STFU? Not in our lifetime.

with no human contact for the rest of their lives, too.

Having to STFU would be punishment enough, I think. Even that might even be impossible to carry out.

But I sure am tired of reading anti-vax posts on DU, unsupported by any factual information. I'd like not seeing such misinformation here very much.

Herd immunity protects those who cannot get vaccines due to medical necessity, thus those who refuse put these people at risk. Their refusal literally kills others.

So complete isolation should be the consequences of choosing not to be vaccinated when there is no medical necessity.

I simply object to people advising others not to be vaccinated. Since there is no scientific support for such statements, they do much harm. Personally, when I do have a communicable illness, even a cold, I avoid contact with others. Everyone should do that, as far as they are able to.

Enforcing such a thing, however, isn't really possible.

Excuse me, but schools can and should refuse to admit students who are not vaccinated. It puts other students at risk. Many districts and colleges/universities adhere to this, either by law or choice. I recall having to submit my kids' vaccination records before being allowed entrance to their higher-education institutions. And it was de rigueur for entrance to kindergarten (in MN, by the way).

Foreign travel sometimes requires particular vaccinations.

For vaccinations such as flu and shingles, it is more difficult to enforce, since there is no common entry point to refuse admittance. But I wouldn't be surprised if airlines, for example, might start requiring them. I wouldn't be against that.

We can't simply allow people to "choose" at will. We live in a society, and we need a certain amount of sensible regulation to keep societies safe and equitable.

They place so many at risk...

If they don't want to take part in societal responsibilities, then they don't need to be a part of it at all.

So, I edited the post to indicate that and reposted here. I hope that's OK with you.

calling for the imprisonment and execution of his political opponent. When anti-vaxers start preaching I just tune them out. The former bothers me more; something the Trumpeters iminate from their heros, Vladimir Putin or Kim Jung Un.

I can count on one hand the number of vaccinations I have gotten in my life. I had measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, scarlet fever, and flu for every year for decades from childhood to middle age. Just LUCK? Dr. Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy and WOO DECADES ago? Just LUCK?????


How can you attribute just LUCK that I, and others my age and older, are still alive today without vaccinations. If you were born before 1957, you did not have these vaccinations for these deadly diseases, because you HAD those deadly diseases, and survived them with LIFE immunity into your old age.

I have never gotten a Flu Shot in my life, including during the 2009 Epidemic (over 60) when everyone around me HAD IT. More Luck? Do you math to see how old I was in 2009.

Woo? ROFL Dr. Jenny was in diapers when I was an adult. I am even older than Andrew WakefIeld. It it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

It's just fact that SOME people are permanently harmed by these diseases, and SOME people don't survive them.

According to medicine today if only ONE out of millions dies or has disabilities it is too many. I had all of those deadly diseases before the age of TWO. Impossible to survive or at least have life long disabilities? Just LUCK? I can count not only blood relatives, but my In-laws and friends my age (no genes in common) as well.

Medicine does not want to talk about this. We Boomers would never have survived to have children, and grandkids, if these disease were really that widespread deadly and "crippling".

NO ONE has ever said that. I suggest you consult a dictionary and find out what the word "some" means in the context that I used it.

I was old enough to have the measles vaccine. I remember my doctor giving me the rubella vaccine when it came out and telling me that it was to protect my babies if I were to grow up to be a mom.

My kids were vaccinated according to their doctors' advice. I've also since received the shingles vaccine and pneumonia vaccine because I work with children who don't think twice about sneezing five inches from your face. I'm so happy I was vaccinated.

I too had a lot of the diseases that they vaccinate against now. I survived with no problems, but not everybody did. I had measles, mumps, chicken pox and scarlett fever. I don't know if I ever had rubella, I think a lot of cases of rubella were mild enough that they weren't diagnosed.

I got all of the vaccines of my time, whooping cough, polio, whatever the vaccine was that gave you a scar on your arm or leg (small pox?) that I don't think they give any more because the vaccine was so effective.

There are some people who can't take a vaccine because of health reasons, and IMHO, those are the only people who should not have to have the vaccine. The flu vaccine is a hit or miss vaccine, they guess if they get it right, and if they don't, the flu vaccine is pretty worthless. And in general, though there are people who die from the flu every year, it is just a week of misery. Those diseases will come back if everybody that can be vaccinated is not vaccinated.

I know people 6-8 years older than you who had polio, and now suffer from post-polio syndrome, typically manifesting 30-40 years after infection.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-polio-syndrome/basics/definition/con-20021725

To my knowledge, those of us who had the vaccine have not had the same LUCK.

in school when I was around 7 years old or so. Must have been just luck that I did not catch it before then? Maybe I did and had no symptoms at all. Post-polio symdrome 30-40 years after infection? If you were exposed to polio before getting the vaccine, would that cure it if a child had alreaady had polio? Given the timeline, it would be over 60 years since before I had that polio vaccine.

To the mumps.

You did OK but not everyone did.

Communicable diseases are a matter of public health - vaccines are NOT 100% effective and babies are susceptible until old enough to be fully vaccinated. There's risk in letting them have a choice.

My children were born in 1979 and 1984. I was vaccinated in the 50s. I had Rubella in 1950 and still had antibodies from the disease 30+ years later without being vaccinated. Medicine just "assumed" that pregnant women who had Measles themselves were immune and could not pass that one to their unborn, or infants. Pertussis? Doctors just assumed that if a pregnant woman had a DPT vax in her youth, it was still good, unlike today. Maybe your new Dtap/Tdap doesn't work as well as the older version? A lot of medical studies to support that one.

In some places the anti-vaccine fanatics murder people directly. Granted, it was morons in our own CIA who fanned the flames of anti-vaccine activism in this part of the world by infiltrating vaccination programs, but I ask seriously, is that much different than what happens here? People are rightfully suspicious of the Pharmaceutical industry in the U.S.A..

That doesn't change the fact that vaccines prevent death and much human misery.

Never ""fucked over" by any of them. You do know that even polio can have no symptoms at all? Since I was 7 before that vax ever came out, there is a very good possibility that I caught polio too without any symptoms.

Sorry, but I do not believe you can possibly put small pox or polio in the same category as measles, mumps, chicken pox, or horror, the FLU. Thankfully, the majority of young adults, including those without children, aren't terrified of dying of these deadly diseases. I guess that is because they never experienced these diseases like WE Old Folks?

I hear there is new QUADRUPLE Flu Vaccine in the works for those of us immune compromised over 65. HURRY UP or I am going DIE from the Flu without that!

Do you also think we should allow smoking in all public places and work places because some people manage to not die of lung cancer despite smoking?

Just because you were lucky and survived those diseases does not mean everyone else will.

I know, I know. We live in an age where no one else matters. It's all about you, and no one else. If you don't think you need to be vaccinated, then no one else needs to be vaccinated.

solely by my age. Yeah, right. If you don't want to protect yourself, protect the ELDERLY who will die if you are not vaccinated? Blanket statement. If you don't get vaccinated, you will kill the elderly! Grandpa is going to die from Measles when he had it himself and now has life time immunity?

If you think you need a Flu Shot to protect yourself, then do it. Do not do it protect elderly me. I would never ask anyone to protect me. That is MY job to protect myself how I see fit.

My husband's coworker's wife has a lot of problem. Few years younger than us in her early 60's. She, and her husband, got all recommended vaccinations, but she still got the Flu and was hospitalized with Pneumonia. I have only been around her twice, including when SHE had the Flu. I sat next to her at the Christmas Party. Since I didn't have a Flu Shot, she should have given it to ME. Her husband, who did not catch the Flu from her, stayed home and did not go to work because he did not want to bring anything home to his wife. He did not DEMAND that his co-workers be vaccinated for everything under the sun because of his wife.

Last year she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Chemo and the whole bit. Her husband arranged to work from home. Oh, but if everyone around him was fully vaccinated and never sick, he would not have to do that? I suppose all of his coworkers in the entire company should be aware of this and do everything they could as individuals to not get sick to protect the immune compromised wife of a co worker?

This couple does what is right for THEM. They do not DEMAND that others bend over backwards for them. That is how it should be. I do not have to stay away from her. She voluntarily stays out of Society. Come on, how in the world can she demand that society bow down to her? I have to say that I ADMIRE her. She isn't SELFISH and demanding that everyone else protect HER. She is protecting herself in the best way she can. If I were in her situation, I would rot in my home before I would demand others protect me with every vaccination under the sun. Selfish isn't a one way street.

You would know this if you had studied some biology and some statistics.

You are free to believe that you have some sort of magic immunity to everything. You are also free to feel pride, as if this is somehow your own doing. Fortunately, you are not the one making decisions that concern the 300 million people in this country. Fortunately, our society recognizes the power of the scientific method, which allows us to overcome the bias inherent in a single person's individual experiences.

What if your husband's coworker's wife did not have a husband who could work from home? What if she lived alone? What if she needed an income and had to continue to work while undergoing chemotherapy? What then?

Enjoy living in your totally empathy-free world, where everything is about you, and where everyone else should fend for themselves.

You are not a statistician?

You do know that while you survived all those diseases, some do not? And many are harmed by them. As I child I knew a young man mentally impaired because of the mumps. So do you think that having survived those diseases you are somehow better off than those like me who avoided them?

I am 50 and except for Chicken Pox avoided all the ones you mentioned since we were smart and educated enough to realize a 25 second vaccine was a hell of a lot better than having measles, mumps, whoophing cough, etc.

And I truly hope you never get the flu. But at your age you truly are at an increased of dying from the flu. Thousands do every year. And the fact that you have never had it is not an indicator that you never will. But do a you will.

Oh, and you may want to get a pneumonia shot as that still kills huge numbers of folks over 65.

Have a nice evening.

My mumps story goes a little beyond my parotid glands.

Would you like to see my chicken pox scars? I had those in my eyes and my mouth as a kid, and missed a few weeks of school to secondary infections. Yeah, tell a weird autistic spectrum kid not to scratch.... I remember it well. And no, vaccines did not contribute to my autistic spectrum shit, that's in my genes, my family tree is full of nuts, at all levels of functionality from "eccentric" rocket scientists to people who never talked and lived alone in their rooms subsidized by their families; all this BEFORE vaccines, even before smallpox vaccines. (I have a smallpox vaccine scar, I couldn't stop scratching that either...)

A few years ago my mom got shingles on her face. I'm not looking forward to anything like that. My mom's physician had no qualms prescribing her powerful painkillers. If we can drive chicken pox to extinction... good riddance!

Cervical cancer too, if you want to know what I really think.

I'm one of those people who thinks it's a good thing to let little kids dig around in organic gardens, eat bugs, and laugh when dogs kiss them on the mouth. My own kids grew up that way and their immune systems were challenged just fine and developed normally, thank you. Nevertheless, the nastier viruses can all go to hell. Let's make them extinct.

"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is fucking bullshit. If something like the Spanish Flu rolls around again, a disease that was most deadly to very healthy young adults, I do hope there is a vaccine that can stop it before it becomes pandemic.

Mind you, there are a few big money pharmaceutical execs and CIA operatives I'd be happy to kick in the face, but that's not going to change my opinion about vaccines as something essential to modern civilization.

I get flu shots too, because, thanks to my asthma, the last time I got the flu I got a side order of pneumonia to go with it.

No, the asthma has nothing to do with vaccines either. That I can safely attribute to Los Angeles air pollution, parents and relatives who smoked, and all the other toxic chemicals we were soaked in as children of the 'fifties and 'sixties.

One of my classmates got sick too, but our little epidemic ended there, because all the other students were immune.

It seemed to zonk my immune system so for months and months afterward I caught every little thing and got twice as sick as everyone else who had the same colds and bugs. If I had caught another serious disease during that time, it would have been very bad news for me. Eventually I recovered fully, but it took a long, long time before I was the strong, healthy kid I had been before.

Until there are solid, legitimate, repeated studies proving they are harmful, everyone needs to stop being breeding grounds for communicable diseases.

It's the 21st century. It's not evil spirits, anymore. It's not god's will: It's a disease we can stop. By no allowing it to spread.

you do need not to be vaccinated for them. Measles for one, among others, gives life time immunity without vaccination. Personally,I think even the flu does also when you have had all different strains of it in your youth.

We are a society who does not want to ever experience any kind of pain SUFFERING whatsoever. DOCTOR, I sprained my ankle (vaccine?) give me PAIN MEDICATION!!!! Americans are a bunch of over medicated wimps. Watch TV Commercials. Ask your doctor, if bla, bla, bla, is right for you and will solve all your problems.

Sorry, but I am too old for all this BS.

Yeah, let's embrace suffering. Let's go back to the days when most of the children a couple had died as children. (My grandparents had three children, and only one survived. This was typical in families her generation and older.)

I'm glad health policy is not made based on your personal opinions but rather on science.

These diseases once devastated the population. Eradicating/controlling them has been one of humanity's greatest achievements.

trust me, get the flu shot.

because they're free to to risk their own health as long as they leave others alone. In fact, they put other people's health at risk, as well, via second-hand smoke.

I'm sorry, Mineral Man. I usually agree with you, but on this one, you're ill-informed. People who refuse to get vaccinated hurt not only themselves but others, as well. Many people are unable to get vaccinated because of health conditions. Babies who are too young to be immunized are protected from diseases by herd immunity alone. To protect those who cannot be vaccinated, those of us who can tolerate vaccines must get vaccinated.

Take a look at this:
http://www.vaccines.gov/basics/protection/
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/7/911.full

from communicable diseases. New ones could come up.

to say if you yourself have had measles, mumps, chicken pox, that you have life long immunity to them, and do not need vaccinations. If you cannot catch these diseases AGAIN, you cannot give them to anyone else.

Do you disagree with that? Everyone of those 100+ people who caught Measles (none died) during that Disney outbreak now have lifetime immunity to Measles, won't need a vaccination ever, and won't be spreading Measles.

Go on the CDC site and look it up. There are millions of us walking around you today who have never been vaccinated for these diseases because we had the diseases themselves and cannot get them again, or give them to anyone else. Do you fear your "unvaccinated" parents and grandparents?

What is suffering? There is no one size fits all even for that. Purely, an individual's point of view. From my perspective of having the flu countless times, I would not personally call the flu suffering. Unpleasant, yes. Suffering, No. Mental suffering from no job, no money, can't pay bills, is far more suffering than the flu.

I agree that they should STFU, but anti-vaxxers shouldn't be allowed to forego vaccination without a legitimate medical reason to do so. If enough of these morons* decide to not vaccinate, and we start getting to levels where herd immunity is compromised (there are areas in the U.S. now where herd immunity is in dire straits), those of us with compromised immune systems are at risk of serious complications or death.

There should be a law requiring vaccination, and those who don't should be fined and/or jailed until they're willing to receive the vaccinations. I'd even go so far to say that knowingly abetting the spread of dangerous pathogens should be a felony, akin to someone with AIDS knowingly having unprotected sex and spreading HIV.

Being a good citizen is more than paying one's taxes and voting in the next election and protesting in the streets.

* - there are a number of these morons right here on DU, a place where one would hope that scientific literacy would be higher than the general population. Unfortunately that's the case in a sizable minority of the DU population.