Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion IQ and health

I appreciate your PSA. The odds are in favor of most people getting vaccines. If I understand correctly, vaccines are required for workers in the fields of health care and medicine.

Well said.

This is primarily to benefit those in their care who have allergies or compromised immune systems that preclude them from getting vaccinated themselves. These individuals can still be protected through "herd immunity."

One predictable outcome of significant pockets of society opting out of vaccination: outbreaks.

Yes, this is one of the things that's very damaging about the "personal choice" crowd and vaccines. Most choose to ignore the fact that their personal choices can make other people, like babies, cancer patients, and people with allergies, sick or very sick.

This is my concern for undocumented immigrants.

We also have things like DTaP as an alternative to DTP (a vaccine which resulted in some claims). There may be a fine balance between accommodating individual liberties and the needs of society as a whole. This is one reason we have both the practice of individual health care, and also the CDC and field of public health.

While washing hands does not prevent all diseases, it may be something we can all agree on.

Thank you for sharing; I was blissfully unaware.
Has hand washing been correlated to IQ or other factors?
If I sing/hum happy birthday twice to time my hand washing, must I pay royalties?

An example: according to the CA Dep't of Health, (see article in LA Times), whoooping cough/pertussis isn't a problem in Mexico, our largest source of undocumented immigrants (they do a good job of vaccinating there). So this one, at least, is a white-folks disease. This makes perfect sense, because upper-middle class college-educated US Caucasians are a major demographic questioning vaccination.

My information was easy to find and was from a reliable source. I'd be interested in knowing your source of information about undocumented residents.

Your point gets back to the demographic outlined above and other points about education: some people think they're finding reliable information, but they aren't, and they allow themselves to be fooled. I'm not claiming that every information source I've ever used is perfect, but I will say that my information about vaccination comes from reputable sources.


No, we don't. DTP isn't an alternative to DTaP; it's an old vaccine for the same diseases (licensed 1949). It hasn't been used in the United States since 1991. The risk of neurological problems due to the old vaccine was 1:140,000 --- staggeringly low compared to what happens if you get tetanus (50,000 or more annual deaths worldwide before the vaccine was widespread) or diptheria (13,000-15,000 annual US deaths in the 1920s out of 100K-200K annual cases or 7.5-15% of cases ended in death. Most cases were children. The first vaccine was licensed in 1924).

Indigo, you're doing a great job of demonstrating how people argue/make decisions based on misinformation. This is bordering on being enough for a case study.

This is where I jump right to:

nodding and (in a horrified tone of voice) asking if they know what Prodromal Syndrome is like... OMG.... It's DEADLY. I had no idea until I researched this.

That way you're turning that impulse in a more productive direction, at least. Because the number ONE argument that I see people make against vaccinating (on philosophical grounds) is that they'll just quarantine themselves if they're sick. NO harm done, right? (er-- yeah, not so much, actually)

There are places within my own state where exemption rates are as high as 30%+ in some elementary schools. One of them is in a college town. {shudder} Yup. Measles outbreak just waiting to happen, pretty much.

Hello everyone - just a reminder to please be respectful in this thread, and please keep it on topic.

Mark