This is only a part time issue for my daughter, but it does make you think more about those if affects all the time when it is closer to you.

This is understandable because I have done the same thing. There are vaccines that shed live viruses and I have no desire to have my son around people recently receiving them. I’m thinking specifically of a nurse at church. I asked her to please let me know if she got the smallpox vax because if she did we would stay away for a period of time.

But how do you know if the vaccinated children’s vaxes took? That’s a common problem too. What if they got a bad batch? What if the vaccine they are trusting in didn’t do a thing for them.
There is no way to know if they are carrying something that will harm your child either.

Do people shedding viruses from recent vaxes cause concern too?

It’s not just a vaccinated/unvaccinated question because the truth is that vaccines are not 100% effective for anyone.

Once almost everyone had measles as a child, and death was common. While improved health care and cleanliness certainly has benefited us greatly, it is not the only explanation. Else unvaccinated children would not contract these diseases at such significantly higher rates than those who are vaccinated. These diseases are viral and do not respond to antibiotics.

Also there are other factors to consider. Children eat far more processed foods today than a century ago, are far less active and suffer from obesity and other complications for an unhealthy lifestyle previously virtually unheard of among children. Our population is denser. Disease should travel much faster through the population.

There are risks to vaccines, but to attempt to argue that they do not work just makes no sense and really isn’t supported by science.

And scarlet fever is bacterial, not viral. It can be treated with antibiotics which have not always been available.

Many of these disseases were almost eradicated without any help from vaccines. Aussies have documented this heavily. Here is one such chart:

http://www.whale.to/vaccines/decline1.html

Other diseases were eradicated without any vaccine ever being invented, scarlet fever for instance. Was it a miracle??? No…the reasons I cited above explain it.

100 years from now I fully suspect the vaccine movement will be likened to the “bleeding” practice of old.

Reacting to what you perceive as my “tone” when I clearly state that I support your right to make these decisions for your own family is not particularly helpful to the discussion.

There is a lot out there about “the right to get sick” but I agree with Rebecca that a lot of people have become desensetized to exactly what these diseases can and have done. Certainly, healthy children often recovered with no ill effects, but that wasn’t always the case. And isn’t always the case.

Back in 1990, we had a similar scare, but rather than 131 cases, it was over 27,000, a 51% increase over the previous year. Mose were unvaccinated or vaccinations were incomplete and over 90% of these were among those with religious or philosophical exemptions to vaccinations. Only 89 deaths, but predominantly among those unvaccinated (91%). Before vaccinations, there were over 500,000 cases per year with thousands of deaths, and of course many more diseases than measles to contend with.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001999.htm

Now, measles is no longer considered endemic to the United States, with most cases starting with someone who traveled overseas. Polio, too, has been virtually eradicated. As well as small pox.

Worldwide, vaccinations have led to a 2/3 decrease in measles cases and death.

I’m sure improving diet and overall health has contributed a lot to this, but deaths in children under five used to be much more commonly related to disease. Now accidents such as improper restraints during a car crash, drowning and accidental poisoning are among the leading causes of deaths for children.

Somehow, I don’t think that most parents…and probably most of us…would be terribly committed to our children’s “right” to get sick at the turn of the century when disease, complications and even death were more common and more known to people on an individual basis.