Mandatory School Vaccinations
 

We have heard Michelle Bachmann's viewpoint on mandatory vaccinations. Do you agree that all vaccinations (smallpox, whooping cough, diptheria, HPV, tetanus, polio) should be at the parent's discretion and not mandated by government?

I do not know Backmann's opinion on vaccinations but if she is elected President, I do not think it will ever be an issue because there will be ObamaCare and I am more concerned about the Death Panels that will determine who has a right for treatments and who will be left to die.

There is no short, yes/no answer to that question, because many of the communicable, deadly diseases are spread by simply being in society, NOT by sexual contact as is the case with human papilloma virus!

There are many diseases spread by physical or sexual contact besides HPV, such as HIV and hepatitis. If you want the government to mandate HPV vaccinations for everyone, are you going to push for everyone getting hepatitis shots too?

When diseases that are airborne are on the loose and epidemic, I think it's appropriate to require it.

Here is a great example that is not even being talked about, while Guardasil against HPV is being talked about....I think because Hollywood and their politicians have succeeded in training people to think that....

Sexual freedom without giving disease a thought is what matters most. Meanwhile, this is a big problem:

"Europe is facing a wave of drug-resistant TB, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported.

The United Nations agency has launched a five-year plan to contain what is said is an "alarming problem" – the region, mainly eastern Europe, bears more than 18% of the global burden of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB).
The toll of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) is harder to quantify, the agency said, because many European countries do not have the technical resources to identify cases. But despite that, the number of reported cases recently nearly tripled – from 132 in 2008 to 344 in 2009.

"TB is an old disease that never went away, and now it is evolving with a vengeance," Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe, said in a statement........

...Currently, the WHO said in a report outlining its five-year plan, there are an estimated 81,000 cases of MDR-TB in the European region, out of a world total estimate of 440,000. The numbers are estimates because in many places formal resistance surveys have never been performed.

And in Europe, the WHO reported, only about a third of the estimated 81,000 cases have been formally reported to health agencies – 27,760 or 34.2% -- mainly because of a lack of drug susceptibility testing or more modern molecular diagnostic methods.

Of those, only 17,169 patients, or 61.8%, were reported to be getting adequate treatment with second-line drugs.

Diagnosing XDR-TB requires the ability to test for susceptibility to second-line drugs, ........

.....The British capital of London has 3,500 cases of TB a year – the highest rate of any western European capital -- and 2% of those are MDR-TB, according to the Stop TB Partnership, an international coalition of organizations aimed at curbing TB........

........Those countries must also examine their health systems, raise awareness of the problem among clinicians, and adopt action plans to deal with the issue, the agency said. The plan also calls for an uninterrupted supply of quality first- and second-line drugs in all countries by the end of 2013........"
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Infectio...rculosis/28503

At the parents discretion...well, let me think about that. Let's say Mrs. Smith decided not to have her child immunized for measles, mumps. Neither did many other parents. Little Suzie comes down with mumps...now it spreads, same with measles. These can be common childhood afflictions, but they can also be deadly. In addition to putting other children at risk, adults are also put at risk.

Has she had her children immunized?

And what magic is to be employed to get parents to do what is right regarding immunization.
Several schools at start up this year had thousands of kids who could not be admitted because the parents did not see to it they were immunized before the start of the school year. Knowing they were not done, the parents sent their kids to school anyway. Many had to wait hours to get the proper immunization from the school administrators.

Leave it up to the parents....no way!!!! But if it ever happens then there is only one acceptable outcome...no immunization....send them home and don't let them back until they do what is required. Hard nosed? You bet....it is the only language irresponsible people understand and sometimes that may not work.

btk

Sure, if you want us to be like a third world nation with these diseases running rampant.

But in this nation, it's not "third-world" or low socio-economic class people who are purposely not vaccinating their children.

Unfortunately, it is well-to-do, suburban "upscale" mothers we know who are purposely not vaccinating their children, because of the unproven claims of autism stemming from vaccinations. They are self-proclaimed natural and organic food experts who are also obssessed with controlling their kids' eating so they don't get fat.

These parents are listening more to television and pop culture than medically educated sources cited here:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...eskeptics.html

If there had been a polio vaccine when we were growing up, it would have prevented some of my schoolmates from being paralyzed and living in an iron lung, and spared my parents much worry and anxiety about one of us getting it..

If there had been a vaccination for diptheria when my father was growing up, he wouldn't have lost two siblings in one day from that disease.

So, I am thankful that there are vaccinations now for these communicable childhood diseases, and if the parents don't realize that they are fortunate to not have to worry about them and don't do the right thing, then the govt. should mandate it.

I support mandatory vaccination as early as deemed safe by the Medical Community. We have idiot parents that don't believe in doctors and will let God heal their sick child and if the child dies, then it was Gods will. Wake up people, this is not even worth discussing. It must be MANDATORY.

spot on

My children were all vaccinated. However, if you have your vaccine that prevents you from getting a particular disease, why would you worry about coming into contact with someone who has the disease as the result of not getting their vaccine?...what am I missing?

You are missing nothing. How could disease "run rampant" when it will only be a small minority that does not get the vaccine. Some people here cannot think.

What happens, though, if a person such as Bachmann gets to be President and does away with mandated vaccinations for school kids? Schools will no longer require them, kids do not get vaccinated, diseases that were about eridicated return in epidemic numbers.

Where I come from in the Washington DC area, if a child shows up on the first day of school without the completed shot record, they are sent home immediately and cannot return until all required shots are up to date. It does not have to cost the families anything to get the shots, either.

The question was: Do you feel that all vaccinations for school children should be at the discretion of the parent or should they be mandated by the government? What is your personal opinion - and what did you do for your children?

You're not missing anything if we're talking about an innoculated child. The assumption is that there could be a number of parents that decide not to have their children vaccinated. A child gets sick, then passes it along to their siblings, who then go to day care where there could be other youngsters not vaccinated and the disease is passed along.

Kids get chickenpox, they might not show signs of the illness while they are "shedding" the virus. Older adults might now develop shingles, which can be very painful for many. Adults not vaccinated as youngsters are also at risk for developing the disease, chickenpox, and it can be more serious. People travel, bringing along with them various viruses and again, spread disease even while they might not know they're infected.
While these childhood diseases aren't as prevalent in the US as they once were, they could re-emerge once again, in full force.

What about the millions of illegals that come here every year that are not vaccinated? I would think that if diseases "run rampant" it would have happened by now. We are only talking about a small percentage of civilians here.
Please explain the millions and millions of people who come into this country every year and why we haven't had an epidemic.