Forty states saw rises in parents citing religious or other personal concerns for not vaccinating their young children.
The number of kids whose caregivers are opting them out of routine childhood vaccines has reached an all-time high, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday, potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of children unprotected against preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough.
The report did not dive into the reasons for the increase, but experts said the findings clearly reflect Americans’ growing unease about medicine in general.
“There is a rising distrust in the health care system,” said Dr. Amna Husain, a pediatrician in private practice in North Carolina, as well as a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Vaccine exemptions “have unfortunately trended upward with it.”
I wish it were that simple.
With fewer people vaccinated, herd immunity is weakened. As I understand it, this means even vaccinated children will come into contact more frequently with infected people, thereby increasing the chance that even vaccinated people get sick.
Not only that, but more disease spreading means more chance that the disease could mutate and render our current vaccines ineffective.
Imagine if a vaccine resistant polio or measles started spreading. Sure, you’re vaccinated against the diseases, but the virus just laughs as it sidesteps your protections and infects you anyway. People refusing vaccines* endanger all of us.
* The exception to this rule are people who refuse for legitimate medical reasons. For example, if they are allergic to the vaccine components or have immune system issues. They should be able to legitimately refuse and the rest of us would protect them with our immunity.
This is exactly what’s happening with COVID
Herd immunity doesn’t exist until a high enough percentage of the population is inoculated, so if you can’t realistically hit that threshold it’s worthless to the community to try and get as many people as you can.
Also, herd immunity only works when the vaccine prevents you from transmitting the disease to others in the first place.
I know this article is about vaccination in general, but many people are going to view it especially in the context of the covid pandemic—so it’s important to note out that the covid vaccine does not satisfy either of the above requirements. Whatever the value may be of achieving herd immunity in any other case, it unequivocally does not apply to covid. I’m not implying that you were saying it did, btw, just advising people—especially the vehement, single-minded detractors and defenders both—not to treat vaccines as if they’re all the same.
I have concerns about your statement that achieving herd immunity is worthless when failing to reach the threshold. Is there not a distinction between herd immunity within a household or school and herd immunity within a city or state or country? Shouldn’t the “population” be in the context of communities with close and frequent interactions?
The basic premise is that the community needs to be inoculated enough so that any breakout doesn’t have enough viable hosts around to jump to and dies out before it can gain momentum among a wider population. This benefits others in the community who are still vulnerable for whatever reason and is a legitimate argument for why people should care if other people get vaccinated. If the threat is dire enough it could even be argued that others should be forced against their will. The costs of implementing herd immunity can be quite high, as well as the benefits—but for us to begin even thinking about whether it’s worth paying, we must be sure we can realistically achieve it.
If the level of inoculation among the population is too low the virus will spread. That’s what’s important—that’s why it’s all or nothing. The fact that it’s slower, or that it won’t overwhelm hospitals as quickly, is so trivial in comparison as to be inconsequential. The only thing that matters is that it’s still there. Fast or slow, it will still infect the entire world, and the vulnerable won’t be safe.
Given all of the above, it goes without saying that a vaccine that only stops a virus from making you sick but doesn’t stop it from spreading is next to useless when it comes to herd immunity—that much should be obvious. I would think it should be obvious too that the covid vaccine is one of such a type, but if you’re interested in arguing that here or elsewhere—or anything else for that matter—please know that ridiculing and dismissing others because you think they’re so obviously wrong and incapable of being saved, is in fact the only thing preventing anyone from trying to fix it.
Is there not a huge distinction between “not infected” and “safe”? Hospitals that aren’t overwhelmed will be able to treat patients more effectively, so it should be way safer to have a slower spread of disease as it allows more patients to get better care.
You also didn’t entirely address my point. If you need 90% of a population to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity for a disease, and 90% of an elementary school is fully vaccinated, how are the remaining 10% not protected if school is the only real place they go out and socially interact?
False, in every respect and point. 🤦
Care to explain? Basically every trustworthy source I skimmed through supports their argument.
Also, if you ever want proof that someone is a brainwashed, right-wing shill, just look for the phrase “THE covid vaccine”. Because in their mind, there is only one. Not over a dozen different ones that actually exist. Hell, in the USA alone there’s at least 4 different original-strain covid vaccines, not including the new bivalent vaccines.
But no. “THE covid vaccine”. 🤦
Honestly this is the one thing I can unquestionably agree with you on lol
For a simple start, he doesn’t understand the difference between a virus / bacterium/etc and what a disease is.
Nor does he understand what a vaccine is, or what it does.
Nor does he understand that every pathogen has a different rate / volume of transmission, acts differently on different people in different conditions and so on.
This is all right-wing, anti-science propaganda that we saw far too much of in 2020. This false idea that “if it isn’t a magic 100% force field then it doesn’t work at all”.
It’s all BS to get stupid people to do nothing and become petri dishes for bugs. Nothing owns the libs like trying their hardest to do nothing and die off. Or something like that.
I don’t see how he says that because he specifically mentions how every vaccine is different, which is true. The first mRNA vaccines are way more effective than prior flu vaccines, for example. That intuitively seems important for defining the ratio needed to achieve herd immunity.
The only statement that I could consider false is that not meeting the “herd immunity ratio” is “useless.” This obviously isn’t true on a personal level, but on a community level in the context of herd immunity, it seems to be true based on my limited knowledge. Every source I’ve looked at says that the US as a whole has not reached herd immunity, especially since the newer COVID variants are spread more easily and thus require a higher proportion of people vaccinated.
I don’t think this person is spreading misinformation or right-wing talking points. It seems that they have knowledge but can’t effectively express it in a way that isn’t misleading to a lay person. This (personally) seems like a widespread issue within STEM and not some comment made out of malice. There seems to be a huge disconnect between medical or scientific goals as well as public messaging that supports said goals
EDIT: I wanted to mention his comment about vaccines still allowing the spread of disease. He isn’t saying that the vaccines aren’t effective, but it does mean that you can carry a pathogen to someone else who isn’t vaccinated. Vaccines aren’t a silver bullet, even if they’re really good.
Sure, if you ignore everything and anything about the viruses themselves. Like incubation time, ability to survive outside of hosts and so on and so forth.
Everything you’re talking about is absolute garbage.
Which isn’t relevant to what numbnuts said.
But he’s implying it. He’s spreading right-wing anti-science propaganda verbatim. This is the same copypasta they’ve been spreading for years. It has the thinnest varnish of plausibility, but really, it’s complete bullshit.
They absolutely are, but that doesn’t make them the magical forcefield that those maga lovers insist they be.
A vaccine just has to make us be able to reduce the ability of a virus to spread to below a certain point, and we win. It just takes longer. But Mr. Needs-Ritalin-Cocain-and-Caffeine-in-the-morning can’t wait that long, so it fails. I mean, the least effective vaccines we came up with at the start were far more than enough to “win”.
Oh, and by the by, it’s these assholes who are why we have freaking whooping cough and measles back. We almost wiped them out, but no, the little death worshippers want to bring us back to the dark ages.