Are anti-vaccine people conspiracy theorists generally?

Nurses General Nursing

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I have an old friend from years ago who I now keep in touch with on Facebook. Her posts are fascinating in the amazing variety of conspiracy theories, some outrageous, some maybe partially true. She's a big believer that cannabis oil will cure just about anything and that information of course is being suppressed by the drug companies and the government.

She blames many, if not all, health problems on vaccines. She also subscribes to some disturbing anti-Semitic ideologies, blaming the network of high powered Jews, led by the evil Rothschild family.

I swear, the internet has turned slightly eccentric people into extremists. 30 years ago this woman was into macrobiotics, native Americans, and New Age philosophies.

If you know about herd immunity, then why the heck are you asking that question? Once again, I'm flabbergasted that we're having this conversation with another HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL.

Not all people can get all vaccines, due to health conditions that make vaccines contraindicated. Infants typically do not start getting vaccinated until 2 months old, and aren't fully protected until a year.

THOSE are the reasons why herd immunity is important.

No need to invoke Jesus in every post you make. Jesus has nothing to do with it.

Jesus has to do with everything for me. You can keep your own counsel with regard to Him and I will keep mine. If you don't like reading His name, don't read my posts.

Hepatitis is scheduled for birth or 1 month.

You never know when you might be able to share knowledge that someone else might not have - such as in this instance when you have stated a reason for pushing for herd immunity. Your reason had not occurred to me.

If you personally are against vaccines, that's your right. But it is not your right to risk lives of others, especially most vulnerable and weak ones. If a young child or an immunodepressed adult "just catches" something from an uncaccinated kid and dies, the mom of that kid is not "just a non-believer in vaccines". She is a killer.

Halleloo! You can drop the mic now. You summed it up perfectly.

Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
You never know when you might be able to share knowledge that someone else might not have - such as in this instance when you have stated a reason for pushing for herd immunity. Your reason had not occurred to me.

But that's the whole basis for herd immunity. You said you understood it.

I hope abstinence involves abstaining from any type of skin-to-skin intimate contact. Because one does not have to have lady partsl sex to contract HPV. It can also be spread during oral and anal sex and as a person who attended a Catholic school that taught abstinence, there was plenty of both of these other two types of sex going on during high school. Because, unfortunately, many of my classmates told me they were still virgins and "doing it in the butt" didn't count. Abstinence means different things to different people.

This isn't meant to be a dig, to be honest, just a glimpse into our world. I teach sex education and the world "virgin" is different for everyone. Virginity is a values word that is linked directly with ones beliefs. (I don't actually use it is while teaching sex education because of this - facts only.)

On this topic, I'm of the age where the HPV vaccine was just coming out and I was still under the cut-off age (26). Given that I had not yet become sexually active, my mom begged me to get this vaccine at my college health center. It was not covered by insurance at the time and she paid out of pocket for it for me ($200/per shot!). My mother was adopted and does not know her medical history, so she saw this as a chance to help me avoid cancer in the future.

A few years later, I had a friend diagnosed with cervical cancer at age 27. She did not get the vaccine. She is doing well now, but it was a long road.

To me abstinence means any and all sexual contact - lady partsl, oral, anal, whatever. How do you define it in your classes? Or are you allowed to even say the word? Or introduce the concept of waiting to have sex until married? Thank you for the kind tone of your reply. Glad your friend is doing well.

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.

Here is another interesting study that found most nonmedical exemptions were due to concern about vaccines causing harm and the parents of these children reported relative doubt about vaccine safety and efficacy as well as low levels of trust in the government and medical/public health experts as well as relative doubt their child was susceptible to the disease.

Perhaps tellingly, parents were also less likely to participate in the survey if they had refused vaccines.

Salmon, D. A., Moulton, L. H., Omer, S. B., Patricia deHart, M., Stokley, S., & Halsey, N. A. (2005). Factors associated with refusal of childhood vaccines among parents of school-aged children: a case-control study. Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine, 159(5), 470-476.

We also know that if your social media circle includes anti-vaxxers you are less likely to vaccinate.

Brunson, E. K. (2013). The impact of social networks on parents' vaccination decisions. Pediatrics, peds-2012.

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
To me abstinence means any and all sexual contact - lady partsl, oral, anal, whatever. How do you define it in your classes? Or are you allowed to even say the word? Or introduce the concept of waiting to have sex until married? Thank you for the kind tone of your reply. Glad your friend is doing well.

"Using the most recent national data (2005) from all U.S. states with information on sex education laws or policies (N = 48), we show that increasing emphasis on abstinence education is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates"

"A multivariate analysis of teen pregnancy and birth rates identified the level of abstinence education as a significant influence on teen pregnancy and birth rates across states (pregnancies F = 5.620, p = 0.002; births F = 11.814, p

Stanger-Hall, K. F., & Hall, D. W. (2011). Abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates: why we need comprehensive sex education in the US. PLoS One, 6(10), e24658.

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
Hepatitis is scheduled for birth or 1 month.

Why is that do you think? Maybe it's because 1/4 babies that get infected with HBV die prematurely?

Specializes in Anesthesia.
How high is highly?

I guess you would need to ask the original poster of the comment I was referring to.

You never know when you might be able to share knowledge that someone else might not have - such as in this instance when you have stated a reason for pushing for herd immunity. Your reason had not occurred to me.

Frankly, I'm wondering why it wasn't taught to you as part of your nursing education.

ARE you a nurse?

Specializes in Psychiatry, Community, Nurse Manager, hospice.

The anti-vaxxers get upset because there is a question of whether or not we ought to force them to comply. Forcing people to do things they don't want to do, especially with regards to what goes in their bodies absolutely sucks for us morally and we should avoid it whenever we can.

Force takes many forms. Threatening to cut off a person's employment or income counts as force. As does prohibiting school.

Using force is justified only when you are very certain that it will benefit the community and also very certain that it will not cause harm to the individual. Then you have moral grounds with which to use force.

My problem with using force on the flu shot is that we don't know what getting it 80 times over the course of a lifetime will do to people and we do know that flu doesn't usually kill healthy people. It does kill sick people, so maybe it is justifiable to use force for healthcare workers-- as in take your shot or don't come to work, don't get paid.

But for folks not working in healthcare I don't think force is justified with regards to the flu shot. It's a vaccine people are expected to get every year. We don't know what effect, if any that has over a lifetime yet.

In 100 years when we have evidence that giving flu shots to a person every year from ages 3 to 100 did not cause undue harm to that person, then we will have moral grounds to use force.

I think gardasil is also one where using force is not justified for similar reasons. It hasn't been around long enough. Gardasil is a weaker case against force then the flu shot, because we aren't expected to get it every year.

With proven, older vaccines that prevent devastating illness like polio, I think we are justified in straight up forcing people to comply. Not like, hold a person down and put a needle in him, but definitely keeping kids out of school, and maybe even cutting off income.

And I say that as a quasi-anarchist who vaccinates her children and gets her required annual flu shot. And also as a psych nurse, who sometimes really does have to hold people down and give them a needle. It breaks my heart every time and I don't do it unless it is really, really necessary.

Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.

But for folks not working in healthcare I don't think force is justified with regards to the flu shot. It's a vaccine people are expected to get every year. We don't know what effect, if any that has over a lifetime yet.

Outside of healthcare, I know of no entity that "forces" anyone to get the flu shot.

I think gardasil is also one where using force is not justified for similar reasons. It hasn't been around long enough. Gardasil is a weaker case against force then the flu shot, because we aren't expected to get it every year.

Ditto Gardasil. It's not compulsory. It's recommended. No states have included Gardasil in the list of required vaccines for public school attendance (thank the Conservative Christian Right for that, good or bad).

Specializes in Anesthesia.
The anti-vaxxers get upset because there is a question of whether or not we ought to force them to comply. Forcing people to do things they don't want to do, especially with regards to what goes in their bodies absolutely sucks for us morally and we should avoid it whenever we can.

Force takes many forms. Threatening to cut off a person's employment or income counts as force. As does prohibiting school.

Using force is justified only when you are very certain that it will benefit the community and also very certain that it will not cause harm to the individual. Then you have moral grounds with which to use force.

My problem with using force on the flu shot is that we don't know what getting it 80 times over the course of a lifetime will do to people and we do know that flu doesn't usually kill healthy people. It does kill sick people, so maybe it is justifiable to use force for healthcare workers-- as in take your shot or don't come to work, don't get paid.

But for folks not working in healthcare I don't think force is justified with regards to the flu shot. It's a vaccine people are expected to get every year. We don't know what effect, if any that has over a lifetime yet.

In 100 years when we have evidence that giving flu shots to a person every year from ages 3 to 100 did not cause undue harm to that person, then we will have moral grounds to use force.

I think gardasil is also one where using force is not justified for similar reasons. It hasn't been around long enough. Gardasil is a weaker case against force then the flu shot, because we aren't expected to get it every year.

With proven, older vaccines that prevent devastating illness like polio, I think we are justified in straight up forcing people to comply. Not like, hold a person down and put a needle in him, but definitely keeping kids out of school, and maybe even cutting off income.

And I say that as a quasi-anarchist who vaccinates her children and gets her required annual flu shot. And also as a psych nurse, who sometimes really does have to hold people down and give them a needle. It breaks my heart every time and I don't do it unless it is really, really necessary.

The only significant way that has been found to improve vaccine rates is to make them mandatory. You can see this in states with mandatory vaccine laws versus states without strict mandatory vaccine laws.

Actually, we have a pretty good idea what mandatory flu vaccines and other vaccines do when given over 80 years. It makes people live longer. The flu vaccine has been around for 80 years. The flu vacccine has an extremely high safety profile just like most vaccines. Your analogy of waiting 100 years to mandate vaccines is ridiculous. That is equilavent of saying lets not give ACE Inhibitors as a first line drug treatment until we have a 100 years of studies. It already takes almost 2 decades for research to come into practice. The flu vaccine outside of the military wasn't even mandatory for several decades well after the safety profile was well established with long term studies, cohort studies, retrospective studies etc.

The HPV vacccine can be 100% effective against most HPV strains that cause cervical cancer. It has been around for 11 years now, and every asinine antivaxxer complaint about its safety or that its going to cause promiscuiity has been debunked. In the USA men on average have 7 sexual partners and women 4 in their lifetimes. It makes sense to have a vaccine that can essentially get rid of most HPV infections, prevent the majority of cervical cancers, eliminate HCPs and infants accidental HPV exposure. The question is why wouldn't there be a mandatory HPV vaccine for girls and boys knowing that the safety profile is consistent with the literature and it has all these health benefits.

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