pensieve wrote:
wavefreak58 wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
In my own case, however, I have simply heard Polio and other diseases had been largely dealt with and eliminated before their vaccines ever even did come out,
At least for polio, I believe this is incorrect. Have you anything that supports this?
The only disease to be wiped out is smallpox. Polio still exists in third world countries so isn't completely wiped out.
People die from not getting vaccines. People that are parents these days probably didn't have to live through pre-vaccine days where young kids would be crippled by these diseases so it makes sense that they think vaccines aren't necessary. But these diseases are coming back. Last winter it wasn't just babies that got whooping cough, they were healthy people in their 20's, probably with some hippie anti-vax parent. My own parent is one of them. And my brother got whooping cough. Also, if more people aren't vaccinated then people who are vaccinated will still get sick.
It was also very callous for the anti-vaccine groups to attack Bill Gates for his great work of vaccinating children in third world countries. These kids would have died without them.
Agreed about people dying.
Also... I have a lung condition that is in the USA and similar conditions something that barely happens except to people with cystic fibrosis, AIDS, and other conditions that predispose them. That's because the USA has vaccines. Bronchiectasis is more common in "third world" countries where vaccines either don't exist or are sparser, as is medical care. Bronchiectasis is not a good thing to have. It can lead to a vicious spiral (especially if untreated) where diseases (including ones vaccines can help prevent like the flu) that affect the respiratory system... basically they are harder to get rid of in some ways because of bronchiectasis, and not getting rid of them easily creates even more bronchiectasis, which makes them even harder to get rid of, and so forth. Despite having a mild case I have to be very careful to avoid ill people. And even a mild case is not fun at all, I cough all the time (enough to get cough headaches which are downright evil) and have to do twice daily breathing treatments with 7% saline. Untreated, that spiral can lead to death (treatment helps expel the phlegm which in turn helps to keep away infections. In places other than "first world" countries, bronchiectasis is commonly caused by vaccine-preventable diseases in childhood and people have to live with it often without medical treatment, which the lack of treatment makes it get worse and can lead to death.
So even when the diseases don't kill you they can still harm you in ways that are dangerous and highly unpleasant. These diseases can also do serious harm to people with fragile health. I know a woman with Ehlers-Danlos, severe epilepsy, severe immune suppression due to needing to take steroids to replace hormones her body doesn't make, and other severe health issues, and she got whooping cough from an unvaccinated child. She dislocated several ribs coughing, she got severely dehydrated, and had near-constant seizures for awhile just from the dehydration and the stress on her body. She could have died. Since I am involved with the disability community, a lot of people I know and care about have serious health problems.
And a lot of us see the anti-vaccination people are essentially saying our lives don't matter. I've even
heard some of them saying, when hearing about how the diseases can do serious harm to people, things like "Oh yeah, but that's mostly people with serious health conditions in the first place." Hello EXCUSE ME? We're just as human as anyone else and we don't want to die just because of rumors about vaccines. Sometimes we can't take vaccines ourselves (yes there are legitimate reasons for this, just not as many as some quacks would tell you) so we rely on people who
can take vaccines, to make it so that most people are immune to the diseases, which creates a situation where we are less likely to get them even though we're not vaccinated. (That also seriously helps people where the vaccinations didn't work on them, which is a certain amount of people who are vaccinated against each disease.)
So I always think, when vaccines are not given to as many people, the people that hurts the most are people vulnerable to disease -- whether that means senior, disabled, starving, lacking medical care, or what. And I happen to think our lives are important enough to vaccinate. And I'd think this even if vaccines did turn out to cause autism. Because there are much worse experiences than even the worst experiences of being autistic, and many of them can be prevented from vaccines.
Besides all this, though... I don't think calling people stupid or idiots is going to help anything. That goes for both sides.
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"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams
07 Feb 2011, 2:21 am
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