Forty states saw rises in parents citing religious or other personal concerns for not vaccinating their young children.
The number of kids whose caregivers are opting them out of routine childhood vaccines has reached an all-time high, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday, potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of children unprotected against preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough.
The report did not dive into the reasons for the increase, but experts said the findings clearly reflect Americans’ growing unease about medicine in general.
“There is a rising distrust in the health care system,” said Dr. Amna Husain, a pediatrician in private practice in North Carolina, as well as a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Vaccine exemptions “have unfortunately trended upward with it.”
Nature is wrong.
A species CAN regress.
Kinda odd to think technology, the thing meant to propel us further, has a lot of uses to hold some people (a lot) back
People misunderstanding evolution constantly always confused the shit out of me lmfao.
Of course species regress. It’s how extinctions happen lmfao. Also 95% of evolution is what women of the species think looks good enough to bang. Sometimes that means you mean drown when it rains lmfao. Looking at all of you snub nosed monkeys and traumatic enseminators.
I think it is just evolution in action with kids unfortunately paying the price. There are many parental Darwin awards being readied.
Religious exemptions need to be banned outright throughout the United States.
Actively withholding your child from receiving vaccines should be grounds for losing custody.
Sadly, I would guess that a challenge against religious exemption would be decided against on first amendment grounds by SCOTUS.
Which is madness. If we’re at the point where abortion can’t be found in the federal Constitution, then vaccine opt outs shouldn’t be derived from the first amendment.
The first amendment protects them here. However, it does not automatically grant them access to government services such as school and welfare. Our focus shouldn’t be so narrow that we forget to protect the people who children are incapable of being vaccinated. So denying these people access to school or government facilities is always an option we should look into.
They warned about these people back in the 1930s and we didn’t listen.
Vaccine exemptions should not exist at all unless a physician (MD or DO, not a naturopath or chiropractor) cites a reason why the vaccine should not be administered.
There are many unscrupulous MD/DOs that will happily compromise their morals for a quick buck. In my opinion they should lose their license, but it usually takes a while and they can do a lot of damage before then.
You can’t keep the determined from self harm. All you can do is hope a few roadblocks will deter the half-hearted.
What are we to do when a parent brings in a paper covered with Bible verses?
The sad reality is you can get away with saying whatever stupid bullshit you want as long as you add “because I believe God said so” at the end of the sentence.
If someone commits a murder, “God told me to” is not a valid legal argument. They’ll still be prosecuted. This should be the same. People can practice their religion however they want until it starts causing suffering to others.
God told me to
Yeah, we also need to bring back sanitariums.
Starting quoting Greek and Hebrew at them?
That means I’d have to learn Green and Hebrew.
I don’t know why Christians don’t
Wait shamans are calling themselves physicians now?
There is a rising distrust in the health care system
I blame all the bullshit fees and tests that hospitals, pharmacy companies, and medical insurance companies have joined forces to do to milk more money out of ppl. Ever since the health care system started to chase profits instead of caring for people, this distrust was bound to happen.
People know that the health care system is trying to make money off of you, not take care of you. So they don’t know which medical advice to trust and which medical advice was given in order to make money.
This.
It is easy, and justified to blame Trump for being anti-vax to have gotten as mainstream as it has…
… but that was only able to gain traction in the first place because people are being offered the choice between healing and going broke.
At some level, conscious or not, this is the masses rebelling against a system that has actively harmed them.
Unfortunately, the outlet for this rebellion actively harms them and is decidedly not in their best interests. It’s going to take at least a generation to rebuild that trust, and our medical system is going to fight tooth and nail to keep that trust ruined in the name of maximum profits,
That’s the only way I can sympathize with anyone who decides not to vax their children. I still do but I can understand the reason not to for this reason. I personally don’t think it’s gotten as far as to be detrimental to my health to still trust the vaxxines but I can see it becoming like that one day. It’s amazing how evil and complicit people will become in the face of making more money.
I do distrust them to properly submit claims to my insurer. Otherwise I don’t have a lot of issues with providers. They may be prone to order “unnecessary” tests but I genuinely think that comes from a desire to actually help people [without regard for their finances].
Big pharma can absolutely choke on its own shit however.
This study won’t answer the question of if this applies to other countries, but I expect it would. Covid sure brought a lot of anti vax people into the limelight. Yet none of the issues you mentioned are a problem in my country. That’s all free (except for the hospital parking).
Denying children healthcare should result in a loss of custody.
Charging for a child’s health care should result in a prison sentence.
Charging for
a child’shealth care should result in a prison sentence.Most vaccines are free for people who need them
The pharmaceutical companies just give them away out of the goodness of their hearts?
Not actually surprising given how many people distrust the health-care system in US. I wonder why that might be…
Right wing propaganda?
The opioid crisis? Opaque costs for anything?
When you ask the price of anything at a hospital or even a pharmacy, even simple things like how much a tetanus shot costs, you’re usually met with a “the insurance usually covers it” in the US. Or “it depends”. You’ll only know how much it costs after everything is done.
This is like saying you don’t trust your municipal tap water because of fracking in Kansas.
Vaccines are actually one of the parts of the US healthcare system which works well. There is no excuse for vaccine skepticism other than stupidity.
Vaccines work too well for their own good in some respects. They are so good that most people don’t remember the bad old days when these diseases ran rampant. People think “measles” and say “so you get some sores for a few days and then fully recover, no biggie.” They hear “whooping cough” and say “you just cough for a bit, so what?”
Too many people don’t recall the horrors these diseases inflicted. I count myself among those who don’t recall first hand, but I’ve read enough accounts to be thankful that I haven’t had to experience this.
Also, the anti-vax movement started small. They stopped getting shots and the world didn’t end. This was actually because everyone else was still supplying herd immunity, but they spun it as “see how you don’t need vaccines?”
As more and more people joined, the herd immunity started to falter. Now, it’s breaking down entirely and diseases once thought gone are making a comeback tour.
And all because these people would rather trust someone online with no medical experience, but who tells them what they want to hear rather than actual doctors.
Another pandemic, let’s goooo!
I remember how I felt about antivaxxers a decade ago. Drove me crazy, people making bad sweeping decisions based on gut feeling and fear instead of trying to understand the medicine and how it benefited them. I often tried pretty hard to convince the ones I knew personally to reconsider.
Nowadays I just try not to get yelled at for my opinions while I watch things fall apart.
Or in the US, getting shot dead. Yelling isn’t enough for these lunatics anymore.
I hate these articles that give no contextual numbers. What was the exemption rate before? The article doesn’t bother to tell us.
I feel bad for the immunocompromised and the children who can’t make their own choices. I don’t feel bad for the nutbag parents who will see their children suffer with preventable diseases. I’ll even likely chuckle when I hear of a death.
Religious extremist (to the point of not accept vaccines at least) potentially extinguishing is so Darwinistic…
If only they didn’t spread diseases to others, that would be true, but they are also going to kill a lot of innocent people this way.
This. If it doesn’t spread then it can’t mutate. Vaccines for things like smallpox are highly effective but they’re not 100% and as the disease mutates the effectiveness goes down.
To be fair my child’s daycare asked for papers from the doctor every time they went, often enough it was forgotten, and you could just sign saying the child’s exempt to not have to deal with the papers.
This is a self correcting problem…the stupidest will fall to give their offspring the chance procreate.
I wish it were that simple.
With fewer people vaccinated, herd immunity is weakened. As I understand it, this means even vaccinated children will come into contact more frequently with infected people, thereby increasing the chance that even vaccinated people get sick.
Not only that, but more disease spreading means more chance that the disease could mutate and render our current vaccines ineffective.
Imagine if a vaccine resistant polio or measles started spreading. Sure, you’re vaccinated against the diseases, but the virus just laughs as it sidesteps your protections and infects you anyway. People refusing vaccines* endanger all of us.
* The exception to this rule are people who refuse for legitimate medical reasons. For example, if they are allergic to the vaccine components or have immune system issues. They should be able to legitimately refuse and the rest of us would protect them with our immunity.
Herd immunity doesn’t exist until a high enough percentage of the population is inoculated, so if you can’t realistically hit that threshold it’s worthless to the community to try and get as many people as you can.
Also, herd immunity only works when the vaccine prevents you from transmitting the disease to others in the first place.
I know this article is about vaccination in general, but many people are going to view it especially in the context of the covid pandemic—so it’s important to note out that the covid vaccine does not satisfy either of the above requirements. Whatever the value may be of achieving herd immunity in any other case, it unequivocally does not apply to covid. I’m not implying that you were saying it did, btw, just advising people—especially the vehement, single-minded detractors and defenders both—not to treat vaccines as if they’re all the same.
False, in every respect and point. 🤦
Care to explain? Basically every trustworthy source I skimmed through supports their argument.
I have concerns about your statement that achieving herd immunity is worthless when failing to reach the threshold. Is there not a distinction between herd immunity within a household or school and herd immunity within a city or state or country? Shouldn’t the “population” be in the context of communities with close and frequent interactions?
And they’ll take a lot of vulnerable people with them in the process.
Thanks Joe rohan
Joe of the Men of Rohan, ally to the King of Gondor.
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