Vaccination and the Social Contract

Monday, February 2, 2015

There's been a flurry of Internet activity the last several weeks over the resurgence of Measles, herd immunity. and vaccinations. I've written on this subject more than once, and my feelings on this topic are pretty clear (and backed up by actual science, to boot).

But I feel the need to speak to this topic once again, inspired by a reprobate named Dr. Jack Wolfson, whom you should consider the new (now no longer a doctor) Andrew Wakefield, except with less morals.

After the outbreak of Measles at Disneyland, Dr. Wolfson felt the need to speak publicly about his opinion regarding vaccines and how they should be eliminated. At first I just considered his commentary to be the normal bleating of anti-vaxxers everywhere, but I was wrong.

In my opinion, Dr. Jack Wilson is a sociopath, with all that implies.

When contacted by CNN about the need to vaccinate healthy children in order to provide herd immunity to children who cannot be vaccinated due to health concerns, he responded:
"It's not my responsibility to inject my child with chemicals in order for [a child like Maggie] to be supposedly healthy," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's very likely that her leukemia is from vaccinations in the first place." 

"I'm not going to sacrifice the well-being of my child. My child is pure," he added. "It's not my responsibility to be protecting their child." 

CNN asked Wolfson if he could live with himself if his unvaccinated child got another child gravely ill. 

"I could live with myself easily," he said. "It's an unfortunate thing that people die, but people die. I'm not going to put my child at risk to save another child." 
Wow. Just.....wow.

Who thinks like this? My friend BrainDoc explains the real risk associated with vaccinating otherwise healthy children:
[Physicians] weigh benefit vs. risk when making a decision how to treat a patient, and vaccines are no different. Vaccines are comprised of chemicals, and, yes, they carry risk. They are injected into the body, so adverse events (side effects) may occur. These generally range from fairly common but mild (low-grade fever, muscle soreness) to really rare and can be severe (e.g., encephalitis, anaphylaxis, development of the disease the vaccine is intended to prevent). These are measured in events per 1,000,000 or million doses (e.g., anaphylaxis occurs in measles at a rate of 3.5 to 10 per million doses).
So basically, Dr. Wolfson is unwilling to have his children take a .0000035% chance of a severe reaction in order to protect the lives of children whose mortality rate would be quite high if they contracted Measles.

Again - who thinks like this? Vaccination for herd immunity is an aspect of the social contract, as well as a public health issue. The social contract demands that members of society give up some small amount of self-determination for the common good. In some cases, that means paying taxes so you can enjoy the services of the fire department and police. In other cases, it means you can't steal other people's shit. And in this case, it means you don't get to wantonly put other people's children in danger because doing so "isn't my responsibility."

It IS your responsibility, you sociopathic. self-important, non-critical thinking mother-fucker. You live in our society, you take advantage of the benefits of doing so - the reciprocal aspect of that is you need to get your children vaccinated, not only for their benefit, but for all our benefit.

Unless, of course, the social contract doesn't apply to you, Dr. Wolfson. If that's the case, I fully support your decision and will immediately notify public institutions that you no longer need their services. No more roads, police, firefighters, public schools, clean water, safe food and drugs for YOU.

After all, it's a small price to pay to keep your kids "pure," right?

3 comments:

Shawn Powers said...

I just get so stabby. And yeah, "stabby" might be a bit dated, but dang nabbit it makes me mad.

Janiece said...

I live to share the stabbiness.

vince said...

Chris Christie recently said that parents should have a "choice" in vaccinating their children, saying that the government’s requirement that children who attend public schools be immunized may be overreaching. He did back down a bit when called on it.

And then there's the nationwide anti-vaccine group Vaccine Liberation.

Stabby, stabby, stabby,