Should there be a penalty for not vaccinating yourself or your kids?

@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

Sure, but maybe I can make my question more specific, what all do you guys in the US, for example, get vaccinated for? I don't even know what vaccines I would have normally had there.

Are there any you guys get that you think I should get for example (I might be headed stateside next trip, any diseases you want to eliminate me as being the vector for)?

Honestly, I don't even know. It's my impression that the remaining diseases of import here are primarily childhood diseases, so I've never given the matter much thought as an adult. (Bacterial meningitis pops up in the university dorms here from time to time, and they provide vaccines to students if they want them, but it's hardly an epidemic.)

As far as what you might be carrying -- I really don't what you might be exposed to that a) can be vaccinated against and b) is a threat to become a significant health hazard in the United States. It would have to be a pretty wicked bug to be at home in both places. Plague comes to mind, but US ground squirrels are full of the stuff anyway, and it hasn't been a hassle.

Quote:

I wonder if paying people to get a vaccine could also help motivate some. I wouldn't be swayed by what they could reasonably offer for it and for me convenience is the bigger motivation but I wonder if some of these parents who don't vaccinate their kids could be enticed to in addition to trying the coercion. The carrot and the stick so to speak.

It's certainly a thought. I think it's been mentioned previously in the thread, though not in these terms.

Again, though, just blowing hot air, and I've no intention of stooping to reasearch or nuttin'. My Little Book of Pandemics from the bathroom is hopeless on the subject of vaccines.

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An aside, interesting to me.
The day I got a call at work - mid, let's say, working out a giant irrigation design of several huge pages/acres, lots of mental whatfor - from a nurse at UCLA. I had a positive test for syphilis.

I was outraged, not as much about the results that I didn't believe, as that they would call me at work, which I had been clear about them not doing.
I also started thinking about the matter of naming names to the state. (incomprehensible).

I knew it was just a low titer +, which can be false positive, but I was instructed to see (I can't remember just where but complicated, for a workup).
Night blindness can be an indicator for syphilis.
I was a clinic patient, who came there because I thought I might have RP, seeing a resident for screening.

But, I knew someone, the head of infectious disease. Colleague of my boss, who'd I'd met and talked with before.
He laughed.
Told me what test to tell them to order.
That one (don't remember now) came out clear negative.

That was about both who you know and my own aggressiveness to the resident re the test to do. As it happens, he wasn't resentful. I think I was his most interesting patient. I assume this would have been resolved for all the other patients in the room if they had that odd problem, but not at all so fast.

Anyway, soon, another appointment, a room full of residents came into look at my eyes with very bright lights.

So, I'm mixed. I am distrusting, but also very interested in epidemiology. The assumptions that can happen. Probably the bribes that can happen.

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@ossobuco,

Oh, without a doubt. It's a government function, even if it's not a government doing it. It creates both a demand and a market for back room transactions. Baksheesh. Connections. Whatever. That's life.

I certainly share your distrust of institutions, if I'm reading that right, and I've seen things in them to be distrustful of. But I also am aware of their sometime (maybe even oft-time) benefit to society. (Not that I'd ever want to be a wheel in one.)

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@patiodog,

You read it right.
And I'm aware of benefit, probable consequent importance. Sometimes. Basically agree.

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@ossobuco,

I feel like I lost my idealism somewhere along the way.

I'm all right with that.

How's life these days, osso?

(Incidentally, every time I type "osso," I think "bones." In a good way.)

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@patiodog,

I happen to hate my a2k name, that I picked in less than thirty seconds when signing up for abuzz, when I suppose PIZZA was already taken.

Someone early on made a lot of fun the name, of the marrow part of bones, which, naive person, never occurred to me.

But by now, I'm just osso.

I'm ok. Basically in a great wash of **** of my own making. Still typing.

Jo

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@ossobuco,

On the other hand, did you you ever watch Cutter's Way (aka Cutter and Bone)?

(tangent, or maybe not)

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@ossobuco,

Is there a connection between your name, your wash of **** of your own making, and a movie that appears to be about the dumping of a body? Because access to a high-volume incinerator would be best, but I suspect building landscapes provides ample opportunity as well.

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@patiodog,

Cutter and Bone...
I guess that was the book.

Incinerators were outlawed in LA in .... I would have to guess, but my aunt had one, and then it was gone. I'll just guess mid or late fifties.

The connection is me and my online name.
I don't build landscapes anymore. Plus I got picky on what I would do. Pooh.
Not to be a downer, just saying. Probably why I am crabby.

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@ossobuco,

But you had an aunt with an incinerator. There's got to be an interesting story there.

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@patiodog,

Parade ground, you'd want to bury a body on a parade ground. General Braddock died on the retreat from what is now Pittsburgh, and Washington had him buried to the east of the camp, and then the little army marched across the grave as they left that morning. That was so the Indians wouldn't find the grave and desecrate it. Worked a treat, too. Braddock was buried in 1755, and the body wasn't found until they were building the National Road (now U.S. Rte 40) in about 1816.

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@patiodog,

Yeah, it was near the peach tree, which was near the garage, which had black widows nesting.
(This is getting weird, I've dreamt about that garage, not well to the extent I remember)

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@ossobuco,

Are you ok there, Set?

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Ah, well, I guess we were talking differently, me as the multi post joke, it was just a surprise at the time. I even dragged it along before I got it.

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@ossobuco,

Really, why did your aunt have an incinerator (if you don't mind my asking - ne'mind if you do)?

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@patiodog,

If you are pulling my leg again, I'll brain you.

In the meantime, they all did, in that neighborhood. And if they did, the incinerators were all about, though LA wasn't as built up back then. I don't have a photo, I don't think, though maybe. Anyway, you burn stuff, it goes away. My aunt also sprayed often with DDT. This was in west los angeles, two blocks from Bundy and Wilshire, half block from Wilshire on Wellesley, near the miniature golf course, near the city line with Santa Monica. Houses built in early twenties, gone now, long story.

I'd have to look up what year the incinerators were removed. This may or may not have been about smog, at its most visible mostly yuck yellow, in LA, I think, in the 40's and 50's, if not the most noxious, somewhat differing compounds than more recently. We lived with my aunt a few times - when my father was working in the studios post Bikini and before NY, with me in beginning elementary school; a couple of visits in between; when we moved to CA again when I was thirteen, strange years; getting our own place when I was sixteen. My aunt willed me that house but the neighbor nabbed it and her. Not that I'm bitter at this point, I now look back bemused.

Not a place in my heart exactly, but part of my life, including the damned incinerator.

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@Robert Gentel,

Going back to the original article.....

Quote:

When a woman from Switzerland who had not been vaccinated for measles visited Tucson in 2008 and became symptomatic, she went to a local hospital for medical attention. This initiated a chain of events that over the next three months led to at least 14 people, including seven kids, getting measles. Seven of the victims caught the disease while visiting healthcare facilities. Four people had to be hospitalized. The outbreak cost two local hospitals a total of nearly $800,000, and the state and local health departments tens of thousands more, to track down the cases, quarantine and treat the sick and notify the thousands of people who might have been exposed.

Robert, if the policy had been clear that you would need the vaccination in order to return home would you have had the vaccination before you left? Or maybe not have taken the trip after all? If you thought that you might present a public health hazard would you have changed your behavior?

I understand that the logistics of making sure that everyone is vaccinated are terribly difficult. We have so many people that don't have access to healthcare or spotty access to healthcare that tracking them is pretty impossible. I can understand why these people aren't vaccinating their kids. It isn't like it can all be taken care of in one visit.

Now I'm reading that many pediatricians are posting that they will not keep unvaccinated people as patients and referring families to other doctors. This is going to further complicate things for the poor.

It's the other group on non-vaccinators that bother me -- the educated, middle class, should know better, main stream, people who have some crazy fear of vaccines. They rely on the "herd" to keep their kids safe, do they not realize that there is a chunk of the herd that doesn't have their access? Probably they just haven't thought about it. I don't have any problem saying that these main-streamers should be made to vaccinate their kids.

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@CalamityJane,

I'd tend to agree that the one experiencing this first hand has better knowledge of the reality.

I have good friends that live in San Diego and hey they are half Mexican and they would say they same thing CJ.

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@patiodog,

Quote:

Here's a thought, and surely it's already being employed to some degree all over the place: make it more onerous to go without the vaccine than to receive it. Require five times the paperwork and bureaucratic runaround to enrol an unvaccinated child than a vaccinated child. Have the processing time for a request to enter sans vaccine be longer than the 10 days required for the vaccine to be effective (doesn't, of course, have any bearing on those who purchase forged or misbegotten papers).

Isn't that a type of punishment? I guess my point is any time you make some sort of requirement around this - ie cannot go into public school without proof of vaccination - is a punishment. It does not have to be a financial punishment just something that entices people, like you said, to be vaccinated.

The other alternative is to reward those that are vaccinated.

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@patiodog,

I know when there was a local outbreak of measles, we had to show proof (at work) of being vaccinated.

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Should there be a penalty for not vaccinating yourself or your kids?

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