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by silencio
5979 days ago
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> Another example is chicken pox – the symptoms are mild (especially in children) and you get immunity from one instance. I had chicken pox and it wasn’t that big a deal. Not big of a deal, until someone who is pregnant, immunocompromised, or of adult age with lowered/no immunity to chicken pox gets infected from a child that wasn't vaccinated. It's not mild, it's severe and possibly life threatening at that point. So okay, I can understand a parent's concern over all the vaccines out there, but it is quite selfish to think it's only about the child in question. It affects public health overall no matter what you want to think of it, unless you're suggesting that people should just not interact with anyone in-person ever. > 4. Since vaccines are widely used (all small children) the bar for new vaccines should be higher. New vaccines should not be mandatory or on the list. This I'm torn over, because the newest vaccines to make the schedule for teens in the US and some other countries are Gardasil and Cervarix (the HPV vaccines), which are very new vaccines that were fast tracked for approval because they were just so effective. I only have a gripe over the unknowns like how long immunity will last. But parents will take that as an excuse to not vaccinate their kids until their kids have probably had sex, at which point it might be of reduced use as your kid might already have been exposed. Is that really something that should be acceptable? |
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Immunocompromised and old people (and high risk people such as doctors and nurses) should be vaccinated if they did not have Chicken Pox as a child. The same goes for yearly flu vaccines (which are only given to people that are immunocompromised or old).
But there is no reason to immunize everyone else.
> but it is quite selfish to think it's only about the child in question.
That is an extremely bad argument (and usually used to justify the removal of a parent's responsibility over his child).
> But parents will take that as an excuse to not vaccinate their kids until their kids have probably had sex, at which point it might be of reduced use as your kid might already have been exposed. Is that really something that should be acceptable?
A parent is a child’s guardian until the child is of age. You mentioned HPV. Yet that is a perfectly preventable disease. Why not let the parent’s decide for their children – and then let the child decide for him/herself when they are of age.
Btw, the phenomenon of teenagers having unprotected sex with multiple partners is a consequence of dysfunctional American culture. In many other countries it does not happen this way. I recently read a story about a school in Oregon (if I recall correctly) that gave out condoms to 13 year old children. This is fairly shocking.