Whooping Cough Is Now a Full-Blown Epidemic in California

[bigross86]

Whooping Cough Is Now a Full-Blown Epidemic in California

Whooping Cough Is Now a Full-Blown Epidemic in California

Matt Novak Today 1:00pm

Well, it's official. California's whooping cough outbreak is now officially classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control. Thanks anti-vaxxers.

California has reported 3,458 cases of pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough, so far this year, with about 800 cases in the past two weeks alone. Babies are at the greatest risk of death from the disease, and two babies have indeed died in California so far this year.

"We urge all pregnant women to get vaccinated," Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the California Department of Public Health told the L.A. Times. "We also urge parents to vaccinate infants as soon as possible."

Babies can't be vaccinated until they reach 6 weeks of age, which is why public health officials often urge pregnant mothers to get vaccinated, giving their newborns some degree of immunity.

As Time notes, the last whooping cough epidemic in California back in 2010 was a direct result of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children. That epidemic effected over 9,000 kids, due in no small part to the anti-vaccination movement that is currently spreading misinformation about vaccines. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the vaccines are safe, anti-science idiots continue to insist that they cause things like autism.

And it's not just California that's suffering from a resurgence of whooping cough. It's been a particularly terrible year nationally as well. From the beginning of 2014 until April 14, 2014 the CDC reports that there have been 4,838 cases of whooping cough in the U.S. — a 24 percent increase over the same period last year.

It fears me that I will need to raise my future kids in this world. If there are idiot drivers on the street, I can drive more carefully and teach my children about road safety. People can be violent idiots, and I can teach my children how to combat that by teaching them how to defend themselves and how to use force properly. But there is no way I can defend my children from the stupidity of these anti-vaxxers.

Even worse, the only way these stupid idiots will ever learn is for massive amounts of children to die. Unfortunately, some of the children who end up dying will belong to parents who did vaccinate their children, but the herd coverage just wasn't there.

[bigross86]

Which also brings this to mind:

What if Car Seats Were Like Vaccines

Posted by: notdeaddinosaur | May 22, 2014

What if a big TV station, say WTOP in Washington DC, came out with a blockbuster story claiming that infant car seats were implicated in cerebral palsy? After all, something like 99.7% of babies diagnosed with cerebral palsy had been brought home from the hospital in a car seat. In fact, every single time they went anywhere in a car, they were strapped into them. That’s an impressive number. There has to be some connection!

Imagine video of kids crying piteously as they’re buckled into the wretched contraptions. After all, car seats are restraining and uncomfortable. Kids hate them! But parents have been duped into using the damn things claiming it makes their children safer. Pshaw! How could a baby be safer anywhere other than in its mother’s arms?

Suppose this idea gained traction. Cerebral palsy is a dreadful thing! Why take the risk? Don’t use those nasty old car seats. Besides, don’t you know that the doctors who recommend them are all getting kickbacks from the manufacturers? [Less preposterous than kickbacks from vaccine manufacturers. Far more money in car seats.] Some Playboy celebrity reality centerfold comes out as the spokesperson against car seats. Suddenly there’s pushback from new parents who want to decide for themselves what the safest way is to transport their precious bundle. Never mind decades of car seat research. They may not be automotive engineers, but their parental gut feelings are good enough. Besides, no automotive engineer ever had to listen to their baby cry whenever she gets strapped in.

Facebook communities emerge where car seat refusal is supported and celebrated as the newest way to keep babies safe. Parents are carefully steered to “research” that hypes the dangers of CP. “Why take unnecessary risks?” becomes their mantra. Because the hype is scary. Parents of kids with CP conspire to sue the car seat manufacturers, because “Someone’s got to pay!” Why did this happen to their child? No one has any good answers [hint: It's not birth trauma] and vague discussions about prenatal injury to the brain like “Sometimes these things happen” is just not good enough.

Of course there’s no plausible connection between car seats and cerebral palsy. But that doesn’t matter. Studies are done to try and prove car seats don’t cause CP, which is technically impossible, since you can’t prove a negative. The anti-carseaters deny that they’re against car seats. They just want “safe” ones — defined as ones that don’t cause cerebral palsy. Do a large double-blind trial: randomly assign some babies to car seats and some to be held in mom’s arms and see how many in each group develop CP, they cry. It will take nothing less to convince them.

What happens? By and large, nothing much. Most kids don’t develop CP, however they travel in cars. And the vast majority of babies who ride in mom’s arms arrive safely at their destinations. There is a small uptick in infant fatalities that steadily grows as more and more people refuse to use car seats, but not many people take notice. The occasional family is devastated by the loss of a baby in a crash, and vow to tell their story high and wide. They do, but the only minds it changes are the ones that weren’t already made up.

Far-fetched? Sadly, not so much.

[Bigfella]

An unholy combination of New Age idiots, obsessively overprotective parents & religious nuts. I don't think the state has the right to enforce vaccination, but I think it should have the right to actively exclude unvaccinated people from places & activities where they might pose a risk to others. People should be required to inform others if their child is unvaccinated & should be liable for prosecution if that child infects someone (not necessarily imprisonment, but fines & criminal convictions). Harsh? perhaps, but if people are sufficiently misguided that they think they can risk the health of others in this manner they should be aware that there are consequences.

[Monash]

Hit them where it hurts - in the hip pocket. No vaccination certificates, no medical insurance coverage when your un-vaccinated child ends up in hospital as a result of a vaccine preventable illness. No state assistance either, 100% user pays and if the bill bankrupts them, well so sad, so bad.

[bigross86]

I've got friends in Detroit who have a son in kindergarten who has all his shots. Another boy in kindergarten, who also has all of his shots, caught whooping cough because there was no herd protection. I honestly cannot even begin to explain how badly I want to beat these fooking idiots into a bloody pulp.

There aren't many groups about which you can say with absolute 100% certainty that they are making the earth a worse place, but the anti-vaxxers are one of them.

[DonBelt]

An unholy combination of New Age idiots, obsessively overprotective parents & religious nuts. I don't think the state has the right to enforce vaccination, but I think it should have the right to actively exclude unvaccinated people from places & activities where they might pose a risk to others. People should be required to inform others if their child is unvaccinated & should be liable for prosecution if that child infects someone (not necessarily imprisonment, but fines & criminal convictions). Harsh? perhaps, but if people are sufficiently misguided that they think they can risk the health of others in this manner they should be aware that there are consequences.

If the government has the right or authority to prevent people from smoking in public places or buildings in the name of public health, they should certainly have the authority to block non-immunized people from public schools and penalize parents for it as parents are responsible to have their kids in school. Perhaps there could be private schools for people to place their non-immunized kids in together. There should be no reason for fear as they all know vaccines are dangerous and just made up by big pharma- right?
Other public places it just wouldn't be possible or practical to exclude non-immunized people from, so the previous measure really wouldn't do much good though.
The problem is one of the biggest motivators behind the fear of vaccines came from a proven fraudulent study by Andrew Wakefield published in the Lancet. It was found to be fraudulent, it was denounced and retracted by the Lancet, Wakefield was stricken from the medical register in the UK and charged with fraud and abuse of the children in the study as well as having been found to be planning a business venture with some of the subjects based on the results of the study.
But the damage was done, which brings up the second half of the problem. The media ( mostly non-experts in medicine, science or public education) hyped it up and bombarded a public with it that had no interest or background in science or medicine and that had increasingly over time been turning it's back on hard sciences as boring, too hard or the purview of nerds. So they go with whatever is sensational or seems to be believed by everyone else or "trendy". Sometimes they'll turn their backs on whatever seems to be backed by "big" anything and chase after whatever seems folksy or cutting edge (translate as unproven).
My unqualified opinion? All my kids are vaccinated- I will go with what the CDC, WHO, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Pediatrics say.
Require children attending public schools be vaccinated. Encourage camps and day care centers to require it. Require incoming people to the US (or your country of choice) to be vaccinated. Stop releasing weak or faulty medical studies to the public, penalize those who hold public licensing of some sort that hype these. Improve public education not only on health, but medicine, theories of public health and basic sciences so they are better able to understand when a study isn't worth the paper it's written on and how personal choices affect the larger public.
I don't think the Gov't should be able to force people to have medical procedures like vaccines, but I do believe it should be able to say if you don't- you can't partake in these public activities that we run or have entry to this country that we are responsible for protecting the public health of.

[Doktor]

The vaccination card is/was requirement for US immigration visa. Travel visas didn't have these. I believe Canadians and Australians had the same requirements.

Sounds just in line with your thinking.

[greyviper]

What is wrong with the vaccination thing? I mean, its more beneficial to have been vaccinated than not. There are I think deeper issues in relation to this problem.

[gunnut]

What is wrong with the vaccination thing? I mean, its more beneficial to have been vaccinated than not. There are I think deeper issues in relation to this problem.

Some idiot made a correlation of more vaccination in kids with increased diagnosis of autism. Naturally vaccination = autism

The weird thing is people from both the left and the right are on this bad wagon. I was on the gun board reading about this guy who wants to withhold his kid from vaccination. He said autism is a terrible disease. So I asked him if he has ever seen polio first hand and what it does to children. He said he hasn't. I said he should read up on it and then decide which is worse, autism or polio.

I can also make a correlation between the decrease of measles/whooping cough/polio with the increase of autism. Naturally measles/whooping cough/polio prevent kids from getting autism. Maybe we should bring those diseases back

Fucking idiots.

[astralis]

yeah, it's the confluence of leftist anti-corporate hippies with rightist anti-government libertarians.

the funny thing is that it seems that the politicos spouting the crazy seem to be republican for the most part, this time around. they're trying to make hay out of it by pandering to their libertarian nuts (chris christie and rand paul recently, and on a related matter, Sen Thom Tillis being against regulations that force restaurant workers to wash their hands after using the restroom!) while you don't see dem politicos trying to appeal to their far left nuts.

[greyviper]

Leftist there, leftist everywhere. The world can't just get enough of them huh.

There is really a lot of work to be done when it comes to educating the general population
about health, diseases and the like topics.

[gunnut]

yeah, it's the confluence of leftist anti-corporate hippies with rightist anti-government libertarians.

the funny thing is that it seems that the politicos spouting the crazy seem to be republican for the most part, this time around. they're trying to make hay out of it by pandering to their libertarian nuts (chris christie and rand paul recently, and on a related matter, Sen Thom Tillis being against regulations that force restaurant workers to wash their hands after using the restroom!) while you don't see dem politicos trying to appeal to their far left nuts.

On the other hand, leftist politicians in CA wants to ban e-cigs. You should read the language in the proposed law.

On the 3rd hand, ever heard of the "chemtrails?"

Chemtrail conspiracy theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[tuna]

I'm thinking it is a way for some moron to justify never getting over being afraid of shots.

As a serving member of the military, who has gone overseas multiple times, I have had my fair share (actually, the "fair share" of a dozen people) of shot. Anthrax, Smallpox, Yellow Fever, Flu, Hepatitis, etc. ad nauseum. OK - I don't really like anthrax, it hurts more than any other shot. I've never suffered any "real" side effect from any of these shots, and haven't gotten sick from any of them (well, in 2003 I had a bunch all at once and got violently ill - but talking to the clinic, they've stopped doing that), or at least I haven't gotten the illness that they were worred about.

My kids are vaccinated, as is my wife.

However, I HATE the idea of being told to do something by big government. I'm a big boy, I'd rather take my chances on common sense prevailing or suffer the consequences of being a dolt.

[astralis]

unfortunately a lot of people aren't big boys, or big girls. and they endanger people or children whom are too young or actually can't live through a vaccine.

[gunnut]

unfortunately a lot of people aren't big boys, or big girls. and they endanger people or children whom are too young or actually can't live through a vaccine.

This is one of the few things I have trouble with as a libertarian. I don't want big brother to tell me what to do, but this may be a place where the big brother should, and need to, tell people what to do.