29 January 2019

Anti-vaxx enabling physicians

Despite a California law passed after the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak that got rid of the "personal belief" vaccine exemptions for children entering school, pockets of low vaccination rates have developed in the state. A number of counties are reporting rates lower than 90 percent, the number needed to achieve herd immunity, which occurs when enough people are vaccinated against an infectious disease to protect others in the community who are not.

That is likely due to a surge in medical exemptions— a doctor's note allowing a child to go to school without the required vaccinations, according to research published October in the journal Pediatrics. In some schools the medical exemption rate is as high as 20 percent, according to the California Department of Public Health.

California parents opposed to vaccinations have found a way around the law, with help from doctors willing to write medical exemptions for kids who don’t need them. The Pediatrics study found some medical exemptions were being given with inadequate justification, such as “family history of allergies and family history of autoimmune disorders.”..

The study revealed that the exemptions were being generated by doctors who don’t normally treat children and were “coming from physicians who were charging fees.”

While some doctors appeared to charge a single fee for a permanent exemption, the researchers discovered that some were giving temporary exemptions, say for three months at a time, and then charging a new fee for each additional exemption...

Richard Pan doesn’t mince his words when he talks about the doctors “selling” exemptions: “The thing we need to recognize is that many of the physicians who have broken their oath, they’re doing it for their own pocketbook. It’s not based on their expertise. They’re monetizing their license,” he told NBC News.
There are of course perfectly valid indications to not be vaccinated, primarily based on impaired host immunity (bone marrow transplant, chemotherapy).  But these doctors are gaming the system for personal profit.  More at NBC News.

10 comments:

  1. The map is a weird combo of new age woo-woo thinkers and conservative tinhat prepers.

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    1. Around here, in the Californian land of fruits and nuts, intelligent liberals like to distinguish themselves from the well intentioned hippies (the fruits and nuts) that believe in all sorts of supernatural nonsense like crystal magic, auras, chakras. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo-woo

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    2. As I understand it, "Woo-woo" here refers generaly and derisively to "magical" in the context of being persecuted by unseen consciousness, as in "woo! The ghosts are going to get me. Woo, woo! scared!" Or otherwise "mumbo jumbo" and "ignorance".

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    3. You learn something every day. Thanx.

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  2. The solution of course being a system where doctors do not get paid for individual medical actions, but just get a salary as government health care employees.

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  3. I don't know who do the woo-woo, but I am scared by any government mandated enforcement of near blanket drug prescription. Taking away a person's right to choose (I still don't wear seat belts !) seems very heavy handed, and if near on every body else IS wearing a seat belt, how can I catch measles ?
    I am pretty sure I am making up this story - The German population was forced to swallow a 'Motherland' pill at the start of the Second World War, this made them conform to the Nazi point of view, have blonde hair and to develop an unbending right arm and hand.
    Mass vaccinations may also carry a "Make America Grate Again' virus, ha, just what we need here in Australia and New Zealand, a whole new bunch of cacophonous American tourists, albeit with good teeth.
    Richard Pan seems to generalise a fair bit, maybe a shot of fact checking would be a way to take the sting out of his 'jab in the dark' method of study, and, any government hell bent on forcing its society to mass medicate would not shy from 'misreading' a study or two.
    Even if I believed in shooting a virus, dead or alive, into my bloodstream, in an effort to avoid getting some disease or virus I was not at all likely to get anyway, I would march, placard high, against any group of people, elected or no, that wanted to force me to do so.
    Get vaccinated, I mean, not march.

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    Replies
    1. WilliamRocket, you have made some useful and insightful comments over the years on this blog. This is not one of them.

      No person has a "right to choose" everything about their lives. You don't have the right to choose to drive 65 mph in a residential school zone or the right to have a campfire in a woods in a drought or a right to manufacture ricin in an apartment building.

      Living as part of a community of people requires that once concede imaginary rights to the "public good," including "near-blanket" mandates that are determined by the group as a whole.

      I'm speaking as a polio survivor...

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  4. California (which I live) new agers are a very "special" breed of stupid (faux?)intellectuals.

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  5. Recently moved to Oregon. Between the low vaccination rate and the lack of fluoride in my water, I'm not sure I'll make it out.

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