I swear, if stuff like this keeps up we’re going to have a major epidemic sooner or later. I don’t understand parents (and other adults) who claim to be afraid of vaccinations yet apparently never consider the alternative – that your child can get a life-threatening illness and pass it along to someone else. And someone else…and another someone else.
While my social attitudes lean toward small-l libertarian on most things lately I’m turning into a hardliner on vacciations. Make them mandatory again for all kids and adults, at least those in sensitive industries. And then protect the pharma companies against lawsuits so they don’t get sued into the ground with junk science. Yes, some tiny fraction of people will have a bad reaction. The same holds true for any medical treatment or drug. That’s tragic, but the risks are way overblown, and the "evidence" that discourages people from getting their kids vaccinated is just supersitious fearmongering. There’s no good reason for killers like TB, polio, and whooping cough
to be hanging around in first-world countries in the 21st century.
I’m hoping that reporting case like this will help people see that the threat of
disease is real, while the possibility of serious side effects is, in comparison, very
remote. Maybe that’s what it takes to get people to care about vaccinations again.
I’m in agreement with you on all of that. There’s no reason that thoroughly preventable diseases sould be making a comeback in the US. Maybe it’s just been too long and memories haven’t held to the days when these diseases were real killers. We already have enough of a problem with diseases that prove resistant to modern medications and anti-biotics, we certainly don’t need these antiques going around killing people.