I was with you right up until you wished polio on the unvaccinated. That is just an evil thing to say.

Relatively empty beaches and much lower house prices.
Of course, I wouldn't be here to enjoy it.

Those laws already exist but maybe some of them will be "strengthened." My state is one of the most stringent, only religious objection and documented medical exception are allowed.

In spite of thinking that vaccines are one of the greatest of man's inventions, probably right behind antibiotics, and in spite of my own personal choice to be vaccinated (and would vaccinate my kids if I had any), I don't think the government should force it on anyone. If a person doesn't own his own body then what can he own?

The "yeah, but the unvaccinated put everyone else at risk" argument doesn't fly with me. I intend to discuss this with my doctor, but why are vaccinated people contracting measles? Do people need more boosters than they're getting now? Should I get a measles booster every 5 or 10 years? The Pnumovax (pneumonia) vaccine is good for 5 years. I get vaccinated every 5 years for that. Our pets get rabies vaccines every year or every 3 years, depending on which vaccine your state allows.

Rather than violating the right of a person to control his own body maybe we need to re-evaluate our current vaccination regimen so the rest of us can remain healthier.

Let Disney check for vaccinations if its so important. Maybe entry to Disney is more important than health to some.
I can just see it. $100 for a ticket to Disney if you have been vaccinated, and $110 if you want to be vaccinated upon entry.
(Saving my $100 for a ticket to Atlantis.)

It's not just the "weak" who die from infections. Some bugs become so virulent that very few people survive them. Do you think the Spanish Flu killed the weak? Wrong, it killed those with good immune systems more than weak ones.

[Wikipedia: Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults. Modern research, using virus taken from the bodies of frozen victims, has concluded that the virus kills through a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system). The strong immune reactions of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.]

It killed tens of millions of people all over the entire world, upwards of 50 million by modern estimates.

If civilization had to continue based only those who survived deadly diseases where do you think we'd be today?

Yep it is working -- so why the push for more regulation? Seems like a different agenda is at work here.

My fellow Americans are paranoid. I think 9/11 really changed America. Ever since then we seem so afraid, so eager to stick anybody with the label of "enemy". So, now the anti-vax and maxi-vax people must be at each other. I've heard anti-vaxers called "biological terrorists". LOL. There's a lot of mention of Andrew Wakefield in social media lately. That's a story that got twisted then got legs. It's too bad people are so wound up over this.

So, think about it. In your personal circle do you know anybody who's gotten measles lately? I don't. We had one suspected case but it ended up being a severe reaction to antibiotics for a young boy. As I watched yet more coverage on the measles story by Brian Williams last night (you know...he never lies) the thought occurred to me. We have all these reported cases of measles yet I have yet to see one person or family member directly effected on the news. I looked over at my buddy and said, "Could this just be a cooked up story?" What do you think? Maybe local news in SoCal has been interviewing victims of this outbreak.

I know I'm supposed to be afraid, but I'm just not feeling it.

Catching the flu will only build up your immunity to that strain of the flu, which may or may not show up again for a number of years.

And even if the flu doesn't kill you, if you get a very bad case then your temporarily challenged immune system may be unable to fight off a secondary infection.

I'm not trying to convince you to get a flu vaccine but just pointing out that it's not necessarily such a trivial decision.

I'm much more likely than average to die from the flu, so I always get vaccinated. I've had cancer for 35 years, and it's not that my immune system is compromised but rather that my airways are partially obstructed. When a cold or flu manifests itself with chest congestion it takes me about two extra weeks to clear out the crud, two extra weeks of coughing that eventually just wears me out.

That was probably chicken pox rather than measles. I could be wrong.

The public is being played like a drum. It's a moot point because, state-by-state, there are laws being drafted to force people to fully vaccinate their kids. This is being done by removing all exemption possibilities and tying education, even home schooling, to full vaccination. If parents don't comply CPS will take the kids and do it, possibly never returning the children to their parents (unfit, you know).

See...I told you this would get interesting for Objectivists. LOL...

"I really kinda hope some of these kids wind up with polio too, so the US can join the Kashmir region of India as being the only place in the world where polio exists."

You sound like a disgusting creature. Maybe I read your statement wrong, though. You actually want kids to get polio? Man, that's pretty sick. You have to be pretty angry to be coming from such a dark place. I feel sorry for you.

When I was a kid, there were three diseases you were expected to get while still in primary school. A sort of rite of passage. They were chicken pox, mumps, and the two kinds of measles, German measles, and measel measles. I seemed to have missed one of the measles because in my late 20s I went to my boss and said I had to go home because I think I had the measles. He said he thought it was just a rash, and opening my shirt, I said "All over?" There was no hoo-ha about it. You got it, you were sick for a few days and that was it.

Informed individual free will should be able to weigh the risk and benefit and make the correct choice.

of course the vaccene is, that's because nobody is dying of measles hardly, due to the vaccine. If we didn't have the vaccine hell a lot of people would be dying from the measles. A lot more than would be killed by the vaccine. That's why we have vaccines. why is this so damn difficult for nitwit soccer moms to understand.

This is silly. If there was no measles vaccine, lots of people would die from measles.

The 10% figure is false. Humans use most of their brain, but much differently than other creatures do. Rather than a central processing unit, the human brain is a communal collective of processing stations. Our eyesight is a result of serial processing from the retina through the optic nerve, where the refined imagery is finally formed in the cortex. Even our sense of balance is a result of the operations of "mini brains" in our spinal column. We operate as an electrochemical jel, with a maximum reaction speed of 240 mph, so if every action we take had to be processed in the lump of matter in our skull, we couldn't walk or speak. Humans are far more complex than we've been taught to believe, and we still don't understand the astounding performance of the savants who make calculations faster than it should be possible, so we have a lot to learn.

Incidentally, no vaccine would have helped Hawking, since ALS is yet untreatable or curable.

I remember as a child being taken to visit other kids who had measles in the hope that I would contract it early, and thereby get immunity. I got the 3-day measles, but never caught the real measles.

Partially... the big problem is so many mothers that have been lulled into thinking its not important. 10% of kids in Orange County, California (very wealthy) were not vaccinated. That's 10% of Anaheim (Disneyland).. for example... And probably about the point in age where these kids are showing up to work their first jobs at Disneyland... and voila... perfect storm.

Ahh... Like Stephen Hawking should have been eliminated? We only use 10% of your brains, its a certainty that we can increase that. Most of the problem has been the short lifespans humans had earlier in history - we used to get married & pop out kids at 14 in the dark ages because most people died of dental infections, the flu, polio, pneumonia, bubonic plague, etc. by the time they were 30. Evolution has been slowed in that regard. Even dolphins and probably dogs use more of their brain that we do (as a percentage of it).

That was my point - the very few deaths are from a generalized infection/allergy (from the egg white) that the people didn't know they even had.

Vaccines are usually cultured in an egg for the sterility and perfect environment it provides. Some (such as the ebola vaccine) are actually cultivated inside of a live tobacco leaf.

You sound like you are afraid of needles.

I travel 150,000 air miles a year... so... obviously my exposure is significant... but I get a flu shot every year, I get a headache and maybe a slight fever for an hour or two after it, and I haven't been sick (ever) in about 10 years.. and I even eat out for pretty much every meal I eat, and in all parts of the country.... the flu shot protects well against sick people preparing your food too.

The generalized flu shot normally has about 700+ sample strains of various influenza in it.

If you never go out of your house, have limited contact with civilization, a vaccination is probably useless. If you are in contact with people, - airports, work in a hospital, schools, etc. its an absolute necessity.

This is absolute junk science. "Nobody" dying from measles is because it was wiped out in the US until the latest crop of Millennial generational tree-huggers and quacks with test tube babies in their 40's/50's in Orange County, CA with way too much time on their hands.

3 million kids are vaccinated each year, so 108 deaths out of 30 million +/-... and I'm sure the vaccine didn't kill them, it was probably an error that created a general infection or something (which can be deadly for a baby).

Without the vaccine, out of 30 million unvaccinated babies, you would be looking at around 25 million cases of measles, which is a serious illness. If on top of asthma or a respiratory infection, it is immediately very deadly. It wouldn't be a shocker to see 100,000 to 250,000 deaths from measles & complications, not to mention the side effects of the prolonged illnesses and the fact that every one of those kids would be out of school for 3 weeks at a time, pretty much wiping out the school.

This is about one thing, mommy is afraid of needles. That's it, so she runs with ridiculous levels of made-up research to find something to justify her concerns.

There are 2 religions that are opposed to vaccination - the JW's used to be back in the 50's, but I think that went away, polio pretty much snuffed out that thought. My dad had polio before the vaccine, they broke his "good" leg 27 times over a 3 year period trying to 'stunt' its growth to match the short polio leg. When that didn't work, they put 350 staples in the bone to keep the bone from growing. When I was about 15, he had over 1000 metal fragments removed from the muscle tissue of his leg where those staples had fragmented. Obviously, none of that worked, and he was put in the "iron lung" for weeks to keep him breathing. It was a horrific disease.

I really kinda hope some of these kids wind up with polio too, so the US can join the Kashmir region of India as being the only place in the world where polio exists.

Christian Scientists are the only one "opposed" on religious grounds. Ok, that's pretty small... something in the decimal point of under 0% of the population, but upwards of 10% of kids are unvaccinated, so it comes back to my argument. Mommy is afraid of needles.

Even though I agree with you, I'm glad for vaccines, because I was born with a very weak immune system.

The dilemma mankind has created for itself with vaccines is that it allows the weak to procreate. Up to a point in history, only those with robust immune systems and strong physical constitutions survived. The unknown positive outcome is how many physically infirm are powerful intellectuals that might have been eliminated in the past. The technological turning point we now seem to be reaching is that we are slowly learning how to overcome physical infirmity, and even getting some indication we may be able to increase our intellectual abilities. Are we about to achieve some form of morally acceptable eugenics? I honestly don't know, any more than I can foresee if our artificially intelligent creations may overtake our new "super race". The Singularity seems to be approaching rapidly.

Yeah....which indicates to me that the vaccine works, no? A vaccine that killed people *and* ended up letting people die of the disease wouldn't be much good, would it?