Vaccination rates have been falling over the past decade or so — driven primarily by fraudulent science, B-list celebrities, and apprehension-mixed-with-sloth from people who really don't recall what it was like in this country when diseases like rubella, mumps, polio, whooping cough, flu, etc. ran rampant, and who figure, "Well, it's just my kid, what difference does it make?"
It makes a difference. For your kid, and for mine.
Reshared post from +George Wiman
Vaccinations have been studied to pieces and they're not the cause of autism. But we have thousands of other chemicals artificially introduced in our bodies from before birth, many only lightly studied if at all. Plasticizers, flame retardants, colorings, sweeteners, and cosmetics with nano-particle technology, to name a few. Any one or any combination could have an epigenetic effect either pre- or post-natal. And it has not been established that autism is rising, though the definition of it is certainly broadening. But still no less august a medical authority than Jenny McCarthy blames vaccinations thanks in no small part to that fraud Andrew Wakefield. Maybe they should pick up the bills for kids stricken with preventable diseases.
Embedded Link
V for Vaccine: A slightly rude film with a powerful point
A couple of kids in the Dallas area have died already from influenza — neither had been vaccinated against it. Deaths have occurred across the nation, frequently in young, otherwise healthy …
Google+: View post on Google+
All of my kids are vaccinated. Hell, they even get the flu one ever year. DH and I both are of the mind that while there is a small chance of some adverse reaction, the odds are in our favor. Babyhead did have a bizarre reaction to Amoxicillian (took 2 weeks for the poor little lad to get better)…but I don't see people not treating their kids with antibiotics because of what may happen and in my opinion over treatment with those is more likely (and just as bad) than what may happen with vaccines.
I have to wonder if another factor is just people have a recalled dislike (or even present dislike) of vaccinations. "Ew! Shots!"
(Sandy, every time you write "DH" I do a double-take, for obvious initial reasons. I understand the acronym, it just makes me blink. 🙂 )
HAH! I never even though of DH. 😛 Just easier to write than anything else. 😀
I wonder that too…but you know what. If you have kids you need to be an adult and get over it. I cried when my babies got shots. I always treated them afterward for being brave (Podling got lolipops, Babyhead got McD's fries). But you know what, Babyhead started being really brave 2 years ago…we would warn him and he would brace himself and then say it wasn't so bad. Podling still hate them, but she is 4 and I can grant her some leeway. However, she doesn't scream like she used to. We tell them that we had to do it and that it is very important and it is a part of life. If you aren't getting your kids shots because you are weak…well you never should have had kids. Parenting is NOT for the weak at all.
My oldest brother came down with polio, more than a dozen years before any vaccine was available. Back in that day, they’d take the kids into a quarantine ward, with no visits even from parents (he was 3). Hospitalization was required at least until a determination could be made about whether the disease would get the diaphragm, which would require time in an “iron lung.”
This episode was major family trauma.
Consequently, whenever the issue of any vaccination came up for the rest of us, my mother would say, “Do it NOW.” I’ve been vaccinated against polio so many times I lost count.
I think the only reaction any of us ever had was my reaction to my first typhoid shot. My mother kept me close and comfortable — I think she was watching for any serious impairment — and as soon as the reaction was over (about 48 hours), she asked about a booster (didn’t get it for many months).
Having watched kids die from flu, I favor the shots. Considering my mother, it may be a mother-intended genetic reaction. (Don’t underestimate the power of a mother to change her children’s genes!)
When I was in junior high, one of the teachers there had lost the use of one of his arms as a child due to polio. That’s when it moved from being “one of those diseases that you get shots for” to “wow, I’m glad I got shots for that and we don’t need to worry about it any more.”
I remember arguing with my pediatrician when he told me that my youngest child wouldn’t be vaccinated for smallpox. I had a minor fit. He did explain things to me and I understood — that vaccine. I can even understand those parents who don’t want anything to do with Gardisil, although I expect that will change, and at least one of my grandchildren has received the course. But the rest of the vaccines available? It’s not called Jenny McCarthy’s Body Count for nothing. Were I in charge, she’d be one of the first to be stuck in the iron lung — with a bad case of the shingles.