rivka | (no subject)

Michael tells me to let this stuff go, but I can't.

So there's this woman on mothering.com - and right away you know that this isn't going anywhere good - whose daughter has been exposed to chicken pox. The kid has developed two pox so far but no fever. And the mom wants to know: "I can take her trick-or-treating, right?"

Mercifully for my sanity, most people on the thread are saying NO, keep her home. But there's a small, vocal contingent saying things like, "Yeah, I wish you could trick-or-treat at our house, because I'd love to expose my kids!" and "Sure, just don't let her put her hand in the treat bowl" (um, chicken pox is airborne), and "Gosh, contagious people go in public out all the time before they know they've been exposed. So what's the difference?"

Someone I don't know put it perfectly:

Back in the days before vaccines, you know what people did with kids who had "childhood illnesses?"

They kept them home, in bed, for the entire course of the illness. Because that was what you did.

When all those diseases were in circulation, people KNEW they could be serious. They didn't mess around, they didn't send them to school, they didn't take them grocery shopping, they didn't take them to Halloween parties, and they didn't take them door to door around the entire neighborhood.

They just didn't. Sick children were kept at home. In fact, in many municipalities, sick children were officially put under quarantine by local public health officials. My grandfather was a public health agent in the days before (most) vaccines and before antibiotics. One of his jobs was to go to the houses of people with certain illnesses and post the big, official, QUARANTINE signs on their doors.

If you're not going to vaccinate, if that is the world you want, then you need to LIVE IN THAT WORLD. That world where those diseases are recognized as commonplace BUT potentially serious to certain people, and where sick children are kept home and treated as sick, to help their bodies recover.

Yes. That one line encapsulates it all: "If you're not going to vaccinate, if that is the world you want, then you need to LIVE IN THAT WORLD." Not a made-up world in which there are no inconvenient consequences to not vaccinating your kids, and everyone is delighted to see your little disease vectors because they all think of chicken pox, measles, and whooping cough as negligible trifles.

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Incidentally, I write short articles for an online service. They're going to run a bunch of articles on the flu, and one of my assignments is a "vaccine panic" article, since so many people are worrying about it. Let me tell you, it is DAMN HARD to debunk some of the stuff floating around (briefly! concisely! because people read these articles on their Blackberries, not their computer screens!) without suggesting "here, panic about THIS!" to all the people who might not have heard that particular rumor.

I started to address the story about the Canadians and their seasonal flu shot issues (a Mexican study found that people who had the seasonal flu shot were less likely to develop serious complications) but (a) I'm not sure it was exactly DEBUNKED so much as outfitted with mitigating details that are complicated to explain and (b) I don't know if this story has much traction yet. Besides, from what I understand, you aren't supposed to get the shots too close together, so lots of people are holding off in the hopes of getting the H1N1 vaccine first. (And I won't argue that seems more urgent, since the seasonal flu isn't even circulating much yet.)

I did tell people there's less mercury in an adult flu shot than in a 6-ounce can of tuna. DO YOU FEED YOUR CHILDREN TUNA CASSEROLE, PEOPLE? THEN SHUT UP ABOUT THOSE SCARY VACCINES WITH THEIR EVIL EVIL MERCURY. (I researched this last year, but comparing the flu shot to the mercury in a typical sushi dinner. Wow, was that ever a sobering set of numbers. I still feed my children sushi, but now I feel guilty about it.)

Of course, the hardcore anti-vaxxers will argue that eating mercury is DIFFERENT than injecting it into the bloodstream, omg!

Or maybe they're just all vegans?

Still haven't gotten off my arse to ask my son's ped about the H1N1 jab - not sure how much of a point there is, given his tiny in-home daycare, although I probably should call his ped tomorrow.

I researched this last year, but comparing the flu shot to the mercury in a typical sushi dinner. Wow, was that ever a sobering set of numbers. I still feed my children sushi, but now I feel guilty about it.

I feed my kid sushi too, and Coz had a sushi-enriched uterine environment and now gets sushi-enriched breastmilk. I have always thought that we were relatively mercury-safe if we eliminated tuna, hamachi, and mackerel. Were you able to get a sense of whether that's the case?