Really, is getting vaccinated for whooping cough really a socialist plot to take over your minds?
If you’ve ever spoken to a mother who has lost a child, you will never forget what she has to say. Mariah Bianchi is such a mother, and she wants you to know why you need to get the pertussis vaccination. Not just for your child, but for you, and anyone who comes into contact with your child.
Her message comes just as the CA Dept. of Public Health is warning people to get vaccinated. Health officials say 2010 is shaping up to be a “peak” year for pertussis, aka whooping cough. The highly contagious disease can be deadly in infants, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
From the article, it sounds as if Mariah Bianchi was not anti-vaccine but simply someone who did not know that adults may need pertussis boosters.
Gotta add this to the Jenny McCarthy body count website.
There is only one reason that we live in a society in which we don’t have 100% vaccination. This is the lack of resolve and the resistance to the process caused by the anti-vac movement.
Greg, it seems a little unjustified in blaming the two deaths on the antivaccine movement. As Elf Eye points out, the mother of one of the children didn’t seem to be “anti-vaccine” but rather was unaware that she should have been vaccinated. It’s primarily an issue about education and awareness, rather than a deep-seated ideological bias against vaccines.
NP, and as Greg responded, the reason we don’t have this education and awareness–and standard protocols for getting adults all their shots–is the anti-vaccine movement.
Imagine that there was a movement against inspecting air planes, and it was somewhat effective. Then there would be fewer inspections. And more crashes. A given crash COULD have happened because of some strange unknown cause and it would have happened anyway, but it would essentially be reasonable to blame all the crashes on the lack of inspections, and thus, the instigators of the inspections, and you’d be right more often than we usually are.
Greg, you airplane inspection analogy is not apt. Airplane crashes are (in general) independent from each other. Infections are never independent. Each infection results from someone catching the infection from someone who is infected.
Infections require both susceptible individuals and infected individuals.
It’s easy to be an anti-vaxer in a world where small pox, polio et al are something you read about in history class.
It’s unfortunate that these people had to die of an easily preventable disease but (silver lining alert!) at least this provides the medical community with tangible ammunition against the anti-vax movement.
Did any of you read the linked article? The death of Bianchi’s baby was one of seven from five years ago. She became very vocal after that. The two deaths are those that have happened this year, which is shaping up to be another peak year.
Besides which, the reason pertussis has been seeing such a resurgence is the fucking anti-vax movement. It is likely that if the anti-vax lunatics weren’t refusing to vaccinate their children, she wouldn’t have gotten the pertussis in the first place. At the very least, with full immunizations, it is less likely to come around.
The airplane analaogy is actually OK. Because we have inspections, crashes with identifiable causes don’t happen again.
unfortunately here in Oz, we’ve had a few young children become ill, and one die, shortly after being given a mixed influenza shot (winter and swine), allegedly without the vaccine having undergone the full suite of tests.
At this stage, the link is only coincidental and awaiting the usual testing and examination protocals.
I’m clenching my teeth just waiting for the anti-vaxxers to come out of the woodwork. They will of course persist even if the results demonstrate no link to the vaccine, or, even if more lives are actually saved by using the vaccine.
The death of a child is always tragic.
As were the two drowning deaths this month of children with autism.
And the 11 deaths this year that were linked to pertussis vaccine.
What this article didn’t mention was how these two deaths were associated with anyone who chose not to vaccinate. This is significant because the pertussis vaccine is one of the poorest performing vaccines we have, and even when the vaccine uptake is high, there are still thousands of cases per year. Even in children who get three and four doses, it is only 80% to 85% effective at best. So even if uptake is 100%, you will still have out breaks and occasional deaths.
As you can see from the CDC’s own numbers, between 1990 and 2003, where there was little to no vaccine backlash, infection rates ranged between 2,000 and 12,000 per year. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5450a3.htm
Until the scientific and public health communities start taking vaccine injury seriously, the public distrust will grow and vaccine preventable diseases WILL make a comeback. Because many parents seeing that two people have died from the disease and 11 have died from the vaccine will still bet on the side of the illness.
Shorter Ginger: Until you make the world perfectly safe, I am going to make it much, much more dangerous to spite you.
Shorter Stephanie: Instead of dealing with you in good faith on the science, I will mock and insult you, further driving the wedge between public health and vaccine resistant parents.
Fixed that for ya.
Ginger, you started with “11 deaths this year that were linked to pertussis vaccine.” If you want good faith on the science, give it.
As far as I know it’s only within the last few years that we’ve added pertussis back to the adult vacination schedule. I’m not sure I’d blame the anti-vaxers for adults that haven’t gotten boosters as much as inertia. Doctors that provided primary care only for adults haven’t been pushing it. People who have grown children or no children aren’t likely to push for it partly because they aren’t likely to know about it.
I have friends who have brand new baby and no where during the whole prenatal process did anyone suggest that they should get a a pertussis booster. They had to seek it out because they had read about it.
daedalus2u: Well, this is not to important to the main point, but … the airplane analogy is “not apt” for a million reasons. Infections don’t fly. Airplanes don’t function with bacteria or viruses. Etc. The point being, to say that an analogy is lacing is to say that an analogy is not a redescription, or clone.
I think you’re just sore because you don’t have an NO link! (Or do you?)
Ginger, please give us the source information, from some place other than ann anti-vax web site, on the link you suggest between those 11 deaths and the vaccine.
And of course, vaccines can have risks. And we have to weight the risks and the benefits.
Truism, did you know that 100% of people who are vaccinated die?
yes itzac, and did you know that 107% of people who aren’t vaccinated die. Whaddya mean you don’t believe me? I believe it so it must be true.
Ginger said, “Because many parents seeing that two people have died from the disease and 11 have died from the vaccine will still bet on the side of the illness.”
You seem to forget that if no one vaccinated against pertussis, then there would likely be many more deaths from pertussis than there are now, and considerably more than the 11 deaths you say are linked to the pertussis vaccine. Sounds like vaccination benefits far outweigh the risks.
If you talk to someone of my mother’s generation (born in the 1930s), you will learn that deaths from pertussis was relatively common at the time, especially in the urban areas. Ginger is purposefully misrepresenting herd immunity. Even if the vaccine is only 85% percent effective, those who are fully protected will protect those who are not. More importantly, they will protect the children who CANNOT get vaccinated for valid reasons, and those who are at high risk because of immunosuppresion. I have cared for infants in the PICU who are infected with pertussis. It is not fun to throw all of the technology science has to offer, and still not be sure from minute to minute whether the infant will live (it is usually infants who are more severely affected), and I have cared for two who did not survive. One of my co-workers contracted pertussis from a patient, and was off work on disability for months. She broke two ribs from the tussive couph, and the cough lasted for months, interrupting her ability to breath properly, or carry out nursing duties, not to mention the pain. I get my pertussis vaccine whenever it is due.
I don’t want my child to die or get autism because I gave them a vaccine shot that might have been the cause of their death/autism. I know two parents very well that have an amazing little girl that did follow the vaccination guidelines that are mandated and up until the time she was vaccinated she was a normal, outgoing, wonderful little child, she went through the process, and then the decline happened. Of course there is no PROOF it was the vaccines that contain thimerosal, but I watched it….nothing else in their life changed other than those vaccines. Riddle me that one. You SEE THAT happen, not just read about it in some far off place, and then tell me your going to hop right up, march your kids on down to the doctor, and shoot them right on up {oh yeah… with MERCURY, which is horrific to the human body, except in this case it seems}. I don’t know anyone who died of pertussis yet, and maybe it wasn’t the vaccine that gave my friend autism, but I’m not willing to chance it with my child… that makes vaccine 1 negative, non-vaccine 0 negatives in my actual life… not in THEORY, in TRUTH. Plus as far as CDC and WHO, with the laughable debacle of the h1n1 virus {it being bull#*it and all} why would I possibly trust them anymore than the FDA?
I don’t want my child to die or get autism because I gave them a vaccine shot that might have been the cause of their death/autism.
I don’t want my child to die or get a behavioral/neurological disorder because some witchdoctor from the next town over put a magic leaf under his mattress.
I know two parents very well that have an amazing little girl that did follow the vaccination guidelines that are mandated and up until the time she was vaccinated she was a normal, outgoing, wonderful little child, she went through the process, and then the decline happened.
I’ll tell you why that is not true in a moment, but first let me say that I know a perfectly healthy young woman who suddenly had severe life threatening illness and all kinds of other problems (including behavioral ones) because a witchdoctor from another village put a magic leaf under her mattress. I am not making this up.
Riddle me that one.
OK, I will.
Normally, the first six vaccines are administered in the first 45 days. At four months, six more. At six months, four more not counting Hep, which may have a more complicated schedule and has a longer time over which the two shots are given. At 12 months we have another 7 or 8. One more (or two) at 18 months. Four more at four months, not counting influenza.
There is no such thing as “the child was fine and we could see that his development was perfect, then the vaccines were given, then there was this sudden change in development.” That particular observation just can’t be made because that is simply not how it happens.
That’s a litte like watching a parking lot in the morning rush hour and saying “It was all empty and stuff, and then suddenly, it was full of cars!!! Magic cars!!!” Impossible.
That is just shit you are making up. I’m not denying the child had a developmental problem, but there is not way for an individual to make this link in a specific child.
You SEE THAT happen, not just read about it in some far off place, and then tell me your going to hop right up, march your kids on down to the doctor, and shoot them right on up
No, you don’t.
There is simply no way to make that observation. As an anthropologist, I understand how you can convince yourself that this is true, and how the person I knew in the Congo’s rainforest was convinced that the above described event happened to her. But it didn’t.
with the laughable debacle of the h1n1 virus {it being bull#*it and all} why would I possibly trust them anymore than the FDA?
Debacle? A potentially easily spread and potentially dangerous form of the flu is identified, a completely novel last minute vaccine is produced (yes, with some production problems, and we need to fix that) and widely delivered (late, but effectively) and overall … and listen to this part VERY CAREFULLY, Mr. AllCaps, because people are generally easily scared and pretty stupid, lots more people got the REGULAR flu vaccine that normally would not have, and so we had a relatively mild regluar flu season AND seem to have dealt nicely with the H1N1 problem, so far.
I am singularly unimpressed, and in fact, ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGED that you count as a factor that no one you know has died of pertussis.
Fuck. You.
I don’t personally know any children who have died of leukemia. Therefore, it isn’t really a problem. Just exactly who/what do you think you are? Wow.
@Ginger Taylor:
“The death or a child is always tragic”.
I agree. Abortion (infanticide) should be banned. So far liberals, through one population control process called abortion, have murdered over 54 million unborn children since that awful Roe V. Wade decision. That’s the ones we know about. It is speculated that over 1 billion children have been murdered through abortion throughout the world.
Tragic doesn’t even begin to describe it. Oh well. The infanticide supports will get their punishment when they meet God face to face.
You have yet to tell me why you think I should force myself to take the CHANCE. I know what I’ve seen happen. Your talking about forcing an infant, whose immune system is brand new, to take some twenty plus injections of foreign substances in the first years of its life and think that can’t possibly have some kind of adverse affects. Just type in mercury and see if it says “not good overall but o.k. to put into children by injection before the age of two”. Have you actually looked at this stuff? Not liberal bullshit papres… wikipedia Mercury. So still, the what HAS happened and what HAS NOT happened in MY life still stands. Your putting in a whole lot of MAYBES so that you can try and force me to feel how you feel cause you made your decision based on words on a page, not REAL HAPPENINGS, so you think you should pressure me and my decision, problem is, I lived mine, it really happened, and you can’t DISPROVE it, so the next best thing is to change the argument and make it about all kinds of other things {i.e. witchdoctor, leukemia, etc.}, because you can’t DISPROVE that something bad might happen, problem also is… they are NOT your kids they are mine. YET you still think you should make my judgement call, and your opinion doesn’t come from an event that happened in your life. I saw what happened, studied {out of fear for my own} as much as I could about what might have been the cause, read a lot of stuff from both sides of the argument about vaccinations and what they consist of and prevent, and saw more than once the possible tie to autism and deaths, and felt like it might have something to do with the result, for lack of any other answer. I made my choice, gave my explanation, you gave no alternative proof but the stock posterchild answer of “they said so thats why”, and tried to prove your argument by loud talk and introduction of other inferred arguments. Interesting you place your “have to” reasonings in the “be afraid, be very afraid” point of view instead of going “read this and read that” to try and educate me. The one part of fact you spoke to me “witch doctor with the leaf and pillow” I took and educated myself with and will now be aware of who lives in the other towns by me.
P.S.I also read about heavy power lines maybe being a factor in childrens leukemia back in the 80’s and chose not to buy a home that was in the area of heavy power lines, because the guys that said it didn’t hurt you {big electric} don’t live at my house and won’t be affected if its not true. You can’t take those things {cancer, autism, death from using pharmeceutical drugs properly} away, I get to make my own decision, not sure why you hate that, especially when your arguments ABOUT the subject are “cause they said so”.
FACT: The WHO said h1n1 was going to be a massive pandemic and put the fear of GOD into all of us that if we didn’t buy it {$bil}and get vaccinated we were all gonna die, then we found out {after the sale w no refund} about the scientist{s} getting paid to do an “impartial” study by the pharm. companies, then the pandemic, by coincidence, didn’t happen.
FACT: FDA passed the salmonella-chicken guys farm to safely sell eggs, they were bad {people actually died}, they said they cleaned him up… and it happened again a few weeks later…
FACT: 106,000 people a year die from side effects of drugs after they take them properly.
Why should I believe these people, and not make my own decision through what is true, and what I decide. I don’t bitch at you for making your decision, I don’t try to influence it, I don’t talk shit about it. Whose definition of democracy do you subscribe too
OMG Scott, that comment is a classic.
I don’t care what you decide or think, but we sane people will do everything in our collective power to force people like you into doing the right thing so today’s infants can grow up in a world without unnecessary epidemics.
Your attitude is not a matter of opinion, and your paranoid delusions are not a matter of harmless mental illness. What you are saying and doing is harmful to others. Do you also engage in other antisocial and dangerous practices, such as driving the wrong way on the highway or tossing empty beer bottles out of the third floor window on a busy street?
I think high school health classes, and prenatal classes should include films of infants suffering (and SUFFERING they are) from a case of pertussis. Funny, I have yet to see a parent turn down an anti botulism vaccine for their children with a case of botulism with the excuse that they are afraid of autism.
Yet your still not making your argument against say… mercury being in these vaccines and the effect it might have on adults, much less children, and why there is some belief, by a growing number of people, that they are tied {yet again that these things have truly occurred to, not theoretically…actually} in close proximity to bad things that have happened, and that when you go to a doctor and they just pull out those vaccines like “of course your going to do this”, and they don’t in any way offer that it is a bit of concern, by, more than one person, this might, possibly, in some way, hurt your child, and that you might want to take a look at all sides of the argument first, before you do something you can’t take back… or believe your “because they said so” argument.
I read about vaccines they give, mercury was in a lot of them, I read about mercury. Its not healthy for humans. I read about the vaccines they put together, some are not necessary to put into an infant, and if that sentiment changes they can be given {without less results or more danger to the person} at older ages than infancy or not together.
Some people think they have been tied to autism. I read some information on that side of the argument. Its seems to be much larger of a concern than I am prepared to risk. I read about the at risk pool for each individual vaccine and a lot of them were not the enviornment my infant was in, so I chose not to take the risk until the jury wasn’t out anymore, and it was just too coincidental that the one incident I witnessed, happened exactly as many people on the internet had explained happened to them.
Now I am sorry you don’t agree with me and your stellar argument doesn’t change my mind yet, but buck up…I think I see another sheep coming. Maybe they will be swayed by your, don’t stay on the point… throw a bunch of mud and smoke… “just listen too me cause I’m smarter cause I have a blog” -isms.
Scott, just a quick question: Which vaccines do you think mercury is in?
Yet your still not making your argument against say… mercury being in these vaccines and the effect it might have on adults, much less children, and why there is some belief, by a growing number of people, that they are tied {yet again that these things have truly occurred to, not theoretically…actually} in close proximity to bad things that have happened,
I do make that argument. I’ve read the primary scientific literature on it and there isn’t any evidence that links any aspect of vaccination with autism. There is a vague,proposed but statistically non comforming co-increase in autism and the use of the mercury, then there is no decrease in autism when the mercury use goes down. They are unlinked.
Besides, with the exception of some (but not all) influenza vaccines, thimerosal (that’s the stuff with the mercury in it) is not used in most, perhaps any, childhood vaccines. The typical paranoid deluded antivaxer, yourself for example, avoids even vaccines without mercury because what you’re doing here is not really avoiding mercury. You are avoiding Big Pharm.
I can see why Big Pharm would make someone nervous, but the conclusions you have drawn are incorrect, inappropriate, and dangerous.
I read about mercury. Its not healthy for humans.
Mercury ingestion or inhalation can be quite bad. But it is no so simple. Mercury comes in different forms, and that determines if it is dangerous, and the amount matters. The mercury in vaccines is a very tiny amount and the form it comes in appears to not interact with human tissues.
One study measured the amount of mercury in the usual tissues (hair, blood, etc) infants and found that the amounts were very very small, and that the amount detected had no relationship to amounts introduced through vaccination. In other words, there is trace mercury there (in our enviornment, in our diets) and the vaccine-sourced mercury is undetectable as an addition to that, it is so small or even non existent. That study demonstrated that vaccine-sourced mercury ends up in the diaper.
I feel icky about mercury being in vaccines, but the truth is that there is somewhere between almost none and zero, and the science shows that it passes harmlessly through owing to the nature of the compound.
Yes Scott, they are your children and you should have the right to refuse to vaccinate them, just like I should have the right to make certain that other children, such as my own, are never exposed to them. If you don’t want to vaccinate your children, keep them the fuck away from my kids and especially keep them away from kids who either couldn’t be vaccinated due to other health issues (hint: these are generally kids who are most in need of herd immunity) and kids who never managed to develop the anti-bodies (hint 2: these kids tend to be right behind the kids mentioned above in need of herd immunity).
You just take full advantage of your rights, just don’t infringe on mine while you do so.
I have followed this article and the vaccine and anti-vaccine issue. My only question (and comment0 to everyone is this: If you believe vaccines are helpful, DO put a lot of energy into informing people and DO attempt to persuade them to get they and they children vaccinated. But answer this, where is your right or anyone’s right individually or collectively (i.e., a so-called government) to FORCE people to take vaccines or have their children vaccinated against their will? Where is the power and authority to do that? Upon what political-religious idea does someone have the right to BY FORCE make someone have a vaccine. Can you help me understand that? That’s a comment and a question. NOW – if YOU are vaccinated and you faccine your children, aren’t you safe? So if you ARE vaccinated and SAFE, why do you feel you have a right to FORCE your beliefs on others and their children? You’re safe aren’t you? So, answer this: why do you NOT leave other people alone? Hope we get some answers here. Thanks Michael Smith msmith6791 at AOL
Greg or someone above, you said below people “get” infections from other people. HOW DOES THAT SCIENTIFICALLY TAKE PLACE? Let’s get into this. Michael Smith msmith6791 at AOL
NOTE: I have typed below what I read above by Greg or someone. So I hope I get some answers. While we are waiting we can all research this. You can GOOGLE: Germ Theory of Disease and get some links to study. You can GOOGLE: Myth of Germ theory of disease and get some good articles PRO AND CON. Here’s a good one on fraud of germ theory: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/222567/why_do_we_get_sick_myth_of_the_germ.html?cat=5
YOU SAID or someone said:Greg, you airplane inspection analogy is not apt. Airplane crashes are (in general) independent from each other. Infections are never independent. Each infection results from someone catching the infection from someone who is infected.
Infections require both susceptible individuals and infected individuals.
Michael, you are a dangrous moron. Let me tell you a few things you will deny or ignore, and finish with a message you can’t ignore.
Diseases like small pox, measles, mumps, polio, and so on are transmitted from one person to another via some process that varies from disease to disease. The “germ theory” is not a myth. And, Oswald shot Kennedy and there really was a Holocaust.
Vaccines are not perfect … some are quite close to 100% effective, but others (many others) are far from that. An individual may receive very little protection, the protection can “wear off” or a version of the disease may be out there that the vaccine does not affect as well as others. It is not as simple as “if you take a vaccine, and your family does, then you are safe, no matter what others do.” Vaccination addresses disease at a population and ecological level. By refusing vaccination, you endanger everyone else for indefensible, stupid reasons.
Many people who get very upset about vaccinations are young, stupid, or poorly educated in history. They do not know what it is like to live in a world where seasonal (or non seasonal) widespread death comes to a neighborhood. They do not know the experience of hearing, in a few days time, that one child, then another, then another, so maybe six or eight of the dozen in your neighborhood, all have rubella, and then wondering if any of them will die. It is a little like hearing that a van of your neighbor’s school kids, along with your own, was in a serious accident but you don’t have details yet. You wait to see if any will be reported dead.
You don’t know what that is like. I do. I don’t want your stupidity to make the world go to that place ever again.
And that’s a normal run of the mill year, every single year, not an epidemic year.
Vaccinations have changed the world so that this sort of thing simply does not happen any more. You are trying to bring that back.
There are a lot of people who are not smart enough to protect themselves, let along to participate in the societal level protection that is required. One can argue until the cows come home as to whether or not there is a legal or constitutional right to push vaccines on people. The simple fact is that those who refuse vaccines are risking all of us. And we will defend ourselves. If you think I’m going to send my children to a school with a large number of anti-vaxers during some neo-epidemic caused by those very anti-vaxers stupidly then you are quite mistaken. In the event of a dangerous epidemic, the law is very flexible in this way. Kids who are not vaccinated, as well as adults, will be forced to vaccinate if necessary or simply be quarantined. You and your children will be kept out of schools, public places, or jailed, as needed.
In the meantime, between epidemics, the screechy ignorant anti-vaxers merely look like idiots. Which is what they are.
By the way, I see the primary use of the second amendment in this country as not defending myself against some mythical government. I see it as my first line of defense in the case of the epidemic. Picking off the unvaccinated. Oh yes, I can have my fantasies too.