In 1932, my uncle Adolph — who by the end of the decade preferred to be known simply as Erik or “the Swede” — was diagnosed with diphtheria. He was 15.
He and his family, including my mother, then 6, were ordered to stay inside their Palo Alto home for many days. No one was allowed in or out, not even my grandfather, who was at his job as a bus driver when the “quarantined” sign was nailed to the door.
It was serious business. In those days, as many as 13,000 to 17,000 children died every year of diphtheria in the United States.
After anxious days of prayer and dutiful bedside care by my grandmother, Adolph survived, but he suffered permanent eyesight damage, which, according to the family, prevented him from going to college. He never let that slow him, however. He graduated from the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, served in the U.S. Navy and went on to run his own successful engineering company.
The last time I talked to Adolph, shortly before he died in 2007, he told me how grateful he still was that he survived that terrible episode. “I was very lucky,” he told me. “Someone was watching out for me.”
I thought of him last week as I read about the rising number of parents, particularly in Sonoma County, who are refusing to vaccinate their children, one of those being the vaccination against pertussis (whoopping cough), tetanus and diptheria.
State records show the percentage of fully immunized students entering kindergarten in Sonoma County has dropped 4 percent in the past six years to 87.7 percent last fall. The county’s rate of exemptions for childhood vaccinations is six times higher than the national average.
Are people watching out for others nowadays?
Once upon a time, parents led the cheer when vaccinations were developed for diseases such as diphtheria and polio. Now parents — at least some of them — seem to be leading the charge against them.
Are there good reasons for this?
I asked this of Dr. Gary Green, doctor of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa. As an internist, Green treated someone returning from India with a severe case of malaria and became fascinated with the subject. He studied it at the Medical Center of Delaware and later completed his infectious diseases training at UCLA. He is now widely respected for his expertise.
He has other important credentials as well. He’s a parent. He notes that he and his wife, Lucy, “didn’t defer or delay” when it came time for giving vaccinations to their son and daughter, who are both now in grade school.
“I think when parents choose to opt out of vaccinations, they put other students at risk and they put the public at risk,” he said. “We know that from pertussis outbreaks, and we know that from measles outbreaks. .
.
. It’s a dangerous thing to a community.”
Green says that those who choose not to vaccinate benefit from the “herd immunity” — which means as long as most everyone else gets their shots, those who avoid them are protected anyway.
“What happens when you stop vaccinating a certain percentage of the population” — less than about 85 percent — “you lose the herd immunity,” he said. And that’s when real problems start to occur, such as the outbreak of measles in San Diego last year triggered by an unvaccinated 7-year-old.
But children don’t just run the risk of spreading whooping cough and other diseases to other children. They put the lives of seniors at risk as well as those with weakened immune systems due to medical treatments or illness.
Green posed this scenario: Imagine a family member has just gone through chemotherapy treatment to combat and beat leukemia but ends of dying of measles because someone chose not to have a child vaccinated. “That kind of thing clearly happens,” he said. “People aren’t conscientious enough about people around them.”
Green said that in his years of practice he’s seen only two cases of life-threatening reactions to vaccinations. Both of them were in Wyoming.
“They do happen, but they are very, very rare,” he said. Too rare to justify the kind of trends we’re seeing in Sonoma County. At some west county schools, for example, more than half of the kindergartners received exemptions from immunizations last fall.
What I don’t get are the people who claim that the experts and data are not to be trusted about vaccinations but then scoff at those who deny such things as global warming — citing all the expert testimony and data. Are experts only to be trusted when they validate our beliefs or, in this case, anxieties?
Ultimately, this is not about facts. We can debunk the facts about an alleged connection between vaccinations and autism until we’re blue in the face, but, like the legend of Bigfoot, the issue won’t go away. You can’t prove a negative. And, as one doctor was quoted, “You can’t unscare people.”
This is about trust — or, rather, distrust based on fear rather than legitimate skepticism.
It’s also about not knowing a time when children were in iron lungs for polio, when quarantined signs were nailed to front doors — and when people watched out for one another.
<p>In 1932, my uncle Adolph — who by the end of the decade preferred to be known simply as Erik or “the Swede” — was diagnosed with diphtheria. He was 15.</p><p>He and his family, including my mother, then 6, were ordered to stay inside their Palo Alto home for many days. No one was allowed in or out, not even my grandfather, who was at his job as a bus driver when the “quarantined” sign was nailed to the door.</p><p>It was serious business. In those days, as many as 13,000 to 17,000 children died every year of diphtheria in the United States.</p><p>After anxious days of prayer and dutiful bedside care by my grandmother, Adolph survived, but he suffered permanent eyesight damage, which, according to the family, prevented him from going to college. He never let that slow him, however. He graduated from the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, served in the U.S. Navy and went on to run his own successful engineering company.</p><p>The last time I talked to Adolph, shortly before he died in 2007, he told me how grateful he still was that he survived that terrible episode. “I was very lucky,” he told me. “Someone was watching out for me.”</p><p>I thought of him last week as I read about the rising number of parents, particularly in Sonoma County, who are refusing to vaccinate their children, one of those being the vaccination against pertussis (whoopping cough), tetanus and diptheria.</p><p><NO1><NO>State records show the percentage of fully immunized students entering kindergarten in Sonoma County has dropped 4 percent in the past six years to 87.7 percent last fall. The county’s rate of exemptions for childhood vaccinations is six times higher than the national average.</p><p>Are people watching out for others nowadays?</p><p>Once upon a time, parents led the cheer when vaccinations were developed for diseases such as diphtheria and polio. Now parents — at least some of them — seem to be leading the charge against them.</p><p>Are there good reasons for this?</p><p>I asked this of Dr. Gary Green, doctor of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa. As an internist, Green treated someone returning from India with a severe case of malaria and became fascinated with the subject. He studied it at the Medical Center of Delaware and later completed his infectious diseases training at UCLA. He is now widely respected for his expertise.</p><p>He has other important credentials as well. He’s a parent. He notes that he and his wife, Lucy, “didn’t defer or delay” when it came time for giving vaccinations to their son and daughter, who are both now in grade school.</p><p>“I think when parents choose to opt out of vaccinations, they put other students at risk and they put the public at risk,” he said. “We know that from pertussis outbreaks, and we know that from measles outbreaks. .<TH>.<TH>. It’s a dangerous thing to a community.”</p><p>Green says that those who choose not to vaccinate benefit from the “herd immunity” — which means as long as most everyone else gets their shots, those who avoid them are protected anyway.</p><p>“What happens when you stop vaccinating a certain percentage of the population” — less than about 85 percent — “you lose the herd immunity,” he said. And that’s when real problems start to occur, such as the outbreak of measles in San Diego last year triggered by an unvaccinated 7-year-old.</p><p>But children don’t just run the risk of spreading whooping cough and other diseases to other children. They put the lives of seniors at risk as well as those with weakened immune systems due to medical treatments or illness.</p><p>Green posed this scenario: Imagine a family member has just gone through chemotherapy treatment to combat and beat leukemia but ends of dying of measles because someone chose not to have a child vaccinated. “That kind of thing clearly happens,” he said. “People aren’t conscientious enough about people around them.”</p><p>Green said that in his years of practice he’s seen only two cases of life-threatening reactions to vaccinations. Both of them were in Wyoming.</p><p>“They do happen, but they are very, very rare,” he said. Too rare to justify the kind of trends we’re seeing in Sonoma County. At some west county schools, for example, more than half of the kindergartners received exemptions from immunizations last fall.</p><p>What I don’t get are the people who claim that the experts and data are not to be trusted about vaccinations but then scoff at those who deny such things as global warming — citing all the expert testimony and data. Are experts only to be trusted when they validate our beliefs or, in this case, anxieties?</p><p>Ultimately, this is not about facts. We can debunk the facts about an alleged connection between vaccinations and autism until we’re blue in the face, but, like the legend of Bigfoot, the issue won’t go away. You can’t prove a negative. And, as one doctor was quoted, “You can’t unscare people.”</p><p>This is about trust — or, rather, distrust based on fear rather than legitimate skepticism.</p><p>It’s also about not knowing a time when children were in iron lungs for polio, when quarantined signs were nailed to front doors — and when people watched out for one another.</p>