Thought experiment

[mme_hardy]

What if people who signed opt-out forms for their children's vaccinations had to accept consequences?

"I agree that if there is an outbreak of vaccine-controllable infectious diseases in the area, my child will be forbidden to attend school until the outbreak passes. I agree that if anyone in my household contracts a vaccine-controllable disease, my household will be quarantined until risk of contagion is past. "Quarantine" means that no member of the household will be allowed to leave the house except for a medical emergency, and that nobody outside the household will be permitted to come within contagion distance of the house."

Comments

[mme_hardy]

That's important to know; thank you. Government vaccination outreach clinics would seem to be a very good idea.

[adrian_turtle]

I find it disingenuous to use information from 1990 to show the difficulty with affording vaccination. In the years since then, many places have gone to quite a bit of trouble to let children have preventative health care, and Obamacare lets adults have it too.

Government vaccination outreach clinics would seem to be a very good idea.

Doesn't California have county boards of health where you can go and get vaccinated for free? It was a thing in New York 20 years ago, and in Michigan 40 years ago. And the towns around here schedule "flu clinics" in the fall, a few times/town, when you can go get vaccinated (if you haven't done it at the drugstore or supermarket or doctor's office or or or.)

[mme_hardy]

Huh? The article laurashapiro linked to is sourcing difficulties in vaccination to a January 2013 CDC study, which seems reliable to me. "49 percent of toddlers born from 2004 through 2008 hadn't had all their shots by their second birthday, but only about 2 percent had parents who refused to have them vaccinated. They were missing shots for pretty mundane reasons—parents' work schedules, transportation problems, insurance hiccups. "

Re clinics, it varies by county. The county across the bay from me, Contra Costa County, offers vaccination clinics in four cities, for one weekday a week from 1:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon. That's very unfriendly to working parents. http://cchealth.org/immunization/clinics.php#simpleContained1

[adrian_turtle]

I was referring to this:
In 1990, for example, an outbreak of measles killed 89 kids in the United States—most of them from poor families who said they couldn't afford the vaccine. A 2008 outbreak in San Diego resulted in 12 cases, this time among kids whose parents had refused the vaccine—but authorities had to quarantine an additional 48 who were too young to be vaccinated.

I had been thinking of "not vaccinated before age 2" as a less serious problem than "not vaccinated before starting school." But I shouldn't have dismissed it, when so many families are affected.

[meara]

I did some work on a pediatric vaccine study (adding meningitis to the standard regimen of shots), and one of the big issues the doctors had was not so much parents refusing to give shots at all (obviously there were some, but a lot of them didn't go to these doctors), but who wanted to "space out" the shots, or not give them because the kid was sniffly, etc. But then you have to go even MORE times, and it's more to keep track of (especially if the patient moves/changes doctors/insurance) and makes it super hard to ensure the kid has all of them. Which yes, some parents can space them out as they choose and pay any extra copays and will be all on top of it making sure they still all get done. Lots had some vague idea of it being "healthier" to space them out and then didn't manage to do that.

(Obviously this is ADDED to all the difficulty of making appointments and arranging/getting to them, etc)

[laurashapiro]

Only if they're open on weekends!