facebook-pixel

Commentary: Failure to vaccinate threatens everyone

A health worker gives a polio vaccine to a girl in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, April 9, 2018. A Pakistani official said authorities launched a new polio vaccination drive, aiming to reach 38.7 million children under the age of 5. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

We’ve all seen it coming — an increase in parents and even custodians, in spite of clearly proven science, refusing to have their children vaccinated and likely immunized against a plethora of horrible diseases — polio, measles (two kinds: roseola and rubella), mumps, typhoid fever, tetanus, chicken pox (often followed by very painful shingles in later years), diphtheria, whooping cough, meningitis, cervical and other cancer-causing papilloma virus and even rabies after a child has been bitten or scratched by a potentially rabid animal (these and others totaling 27 preventable diseases).

And now more and more of these diseases are making a chilling and deadly return. I will not go into the credible science for and against, as that is simple to find on the internet, or from your doctor, nurse, physician’s assistant or health department, and immunization for all of these diseases are clearly today’s medical standard of care and practice. Interestingly, the most quoted and only published study supporting a vaccination (not allergic) bad outcome (autism), was not only completely debunked, but was actually recalled by the publishing scientific journal (a very rare event), and the doctor authoring it then banned from medical practice (an even rarer event).

In my experiences as an emergency, EMS and 911 physician, I often worked with the folks at the 911 center in Montreal, Quebec. The center and other government offices were located in a huge building of 1800s architecture that looked similar to the old Saint Anne’s school on 2100 South — although at least three times as big. Its initial use was to house orphan children who were smitten “deaf and mute” by what was called when I was a kid the German measles (rubella), way before any immunizations or cures for it existed — several hundreds of female children. Saint-Denis was a gothic heart-breathtaking sight to behold. And it starkly reminded me, a more modernly trained doc, of the potential ravishes of these always-lurking diseases.

While I think that such immunizations should be an absolute legal requirement for all kids (just like driver’s ed, and the requirement to drive on the right side of the road), there is a secondary solution that doesn’t prevent parental discretion in vaccinations (as if that should be necessary in the 21st century), but one that will hold these parents and custodians accountable in an important and obvious way.

Any child not presenting evidence of all currently required immunizations, entering into a day care facility, public school, dance program, athletic team or other similarly joined social group, must post a bond or obtain insurance that covers the costs (both medical care and disability, loss of income, satisfaction of life, etc.) of any others who might get such disease, if it is shown that their child had the disease while participating in any such group in which others were then shown to be infected.

Health departments and CDC epidemiologists confirm such behavior all the time —it’s not rocket science. So therefore, stick your “cock-sure” neck out and don’t vaccinate your kids. But now you’ll have to have some skin in the game – which is how community-based civilization has worked under the law for centuries.

Good luck prayer or charm will now definitely be needed when making such bad decisions.

Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune Jeff Clawson, M.D., inventor of the Priority Dispatch System and co-founder of the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch invented emergency dispatch codes that improve the efficiency of emergency calls. Clawson was photographed in his office at National Academies of Emergency Dispatch office in Salt Lake City on Friday, August 6, 2010.

Jeff Clawson, M.D., is medical director of the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch, Salt Lake City.