I've been watching and reading the anti-anti-vax diaries here for the past few weeks with some interest, as so many people seem to be freaking out about the latest measles outbreaks with enough emotion to warrant that "OMG! We're All Gonna Die!!!" stick figure graphic we used to laugh about (because it's so silly). As the fear and loathing has built into a cacophony over the last week, I've been seeing more and more proposals for draconian police state "solutions" to the "problem" of people willing to risk now-rare illnesses in their children by not vaccinating, as if that is somehow an existential threat to the ~92+% of Americans who are vaccinated or have had the measles and are therefore immune. The reasoning seems to have become steadily more detached from reality, and it's been semi-fascinating to watch.
Today the fear and loathing finally overflowed for me in comments attached to Laura Clawson's FP diary. Holy moley, Batman! I know that people - including Americans - are really bad at making reasonable risk assessments about the dangers of life and death on planet earth, but this is ridiculous. We all know or have heard about people who won't fly because they're terrified of dying in a plane crash, but think nothing of braving the freeway on a daily basis. I see much the same abject terror of measles playing out on these pages, among people who are (or should be) immune to measles and have ensured their children are immune to measles. The vaccine being, according to CDC, 99% effective in conferring immunity.
Of course, that effectiveness level fluctuates some, and CDC may be less than honest about reality on that. The original vaccine was deemed that effective after one shot. Then they decided it would take two. Now they're thinking maybe 3 or more, with occasional adult boosters. I don't know why immunity is so hard to come by these days, nor am I sure that it really is. This kind of thing could mean that none of us can know unless we got our immunity the hard way (as I did) or have a titer test for antibodies ($$$) whether or not we're actually immune, no matter how many shots we got. That's an issue for sure, probably speaks to the number of measles victims lately who were vaccinated, and something we should perhaps insist CDC and the medical community and Merck, Inc. come clean about. But that's not where I'm seeing the panic being aimed. As if we all now believe Big Government, Big Pharma and the lousy US health care delivery system are all above reproach or question. Where such a sentiment came from I sure as heck don't know, but there you have it.
So the agitated angst is aimed purely at people who don't get their kids those 33-36 or more shots on the schedule (minus annual flu plus tetanus boosters) these days by the time they're 12. 24 of them before the age of 18 months. Even though by the stats the terrified trust so much, the risk is almost exclusively confined to the people who aren't getting vaccinated. And the small percentage of highly allergic and/or immune compromised children who are exempted because they're in more danger from the shots than from the diseases the shots purportedly prevent. And for those, it's the highly allergic who most depend on 'herd immunity' to protect them, because public schools and public spaces are regular hotbeds of every virus or bug going around in the best of times, and I can't imagine why anybody would subject their no-immune system bubble-child to that even if all the vaccination preventable diseases didn't exist at all. If they do, I don't see anybody up in arms about lousy parenting and outrageous endangerment of said child.
Anyway, here are some comment excerpts from those threads that I find disturbing...
No vax? Then no public school, no shopping centers, no houses of worship, no doctors' offices, no hospitals, no no no... You have relinquished your right to be out in public, anywhere there are people who don't live in your house.
Note: I agree that there should be no "belief" excuses for public school. The rest of this is authoritarian bullshit. The point of getting vaccinated is so you'll be immune to diseases. If you're immune, you have nothing to fear from the not-immune. If immunization doesn't work, we should deal with THAT before we go well beyond Godwin on the police state tactics. Measles was never that f*cking scary even in the olden days, people. I know, because I was there. Oy!
Public health is one area where we really can't afford to be too indulgent of solipsistic #firstworldproblems notions of what constitutes "freedom." If that means sending in the SWAT teams, count me in.
Nice. SWAT teams and FEMA camps. Obviously, some of the people who have allowed themselves to become terrorized by current measles outbreaks - people who are all duly immune, we presume - obviously don't give a shit about other people's relative health/illness levels if they've got a good (to them) excuse to do some jackboot thugging on their fellow citizens.
Do not allow unvaccinated people out in public without an ID card showing purchase of insurance to cover medical costs (and, in the worst case, compensation to relatives) incurred by people catching diseases from you which you could have prevented.
Again, the point of vaccination is to protect you from the diseases. If you are vaccinated, you aren't catching those diseases from the unvaccinated who are sick with them. If you are afraid, then you should get more shots so you'll feel better about yourself. You obviously don't care about how other people feel about things, so why pretend? Take responsibility for yourself.
It's neglect. CPS can take them into custody and they will be vaccinated anyway, and the parents lose on two fronts. //Yes, I believe this is the way to go.
Yeah. Kids are ever so much safer and better cared for in foster care than with their loving parents who have done nothing other than eschew vaccination for diseases that you are vaccinated against. Maybe looking up the death rate for foster care/institutional custodial care might be helpful here. From much worse neglect/abuse than just catching the freaking measles.
what I would do is [...] require immunization records in order to obtain or renew a driver's license or state photo ID card.
Unvaccinated? No vote for you! That's just what we activist Dems should champion. Disenfranchisement Are Us! We should coordinate that with the Repukes, I'm sure they'll help get such draconian laws passed.
...However, solutions are available to the nuts - lots of space in same area where they will be no threats to anyone - isolated camps with very big walls, with only food and other things ( also no health stuff - God will protect you) and not way out and Stay the F__K there!
Oooooooh, Boogeyman! Concentration camps are probably great job opportunities for small towns devastated by the recent economic downturn, right?
They can refuse vaccinations on one condition. They must be confined to a tent and shit in a box for the rest of their lives.
Really, people. Is this where we want to go with this after a couple hundred cases of measles imported from the Philippines 15 years after endemic measles was declared eliminated in this country? Does anybody really believe this kind of crap is a) necessary, or b) reasonable?
Why do we vaccinate? Answer: so we don't get diseases. If we are immune to the diseases, then we have no reason to fear them or the people who have them. If we want to ensure that others avail themselves of that peace of mind, then it seems to me that threatening to put them in concentration camps or taking their children away are probably not the best approach. I've personally always been a big believer in freedom, liberty, and not approaching life being afraid of shadows, ghosts and my fellow citizens. Maybe just a leftover of my military upbringing and young adulthood, but that whole "Home of the Brave" thing meant something once upon a time. Enough for me to stand up at lunch one day shortly after 9-11 (when FoxNews was all they'd ever have on the mounted TVs in the lunchroom at work) after yet another terror alert scam and yell - I Am Not Afraid! And I meant it. I am still not afraid.
Do let us know when the measles death toll in this country reaches the level of 9-11 (~3,000). I may then re-evaluate the actual danger level to the body politic. But CDC tells me that since the last years of the last century there have been a total of 8 measles deaths here in the US of A. That's simply not a level at which public panic is warranted. Still, even if it were ~3,000 I wouldn't be running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I am immune. So are my kids, so are my grandkids. It's a shame when it happens to others and I'll feel sorry for them, but it's still no threat to me.
This panic is way out of hand. In my not-so humble opinion. And I am quite disturbed by the expressed authoritarian fantasies of too many Kossacks in regards to this relatively minor threat (no threat at all if you're properly immune). I didn't sign up for this when I decided many long years ago to support the Democratic Party because I believe it represents a better governing philosophy than anything the Republicans offer. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this nation is too hopelessly corrupt all around to bother.
So. Where are we as Democrats on this? Is it to be concentration camps and physical force backed up by SWATs? Removing children from loving homes and throwing them into the bottomless pit of abuse that masquerades as foster systems in too many states? How much serious damage are we willing to do to otherwise good citizens and their children because we're terrified of diseases we're immune to? I'd really like to know...