Panel endorses 2nd vaccine for kids' virus

IIRC, in recent years, rotavirus or some variation has been named as the cause for school closings around the country and named as cause of epidemics in nursing homes throughout the nation.

How many vaccines are given to newborns these days?

Too many. I don't know the exact number, but they're vaccinating against things that aren't a huge risk to everyone.

I'm convinced that the rise in auto-immune diseases is connected to increased vaccinations. Our bodies and our immune systems are designed to combat things on their own, and even though I recognize that vaccines against things like polio and smallpox are Very Good, I'm not sure something that affects so small a number as listed above is a good idea. Surely there are other ways to deal with rotavirus. Like hand-washing, which isn't difficult in first-world countries.

I seem to recall knowing about this as a problem in day-care settings if care-takers were not scrupulous about hand washing and cleaning surfaces after changing diapers.

Do you really believe that it is better to let the children suffer from the disease than to vaccinate them against it?

Do you believe that 67,000 hospitalized children each year is not important enough to try to prevent? Why do you call that a "small number"?

and if you think that 67,000 hospitalized children are too many, and that we should vaccinate rather than educate about hand-washing, then so be it. But many of those hospitalizations could be prevented by other measures. Meanwhile, despite all assurances, I'm not convinced that additional immunizations are necessarily a good idea. We really don't know for sure what is being done to the body's own immune system by these vaccinations.

In many cases a natural immunity is better and longer-lasting than one conferred by vaccination. Flu is actually the best example here. I get into lots of disagreements with people during flu-shot season about this, but the truth of the matter is, if you get the flu and recover (as the vast majority of people will do) then you remain largely immune to that type of flu for years to come. In the 1918 flu epidemic, one reason old people didn't succumb as much to that flu was that they'd lived through a flu epidemic of that type some fifty years earlier.

Vaccinations in general usually only confer a temporary (although sometimes a long-term temporary) immunity, while getting the disease itself usually confers lifetime immunity. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I got a small pox vaccination as a child (I'm that old). But I do know that in the early years of things like the MMR vaccination (measles, mumps, rubella) they learned the hard way (by college age students coming down with one or more of those things) that a booster was needed.

I do believe that the vast majority of rotavirus infections in this country are in children in daycare of some sort. Those children probably should get the vaccine. But not all of them.

rather than opinion based medicine.

You have created a false choice based on your opinion that education is a better way to attack the problem. That is the same approach that the "abstinence only" crowd uses and we can see just how well that works.

It seems ironic that you want vaccinations to be permanent and 100% effective, but you don't hold other solutions to that same standard. Hand washing only lasts a few minutes and is only as effective as the diligence of the person washing the hands.

It is a real shame that you don't know the facts. Perhaps that would change your opinion.

and get other children sick rather than vaccinate? Jeezus fucking christ.
Vaccination is better than getting sick and actually helps train the immune system faster and better than the "natural" way of sickness. In fact, the kids that get vaccinations are less likely to have immune problems later on as their systems learn what to attack and what not to attack.
Overprotective parents often end up with kids with allergies and autoimmune problems because they did not let the immune system LEARN.

"they're vaccinating against things that aren't a huge risk to everyone"

Did ya ever stop to think that MAYBE the reason those things aren't a huge risk is BECAUSE we vaccinate?

There is exactly ONE vaccine given to newborns "these days", Hepatitis B.

:eyes:

Are they most at risk at this time, or is this the easiest time for their systems to handle this vaccine with the fewest possible complications? Or is this the simplest way to get the disease eradicated- making sure the most are vaccinated?

I am asking because and you seem to quite up to date on these matters.

have good demographic, risk, and prevalence data on Hep B, so you can find the data there. In short:

-Hep B is an eradicable disease.
-Newborns who get infected are MUCH more likely (90%) to become chronic carriers than adults.
-Infant chronic carriers have about a 25% mortality rate in their 20s and 30s from liver CA and cirrhosis.

As with any intervention you need to look at the risks and benefits:
-Risk of a severe adverse reaction to the vaccine is about 2:100,000.
-Risk of getting Hepatitis B in a VACCINATED population is about 2:100,000. (About 8:100,000 in an un vaccinated population)

So the risks/benefits for the individual are at worst balanced and in most public health officials minds the scales tip due to the societal benefits.

As an aside, those numbers are off the cuff. I keep up to speed on this stuff so they should jive with the CDC and WHO numbers unless they have been updated in the past 6 months or so.

Last one withdrawn http://whale.to/vaccines/rotavirus.html
http://whale.to/vaccines/rotateq_h.html

Just checking.