Vaccination Rates Dropping in SB County
Kelsy Brugger in “The Independent”, 9/11/14, writes that SB County Health Department figures show a rise in vaccine exemptions from 2.9% in 2011 to 4.7 % in 2013. Herd immunity begins to rapidly deteriorate after 5% of the population does not vaccinate. National trends show that vaccination rates often drop within pockets of affluent and highly educated groups and that national high exemption rates hover around 25%. Following that trend, 27.4% of students at Montecito Union School filed exemptions as did a whopping 41.7% of students at El Montecito School, according to SB County records.
Using data from the CDC, “The Hollywood Reporter” did an excellent article showing that vaccination rates in wealthy school districts in Los Angeles are as low as those in Southern Sudan! There is even a new term going around calling this phenomenon, “affluenza”, suggesting that the affluent/wealthy think that they don’t get sick like the rest of us (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-vaccination-fail-why-la-731815).
PBS/Nova has just released an excellent, science based video called, “Vaccines: Calling the Shots, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcs0qhzfek that every parent should see. This anti-vax trend in Santa Barbara is significant, very disturbing, and potentially harmful to many of our children.
Parents are asked by their physicians to have 28 vaccinations for 14 different diseases within their child’s first two years. That s a lot of shots and many parents might naturally question if so many are necessary. However, all the shots are necessary, simply because that is the number of serious and life threatening diseases that children are susceptible to and which vaccinations can eradicate if everyone maintains herd immunity. Research since the 1950’s has shown that after millions upon millions of vaccinations, worldwide, that fears of autism, multiple sclerosis, SIDS, heart failure, etc. are completely unfounded . Vaccinations have extremely rare side effects (about one serious side effect for every one million vaccinations) and enormous benefits (over six million people saved, per year, from painful suffering and death). Finally, research over many years has demonstrated that the number of vaccinations and the CDC recommended vaccination schedule is safe and effective.
Many parents avoid vaccinations because they follow a naturalistic ideology and consider vaccinations an unnatural substance in their body. Well, there is nothing more natural than measles, whooping cough and smallpox. In fact, we live in a “soup” of natural air born particles of disease and our body’s immune system stays strong and keeps us healthy by continually fighting off these diseases. Vaccination exactly mimics this natural process by selectively exposing our immune systems to a very weak form of a debilitating and deadly disease. Our immune systems are then triggered and prepared to fight off that particular disease. The only difference between the normal, natural and continuous operation of our immune system and a vaccination is that medical science picks one of the many diseases that our immune system is continually fighting.
In the PBS video, a group of Moms are watching their children play and they talk on camera about their confusion over vaccinations. “There’s just so much information, I don’t know who to ask”. “There’s no such thing as an unbiased source”. “Who am I supposed to trust?” One Mom relates a story that sometime after her child had a vaccination that she had a seizure and the Mom blames the vaccination.
You don’t know who to ask? How about asking your M.D. pediatrician? Ask ten different pediatricians and see if their recommendations agree. They will agree because they follow the CDC guidelines and also because it is their difficult task in life to sometimes watch children die of these preventable diseases. For that reason, every pediatrician is going to recommend the absolute best and safest procedure and schedule available. Who to trust? How about trusting the M.D.’s four years of medical school, two to five years of residency training and State Medical Board certification?
These Moms are practicing the worst and most dangerous form of anti-science, pseudo-skepticism with their child’s health. It goes something like this: “Let’s see. I have to make this life-and-death medical decision for my child. Should I go with the over two hundred years of science based medical research, experimentation and practice, with millions of people saved, horrible diseases wiped off the face of the earth or…should I go with Betty Sue’s opinion who’s sitting next to me on the park bench? I don’t know. I’m not sure. Betty Sue goes to the health food store…She eats all organic…She’s so natural…I want my kids to be like hers…”
I want to know who these Moms had for Science teachers in high school and college. How did they pass any of their Science classes without knowing the difference between scientific research and Betty Sue’s opinion? How could they possibly equate 200 years and millions of positive outcomes with Betty Sue’s emotional story? Why didn’t that other mom not understand that just because her child had a seizure sometime after her vaccination, that she did not necessarily have the seizure because of the vaccination (post hoc thinking). Why wasn’t she taught these simple cognitive fallacies when she learned how to examine scientific evidence in high school?
Because vaccinations work so well, each generation of educated parents may try to second guess their physicians. “Why should I vaccinate against smallpox? No one in the U.S. gets smallpox anymore.” The same could be said for measles in 2000 but now measles is coming back. Cases of whooping cough/pertussis have tripled in California and SB County considers our 81 cases part of the statewide epidemic (8000 cases). These horrible diseases return when we think Betty Sue’s opinion is equal to or better than medical research.
There is also a significant parent resistance to HPV vaccine which is recommended for the prevention of cervical/anal cancer and genital warts. Many religious parents feel that their message of abstinence is somehow subverted by the vaccination. This does not logically follow: a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer has nothing to do with religious instruction. This situation is particularly frustrating since HPV vaccine actually prevents cancer. Wait. Wait. Let me say that again: we have a cure for this cancer. The medical community doesn’t get to say that very often. It’s not a treatment. HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer! Still, some parents have developed pseudo-skeptical and anti-science views on the subject. Unbelievable.
The Complementary, Integrative and Alternative (C.I.A.) crowd appears to be divided on the issue of vaccinations with some realizing that the scientific evidence for vaccination is so overwhelming that they refer their patients out to M.D.’s and some who still actively preach anti-science and anti-germ theory of disease nonsense. D.D. Palmer, the founder of Chiropractic, said this, “It is the very height of absurdity to strive to ‘protect’ any person from smallpox and other malady by inoculating them with a filthy animal poison… No one will ever pollute the blood of any member of my family unless he cares to walk over my dead body…” (Palmer, DD. “The Chiropractor’s Adjustor”, 1910). Even in 1910, Edward Jenner’s documented, modern medical vaccination procedure for smallpox (1796) had been successful for 114 years. Alternative medicine may be tolerable when they treat conditions that are going to get better anyway, like colds and flu, but actively preaching against vaccinations is shameful and will only result in the increased suffering of children. Again, I find it amazing that people follow these placebo/belief-based practitioners when their child’s health is at risk.
A few minutes into the “Vaccines: Calling the Shots”, video, you will see a seven week old baby suffering from whooping cough. I mean on the verge of death suffering. It’s heart wrenching. I spent five years as an EMT on a 911 ambulance in Manhattan, N.Y. I’ve seen some pretty raw damage. Yet this little baby’s distress really got to me. Prepare yourself.
This mother’s tears and the tiny infants struggle to breath is something that children no longer have to suffer. If you can watch that little seven week old baby struggle for his life’s breath and then go play Russian roulette with your child’s health, you have been misled with false information from the naturalistic, anti-science, medieval medicine crowd. Don’t do that. Your child deserves better. Don’t listen to Betty Sue and the other pseudo-skeptical, mumbo jumbo apologists. Listen to your M.D. and follow their vaccination schedule.
Victor Dominocielo, M.A. 9/16/14
Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 37 years, is the human biology and health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.