Category Archives: Discussion and Philosophy

Here is where I can rant about issues, or just calmly discuss them.

What Will Unvaccinated Children Choose?–speculations on vaccination choices as adults

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This is not another post on whether you should vaccinate your children, nor is it about the consequences of increasing numbers of unvaccinated children. At least, it isn’t about the consequences for children as children.

We are all familiar with the controversy and its history. Once upon a time, kids tended to get certain diseases when they were young, the so-called “childhood diseases.” Over the years, we developed vaccines for those diseases and made those vaccines available and, in fact, largely compulsory. The result was a decrease in the incidence of measles, polio, pertussis, mumps, and chickenpox, among others. Recently, some people have become concerned about the risks of the vaccines and are not vaccinating their children. The incidence of those diseases is increasing, but there are still many children who manage to avoid them even without being vaccinated.

What will those children choose to do once they are eighteen and in charge of their own medical decisions?

Measles, mumps, chickenpox, and polio tend to be more severe in adulthood. There’s a lot of focus right now on the risks of these diseases to children–the risks for the very young are particularly high–but not so much being said about the risks to adults. This is probably because most of today’s adults were vaccinated as kids.

Will the unvaccinated young adults reevaluate the risks and decide that it’s time to get vaccinated? After all, they have perhaps another sixty years in which to be exposed to the diseases. If they have unvaccinated kids of their own, exposure is even more likely. And if they manage to avoid the disease during their child-bearing years, then they will be susceptible to them when they become grandparents. I suspect getting measles in one’s sixties is even worse than getting it at age twenty.

To some extent, their reevaluation may depend on why their parents decided not to vaccinate them. If their parents’ main concern was the persistent rumor about vaccines and autism, or concerns about too many vaccines at once, maybe they will decide it’s time to get vaccinated. If their parents had other worries, then even warnings about the increased severity of the disease may not be persuasive.

It will be interesting (that’s one word for it) to see what happens. But there is one group that has an additional reason to consider getting vaccinated upon reaching adulthood. I hope that young women who plan to have children someday will take into account the added risks of getting certain diseases during pregnancy. In particular, I hope they will be open to vaccination for rubella (German measles) while they still have time.

Till next post.

In Celebration of our Flag on Flag Day

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To celebrate the flag of our great nation, I thought I’d say something about why, exactly, I love this country.

First, though, I need to list some of the goals that I think most of us have in common–the way we want this country to be.

We want to live in a country where everyone prospers. We want a country where each person has an opportunity to contribute to society, whether in a paying job or otherwise, and where everyone who puts in a full day’s work has enough to live on.

We want a country where people treat each other with respect, and receive the same in return.

We want a country with laws that apply equally to everyone, whether rich or poor, powerful or powerless.

But having these goals in common doesn’t mean we’re going to agree on how to reach them, and indeed, we all know that whenever you have a large enough group of people, there will be disagreement. Sometimes passionate disagreement.

And yet, we have to work together somehow. So we decided on a particular form of government, one that grants everyone a voice yet makes it possible to reach decisions. It’s a foregone conclusion that not everyone will like every decision, and that not every decision will turn out to have been a good one, but we’ve agreed to go along with the decisions so long as they follow from a fair process.

We designed our government knowing not only that people are fallible, but also that power corrupts and that even good people can lose touch with what’s right. So we divided the powers among three branches, to provide checks and balances. We placed limits on how long people can hold executive or legislative power before needing to be re-elected. We added a two-term limit for presidents, because we didn’t want any one person to accumulate too much power. (And why we don’t have something similar for legislators, I don’t know… but that’s another topic.)

We designed our government with the goal of being able to correct missteps when we recognize them. It doesn’t happen by itself, but the potential is there. And that is something I love about our country.

And yeah, no kings.

Till next post.

On the F-word

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Perhaps more than anything else, the way we react to language says something about what generation we belong to. I belong to the generation that didn’t grow up using “like” in every other sentence, but rapidly picked up the habit as young adults. A generation that didn’t up-talk, though I find myself doing that more often than I’d like now. A generation in which the f-word was still a serious curse word. Or as Ralphie says in A Christmas Story, “the queen-mother of dirty words”–though Ralphie was an earlier generation.

My parents made some effort not to curse too freely in front of us kids, but they certainly exclaimed “D—!”, “H—!”, or “S—!” when feeling seriously provoked (Oddly enough, my mom sometimes says “Pardon my French” when she’s just sworn in English, and “Pardon my English” when she’s just said, “M—-!”) But “Fudge!” is as close as they generally got to the f-word.

I realize that things have changed. I have a daughter. I read YA. But I can’t get used to the f-word as an all-purpose filler. How did this even happen? Of all words to popularize, why the swear word that combines sex and (threat of) violence? Weren’t we supposed to be fighting that combination?

My daughter tells me the f-word doesn’t carry that same sense of threat now, though I’m pretty sure people still say “F— you!” and tell others to “F— off!” And I suppose there are other words that also combined sex and threat that don’t strike me as forcefully, perhaps because they exist in other, innocent contexts as well. The word “screw” has a legitimate place in construction and engineering.

Language does change, whether we like it or not, and exposure has its effects. The f-word does pop into my mind when everything goes to hell in a handbasket*, though I prefer not to actually say it. I may say, like, a lot of other words that irritate me? And, like, find myself up-talking when I don’t mean to? But maybe I can stand firm on this one.

Though the euphemistic “fudge” has given way to “freak” and “frick”, so who knows?

Till next post.

*Why a handbasket? Just because it’s alliterative??