April 17, 2014
The whole hooraw about some people refusing to vaccinate their kids because of urban legends about the dangers really strikes me as strange. I understand the situation and have no sympathy, in part because I grew up in the 1950's and most of those vaccines didn't exist then.
We got vaccinated for smallpox, though, which they don't do any more. We got vaccinated for diphtheria and tetanus and pertussis. And the polio vaccine came out while I was a kid.
That was a big one. I remember my parents taking us all to one of the local high schools one evening and we had to stand in a long line, and when we got to the front there was a big tray with a huge pile of sugar cubes, must have been ten pounds of sugar there. And my parents told me to take one cube and eat it. OK fine, if you insist.
But there were a lot of what we called "childhood diseases" for which no vaccines existed, and it was considered routine for any kid to get them all. So I've had measles. I got it four times, in fact, because there are four strains, or so I was told. We called them "7 day measles", "14 day measles", "21 day measles" and "German measles" (i.e. rubella).
In a couple of cases it was considered to be desirable for kids to get infected and get it over with. I remember one time my mom took my sister and me to see a boy who was just getting over rubella, and we spent an hour with him in his bedroom in hopes that we'd get infected. (It didn't work. I guess he was past being infectious.)
Mumps is like that, as well. It's a lot more serious disease in an adult than in a kid. And I've had the mumps.
In theory a lot of those diseases have a low probability of killing, but I don't remember it ever happening to anyone I ever heard about. (Though I myself nearly died from "stomach flu" when I was maybe 3; I had to spend a couple of days in the hospital with an IV in my arm getting rehydrated.)
But I did spend a lot of time sick in bed, and so did we all back then. I'm glad those days are gone. Vaccines are a medical miracle and people who refuse to vaccinate their kids are blithering idiots.
(Inspired by a swarm of vaccine posts over at Instapundit.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at
03:41 PM
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Posted by: RickC at April 17, 2014 05:24 PM (0a7VZ)
You evidently showed up on the scene a bit late or this was a booster, the sugar cube contained attenuated live viri (three strains have to be covered) and was approved some time after the injected inactivated vaccine. Its advantages are it provides strong GI tract immunity, and other children in the community will indirectly get it....
Big disadvantage is that attenuated strain vaccines tend to zap a few people who are especially susceptible, so nowadays in the US and I'm sure other places where there's no circulating viri it's preferred, it's protecting against you coming into contact with a foreign source or visiting a foreign place. We're rather close to eradicating it from the earth like smallpox.
The other point is that community. Measles as of late is providing harsh object lessons in the need for "herd immunity": if you don't get enough of the population vaccinated, it'll circulate, and zap a number of people who got the vaccine but didn't get a strong enough immune response.
Posted by: hga at April 18, 2014 06:28 AM (SBLCe)
The short reason "why" goes like this: most cases of autism are "light" and not the type that require institutionalization. Those children, pre-1950, were the ones that died from the waves of childhood diseases. The rise of vaccines has allowed parents to survive that are far more likely to have children with Autism. Autism compromises the immune scale response to major illnesses, but it also "shows up" when you hit a child with several vaccines. So the child suddenly "has" autism.
It comes down to the reality that Autism is a metabolic disorder and vaccines put a huge drain, for a short period, on the body. (For reasons of cost, they really do stack too many vaccines on a child at once, but that's a side issue) So now the vaccines "cause" the problem, so claimed, that they actually prevented the child from dying to the disease if they had gotten it.
Such is the nature of biology & hysteria.
Posted by: sqa at April 18, 2014 10:06 AM (vCXBa)
Autism compromises the immune scale response to major illnesses, but it also "shows up" when you hit a child with several vaccines.Uh... No. Not at all. It's just that it's a mental problem and babies too young to be vaccinated are also too young to show the signs of autism-spectrum disorders. They're little blobs that eat, poop, scream, and sleep.
It comes down to the reality that Autism is a metabolic disorder and vaccines put a huge drain, for a short period, on the body.No. Autism is about how your brain is wired. It is not any sort of metabolic disorder.
There is not only no causal connection between vaccines and autism, there is no statistical correlation. There's no link of any kind. Biology doesn't enter into the story, it's entirely hysteria.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 18, 2014 11:14 AM (PiXy!)
You can thank the Lancet, the medical journal, for the current wave.
More specifically, Andrew Wakefield. Aside from other motivations, Wakefield had to tried to get money and contracts from British vaccine makers before he ran his now-discredited article - and was turned down flat.
It is interesting seeing how one of the many people who revealed Wakefield's dishonesty, journalist Brian Deer, was attacked by Keith Olbermann (Both personally and regarding his efforts to reveal Wakefield as a charlatan and the anti-vaccine movement as being based on a lie.) because Deer worked for evil Murdoch and nothing else. The fact that both Oblermann and McCarthy regard Wakefield as a reliable, definitive source, says a lot.
Posted by: cxt217 at April 18, 2014 11:16 AM (46Ovp)
Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
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Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)
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