Something about this comment is really bugging me and I'm not sure what it is. I think I'm in agreement that giving people unnecessary medical procedures is probably a bad idea. Maybe it's just because I don't understand why you hate the chicken pox vaccine.
I took a quick look at the CDC page about it and the wikipedia entry. According to wikipedia before the vaccine was introduced in the US 10k people a year were admitted to a hospital due to chicken pox and 100 people a year died from it. It goes on to say that 10 years after the CDC recommended the vaccine the hospital admissions dropped by 71% for people under 20 and deaths dropped 97%.
Neither of those sources had numbers for the moderate or severe reactions cause by the vaccine (seizures,pneumonia) the CDC just says very rare. Overall though it seems like there is essentially no downside.
Now that I just looked all that up maybe my issue is when you claim that they "weighed a very rare risk for unvaccinated children against even smaller risks for vaccinated children" and go on to agree that was a rational decision. At that point wouldn't not being immunized just be irrational?
I'll admit that I don't make all of my decisions scientifically. I had chicken pox, all of my siblings and cousins had chicken pox, and I personally don't know anyone who had a bad enough case to be hospitalized.
If 100 people die out of 10000 that are hospitalized, the danger of death from people who have an unusually bad infection is only 1%, meaning the risk for the general public is significantly less.
But I'll admit my grandparents lived in a time where they knew large numbers of people suffered through measles, mumps or reubela. If they had the same "I lived through it" attitude I have, those diseases would be much more common today.
But, still, I have a hard time telling my kids that they have to get this specific vaccine so they can avoid the horrors of spending a week or two covering themselves with calamine lotion, with a small risk of something worse happening.
OK, here are the numbers from the CDC ( http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccination.html ): 4 million cases annually, 10,600 (0.265%) required hospitalization, and 100 to 150 (0.0025% to 0.0037% of the 4 million cases) deaths.
Certainly going from 100-150 deaths a year to fewer than 10 is a significant improvement, and the 90-140 people who survive each year who wouldn't are grateful (or would be, if they knew what the alternative was). But we are talking about a very small risk.
I took a quick look at the CDC page about it and the wikipedia entry. According to wikipedia before the vaccine was introduced in the US 10k people a year were admitted to a hospital due to chicken pox and 100 people a year died from it. It goes on to say that 10 years after the CDC recommended the vaccine the hospital admissions dropped by 71% for people under 20 and deaths dropped 97%.
Neither of those sources had numbers for the moderate or severe reactions cause by the vaccine (seizures,pneumonia) the CDC just says very rare. Overall though it seems like there is essentially no downside.
Now that I just looked all that up maybe my issue is when you claim that they "weighed a very rare risk for unvaccinated children against even smaller risks for vaccinated children" and go on to agree that was a rational decision. At that point wouldn't not being immunized just be irrational?