Vaccines

[Balog]

Because there are still disease vectors for it.

Ok, so we are down to 2 cases, and lets say a lot of people decide to stop vaccinating for it because there are "only" two cases. Now those 2 cases grow to 4, then 16, then 64...etc etc. etc. Not too long after we have a full blown polio epidemic again. Maybe not as big as the last one because vaccines will be brought out again, but do you really want to risk your kid being one of the unlucky ones who caught it before everyone decided pulled their heads back out of their ass?

It happened with pertussis, and is starting to happen again with other diseases. It's becoming trendy to not vaccinate kids, and as a result a lot of diseases that were more or less relegated to the third world are coming back in fairly large numbers.

Up here in Snohomish county we have lots of filthy hippies who decided in between bong hits to not vaccinate their kids. We also have one of the nations largest pertussis epidemics, and several fatalities because of it. Get the damn vaccines. We did a slightly spread out schedule and skipped whatever the STD one is, but overall there is no good reason to not get your kids vaccinated with the full spectrum.

[charby]

Up here in Snohomish county we have lots of filthy hippies who decided in between bong hits to not vaccinate their kids. We also have one of the nations largest pertussis epidemics, and several fatalities because of it. Get the damn vaccines. We did a slightly spread out schedule and skipped whatever the STD one is, but overall there is no good reason to not get your kids vaccinated with the full spectrum.

If I had a daughter I would make sure she got the HPV vaccination. Teenagers will be teenagers no matter how you raised them, I'd rather make sure they are as protected as much as I can.

[mtnbkr]

If I had a daughter I would make sure she got the HPV vaccination. Teenagers will be teenagers no matter how you raised them, I'd rather make sure they are as protected as much as I can.

I would shun her for being a slut.

Chris

[MechAg94]

So, if there are only 2 cases of polio a year, why get a vaccine?

I'm well aware of the "herd immunity" argument for vaccines, but nobody gets smallpox vaccines anymore, right, except military people who might be exposed to bioweapons. Nobody says "the smallpox vaccine worked so well to eradicate smallpox, let's all keep taking it".


Anyway, I talked with my pediatrician and we kind of decided a reduced vaccination schedule.

So there are two cases of people who got the disease.  That does not count all the people who were exposed to it.

[Scout26]

So there are two cases of people who got the disease.  That does not count all the people who were exposed to it.

Bingo.  And that just in the US.  I couldn't find the worldwide numbers, but if you live in or near any major metropolitan area, you and your family will be coming in contact with those fresh off the boat/plane from parts unknown, where vaccinations and sanitation are right up to third world standards (meaning none).

All you have to do is look at the number of cases prior to the development and use of the vaccination and after.  The risk is simply too great not to.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality

[Balog]

If I had a daughter I would make sure she got the HPV vaccination. Teenagers will be teenagers no matter how you raised them, I'd rather make sure they are as protected as much as I can.

The idea of teens as these out of control children in adults bodies who can't be expected to make reasonable and mature decisions is a very recent, Western culture phenomenon. Society in America has horrifically low expectations of teens, and they mostly live up to them. But it's hardly a law of nature.

[Northwoods]

The idea of teens as these out of control children in adults bodies who can't be expected to make reasonable and mature decisions is a very recent, Western culture phenomenon. Society in America has horrifically low expectations of teens, and they mostly live up to them. But it's hardly a law of nature.

Not every sexual experience a teen girl has is consensual.  I'd sure hate my daughters to endure HPV infections after enduring a rape.

[charby]

The idea of teens as these out of control children in adults bodies who can't be expected to make reasonable and mature decisions is a very recent, Western culture phenomenon. Society in America has horrifically low expectations of teens, and they mostly live up to them. But it's hardly a law of nature.

I remember talking with a friends grandma a few years ago about being a teen in the 1930's. She said that many of them were having sex then, just not as open about it as it is now. She said it wasn't as pure an innocent as people say olden times were.

I was a teen in the 1980's early 90's and we all were a bunch of rabbits.  

[Northwoods]

FWIW Zach - I've had 2 kids delivered by midwives at a birth center, one caught by my MIL on the way to a birth center, and one intentionally born at home.  SWMBO is a SAHM, and we are (now) homeschooling.  

We got our kids all the recommended vacs, except Rotavirus.  We skipped that one mostly because it is an oral vaccine and we couldn't be totally sure it was gluten free (SWMBO and at least the 3 older kids without doubt have Celiacs).  That and Rotavirus is just not something I feel is really vaccinating against anyway (it's unpleasnt but not really life threatening).

We would have skipped the varicella vaccine too, but too mny kids are vaccinated so the odds of getting chicken pox is too low anymore.  I tend to think the immunity of having chicken pox is worth the suck of having it as a kid, but without the vaccine they're at higher risk of eventually getting it as an adult, at which point it does become life threatening.

[Azrael256]

Only one person mentioned it, but to put this one down now... Your kids are getting a lower immunological load from the 87 shots they get before 18 than from the 7 I got to that age.  I looked at the spreadsheet when The Poop Machine got her stickins, and I had to ask about it when I realized her "shot card" looked like a shot billboard.

She will also be getting her HPV shot.  Not immunizing a girl because she's a slut makes approximately as much sense as not immunizing her because some slut said it causes autism.

Also, I know un-immunized folks who grew up into perfectly health adults.  Luck can be as effective as a shot if you're really lucky. It's just a lot less predictable.

[Marnoot]

I tend to think the immunity of having chicken pox is worth the suck of having it as a kid, but without the vaccine they're at higher risk of eventually getting it as an adult, at which point it does become life threatening.

A downside to getting chickenpox immunity via infection rather than vaccination is the chance for developing shingles later in life. If you've had chickenpox, you've still got the varicella virus embedded in you (see viral latency), which can flare up as shingles. Immunity via vaccine doesn't have this issue.

A flip downside (for now) of the existence of the chickenpox vaccine is that adults that had chickenpox as a child are more likely to get shingles now due to fact they're not getting "booster" exposures to the virus nearly as frequently from coming into contact with children with chickenpox.

[Balog]

Not every sexual experience a teen girl has is consensual.  I'd sure hate my daughters to endure HPV infections after enduring a rape.

I wasn't addressing the question of vaccinations, merely the silly notion of teens as incapable of being rational and mature because of their age.

[Balog]

Also, to folks making asinine "slut" comments: grow up. Folks who don't agree with you aren't the hateful WBC characterization a you're making them out to be.

[BobR]

Rotavirus is just not something I feel is really vaccinating against anyway (it's unpleasnt but not really life threatening).

Each year, rotavirus illness is responsible an estimated 453,000 deaths among infants around the world. Before the introduction of a rotavirus vaccine, rotavirus illness caused in an estimated 55,000 to 70,000 hospitalizations and dozens of deaths in the United States each year.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/rotavsb.html

Messy, inconvenient, and if allowed to go on for very long it will lead to a hospital stay, for the most part, in the US. In other countries, it can be a whole lot worse.

I think, if I were going to delay or skip one, it would be Hepatitis B. At least far a couple of years. I would eventually get it for my kids though, long before they became sexually active.


bob

[Northwoods]

I wasn't addressing the question of vaccinations, merely the silly notion of teens as incapable of being rational and mature because of their age.

And I was addressing the notion that kids that experience sexual contact do not do so always  by choice.  Regardless of whether those that do so by choice make that choice through rational mature processes or not.

[Neemi]

I'm all in favor of vaccinating, for lots of the reasons listed before. Polio = bad. Small fever = Tylenol and all is well.

As far the schedule, I know that part of it is that they space it that way so that kids can get the max coverage as quickly and safely as possible.

Hepatitis B - Hepatitis is just a generally nasty thing to get. This one I don't know why it's birth, two months, etc.

(2 months)
    DTaP - diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus. 3 nasty bacterium that you really don't want to get. They need regular boosters*
    Hib - next dose!
    Polio (IPV) - sure, there may only have been two cases, but who wants to be case #3? No, thanks. The vaccine is so effective that why not go ahead and avoid a lifetime of pain?
    Pneumococcal (PCV) - primary cause of meningitis in kids under the age of one. It's deadly, it's nasty, and it's preventable.
    Rotavirus - severe diarrhea in kids is problematic; their immature systems dehydrate much, much faster than adults. And when a kid goes into true shock, it's scary.

Why do more vaccines kick in at 2 & 4 months? It's partly due to the fact that at 90 days of age the baby's own immune system is finally starting to work. Baby no longer has the antibodies from mom (from before birth - will still have some via the breastmilk if breastfeeding)

(4 months) - rinse & repeat.
    DTaP - 
    Hib
    Polio (IPV)
    Pneumococcal (PCV)
    Rotavirus

(6 months)
    DTaP
    Hib
    Pneumococcal (PCV)
    Rotavirus

(6 to 18 months)
    Hepatitis B
    Polio (IPV)

(12 to 15 months)
    Hib
    MMR -
    Pneumococcal (PCV)
    Varicella - optional, in my opinion. I haven't seen chicken pox in my ER in years. Lots of folks think they have it, but it's almost always ended up being a different kind of rash.

(12 to 23 months)
    Hepatitis A - icky disease. All hepatitis-es can have a chronic effect on the liver; you kind of need the liver. I'm a fan of the a/b vaccines.

*DTAP - while studying antibody levels, they're discovering that the vaccines for pertussis, in particular, doesn't last as long as they thought it did. It's also not as strong as they thought it was. However - I think it's still important to get. It just means, that like MMR, you may either need a booster or to get your titers drawn to see if you're still immune. However, if you're a little one, the vaccine is less invasive than drawing titers, so they tend to just do that.

As far as the HPV vaccine, what I've read on it is fairly positive. I'm a fan of that one as well.

Then again, I like vaccines in general. I hope that helped.

[BryanP]

Also, to folks making asinine "slut" comments: grow up. Folks who don't agree with you aren't the hateful WBC characterization a you're making them out to be.

You are correct.  However, I still have to wonder at the logic of not vaccinating for HPV.  Even if a daughter is The Perfect Girl, stays "pure" until marriage etc..., that doesn't mean her future hubby did the same.  He can be carrying HPV and now she's infected with a virus she could have been protected against.

While it may not be true of all of them, there does seem to be a bit of bluenosed "If the girl ain't doin whut she ain't oughtta be doin then she don't need no vaccine" attitude among the "I'm not vaccinating MY little girl for a FORNICATION disease!" crowd.

And heck, they can vaccinate guys against it too. It doesn't cause guys the physical problems it does women, but we can carry it around.  Unless we've been vaccinated.

[Balog]

I don't have any objection to HPV vaccines (and I'm not sure if that was the one we skipped). I also don't have any objection to folks who don't vaccinate against it.

[roo_ster]

Wife & I are not exactly Marin-county hot-tubbing hippie freaks, but we plan on getting both kiddos HPV vaccinated. 

Also, the jury is out on whether HPV can be transmitted via blood.  Nearly 10% of donated blood tested tests positive for HPV...but blood is not normally tested for HPV.  So, if you (or your kiddo) needs blood, that is yet another risk you can roll the dice on.

Gotta understand, though, those vaccines are only good for a few years.

[zxcvbob]

A downside to getting chickenpox immunity via infection rather than vaccination is the chance for developing shingles later in life. If you've had chickenpox, you've still got the varicella virus embedded in you (see viral latency), which can flare up as shingles. Immunity via vaccine doesn't have this issue.

A flip downside (for now) of the existence of the chickenpox vaccine is that adults that had chickenpox as a child are more likely to get shingles now due to fact they're not getting "booster" exposures to the virus nearly as frequently from coming into contact with children with chickenpox.

I was going to get a zoster (shingles) vaccine, until I found out what that one is cultured from -- human embryo cells.  Gonna pass.

[birdman]

My opinion:
Not getting vaccinated for things is flat out stupid.  You don't know what exposures can happen in the future, and vaccines only work if administered before hand.

For every moron that doesn't that creates a greater probability of epidemic.  Period.  No ifs ands or buts.

You may disagree, but my opinion is based solely on fact.  If you disagree for personal reasons, do not attempt to pretend its a fact asked decision.  The risk of not vaccinating FAR (and I mean orders of magnitude) outweighs any risk of vaccinating.

So if you don't, suck it up and just simply say "I'm not doing this because of personal, non-factual reasons" and don't attempt to argue any other way.

[zahc]

Your argument is "i'm right, because". I don't buy your objectivity argument.

Risk calculations are never as straightforward as that because you always have to consider both the risks and the stakes. Some things have very high stakes but very low chance of happening (like having to use a gun defensively). Everyone has to wiegh those kind of decisions for himself. It's easy to say "omg you could die", while neglecting to mention that your chances of getting e.g. Whooping cough may be a million-to-one, and only a small percentage of those cases are fatal, those often being individuals compromised to start with due to age or other complication. That 25000 kids died of polio in 1974 is essentially irrelevant to why I should take a vaccine today. The chance of complications, which can be 100% avoided, may well top the risk equation. That's why they have stopped recommending yearly mammograms...yes you could omg die from breast cancer, yet even the very small risk of a simple mammogram turned out not to be worth it in the big picture, and it took how many years? Guess what, it didn't make sense for all those years they were still recommending it either.

[Balog]

A lot of kids have died in my area from whooping cough because they weren't vaccinated.

[Scout26]

A few years back in the early days of the Interwebz (when it was mostly text).  I found something called the "CDC Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report"  Thing was freaking huge, hundreds of pages long.  Millions of bytes.  So I signed up a cow-orker who always forget to log-off his terminal (we didn't have computers).

This report would kill the system.  Corporate would call and scream at him to un-subscribe from this bandwidth killing and memory eating monster of an e-mail.  Needless to say he kept re-subscribing.  

The reason I mention this is so that you can go and read up on not only the vaccinations but also the risks.   Because if you don't get the vaccination, but get the disease, there's not much that can be done other then letting the disease run it course and keeping the patient "comfortable".  I can think of nothing worse then as a parent watching my child suffer because I failed to act to protect them.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm6217md.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/   (see the index at the top)

[zxcvbob]

If you really want to delve into the complexity of vaccine ethics, look at the polio Salk vs. Pasteur debate.  The injected Salk vaccine is marginally safer for the recipient (I believe the Pasteur vaccine can actually cause polio in someone who is immune-compromised), but the oral Pasteur vaccine boosts the "herd immunity" by keeping attenuated poliovirus in the environment -- from dirty diapers, there's no nice way to put it.  So in the USA, polio has been eradicated (but could come back) and the inactivated-virus Salk vaccine is more appropriate.  In 3rd World countries where polio is a real risk instead of just a potential risk, the oral Pasteur vaccine is more appropriate.  

People in those 3rd World countries see the USA getting a different vaccine and cry "Fowl!" and don't want to take any vaccinations.