The Poorest State in America Ranks No. 1 When It Comes to Vaccines

[Liberal_in_LA]

It’s an unfortunate reality: Mississippi regularly ranks last in a lot of things—lowest education rate, highest poverty rate, and a lack of LGBT equality.

Yet, the state is coming up a winner in one unlikely category: It is completely measles free, despite a national surge that has infected more than 100 people in 14 states this year.

At least in part, that’s thanks to the fact that Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate for school-age children in the country. Kids in Mississippi may have a better chance of avoiding diseases such as the measles because it’s one of only two states—along with West Virginia—that doesn’t allow parents to refuse vaccinations because of personal philosophies or religious beliefs. In Mississippi, children can’t enroll in school until their immunizations are up-to-date.

In the 2013–2014 school year, 99.7 percent of Mississippi kids entering kindergarten were vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s a few points higher than the national median vaccination rate of 94.7 percent.
http://news.yahoo.com/poorest-state-america-ranks-1-comes-vaccines-010216593.html

[onehandle]

1. Tyranny!

Someone there needs to stop Obamacare from sticking their children with voodoo needles!

[daredtowork]

2. Actually that's not a joke

In the South it's all about freedom and personal responsibility and habeus corpus and religion first...right until the 1% are worried about their children getting the measles. Then they can impose what they want in contravention of all their previous supposed beliefs.

DU would be appalled at the situation as well...except everyone is letting concern for a measles epidemic jump the ideological/ethical line. Really sad to see Liberal in LA on this bandwagon.

I thought this article in Salon was a decent take on the topic:
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/07/anti_vaxxers_climate_deniers_and_the_crisis_of_authority/

Though everyone will probably call this guy a stealth anti-vaxxer, despite all his protests otherwise, trying to slip anti-science beliefs past the Science War's hard-fought front line.

He's the one telling the truth of the matter, though.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

3. I know I like to get my medical advice from movie critics.

This guy is a hack. There is no understanding anti-vaxxers. I can show them the data over and over and over, and they still go back to the discredited study or other nuttery.

[daredtowork]

5. I was glad he brought up thalidomide and DDT

It strikes me there might be a generation gap around "big science distrust", too. Those who are on the tale end of the Silent Spring generation, who still remember Three Mile Island and Silkwood, are not going to regard themselves as "nuts" no matter what insults you hurl at them. The children's literature that comprised their education including various futuristic and science fiction stories about toxic waste, air pollution, corrupt big pharma, etc. I remember several stories that took their jumping off point from thalidomide.

So while you are shouting SCIENCE(!) and EDUCATION(!), you are shouting it to people whose beliefs were formed from their education and don't just simply deny science.

I will say this one more time, too - I have my vaccinations, and I support people getting them. If I had children, I'd get vaccinations for my children. I wasn't a science major, but I studied history of science and consider myself an appreciator of science. I'm also a reality-based person, and the reality is that the US hasn't provided great basic education in recent decades - but in the meantime has given people many reasons to distrust the scientific establishment, has driven them to seek medical alternatives and quack remedies, and is still a democracy with constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties. That last part seems to be forgotten the minute the basement-dwellers of DU got a socially-sanctioned pretext to yell at people and suggest they be subjected to medical procedures against their will and/or herded into containment camps.

Try it and those "crackpots" are going to be overwhelming at the ballot box. </cassandra>

[former9thward]

4. I don't think Obamacare has much to do with it.

They have Obamacare in CA.

What Mississippi can teach California

A staggering 99.7% of kindergartners in Mississippi are vaccinated for measles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That's the highest rate in the nation.

In California, the rate is only 92.3%.

(Colorado, meanwhile, has the lowest rate, at 81.7%.)

Those numbers are significant. Even a very small percentage of unvaccinated kids can contribute to an outbreak, especially if they're concentrated in a single community, as is often the case in high-end, hippy-dippy California. According to the San Jose Mercury News, 87% of kindergartners at the Berkeley Rose School, for example, had exemptions from vaccination. Parents at the school "seek more alternative health care,"a spokeswoman told that newspaper.




http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/04/opinion/sutter-vaccine-mississippi-california/