My mom got polio after the polio vaccine had been invented; her parents did not understand/believe in the good of the new fangled (yet hundreds of years old) concept of vaccines. Because of that, I decided long ago that I'm Yay!Vaccines, in spite of possible bad reactions, up to and including autism. Of course, it is a relief to be a little more sure that vaccinating any child I might have will not cause autism.

Alpha-bits.

By the way, since I see we're still on food a bit, I went shopping and had two Reuben sandwiches for dinner. And they were wonderful.

Daniel bought some salted-up brisket. When we get around to cooking it up (in the crockpot, changing out the water several times), I shall have to get some rye bread, sour kraut, swiss cheese, and Thousand Island Dressing.

we had one of those viruses over here for a couple days where she only got the fever at night - and during the day she was active and fine.

Her fever is back to 100 now, but she's running around like normal. I've convinced her to watch MORE movies and since she's normally limited to an hour a day, she's happy.

re: the vaccines

I must admit that as someone who has done the research and vaccinated Ellie, that case in GA stills freaks me out on a non-intellectual level. Frisco got his first shots last week and even though I *knew* he would be fine, I was still nervous.

My midwife, who I otherwise adored, kept telling me rather proudly how her daughter doesn't get her kids vaccinated. As mentioned above, I think it comes from people never having seen how awful these diseases really are. I mean, I suspect in the 50s if people had been told, "This vaccine will prevent polio but there's a .1% chance your child might have autism," people still would have done it.

Oh, Aimee. ::hugs Aimee hard and shoots death glare at Aimee's boss::

Oh, and Aimee, I'm obsessed with my own stuff this morning, but your Boss needs to be kicked. If you trust your employees to work for you, you have to trust that if they ask for something, it's because they need it.

And chicken pox may not kill you, but if you can avoid the itching and scarring and general ICK, why wouldn't you?

There's a chicken pox vaccine?

Apparently it's been licensed in the US since 1995. Huh.

Now Smallpox..."Don't come back now, y'hear?"

The thing that really burns me is that the study that kicked off the autism paranoia was based on 12 children. TWELVE. And the results were shaky to begin with and were later redacted by all but 3 of the original authors. (Not to mention all the subsequent studies - larger and more rigorous - which failed to show any link at all.)

But that one stupid study was picked up by the news media and started a goddamn movement, and now it doesn't matter what the facts are, people will believe what they want to believe.

Jake was a toddler when the vaccine started becoming popular, and it wasn't recommended yet, based on ... something I forget. He would have been four in 1995, and he got the pox that year, so that sounds right. Ben and Sara had it, though.

I grew up in the era of chicken pox parties. Remember those?

K-Bug got Chicken Pox the old fashioned way but CJ got the vaccine and now his doc is recommending a booster for it.

At the SDSU open house, the papers we got on housing HIGHLY recommended the meningococcal meningitus vaccine. It is not manditory, but you have to either get the vaccine or sign a waiver.