Too many vaccines coming onto the market over just a few decades, many coming with instant mandates, have put many parents on the defensive.

When companies are pushing the envelope AND making a whole lot of money, distrust is inevitable. And once parents start to entertain the idea that a particular vaccine is not such a great idea (hepatis B for newborn pops to mind), then they ALL become suspect. The miracle of vaccines in preventing diseases is suddenly in doubt for these parents, and we wind up seeing the really bad ones popping back up in unvaccinated children.

These people are not idiots; they are responding in a way that could easily have been anticipated. The result is that we have a significant distrust of something that was once fully accepted - and disease is the result.

Instead of tsk-tsking these parents, we need to understand why, and then find ways to solve the problem.

Pseudo-science on the Internet is the cause.

I'm sorry that healthy kids bother some, but this is not about "big pharma."

Enough with the red herring nonsense.

And most intelligent people are not going to do something - especially to their children - just because someone tells them to do it.

So the trust issue is paramount, and simply getting angry at parents who don't get their kids vaccinated is not going to solve the problem.

Red herring? LOL - so this distracts people from getting all purple in the face over the non-vaccinators? I would say ranting over this issue is a waste of energy. It is time to understand why it's happening and start rebuilding the trust.

You went straight for the money argument.

That's a Red Flag & a Red Herring - a 2 fer.

Talking about red flags and red herrings does not address what I said. If you want to disagree with me, at least toss in a little logic.

for someone to refute it.

http://debunkingdenialism.com/2010/10/31/the-pharma-profit-gambit/

If you want to contribute to a discussion, you really should make the effort to contribute something of value.

Try again.

I don't come here to trade meaningless barbs.

If you don't like what I write about, and you don't want to engage in a respectful discussion (I am amazingly open to logical reasoning), then perhaps you should just ignore my posts.

Far too often you push meaningless conspiracy crap. Thus, your claim is crap.

Dress it up however you want, that's the reality. The reason people don't trust vaccines is because they trust a bunch of conspiracy theorists. I don't find that to be a mark of intelligence.

since I was in school in the 1950s. An immunization record had to be submitted to every single school I went to, and I went to a lot of them.

As new vaccines have come out, they have simply been added to the original TDaP: MMR, polio, and now hepatitis and chicken pox. Don't kid yourself, all these diseases can be killers.

You'd think parents would want to give their kids the maximum chance to grow up healthy, but charlatans like Wakefield have gotten their sick and disgracefully inaccurate message out for decades. Medically ignorant parents who don't remember what the diseases were like are now completely confused.

I agree 100%

It's bizarre to me that people would rather their children go unvaccinated and have the potential to get any of those childhood (or non-childhood) diseases. After experiencing a month of constant illness in my household (colds and roseola and coughs and fevers and throwing up), I'm happy to prevent anything more serious from taking over and wreaking havoc!

get a bunch of boosters all over again.

And I can't even guess how many times I was vaccinated for smallpox as a kid. Since I didn't display a classic "take", I was re-vaccinated at least once every time they did all of us at school.

If it were, it would not be so specific to vaccines. Pharma has profiteered far more over many other drugs than over vaccines, and yet most prescription and over-the-counter drugs don't evoke the same paranoia.

In the UK, there have been no 'instant mandates': I don't think there is a single vaccine here that's mandatory. And our health system is not 'for profit' in the way that America's is (or at least won't be until Andrew Lansley and Jeremy Hunt's dirty 'reforms' take full effect!) Yet paranoia over the MMR vaccine in particular has been a serious issue here. And it's not because parents are 'idiots'; it is because of the misleading reports of a corrupt doctor, Andrew Wakefield, and of the scaremongering and propaganda dished out by the right-wing tabloids.

Thanks for this illuminating response.

among the parents that I know. The only meme that I find not to be true- but typically overstated and believed by many parents scared of vaccines is that the pharmaceutical companies make all this money on vaccines. My experience observing this industry is that the biological products, such as vaccines, are demanded by governments. The industry produces them (more or less) as a service to society at low profit margins. Hence the mandates to make sure that the companies don't lose huge amounts of money producing these money losers at worst, break eveners at best products. The other products that they make give them the typical profits they thrive on. I recall numbers such as 10% profit on biologicals and 90% profit on chemically derived pharmaceuticals.

It strikes many parents as too many, too fast and then they throw them all out and the whole thing gets way out of hand.

I find the typical responses to your thread both boring and nonsensical.

So it is interesting to see your insights.

It is so nice to get some fresh thoughts on this matter, delivered in a way that is conducive to discussion rather than confrontation.

I am very tired of the samed canned responses. It is time to get people past fear and back to sense. Screaming at people does not usually work.

I'm tired of the same old, long debunked anti-vax nonsense.

Why aren't you?

You are not trying to understand how to solve a problem. To begin to figure it out one has to understand it. To continue to claim that these parents are stupid does not get close to solving the issues of fear and distrust.

How these issues can be addressed - how to reach people whose minds are shut down by fear. That is what I think we are trying to flesh out here.

Yeah, there's a problem. It's lying conspiracy theorists pushing baseless fear on the Internet.

Cut the crap.

Let me hear your concrete ideas of how to reason with people who are afraid.

Calling me names and accusing me of all sorts of things is against DU rules and I will alert- in fact please edit your insult out of your post.

Now you want me to fix what you've helped create?

Oh, no. That's not ok.

Polio could be on the way out, too. Unfortunately, polio is ramping up in Africa due to silly religious objections, while children are maimed or dying.

Meanwhile parents in the US are not vaccinating because polio is basically unknown in the US since the fifties. Well, if there is no longer herd immunity, a polio outbreak is only an intercontinental plane trip away.

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But it is all a conspiracy by physicians, the AMA, the CDC, and the drug companies.
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are afraid the vaccine-wielding Americans are trying to kill their children, making it harder for polio to be eradicated.

Similar fears have undermined some vaccination programs in countries in Africa.

You just don't know where to start.

Just mention flu shots to some adults!

(For the record - i got my flu shot a month ago - asthma and influenza do not mix!)

I need to get mine. I just recovered from a terrible bout of bronchitis (I also have asthma, and got a virus that led me downhill to a terrible case of bronchitis!), so I intend to get my flu shot this week to try to prevent that from happening again this year!

and many adults and older children, were not immune, in spite of being vaccinated as small children? So good to know that "hysteria" among "parents" is the primary cause of disease transmission.

The same people who have promoted this false theory here for years, can see that their record of misleading assertions, has been false since DU's founding. Yet the "hysteria" about parents not vaccinating in increasing number remains. Why can't some accept the "science" on this?

Below is an overall assessment of childhood compliance rates, as finalized by the CDC through 2009. Note many said in 2008/2009 etc. that vaccination rates were declining. They were wrong then, and remain wrong today.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/G/coverage.pdf

If that's not of comfort to some, here is newer data on infants and toddlers > Estimated Vaccination Coverage* with Individual Vaccines and Selected Vaccination Series Among Children 19-35 Months of Age by State and Local Area: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/stats-surv/nis/tables/11/tab02_antigen_iap_2011.pdf

Also see, Vaccination compliance in teens. (Note some recommendations are newer, thus the rates dip a bit from compliance levels in younger children.) > http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/stats-surv/nisteen/tables/11/tab01_iap_2011.pdf

Not only are adults far less likely to be up to date with their vaccinations, but the gov doesn't carefully track the info and relies on period phone surveys. See - Vaccination coverage among U.S. adults (most recent survey) 2007 > http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/stats-surv/nis/downloads/nis-adult-summer-2007.pdf

Note - 2.1% of adults had the recommended Tdap booster as of 2007. Contrast that number to over 90% children in compliance according to the most recent data. And then, tell me why the false notion that parents and/or hysteria about vaccines are the problem, continues.

Last edited Fri Nov 9, 2012, 02:30 PM - Edit history (2)

For example, 3 doses of Dtap (among children) = 96.% compliance.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/stats-surv/nis/tables/11/tab02_antigen_iap_2011.pdf

Seems some bloggers are peddling their own brand of 'hysteria' and refuse to accept the 'science'?

The problem, if there is one, is the blind assertion that only children need to be vaccinated. And, if there is an "outbreak" it's because of the 4% of children who may not be vaccinated, vs. the over 90% of adults who are not up to date on boosters.

You choose to ignore all evidence that doesn't fit your viewpoint. You refuse to look at the full demographics. I'm not going to go down your BS road again.

Goodbye.

You and the bloggers you love to quote, have been proven wrong time and time again, by THE authorities on vaccine uptake. Regardless, you continue to peddle hysterical myths about parents increasingly refusing vaccination.