re: #32 Justanotherhuman

I was going to post about this as well.

NYC private schools have a far worse vaccination rate than public schools. Part of what’s driving that is that public schools require vaccination except under specific situations, while the private schools may be more lax on allowing parents to keep their kids from getting the vaccinations needed to prevent outbreaks such as these.

It pisses me off to no end how these people are pushing junk science, debunked nonsense, and using fear and religious justifications to put the public in danger from diseases that could potentially be eliminated altogether.

I wish states and localities would listen to the public health experts instead of allowing debunked nonsense rule the day on vaccinations. There’s no link between vaccination and autism at all, and whatever links were suspected were due to a bogus study that has been formally retracted by The Lancet because the author of that study engaged in all kinds of malfeasance.

In fact, I wish states would move to tighten vaccination requirements, instead of loosening them in the name of religious freedom (where active campaigns to get kids excluded from vaccinations is a growing trend). The state can and does meet the higher burden to show that the public health is endangered by allowing parents to keep their kids from being vaccinated so as to override their religious beliefs (whether heartfelt or otherwise).

It’s not a religious freedom issue; it’s a public health issue on an area where the lives of millions are needlessly put at risk because vaccinations protect not only those who receive them, but reduce the chances that someone who is unable to be vaccinated (infants under a certain age, people whose immune systems are compromised, etc.) will get an illness that could potentially kill them.

Measles isn’t some harmless ailment. It can and does kill.

India, which has just successfully eradicated polio after a decades long effort, is now turning to measles, which kills more than 56,000 there ever year. There are more than 100,000 deaths from measles and the complications from the disease every year; 20 million contract the disease every year.

We don’t know of such things in the US, because we’ve been pretty successful in reducing measles to a rarity. It’s the anti-vaxxer campaigns that are reversing that trend, and the body count will rise unless states and the federal government move to put it to an end.

4 of the cases in New York’s outbreak have been serious enough to require hospitalization. That’s out of 25 confirmed cases. We’re talking 16% of the cases.

Hospitalization costs far more than any vaccination - which for the measles and mumps is about a dollar a dose.