Getting a measles vaccination isn't a personal choice - it's a social responsibility
Robert Reich
The core issue is the common good. Measles travels through the air and if enough people opt out of vaccinations, they put everyone at a higher risk
Sun 5 May 2019 01.00 EDT Last modified on Sun 5 May 2019 01.36 EDT
I remember having measles as a kid. Believe me, it was no fun. Also, measles could cause birth defects if a pregnant women got infected. If you were elderly, measles could be fatal.
Eventually, after vaccinations became nearly universal in America, measles was declared eliminated from the US in 2000.
But now the measles are back already surpassing 700 cases this year, in 22 states. So far, 66 people have been hospitalized, a third of them with pneumonia.
What happened? We stopped vaccinating everyone. More than 500 of the new cases are in people who had not been vaccinated.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/05/measles-vaccinations-social-responsibility
BigmanPigman
(51,569 posts)quarantined in the Caribbean due to a measles case being discovered on board.
murielm99
(30,717 posts)developed measles encephalitis. It happened in about one in every one thousand measles cases before the vaccine was widely used.
Don't ask me why this kid was not given the vaccine.
She devolved into a vegetative state and died when she was ten or eleven. Very sad.
Mazeltov Cocktail
(569 posts)... I was very sick, I had to spend 3 weeks in bed in a darkened room. I now have to get a " shingles " vaccine ($200.00) and it is not that effective. Two friends, my age, both got mild cases of shingles in spite of getting the vaccine.
I am old enough to have had every childhood disease except polio (mumps, rheumatic fever, whooping cough, chicken pox etc.)
and I remember lining up to get the "Salk vaccine ".
Why would anyone knowingly put their children through this!
Lars39
(26,107 posts)The new shingles vaccination, Shingrix has 91% immunity. It is expensive but insurance might pay for it all.
csziggy
(34,131 posts)uriel1972
(4,261 posts)don't handle the concept of social responsibility well.