The Endemic Tenacity of Stupid

I had a kid stay home sick today for the first time I think this whole school year, so I'm doing well. One of the main benefits of them getting older is that when they're sick, I can leave them here to wallow in their own secretions and expulsions all alone. I was doing that before, but now I can say it's because they're old enough to take care of themselves and not like before, when I just really wasn't that interested. Ever hang around with a sick child? All they want to do is sleep. Or vomit. Equal parts boring and viscerally terrifying. It's like being in the military but without being able to shoot anyone ever.

You know what would have been interesting? An awesome old-timey disease that made him swell up in weird places with pustules or bubos or something. You know, like measels. Dumb, short-sighted me though, I went and got him vaccinated as a baby, so now our measels likelihood is virtually nada. Turns out he only has a nasty head cold. If I stayed home from work just because of that, I think I'd be robbing him of no small part of his developing adult sense of self. Plus I would have to listen to him clear his sinuses, which is yucky. Sometimes child negligence is a win-win.

And sometimes child negligence is a public health crisis. Remember that time we eradicated measels in the United States? You know, in 2000? And then it came back with a raging vengeance, maiming and killing American children just on the off chance that Jenny McCarthy's kid, who already had autism, wouldn't get autism? Again, I guess?

The CDC and I agree that while autism is tragic and the rise in the numbers of cases of autism is a concern, there are studies proving (to the extent a negative can be proven) that vaccination does not cause autism. On the other side, of course, is one of the girls from Laguna Hills. Not the frightened-Barbie-looking one, one of the other ones. You know, the one paid to be vapid on television.

There's a lot to consider is all I'm saying.

Kristin Cavallari says we should be careful because she's read in books that vaccines can cause "asthma, allergies [and] ear infections." Essentially the position is that her children are too fragile to handle--not an actual one, but potential for--an ear infection, so let's take our chances with rubella.

I think it's easy to see the shocking and tragic rise of autism since about 2000, now up to 1 in 88 children, and try to start groping in the dark for answers. As a diagnosis in the modern sense, it's only been around since the middle of the 20th century, so it's possible that our diagnostic expertise is becoming more subtly tuned to find it where it lurks. The problem with assigning it to the MMR vaccine is that the vaccine itself is absolutely ubiquitous. As such, we could use it to account for just about any other widespread social phenomenon that has risen to previously unheard of levels, like internet porn or those lumberjacky beards. At least in the latter case, MMR vaccine would have a lot to answer for.

But it turns out that the lumberjacky beards themselves are probably more of an unsanitary disease vector than the vaccine itself. I'm not blind or unsympathetic to the point of view that doling out doses of anything in massive, even comprehensive numbers would lead to a public health challenge of some kind in having to deal with the potential for side effects. Who knows what all effects the vaccines themselves may cause?

You know what they definitely do not cause though? Fucking measels.