196 Outbreak!
We have a four month old and this one hits close to home, quite literally, as there are several ongoing outbreaks in our town. In Colorado, the vaccination rate is the lowest in the nation (81.7% compared to the 2013 national kindergarten average of 94.7 for the MMR vaccine). Interested in seeing a map of all the vaccine preventable outbreaks worldwide? Look no further.
↓ Transcript
KATE
I'm worried about the outbreaks in town. Did everyone get their shots?
CRAIG
Yeah, of course.
MITCH
I'm good. The school makes me get them.
ROB
I'll go tomorrow.
WYLONA
Oh no, It's okay, I don't ever get sick.
I'm worried about the outbreaks in town. Did everyone get their shots?
CRAIG
Yeah, of course.
MITCH
I'm good. The school makes me get them.
ROB
I'll go tomorrow.
WYLONA
Oh no, It's okay, I don't ever get sick.
Apparently there is no vaccine against blind belief.
She is also, no doubt, an excellent sailor when the water is calm.
One of the things that drives me nuts about anti-vaxxers is how fundamentally selfish their stance is. If the vaccine-preventable diseases only impacted them, I’d rather cynically write it off as a Darwinian chlorination of the gene pool. The problem is that it doesn’t, it impacts everyone around them.
I find it slightly curious that a vaccine can prevent people from getting a disease unless they come in contact with someone who has caught it from not getting a vaccine…
Having a vax won’t stop u from getting sick when you are surrounded by sick people. It is called herd immunity.
Think of vaccines as a seatbelt. And make sure to get your booster shots.
Much of the harm from getting a viral infection comes not from the virus itself but the immune system’s response to it. For a baby, even the comparatively weak immune response to a vaccine would put a potentially dangerous level of stress on their system. Therefore, it is generally recommended that babies not be vaccinated before they are at least six months old. During this window of time, their immune system is just developing and they’re not vaccinated. To keep them safe, it is necessary that all the adults and older children around them be vaccinated. This is the meaning of the phrase herd immunity.
I’ll admit I don’t always get my flu shot promptly. I should, but I don’t. I tend to get distracted by everything else in my life. Although, the only outbreaks I’ve ever come across were varied degrees of the common cold and if I got infected I was generally one of the first and quickest over it. Still, on the off chance that I somehow infected anyone here I apologize. I really need to be better about getting my shots.
This reminds me, I need to get my boosters. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be working in a hospital soon. My older brother is a paramedic, he always makes sure all of his kids are vaccinated, who knows what they’d catch otherwise.
There should eventually be something about anti-vaxxers who go through boot camp, especially concerning the part of boot camp where they get their mandatory shots. Perhaps an interview of an anti-vaxxer who hasn’t had their shots yet, an interview of an anti-vaxxer who was ordered to get their shots anyway, and an interview of an anti-vaxxer who is retired from the military who thinks that their shots are good for the rest of their life? Run-on sentence runs on.
I’m an anti-Vaxer. I hate cleaning my carpets.