(no subject)

[rivka]

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.

Comments

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I exposed my mother to rubella when she was pregnant with my little brother. He died twelve hours after he was born.

My sister-in-law, a now-retired school teacher, developed pertussis after being exposed by one of her students who had not been vaccinated. It took her nearly two months to recover.

I remember my parents and my grandmother and my aunts and uncles telling me stories about polio, and summers spent in fear.

Being the daughter of a biochemist, I often find myself sitting on my hands after reading the latest stupid, idiotic, outrageous pseudo-science blatherings from a misinformed, miseducated, misguided moron. They've all perfected the art of sticking their fingers in their ears and singing, "lalala I can't hear you!" It makes me so very, very angry.

*checking out Trolls With Wooden Spoons*