UCLA is an open campus. Anyone can, and does, just walk onto campus. There are some folks that just audit classes and are not enrolled. Some people from greater LA just like to spend time in Powell Library and read/study. It's not uncommon at all to have random people from across the planet just walk onto campus.
Vaccinations are free of charge in most (all?) of the U.S, in California any pharmacy can be reimbursed. This isn't an issue of funds, it's an issue of unwillingness to vaccinate.
Last flu season, I walked into Kaiser and got a flu shot in about five minutes total. I’m not a Kaiser member, and they didn’t even ask for billing info.
That's one thing we've done pretty well, bringing down the cost of critical vaccines. Others are expensive, but they are mostly elective. If you look at the CDC price list [0] for kids, only 2 vaccines are over $200 for private sector cost, and they're not too important (one is MMR/Varicella which covers what would otherwise be two vaccines, and the other is HPV which is unimportant). Even cheaper for adults. That's within the price range of pretty much anyone.
In 2018 nearly 580k women were diagnosed with cervical cancer. 70% of said cancer is caused by HPV (by two strains of it to be exact). So that is 406k women each year getting cervical cancer which could have been prevented if they were vaccinated, and that’s only counting people who were diagnosed. Now consider that HPV is also known to cause cancers in other organs, both reproductive and non-reproductive, and that these affect not only women but men as well.
Granted only 14 of the 100+ strains are linked to cancer, but still. That’s a lot of preventable cancer.
The CDC recommends the vaccine for basically everyone up to 26, and the FDA has approved a vaccine for up to 45.
HPV is elective, because activities that cause it are elective. Cancer-causing strains are transmitted largely by risky behavior, which is a choice. That is why I called it elective. Being in a room with someone with measles can cause you to get it; being in a room with someone with cancer-causing HPV cannot. It requires a conscious choice.
>HPV is elective, because activities that cause it are elective.
This is patently absurd because if nothing else it's unfortunately a fact not all exposure to HPV is elective. Did you miss the recent article about a baby born with HPV nodes on her throat that damaged her vocal cords? By vaccinating the mother and the father and preventing them from having HPV there's no chance of in-vitro tranmission to the child. Just as vaccinating for tetanus, measles mumps and rubella and all the rest building herd immunity prevents current and future generations from passing on the disease.
And regardless of your implied moral judgements preventing a cancer-causing disease is a net benefit to public health.
A 100% effective vaccination? Also, I didn't imply any moral judgement, I'm simply stating it's not as important as others.
With respect to the baby story, was that a strain which was prevented by a HPV vaccination?
I understand there is a benefit, and wasn't disputing that. All I was saying was that it was elective and less important. There is a reason it is not required for schools as MMR is, and that it is not standard.
You're not implying that if people just abstained from sex they wouldn't need the HPV vaccination? That's a judgement about people having pre-marital sex, is it not? And your stance that it's "less important" is based on the idea that simply abstaining from sex prevents all HPV exposure, correct? That is not a science-based conclusion. HPV can be transmitted outside of sex by walking barefoot across a bathroom floor.
But if you want a morality-driven argument it is IMHO undeniably imperative to vaccinate the general public against disease including cancer causing disease regardless of the mode of transmission of said disease and that imperative and benefits outweigh any counter argument that simply abstaining from a given behavior lowers that risk.
If I can find the citation for the article I mentioned (I did Google for it but couldn't find it the first time) I'll happily address whether in fact it's one prevented by Gardasil, etc.
> You're not implying that if people just abstained from sex they wouldn't need the HPV vaccination? That's a judgement about people having pre-marital sex, is it not?
No, because I said nothing about pre-marital anything. There is still a risk, even in marriage, though people who take only one sexual partner are less likely to contract such diseases. That's not a judgement, as I am not saying whether anything is right or wrong, it is simply a fact.
> And your stance that it's "less important" is based on the idea that simply abstaining from sex prevents all HPV exposure, correct? That is not a science-based conclusion. HPV can be transmitted outside of sex by walking barefoot across a bathroom floor.
Correct. You are correct about some varieties, none of which are currently known to cause caner.
> But if you want a morality-driven argument it is IMHO undeniably imperative to vaccinate the general public against disease including cancer causing disease regardless of the mode of transmission of said disease and that imperative and benefits outweigh any counter argument that simply abstaining from a given behavior lowers that risk.
Again, I didn't say that it was necessarily bad, I was pointing out that it was less important than MMR or other such vaccinations, an assertion by which I stand.
> If I can find the citation for the article I mentioned (I did Google for it but couldn't find it the first time) I'll happily address whether in fact it's one prevented by Gardasil, etc.
I couldn't find it through internet-searching either, which is why I made the above point.
I still maintain that a HPV vaccination is less important than other vaccinations. This is especially true for men, as the largest cancer risk by far is for cervical cancer. You are unlikely to get major traction for people being vaccinated against a disease that will most harm another at their expense and pain. Why did you take such issue with a passing remark I made as part of a broader, positive point? I am not saying anything that is wrong; the risks are there and the benefits for a large part of the population that would be required to achieve herd immunity are not.
Again, there is reason it is not standard or required. The herd immunity argument is not as relevant because it is much less important for men (especially because existing vaccines focus mostly on strains that cause cervical cancer) and so a large portion of the population will remain unvaccinated against it.
> I still maintain that a HPV vaccination is less important than other vaccinations. This is especially true for men
Yes. Because stopping cancers at disease spreading vectors is just silly, right?
We don't vaccinate children and give boosters when they are young (at booster time and have great immune systems) for them to not be kinda sick for a while. We do it to prevent others, who are more vulnerable, from getting really sick and/or dying.
How are you missing the simple fact that most women get the cancerous strains from men?
How can you argue that virgins having sex with anything but another virgin and having no other sexual partners for life is what is needed for non-risky behavior? Because if any one has more than one partner and that partner is allowed more than one partner we are going to have spread of cancerous strains.
Moralistic arguments are what keeps us from mass-vaccinating against HPV-strains.
Literally 2019 and arguing on the internet for abstinence only?
That guy is saying that 400k cases of diagnosed cancer per year is “unimportant” because apparently[1] you can just choose not to have sex. They doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that 100%[2] of the population are affected by HPV, and that cervical cancer is just 2 of the 14 strains of cancer causing HPV that we know of. Their judgement is indeed clouded by the whole “it’s a SEX thing” whether they want to admit it or not.
[1] Of course you can choose to not have sex, and many people do, but my point wasn’t literal. Abstinence is absurd, regressive, arcane, etc, and doesn’t belong in 2019 nor does it work on 2019.
[2] Just to pre-emptively cover my base against pedantic people: I’m sure that the number isn’t 100% because of genetic mutations but those are exceptions not the rule.
> Abstinence is absurd, regressive, arcane, etc, and doesn't belong in 2019 nor does it work on 2019.
Why do you call it these things? Your opinion is not a source. I think both of us can agree it is 100% effective with respect to disease prevention. We're running into antibiotic-resistant STDs because people won't stop sleeping around. From the CDC: "Gonorrhea has progressively developed resistance to the antibiotic drugs prescribed to treat it." [0]
> cervical cancer is just 2 of the 14 strains of cancer causing HPV that we know of.
"The main type of cancer linked to HPV infection is cervical cancer. Virtually all cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV." [1] Yes there are risks of other cancer, but they are very small unless you are gay.
> How are you missing the simple fact that most women get the cancerous strains from men?
This is exactly the problem. How do you plan to convince men to get vaccinated to prevent a cancer that affects women?
> Moralistic arguments are what keep us from mass-vaccinating against HPV-strains.
This is not a moralistic argument; I made no argument about what is right or wrong. What keeps that from happening is that many people who would need to do so would get little benefit. It's a positive externality.
> Literally 2019 and arguing on the internet for abstinence only?
I didn't argue for it, but there's nothing wrong with it. What's bad about that approach? It's 100% effective at preventing the spread of disease. Literally 2019 and we have super-STDs because people won't stop sleeping around. From the CDC: "Gonorrhea has progressively developed resistance to the antibiotic drugs prescribed to treat it." [0] Show me another approach that will work. Vaccine? Oh wait, we don't have one for that, and our antibiotics don't work. It's for good reason that society used to shun this sort of behavior. Promiscuous people are causing a serious public health issue because they are too lazy to keep it in their pants.
It's also not correct. I have to pay for all my vaccinations, and have had to do so in all the various states I've lived in, including California.
The US does not have a program of free vaccines for the population.
If people have insurance that pays for it, the insurance covers it, but that's not the same as free.
Elsewhere in this thread a med student relates his experience of getting his MMR booster for "free", but administering it was $500 per shot, later raised to $700. The free was also not free, the student insurance paid for the shot itself and he merely had to pay for the administration. This is a more typical vaccination scenario in the US. Also worth noting is that very very few of the people commenting in any discussion of vaccines are up to date with their boosters because very few adults in general are up to date.
"By taking a strong pro-choice stand on vaccinations, we'll be saving the American healthcare system millions in costs while ignoring the time bomb that'll realistically only go off when the opposition is in power".
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if that's the route the US is headed regarding vax policy.
Genuine Merck MMR vaccine comes in packs of ten, priced at ~$21 USD (for CDC, standard MSRP is 75, still not really expensive), takes about ten seconds to administer. It's an amount of money that any number of people in anyone's life (unless you have no friends, family, neighbours, or colleagues at all) in the U.S. could lose by accident on a given day.
I didn't look up the Cal State LA, but UCLA does require it.
https://www.immunizationrequirement.ucla.edu/ I went to UCLA, one of my kids did, and the other went to UCI. As far as I remember it's always been required. But it could be people are getting waivers for sketchy reasons or just lying about it. I view this outbreak more of a symptom of the problem (people not wanting their kids vaccinated) than the universities having a lax policy as a cause.
Oh man! Have I got a story on schools and Immunizations!
My grad school was CU Anschutz Med Campus. They also require immunization records to attend in the event of an outbreak. This is important as it is a med-campus and there are a lot of sick people, immuno-compromised people, infants, and a CDC infectious disease center. If you are not immunized, you will be staying at home in the event of an outbreak and you will fail your finals.
There were a few issues though.
One was that you had to send in your immunization records. Per various rules in various bureaucracies, Kaiser in CA would only send out faxes. CU-AMC would not ever accept a fax. Both cited HIPAA law as the reason. Many of the students, including the med students, spent years figuring these things out as each hospital system battled it out from the various states and countries that students came from. No joke, it took me just over 3 semesters to get it hammered out, about 1.5 years. Eventually, my records were sent out via snail-mail.
The second issue was the bilking of the students. Every single student that I personally knew was told that their MMR titers were out of date (essentially, the test to see if you are in fact immunized). Thus, they needed to get their titers pulled again. So, we all go down to the students' nurses office to get the titers pulled. Every single student is then told that they are deficient in their titers. So, we all then go to get our MMR booster shots. Wham, bam, you now have your booster shot. Mind you, this is all personal stuff. You don't really talk about it over lunch. Nothing was amiss to anyone at this point.
Then, the ~ $500 bill came to us. Yes, really. $500 for an MMR booster shot. Looking closer, it's not that the shots were themselves $500, the vaccine was itself free. It was the administration of the shots. Having that nurse give you the shot, a 5 minute process, was $500 after the student health insurance kicked in. Every single student I knew also received one of these bills.
Understandably outraged at this, we all go to our respective department heads and ask what the hell is going on. They, also are surprised. After a few months of meetings and whatnot, my department states that they will pay out for our costs. Nice, but not that it mattered. Many of us, waiting on these things to suss out, were sent to collections. Lab phones were ringing off the hook, PIs and advisors were getting calls from scummy collectors about our debts, there were loads of very threatening emails sent to official university addressed, etc. The insurance that the students all went through was not going to budge, you had to pay out. It was a mess.
Some of the other departments decided to try to just have the students sign religious waivers for the next incoming class. This worked. That next class that was in a department that had the students go off and sign waivers didn't have to deal with this nonsense. My department was not one of them. As such, some of my new lab-mates got ~ $700 bills for the MMR boosters (I assume the upped the price to make-up for lost revenue, but have no proof). My new lab mates had to go through all the rigmarole as I had to as well, with debt collectors, lazy departments, and bad billing.
Well, then all the departments figured this out. All the students are told to just go down and get religious waivers for the shots. This includes the med students, the dental students, the NPs, etc. This bypasses the insane student health insurance (no idea why it was still there after this, but, again, bureaucrats). In the event of an outbreak, all the students will need to stay home and fail all of their classes.
So, AFAIK, all/most of the students at CU-AMC are on religious waivers as of today, due to scummy insurance and a bureaucratic fight with the various departments.
Odd, Kaiser in CA was willing to send a secure email (I assume that meant an email containing a web link) with my vaccination history when I started grad school at NYU in 2015.
To your larger point of what a mess this is, though: NYU refused to accept a vaccination history that didn't have a "doctor's stamp" on it so wouldn't take the email. After unsuccessfully trying to get a doctor to sign off on my vaccination history, I realized it would be easier to just get re-immunized. Luckily the health center charged less than $100 for that, but the whole thing was still way more annoying than it should have been.
I don't know how you came to model anything about this with "1^N" (I don't recognize that either). A nuclear chain reaction for instance starts with a single fission event, and if it's supercritical neutron population grows exponentially.
1^N is "1 raised to the N". The one measles case so far growing exponentially where N is the exponent. It's still 1 for all values of N though. Nothing is actually increasing even though it's "growing exponentially". There is one measles case so far. Even if it "spreads exponentially" you would still only ever have one case if you intentionally misunderstand how disease spreads and model the number of cases with the function X^N where X is your starting number of cases.
Jokes aren't funny when you have to explain them though
Not everybody can be vaccinated and measles spreads like crazy. If there's one confirmed infection, that person likely already spread the virus for a couple of days before symptoms occur.
Besides, it's a disease that shouldn't be around anymore at all.
Well, measles is extremely contagious and nowadays you can't expect that everybody else is vaccinated, so...
I'd call a single case of smallpox "Smallpox Outbreak". Too bad this recent outbreak of sheer ignorance and prejudice is going to delay a meaningful comparison between both viral diseases.
I passed it at 7 and it wasn't easy. I have personal experience of it being nasty, anti-vaxxers mostly don't. They don't even know what they're talking about because that's the whole point of their position, ignore every actual piece of knowledge about this and construct an very entertaining conspiracy that has no consequences until herd immunity crumbles. I don't even know why we're having this problem, we were on our way to eradicate measles, as we did with smallpox.
Can you provide examples? The only example of a 'scientific' study I am aware of is the disgraced Wakefield stuff which has been disproven so many times it isn't even funny. That's before you add in the malpractice that happened and the conflict of interest he held.
Italian researchers tested 44 different vaccines and found significant contamination in all of them, ranging from red blood cells to lead, tungsten, gold, and chromium.
The describe this finding as "baffling" and call for better purification and quality control, given that many of the contaminants were capable of causing health problems.
"New Quality-Control Investigations on Vaccines: Micro-
and Nanocontamination"
Absolutely not an expert on this, but doesn't your daughter get the immune antibodies from her mother in the first few months? Either passed during pregnancy or by breastfeeding.
The MMR vaccine is more effective after 12 months, i.e. there are fewer cases of the vaccine failing to confer immunity when first administered at 12 mos as opposed to earlier.
You can receive a first MMR dose earlier than 12 mos for certain grounds (e.g. international travel, military postings) but it is then recommended that the infant receive a second 'first dose' after 12 months.
IANAMD, but after looking at the vaccination plan for children last week, my guess would be that there's so many vaccines to be taken in the first two years of life that they have to sort it by priority and space out to balance risk of catching a disease with risk of overloading the body.
The evidence seems to indicate that vaccines don't cause some kind of "immune system overload". There are efforts underway to increase the number of vaccines given at a time.
That's good to know. Doesn't stop midwifes from scaring us into considering combined vaccines that reduce the number of injections, solely by arguing that the more injections, the less safe it is for the baby.
Immume systems are fucking amazing[1]. There are millions of viruses and bacteria of all sorts everywhere in your house and outside that a child's immune system is constantly dealing to without you even being cognizant of it. And if it wasn't dealing with those successfully you'd very quickly know about it because your child has an immune disorder. The vaccines are absolutely infinitesimally small in terms of an immune reaction compared to this every day constant barrage.
[1] Except when they're broken, and then it sucks bad, and you find out how damn amazing they are and how much we take them for granted.
Does the human body process breastmilk differently as a child? Why can’t we immunize small populations of people or animals and use their milk to spread the antibodies to young and at risk populations?
We still don't know to synthesize breastmilk, even for babies (this is why breastfeeding is reccomended).
Also, it is a relativly recent development that adult humans can even digest milk. Lactose tolerence is the mutation, and a sizable portion of humans do not have it.
Sure but if it conveys immunity to measles in a measely area, I’m sure it would be pretty easy to convince some nursing mothers to nurse longer and sell the milk.
No kidding… My son is the same age. Here in the Netherlands the vaccination rate is dropping steadily too, and now sits just above 90%. Not as bad as some other countries, but worrying nonetheless.
By the way, our kids are protected for a while yet by their mothers' immunity to measles (of course that implies mum having either been vaccinated or having had the measles themselves).
to put it in quantitative context, you put her life at risk every time you put her in a car. Measles killed roughly 500/kids a year before vaccinations. Car accidents kill about .5/1000 kids.
The probability of your child getting measles and dying is below most other risks that you take for granted each day.
You forgot to mention that there were an average 500,000 cases of measles per year in the 4 year period you're picking for the 500/year metric.
You also forgot to mention that about 1-2 in each thousand with measles developed encephalitis and 1 in 1000 developed post-infectious encephalitis and that 1 in 20 gets pneumonia.
A child being severely sick for extended periods can be really expensive. Especially for those countries like the US which don't have universal healthcare.
This is a nonsensical comparison. There's a difference between unavoidable risks and avoidable risks.
You take steps to minimize unavoidable risks like car travel (e.g. use car seats), but it ultimately you need to travel to function in society.
Measles is a completely avoidable risk. Vaccination and ultimately herd immunity provides a 100% level of protection against measles. We were close to eradicating it.
Urbanization is a thing. We cram ourselves together more than in the 60s. Epidemics would be worse without vaccinations and other modern medicine niceties.
Anyone know what the chance of being infected is if you've been exposed to someone with measles and had both measles vaccinations?
As best as I can gather, the probability of being protected is 97%, but that seems to be a general probability during the average persons lifetime. I can't seem to find a number for when its known you've been exposed.
Whenever I travel somewhere, my yellow WHO vaccination card comes with me. It fills me with some pride that humankind set up a worldwide organization to aid health of both individual /and society/. It's a good feeling to be protected and protect others.
Vaccination is one of those things that's presented as a choice, and so some people will think about whether to do it. And out of those, some will decide it's not for them. With all the misinformation on the internet it's probably quite easy to get the wrong impression of how it works.
I really hope this anti-vaxx thing is a passing fad. We're at a point where we can't live without it. People aren't spread out on farms anymore, we all jam together on public transport every day now.
A lot of the kids of anti-vax parents become strident pro-vaccination people. I would too if my parents had wilfully left me susceptible to deadly illness
Some. I know some kids who grew up more anti-vax than their parents. One girl told me she had whooping cough, it was awful, but still better than the side effects of vaccinations.
> well hey, my ribs are broken, my colon is falling out of my inguinal canal and I vomit every time I cough, but at least I don't have vaccine poisoning
Did she use modern medicine to treat the bacteria?
I don't think it's just a fad, sadly. It's a kind of post-modern hipsterism that borders on the quasi-reactionary, of a sort that seems to be weirdly popular as of late, and it might stay around for a while whether we like it or not. Yes, crowded environments will definitely be an issue. Hopefully wearing face masks in public will become more popular, much like we see happening in East Asia.
My understanding is that face masks help if you have a cold to avoid spreading germs but are pretty much useless in terms of protecting you from other people's diseases.
It's not just religious conservatives. I hardly subscribe to "horseshoe theory" but there are similarities between religious conservatives and a particular sort of anti-authority people on the left, and this is one of them. Both slices of the ideological spectrum include the rejection of authority, namely in this case either the state or liberal (as in Liberalism) scientific epistemology, or both. Post-modern hipsterism isn't quite the right term, but it's in the right vicinity IMO.
Yup, the "post-modern" part I actually meant quite literally in fact. It's a societal attitude that somewhat widespread these days, of rejecting modernity in some forms (such as with the medical technology of vaccination, wrt. anti-vax adherents) while accepting it unreservedly in many other ways (as with the rise of the Internet, and especially the myriad local groups and weird "tribes" fostered by online social media - certainly a novel way to build up social capital, compared to the churches of old!). It's not really about the ideological spectrum per se, in fact focusing on that is more confusing than anything else.
Waldorf Schools show a number of times too, they tend to mix up science with romanticized fake spirituality, which would make perfect sense some of them would go too far. The parents are typically well educated, but also have a wishy-washy spiritual seeker tendency.
In fact, there is no major religion that is against vaccination [1].
Even religions that you might expect to have a problem because of some of the ingredients in the vaccine, such as Hindus with vaccines that include bovine components, or Muslims and Jews with vaccines using porcine components, are fine with them even with if they include those components.
Jainism you might expect to have a problem because they are against violence against any life, including microorganisms. But vaccines are allowed, with regrets, as necessary to protect other lives. (The same reason they allow soap and cooking).
Scientologists are OK with vaccination.
Among Christians, most denominations are fine with vaccines. Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Amish, Anglican, Baptist, Mormons, Congregational, Episcopalian, Jehovah's Witness, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Quaker, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Seventh-Day Adventist, and Unitarian-Universalist...all fine with vaccination.
The Christians against vaccination are the Christian Scientists, the Dutch Reformed Congregations, and the faith healing denominations. (Christian Scientists think vaccinations are unnecessary because they think they can cure disease with prayer, but they don't have a religious problem with getting vaccinations if they are required to enroll in school or travel or things like that).
The Vatican issued an official statement about the morality of using, administering, allowing and requiring vaccines which include aborted fetal cells.
The document you cite concludes that it is OK for Catholics to use such vaccines on their children if there are no vaccines not derived from such cells available because the moral necessity to protect the health of your children and those they come in contact with outweighs the mild, remote passive material cooperation with abortion doing so provides.
That was from 2005. They updated their position in 2017 [1]. The two abortions that provided the cell lines used for vaccines were more than 50 years ago. That removes even that mild passive material cooperation concern:
> the cell lines currently in use are very distant from the original abortions and no longer imply that bond of moral cooperation indispensable for an ethically negative evaluation of their use
...
> The technical characteristics of the production of the vaccines most commonly used in childhood lead us to exclude that there is a morally relevant cooperation between those who use these vaccines today and the practice of voluntary abortion
They also say that there is a "moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others".
Popularism of anti-vax movement is directly tied to social media and the ease of which people have been able to form communities around the issue. Combine that with Russian trolls and targeted advertising and you have can see why it's spread.
Question is whether Facebook in particular is going to do something about it so it is just a passing fad.
There is a large group of people starting to frame this a "personal freedom' issue. Some people in my circle are family members, or old classmates, etc. Some view it as a moral issue, because they are afraid of what 'the state' might mandate as a vaccine. (and what might get added in the future. For example, a few of them are VERY opposed to gaurdasil, since in their minds (not mine) that helps promote promiscuity, and the downfall of good moral choices, etc.
Overall, the people that I know that are opposed are all successful, in industries without strong education requirements (ie, realestate, the trades, etc) But have a VERY strong distrust of government, and the medical industry. They frame it as a personal 'freedom' but really, they seem to be worried that the corrupt state will push barely tested shots on our kids, that will cause who knows what.
I don't agree with them, but I figured I would state their points, because just calling them idiots doesn't solve the problem
>For example, a few of them are VERY opposed to gaurdasil, since in their minds (not mine) that helps promote promiscuity, and the downfall of good moral choices, etc.
Not disagreeing with the message of your comment, but I would be quite careful with relating what happened regarding Gardasil. While a lot of people opposed it on promiscuity grounds, there were many other reasons people opposed it, and they tend all to erroneously get lumped into the same category. Probably the most common reason was that the manufacturer was very strongly pushing to make it a mandatory vaccine for school, and was charging a huge amount for it. The cost at the time was a lot more expensive (order of magnitude) compared to other mandatory vaccines. So people felt it was mostly a money grab by the manufacturer. Additionally, at the time there were studies suggesting that were it to become mandatory, it would be a net negative for the overall health of society - because it cost so much. Money would be diverted to this vaccine from treating other health issues. There were studies indicating that the cost of mass vaccination was significantly more than the cost of the disease (relatively rare in the US).
(The years since have likely shown the studies to be inaccurate, but they were out there).
On top of that, they put in a ton of money on marketing. They paid a large number of physicians to go on speaking tours about the benefits of Gardasil. These physicians were sometimes touted as experts, but most were just regular physicians who had no particular expertise on the matter.
In that kind of environment, you can understand that people will not trust the motives of the company, and thus by proxy their claims on the effectiveness of the vaccine. The manner in which they pushed for that vaccine likely hurt the vaccine movement overall.
(And on the side, I always suspected that the whole "promotion of promiscuity" argument was merely a strategy by those who don't believe in mass medication by the government - so they put out the morality propaganda to help their cause).
I've always struggled a bit with the whole vaccination issue. Those who don't want them are obviously idiots, and unfortunately most are parents who are refusing to vaccinate their children. I generally lean more toward the libertarian "do what you want until it hurts me" stance, but it's obvious that a disease epidemic hurts me. At the same time, I have trouble with the idea of the government rounding people up and sticking needles in their arms.
It's a tough question, and I'm not quite sure how to solve it. We will likely face many more issues of disease in the years to come, with antibiotic resistance becoming a growing threat. The idea of a society where a small nick very well may cause a fatal infection is not a pleasant one.
It seems like vaccination info is not kept at the state or federal level. This information is no doubt extremely dangerous - imagine if a malicious actor could get ahold of the "non-vaccinated list." But right now, it's stored at high schools, universities, and workplaces around the country with standard HIPAA-grade security. As an example of what kind of government oversight I'm talking about: in Canada, there are reporting requirements for certain STD infections (including treatable ones: think chlamydia, or gonorrhea). I think some US states have reporting requirements as well.
In cases like this, where there's already an active quarantine, if the CDC or the state kept track of non-vaccinated people, they could be quarantined as well. The idea being, even if they're not showing symptoms, they're at high risk for carrying the disease. This seems like a reasonable trade-off for choosing not to vaccinate yourself, and my guess is people who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons would be glad to consent to quarantine.
They do quarantine people for the flu. Happened during my undergrad; they kept a few students with the swine flu in their rooms. Had meals and supplies brought to them and asked them to not leave.
Where are you getting death rate from for measles and flu please?
Also, we're not just interested in death rates (about 2 children out of every 1000 who get measles will die from it) but also long term harm, which can include deafness or brain damage.
Since the US had eradicated measles in about 2000 that's a lot of preventable harm that's happening because people fear vaccines.
No, what seems illegal is forgoing vaccination. You want to forfeit a proven system to prevent widespread disease, then you should give up your right to live in the country. How vaccination isn't a mandatory thing by law, is beyond me.
One can strongly favor vaccination (and favor prohibiting activities such as attending public schools absent vaccination without specific medical reasons) without favoring deportation for anyone who doesn't submit to forced vaccination--which I'm pretty sure would be unconstitutional for citizens.
Funnily enough in order to get a green card you need to present proof of comprehensive vaccination. This is only done almost at the end of the process, at which point you would have been in the US for years.
Not saying it was proportionate but we had colonies for infectious back then. Of course we were also idiots who used it mostly for Hansen's disease instead of far more virulent diseases like Smallpox because lepers were way more marginalizable as opposed to something which can infect anyone. Although stubborn cases like Typhoid Mary also got the same treatment.
I guess the answer is that it should be required by law then? You either get vaccinated, or you go into permanent quarantine until you do. I don't understand how in this case, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
I appreciate your desire to solve the problem, and I'm certainly pro-vaccination. However, I really don't want to set another precedent of allowing the state to permanently detain people because of perceived public danger (real or otherwise).
Imagine if this kind of thinking prevailed in the HIV hysteria of the 80's/90's. It's relatively easy to follow this approach to its logical conclusion. When you order authoritarianism, it's very likely you'll get it. And not simply in the places you want it.
The HIV scenario is not equivalent. It was new, people were frightened and ignorant. There is no cure, no vaccination. Measles is a well understood disease that had been eradicated. Openly putting others at risk because of some nonsense belief should not be tolerated.
Are you good with a HIV+ person knowingly infecting others because it's their right to refuse antiviral medication? Measles and other highly contagious diseases can infect large populations without anyone knowing before it's too late.
I don't disagree with you and I trust you to make the distinction between the two things. However, I don't trust lawmakers/police/military to have the same sense of nuance.
It is likely I am just uniformed as to the California school system. Texas schools require immunization records.