Flu Vaccines Necessary in Kids?
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Influenza puts me between a rock and a hard place.
I have a partially vaccinated son w/autism. I have a unvaccinated son w/out issues. The unvaccinated son had a complication to influenza this year that put him in hospital for 3 days - he has had this scary complication 3 times in the past couple of years. I can't leave him open to it again so I feel I must vaccinate against flu next season. There is no easy answer here, we all have to be informed and make our own decisions. The government has a responsibility to protect the community as a whole - I have a responsibility to protect my family.
flu shot not necessary in kids
I completely agree that flu shots are nto safe for children, it is the vaccine with the most thimerosal (mercury) in it but it is recommended for pregnant women and babies....makes sense to me, pregnant women are told not to eat certain types of fish because of mercury levels but they can have organic mercury injected into their blood streams.
Consider the following...(continued)
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The third, and last, publication that suggests the importance of reducing transmission in children comes from the Annals of Emergency Medicine, March 28, 2008, in the article titled "Pediatric population size is associated with local timing and rate of influenza and other acute respiratory infections among adults". In this article, 157,542 adult respiratory infection-related Emergency Department visits were analyzed. From this study, "3−4 year olds are found to be the most significant predictors of adult illness rate ...and timing of onset" of acute respiratory illness. Furthermore they state that "these findings add to a growing body of evidence supporting a critical role played by children in community-wide transmission of ARIs [acute respiratory illnesses]".
Because of this, I want to strongly recommend that your readers consider the following: Evidence shows that not vaccinating children and adults against the flu increases the likeliness that you and your family will develop respiratory illness. It is not a mandate, it is the currently known truth based off of research.
I realize that you are pro-vaccine, and I do not mean this response in any other manner besides that of education. Without you, these questions would not be asked and I applaud your bringing this issue to light. It is my simple hope that facts, and not fear, be the contributors to every families navigation towards better health. May this season be a healthy one, and again, thank you for your piece.
-Matthew
Consider the following...
Hello Deborah,
Thank you for taking the time to report on a very important part vaccines play in maintaining public health, as well as raising the question about whether childhood flu vaccination is as important as public health officials say it is. As a disclaimer, I am a public health nurse working in the immunization field, and this means that I have made it my job to question what communities can do to improve their quality of life and to reduce the occurrence of disease; In that position, I support the right parents have to choose their child's care and make the best, evidence-based information available to parents.
I feel that your article gives good testimony to some of the major questions I've seen in the field about vaccines, first, whether or not they are necessary, and second, whether or not they are safe. In your article, you mentioned that the risk of death in children was not that great (about 1:1,000,000). However, in the article published by the CDC with those numbers, the also state that "of the 63 cases aged >6 months for whom vaccination status was known, 58 (92%) had not been vaccinated against influenza" (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5725a5.htm). This means that of those who died, only 8% of those who vaccinated died, compared with 92% of those who didn't. So even if the rate of death is not in high ratio, the evidence does seem to show that flu vaccination does prevent deaths.
Perhaps moreover, though, is the risk of transmission associated with children. Children are a large part of the flu transmission picture. Whether to other children or to other adults, their impact is documented. One source is based from Ira Longini's paper "Estimating Influenza Vaccine Efficacy From Challenge and Community-based Study Data", in which he states that "children are the most responsible for transmission of the flu. So, by vaccinating children in large enough percentages -- over 50 percent -- you could shut off transmission [to much of the population] in quantifiable amounts..." (Feb, 11, 2008, http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/168/12/1343 ).
A second testimony to the importance of child contact and flu transmission is derived from a recent publication in Nature, where the data-based estimation of the effects of closing schools (isolating a large amount of child-to-child contact) was compared with the rate of flu transmission in that population. They found that "estimating the impact of school closure on influenza transmission... we show that [closing for the] holidays lead to a 20–29% reduction in the rate at which influenza is transmitted to children." (April 10, 2008, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7188/full/nature06732.html)
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Consider the following...
Hello Deborah,
Thank you for taking the time to report on a very important part vaccines play in maintaining public health, as well as raising the question about whether childhood flu vaccination is as important as public health officials say it is. As a disclaimer, I am a public health nurse working in the immunization field, and this means that I have made it my job to question what communities can do to improve their quality of life and to reduce the occurrence of disease; In that position, I support the right parents have to choose their child's care and make the best, evidence-based information available to parents.
I feel that your article gives good testimony to some of the major questions I've seen in the field about vaccines, first, whether or not they are necessary, and second, whether or not they are safe. In your article, you mentioned that the risk of death in children was not that great (about 1:1,000,000). However, in the article published by the CDC with those numbers, the also state that "of the 63 cases aged >6 months for whom vaccination status was known, 58 (92%) had not been vaccinated against influenza" (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5725a5.htm). This means that of those who died, only 8% of those who vaccinated died, compared with 92% of those who didn't. So even if the rate of death is not in high ratio, the evidence does seem to show that flu vaccination does prevent deaths.
Perhaps moreover, though, is the risk of transmission associated with children. Children are a large part of the flu transmission picture. Whether to other children or to other adults, their impact is documented. One source is based from Ira Longini's paper "Estimating Influenza Vaccine Efficacy From Challenge and Community-based Study Data", in which he states that "children are the most responsible for transmission of the flu. So, by vaccinating children in large enough percentages -- over 50 percent -- you could shut off transmission [to much of the population] in quantifiable amounts..." (Feb, 11, 2008, http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/168/12/1343 ).
A second testimony to the importance of child contact and flu transmission is derived from a recent publication in Nature, where the data-based estimation of the effects of closing schools (isolating a large amount of child-to-child contact) was compared with the rate of flu transmission in that population. They found that "estimating the impact of school closure on influenza transmission... we show that [closing for the] holidays lead to a 20–29% reduction in the rate at which influenza is transmitted to children." (April 10, 2008, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7188/full/nature06732.html)
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flu shot
well I would NEVER give my kids or anyone I know the flu shot. ALl but one very hard to find shot is mercury free. I don't care that the government thinks it is too little mercury to be harmful; I simply don't believe that. I would prefer not to but toxins into my body that my body may not be able to chelate fore x number of reasons when who knows if that flu strain will even hit me and if it does, I would rather be sick for a week than sick for an entire lifetime. NO FLU SHOTS EVER
Flu vaccines in children
Thank you for presenting both sides of this issue. I used to get my children totally vaccinated with any vaccine that came on the market. Now I realize that many vaccines were designed specifically to make money for the drug companies and are not actually for my children's health. The huge increase in recommended vaccines in children (they get something like 30 vaccinations by the time they are 2!) without any long term studies on what this may do to their immune system is scary. Babies get vaccinated against hepatitis on the day they are born - this is the type of hepatitis that drug users and sex trade workers have - and I guess the fear is that all of our little newborns will be shooting up drugs and visiting prostitutes immediately so we'd better protect them from day 1. My children do not need to be a money-making lab rat for the drug companies. Let's slow down the vaccination schedule and limit the numbers of vaccines to something that may actually be healthy for our children.
