Vaccination & epidemic

[Clodfobble]

*shrug* Or treat vaccination as a serious medical intervention, like antibiotics (ought to be,) and only use them when absolutely necessary, like antibiotics (ought to be.)

[Happy Monkey]

Vaccination is a preventative. If you need serious medical intervention, it's too late.

[Clodfobble]

Some shots, such as tetanus for example, can be given shortly after a known exposure. In addition, shots can be given in local areas during specific outbreaks instead of nationwide for all possible diseases. Mothers can be tested for diseases such as Hep B instead of giving all babies the shot when they will almost certainly have no exposure. There ARE options.

Antibiotics can be used preventatively across the board too. But it's strongly discouraged, and for good reason.

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Some shots, such as tetanus for example, can be given shortly after a known exposure. In addition, shots can be given in local areas during specific outbreaks instead of nationwide for all possible diseases. Mothers can be tested for diseases such as Hep B instead of giving all babies the shot when they will almost certainly have no exposure. There ARE options.

Antibiotics can be used preventatively across the board too. But it's strongly discouraged, and for good reason.

The argument here is very circular which is why I rarely involve myself, but clearly, a child will

almost certainly have no exposure

because the disease is less prolific due to vaccination.

If no one ever vaccinated, my child would have a much higher risk of dying from a preventable disease than it would of developing an auto immune disease.

There in lies the social issue.

Because these diseases almost don't exist, it gives people the luxury of being able to say they don't need to immunise or that they choose not to because the other risks are higher.

I guess if people had to go back a couple of generations and live in families where the infant mortality rate was high (most families lost or had crippled at least one child) thanks to many of these preventable diseases, some of us might better understand the need to immunise where ever possible.

[Happy Monkey]

And those options are used to determine which vaccinations are on the schedule.

For example, rabies is not, while Hep B is:

Originally Posted by CDC

Approximately 25 percent of children who become infected with life-long hepatitis B virus would be expected to die of related liver disease as adults. (emphasis theirs)
...
In addition, approximately 33,000 children (10 years of age and younger) of mothers who are not infected (emphasis mine) with hepatitis B virus were infected each year before routine recommendation of childhood hepatitis B vaccination.

[Happy Monkey]

Are you relatively unmoved by the conflict between:

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Mothers can be tested for diseases such as Hep B instead of giving all babies the shot when they will almost certainly have no exposure.

Originally Posted by CDC

In addition, approximately 33,000 children (10 years of age and younger) of mothers who are not infected (emphasis mine) with hepatitis B virus were infected each year before routine recommendation of childhood hepatitis B vaccination

[Clodfobble]

And I believe their determinations should be more conservative than they are. As we've established, I am relatively unmoved by death stats, because I think the consequences of our actions will be worse than the original problem, and sooner rather than later. We're not even trying to make it later, in my opinion.

[Clodfobble]

Yes, I am. Because on a surface level, your stats are for all children under age 10, not newborns. An 8-year-old is more likely to come into contact with adult fluids than a newborn. The shot could be given at age 1 or 2 or 3, just like many shots, were it not for some infected mothers passing it through breastmilk. They could test the mothers, but they don't. I understand that you believe that there is no risk difference between giving the shot on day one vs. day 730, but given that I don't believe that, it makes sense that I would advocate testing the mothers, and giving the shot later if that's what the parent wants to do.

I am also unmoved because on a deeper level, yes, children under the age of 10 get diseases. So do people over the age of 10. It sucks. It's painful. Sometimes it kills us. That doesn't mean that our current course of action will be better for us in the long run than the mechanism that evolution already provided.

You guys keep pointing out how horrible option A is, but I'm not denying that. I'm simply saying that option B may actually turn out to be much worse. Why do we not also give children under 10 a steady dose of antibiotics every day? That, too, would prevent many diseases which hurt and sometimes kill us. It's what they do with penned-in cattle, after all. And have there perhaps been any negative consequences from that policy?



Of course every single childhood death should be prevented at all costs! But maybe...[/Louis C.K.]

[Lamplighter]

Gee Clod, so many factual errors in your discussion.

Most of the current vaccines are for viruses, so discussion giving antibiotics instead is immaterial.

Back to talking about Hepatitis B,
HBV is transmitted by percutaneous or mucosal exposure
to the blood or body fluids of an infected person, most often through injection-drug use,
from sexual contact with an infected person,
or from an infected mother to her newborn during childbirth.

The risk for chronic HBV infection decreases with increasing age at infection.
Among infants who acquire HBV infection from their mothers at birth,
as many as 90% become chronically infected,
whereas 30%–50% of children infected at age 1–5 years become chronically infected.
This percentage is smaller among adults, in whom approximately 5% of all
acute HBV infections progress to chronic infection.
At least 50% of these chronic infections eventually lead to the person's death due to liver disease.

If you look for studies about the efficacy of only screening pregnant women,
and immunizing only the mother, or immunizing the newborn, or
immunizing the newborn AND giving HBIG (immune globulin),
you find that your scheme just doesn't work.

A significantly greater percentage of children with HBeAg-positive mothers
tested positive for antibodies against the hepatitis B core protein (16.76%) and HBsAg (9.26%)
than children with HBeAg-negative mothers (1.58% and 0.29%, respectively; P < .0001 and <.001).

Among the HBV-infected children, the rate of chronicity also was higher
among children with HBeAg-positive mothers than children with HBeAg-negative mothers (54% vs 17%; P = .002).
Similar rates of antibodies against the hepatitis B core protein (0.99% and 1.88%; P = .19)
and HBsAg (0.14% and 0.29%; P = .65) were noted in children born to HBeAg-negative
mothers who were or were not given HBIG.

Infantile fulminant hepatitis developed in 1 of 1050 children who did not receive HBIG (.095%).

I understand your warning about potential, future bad things happening... maybe.
But bad things are happening now, and that's what public health is all about... dealing with reality, not the theoretical.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

It's what they do with penned-in cattle, after all. And have there perhaps been any negative consequences from that policy?

Penned cattle are given mega doses of antibiotics to fatten them up. Common knowledge: to destroy bacteria required to keep cattle healthy. But those cattle will only live another six months. Without intestinal bacterium, cattle also no longer know when to stop feeding. That makes obese cattle and richer slaughter houses. And may now explain why so many antibiotics no longer work.

Excessive use of antibiotics may also explain human obesity, Chrone's disease, diseases now associated with bacteria missing in intestines, and some auto-immune disorders - to name a few. Antibiotics as a preventative measure obviously were and still are bad for long term health.

Not vaccinating kids (at or after 2) puts infants (less than 2 years) at elevated risk of what were once almost eliminated diseases. Many people do not vaccinate due to brainwashing; subjective claims from ‘experts’ such as Jenny McCarthy. BTW, everything Jenny McCarthy said has been proven wrong multiple times.

Down side to vaccinations is near zero. Significant problems are created when not vaccinating. The proof now seen in so many venues where Jenny McCarthy brainwashing created major outbreaks of once preventable diseases.

In one case, a teacher, who was vaccinated for whopping cough, got the disease. We know that some vaccinations wear off on some people. She had whopping cough because some parents (using emotion rather than fact) did not vaccinate their kids. The school (and herself) suffered a major whopping cough outbreak because so many parents had no regard for well proven solutions, the health of others, and health of their kids (especially infants).

In the 1950s, a majority also believed smoking increases health. Same brainwashing technique, now used by Jenny McCarthy, et al, also proved that smoking myth.

Numbers don't lie. Conclusions based only in emotions do.

[Clodfobble]

Sigh. It's not about giving antibiotics instead of vaccines, it's about why something that seems beneficial might have unintended negative consequences. It was a parallel example, not a suggestion. Christ Almighty, if you really think I'm in favor of daily prophylactic antibiotics, you have paid zero attention to who I am.

I sincerely hope vaccinations work out for you and your family. Meanwhile I shall continue to do the risk assessment for my own family and make my own decisions accordingly. Everything else is kind of pointless, no?

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

<snip>
Meanwhile I shall continue to do the risk assessment
for my own family and make my own decisions accordingly.
Everything else is kind of pointless, no?

Clod, this is exactly what I expect/want/urge you to do.

Every parent should, and in Texas and probably in all US states,
has the legal and ethical right to forego immunization of their own children.

I truly do believe that parents know more about their own kids
than the physicians that treat them and I fully subscribe to the
maxim "Listen to the parent".

From your postings here about your own kids, I think you have
done a remarkably good job of coming to grips with what is best
and what is not for them in their diet and care.

We are in disagreement only when someone advocates ideas that are
contrary to what public health experience and/or scientific
investigation has shown to be valid, safe, and economically
the ways to proceed to yield the most good for the most people,
and especially for the most vulnerable.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

We are in disagreement only when someone advocates ideas that are
contrary to what public health experience and/or scientific
investigation has shown to be valid, safe, and ...
the ways to proceed to yield the most good for the most people,
and especially for the most vulnerable.

Yes. Immunization precisely fits this description - it has been shown to be effective, safe, and yields demonstrable good for many people. Once the majority of a population has been immunized, the herd effect protects occasional individuals who are not immune. As soon as the number of unimmunized individuals rises to a critical level the herd effect is no longer operative and outbreaks occur. That's what we have seen in recent years. The choice to not immunize affects not only the individual, but many others.

We are all exposed to tens of thousands of agents that affect our immune systems - daily, over years, rather than a limited number of times (as with immunizations). Immunizations stimulate specific immune memory for a particular antigen. Immune disruptors in the environment have more general effects. It makes more sense to examine these when looking for possible reasons for the rise in autoimmune disease in recent decades than to point a finger at immunization. Even then it's important to remember that this sort of discussion is about association, not cause. Association is a place to start, but it doesn't prove causality.

I looked very carefully at the immunization issue when my children were small and my first son had a bad reaction to the pertussis vaccine. I reviewed all the literature I could find very, very carefully. From that, I came to a conclusion and had all of my children immunized according to the then-current schedule. In the past year I've had the chance to review the literature again while working on my MPH. I just mention that because it might be easy to assume that, having undergone a medical education, I must have been taught to accept immunization without thinking. In fact, I was taught not to accept anything without looking up the literature on it. While at times you find common practice that has been based on flimsy original papers or insufficient evidence, that's not the case with immunization.

[Clodfobble]

And I sincerely hope that works out for your family. We've discussed the fallacy of high infectious mortality before (one need not go back that many generations because the only thing that matters is the infectious disease rate just before vaccination started, not back when doctors didn't know they needed to wash their hands) and we've also discussed how the rate of autoimmune disease is not static, but rising sharply, not just with each generation but with each passing year. Circular, just like you said. I had a whole discussion written out here about whether people who currently have an active autoimmune disease should continue taking vaccines, but it doesn't matter. Everyone posting has already made up their minds, and no one else is even reading. Once again I've let this thread get to me when I swore I was never going to bother opening it again.

I sincerely hope it works out for all of you. Best of luck and I hope your kids stay healthy.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Everyone posting has already made up their minds, and no one else is even reading.

I've been reading, and I've been very intrigued by all of your arguments. I used to always be first in line for any kind of shot and also had the same attitude for my kids. But since this thread started years ago, I've changed my mind. I don't get shots any more unless I have a very compelling reason, and I don't just blindly give my kids every shot out there. We pretty much opt out of all the optional shots now, like the flu shots. So far, I haven't identified any side effects associated with any of the shots for my family, but I don't take that for granted like I used to.