe until I started reading the CDC's own website where I changed my mind.
In my lifetime alone, the CDC has over 56 confirmed cases of death from one vaccine alone. Three years before I was born there was an even worse vaccine catastrophe that you may not have read about called the Cutter Incident.
Ask yourself this. Who is telling you the vaccines are safe? Is it the same people who said they were safe back in 1955 and again in 1976? Is it the same people who have been saying that heroin and Oxycontin are safe? Heroin used to be sold over the counter in cough syrup by Bayer pharmaceutical and was promoted for children. That's right. One of the most trusted pharmaceutical companies on earth was pushing heroin towards children. And I should trust these same people???????????
Perhaps you would like to bring back mandatory sterilization in this country? I am epileptic and during my childhood, I could have been legally sterilized under Indiana law. The law was on the books until 1974.
3
@tom harrison
Millions of doses administered and only 56 deaths
over many years. Definitely safer than many things.
9
@ tom harris
It’s called scientific progress, Tom. Maybe vaccines we’re less safe in the 50s, but the medical profession learns from its mistakes. That is why we no longer prescribe Thalidomide to pregnant women. That is why we now know that smoking causes cancer. Just because something really awful happened 60 years ago, doesn’t mean that it will happen today. My mother smoked and drank through her pregnancy. Just because I turned out OK, should we not recommend against smoking and drinking for pregnant women? In the 60s, no one knew about the terrible risks my mother took with me as a fetus. Do you think she would do that now? Would you? And don’t forget, pregnancy is NOT a highly contagious disease. Measles is. All the more reason to to advantage of medical progress.
6
With a little hard work and cooperation, we can return to the living conditions and life expectancy of the Middle Ages in a jiffy! Outlaw those nasty vaccines and stop treating drinking water and sewage. Voila! The good old days.
23
You left out Drink Raw Milk.
4
The dangers posed by the non vaccinated to the general public warrants the application of a previous solution to this problem. Quarantine. If they choose to put the public at risk remove them from the public.
22
That may be the more appropriate response, rather than setting a precedent that the government is allowed to force legally competent people to undergo certain medical treatment/procedures. There was a time, not too long ago, when our government required certain classes of people to be sterilized. Let's not go back to those bad-old days.
(Written by someone who is fully vaccinated)
6
@ROI exactly
1
I was a few months old during the polio pandemic of the 50s.
I was told my mother took me and my brother to the countryside all summer, dad visited when he could.
I was told as soon as the vaccine started circulating there were long lines to get it.
I had a friend that was not so lucky and had partial paralysis on one leg, wore a brace.
What are these people thinking?
They place all of us at risk, especially children that are too young, have cancer or other illnesses.
Ignorant!
25
@Lili B - Perhaps they remember the Cutter Incident. The head of the NIH resigned over this incident when live polio was mistakenly given in a vaccine and over 40,000 children got infected - 5 died of polio.
3
@tom harrison Citation? Link? From a REPUTABLE source, please.
3
@ Sharoney
Sadly it’s true. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
However, the actual statistics are:
out of 200,000 children who received a vaccination that that contained an incompletely inactivated polio virus, 40,000 we’re infected with “abortive” poliomyelitis—which does not affect the central nervous system or cause paralysis. 56 people developed paralytic poliomyelitis and 5 children died. It also caused an epidemic in which a further 113 people we’re paralyzed and an additional 5 children died. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy. However, in the last 60 years, vaccination science has improved and is now MUCH safer. One’s pediatrician can knowledgeably tell one if there is a genuine medical reason that would exempt one’s child from being vaccinated.
For those anti-vaxxers who use this 60 year old tragedy to justify their irresponsibility, instead of focusing on the failure of the vaccine (which has been addressed in the current MMR vaccination), you should look at how contagious polio was. Just like measles. The vaccine is safe for those who are not medically exempt. To not vaccinate is not a choice, it goes against all reason and scientific fact. Shame on anti-vaxxers.
2
For anyone in New York (and NJ), you can look up the immunization rate at your child's school here. Check it out, and speak up at your school. Frankly i wish it were further subdivided to show the allocation between medical and religious exemptions. The latter should be banned. https://project.wnyc.org/vaccinations/
10
I wish all other states, cities, and school districts around the country provided such information.
4
@x
Great site! BUT, be aware that the vaccination rates reported are generally from 3-5 years ago. They are not current so not immediately helpful during this kind of outbreak, but they can give you an idea about the overall vaccination philosophy of the parent body.
2
Anti-vaxxers have a misplaced fear of essential vaccines, whereas the real issue lay with the very aggressive immunization schedule in the US, when compared for example to the EU schedule. The US schedule includes many vaccines that are considered optional in most other countries (rotavirus, for example, developed initially for countries with poor sanitation or the flu vaccine). The schedule also mandates that infants receive several vaccines at once. That can be a lot even for an adult. The US immunization schedule needs to better differentiate between essential and optional vaccines, and spread the jabs over more doctors' visits.
8
@AC
But there's no credible study to find that multiple vaccines at once are an issue - what has been found is that spreading them out results in more unvaccinated children, as the parents are overloaded with the number of doctor's visits they must make. The matter has been studied.
12
@AC The 'payload' in most current vaccines is lower than in the past, because of better understanding of how much is needed to set up someone's immunity, and frankly because it lets the companies get by with lower dosages. That said, the common thought is that the 'stress' from current vaccinations is minor and worth it for the protection provided.
7
Why wait until a baby is a year old? Maybe a booster will be needed later, but given the current epidemic it makes sense to vaccinate younger children. To the best of my recollection, the one year “rule” is relatively recent.
1
Because of fear, ignorance and political correctness there is a seemingly valid campaign for exceptions allowed for anti-vexers. Our political leaders fearful of seeming to oppose religious beliefs or because they wanted to appear to defend the constitutional rights of minority groups that opposed vaccines due to alleged religious objections, are greatly responsible for the current outbreak of measles. By being cowardly and interested solely in re-election rather than public safety they have endangered thousands of others.
What should be paramount is not objection due to religious belief or alleged curtailment of constitutional rights, but rather the right of parents of those too young to vaccinate and those who for legitimate medical reasons (allergy and reactions) cannot be vaccinated. The science of herd immunity is well documented.
The Internet too, with media providers who misunderstand that free speech does not include the right to yell fire when there is none, is also responsible for fear mongering and spreading of baseless, unscientific claims of autism and other reactions due to vaccinations.
As a Jew, I am also appalled at the fear and ignorance of the ultra-orthodox/Hasidic sects that also reject vaccination based on unfound religious claims or simply out of misinformation spread by aggressive fear mongers.
The baby boomers are the last of a generation that remembers measles. We know how deathly ill and deadly it can be. We need to remind everyone.
10
I wonder: Is the trump administration providing free vaccines to the children they have separated and, in some cases, "disappeared" from their families? If so, are medical doctors adequately screening those children for conditions that would contraindicated vaccination? If not (vaccinating or screening), why not?
4
They didn’t think of it. And, they’re likely vaccinated.
And, they’re brown.
Being "brown" should have nothing to do with whether or not a child gets vaccinated.
Given that many of the children's families were
impoverished prior to reaching the US or by the time they did, what makes you confident that most were already vaccinated prior to arrival?
My comment was not a judgement on asylum seekers or other immigrants. Rather, voicing a concern for the health and welfare of those people and, especially, the terribly vulnerable children.
3
It does for the Trump administration.
Just a reminder for adults - you should consider getting checked to make sure your MMR vaccine is still working. I was tested after I had my son in 2016 and I had no immunity to German measles (still was fine for measles and mumps). I got a shot as soon as they could bring it to the room.
85
@Sabrina - :) I have never been vaccinated. Unless you count that week when I had measles way back in the day like every other child I ever met in my entire childhood.
1
How lovely and lucky for you. Many other lovely children were not so lucky.
:(
5
@Sabrina So many lies around the safety & efficacy of vaccines.
1
None of my friends are anti-vax and if they were I'd dump them in a heartbeat.
But my baby also goes to daycare and Michigan allows for "philosophical" vaccination exemptions. I can't control what the other parents do and I also can't (nor want to) quit my job to wait until my baby's 1 year vaccination.
5
@Chicago in Tampa, re breastfeeding for immunity:
Breast feeding's great for immunity, but not every mom can breast feed or exclusively breast feed. Often these moms are needlessly and thoughtlessly shamed by others for feeding their infants formula, which just compounds postpartum mental health issues and other hardships of parenting an infant.
Numerous reasons legitimately interfere with breast feeding -- too many to list here. Some examples: being an adopting mother (no milk); having had mastectomy; other health issues with mammary or nipple tissue or the baby's mouth, sucking, latching ability; mom needing medication that unfortunately passes through to the milk, such as anti-epileptics, chemo therapies, numerous psychotropic medications, certain blood/heart related medications, etc.; and work/financial reasons mom can't maintain adequate milk production.
I had no idea how complex (and also wonderful) breastfeeding would be for my baby and me, or for some mom friends, but I can tell you that formula saved our babies' lives and, for some of us, our own as well. (No, I don't work for or am in any way connected to formula manufacturers, other than as a grateful parent. And one who understands the down-sides of formula feeding and marketing as well.)
Breastfeeding doesn't convey adequate immunity to the most serious contagious diseases. And even babies of moms who can't breastfeed deserve the benefits of herd immunity that wide-spread vaccination often can provide.
25
Including measles.
3
@parent
THANK YOU! your comment is so well-written and comprehensive. My child could not digest my milk. I breastfed for 3 months before we understood what was happening. 3 months of spitting and throwing up, refusal to nurse, screaming when nursed, not getting enough nutrition. As soon as a gastroenterologist put him on the right formula, I had a brand new, healthy, happy baby, who was then fully vaccinated according to the pediatrician’s recommendations.
9
Uncomfortable question:
Might laws requiring people to get vaccinated, especially if there are no other options , such as homeschooling one's unvaccinated kids, somehow be (mis)used to justify government interference in, or prohibition of, abortion of pregnancy?
1
@Pro choice
Well, since contact in utero with measles virus would lead to birth defects or spontaneous abortion, they clearly aren't concerned. Almost no one mentioned it in the whole 'what about people who can't get vaccinated' media debate. But measles infected populations would make for easy, if not as reliable, home abortions.
You're right, but I half thought that was what the anti vaxers wanted.
4
@Pro choice how?
1
Although I am a supporter of vaccines and of following the latest recommendations and guidance, the concept that the government would or could force vaccinations is shocking. The government forcing drugs into kids against their parent's consent. No, not in America.
9
@DRS Putting other people's lives or health at risk is a crime. Period.
21
@DRS Vaccines aren’t “drugs”, but how about chlorine in the drinking water? Are you against that? By living in a society, or in a social group, we are no longer 100% “free”.
Do you object to government-mandated speed limits?
17
@DRS,
At last count, 30,000 cases of measles have been reported in the Philippines alone, since the beginning of January. Let us backtrack to when some of our ancestors first came to America and arrived through the port of Ellis Island. Some of the passengers were placed in quarantine.
When traveling from the US to other countries, certain vaccinations are declared mandatory by the host government.
If you were a humanitarian worker on assignment to the Democratic Republic of the Congo where another outbreak of Ebola has taken place, you might be detained by public health officials at the airport on your return.
'No, not in America' may be right only because it has the means and measures of preventing and containing these epidemics and protecting the Public.
The measles virus is extremely virulent: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “you can catch measles just by being in a room where a person with measles has been, up to two hours after that person is gone.”
Hoping an expedient solution can be found for the protection of our babies, and it might help to place posters in plain sight with some information and clarification as to precautionary measures during this outbreak.
2
When I was in medical school and we were taught about measles, we were shown antiquated pictures from 30 years ago to familiarize us with them, and then given the caveat that we will never see it in practice. Fast forward 9 years later and I now have a four month old who I am scared to bring into many different environments because of how rampant the disease currently is in the New York area. This whole situation is inexcusable and outrageous.
27
@Abby Cooper - Its interesting that you are scared. Parents back in my day would take their healthy kids to the sick home to get them exposed and just be done with it already. It was considered a younger childhood disease because no one got to the 8th grade without having gone through measles, mumps, and chickenpox. No one.
I have seen far deadlier issues from a jar of Skippy peanut butter. If I get invited to a kid's house and want to make cookies, I panic over what to make that won't kill the kids. No joke. Have we shut down peanut butter companies over the possible threat? Checkout how many children die per year from peanut butter vs. measles.
1
@tom Harrison
You mean the old, and highly unreliable, safety-wise way of proto-vaccination?
Nah, we'll pass on that. Prefer to do it in a more reliably safe manner and one that doesn't needlessly put others in harms way. It's call the MMR vaccine. If you're a kid, you might even get a nifty sticker out of it.
9
@tom harrison Apples and oranges, Tom. Peanut allergies are not transmittable.
The reason "no one got to the 8th grade without having gone through measles, mumps and chickenpox" was because there were no vaccines available against those diseases.
Why do you want kids to get sick? Because you were allegedly deliberately exposed and you think getting kids sick with a potentially debilitating illness is a good thing? I don't get it.
6
Rockland County, NY is the epicenter of one of the nation’s largest outbreaks. Measles cases have been largely limited to members of an insular religious group. Many people in the county, especially those with young children, are limiting their shopping at big box stores and malls to the one day a week that they know members of the affected community will not be there. I kid you not.
20
@JL The Wakefield adherents (vaccines cause autism) appear to be targeting insular Muslim & Orthodox communities with their damaging theories; assuming these groups aren't trusting traditional news, or outright racism against them?
5
@Robert Halloran - Or maybe just maybe their grandparents talk to them about the eugenics program that went on in this country with forced sterilization. Indiana had that law on their books until 1974.
Maybe their parents tell them about the Cutter Incident when over 40,000 children were infected with a live polio virus in 1955. Oops!
Or maybe they are old enough to remember the people who died from the Swine Flu vaccine back in 1976.
Or maybe, just maybe, the same doctor who is telling them the vaccines are safe is the same doctor who told them Oxy's were okay.
1
It's a sad situation when Jenny McCarthy, whose claim to fame was being a nude model for Playboy, has more sway over many people than scientists who have actually studied vaccines for their safety and efficacy. All states should follow the example of Mississippi, which leads the country in vaccination rates because they don't allow parents to meditate about vaccinations, claim their religion doesn't allow it, or just can't be bothered. There are legitimate medical exemptions and that is all they allow. West Virginia has followed suit and probably grudgingly, so did California. New York and other states should follow ASAP. The health of the children of the US depends on it.
28
@S.L.Mississippi is also has the highest infant mortality rate in the country - maybe not the best example to roll out.
1
@phil- That is a separate issue. Many pregnant women do not seek prenatal care. There is a high incidence of smoking, hypertension, and obesity which are risk factors for perinatal deaths for both babies and mothers. The Legislators know their voters and they don't give them a chance to make the wrong decision about vaccinations.
6
No vaccinations, no health insurance coverage for these preventable diseases and their known complications.
Harsh? Yeah, well actions should have consequences. This is the least we can demand.
10
Harsh, and probably already written into insurance policies. But also dangerous to the public health. There are people who would then not seek medical attention (however idiotic that would be).
Do you want people with full-blown disease roaming around, even if it's just a hospital corridor?
4
Measles is one of many health hazards. Panic is a hazard too. Parents should assess the danger and act accordingly. The goal is to take reasonable precautions but not unreasonable ones. How you react sends a message to your children (not babies, of course). You want your children to be cautious but not irrationally fearful. It helps if you, too, are cautious but not irrationally fearful.
7
Demanding that people get vaccinated isn’t panic.
You want the door marked, “TRUMP AND CARAVANS.”
7
The pregnant people who still have the option should consider breastfeeding their babies, mother's milk contains antibodies and should help mitigate measles if it's in your area. I understand that not everyone has that option, this is just pointed out for consideration.
1
Jennie, please read the comments from medical doctors and others regarding the inefficacy of breastmilk as deterrent to very serious diseases.
10
I did. I breast fed. Heathy child. few colds, no ear aches and a very close bonding. Oh and i had to sacrifice drinking coffee for a year. more than worth it.
Super good for you and your baby, @Chicago, but if you haven't vaccinated your little one, do yourself and especially your child a favor: stay far away from anyplace a person infected with measles has been or thing they may have touched. It may be that, as lactation nurses say, "breast is best" -- but not for strong, reliable immunity to measles or other serious and highly contagious diseases.
3
Let's get some perspective. This isn't polio we're talking about, it's measles. When I was a child, less than 50 years ago, we all got measles, and it wasn't a big deal -- it was akin to chicken pox (oh yeah, no one gets that anymore either). Nearly everyone who gets measles makes a full recovery. It's not worth panicking over.
6
@Mag K Wasn't a big deal ? You have heard of Roald Dahl I presume...also men were rendered infertile by chickenpox so not a nothing either.
https://cheezburger.com/7613189/heartbreaking-roald-dahl-letter-urges-people-to-vaccinate-against-measles
11
@Mag K No. Every person is different in their response to a disease. Measles can be severe. Your statement is exactly what is not needed. The response should be to receive the immunization necessary to protect yourself, your children and the community in which you live.
15
@Mag K
And your response to pregnant women who miscarry because of exposure to measles? Or to the immunosupressed? Oh, well I could have gotten vaccinated but....
7
One solution to this problem is to have mothers fully vaccinated and then breastfeed their baby until the child can be vaccinated. The breast milk will pass antibodies to the baby.
1
@DocG except you can't get an MMR booster when you're pregnant or trying to conceive and often the measles immunity wanes despite a history of immunization -- the exact position I'm in, 6 months pregnant. I just have to wait and know that I'm not immune and unable to do anything about it for me or my baby.
8
It’s a shame that ones children should be sequestered due to the irrational fears of the anti-vaccers. The children who’s parents are causing this, are the ones who should be removed from the public. Until these children are old enough to make their own decisions, they will and should be held accountable for the sins of the parent.
2
Thanks to a very few people, millions are now somehow affected by the results of their self-righteous ignorant views. Thanks to a very few people, this disease was all but eradicated. Thanks to a very few people, who think that because other people abide by societal norms, they don't have to. That choice should not be left to ignorant people when peoples' lives and the lives of their children are at stake. The flaw here was making concessions for religious or ethnic reasons to appease dogmatic ignorance.
10
I have an infant but won't stay cowering at home because of this. I have nothing but contempt for the antivaxxers, but let's keep things in perspective. If you go out and keep living your life, the probability of your child catching the measles is still pretty slim. And even if he does catch the disease, the probability of it being severe is still slim. Yet people who are panicking now probably don't think twice about doing other routine but risky things with their children, such as riding in a car. Let's face it: risks are a part of life.
48
@Bob
Measles is extremely contagious. That's why it used to be such a given that every child caught it. So it's not that slim. The odds of severe may be fairly slim, but it's an unnecessary risk.
30
Certain risk such as driving as generally unavoidable. This one should be and that’s the issue.
22
@Pedro If you live in certain neighborhoods, the chances are not slim because measles is extremely contagious. And what do you mean by it not causing a problem? If you catch it, you become really really sick for a couple of weeks. You don't think that's a problem?
14
The few doctors who reject vaccination are harming patients. In California the number of medical exemptions in some schools is much higher than the number of people in the population that actually have medical conditions that require avoidance of immunization. Obviously a few doctors are issuing fraudulent exemptions. Those doctors need to be tracked down and their licenses to practice medicine permanently revoked for deliberately harming patients..
47
@Federalist
And laws are currently being drafted and passed - over the protests of the anti-vaxx community, to prevent fake medical exemptions, to oversee the doctors handing these out to anyone who pays them for one.
6
Parents of infants too young to be vaccinated should also consider that grandparents, particularly those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s, might not be immunized.
Such grandparents might have received a vaccine much less effective than the one available when they were children.
14
They may also have contracted measles naturally and have a very robust immune response as myself , my siblings and friends did. Measles can also be a mild disease process as well as one fraught with devastating side affects that can last a lifetime. Vaccines have a side affect ratio of 1:100,000 to 1-1,000,000. Many side effects from disease and vaccines are genetic and random. But the chances of the disease causing side effects are 100 to 1,000 times greater. Anti- vaccers like to gamble with their children and other children ‘s lives
8
@Karen
I wonder how far this be very afraid business will go. I'm that age, I had measles, and my child had immunity from measles through continued breastfeeding.
1
@Karen
Vaccine generally not indicated for those born before 1957. Of course, only way to know if someone is immune is to check titers.
2
Measles is a disease that is passed from person to person, and we give vaccines in order to break the chain of transmission.
People have a right to decline the vaccine. However, if they do so, they also have a responsibility to be accountable for their action. Not only should they be responsible for their own illness, but if they get measles, and give it to others, they should be held responsible for all of the people who became infected because they declined to break the chain of infection.
In other words, the people who decline the measles vaccine (or for their children) and get measles should pay the costs of the people who get measles who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
By the way, a study from several years ago estimated the cost of measles to be about $10,000 per case.
This potential liability might already exist under current liability law, and would be a sufficient deterrent to those who might decline the vaccine.
62
@Thomas Huffer M.D.
There are health insurance clause that stipulate if the insured participates in a high risk activity, the health insurance won't cover injuries resulting from the activity.
There should be a similar clause for those that decide not to vaccinate. If you do not vaccinate then insurance does not cover medical costs for illness resulting from measles.
30
@Thomas Huffer M.D.
Applying this logic should the parents of a 200lb 12 year old who was raised on fast food be liable for medical bills when their child is diagnosed with type II diabetes? After all, their own bad parenting led to the illness.
3
@Thomas Huffer M.D. But how would you be able to determine whom to send the bill to? Measles is not a car accident, it's a disease with an incubation period. You can't really know who gave it to you. And even if all the people in this country were immunized, would we not allow unvaccinated foreign travelers to enter the U.S.? Or would we bill them? Where would this end?
I'm a doctor in a clinic serving the underserved population of Los Angeles. Thankfully there is no hesitation to vaccinate in my patient population. But when I head back home, it's a different story. I don't worry much when my kids are playing in the playground because they are fully vaccinated, but I do wonder about the kiddos there who are less than a year old who cannot get the MMR vaccination. They are in the same vicinity of kids who go to the fancy neighborhood private French school who don't vaccinate their kids. It's a dangerous combination.
Wish people were more sensible and rational.
79
I've had red measles, German measles, mumps, chickenpox and polio. No vaccines were available. I got through the first four, but the fifth was the glitchy one. I ended up in an iron lung, paralyzed from the neck down, and hospitalized for 5 months. I've lived with a disability for 70 years. Amazingly, I'm told by antivaxxers that "natural immunity" is best. Really?
304
Not to mention the progressive disability and lowered life expectancy for people who were lucky to have survived their childhood bout of polio -- post-polio syndrome, as I'm sure you are all too aware (though many aren't). I had a few wonderful friends whose lives ended too soon as a result.
The message being that some of the diseases for which vaccines are available can, if contracted, continue to wreak havoc on the body long after acute illness as passed. Do parents who don't vaccinate realize this?
24
@Judith Beatty - My friend's aunt, now well into her 70s, contracted polio as a child. There were no vaccines available for her back then. While she did not suffer in an iron lung as you did, polio attacked her heart and it now operates at limited capacity. She has had cardiac problems most of her life thanks to this dreadful disease. Vaccines not only save lives, they improve the quality of one's life. I think about how much better my friend's aunt's life would be today - and she is a force of a woman who has made a good life for herself despite her chronic health problems - had she had a vaccine for polio all those years ago.
28
@Pedro is demonstrating one of the latest anti-vax talking points.
The anti-vax community likes to say that vaccines are unnecessary as well as harmful.
The latest twist is the "polio isn't real" argument. It has several variations, but the gist is that polio is actually rare or harmless. The old-time doctors knew nothing. Those kids were actually poisoned by DDT (or lead, or mercury)!
This argument resonates for people whose worldview says that viruses are crunchy, granola, healthful and organic while medicine is scary, industrial, dirty, and toxic. They feel that medicines are dangerous, dirty, and disease causing. They feel that viruses are clean and natural and promote good health and a strong immune system. They have chicken pox parties and praise measles as a rite of passage that let kids grow up healthy and strong.
It makes sense, if you understand that we all have a deep instinctive drive to avoid contamination and disease. For anti-vaxxers, the triggers got mixed up. They have never seen deadly infectious disease and thus do not fear it. They have seen environmental devastation in their lifetimes, and now they fear "chemicals" the way people once feared rotten food, bad smells, or lepers.
For anti-vaxxers, a natural fear of disease and contamination has been linked to "chemicals" - medicine included. It's why they fear vaccines more than polio. They just can't believe polio was really the culprit. They know (feel!) that chemicals are what make people sick.
18
The anti-vaxers should use their cell-phones and computers to look up some real science. They can look up the death rate, the cost of caring for the ill, etc. on their readily available technology.
I bet these same anti-vaxers use cell phones when convenient. They will use the technology of the ICU when their families are infected.
Unless they are willing to live in government-imposed exile, they are a menace.
27
Even before the whooping cough outbreak several years ago, which was also linked to parents declining to vaccinate kids in a timely manner or at all, I started backing away from friends I knew had kids without medical reasons not to vaccinate but were nonetheless completely unwilling to allow their kids to be vaccinated, often on "principle" (personal belief).
I couldn't abide their selfishness and nonchalance about helping save vulnerable others who legitimately had no reasonable choice and would've preferred to vaccinate but couldn't. Herd immunity was something to count on others to ensure, not something they had felt any responsibility to help maintain. So, as a matter of principle (and personal and public health protection), I reduced the amount of time I spent with them.
When, in the same year, a close friend was undergoing a harsh chemotherapy and radiation to fight off stage 3 cancer that took my friend by surprise, and another friend's toddler's immunity was compromised by lung condition, I started asking other friends if they had vaccinated their kids with the MMR and I stopped spending time with the non-vaccinating people. The reasons -- partly to prevent my more vulnerable friends & their children from catching something I might unwittingly introduce into their environment, and partly because the fact that the non-vac-by-choice (nvbc) parents knew about my other close friends' vulnerability, they still shrugged off any sense of responsibility.
260
@Pedro. Believe what you want. Spouse and I rec'd the updated MMR with NO problems. Fear-mongering that harms the innocent is irresponsible.
25
@Pedro: Confirmed by whom? Which older version? Please provide scientific evidence if you are going to make negative assertions about vaccines.
While the pertussis vaccine does not confer 100% protection, there is plenty of evidence of that appropriately vaccinated people have less severe symptoms and fewer complications related to pertussis. For example:
Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 65, Issue 5, 1 September 2017, Pages 811–818.
17
@Mom
The whooping cough scare happened because the newer vaccines were less effective than the older ones and the protection from vaccines given long ago had waned. It’s incorrect to blame those whooping cough cases on ppl refusing to vaccinate their kids in a timely manner. It may feel good to have someone to be angry at but in this case there is no one to blame.
4
Should vaccinated (as opposed to immunized) people also stay out of public places during an outbreak?
The CDC lists the effectiveness rate of the measles portion of the MMR vaccine as one dose at 93%, two doses at 97%, so while it seems they'd be less likely to get and transmit measles, they still can.
My question to those who are advocating that unvaccinated children/people stay at home during an outbreak (assuming they continue to choose not to vaccinate, and barring that being a government requirement): if 1 out of 14 vaccinated folks (1 out of 33 for multiple doses) can also get and transmit measles, wouldn't it be safer to eliminate all the risk by having every potential carrier out of public spaces?
3
@Torsti Rovainen That's what herd immunity is, the 3% who have been fully vaccinated but don't receive immunity vs. the 100% of those who are not fully vaccinated who don't have immunity. It's not the 3% who are causing the public health issue, it's the 100% of those who haven't been vaccinated at all who are. Get it now?
5
@Torsti Rovainen
The risk is much lower. 1 out of 33 is a much lower risk than 9 out of 10. If that risk is still too high for you, of course, you should stay out of public places.
You make an interesting distinction between "vaccinated" and "immunized." Not sure what you mean. Are you contrasting the somewhat lesser immunity a person gets from vaccination to the somewhat greater immunity a person gets from surviving the wild disease? You should know that even contracting the wild disease does not confer life-long immunity on 100% of all survivors. I don't know the numbers for measles, but I can point to another comment on this web page where a person describes losing their immunity as a result of an immunity-related disease later in life. I personally know at least one person who contracted wild chickenpox as a child, twice.
I will note just for completeness that pediatricians do routinely advise parents of newborns to avoid public places, especially during winter flu season, because the potential harms are so much higher for newborns. How long a newborn is advised to stay out of public places varies depending on circumstances (including what is circulating in the community).
2
@Torsti Rovainen
If everyone vaccinated with the recommended 2 doses, the vaccine's less than perfect efficacy rate wouldn't matter because herd immunity would be established. Herd immunity does not mean 100% immunity; it usually means a community has somewhere around 90 - 95% of its population immune. That is enough to either eliminate the virus or confine it to a few isolated cases should it be introduced into the population.
That's why the decision not to vaccinate is different from most other parenting decisions, in that it affects everyone in the community, not just the non-vaxxers.
5
Boy, do I understand their anxiety. I was six weeks old in 1950 and came down with whooping cough — a disease without a preventive vaccine in those days. My mother told me I might have picked up the disease in my pediatrician’s waiting room. I spent two months in a children’s hospital and with subsequent respiratory effects my whole life.
Please parents and non-parents: Take advantage of the miracle of vaccines for you and others.
97
@J. R. Wakeland my mother got mumps from unvaccinated children in a doctor's waiting room at age 41. While she had had the disease in childhood, she was living with an autoimmune disorder and the result was pretty horrifying. I remember looking at my learner's permit and wondering if it was legal for me to drive if the person over age 21 in the passenger seat wasn't very conscious. Bottom line: people act as if vaccination is a personal issue - it isn't when you consider the collateral damage like my mother. I wonder how long it will be until people are sued for not vaccinating by people with infants and immune disorders who end up with serious damage.
53
@Multimodalmama
I agree, it would be too difficult to prove who transmitted the disease, but everyone who declines vaccination should be forced to buy expensive liability insurance to pay out settlements to everyone who becomes sick or dies from these diseases in the state they live in and all the places they visit.
7
@Multimodalmama
Are you saying she got mumps twice?
There are people who will believe anything as long as it fits their beliefs ,. Information that contradicts those beliefs
is totally ignored. Young children do not play nice . They cough and sneeze wherever and whenever . If these coughs and sneezes are the first symptom of measles or other communicable diseases a number of babies too young to be vaccinated or people on immune suppressing drugs can become dangerously ill. This danger is everywhere . In my small Canadian city , the number of school age children with
no or incomplete immunizations is staggering.
21
I would think the following is fair. People who choose to not be vaccinated or have their children vaccinated are libel for all costs associated with their choice. Recently, a child incurred an $800,000 hospital bill for their parents’ choice to not have them vaccinated. Family pays the bill.
55
Too many anti-vaxxers are fooled by false sources of information or feel they have special insight justifying their dangerous views. Partly, they are taking advantage of the current environment where most vaccine preventable diseases are rare. They ignore the fact that disease rarity is due to vaccinations. Public health can tolerate a few freeloaders but not whole communities in a highly connected world.
Measles isn’t as dangerous as smallpox, but it can still kill the unimmunized who are also weak, malnourished, or immunocompromised. It’s much more dangerous in the third world. As noted in the article, children under a year of age typically aren’t vaccinated due to residual maternal antibodies that might neutralize the vaccine. Giving it early is not harmful but it’s usually a waste when community risk is low. Public health authorities can recommend vaccinations down to 6 months of age if conditions warrant.
It’s worth noting that worldwide eradication is possible for many diseases. Smallpox is gone. We were close with polio and we briefly managed to eliminate measles from the Americas. Unfortunately, religious fundamentalism in Africa and South Asia have seriously hampered vaccinations in some communities. Using a vaccination program in Pakistan to help find Osama Bin Laden dealt a major blow to those efforts. Public health dollars are limited in poor countries and conflict zones. And Russian trolls reportedly stoke division in the West over vaccines.
26
Some people are so focused on their "rights" that they ignore the reciprocal responsibility they bear not to harm others by their actions. If people irrationally refuse to vaccinate their kids, then they should be required to home school their kids and avoid public areas.
One question I have for the irrational anti-vax people: do you or your children ever plan to travel outside the US? We know a young woman who very much wanted to go on a service trip to SE Asia with classmates. Given that developing countries can be a hotbed of diseases (e.g. polio, MMR, etc., DPT), she was at high risk unless she received all the vaccinations she had missed. The parents mindlessly said she, of course, would be fine without them, since she is healthy and strong. Fortunately, the young woman had more sense than her parents, took matters into her own hands, and got herself vaccinated.
40
@J. Your right to get vaccinated does not trump my right to refuse a foreign substance being injected in to my body. We all make sacrifices and compromises in society. Your logic, if followed can lead to some scary and Orwellian laws and regulations.
2
First of all, Rob, it's not your body - it's your children. I'll bet anything (since vaccine non compliance wasn't "hip" last century) that your parents vaccinated you and you are perfectly fine and well protected now. Pay it forward.
17
@Rob
Does a young baby's right to live a healthy life trump your refusing a vaccine? But then perhaps your life is more important than a mere baby's. The Founders of our country has a strong belief that the Common Good was to be desired, even when it may infringe on the desires of a few. Please read some history.
8
While getting into a heated debate may not be useful, I do believe that friends and family need to clearly communicate with the their anti-vaccination friends and family.
Explain, "Because of your choice not to vaccinate your children, you've put MY infant at risk of a very, very serious disease. And this means you are not welcome in my home and I will not socialize with you. Next time you want to take a risk, don't involve me or my family."
This anti-vaccine nonsense must stop and social pressure can help even when public health education fails.
66
I feel very badly for these parents. For them navigating a normal day of shopping, walking and trying to enjoy their lives must feel like driving around a freeway in a small sedan with clueless drunk drivers in Hummers potentially in any lane at any time. Because anti-vaxxers are no better than those driving under the influence — a danger to themselves, their passengers and any one they might crash into causing injury and death. It’s beyond my comprehension that we allow this dangerous, life-threatening behavior.
20
I was born in the middle of the baby boom and I can’t remember, as a child, ever seeing an infant. Welcome to the 1950’s.
9
@Jean Lawless
What an extraordinary observation. Now that I think of it, I don't remember seeing any outside of the home either? Infants (under the age of 12 months) were simply not schlepped around in public and taken everywhere like they are today.
3
Public health officials should be given the authority to require vaccinations for everyone except those who have certifiable medical reasons why they cannot be vaccinated. No other exemptions, religious or otherwise, because no one has the right, in the name of his or her own beliefs, to put others at risk.
229
@lydgate
Actually it should be an individuals right what they put in their body. There are risks on either side, of taking them, or not taking them. What people fail to realize is that more and more people are against vaccinations bc they personally know people that have been negatively affected by them.
Also, measles was declared eradicated in 2000. However, cancers, and autoimmune diseases are on the rise and kill hundreds of thousands, if not a million people per year, in the USA. So where you give up one disease, you trade it for another. Soon as polio, mumps, measles started declining, Cancer, auto immune diseases and neurological diseases have been majorly inclining. So where's the study saying vaccines hasn't been a major contributor to these other diseases we have?
I personally know people who have had no side effects to vaccinations, I've also known people who have had awful side effects, and then other people who have had their kids majorly altered bc of them. Everyone should be able to make their own risk assessment. I'd like to see a study done of people that have never been vaccinated vs people who have been, and the rates of cancer and other diseases between the two groups.
3
@lydgate California has done this. The anti-vaxers have simply found doctors who will write the medical exemptions.
1
@DH Then these doctors' licences should be revoked since any person in his sane mind knows more about medicine then this so-called doctor, apparently. I do believe in the right of choice but not in indangering others and the outbreaks are a clear sign that something drastic should be done.
8
Jill Dumme, you reference a time when your kids will be safe, and then you won't have to steer clear of your anti-vax friends. This time is never. As long as people won't vaccinate we will not have herd immunity, and those who cannot be vaccinated are forever at risk. I grew up in the 1950s unable to be vaccinated for smallpox. But my parents were reassured that since almost everyone else had received the vaccine, I was not at risk. And they were correct. My 5 year old grandson lacks immunity following cancer and transplant surgery. I wish my daughter and son-in-law could be as confident of his safety as my parents were of mine.
33
I’m not able to be vaccinated for measles. I became seriously ill as a child after the first dose of MMR vaccines, and couldn’t complete the course. I’ve tried again as an adult, and the same thing. I’m one of the very rare people who qualify for a medical exemption to this vaccination. Therefore my health is dependent on heard immunity and I’m frustrated at the recklessness of people who have put me and others like me at risk. I’m in my mid-30’s and hope to have a child in the next couple of years, but worry about the dangers of pregnancy now.
82
@Rushing
So, you've actually had two doses of MMR (you say you tried again as an adult)?
It sounds as if (a) you really are one of the people who qualify for a medical exemption, and (b) the vaccine that made you seriously ill might also have conferred immunity on you (unless the illness somehow prevented your immune system from responding to the active agent in the vaccine).
You may wish to have a blood test to confirm whether you have antibodies to measles, mumps, and rubella. You might have gotten some benefit out of the otherwise miserable experience you describe.
8
@Rushing
If you've had two doses, you should be vaccinated? Or did they test it with a too small dose for vaccination? I'm a bit confused.
I am a great believer in vaccines and have myself and my kids vaccinated fully.
@Rushing when I was in school, a friend of mine had a similar problem receiving vaccines. He volunteered to sign people in when the school had vaccination drives because he knew that making sure that everyone around him was vaccinated was his best shot at not getting sick.
5
Education may be useful for some of the alternative medicine doctors (chiropractors and others) who firmly believe vaccination is harmful. I know of at least three doctors, (one is highly a highly respected doctor for the Waldorf community, one doctor practices in Sacramento, and the other in Alameda). The alternative medicine doctors naturally share their anti vaccine beliefs with all their patients. I am not sure of all the reasoning but their objections are not simply the autism/vaccine issue, which is what everyone references as the problem. I think antivax doctors feel that if you get some of these diseases and fight them off, your immune system will be all the stronger/better for it. Is this taught at in the chiropractor schools? The young men and women graduates are perhaps too young to appreciate a larger picture?
Three years ago, when my husband contracted whooping cough from his grandchildren's family I was terrified, and ANGRY! This issue became very real indeed for me.
16
@Amy Jane I live in Austin and have gone to several chiropractors and none of them have exposed weird beliefs about vaccinations. Maybe its a West coast thing.
1
@Amy Jane, is the one in Sacramento a chiropractor?
I had two of the big three - measles and chicken pox - at the same time as a child. I was sick and did not leave my bed for two weeks and I still have some nice pox marks on my face to show for it. In my case, it could have been a lot worse. Let's pass legislation that basically prohibits avoiding vaccination unless there is a proven medical emergency.
43
I can understand how some parents, based on the nonsense and misinformation readily available on the internet about purported risks of vaccination, or based on prior bad experiences with vaccinations, may be reluctant to vaccinate their children. But here's the thing: Why should the neighbors of these parents or anyone else have to be concerned about their children contracting measles or other communicable diseases because these parents have a concern about their children suffering a complication from a vaccine? What makes the health concerns of these non-vaxxer parents any more legitimate than their neighbors' health concerns? But if non-vaxxer parents nevertheless insist on not vaccinating their children for whatever reason, then they have a moral and ethical obligation to quarantine their children (and themselves) from anyone else to make sure that they do not spread diseases that could be eradicated through vaccinations.
30
@Jay Orchard It doesn't take much contact with a passionate anti-vaxxer to understand that the only interest that motivates them is self-interest. Literally, they think their children are more important than other people's.
26
@Jay Orchard many diseases are transmissible before they are symptomatic.
2
Have I missed something in these comments? Where are the anti-vaxers and their "reasons" for not vaccinating? Please enlighten us, anti-vaxers.
33
@susan They don't enlighten, they obfuscate, insult and spread innuendo about the medical industrial complex and the importance of upholding the First Amendment.
17
@susan - they don't read the NYtimes. They read vaccineskill.org or other "reputable" news sources like that.
7
@Barbara
Geez, what happens when you meet someone who voted for the other party?
There should be some consequence for not vaccinating for diseases as dangerous as measles or polio - a fine, a loss of child tax credit, inability to enroll in public school, your and your children's name a matter of public record or all of the above. Because I wouldn't wish the measles on anyone, even the children of those who do not vaccinate.
58
@Syliva - My friend's husband has a cousin who is an anti-vaxxer. According to my friend, the cousin cannot enroll her three children in the public school district where they live as the district requires all students to present proof of immunization prior to enrollment. The cousin cannot afford to send the kids to private school, where her choice not to vaccinate them might be tolerated, and the last I heard she was home schooling them. This woman, like all anti-vaxxers, is simply fortunate that her children have not become critically ill with a serious illness that could cripple or, God forbid, kill them.
12
@Syliva
I go a step further. Some states penalize known HIV carriers who pass the illness on purpose to other people.
Should we penalize antivaxxers that cause serious illness or death to others or even their own children?
5
So why has the legislation banning religious exemption for vaccination stalled in NY, as the sister article to this writes?
Not vaccinating your own child, especially during an outbreak, is tantamount to child neglect/abuse. Allowing your child to spread a potentially disabling or even lethal disease to an unvaccinated baby is even worse. To any anti-vaxxers: your child will not thank you for this terrible, terrible decision once they're old enough to understand what you've done to them and how your decision turned them into a vehicle to harm others.
Yet, people make terrible decisions all of the time that could potentially endanger their dependents and others around them. That's why we have laws. Frankly, I think this outbreak and any deaths caused by it are on the heads of our greedy poll-obsessed politicians who are more afraid of a Twitterstorm than they are of a lethal outbreak of a preventable disease that may claim the lives of the most vulnerable in our society. It's their job to make the laws to stop segments of the population from doing harm to their children or to others.
36
@Megan Probably because the religious crowd votes and protecting their political power is more important than protecting vulnerable kids...
5
@Megan NYT reported recently that the legislation has stalled in NY because the legislature doesn't want to lose the votes of the Orthodox Jewish community.
2
We had our first child amidst the measles outbreak in Clark County, WA. What should be a joyous time was hampered as my wife is a public school teacher and her doctor’s office and the hospital she delivered in were sites of numerous exposures. Those who place the most vulnerable at risk through their own arrogance are contemptible human beings. I applaud the legislators and officials working to combat this public health and misinformation emergency.
92
These anti-vaxxers need a dose of pre-vaccination-era reality. So do a reality show. Put them on an island with an infected person. See who "wins." Sorry to be so harsh, and I'm not really suggesting this, but maybe a dose of horror would get through to them.
38
@Anonymous
Agreed. And tax them for medical costs. Since health care for the infected is so expensive, they should be taxed additionally for contributing to mounting health costs for the general public.
14
As in so much else today, the main problem is a lack of individual accountability. Whether it is the "masters of the universe" in the financial industry, Alex Jones and his Sandy Hook conspiracies, or the anti-vaxxers, they get away with it because there are no consequences for spreading their lies. Notice that, since Alex Jones was sued earlier this year, he says nothing about the Sandy Hook massacre and the child actors he claims were there. Unlike on the internet, in a court of law, facts still matter, and now Jones has to face the music.
It seems that the only way to rein these people in is to take them to court; if so, then the sooner someone sues these anti-vaxxers, the sooner we can end this imbecility.
39
When I was pregnant I discovered I wasn’t immune to Rubella; for some reason I’d never been vaccinated against it. I was told to avoid all unvaccinated kids; scary proposition. How on earth do you know who’s been vaccinated? I totally get the fears of parents of babies too young to vaccinate. Got my MMR after my child was born when it was safe to do so.
I have friends who are anti-vaxers. Impossible to shake their beliefs that vaccines are dangerous and the reason their child is so healthy is because they don’t vaccinate. That it’s been the other parents vaccinating their children and the resultant herd immunity protecting their kid seems to be beyond their comprehension.
The only answer seems to be to only allow true medical exemptions and that’s it. Plus, doctors need to be way more proactive in terms of figuring out who hasn’t been adequately immunized. Nobody noticed I hadn’t been.
71
@Greenie
'' I have friends who are anti-vaxers''
You do not have friends.
Would a true friend risk giving you rubella while pregnant?
11
@Lawrence
I can assure you that anti-vaxers don't understand this. It's a complicated head-set and they don't realize how much they are putting others at risk by their single-minded devotion to their own child. In truth, they are putting their own child at risk as well but they don't see this. Most of my friends are not anti-vaxers though.
2
The good news is that measles vaccinations are up. The bad news is that enough parents are still invoking their "right" to refuse to vaccinate their children, thereby reducing herd immunity. State legislatures are moving to rescind religious and personal preference exceptions to the requirement of vaccination before entering school. People who refuse to comply should face a substantial price for their personal choice -- exclusion from school or fines. State and federal health officials should graphically show the horror of small children dying or being permanently injured by this disease.
156
@Alan Mass they should also be required to purchase liability insurance and be held responsible should they be sued for damages by cancer patients, parents of infants, etc. They love to talk about personal choices - let's see some personal responsibility!
31
@Multimodalmama
Should the makers of the vaccines be held liable for side effects ?
At the moment they are not. And unlike other medical treatments, there is no follow up. That encourages a disregard for side affects.
4
@Multimodalmama. And then they can sue the person who got them sick, and then that person can sue the person who got them sick and so on? 🙄
Vaccination is a public health issue. Comply or face prosecution for assault or manslaughter.
32
@Fiffie, and major civil lawsuits.
3
Isn’t it true that new mothers who breastfeed pass their immunities on to the infant? If this is the case, baby is protected until vaccine is administered. What a beautiful gift!
1
@Diaz Read the article more carefully: babies acquire varying degrees of disease resistance from their mothers. Not all mothers were adequately vaccinated to begin with. An infant that gets little to no immunity from its mother is very much at risk. That's why it is so critical for everyone who can be vaccinated to be vaccinated: to protect infants until they, too, can be vaccinated.
42
While some antibodies can be passed via breastfeeding, 1) not all babies babies are breastfed, 2) babies don’t get their MMR until their first birthday. On-time vaccination following the recommended schedule is the best way to protect against measles. #VaccinesWork
35
@Diaz only certain types of antibodies pass through breastmilk (IgA antibodies) and they are limited to what is absorbed by the digestive system. The types of antibodies that protect against vaccine preventable illnesses do not pass through breast milk. Those antibodies are instead a consequences of pregnancy. All babies get passive immunities from mom (IgG antibodies) primarily during the third trimester, which includes passive immunity for things mom has been vaccinated against- that’s why they recommend a TDAP and flu shot during pregnancy. However, these antibodies wear off by amount 6 months of age.
31
I know parents of infants in Rockland County who had to beg their doctors for a first MMR dose at 6 months. They are livid. I mean they are just consumed with rage.
For many of us, anti-vaxxers are annoying or baffling or morally outrageous. For parents of infants or immunocompromised children, they are a direct and mortal threat.
The rage humans feel against anyone or anything that threatens our children is primal and overwhelming. It does not easily or quickly fade.
Ironically, anti-vaxxers probably feel a similar primal rage and terror. They have convinced themselves that "big pharma" has filled enormous needles with mercury and "toxins" and are teaming up with the police and FBI in a nefarious plot to give their children autism. They may be afraid of phantoms created out of their own ignorance, but that fear nonetheless makes it hard to reach them.
67
unfortunately people need to be given an incentive to care about the common good. I understand individual choice as well, but it is the government's job to figure out creative solutions. How about families who don't opt to vaccinate their children don't get the child tax credit? Instead that money is places in a fund for education and controlling outbreaks?
38
This makes me so angry. I am 6 months pregnant. I was vaccinated as a child, but found out at the onset of this pregnancy that the vaccine wore off and I am no longer immune. I am not able to get a booster until after my baby is born. Thus, I am forced to confront the risk of infection and the damage that it could cause to my unborn child when taking public transportation or even a taxi, going grocery shopping and visiting my doctor's office. My unborn child is completely vulnerable - and we had no choice in the matter. Furious with people who have made this choice for us.
227
There should be no exemptions from vaccinations, none. This puts all of us at risk. If politicians are worried about losing the votes of religious groups or any group, they are putting all their constituents at risk. Pass a no exemptions bill so that it becomes a non issue for both parties.
will vote according to
32
@Carole
There are people who are immunosuppressed who cannot take the vaccines (including infants under a year). They should be the only exception. If they were, the herd immunity would protect them. Religious and personal reasons should not be allowed.
36
@ExPatMX
Medical exemptions should also include those who are allergic or have other bad reactions to vaccines, as well as the immunosuppressed.
5
Getting basic vaccinations that have implications for broad society should be mandatory. If you skip, you get fined.
ALL schools should be required to provide sufficient evidence their student population is vaccinated. If there's a lapse, no more federal dollars until you fix it.
If you grow up and decide flu shots aren't for you, fine. Have fun with that.
Until vaccinations are required, there's always going to be an under-informed and vocal minority who claim "freedom" and push their beliefs on others to the determinant and danger of all.
41
Im a pediatrician. When the law eliminating all non-medical exemptions was passed in California, the number of vaccine skepticism and objections raised by new parents dropped dramatically. Children can no longer enroll in any school in this state without full immunization. People make fewer bad choices, when you take away the option for each to decide, themselves, what is good public health policy.
372
@CityTrucker
Just like it should not be OK to drive a monster SUV without at least paying the true cost of fuel and carbon emissions and some penalty for making the rest of society pay for your use of this vehicle. Add in cost of road wear and tear, cost of carbon emissions in building that 2 ton behemoth, additional parking space, being bill boarded on the highway increasing the chance of huge pileups.
The cost of scientific ignorance or second guessing by poorly educated or easily duped people should be paid by for those people .. and yes I know people with 4 year STEM educations who can't believe that higher C02 concentrations could trap heat in the atmosphere.
25
If your child visits a house of a friend, you can inquire whether there are guns in the house and, if so, are they locked up.
So, absolutely ask, "Are you and your children vaccinated?"
A measles infection may be less risky than a gunshot wound, but it is certainly far more likely.
77
@J Fogarty
If the answer is yes, how do you know it is the truth? If a person refuses to self-vaccinate or vaccinate their children, I doubt they would worry about lying now that there is a stigma attached to the anti-vaxxers.
3
They aren’t “anti-vaxxers ”.
They are pro-diseasers.
226
@Tom Clifford worse, many are hypocrites who are relying on herd immunity for their children not to get ill. I bet that if proof of immunity, which could be obtained by having the disease or getting vaccinated, were a requirement for school attendance, that these same parents would choose to vaccinate rather than allow their children to have the disease to prove immunity.
16
@Tom Clifford
That's too polite. I think pro-plaguers or pro-pandemicists is more appropriate since they are threatening public health and not just themselves.
15
@Tom Clifford what they are is free riders. If they lived in a third world country where diseases like this are still prevalent, they would be first in line to get the vaccine. All this hooey about religion and autism and whatever other nonsense they are spewing would go out the window. They are counting on others taking the "risk" so that their precious snowflakes don't have to. They enrage me.
16
My grandfather (born in 1920) walked with a limp for most of his life because of a relatively mild case of polio. His older brother died as a teenager because of encephalitis he contracted as the result of a disease for which a vaccine is now available, but wasn't then. These things aren't ancient history, they happened to people we knew (or would have known, if not for the diseases), not even 100 years ago. I don't have kids of my own but worry about my nieces and nephews (especially the one who is not yet old enough for the vaccine) and will shortly be getting a second MMR dose for myself (I was born during the 1970s when people typically only got one).
56
My wife is on immunotherapy for cancer. What about her and others who are in the same position? It's incredibly cruel that she is dealing with a life-threatening illness that can be exacerbated by selfish, irresponsible, scientifically-ignorant anti-vaxers.
333
@Frank Yes, when I saw the article title I thought, there are other large groups, people with immune suppression or disorders and cancer patients, who are endangered by anti-vaxers. I have leukemia, and cannot have a live booster shot. I've become even more isolated to protect myself, and that isn't good for anyone's health.
41
@Frank
I despise the reasoning of anti-vaxxers, but this line of reasoning isn't a suitable counterargument.
I'm sure there are more people with peanut allergies than with suppressed immune systems. Should we ban peanuts throughout society to protect those with allergies?
The stronger argument is much more general: the risks from vaccination are orders of magnitude smaller than the risks of contagion in an undervaccinated population.
Period.
3
@Len Arends
An allergy is not an illness, not a disease, and not contagious.
13
As far as I am concerned RFK, JR., Jenny McCarthy, Pres. Trump before he recently changed his mind, and any other anti-vaxxers REGARDLESS OF THEIR REASONS
(especially Measles) are:
ACCESSORIES TO MURDER!!!
As a med student and Pediatric Resident I saw children die from measles both pre vaccine era and after it came out.
132
@adara614 Don't forget Bill Maher. He is anti-vaxx.
2
I will add him to the list.
He never will be missed
4
We don't talk enough about how much vaccines have shaped the very nature of modern society. Only a couple generations ago it was expected that not all your children would live to be age 5. My grandmother lost 3 siblings to early childhood diseases. When we talk about older generations being colder with their children than we are today it was a self protection mechanism because you couldn't be sure which of your children would survive and around a quarter of them wouldn't. The reason why we don't have a history of early childhood education has a lot to do with the fact that young children had to be routinely quarantined like this. It wasn't until they were 6 that children could reliably leave the house for any period of time. I've seen some attribute the ability for women to work outside the house to vaccines ending these periodic long quarantine periods when children weren't able to leave the home. We need to talk much more openly about innumerable societal benefits we can attribute to vaccines as well as the multifaceted 19th century hell that the anti-vax community is condemning us to.
388
@LT You have added a very interesting perspective to the debate - vaccines' use as an enabler of women working outside the home. Never thought of it like that before but it makes sense. Of course, a lot of the "vax-skeptics" are right-wing conservatives who would love nothing more than pushing women back into the home.
52
@LT Agree wholeheartedly. Two of my grandparents lost siblings to diseases we now vaccinate for. One grandmother came close to dying of diptheria as well. The anti-vaxxers suffer from a dangerous strain of self-congratulatory narcissism that is a threat to us all.
72
@KH
Both my parents lost siblings that way. It cast long terrible shadows over their family lives, especially for my mom.
31
I do not know what I would do if my baby got the measles because someone I knew had refused to vaccinate their child. But I think it would be very ugly. And I would never, never forgive them
PS. I had the measles as a child. It was very, very bad, doctor visit every day to my house bad
40
This feels like “first world problems: the ultimate edition”. It’s amazing that people given a gift like this vaccine and others have instead chosen such a harmful and ignorant path.
195
@Sagar. Exactly. In other nations, parents will walk for hours or days to get their children vaccinated. Unbelievable that first world parents would opt to refuse an intervention (vaccination) that has helped to significantly increase life expectancy in America.
10
@Sagar Yes, but in the U.S. we have a high rate of vaccination. That means that many people can count on the herd immunity to protect their children, and it becomes a "choice" whether or not to vaccinate. And if--IF--someone's unvaccinated child becomes ill with a disease for which s/he could have been protected, the parent can choose to fall upon the vast protection of our health care system. There is a significant possibility the child will live through the disease. Chance of death is remote (remember the recent case of tetanus in Oregon where a boy contracted tetanus? And his vaccine-denying parents took him to the hospital, where doctors ended up curing him, after several months? They took him home, sans second dose of tetanus vaccine, and one million dollars poorer--medical bills which will probably be paid from taxpayer funds--but without any other vaccines, on the off chance he contracts any further preventable illnesses?). Parents who disbelieve medical science because of misguided faith or misinformation or snake-oil salesmen or whatever are very willing to throw themselves on the mercy of said medical systems when their children's lives are at stake.
5
@Sagar Alas, it is NOT a first-world problem. Anti-vaxxers in Pakistan recently murdered three nurses vaccinating children for Polio. Stupidity exists everywhere.
8
I don't maintain friendships with people who have anti-scientific beliefs. That's not compatible with my ethics, and so I say au revoir to those friends if all attempts at reasonable conversations have failed. This is particularly true with respect to anti-vaccination arguments since those actively harm other members of the community. People should take a stand in their social circles rather than agreeing to disagree amicably.
171
If they can, parents should live their lives while taking reasonable precautions. These precautions should include ensuring that all adults and children coming into the home have been vaccinated or had Measles before. Hunkering down for a year and avoiding all social situations will do more harm than good for the mental state of the parents and the development of the infant. I am absolutely furious at the selfish, narcissistic, and anti-scientific parents who made this situation possible.
46
@purpledog
Let all invitations have a little foot note saying "only MMP vaccinated or protected individuals are invited".
3
Anti-vaxxers who are found to have spread measles or other vaccine-preventable diseases should be prosecuted for at least negligence and held liable for damages.
163
This is so frustrating. We're expecting a new baby at the end of the summer in Brooklyn and while we'd have waited a while to bring them on the subway, waiting a year just isn't possible. It would mean not being able to get our older kid to school, and basically eschewing all human interaction until 2021 (including getting to work.) It's absurd and shameful that a small handful of people have impacted daily life in this way.
Plenty of people in this world are desperate for vaccines and here we let non-science, internet rumors and laziness let them go to waste.
161
@AB
Ironically, some doctors who believe in the "hygiene hypothesis" say that it's a necessary part of the development of an infant's immune system to be exposed to antigens. Children who grow up on farms, or at least with pets in the home, are less likely to develop asthma.
One doctor told me that there is a protein sequence found in horse manure which is also found on human immune proteins, and seems to be helpful.
However, in medicine, they look at the strength of the evidence -- randomized, controlled trials; associational studies, or merely doctors' best opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/well/family/too-clean-for-our-childrens-good.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/sunday-review/invite-some-germs-to-dinner.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/educate-your-immune-system.html
The evidence for the hygiene hypothesis is still kind of low and speculative https://www.pnas.org/content/114/7/1433
I would not recommend to parents that they let their infants roll around in horse manure (on the Central Park riding trails, for example) until stronger evidence supports it.
I was born in 1948 so my childhood predated the vaccines and I did have measles as a young child. I remember how terrified both of my parents were at the time. I don't understand parents who are going to go about their regular routine and yet have an infant at risk, don't know if that's selfishness or denial. As to parents that refuse to vaccinate their children or themselves you may have to live with consequences for which you can never forgive yourselves.
142
@Steve
I understand parents who have an infant at risk and go about their regular routine. If they don't go to work, they will lose their jobs. They can't stop buying groceries or going to work. They are doing the best they can.
As for the anti-vaxxers - I wish I could be as optimistic as you. You think they would never be able to forgive themselves if they maimed or killed a baby by giving that baby measles before the baby could be vaccinated. I think that as long as it's not *their* baby, anti-vaxxers will forgive themselves just fine.
110
@Steve the problem is that others may have to live with the consequences of their decision. that's what is so appalling about the whole thing. people treat this as an individual or even private decision and it is very much not that. My parents both had measles too, I have a young child, and I am appalled that the community chooses to regress, most particularly people my age whose parents probably often had measles and who are now choosing to make their own children more vulnerable to a disease that should be close to extinction.
37
@Steve I was born in 1957 in India. I did have measles. It was difficult for my parents to make me take medication (don't ask me what they were, that was so long ago in 1964 or so, certainly not Human Immunoglobin) but I wasn't a great patient. It tooks 2 weeks at home - missing classes (of course I was only 7 so it was not a big deal). Then my brother - age 3 got it. They were terrified. The neighbors got it - all were very anxious.
I came to this country and my son (age 32 now) got all vaccinations. Thank God I did not have to face the same anxieties as my parents.
55