20 Cases of Measles….
Twenty cases of measles and counting in unvaccinated kids in California. Unbelievable. Now can we please stop this anti-vaccine movement forever? For those that don’t know that story about this hoax and criminal act, please see this cool cartoon graphic. I think at this point the parents need to be held accountable as well. I say as well but the lowlife Dr. Wakefield only made money off his crime and is still floating around being hailed as some type of hero by the Jenny McCarthys of this world. All hell will break loose if polio gets out. We need to work together to stop these idiots.
OMG,
I am in Cali, some of these parents drive me crazy!!!
For 15 years I worked in on the line of a college town with lots of “educated” persons and a very low SES city. Never did I have a parent from the big bad city refuse to have vaccines given. Only those from the college town. And they would act appalled if I had not read the “latest” book by some quack who recommends you only get particular vaccines and never in the schedule that is recommended by the Peds people.
Now I work in a full on ghetto again, so not getting any flack on immunizations!
Really??
I totally agree these parents hold the responsibility for these outbreaks, and any sequelae and or deaths that are the outcome. Why are they always so shocked by the outbreak too!!!
“How did this happen?”, they say.
You guys old enough to remember that if you did not get vaccinated, you did not go to school.
I remember my Mother taking me around to fine some Urgent Care one night cuz they were not gonna let me back in school if I did not get a Tetanus booster!!
Oh and Lance, et. al. – you guys are all my heros!!!
Cheers,
Cyn
Dr. Doug, you should be writing this as an op-ed piece for the LA Times!
One problem comes in that all of the stories of times past – of how people were injured by everything from measles to polio – all diseases for which there are tried-and-proven vaccines – are denying that it happened at all! Just as it started with Holocaust deniers, there are now Dustbowl Deniers, Great Depression deniers, Polio pandemic deniers, Spanish flu deniers, and on and on.
There are living people who remember these things, and people living with the after-effects of the diseases. But, some people will believe or choose to disbelieve anything.
On my blog, I go into likely, not-so-likely, and ludicrously improbable events that will cause the end of society, human kind, life on earth, or even the universe. As much as I go into the likely scenarios, the one I’ve been predicting for a LONG time is that it will be a pandemic of an old, well-understood disease for which there has been a vaccine for decades. The obvious will be ignored and disregarded, politicos throughout the world will put in trillions of $ to “find a cure” for something they consider “new” while disregarding the fact that it’s something old and well understood.
It doesn’t help either that many doctors in the US and other western democracies have never seen a case of some of these dread-diseases of yesteryear, unless they have worked, trained, or lived in a third-world country. That speaks well for the efficacy of vaccines, but bodes ill for outbreaks or quarantining people in time. A doctor or nurse who has seen someone with polio, or a deadly case of measles or chicken pox or scarlet fever will work harder and have more credibility to get (mildly) anti-vax parents to vaccinate.
There are also people who want to get rid of all ability of the CDC, NHS, or any health department to enforce a quarantine. Because, you know, “They” just want to end freedom. Like our freedom to catch measles, polio, TB, or worse.
many do not understand that if there was a report of a disease that their child was not vaccinated for the child needs to stay home. Quarantine for the non-vaccinated and the ill/exposed. How about bracelets that say non-vaccinated? Our corporation said we can not fire non-vaccinated families or have them sign any paper work. The paper work did not help legally.
Has any one ever taken stories from those who have been hurt by polio, photographs from the above, and all the consequences of these, sat with parents refusing to have it done? I mean where the results of what happens literally stares them in the face? Then calmly go over why and what basis they have for their results?
After that get them to sign something saying that they can be held liable for getting other children sick and they agree they have seen the consequences of not vaccinating.
You would think the states requiring physicians who do abortions to show the women pictures/videos of fetuses, tell them it will increase their risk of breast cancer, etc., will also require them to do what you recommend.
In our system, the pediatricians have fired all the non-vaccinating parents.
I think it’s great, but, of course, the parents just see it as proof of The Man’s desire to persecute them for knowing the “truth.”
Far as I’m concerned, they should all be locked up for child neglect and reckless endangerment, and their kids placed in orphanages
Lots of old and former farms around here – I’m still waiting to see a kid with lockjaw, so I can have the pleasure of explaining to the parent the phases of the painful and inevitable death that awaits, and ask why the child wasn’t vaccinated. Yes, I’m a jerk.