dumb vaccination question

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with the anti vaccine movement getting publicity, i see comments by pro vaccine people to the anti vaccine people like: "get your kids vaccinated dont endanger my kids."


now assuming pro vaccine people had their kids vaccinated, how would their kids be endangered by unvaccinated kids in school?
wouldnt they be 'immune' is that not the definition of vaccination?
 
Originally Posted By: wrcsixeight
I think kids below a certain age cannot be vaccinated for MMR, but could still contract those diseases.


correct
 
Originally Posted By: 1 FMF
now assuming pro vaccine people had their kids vaccinated, how would their kids be endangered by unvaccinated kids in school?
wouldnt they be 'immune' is that not the definition of vaccination?

1. Some people can't be vaccinated because they're too young or have some kind of medical condition (which is doubly bad because it'd also make having the disease worse).

2. Not all vaccines work 100% on all people.

3. The more people carry a disease, the more likely it is that a mutant form will emerge that the vaccine can't fight.
 
It's called "heard immunity": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

To eradicate a particular disease, a certain percentage of the population must be immune to it. For measles that number is between 83%-94% of the population. If enough people do not vaccinate, the herd immunity is broken and the disease begins to spread again.

We often hear bad science in the news, just like we hear about bad people, bad places, and bad everything else because that is what sells. But science generally works and unless you are trained to read and understand it, it's best not to second guess the doctors and scientists, especially when lives are on the line.

Full disclosure: my wife is a PhD plant pathologist/microbiologist that works in the pathology lab at a children's hospital.

robert
 
I think this is a totally fair question, by the way. Not dumb at all. If I didn't know, I'd be wondering the same thing.
 
I dont mind vaccines, I do mind the intent to put four or more into a small child with miniscule mass and high fat content at once.

It is purely criminal, on part of the profit mongering insurance companies who wont pay for it any other way, and parents who believe every last thing that their doctor (part of the club interested in selling vaccines) tells them.
 
with measles and mumps vaccine thats been around for however many years i havent seen any real proof that it doesnt work or is harmful, with the understanding that theres an outlier with everythin so im sure theres at least 1 case where someone had a reaction or didnt work and an antivaccine petson could use it to support their case.
but with like school and age, every kid is 5 and up in elementary school, kids get first mmr shot around 1 yr old then last one by age 4 correct? so attempting to be logical and trying to find facts i have a hard time understanding how why people say their kids endangered, regarding mmr at least.
are there other diseases or conditions they may be referring to?
and does this vaccine issue include the flu vaccine?
i just got over flu, home 5 days, and i never have and choose not to get flu shot. last i knew there was no cure for it or no cure for common cold yet "they" push the flu shots pretty hard. and people told me to get tamiflu, which i did not after reading how there seems to be falsified research behind it or the folks who made it released only that data supporting it and did not disclose the rest
 
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So with more deluded people deciding daily not to have their Kids vaccinated, how long before we see a resurgence of, say, Polio?
 
Originally Posted By: 02SE
So with more deluded people deciding daily not to have their Kids vaccinated, how long before we see a resurgence of, say, Polio?


I give us 2 years at most.
 
Originally Posted By: 1 FMF
with the anti vaccine movement getting publicity, i see comments by pro vaccine people to the anti vaccine people like: "get your kids vaccinated dont endanger my kids."


now assuming pro vaccine people had their kids vaccinated, how would their kids be endangered by unvaccinated kids in school?
wouldnt they be 'immune' is that not the definition of vaccination?


That is NOT a dumb question!

There are two basic answers to your question. First, no vaccine is 100% effective, in 100% of a population--because there is such a thing as vaccine failure--which has been assessed by various researchers at about, on average, 3% to 5% for some viral vaccines given to children/adults (i.e. measles, rubella, mumps, polio, hepatitis A or B, etc.). For bacterial diseases (i.e. pertussis [whooping cough], tetanus, diphtheria, Hib, etc.) the range is about 90% to 98% or so, depending on which vaccine/disease is at question. We've all heard a good bit about "herd immunity" recently. That is the concept that if a large number of individuals are immune to a disease, then the number of possible susceptible individuals to that disease can be reduced such that an outbreak is less likely to occur. Less likely doesn't mean impossible.

In the real world of public health and childhood vaccine preventable diseases, especially in school and/or daycare environments, this can occur: An outbreak of a disease! Here's why. For viral vaccine preventable diseases approximately 3 to 5 children per 100 children, who have been vaccinated are NOT immune. In general, for bacterial vaccine preventable diseases the range can be about 2% to 10% who have been vaccinated--but are NOT immune. Exactly why some children, or adults, do not respond to a particular vaccine is not completely understood. If a more complete answer of that question could be given a Nobel Prize for Medicine would be assured.

In the case of a measles outbreak, such as at Disneyland, just one person can infect any number of persons they are in contact with who are not immune because they have not had the vaccine, or they did not become immune after receiving the vaccine. So, randomly distributed among us are those people who have had the measles vaccine but it didn't "take." In a busy place like Disneyland, with thousands of people in any one place you can roughly figure that there are 30 (3%) to 50 (5%) per 1,000 people who are at risk. If, just one of those at risk persons comes into contact with an infected person--it's off to the races! Because measles is so contagious, you can be sure there will be subsequent cases to patient zero.

The second answer to the other part of your question is that young children, those who are less than age two, are at the most risk of childhood vaccine preventable diseases because they either are not old enough to receive some vaccines, or because they are still in the process of receiving vaccines that must be given in a series of doses over a period of six to eighteen months to maximum protection.

Because we live in an imperfect world, where diseases cause serious harm, we as adults must all take seriously the risk of disease versus the benefit of vaccines for the children we are privileged to have. Even after 40+ years of working in the public health field of vaccines and childhood diseases, I've come to the conclusion that one cannot reach all or even some of the anti-vaxers. Actually, I don't feel too bad about not reaching all those people over the years! I do know that if the Pope in Rome, the Grand Tut-Tut in Mecca, or the Deli Lama of Tibet, or the Rabbi in East Halfasack, NJ can't reason with or reach all of their washed-unwashed masses, then I don't feel so bad.
 
Has there ever been a widespread issue in using vaccines? I am sure that some people are affected or may have issues, but is it so many that it is worth not taking it? I mean way back in the day, I seem to recall that "live" cultures were used in certain vaccines, but these days the cultures are "dead". I had a third grade teacher whose legs were damaged by polio and she stated that she was "at the fringe" of when the vaccine started to be in wide use and she had all of her children vaccinated for it when it was offered. From my limited POV, it just seems strange that suddenly there are so many against using the very vaccines that have reduced some diseases to a state of non-existence.
 
Blame the media giving the anti-vaxxers a platform to spew their bile because it drives ratings. Nothing like having people losing their cool on radio or TV to get listeners/viewers. It does not do any of us any good, but it sure is good for the media bigwigs and their stock options.
 
Just look at the common cold, the "handoff" is about 1:1, people get it about as fast as they get over it by touching 50 doorknobs, telephones, and shopping carts, and breathing the germy air of others.

Pack us all together for Xmas shopping and suddenly we're interfacing with 60 people and it starts spreading.

Vaccinating "everyone", or nearly everyone who qualifies, keeps the ratio down under 1. Go back a couple months to the ebola thing we've all forgotten about to see how that was controlled and why everyone was freaking out.

To look at it another way, imagine a morning commute in the snow, and one car doesn't have adequate tires. The other cars can swerve around it, and are mashing the snow down to keep traffic moving, but that one idiot has the potential to really muck stuff up. They can wreck and block traffic. This is the same "me me me" mindset.
 
When I was in school-somewhere around 8th or 9th grade-2 kids contracted polio. The school was closed for a while to make certain it wasn't an outbreak.

The folks who don't get their kids immunized have never lived through something like a polio outbreak.
 
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
When I was in school-somewhere around 8th or 9th grade-2 kids contracted polio. The school was closed for a while to make certain it wasn't an outbreak.

The folks who don't get their kids immunized have never lived through something like a polio outbreak.

Exactly.
And I think many or most people do not have the ability to process information and come up with a rational conclusion. If a vaccine killed 1 person out of 10 and 2 out of ten are known to die from the disease...no one would use the vaccine.
 
Originally Posted By: 2010_FX4
Has there ever been a widespread issue in using vaccines? I am sure that some people are affected or may have issues, but is it so many that it is worth not taking it?

THESE are the kinds of questions that people SHOULD be asking. Right now, the answer is a resounding no, but this is a healthy kind of skepticism for people to retain -- unlike the foamy-mouthed blanket condemnation and shapeshifting double-talk of the anti-vaccine movement.
 
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
When I was in school-somewhere around 8th or 9th grade-2 kids contracted polio. The school was closed for a while to make certain it wasn't an outbreak.

The folks who don't get their kids immunized have never lived through something like a polio outbreak.


It's pretty rare that I agree with you on something, but this is definitely one of those things. Vaccinate your [censored] kids people. I don't care if you get them a flu shot or not, but seriously, MMR, Tetanus/whooping cough, Polio, etc. Just do it. Stop putting your own kids lives (not to mention OTHER kids and adults lives) at risk because of what some quack idiot chick who doesn't know what she's talking about said.
 
It seems we've done fairly well in the 'modern world' combating some of the 'ills', but the relatively unrestricted travel from areas still of the 'dark ages' brings it back=crazy.
 
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