For the folks who think that natural immunity beats a vaccination,Trinidad Elementary School has turned into a textbook lesson on how to grow your own outbreak.
Chickenpox has spread swiftly through the 180-student school, apparently contracted so far by at least 16 children and adults. The numbers aren’t surprising given that roughly 20 percent of the students have not been vaccinated, at their parents’ request.
Each of those children could be a biological time bomb for someone with AIDS whose immune system is badly compromised, or for a woman in the wrong stage of pregnancy, who could end up with a paralyzed, blind or developmentally disabled baby, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Is that OK?
Well, the school district is hosting a free vaccine clinic being offered by Humboldt County, but it’s not actually recommending that kids get vaccinated.
“We are offering. We are not taking a medical stand,” said principal Geoff Proust.
“The parent group we have has a lot of people who have doubts aboutthe safety of vaccines or the honesty of governmental forces” that recommend them, he said. “On one hand, I support the independent thinking of my parent group. On the other hand, they might not necessarily be thinking beyond their own family.”
Even in a county with a vocal anti-vaccine contingent, outbreaks like the one in Trinidad apparently aren’t common.
Chris Hammond, a communicable disease program nurse for Humboldt County, said this is the first she’s seen in her three years here. The county has had no documented episode of a youngster with chickenpox making any other person seriously ill, she said.
There are risks to getting any vaccine. There are also risks to skipping them, risks that reach beyond any one child. A good chickenpox summary is here, from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
This article appears in Caged.
Anti-intellectualism at its finest.
Let’s hope one of those kids (or adults) doesn’t have a bad reaction to the disease. We like to think of it as a simple matter, but a minority of cases turn really bad.
Oh, for crying out loud. It’s chickenpox.
This is totally normal.
Case in point.
Do not minimize chickenpox. It stays with you for life and can lead to a very painful case of shingles as you get older.
I guess it should come as a comfort to those who suffer from shingles that it’s “totally normal.”
This is Chickenpox you are talking about. Not Whooping Cough. Most adults walking around today have HAD Chickenpox, and Mumps, and probably Measles. A surprising number have had Chickenpox twice. It’s not life-threatening, except in rare instances.
This blogpost is written in an extremely inflammatory manner suggesting that there is something wrong with the parents in the school. That is not the case. And I am sorry to see this inflammatory rhetoric appear under the new editor’s name. To imply that students coming down with Chickenpox is something startling is stupid. Sorry. But that’s the truth.
This vaccine is relatively new, and many parents who get ALL the other vaccines choose not to get this one. SCHOOLS favor this vaccine because it cuts down on absence and adds to the ADA (Money).
There have been outbreaks of Whooping Cough in local schools – for exactly the same reason – far more dangerous – and with no such inflammatory rhetoric. In those cases, some parents had opted out of getting the kids vaccinated on philosophical grounds, and others opted out because their child had an adverse reaction to their first series of shots.
Some make the case that those parents are irresponsible, and subjected other kids to needless risk – as the author is trying to imply here – only it’s Chickenpox, not Whooping Cough. The end result, in the case of Whooping Cough is that now, those of us who DID get all the required immunizations are being required to get a whole new round, simply because no one wants to require those parents who didn’t to do it.
You wanna get mad about something, get mad about that.
Kudos Rose, this snide post is a bit off kilter, how about as journalists we ask why parents do not want to vaccinate?
Not vaccinated: a low, but nonetheless an existent risk of serious complications from chickenpox (including death, sometimes exacerbated by other preexisting medical conditions). Shingles is the common one noted though.
Vaccinated: a very low risk of getting chickenpox at all.
Why would you gamble with your children when there is a vaccine for the disease? (I mean, assuming you don’t harbor unfounded fears about science.)
Heck, just try living down your child getting one of those red papules on his or her eyelid, or having lifetime scarring from the largest papules… which could have been avoided with a 10 minute appointment with a pediatrician.
Why? AJ? Because the Government says so?
And frankly, those who do not get vaccines cite almost EXACTLY word for word your concerns – an existent risk of serious complications, (including death, sometimes exacerbated by other preexisting medical conditions) caused BY the vaccine.
And SOME of them have kids who HAVE severe reactions to the first set of shots.
You act like it is a decision people make lightly – and the editor here in her post makes it sound like they are irresponsible parents. They are far from it. She owes them an apology for that overreaction.
Chickenpox is not Whooping Cough.
“Chickenpox is not Whooping Cough”? Thanks for the diagnosis, doctor, but I’d prefer vaccinations to common quackery.
Sorry Rose, but the evidence is on the side of vaccination. If you have evidence that something weird is going on in Trinidad causing a deviation from the norm, making vaccinations not the safest option, I’d love to know more about it.
As to whether the parents are irresponsible, I suppose it comes down to how you define irresponsibility. It could be simple ignorance of the facts. I suspect it usually is exactly that. Fear of government. Fear of science. Fear of the unknown. There is a cure for that. It’s called education.
How about lack of trust of big Pharma? How about mis-information from both sides? How about being told there is no mercury in vaccines anymore by reporters like Kevin H., however documented by a reputable institiution.- that factual that is wrong? See John Hopkins and the case for the flu vaccine that still contains mercury here-
http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm
I dont enjoy the fear mongering, I do not enjoy the ad hominem AJ- there are valid concerns in peoples minds, this is not kookery. There is such a strong anit-vaccine attitude, why is that? Education? Ignorance? Glady to toe to toe with you haus on degrees, education or however you are measuring people.
Yes Jonathan, I agree that you fit the profile I described of a person who is afraid of vaccines.
Well AJ, my kids are vaccinated, so the point that your profile is wrong is just a start of your issues. I believe in listening to others and there is a serious counter point going on that people like you would prefer to cheapen instead of analyze. It is that easy for you eh? Being right with one side of the equation?
Using chicken pox to push an agenda. When someone does not ask or understand a counter point to an argument, I would classify that person – that means you AJ- as ignorant, biased and discriminatory.
Jonathan J…You hit the nail right on the head….kind of reminds me of the Occupy Eureka/Arcata folks…one sided, no point/counterpoint and ignorant
I’m sorry Jonathan, but if you’re bothered by my tone, we should stop here. I hope you will talk to your pediatrician about your doubts regarding vaccinations.
Who’s “using chicken pox to push an agenda”? What’s the agenda?
The agenda is to vastly reduce the prevalence of disease around the globe, a goal that has been accomplished wherever vaccines are deployed. You might wonder why researchers bothered to develop a vaccine for chickenpox, but the Journal and commenters have already covered that topic. As a T-S commenter noted, people think of chickenpox as a normal, harmless childhood disease. So, those same people presumably view shingles as normal, and the debilitating long-term pain that sometimes accompanies shingles.
The scary thing is that outbreaks of preventable disease are often at schools, and threats are often posed to pregnant women… and if you’ve spent any time at a school at drop-off or pick-up time, you know there’s a higher-than-normal percentage of unborn children exposed to the school environment.
The Journal would do well to publish the percentage of unvaccinated students at area schools (assuming that data is available). It’s good information to have, especially for families not done having children. It’s a health safety issue affecting the entire community.
We truly have entered the Twilight Zone when we’re getting an AJ lecture in Humboldt County. Do you even have any kids?
Mine are all vaccinated – by the way. And I have talked to doctors, and no, they do NOT know the long term effects of the Chickenpox vaccine, it has not been around long enough. Will it prevent shingles when today’s kids are 30? 40? 50? 60? No one knows.
Most every adult I know survived Mumps, Measles AND Chickenpox. In fact, parents used to deliberately expose their kids to get it over with.
Again – the inflammatory language in this blog post is beneath the standards of the Journal, in my opinion. It is sensationalistic and does not appear to be written by an adult. Again, sorry, But you owe the parents of Trinidad an apology.
I have two kids, thank you for asking. Perhaps you’re confusing me with another AJ because I wasn’t aware I was prolific enough to have a reputation preceding me.
IMHO, Carrie’s “inflammatory language” is tame considering that people are needlessly putting members of the greater community at risk. Do you take issue with anything she said — on a factual basis? Did she say anything that is not factually true?
AJ you are a bigot, you use nice words and a prozac laced tone, you try to play the saint, but you are as plain a bigot as they come. There are many doctors that have a different view on certain types of vaccinations than the AMA or what is being said by this author, that was the point, people that do not have kids vaccinated are not ignorant, they have an opposing view point, and your world view is not the only one. Again, it would be good to get the opposing view point printed- prolly too much to ask.
AJ is a bigot? Hardly, but Jonathan J is a nut.
If you really – and I mean REALLY wanna get real AJ – the author mentions that an ordinary childhood illness threatens AIDS victims.
Now – as to how they got AIDS – I believe, with a few exceptions, that is because THEY “needlessly” (your word) put themselves at risk.
And paid the price. Getting sanctimonious and attacking innocent parents is not cool.
Sorry Jonathan and Rose, but I dwell in a world of evidence, not conspiracy and fear.
Rose inviting someone to “really – and I mean REALLY..get real” is funny enough, but her complaining about someone else waxing sanctimonious is nauseating.
If you are not feeling well Joel
maybe you should try a nice dose of SPAM………………….
Calling people ignorant because they have a differnt point of view, based on opposing data, is not living in a world of evidence AJ, sorry but you are lying to yourself.
The article could have been written to calmly say there is a Chickenpox outbreak. AIDS afflicted and pregnant women may want to take appropriate precautions. For this and that reason.
A reasoned discussion is possible.
And that ‘reasoned’ discussion should start from reality.
For example – the statement “woman in the wrong stage of pregnancy” is so disconnected from the reality that, from time immemorial, who do you think was with all the kids who ever came down with Chickenpox, Mumps, Measles, the childhood illnesses? Women. Of childbearing years. Many times pregnant, and at every single stage of pregnancy.
At least that was reality back in the real world. I don’t really know what reality is in this new upside down Bizzarro World. Where AJ must dwell in the world of fear that a pregnant woman might be exposed to a kid with Chickenpox, and wants Big Brother to dictate accordingly.
My comments are not very scientific… just a feeling i get… that for all the specific diseases we prevent with vaccines, we seem to have more and more problems with general hardiness and immunity. Almost as if there’s a reason to get sick, as if it strengthens the immune system.
All i know is that when we were kids, mumps, measles, chicken pox, etc., were normal and to some degree even fun. Skip school, watch TV, have Mom be all nice and bring you ginger ale. Sometimes there is a case of shingles later on… in fact i had shingles. Not a very big deal, though it was painfully centered from my heel to my hip. Got to try Vicodan for the pain… didn’t love it, but it did the trick, and life went on.
What is so wrong with a little down time? It’s like people want to outlaw Nature. If you are an infant, infirm elderly, AIDS patient, etc., you of course want to stay away from chicken pox. And everything else right down to the common cold– which is another thing “they” are actually trying to eliminate. Couldn’t it be that there’s a reason for these things, other than the unpopular but valuable function of selection for healthy breeding stock? Maybe illnesses give us a break just when we need it… maybe they make us each, individually, stronger. Maybe pain itself is valuable. I don’t wish it on anyone else, but in my own life, i wouldn’t disown any of the pain i’ve felt. Seems odd to have a goal of progress to be elimination of all pain, even temporary, relatively mild pain. Seems like we are trying to make life into something safe, pain-free, comfortable, predictable… an ancient and laudable goal, but i’m pretty sure it comes with a steep price.
Just wondering. Seems odd that a topic so worthy of open-minded speculation gets people so righteous and adamant.
MRC-5.