pantryslut | (no subject)

(no subject)

The Berkeley Parents Network just shared some really interesting statistics about who is and isn't getting vaccinated for whooping cough around here.

And so I am forced to ask: what the hell is wrong with parents in Marin and those sending their charges to Montessori schools?

ETA: I'm a little curious as to what it is about the DTP shot in particular that people object to, but I'm also afraid to poke around to find out. Like I said elsewhere, it's already been a hard week.

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Special snowflakes don't get pertussis.

Being counterculture and "sticking it to the Man" are more important than protecting everyone disempowered.

Seems so. Piedmont Unified rates are also really low.

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2010IZRateTable.pdf

As is Piedmont Ave. in Oakland. I think we're just on the other side of the line for that being our neighborhood school.

Edited 2011-03-03 21:23 (UTC)

A friend of mine, many years ago, remarked that the very safest thing would be not to vaccinate one's own children while making sure that all other children were vaccinated. Given that she wasn't the absolute dictator of the world and didn't have much faith in the herd immunity in her immediate neighborhood, she went ahead and had her children vaccinated and hoped that others would do so for their children.

I assume it's not necessary to unpack that anecdote in this venue.

At a guess, it might be weird overflow from Wakefield's anti-MMR autism fraud: that led to some of the anti-vaccinationists objecting to combined shots in general.

I just had a talk with my father about how when the Red Cross offers free vacc clinics in his town these days, the newspaper's letter page fills up with rants about how they're trying to kill poor children.

Alas, I replied, we have far more efficient methods for that.

*sigh* Oh, special snowflake parents...you give crunchy parenthood a bad name.

A little exercise: text-search "Waldorf" and look at the PBE column.

I noticed some of that just by browsing :(

What's wrong with people is that they are unfamiliar with the actual science about vaccines, they've never met someone who HAD polio as a child*, and they have had their heads filled with a lot of fear about vaccines causing autism despite the fact that there is zero, zilch, nada evidence for this, or for the older, mercury-based preservative causing autism.

* I have several friends who have varying degrees of disability from polio, which they contracted before the vaccine became available. They all wish they'd had the option and all turn interesting colors when you mention people who won't vaccinate their kids.

Nonetheless, the specific demographics interest me. Why Montessori (and Waldorf)? Why Piedmont and Marin, but not (as far as I can tell) Crocker Heights?

Good questions.

Waldorf is Steiner, I think - they are philosophically out there someplace, ISTR.

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