Should people who refuse vaccines pay a price ?

I am sorry I took so long to get back to you. I was not aware a question had been asked until yesterday.

I cannot state that the source I am about to quote is the absolute best and unbiased but on this one topic what they say is the same as what I have seen before from sources I trusted and they did provide citations. Unless they blatantly misrepresented the citations then it is correct.

"For example, if 100 people are vaccinated and 5 contract the disease, the vaccine is declared to be 95% effective. But if only 10 of the 100 were actually exposed to the disease, then the vaccine was really only 50% effective. "
http://www.relfe.com/vaccine.html

So the real question becomes how many of the vaccinated people are later exposed to a particular disease. And since all of the diseases are relatively rare even in unvaccinated populations it is safe to say that few of the vaccinated persons were exposed.

I have never really fully understood herd immunity but here goes:

In a nutshell I think it says that when most people are vaccinated all people are protected because the incidence of the disease becomes low enough that even unvaccinated people will not be exposed much.

So I would say two things: 1. if the incidence of the disease is already low and it becomes lower and 80% of the population is vaccinated but maybe only 50% of the population actually acquired an immunity then what difference will 1 or 2% more people who are not immune matter?

2. there are many instances of populations that were fully or highly immunized having outbreaks of the disease for which they were immunized. If in a 100% vaccinated country there can be outbreaks then really what difference does it make if 1 or 2% of the people do not get a vaccination that was not all that effective to begin with.

"The medical literature has a surprising number of studies documenting vaccine failure. Measles, mumps, small pox, polio and Hib outbreaks have all occurred in vaccinated populations. [11, 12, 13, 14 ,15] In 1989 the CDC reported: "Among school-aged children, [measles] outbreaks have occurred in schools with vaccination levels of greater than 98 percent.[16] [They] have occurred in all parts of the country, including areas that had not reported measles for years."[17] The CDC even reported a measles outbreak in a documented 100 percent vaccinated population. [18] "
(Same source as above)

Herd immunity appears not to be occurring anyway so I really don't see how a small minority would even make a difference.

he has no special condition at all. I just think that it is somewhat normal for people to have chicken pox more than once despite frequent claims that vaccinated people cannot have it again - those claims may be wrong, they are pretty bold after all.

Some cherry picked sentences from Reuters:

"NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study has found that quite a few people with chickenpox say they've already had a bout of the spot-causing ailment, suggesting that such repeat infection may be more common than previously thought.

Typically, one infection is thought to confer a lifelong immunity to future chickenpox infections.

Investigators led by Susan Hall of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, report that 13% of cases of chickenpox reported in 1999 from one US region occurred in people who believed they had already had chickenpox. Interestingly enough, almost half of those suspected of double infections said that other members of their families had also had chickenpox twice.

The investigators determined the rate of reported second infections from an examination of all reported cases of chickenpox in a region of Los Angeles county, from 1995 to 1999. In 1995, 4.5% said they'd already had chickenpox once while that number was 13% in 1999.

It has long been believed that a single infection with chickenpox leaves the body immune to subsequent bouts of the disease. So how could some people develop chickenpox twice? The answer, Seward said, may lie in the first infection's inability to completely immunize a person against the disease.

"It may be that some people just don't develop a high enough antibody response to be protective," Seward said. "That dogma (that one case of chickenpox leaves a person immune for life) may not be absolute dogma," she added.

http://www.vaccinationnews.com/DailyNews/June2002/ChixStrikesTwiceMoreOften.htm

 

No, maybe that person has a condition which could make vaccination a high risk issue. Like spasticity, allergies, cerebral palsy, spina bifida or other neurological issue. Both sides of the story must be considered. My doctors will tell me if a vaccine is worth taking or is best avoided for me. That must and should be considered.

 

Vaccines aren't nearly as effective as people claim.. the chickenpox is just one, but I have no measurable immunity to MMR (despite getting "all" of my shots on schedule growing up, the last of which was only about 6 years prior to my first pregnancy) which gets me a big red stamp on my chart if I get pregnant and no one will give me another shot now because of a known drug allergy. The thing is, no one bothers to test titers except for certain circumstances (like pregnancy, or hep B for healthcare workers, etc).. I think they should be standard at the completion of any series of vaccines since it's a fairly straightforward test, and it would be a means of showing whether a vaccine has "taken" for someone or not. You could have a "fully vaccinated" child who doesn't have the immunity they should... IMO that's a bigger problem than people choosing not to vaccinate. At least those people know they (or their child) have no immunity, which is better than going around assuming.

I had to delay my middle child's first MMR shot because I was about 8 or 9 weeks pregnant with my youngest when she was supposed to get it (it's a live virus, and while the risks are low that someone like me could catch rubella from her, the risk was still there, and I wasn't about to take a chance if I could avoid it). I actually waited until her younger brother was born just to be extra safe... our pedi wasn't happy at all about it, but IMO there was a bigger risk to me and her unborn baby brother if she exposed us to rubella via the live vaccine compared to her relatively low risk of contracting any of those without it.

 

The "people"and the "CDC" are lying.

 

I suppose my titers were too? Hmmmm.....

 

Your anecdote does not = data.

 

Yup ... sometimes you're part of the 5% but I'm sure it feels like the 100% to you.