
Anti-vaccination stronghold in NC hit with worst chickenpox outbreak in 20 years - howard941
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/19/anti-vaccination-stronghold-nc-hit-with-states-worst-chickenpox-outbreak-decades/
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will4274
Why is this marked as a dupe? Past shows no other submissions. No moderator
comment indicating what this is a dupe of. What is this a dupe of?

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thaumaturgy
It's a dupe of this discussion from three days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18494345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18494345)

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will4274
That article appears to have been flagged and removed before it hit the front
page.

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rayiner
So my dad worked in international development his whole life. A big part of it
was helping deploy vaccinations to countries around the world. When he was a
child in Bangladesh, 1 out of 3 kids died before age 5. Today it’s down to 1
in 25, thanks in large part of vaccination.

People in the third world, with vastly inferior education systems, understand
the importance of vaccinations and are lining up to get them. So the idea that
people in the first world are deliberately turning them down just blows my
dad’s mind. In my view a sign of some serious cultural decay that this is
happening. Some combination of declining trust in core institutions and a rise
in pernicious individualism.

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bane
There's a weird phenomena at play where ignorance has been advertised as a
virtue and willful ignorance can be used as a superiority or virtue signal and
used to socially position people above others in the same way that other
beliefs and belief purity tests end up harming the believer. It seems to be
fed by a bizarre ecosystem of pseudo-information that fill the minds of people
and discourage critical thinking -- and maybe plays on some desire for social
belonging to a group with secret knowledge.

I remember reading some papers and articles on this and how it kind of hacks
the minds of people by playing to base insecurities. Critical thought is not
really a natural state of humans, so it can be very easy to subvert.

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ghthor
I think its caused by disenfranchisemnt. When you feel like you have no
control or are involved in decision making, it's easy for that to break down
trust. That's what I see in myself, and those around me.

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cmurf
This was chickenpox. Imagine if it were rubella. Or polio.

They can't be physically or economically coerced by a government because of
the religious exemption, so far that's the law of the land as the Supreme
Court conservative shift gave us the Hobby Lobby case. So there's nothing to
do about it legally in the near term, short of something so horrific that even
the conservative court reverses itself somehow.

But I wonder to what degree insurers and businesses could affect the decision
making: if you're not immunized, we won't cover your hospitalization; and
refuse to hire people who's immunizations aren't up to date.

I've been an employer, and if I'm the one paying for a majority of health care
premiums, I'd absolutely be on board with discriminating in hiring people who
think immunizations are some b.s. conspiracy. That sort of paranoia is a
hiring risk even aside from the loss of herd immunity.

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clort
You might be able to discriminate against potential employees based on their
obvious stupidity, but you might be on less certain ground when they claim it
is a religious viewpoint?

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DanBC
Which religions forbid immunisation?

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eesmith
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_and_religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_and_religion)

> Christian Science selectively rejects various forms of medical care
> including vaccination.[14][15] The Congregation of Universal Wisdom, a
> religion based on belief in chiropractic spinal adjustments and Universal
> Intelligence, forbids vaccinations

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curran736
You people really trippin over chicken pox? What about the CDC doctor Dr
William Thompson who admitted to fraud in vaccine paper? What about another
Dr. Thorson wanted by interpol bc he stole CDC money for autism and vaccine
research? People will blindly inject vaccines and not even ask about the
safety tests for the nano aluminum particles their using... or the XMRV
retroviruses from animal byproducts contaminating the supply lines

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ryanmercer
Wait, is there a chickenpox vaccination now? Sure wasn't 20-something years
ago when I had it, on my birthday, ugh.

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howard941
Yes. See the Prevention section at
[https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2018/infectious-
dise...](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2018/infectious-diseases-
related-to-travel/varicella-chickenpox)

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methodover
We need to figure out how to better persuade people to get their kids
vaccinated. Perhaps a mix of education targeted at families who claim these
exemptions, and fines to represent the negative externality of their choices?

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cmsj
or just make vaccines mandatory for every child able to have them?

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chris_wot
Actually, in Australia we prevented childcare payments for those who
conscientiously object. Religious grounds aren’t accepted. It’s called “no
jab, no pay”.[1]

It has arrested the slide in vaccinations, and in fact increased the
vaccination rate by a few percent.

We also have strongly endured that groups like the Australian Vaccination
Network are curtailed. They are now called the Australian Vaccination-risks
Network, by court order after a statutory body the NSW HCCC pursued them.

You don’t need to make vaccines mandatory, you just need to have consequences
for those who refuse; and you need to go after groups who peddle in lies.

[https://beta.health.gov.au/file/1126/download?token=nF1qzHkN](https://beta.health.gov.au/file/1126/download?token=nF1qzHkN)

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conanbatt
Refusing childcare payments is just another flavor of mandatory, enforced
through the tax system.

A responsbility approach would be a health insurance on third parties.

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chris_wot
That is hardly responsible. We have free health care in Australia, and landing
someone in hospital but paying for it because of the actions of another party
is neither desirable nor sensible.

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conanbatt
Why wouldn't it be responsible?

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stmfreak
Chicken Pox is a harmless right of passage as a child. Better to get it young
than old when it has serious complications. I don’t know why we need a vaccine
for this except for adults who missed it as children.

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eesmith
It's not harmless for some. Quoting from the CDC at
[https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/surveillance/monitoring-
varic...](https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/surveillance/monitoring-
varicella.html) :

"In the early 1990s, an average of 4 million people got varicella, 10,500 to
13,000 were hospitalized (range, 8,000 to 18,000), and 100 to 150 died each
year."

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oldgradstudent
This is hilarious. Most of Western Europe does not vaccinate against
chickenpox.

[https://vaccine-
schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Scheduler/ByDisease?...](https://vaccine-
schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Scheduler/ByDisease?SelectedDiseaseId=11&SelectedCountryIdByDisease=-1)

There are 600,000 cases every year just in the UK, but the Washington Post
doesn't even bother mentioning that there is a disagreement between national
health organizations about the cost benefit trade-off of vaccinating against
chickenpox.

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RobertRoberts
You are getting voted down, but I _wanted_ all my kids to get chicken pox. We
tried to get them together with other kids that have it so they could get it.

Everyone got chicken pox decades ago, it was expected. No one cared. Why does
anyone care now?

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jesseb
Because Shingles is awful, for one.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingles)

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RobertRoberts
This is _exactly_ the reason why we wanted our kids to get chicken pox!

Or at least that is the story we have all been told. I know personally at
least 3 elderly people that have had shingles (or do right now) that had
chicken pox as kids.

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shepardrtc
You misunderstand. Shingles are a resurgence of chickenpox when you're old and
your immune system is too weak to fight it off. Chickenpox is herpes. It hides
in your body, but as long as you're healthy, your immune system doesn't have
much issue fighting it off. When you get old, then it can come back and be
potentially deadly.

