Contracting Measles and passing it to others after the vaccine. A new case of interest.

a reply to: Witness2008
I think it's safe to say one of us doesn't understand herd immunity. Schools are not representative of society at large due to the way children interact. Your point about mandatory vaccinations is completely irrelevant. If you have a high enough rate of vaccination in society the spread of the disease becomes that much higher and outbreaks become rarer and rarer. Can you really not see why a single school whose pupils have contact with society at large and who interact in a pretty unique fashion can not be used as an example of herd immunity?

a reply to: GetHyped
The thing I find frustrating is that even if the majority of horror stories about vaccination were true (and their clearly not) then you would still be better off getting your kids vaccinated.

a reply to: ScepticScot

Then why are vaccinations only mandatory in schools?

a reply to: Witness2008
To minimise risk of spread of the disease for the very reasons given . Schools are a high risk environment for the speed of disease. They are not however the only place vaccines are mandatory.

a reply to: ScepticScot


Other than the military, and health providers (and even there it is questionable) where are vaccinations mandatory?

a reply to: InverseLookingGlass

Um in the U.K I was told you needed a booster. As the t cells in your immune system eventually die off.
So it is definitely possible to get the disease after you've been immunized.
I two years ago contracted the mumps.
i had never had any immunizations against it. ( it wasn't compulsory for the year 1988 in my city )
however. my friends whom I hung out with had the vaccines in the previous and prior years. I still passed the infection on to them.

originally posted by: Witness2008
a reply to: ScepticScot


Other than the military, and health providers (and even there it is questionable) where are vaccinations mandatory?

Husband is a microbiologist and has had more vaccines for more things than the average person will have in their entire life. If you work with bugs, you need vaccines, and in most work environments where they need you to work with or around the bugs, they require you to have the vaccines as a condition of employment.

Or do you think he would have been better off without the rabies shots while he was working for the state rabies testing lab?

a reply to: Witness2008
You have just given two other examples yourself of where they are mandatory so clearly schools are not the only place.

a reply to: ketsuko

Well I suppose If I were working with rabies I may want some immunity. Are you suggesting that we need herd immunity for rabies?

Your husbands choice to work with dangerous live viruses is just that.....a choice.

a reply to: Witness2008

Yes, but you asked for other instances where vaccines are mandatory and I gave you one. If you want to pursue certain professions, you will need vaccinations.

But the laws that mandate we vaccinate our pets are to provide herd immunity of a sort as much as possible. We vaccinate our dogs and cats against rabies so that we don't have to get the shots.

a reply to: ketsuko

My inquiry is on the idea of herd immunity. We can safely assume that certain professions require certain vaccinations. The idea of herd immunity is being exercised and mandated with school age children.

originally posted by: Witness2008
a reply to: ketsuko

My inquiry is on the idea of herd immunity. We can safely assume that certain professions require certain vaccinations. The idea of herd immunity is being exercised and mandated with school age children.

This is a pretty good primer on the idea of contamination. Now think about it with little kids. They're a lot less conscientious about what happens to their snot and sneezes than adults are, and you saw how bad it spread when we were talking about the average adult.

Now amp that with a classroom of 20 kids x 3 x maybe 6 different age classes (K-5) in the average grade school all moving around, sneezing, snotting, touching things and not really being very sanitary in any way.

That's why the common cold and the flu always hit the schools first and hardest every year, and it's why they worry about the nastier diseases getting in their. Kids are just tiny little germ factories and they readily share what they have with the kids next to them. You know when you are at work and your coworker starts to look bad, you eye them funny and start edging away ... yeah, kids could care less and they might not even mention they feel ill until they've puked all over you too. And that's why schools want your kids to have their shots.

a reply to: Witness2008

Which part of herd immunity are you struggling with?

a reply to: ketsuko

Yes kids spread germs, and they do get sick, but where does the herd immunity come from? Vaccinating against colds has yet to happen, most flu vaccines are ineffective, the measles, mumps and pertussis vaccine is not all it is cracked up to be, so where does the herd immunity come from and immunity to what illnesses?

a reply to: Witness2008

You are familiar with the idea that once you have had an illness, your body produces antibodies to it. Right?

So, if enough of the individuals in a group have antibodies to an illness, then that illness has nowhere to go, no one to infect, because every individual in that group can theoretically fight it off because they have antibodies.

Unfortunately, getting a disease naturally is problematic for two reasons:

1.) It doesn't spread to every individual in the group in any one outbreak.
2.) Most diseases have the risk of problematic, even lethal side effects (even the flu does which is why they try to come up with a vaccine for it).

Vaccinations try to address these problems by exposing a person's immune system to a weakened or killed virus (or in modern vaccines even part of the protein coat that will provoke a response and provide an accurate attachment site for anti bodies will do) so that the individual does not get the actual disease to avoid the worst effects of the illness and to ensure that the entire group of individuals as much as possible has either outright immunity or strong resistance to the actual pathogen.

That way, when actual exposure does occur, any potential outbreak will be very limited and easily contained.

Now, just like with actual active immunity, no vaccine is 100% either in effectiveness or safety because every person is different and reacts in different ways. But then again, as I said, you take your risks getting the actual disease too, and just by getting it and fighting it off, you may not actually develop a full immune response that will protect you for life.

a reply to: ketsuko

Unless a vaccine is 100% effective there is no way we can obtain herd immunity. Vaccine failures happen world wide. Here is a link that I am sure some folks won't investigate because they will be unable to get past the blog title, however it has many case studies, world wide that show the ineffectiveness of vaccinations.www.calivaxchoice.com...

So...in my mind, a parent just takes their chances when it comes to childhood illnesses. Get the shot, you may be protected until the next boosters, that by the way will be required for the rest of their lives. Or let them come down with the illness, take care of them at home with lot's of love and have life time protection. The later does not require the accumulation of mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, MSG or any other toxic substance that unfortunately comes with every vaccination.

a reply to: Witness2008

There is no way anything is 100%. Even getting the disease is not 100% ... unless you die.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Witness2008

There is no way anything is 100%. Even getting the disease is not 100% ... unless you die.

This I agree with. However, I can be 100% sure that my child won't suffer heavy metals overload when they get sick. I have nursed a lot of kids through childhood illness, and found that vitamin A and C along with a regular raw diet made the difference in the severity. Health and protection is not gotten through a needle.

originally posted by: Witness2008

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Witness2008

There is no way anything is 100%. Even getting the disease is not 100% ... unless you die.

This I agree with. However, I can be 100% sure that my child won't suffer heavy metals overload when they get sick. I have nursed a lot of kids through childhood illness, and found that vitamin A and C along with a regular raw diet made the difference in the severity. Health and protection is not gotten through a needle.

I've seen a lot of tiny tomb stones in old cemeteries.

And I have a happy, healthy kiddo who disagrees with your analysis. We'll see about things when polio gets brought back over the border.

a reply to: ketsuko

We don't have to wait for it to come over the border, it's already here, thanks to the vaccine.

In 2005, it was reported that children in a small village in the United States had contracted vaccine-derived polio. In Nigeria, >70 cases have been reported. In 2006, ∼1600 cases of vaccine-induced polio occurred in India, according to the Indian Medical Association Sub-Committee on Immunisation's report on the Polio Eradication Initiative [3]. The point to be noted is that these cases were reported during repeated mass-immunization campaigns in which repeated doses of OPV were administered. In 2008, many cases of polio were reported in all provinces of Pakistan, where OPV is used for repeated mass-immunization campaigns. These vaccine-related cases are big challenge for the scientific community if the polio-eradication goal is to be achieved, and there is a need for prompt action to combat the issue

cid.oxfordjournals.org...