Mississippi - the Nation's Leader In Vaccination Rates 297
HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that Mississippi — which ranks as one of the worst states for smoking, obesity and physical inactivity — seldom is viewed as a leader on health issues. But it is one of two states that permit neither religious nor philosophical exemptions to its vaccination program. Only children with medical conditions that would be exacerbated by vaccines may enroll in Mississippi schools without completing the immunization schedule, which calls for five vaccines. With a vaccination rate of greater than 99.7%, Mississippi leads the national median by five percentage points and has the country's highest immunization rate among kindergarten students.
However, in recent weeks, the nearly unbending nature of Mississippi's law requiring students to be vaccinated has been in jeopardy, with two dozen lawmakers publicly supporting an exemption for "conscientious beliefs" turning Mississippi into one more battleground between medical experts who champion vaccinations and parents who fear the government's role in medical decision-making. "We have been a victim of our success, and people don't realize how bad these diseases are," said Mississippi state epidemiologist, Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III, before lawmakers met to consider a bill that would have expanded exceptions to the vaccine requirement. Members of the education committee for the House of Representatives, in effect, endorsed the state's current approach. By a voice vote, they advanced a heavily amended version of the bill that now calls for only technical changes to Mississippi's law, which has been largely untouched since the late 1970s. The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests. "If a medical professional thinks it's wise not to vaccinate, then that will be the gospel," said House Education Committee Chairman John Moore, R-Brandon.
However, in recent weeks, the nearly unbending nature of Mississippi's law requiring students to be vaccinated has been in jeopardy, with two dozen lawmakers publicly supporting an exemption for "conscientious beliefs" turning Mississippi into one more battleground between medical experts who champion vaccinations and parents who fear the government's role in medical decision-making. "We have been a victim of our success, and people don't realize how bad these diseases are," said Mississippi state epidemiologist, Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III, before lawmakers met to consider a bill that would have expanded exceptions to the vaccine requirement. Members of the education committee for the House of Representatives, in effect, endorsed the state's current approach. By a voice vote, they advanced a heavily amended version of the bill that now calls for only technical changes to Mississippi's law, which has been largely untouched since the late 1970s. The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests. "If a medical professional thinks it's wise not to vaccinate, then that will be the gospel," said House Education Committee Chairman John Moore, R-Brandon.
thank god for mississippi (Score:5, Funny)
Re:thank god for the poor states (Score:2)
Coincidence or Medicaid?
Re:thank god for the poor states (Score:5, Insightful)
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Its because they don't have internet, so don't know they should be scared of vaccinations.
Seems like a 99.7% vaccination rate would be the perfect data pool in which to prove or disprove your paranoia.
What say you, Mississippi statistics? (taking into account the McFood Pyramid that is quite popular in the south of course)
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Essentially, they have a prophylactic to protect them from the virus that is vaccination denialism?
Re:thank god for the poor states (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thank god for the poor states (Score:5, Informative)
Everywhere I've lived in the US, vaccinations are provided gratis by the local health department.
People with insurance usually go to a doctor and get their vaccinations through them, but the health department will also do it for free. (That's the same health department that will run free STD tests.) Often, the real battle is communicating to people that these resources are available, fighting the stigma associated with getting free services from the government, and the practical issues of getting a working person over to a busy government office.
As many childhood vaccinations are practically mandatory in the US, as they're required for attending elementary school (which is also mandatory), it makes sense that they're freely available.
As a result, I think, of Obamacare, all childhood vaccines and most adult vaccines (including flu) are free to anyone with insurance.
Re:thank god for the poor states (Score:5, Insightful)
That's amazing. What an amazing story. Get this out to the scientific community pronto, they've been pissing about doing studies of tens of thousands of people for decades, but fuck that, because you got sick a bit as a kid and now that you haven't been vaccinated you don't get sick. So yeah let's chuck the vaccines, based on what you think you experienced.
TLDR anecdotes count for precisely fuck-all.
Re: thank god for the poor states (Score:2)
Re:thank god for the poor states (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was a kid I got a lot of vaccines. My income was zero. Now I get almost no vaccines and my income has skyrocketed.
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When I got vaccinated as a kid, I always ended up sick at some point that same year.
So as a kid, you got sick with polio, mumps, measles, and whooping cough, and lived to tell about it?
I got sick a lot as a kid too. As an adult, I don't get sick much at all. It's normal for kids to get sick a lot: they're in school with hundreds of other kids, and catch it from them. There's a reason some people call kids "disease vectors".
Oh, some rich are a huge part of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If somebody isn't immunized, then even the rich people who are insured are at risk in the event that their infants are too young to be vaccinated, or couldn't be vaccinated because of medical complications.
The self-indulgent rich are actually a huge part of the vaccination problem. Check out where some of the latest outbreaks have been- Hollywood, Disney world, etc- not places for people with no money.
A journalist named Seth Mnookin wrote a book, "The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear", and was Interviewed recently: [sciencemag.org]
Further:
There's also a great comment attached, by a poster named 'Tom Billings (qualifications unknown)', that gets into the causes of autism: Genetic
Actually, it's simpler than that. It's just very unpopular, because it says things about humans we don't like to hear. You don't need government subsidizing something for it to increase. That is only one cause of some increases in some things.
The genes associated with autism are mostly SNPs and single folds. Single nucleotide polymorphisms and single folds are single mutation events. You would expect those to be just as common throughout history as a result. So, why don't we see in the past the same rates of autism we see today? It's brutally simple. The children born with such genetic differences mostly didn't survive to reproductive age. They were murdered.
His comment goes on and it's worth a read.
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Actually, I thought I read a headline recently that said some new research pointed to the possibility that mothers taking anti-depressants might be at higher risk of their child developing autism. Of course, correlation doesn't prove causation, but given that autism rates have increased a lot in recent years, and anti-depressant use has skyrocketed, there might be something to it.
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Maybe they just have information about immunizations that you do not have.. doctors that tell them that immunizations are unsafe that you do not see because you are sent to a nurse at best, but most likely a social worker with no medical education... she knows best what is good for you
If that were true you would be able to cite doctors & studies supporting your position. But you can't, so you didn't.
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Diagnoses of autism have climbed in part because we're a little more lax about what constitutes "autism." Fifty years ago someone would have been called "slow" or a "dullard," not autistic. I'm not saying this accounts for all the rise of diagnoses, but our our diagnostic standards have changed over the decades.
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School aged vaccinations for this type of stuff are generally available for free (there's usually a local government-run "Health Department" that will administer them).
Basically all the mandatory vaccinations are that way. The yearly flu-shot isn't completely free, though almost all insurances cover it if you elect to take it. At work they'll bring a nurse in for a day or two and you can just stop in and get one if you'd like.
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Are there really people who say "your particular combination of luck, genetics, circumstance and choices are so much more influenced by choice than anything that unlike other people with health conditions, fuck you" ?
Are those people worried that the lack of financial incentives will be the tipping point?
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yes. absolutely. Don't exercise. Smoke. Eat shitty food. Become 100 pounds overweight. Then expect me to pay for your diabetes medicine and lung surgery. Fuck no
No one expects you to do shit. I do expect insurance companies to take care of those they ensure
In other words, you DO expect us to pay for them. If you're asking someone other than the person who gets sick to pay for the treatments, then you're asking all of us to. Neither insurance companies nor governments are pools of magic money, that money comes from insured folks and tax payers.
Re:thank god for the poor states (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no antivaxxer, but do they have the lowest rates of autism, or merely the lowest /diagnosed/ rates? Given their poverty one can imagine fewer people going to the doctor in those states.
Re:thank god for mississippi (Score:5, Informative)
OK, let me get this straight. The dumb, uneducated, poor, largely minority backwoods state of Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate in the country. Sounds good so far.
And, vaccines are medically proven to be effective and not harmful. Got it.
The lowest vaccination rates are among the "educated" yuppie crowd (Prius driving, Whole Foods loving, vegetarian or vegan, politically left, etc.). OK, interesting.
So, tell me again who "believes in science?"
It has nothing to do with Medicaid. If cost was a factor, then the educated yuppie crowd would have the highest vaccination rates, not the lowest, as they are the most able to afford it.
Re:thank god for mississippi (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the antivaxxers I know are more inclined towards the right. Some poster above commented with a link to a study confirming this statistically, but my anecdotal experience tells me that evangelical, organic, don't trust science OR government types are the primary culprits of this kind of thinking.
It really comes from a mix of ignorance and arrogance - people don't even know enough about science, medicine, or history to have a clue how wrong they are about every aspect of this decision. It's basically a textbook example of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
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I'd say it has a bit more to do with the distrust of big pharma than science per se. It isn't too far to go from "there is more money in treatment than in prevention" to "vaccines are bunk".
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I suppose it could be geographical - I'm in Colorado, home of evangelical strongholds but also the birthplace of the gluten free lifestyle. We've got a weird blend of vegan hippies in Boulder and church moms in Colorado Springs, I imagine embracing pseudoscience would be the one thing they could agree on.
If Mississippi and Arkansas didn't suck so hard... (Score:2)
If Mississippi and Arkansas didn't suck so hard...Louisiana would fall off into the Gulf.... probably pushed by Texas.
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seriously...
somebody...
damn, now I gotta drive down town for biscuits and gravy...
I'm stunned to see a southern state that has no "religious exemption" or "retarded parent waiver"(I may have paraphrased that one) allowing a bunch of little germ factories to scamper from place to place spreading misery.
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So utterly in contravention of the US Consitution as to be laughable. If it hasn't been struck down, it'll be only because no federal court has heard a challenge to it yet; the first one made will succeed.
Re: thank god for mississippi (Score:3)
Wrong section. Article VI says: ...but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Children are not property. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents are granted a tremendous amount of leeway over what to do with their children. But at the end of the day, children are not "things" for parents to do with as they wish. They're people. A parent may have a sincere and deeply held belief that children don't actually need to eat, that if they meditate enough they can gather the energy they need from the sun. But that doesn't mean that Child Protective Services aren't going to get involved if the parents refuse to feed their child. No, there's no easy definition for where the line between parental rights / belief dominate and where child abuse begins should be. But there must be a line.
And ignoring the fact that the person we're talking about here is too young to make informed decisions, even if that wasn't the case, it still wouldn't be a reasonable argument. Even if we were talking about adults, while you're free to endanger yourself to your heart's content, you don't have the right to endanger others. You may feel that drunk driving is perfectly safe and it's just your personal choice and drunk driving laws are an infliction on your freedom of movement, but the law sees it differently for damned good reason, and you will be punished if caught. Want to endanger yourself? Fine, go do it. Want to endanger me? Nope, and thank $DEITY that there are laws and law enforcement to stop you. You don't have an inalienable right to put your neighbors at risk of mowing them over with your car, and you don't have an inalienable right to walk around them as a disease vector.
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I don't think that anywhere the annual flu vaccine is required by law. Even for people who work in healthcare.
And this seasons shot wasn't worth a tin of shit.
Still the insurance paid for it, and I got a free klondike bar at work.
Re:Children are not property. (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess the only question is, how far do you take it when determining that somebody is harming their children. I definitely think that everybody except the tiny percentage of individuals who have a medical condition should be vaccinated against things like measles. But I'm not so sure about things like chicken pox or the flu vaccine.
If your child is stricken with a disease that has high potential of death, significant injury, loss of function or disfigurement or the same to others, and that disease is preventable through vacination, and you failed to provide that vacination that would meet the standard of harming their children or endangering the public in my mind.
As far as flu, people die from that, my Mother was hospitalized just last month for the flu, while my Dad was in the ICU after arresting while being treat for pneumonia that was as likely as not to have been triggered by having the flu. My Dad never came out of the hospital and was on a respirator for 6 weeks; Mom back in the Hospital because she never regained enough strength and is now refusing treatment so she'll pass away soon too.
My attitude right now is to tell the antivaxers to STFU and get the Kids their shots, if your kid goes deaf because of a fever due to having measles, I'd throw your ass in prison.
Re:Children are not property. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parents are granted a tremendous amount of leeway over what to do with their children. But at the end of the day, children are not "things" for parents to do with as they wish. They're people. A parent may have a sincere and deeply held belief that children don't actually need to eat, that if they meditate enough they can gather the energy they need from the sun. But that doesn't mean that Child Protective Services aren't going to get involved if the parents refuse to feed their child. No, there's no easy definition for where the line between parental rights / belief dominate and where child abuse begins should be. But there must be a line.
At one point our country felt there must be a line between Church and State.
Ironically, the dissolving of that line led to the issues we now face today.
The problem is not that we don't feel there should be a line. The problem is enforcing the damn thing with some science and common sense.
You're right, parents are granted a lot of leeway. The problem these days is they come armed with a lawyer to defend that leeway, and we allow it rather than override for the common good.
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But at the end of the day, children are not "things" for parents to do with as they wish. They're people.
unless they are still in the womb you mean.
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So parents can't treat their kids like "property", but the government can?
Not vaccinating your kids is stupid. But forcing people to do it to send their kids to public school, then forcing them to attend said public school unless they're rich enough to pay for a private school, is class warfare. I hope these states have charter schools and/or a voucher program.
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I'll sort of give you drugs, though most of that is actually motivated in terms of what drug addicts do to their surrounding (crime, family etc. etc.), but I'll give you that.
Euthanasia though, I won't give you as easily. There's no-one trying to outlaw killing yourself as far as I know, only forbidding the medical profession from helping you (something I agree with BTW). There aren't typically any legal repercussions for attempted suicide, or even helping someone else, as long as you don't "help" crosses o
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No, there's no easy definition for where the line between parental rights / belief dominate and where child abuse begins should be.
There's no reason to even step into that minefield. Communicable diseases are a public health issue, not a parental rights issue.
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No, there must not be a line. Because everyone makes some bad choices and some good ones. While some choices are severe enough to outweigh any amount of good ones, the vast majority of the time the question has to be "on balance, are they a good enough parent."
So, we have to have more discretion built into the system. Which leads to more abuse. But
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Property is not a good word I agree, but absolute responsibility I think is. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. Empower the parents to make all choices but make it clear that there are consequences to those choices.
In the case of vaccination, aside from the risk of disease, the consequences should be no access to public schools without a certified (reasonable) minimum vaccination record or medical exemption. I would stop at that.
I think that's enough but I would have thought that most insurance co
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back in the day you would ship your extra kids to the army by age 10 or so to die in one of the european wars. or you put them to work on the farm
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Gee, how did we possibly get from the 1600s to the 2000s without "Child Protective Services"?
By having lots of children to compensate for very high infant mortality. How did you think we did it?
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How does anyone else's exercise pattern impact you? Absent people who you care about (family, friends) harming themselves.
What are Autism rates in Mississippi (Score:5, Interesting)
Does Mississippi have more Autistic children than other states with lower vaccination rates? I think that should be looked at so maybe we can show that this is not the cause of Autism.
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i think I read that NJ has the highest autisim rate. and i don't know if it is true, but some of the older studies have linked autism to upper middle class families and zip codes
Re:What are Autism rates in Mississippi (Score:4, Interesting)
... they find someone who'll diagnose the kid with "something on the autistic spectrum" ...
Part of what is happening is that parents seek help with the school system for their "naughty kid" who is underperforming or has behavioral issues. Because of all the attention that autism has received, the schools have plenty of funding to handle kids who are "on the spectrum".
Doctors know this and play the game handing out "autism spectrum" diagnoses in an effort to aid the parents in seeking an IEP (Individual Education Plan) for their problem children. Autism Spectrum Disorder is so vague that, depending on the day, you could probably cram 75% of kids into a ASD diagnosis.
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a lot of the hippy parents don't discipline their kids. i've seen on such kid like that. runs like mad in a movie theater disturbing others.
and a lot of people are having kids later in life at the age where they want to chill out more instead of play with a small kid after work.
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nope, there is a vaccine fund for damages. you can't sue if your kid gets sick from a vaccine and you have to prove it was the vaccine that caused it
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Huh? If there's a 95% vaccination rate, one in every twenty people is unvaccinated, so even if you're the quiet type you likely run into at least one a day. If there's a 99.7% vaccination rate, that's three people in a thousand, and most people would be unlikely to encounter one in a day.
If a sick person runs into several unvaccinated people while contagious, there's a good chance the disease will spread. If a sick person runs into no unvaccinated people while contagious, it's likely to stop with him
Re:What are Autism rates in Mississippi (Score:5, Interesting)
And yeah, that does make the autism argument look real dumb. Especially when you look at the top 3 States for autism - Minnesota, Maine and Oregon; which interestingly enough also have some of the highest rates of non-vaccination.
Re:What are Autism rates in Mississippi (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the CDC only has data from 11 States, and Mississippi isn't one of them. Other groups have more data available, but so far the best compilation I've found is at some anti-vax site - http://vaxtruth.org/2012/04/wh... [vaxtruth.org] Their chart has Mississippi ranked 44th for autism rates, West Virginia is 39th.
And yeah, that does make the autism argument look real dumb. Especially when you look at the top 3 States for autism - Minnesota, Maine and Oregon; which interestingly enough also have some of the highest rates of non-vaccination.
Those are all states where houses commonly have basements, and they are in the hottest zones for radon [epa.gov] exposure. Those are all states where a large number of people get their water from wells, and arsenic in the groundwater [usgs.gov] is a problem. The Radium in groundwater map [usgs.gov] is tilted towards those 3 states too. When I was a kid in Maine, we drank untreated well water and played in the basement nearly every day.
I think it makes a lot more sense to look at connections between long-term exposure to known toxins and autism.
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These reports seem to be a bit old (from 2011 or so), but here are a couple:
http://graphics.latimes.com/usmap-autism-rates-state/ [latimes.com]
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/hea_aut_num_of_chi_wit_aut_percap-autism-number-children-per-capita [statemaster.com]
In both, Mississippi's autism rates seem much lower than other states. However, this could be because of lack of testing or resources for parents of autistic kids. So autism incidences don't get reported and autism seems rate in the state. Better detection and resources are the m
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Well, most anti-vaxxers seem to have backed off the autism thing, and they're more onto rare, catastrophic side effects like encephalopathy.
What I try to point out is that the diseases in question *also* have catastrophic side effects, including encephalopathy. In fact your chance of experiencing those catastrophic situations is *higher* if you don't vaccinate than if you do . In Bayesian terms, P(C | V) P(C | -V); where C is experiencing a catastrophic neurological injury and V is being vaccinated.
But thi
Makes USA kind of look like ancient Rome (Score:3)
In ancient Rome the children where legally the property of the father until they where old enough.
Some states in USA do the same, they allow the parents to make choices for their children that are scientifically proven to be deadly in certain circumstances. Thereby the USA are legally stating that in the eyes of the state, children are the legal property of their parents in certain cases.
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Actually, according strict traditional Roman law, sons were the legally the property of the father until he died. Daughters were his property until they married, at which point they became the property of their husbands' fathers. It became usual for a father to emancipate his sons when they came of age, but if he didn't, they remained his property.
Your rights don't include infecting my kid or me (Score:5, Insightful)
Your "conscientious" rights don't include the right to put other kids who *can't* get immunized at risk (or adults who weren't immunized as kids). If you want to conscientiously object to getting your kid immunized, then a school should have the right to conscientiously refuse to admit your kid. Create a special conscientious school or something and keep the fuck away from the rest of us.
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no, but children are legally mandated to receive an education. kids who can't get vaccinated, their parents could decide that a camping trip might be safer than one to a theme park, and they're free to make that decision. they can take measures, not so much with schooling. educating a kid is a full time job... you know what teachers do.
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No, you're blatantly wrong. There are three potential reasons for an exemption: religious, personal, or medical. Let me put this in capitals so you can understand:
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE GODDAMN 50 STATES ALLOWS A MEDICAL EXEMPTION FOR VACCINATIONS.
Source: CDC
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/laws/
Good for Mississipi (Score:2)
But underlying all this, it seems that the US American belief that you should have the complete right as a parent to decide how to raise your children, even if it is against their well being, is not new. I clearly remember 'Huckleberry Finn', and the description of his father who falls in the same category as those people that are opposed to vaccination (for whichever reason). And that was written 130 years ago.
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But underlying all this, it seems that the US American belief that you should have the complete right as a parent to decide how to raise your children, even if it is against their well being, is not new. I clearly remember 'Huckleberry Finn', and the description of his father who falls in the same category as those people that are opposed to vaccination (for whichever reason). And that was written 130 years ago.
Right, and I even agree with them. But in this case you're not just making a choice that puts your kid at risk. You're also making a choice that puts my kid at risk, which is where it crosses the line. If a vaccine were 100% effective, I'd agree with them on choice. But they're not, so they should be mandatory.
Mississippi (Score:2)
In other words, this allows the anti-vaxxers and religious nuts to go to their chiropractor, osteopath or other quack to get an exemption. Hell there are plenty of MDs that will write a prescription for anything you want for $50.
They might as well have killed the law (Score:2)
People just don't trust doctors; MDs don't listen (Score:4, Insightful)
I've found very few MDs who have any kind of listening skills. I've known some brilliant ones. But many of them are shills for the drug companies, pushing unnecessary drugs and just all-around being ineffective. We're told to revere doctors, but the reality is that MDs are not scientists -- they're technicians, and often not terribly skilled ones. These facts are not lost on their patents. People just don't trust doctors. Vaccines are just one more dubious thing that MDs push on us.
This distrust of the medical profession totally understandable, and you shouldn't call people morons for feeling this way. Most people are not scientists who can do their own research. Their only source of information is these doctors they don't like. If we want to fix the vaccination problem, we have to fix the doctors and get them to stop doing stupid things like prescribing antidepressants for autoimmune diseases. [*]
The science of vaccines is solid. As with anything, it's not entirely risk-free, but the risks are worth the benefits for protection against some serious diseases. It's also irresponsible to put other people at risk. IF (huge IF) there is any correlation with autism, that correlation is miniscule compared to the effects of the other shit we put in our bodies (horrible American diet, pollution, etc.). But people are much more willing to skip a vaccination appointment than not eat that Big Mac.
Incidentally, I heard recently something interesting about flu shots. If those who decide which viruses are being innoculated against predict them correctly, then flu shots work great. If, on the other hand, their predictions are too far off the mark, the flu shot may actually make you MORE vulnerable to viruses that they missed. Of course, you should verify this claim before deciding not to get a flu shot. This isn't a matter of effectiveness of vaccines but rather an issue of getting the right ones.
[*] In medical school doctors are expliclty taught that if someone comes in with a constellation of symptoms, especially if they have them written down, then that person is a hypochondriac. The thing is, auto-immune diseases are not exactly a 1-in-a-million phenomenon. Hashimoto's and Lupus are quite well understood. They come with constellations of symptoms, and they also come with brain fog, which basically forces people to write down their symptoms. My wife had to perform her own differential diagnosis based on the symptoms to determine (abductively) that Hashimoto's is the clear best explanation, but nevertheless, she had to fight with one of the few endocrinologists in the area just to get tested. Of course she tested positive, but even in the face of the evidence, this doctor still doesn't want to engage in any kind of treatment plan. Why? Because endocrinologists make all their money from pushing drugs on diabetics and have no interest in anything else.
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I've found very few MDs who have any kind of listening skills. I've known some brilliant ones.
Yeah, I know what you mean. In talking to several doctors, I get the distinct feeling that I'm on the flip side of what happens when my mother-in-law has a computing problem: she hands me the computer and starts offering endless way-off-the-mark suggestions which I have to forcibly ignore while trying to concentrate on troubleshooting the real problem.
Being listened to makes us feel better (in pretty much any human situation, but especially when our health is on the line). However, we as patients are gen
Onion... :D (Score:5, Insightful)
The Onion as usual got right to the core of it :)
"Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I fully stand behind my choices as a mom, including my choice not to vaccinate my son, because it is my fundamental right as a parent to decide which eradicated diseases come roaring back."
Vaccine refusers are some of the most odious, self-entitled pricks on this planet.
Anti-Vaxxers (Score:5, Interesting)
The anti-vaccine people are the most selfishly stupid people on this planet. Citing a discredited report linking vaccines to autism, taking medical advice from a media whore that appeared on Oprah over that of scientists and doctors, quoting conspiracy theory websites, and claiming "special knowledge" that is being "kept hidden", they put the very young who have not been immunized at risk of completely preventable diseases.
They also put those who are on anti-rejection drugs after a transplant at risk. And those who are chemotherapy. And those who are on retroviral drugs.
All they think about is their own paranoid delusions of a grand conspiracy "out to get them."
John Cleese describes them better than I can:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU [youtube.com]
civil or criminal recourse? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a friend who, in her thirties, just got measles from one of her son's friends, and now she's lost her hearing -- a fairly common, and often permanent, complication of measles. She's trying to sue the parents, on the basis of one of them posting about how they didn't vaccinate their child because they didn't believe in it. She figures that if a person who has AIDS and has unprotected sex with people can be charged with murder -- a criminal act -- she should be able to win a civil judgment for at least negligence.
If it works, it could be an interesting new chapter in the vaccination story, and does raise the question of why AIDS is handled differently than measles.
Only One "Whole Foods" in Mississippi (Score:2, Informative)
This report in the main post above was absolutely guaranteed to inflame the condescension so inherent in the liberal coastal mentality that afflicts so many /. posters. No human society can be found that is not riddled with irrational pieties and unfounded self-congratulation. This is not to say that any human being not otherwise non-compis mentis would prefer to live in San Francisco over Peshawar. But, condescending to the rubes who live in Dixie is not only rude, it is foolish. Sometimes they really are
Re: (Score:2)
But, condescending to the rubes who live in Dixie is not only rude, it is foolish. Sometimes they really are smarter than /.ers.
Sometimes they are slashdotters.
This is amendment is a mistake (Score:3)
The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests.
Normally, I would agree that this would be fine.
However, the irrational anti-vaccine hysteria has become too widespread.
What is going to happen, is there are going to be improper waivers given in the name of a "health issue" constructed for the purposes of avoiding vaccination.
Inevitably, there are going to be some medical professionals who are persuaded. They should be students of science, but there are plenty in the industry who are not scientists and could be persuaded by some specious arguments.
Therefore, I would say that their waiver should be subject to review. If there is any doubt; it should not be adequate just to find one professional to sign off on something. There should have to be a documented basis that would be accepted by the industry or by the average professional.
This doesn't surprise me at all. (Score:2)
I have a young relative who's an anti-vaxxer. A lot of my relatives are science fans and natural history geeks, so its putting a lot of stress on the family.
Here's the thing about anti-vaxxers. It's a stupid position but the people who take it aren't necessarily stupid or uneducated. What they are is rabidly anti-authority. "Question Authority" was even a popular left-wing slogan in the 60s and 70s. And it's a good idea, along with believing in your ability to decide for yourself, which is another value
Re:conscientious beliefs... let's break that down. (Score:4, Informative)
con- against, anti
No, "contra-" means against. "Con-" means "with".
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Constipation - Antipack
Conquest - Antihunt
Yep. It works.
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I think GP means the 'conscientious objection' that would basically allow any parent to refuse the vaccinations for any reason they see fit.
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Except for the "science deniers" in this case would have to be the physicians themselves.
Which will be easy enough to find - especially if they don't want to face liability issues for going against the will of the parents.
Expect a huge influx of "child is allergic to all vaccine" reports from Mississippi doctors in the near future.
Re:so... (Score:5, Informative)
Why? It's not like infections only happen in schools. Or that students spend 100% of their time at school. Look at the Disneyland outbreak.
I think that you are under the impression that it is ONLY transmitted via sex or needles.
Re:so... (Score:5, Informative)
Hep B can be contracted in many ways. The hepatitis virus is extremely hardy as compared to other similar systemic diseases' virii, for example, HIV is far more delicate and cannot survive outside the body for long. Hep B hangs around on surfaces for much longer; if someone with Hep B bleeds on something and then a kid touches it, they can contract Hep B.
It's not always unprotected sex and illegal drug use. Sometimes it's a kid touching something.
Re:Highest in infant mortality (Score:2)
Don't be ridiculous. It's obviously because of vaccinations and not:
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If you bother to look beyond the surface numbers, I will bet that you will find that poverty correlates much more strongly with infant mortality than rates of vaccinations. And MS is pretty poor.
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Why do you hate America? /s
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Note the glaring contradiction in your analysis. You're advocating that we allow the U.S. federal government to take over the entire USA medical system. Yet, it is this very same government that pursues the policy of global military imperialism. There is no "other side" on this issue. We have two dominant political parties who have managed to exclude everyone else from the political system. Both of these parties agree on this aggressive foreign policy and global military presence.
The debate about vacci
Re:Not 5 vaccines, 7-11 (Score:5, Insightful)
By "moderate anti-vaxxer", you mean "I've got Dunning-Kruger and think I know more than doctors and scientists who study this for a living". You're hardly the only slashdotter who wrongly thinks he's smarter than actual experts.
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What's the argument for separating? Is it a concern that the immune system may not deal as well with multiple vaccines at once?
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It's nice to see some actual science in this conversation. I don't know if I consider 1 additional severe reaction in 2300 to be worth the inconvenience of separate vaccines, but at least there's a rational basis for it.
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"I'm a moderate anti-vaxxer"
In other words, you're only somewhat stupid?
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So which of those do you object to? Varicella maybe?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see waiting on Varicella until around age 9 or 10, as pre-puberty symptoms of chicken pox are generally pretty mild.
It's pretty stupid to NOT get the Varicella vaccine after the onset of puberty if you haven't had chicken pox yet, as symptoms increase significantly as you age. IIRC, symptoms post-puberty can include permanent debilitation and/or death depending on person and age.
For the other vaccines listed, you'd have to be pretty stupid to not get them as early as you can, as all of those diseases
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Re:foreign invasion (Score:5, Informative)
So yeah, idiots choosing not to vaccinate, whether because Jenny or Jesus said so, do count as the entire problem.
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Note that the measles vaccine is only 97% effective.
Note further that the national vaccination rate is ~94.7%.
Which leaves us with 5.3% of the population vulnerable due to lack of vaccine, and 2.8% vulnerable due to failed vaccine.
In other words, the odds say about 35% of measles come into the country from vaccinated people going on vacation and coming back infected.
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GMO front man exposed [naturalnews.com]
Mercury still in flu shots [naturalnews.com]
Vaccines sterilize women [naturalnews.com]
CDC scientist confesses to vaccine fraud [naturalnews.com]
But wait! Let's not limit ourselves to just their headlines...
Essential vocabulary for the medical police state descending upon America [naturalnews.com]
Six preventable disorders America has manufactured, perpetuated, and propagated [naturalnews.com]
Tetanus vaccines found spiked with sterilization chemical to carry out race-based genocide against Africans [naturalnews.com]
And my favorite,
Gun-free schools in A [naturalnews.com]
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Or, since the dumb people would choose not to vaccinate, the fact that it's required compensates for the stupid. I think you've got a case of cart-before-horse.
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(Google it) Therefore, only dumb people get their kids vaccinated
Or: When you're 'smarter' you're more likely to put your individual needs above that of the village.
Is it any wonder they hate the book smart tribe?