Gee, thanks a lot anti-vaxxers for the mess!

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Arizona's government is asking those who have not been vaccinated to stay out of work, school, or day care for 21 days because of a major outbreak of measles coming out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/us/me ... .html?_r=0

Wasn't measles supposed to be eradicated because of vaccinations? I think it would have if we didn't have a big anti-vaxxer movement.

It looks like you're getting what you want, anti-vaxxers!

Actually about 20 years ago there were cases of measles among adults on college campuses. It turns out that the vaccines are no longer effective after a certain time and you need a booster as an adults, or thats what they said then. I don't think those who are against vaccinations had anything to do with that, because it was people who had the vaccine that were catching it.

I've never had any vaccines. I was allergic and the pediatrician wouldn't give them to me. My oldest daughter had a reaction to the pertussis and we stopped giving any of our kids that one, under his advice. I don't do the chicken pox vaccine, my kids had chicken pox instead, a few years back. I also don't do the HPV vaccine. It's a new vaccine and nobody knows what the effects from it years down the road will be and HPV is something that can easily be avoided. My oldest daughter is in a relationship and has been in it since she was 14, and my younger daughter said she wants to stay a virgin until she's married and that's not a religious thing - she's athiest. No need for either of them to get that vaccine.

I don't even know or particularly care to know what that motivations of the typical "anti-vaxxer" are. In many cases people just don't trust the quackery that passes for medicine.

Source?

The vaccine is about 95% effective, according to articles that I read. This makes it all the more important to achieve herd immunity as much as we can, because the more non-vaccinated people there are, the more people with chances to be easily infected with measles, and therefore more opportunity for that 5% non-effectiveness to play out for those who were vaccinated.

Also, we didn't declare measles eradicated until 2000. When I was a kid in the early 90s, I don't think I received the MMR vaccine until elementary school.

I'm all for freedom of choice, but not where someone's choice can seriously harm or even cause the death of others. So I feel that vaccinations should be mandated by law. Parents who put their own children at risk should be prosecuted. Not JUST because they put their own children at risk but also because they put the general public health at risk.

The reasoning process of these "parents" (I quote the word because no true parent would skip vaccinations) is SERIOUSLY flawed. Even if vaccinations DID raise the risk of ASD, if I were a parent I would much rather have an ASD child than a dead child. Vaccines save far more lives than they take. Hence, vaccinating is far less risky than NOT vaccinating.

Medical quackery such as Wakefield's fraudulent assertions that vaccinations cause autism?

Personally, I don't see the logic in vaccinations causing autism. It's on par with sorcery in my opinion.
That said, I still think people have the right to chose for themselves whether or not to be vax'd even if it does put others at risk. It's one of the perils of living in a free society that I'm not willing to throw away to buy a little safely with.

Well, I believe my freedom ends where your safety begins. With freedom comes responsibility.

I'm not and anti-vaxxer. If I was I'd proudly say so without reservation.
Having said that, I still hold with personal freedom on the matter. I doubt there are enough practicing anti-vaxxers (selective polls and "cooked" statistics aside) out there to fuss over.

But like I said, any and all freedoms have to be tempered with responsibility. And their kids who they refuse to vaccinate are a health threat to any other child who has not yet had the opportunity to get vaccinated. That's a clear abuse of freedom.

I prefer better education on how dangerous this anti-vax s**t really is, instead of forcing people to be vaccinated against their will. If only we could inoculate people against conspiracy theories they randomly find on the interweb.

Don't forget they endanger their own kids as well. It doesn't make it right just because it's "their" kid.

Right you are.

In any school district I went to, in more than one state and more than one region of the country, vaccinations were a prerequisite to registering for school. No proof of vaccination no enrolment so that pretty much sews it up.
Really now; past experience with you tells me that at this point you're only replying to me to get the last word in.

News sources report a much larger percentage of parents in the past decade or so compared to previously have applied for waivers to vaccination and have been getting those waivers. The waivers, as I understand them, allow the child to attend school without the prerequisite vaccination.

If you're in California there are. Their vaccination rate is 92%, so those who can't be vaccinated can't rely on herd immunity.

Compulsory vaccination isn't a matter of freedom, because parents don't have the right to decide what happens to their child anyway; I really don't know where that crazy idea came from. What they have is a responsibility to make sure they're healthy and cared for, and if they choose to put their child at risk, they're failing that responsibility. If a JW couple had a child who needed an operation involving a blood transfusion, it would be morally correct for a court to order the operation to go ahead without the parents consent. I don't see why vaccinations should be any different...