Natter Area 51: The Truthiness Is in Here
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
I'm reading People magazine, and they've got an article about the baby that died, whose parents were sentenced a few weeks ago. (The headline is "Did this baby die from a VEGAN DIET?" Um, no. The baby died from being underfed. If his parents had fed him the same amount of cow's milk that they fed him of soy milk, he probably would have still died.)
Anyway. The article mentions a family that's raised their kids vegan since birth, and the kids are fine. It's got this sentence: "Though the kids rank approximately in the 50th percentile for height and weight, they are normal, active children who take multivitamins and eat fortified cereal and soy milk, according to their parents." What on earth is that "though" at the beginning of the sentence supposed to mean?
Even though they're only precisely of average size...
So, I have sneakers. I'm not entirely sold on them, though. Hmph.
Anyway. The article mentions a family that's raised their kids vegan since birth, and the kids are fine. It's got this sentence: "Though the kids rank approximately in the 50th percentile for height and weight, they are normal, active children who take multivitamins and eat fortified cereal and soy milk, according to their parents." What on earth is that "though" at the beginning of the sentence supposed to mean?
Apparently, most kids are above average. Maybe the writer is from Lake Wobegon?
That said, I think every young woman should get the vaccine, because cervical cancer, bad.
Me, too. My daughter will get it, mandatory or not. I just object to the government making me do things.
A mandatory vaccine could make it as nearly extinct as polio in a generation or two. I don't see a downside.
The downside I see is infringing upon people's civil liberties. If it is mandated, and a person chooses not to have the vaccine (or if a parent chooses to delay a child's vaccine for whatever reason), what's going to result is that the person cannot get into school. You aren't going to catch HPV in a school setting, so you shouldn't have to be vaccinated against it, to go to school.
That's the only way states "mandate" vaccines. They don't stop everyone at the state line and shoot them up.
My "zap 'em all" had more to do with the feeling that insurance should cover it for everybody because zapping everybody is how you control a disease.
Right now if you're not a woman between, what, nine and twenty six you need to pony up $300+ dollars to get it. My ObGyn suspects that coverage limitation has more to do with available stocks than anything else and that in time it will extend to older women and then to men.
As far as it being mandatory... now that its been linked to oral cancer... if JZs depiction of "intimate contact" is what we're dealing with it probably should.
If its purely intercourse I'm still on the fence -- I can only control my own sexual behavior. I can't control my child's, my partner's, or my child's partner's. Epidemiologically speaking that seems like a lot of risk.
If it is mandated, and a person chooses not to have the vaccine (or if a parent chooses to delay a child's vaccine for whatever reason), what's going to result is that the person cannot get into school. You aren't going to catch HPV in a school setting, so you shouldn't have to be vaccinated against it, to go to school.
Lots of anti-vac folks are getting wavers--for things like MMR, so I think this one will have opt-out wavers, too.
I get itchy with the anti-vac crowd when it comes to common and dangerous illnesses but I don't see the point in making them get their kids vaccinated. If they lose a child to a common, preventable illness (at any age), it's their loss, not mine.
I do worry about over vaccinating, but the thing that bugs me is the chicken pox vaccine. Sheesh, its just chicken pox... is it mandatory for school?
Sheesh, its just chicken pox... is it mandatory for school?
Chicken pox can have some pretty serious complications in kids with asthma, I think.
OK, I can't find a cite for that right now, but it can cause serious problems if a pregnant woman who never had the disease or the vaccine is exposed to a kid who's infected.
Just like tonsilitis, chicken pox is more dangerous as you get older.
Also, vaccination for mumps has been standard for years, and mumps really isn't that much more serious than chicken pox for most people.
The university I'm at now requires either a chicken pox vaccine, a culture that shows you've been exposed and have immunity, or a doctor's records showing that you've had it, for any student under 26. (I went the doctor's records route, which took a bit of research -- I had chicken pox when I was three years old, which was several doctors ago. So I didn't have any records from the doctor who actually saw me then, but I had Dr. K.'s records, which said that Dr. R.'s records said that Dr. B.'s records said that I had chicken pox in July 1984.)
