Tag Archive for measles

Inviting Childhood Disease

February 1, 2019 Comments Off on Inviting Childhood Disease

Measles can harm a person for life, and it’s staging a comeback from 20000, when the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S.  2018 was bad, with 349 cases in the U.S.  It was the second worst year for that disease in twenty years. Mainly because so many parents refuse to vaccinate their children.  Last year, there were outbreaks in the 25 states that have communities of anti-vaccination communities.

Again and again scientific proof has been presented that the vaccine is NOT harmful and DOES protect our children. It also protects infants under 12 months and people with health issues, like cancer, who don’t have the option of getting vaccinated. Yet measles spreads so easily–you can get it by entering a room or touching a surface within a couple of hours after an infected person has  done so.

Learn more by reading  Measles was no big deal — until my daughter caught it.

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Measles Outbreak!

August 20, 2018 4 comments

It seems like a small number–107 kids in 21 states with measles–but the year is only a little more than half over. (There were 118 cases in 2017 and 86 the year before, according to  the CDC.) But measles spreads so easily. In fact, you can get it if you enter a room within two hours after a person with the disease has been there, because that’s how long it stays in the air.

Measles hadn’t been a problem since the introduction of inoculations for it. So why are the numbers of cases increasing? Because the number of unvaccinated people is rising. Yes, some of those people come from other countries, but more people right here are refusing to have their children vaccinated.

Be sure to ask your child’s school or daycare center if they require that the children under their care be vaccinated. Some charter/private schools do not. And keep your kids’ vaccinations up-to-date. Don’t take a chance with the health of your child and family.

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Parental Choice or Abuse?

February 3, 2015 Comments Off on Parental Choice or Abuse?

Two probable Presidential candidates (Christie and Paul) came out today advocating parental choice in whether to have children vaccinated against measles and other diseases.  Christie soon backtracked, but Paul remains adamant.  This idea of parental choice is one I hear often.  Let’s take a look at it.

First, remember that the controversy over vaccinations began many years ago, as the result of a report–since discredited as unscientific and inaccurate–and a claim by a researcher–since exposed as as self-serving and fudging the data.  The scientific world totally denies Rand Paul’s absurd statement that vaccines cause mental illness or any other condition.

Back to parental choice.  The choice not to vaccinate a child is a choice to put him in danger of being one out of the nine babies out of ten in a room exposed to measles to catch that disease and possibly suffer resulting hearing loss, deafness, pneumonia, encephalitis, or even death.

Parents don’t have a legal choice to beat their children, starve them, lock them in a closet, or leave them alone for several days.  That’s called “child abuse” or “child endangerment.”  Refusing to provide a child with proven protection against a potentially debilitating disease–how is that “choice” rather than “child abuse/endangerment?”

 

 

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PLEASE Get Shot!

May 30, 2014 Comments Off on PLEASE Get Shot!

The situation is approaching dangerous. Measles, supposedly eliminated 14 years ago, is again alive and growing in the U.S.  The 288 cases reported in 18 states is the largest outbreak in those 14 years, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is NOT hopeful that those are the last ones.

Too many American adults have not been vaccinated, and far too many are not giving their children that protection.  We never know when we’ll go to a ball game or movie and sit next to someone who wasn’t vaccinated before traveling (need two shots if traveling to some parts of the world) and is now carrying the deadly disease.  Or we may take our small child to a birthday party where another child hasn’t been vaccinated but has been visited recently by a relative from another country and given the “gift” of measles that haven’t exhibited symptoms yet.

It’s not worth the chance–or your child’s life.  PLEASE, make sure that everyone in your family and circle of friends has been vaccinated against measles.

 

 

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Disease and Choice

February 14, 2014 Comments Off on Disease and Choice

Possible measles outbreak at UC Berkeley?  Or even further?  Unbelievable but true.  Because a Berkeley student  who didn’t know he’d been infected (probably while traveling overseas) rode public transportation (BART) around Contra Costa County and interacted with strangers, friends, family, and other students.

Measles is  easily spread and is very serious, often causing pneumonia, brain damage, seizures, or death.  We don’t see it too often anymore in the U.S., though, because so many Americans have been immunized.  But not this young man.

Why not?  There are nine other diseases, besides measles, that are preventable: chickenpox, lockjaw (tetanus), whooping cough, polio, mumps, German measles,hepatitis B, and type B flu.  All it takes is preventative vaccinations, which everyone should have.

But that interferes with my Constitutional rights, my freedom of choice, some will say.  My answer to them is this: protect yourself, and therefore the rest of us, or become a hermit and live somewhere totally away from us.  Now, THAT’S your choice.

 

 

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