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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Agreed. I used to work in African blindness prevention programs. Measles is the leading cause of preventable blindness in Africa. And yes you see scores of beggers with twisted limbs who were polio victims. It is very real.

Both my aunt and sister in law got whooping cough as babies - my aunt suffered a stroke as a result which paralyzed the right side of her body. My sister in law nearly died (turning blue, not able to breath) but they got her to the hospital before permanent damage was done.

What gets me the most about the anti-vax stuff is that the people most vocal are all so privileged and they don't know it or won't acknowledge it. Heck, there is a little boy in Ant's class who has Leukemia. His mom has kept him home a lot this year, not because HE is sick, but because everyone else is. This little boy's education is directly impacted by other people's health decisions. The kid is already going through hell; why make it more intense?

I had measles and whooping cough and chicken pox as a toddler, and I'm fine. My children are still vaccinated because even if they would be fine, like I was, there are other people whom they might infect who might die until they were dead in the way of dead people who don't stop being dead. Ever.

This is such a no-brainer for me.

You are right of course, Ailbhe. Most kids would be fine, especially as in countries like yours and mine, they are likely to be well nourished and warm and getting enough sleep. Because we are so safe we forget that when everyone got measles, even a small number of complications left a lot of very damaged people. We don't see those now, BECAUSE of vaccination, so ignorant people think these are minor diseases.