TNR's Ioffe: "Thanks Jenny McCarthy" (or "Welcome back Whooping Cough!")

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by randallscott35

So we should force everyone to vaccinate their kids? They wanted to give Hep B vaccine, a sexually transmitted disease, the same day my kids were born....Completely ludicrous.

Thirty to forty percent of people infected with Hep B acquired it in childhood, prior to becoming sexually active. The virus can live on surfaces for up to seven days. So a kid can scrape his knee on a surface where the virus is hanging out, and pick it up.

It's also asymptomatic in almost one third of adults who have it- many people are infected and don't know. So a mother may have Hep B and not know it, and then give it to her child, if not during birth, then during breastfeeding. And the younger an infected person is when he or she got the virus, the more likely he or she is to suffer serious health problems later. Seeing as how 90 percent of infants who contract it will go on to suffer chronic health problems later in life, why on earth would parents want to take any risk at all with their child's health, when they can protect their child against Hep B in the first weeks of life? Completely ludicrous.

But my son is already vaccinated against it, so I know I've protected him.