if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Whooping It Up
by Hal_10000
Who do I love? People who won’t vaccinate their kids:
Erik Ferry thought little of the sniffles and cough his 12-year-old daughter came down with in February.
But the coughs became more frequent and violent, and the bug hung on for days, then weeks.Concerned it was more than just a cold, Ferry took his daughter to the doctor, and a dose of antibiotics cleared things up. Only later did he learn that several of the girl’s classmates at the East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante had the same symptoms.
And it was only this month that Ferry, who lives in Berkeley, learned that a bout of pertussis, or whooping cough, was sweeping through the school like a bad rumor: Sixteen students have been diagnosed, and health officials suspect many more are infected.
Read Orac’s complete post. Basically, a bunch of dirty hippies decided not to do the vaccination thing and their kids caught a potentially lethal disease as a result. It’s not clear, but I wouldn’t be surprised is some vaccinated kids or infants were infected as well.
Pertussis is no laughing matter. It used to kill 10,000 children a year.
Comments
When you depend on herd immunity to protect your children from disease, make sure you pick the right herd, and never let anyone in or out....
When people tell me that they are against vaccinations, I politely thank them for letting me know they are carriers.
I brought this point up with a friend of mine. I asked her if she found out her daughter was going to die next week from a disease, would she allow her daughter to be cured it it guaranteed the cure would kill her in 10 yrs. I also added that the 10 yr death would be quick and painless, her daughter could live a normal life till then.
Essentially, this is the choice medicine gives us. We can now live longer lives, but we will all die. Better to make the best go if you can instead of living your short existence full of disease and early deaths.
Shalom Hal,
The science illiterate would be a better description than dirty hippies as demonstrated by the continuing story of attempts to link Autism to vaccinations.
B’shalom,
Jeff
The pharmaceutical industry has to share some of the blame. The SV40 (simian virus) contamination of the polio vaccine was hardly going to make anyone feel all warm and fuzzy about giving junior a shot in the arm.
The federal government trust fund for all proven cases of vaccine-related consequences, paid for by a 75 cent excise on all vaccine doses (how could you prove anything in an individual lawsuit anyway?) is not really an incentive for the pharmaceutical companies to have to worry about vaccine quality. But then, they were big political donors, so it makes sense to look after them.
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It had to hang on for WEEKS before he decided that maybe he should go to a doctor?!?!
Wow.