(no subject)
Nov. 1st, 2009 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaMichael 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:
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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 07:23 pm (UTC)If you want to gamble on the protections of herd immunity while living in the U.S., that is (infuriatingly) your choice as a parent, although playing those odds with a child who has a potentially fatal disease like CF is grossly irresponsible. TAKING SUCH A CHILD TO INDIA UNVACCINATED is so far beyond the pale I don't even know how to talk to someone like this.
In fact, even though my experiences of international travel and living were possibly the most valuable learning experience of my life, I do not think I would take a child with CF to India at all. Air pollution there is atrocious, and the key to a relatively long life for a person with CF is to absolutely minimize the incremental damage that gets done. (I read a really fascinating article a year or two back comparing approaches and outcomes to the top clinic in the U.S. for CF -- which is in my city -- and a somewhat below-average clinic, this one in Ohio. In theory, they did basically the same stuff. The Minneapolis ped wasn't doing anything cutting edge, he was just being an absolute hardass. If someone started cutting corners with their treatment, and their health started to slip even slightly, he'd put them in the hospital for a few weeks to try to regain the lost ground. It kind of drove the teenagers in the program nuts, but his patients were more likely to live well into adulthood than anyone else's anywhere.) (And I can't even begin to imagine his response to a parent who refused to have their child with CF vaccinated against measles or the flu, or who wanted to them to India.)