a few observations

the overwhelming majority vaccines/vaccinations are effective

however a small fraction of a percent of children/people have serious complications

the state has a credibility problem

some of the resistance have legitimate concerns, some are misinformed/ignorant and a few are malicious

politicians/leaders haven't addressed the issue completely

if i were in a leadership position, i'd make it priority to open all of this up

perhaps go on television/radio/webpage and encourage open and honest dialog and sharing of accurate info

have a history of disease, history of vaccines and a history of results both good and bad

encourage people to get vaccinated as well as report any adverse issues (preexisting as well)

make it easy for people to get vaccinated and get help for unintended reactions (vaers)

start a high profile campaign to build a better vaccine and maybe a pre-vaccine test to help indicate if an individual is at risk for negative reactions

(crowd source and incentivize/reward a global effort for good results)

keep people posted/updated on the progress

i think if people feel they're getting the truth from a trusted source and they can see and understand the info or the grasp the concept (peaceful negotiation) the chances of acceptance are greater

parents are passionate about their children and they want to protect them from disease as well as a bad reaction

medical professionals need to make sure that the parents know the benefits and especially the risk (as small as it may be)

full disclosure is a big deal when you're dealing something like this

feel free to wax

The anti vaxxers ia a bit more complicated group.

 kurtster wrote: 
Good point, a controlled border with thorough, effective and fair process for immigration is sorely needed for many reasons.

Edit:  Just looked it up. Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico all have measles immunization rates close to or better than the US. So while it's a valid point, it's probably not the source of the outbreak. Tuberculosis is more clinically treated and the vaccine isn't widespread in the US either.

 aflanigan wrote: 
Perhaps our herd is being infected by the new flood of illegal arrivals, especially children who have not had vaccinations in their home country.  Last summer it was well documented and swept under the rug regarding the high rate of infectious diseases found in these children including the particularly nasty tuberculosis.

There are many reasons for controlled immigration, keeping out infectious disease being one of them. 

But illegal immigrants couldn't be the source of this outbreak, right ?  Riiiiiiiiighttt .... 

 Lazy8 wrote:
So you are saying that in a situation where people's individual actions caused harm to others, laws were written and enforced and the harm was reduced?  Hmmm maybe laws do work sometimes?

 Lazy8 wrote:
Okay, ao let's assume that we can find him, and that he chose not to be immunized because he has a crush on Jenny McCarthy and was hoping that skipping the vaccines would impress her and he would get a date out of it (not the dumbest thing a guy has ever done in the quest for love).  Now is he liable?  Is she?  I'm good with sending it to trial to find out.  

Maybe while hunting for witches we'll find a witch.. or get turned into a toad.

I'm honestly not sure, but I think we have some systems in place that work through this kind of stuff. When we are facing a resurgence of preventable diseases I don't think doing nothing because 'status quo' is the right response. I also think political pandering on both sides deserve punishment from the political system.  I'd really like to see people using good information to make good decisions for the best possible outcomes. 

 aflanigan wrote:
Natural selection will take care of those clusters.

islander wrote:
I'll leave the speculating about jackbooted revolutionaries to those with more fevered imaginations, but when you talk about enforcable edicts and mandatory things, yes, you're talking about laws.

Changing civil law to make one particular patient liable for a disease outbreak would require a change in law.

And yes, peanuts disappeared from airplanes (and schools, and other places) in large part because of a fog of laws written on the subject. Here's a brief summary. There were also lawsuits and the threat of them. Yes, people screamed about it (mostly the peanut growers), sorry you didn't hear about it.

As for civil liability...assuming you could even prove who patient zero was (good luck with that) do you sue the person who brought measles to Disneyland or the person who gave that person measles? What if patient zero had a valid reason not to be immunized, then what? All that witch hunting for nothing.

The only place politics has come into it is that this situation has provided an opportunity to play gotcha on some politicians. Republican politicians, of course—when the White House issued a statement today saying exactly the same thing it didn't wind up in the echo chamber. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton (along with John McCain) pandered to the antivax crowd back in 2008, but that doesn't count either.

Politicians of both incumbent parties understand that there is nothing they can do to make people vaccinate their kids, but they all see a hot-button topic they can capitalize on without committing to doing anything.

 Steely_D wrote: 
Well said. 

 Lazy8 wrote: 
I didn't propose "another law". And I said I'm not really sure what enforcement would be.  I do think liability is a reasonable thing to put on people who are not vaccinated.  If we find patient zero at Disneyland send them all the bills for the chaos they apparently kicked off.  I'm trying to foster and contribute to a discussion here.

We managed to save people that are allergic to peanuts without unleashing the army and the lawyers. You don't get peanuts on airplanes and I have yet to see anyone screaming about how their freedom to access legumes has been infringed.  

It saddens me that EVERYTHING comes down to a political alliance to one of two parties.  There is no winning if we continue to frame every topic this way.  Science does work and science is wrong sometimes. There are no perfect solutions in our world - that doesn't mean we stop trying.

I'm really happy I don't have kids that will have to work their way through the morass that this world is becoming. I'm also really happy that I'll have the resources to do just fine regardless. The onus is on the vast majority to figure it out or stop short of a revolution. If it gets to revolution, the jackboots will be released.  Then vaccination will be the least of the forced situations you will have to endure (and I bet there will be vaccinations by force). 

 islander wrote: 
I read that vaccination rates continue to increase. The problem seems to be that nonvaccinated people are tending to cluster together more, and that seems to be weakening the herd immunity (don't have a cite handy but I could find it tomorrow).

At any rate, irresponsible statements that vaccination should be voluntary is not affirming the status quo. Such statements suggest that mandatory vaccination requirements that exist in all 50 states are not really necessary and should be ignored. Asserting that vaccinating your kids is basically a voluntary thing right now is kind of like saying that obtaining a drivers' license in order to drive is voluntary. You may choose to not vaccinate your children, but you'll have to homeschool them, or find a private school/preschool that doesn't require vaccinations. Not a realistic option for most parents. Or you can lie and claim a religious exemption. 

 islander wrote:
There are problems that aren't amenable to yet another law, and this is one of them.

What penalties do you assign to people who aren't vaccinated? Prison? Fines? Vaccination by force?

How do you enforce it—how do you know I'm not vaccinated? Prove it.

If that's not what you're talking about, then what are you talking about?

 Lazy8 wrote: 
The problem is that the status quo is changing. We used to have the vast majority immunized and a few outliers that refused. The outliers are gaining in both strength and number and because of that we are seeing a resurgence of diseases that were nearly eradicated.

I'm all for your right to do whatever as long as it impacts just you. But when you get a massive measles outbreak like we have now I think that public welfare outweighs your right to abstain. I'd make exceptions for medically recognized conditions, but not much else.   Not exactly sure what I think the enforcement should be - I don't think banning people from public spaces is really practical, and I think assigning liability might get tricky. But I can' think of many other situations where you would put the public at risk and not suffer some consequence. 

i'd like to take a vaccination out west this summer

maybe the grand canyon or yellowstone

 Lazy8 wrote: 
I think you have earned some kind of award in managing to twist or completely misconstrue what I am saying a number of times within 24 hours. But carry on if you must.

 

 aflanigan wrote:
You're eager to dump on politicians (who—surprise!—you already don't like) over this because they aren't advocating...what? Mandatory vaccinations?

Guess who else isn't advocating that? Everybody.

You really, really want this to be a political issue, but that requires some kind of disagreement. Not seeing one. Until somebody argues for a change to the status quo, being outraged over support for the status quo is just generating fake controversy.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
I think your eagerness to tar me with more labels (contemptuous of parents) reflects a degree of defensiveness, and I'm not sure what is driving it.

Please reread my post. I was singling out politicians, not parents. I've had discussions with kctomato about the anti-vaccine movement and the effects of vaccines. I don't think I've ever expressed contempt for any parents who have to go through the ordeal of raising an autistic child. I definitely understand the logic of seeing a correlation between vaccination and the onset of ASD, and recognizing  a plausible causal mechanism for the disease. I try to be respectful when challenging the strongly held beliefs of parents who resist vaccination.

But the issue I raised here was political pandering, not making value judgements about parents. I couldn't have said it better than you: Lives are at stake. It's more important to try and challenge the quackery and hopefully change peoples' minds than to score a quick political point or two by pandering to unwarranted fears. By your own yardstick, Mr. Paul fails miserably on this issue. 

aflanigan wrote:
I think your contempt for those refusing to vaccinate is blinding you to what their real motives are, and ultimately how they can be persuaded.

All but the hardest-core acknowledge that vaccines work and prevent disease. Arguing that they don't is a strawman. When advocating against vaccinations what they're really doing is making a risk trade-off.

There are real risks to being vaccinated. They are very small, and generally the consequences are insignificant (autism being not one of them, of course, but most people who have actually looked at the evidence aren't falling for this anymore), but they're not zero.

There are real risks to not being vaccinated. Again, all but the true believers acknowledge this.

Before the antivaccine movement got much traction those risks were small. Herd immunity protected the unvaccinated and kept the disease threats rare. Early on being an antivaxxer was a rational (if selfish) choice. But as fewer and fewer people are vaccinating their kids the risks of not vaccinating go up, as we've seen in the recent Disneyland outbreak.

When people refuse vaccines for their kids they are (for the most part) making a risk calculation. Our task is to show them that the math for vaccination is compelling, and the less successful we are at doing that the better the case to be made, but we're not going to make that case by misattributing motives or insulting people.

Would you rather change minds or would you rather feel self-righteous and superior? Ignorance can be cured and along with it a host of other problems, but no one gets better educated by being told what morons they are.

The quacks need to be challenged, no doubt. Mercola et al are doing a huge amount of damage, but their message is taking root because we're failing to make our case.

It's important. Lives are at stake. Isn't that more important than scoring a quick political point or two?

Enough said

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
To me, it's a no-brainer for any politician, but seeing the obvious and shunning dubious conspiracy theories and pseudoscience in favor of common sense seems to be a rare attribute among politicos these days.

Picture the scenario: The trial vaccines for Ebola being tried out in Liberia prove successful at protecting people against the disease (say, converting a 60-70 percent mortality rate into a 90 percent survival rate). When another outbreak occurs next year, the vaccine is widely distributed in the affected country, and stops the disease from spreading. Poor isolation protocol, however, results in a group of about 25 nonvaccinated, infected people entering the US undetected (without CDC knowing). Ebola cases start showing up in US hospitals. Would the talking heads on CNN and Fox news be insisting that "it's a personal choice", and we really don't need to expose our children or ourselves to a dangerous vaccine with potentially harmful side effects? Or would they be clamoring for the vaccine to be distributed in the US so they could be first in line to get it?

Another country heard from...