My wife was born in the USSR and this year ended up coming down with HIB (a bacteria initially thought to be the cause of the flu) because it was not part of the inoculation schedule for the USSR and is not universally done. As a woman in her thirties she was sick and mostly bed ridden for two months and has vocal cord damage that may or may not be healed with physical therapy. The whole family picked it up from my son’s preschool where HIB is essentially harmlessly endemic due to inoculations. As a young child or infant, catching a particularly bad HIB strain can cause an infection of the brain and potential death.
Meanwhile my son and I (both inoculated in our first months of life) had a very light cold, essentially unnoticeable on my part, and were ok in a couple days. Because we inoculate children against HIB no doctors sees serious cases like this in otherwise healthy adults and it took many rounds of seeing multiple doctors before they tried looking for HIB. The bacteria is very very common but only the immunocompromised are checked with any regularity.
Incidents like this will become more common if these antivax anti science schemes are in effect for long enough. HIB is not a big flashy name because we have solved this problem. You get a “cold”, are told to rest, and you never remember it happening as time passes. My wife is not going to forget the part of her vocal range that does not work. She has had to stop her singing classes, something she loves.
“You died of dysentery” is a meme in the US because the only people we collectively know who have had dysentery are the characters we played in the Oregon Trail as kids in school. As someone who has had Dysentery care of an outbreak in the Caribbean, I feel like we’re seeing the result of the tremendous success of our health programs allowing completely stupid thinking to gain power.
What really pains me through all this is that the absence of disease does not mean that vaccines do not work! One would think the latest pointless measles outbreak would have been proof to convince people that the antivax rhetoric is all bunk, yet here we are. I don’t understand how we have gotten here beyond people simply not seeing up close what has been prevented by decades of programs.
My parents are old enough to have grown up with people who were irreparably harmed by Polio. The only ones I know of are aging senators or when the odd documentary on iron lungs. The vaccine development for Polio is the example that people like RFK use against all other vaccines, as if they’re all made the same way and as if we had not learned from the experience. Regulations are often written in blood and it’s simply disgraceful that they are throwing away what has been codified so they can smugly sell onesies with “I didn’t get a vaccine” on it.
Meanwhile RFK’s kids are vaccinated.
Charlatan.
If someone thinks they’ve actually been harmed by a vaccine, there’s a part of the government that would like to talk to you. Better do that fast before that gets torn down too.
Meanwhile my son and I (both inoculated in our first months of life) had a very light cold, essentially unnoticeable on my part, and were ok in a couple days. Because we inoculate children against HIB no doctors sees serious cases like this in otherwise healthy adults and it took many rounds of seeing multiple doctors before they tried looking for HIB. The bacteria is very very common but only the immunocompromised are checked with any regularity.
Incidents like this will become more common if these antivax anti science schemes are in effect for long enough. HIB is not a big flashy name because we have solved this problem. You get a “cold”, are told to rest, and you never remember it happening as time passes. My wife is not going to forget the part of her vocal range that does not work. She has had to stop her singing classes, something she loves.
“You died of dysentery” is a meme in the US because the only people we collectively know who have had dysentery are the characters we played in the Oregon Trail as kids in school. As someone who has had Dysentery care of an outbreak in the Caribbean, I feel like we’re seeing the result of the tremendous success of our health programs allowing completely stupid thinking to gain power.
What really pains me through all this is that the absence of disease does not mean that vaccines do not work! One would think the latest pointless measles outbreak would have been proof to convince people that the antivax rhetoric is all bunk, yet here we are. I don’t understand how we have gotten here beyond people simply not seeing up close what has been prevented by decades of programs.
My parents are old enough to have grown up with people who were irreparably harmed by Polio. The only ones I know of are aging senators or when the odd documentary on iron lungs. The vaccine development for Polio is the example that people like RFK use against all other vaccines, as if they’re all made the same way and as if we had not learned from the experience. Regulations are often written in blood and it’s simply disgraceful that they are throwing away what has been codified so they can smugly sell onesies with “I didn’t get a vaccine” on it.
Meanwhile RFK’s kids are vaccinated.
Charlatan.
If someone thinks they’ve actually been harmed by a vaccine, there’s a part of the government that would like to talk to you. Better do that fast before that gets torn down too.