The “me” generation of rugged individualists has hit a new low. Many of its members won’t let their kids be vaccinated. Invariably those children get sick. Tough luck for the religious zealots and paranoid fearers of autism. Often their kids die of diseases that were thought obliterated decades ago.
We’ll spare you the pictures of hideously deformed babies in otherwise normal middle class American homes, the limbless infants who have died or will die of meningitis or polio or scarlet fever or the bubonic plague. Or even the common current edition of the flu, mumps or chicken pox.
Measles was declared dead more than a dozen years ago. But the disease has resurfaced in Texas, California and New York. Granted there were only about 200,000 cases reported in this country. All of them were in unvaccinated children. USA Today reports that as the number of unvaccinated are infected, the number could rise exponentially. And of new cases, about one kid in 1,000 infected will die.
But an unvaccinated kid with the Dread Gonk or some other horrible affliction is still a person, a social person with a social-person mommy and or daddy who will take them to the park where they can infect other kids… kids who are not old enough to be vaccinated and are vulnerable to contagions of all sorts.
It’s a pretty well established fact that vaccines don’t cause autism. Of course, that postulate comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the largest, most advanced and most respected investigators of this stuff on the planet.
Some parents don’t trust it or any other government agency. But they do trust uneducated but “spiritual” politicians and preachers who should be locked into padded cells so that when they hear voices the rest of us are protected.
Some vaccines do have side effects. Skin rashes, a little swelling, a low key easy to kill version of whatever the vaccine is supposed to protect against.
Autism Spectrum Disorder is not one of them. We don’t know the direct cause or causes. Current thinking is leaning toward genetic factors compounded by environmental toxins like mercury.
Vaccination is a public health issue. Like smoking or drug addiction or the misuse of firearms.
Parents who were vaccinated as children and shockingly don’t have autism ask themselves “how is this possible?”
Just because you hear voices, doesn't mean they speak truth.
Shrapnel:
--Crime remains down in New York City but the New York Times reports that car theft is on the rise and that thieves are targeting older and nearly worthless vehicles. A quirk in the state law makes them easy to sell for scrap. So the heavier, the better … and at 5,000 pounds, your ‘57 DeSoto Firedome 8 is a prime target even though it hasn’t run in 15 years.
--They’re making a big deal out of the low graduation rate among male basketball players at UConn, newly minted NCAA basketball champions and at eight per cent they should be. That’s the poorest in the sport. But the other teams in the “final four” aren’t great either with Wisconsin at 44%, Florida at 60 and Kentucky at 82.
--Chick-fil-A says it’s going to open stores in New York City. They’ll be about as welcome as Wal-mart. But they’ll do enough business to stay in business because the average New Yorker doesn’t care where he eats or about the politics or sexual repression of those who own the places he patronizes.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment