[FLPERMACULTURE] Fwd: New York Trying to Make ALL Vaccines Mandatory!

[Jon Bosak]

I've managed to hold back so far on joining this thread, but it's
becoming pretty clear that some people simply don't understand how
vaccination works or the role it has played in changing the
incidence of infectious disease in this country over the last
hundred years.

Chris Eshleman asks:

 > Is my deciding to not be vaccinated going to affect someone who
 > has?

The answer is: YES, IT WILL.  The elimination of epidemics
requires that VIRTUALLY EVERYONE in a given population be
vaccinated.  If you don't get nearly 100 percent coverage, then
the control of infectious disease DOESN'T WORK.  The elimination
of the diseases that once accounted for the vast majority of
deaths in this country wasn't the result of some plot by "big
pharma" -- it was a concerted effort by every state in the union
that succeeded through UNIVERSAL and MANDATORY programs of
inoculation and treatment.

One of the saddest developments in this country over the last few
years is the reappearance of diseases once effectively eradicated
due directly to the refusal of people ignorant of epidemiology to
conform to the public health standards that once made us the most
disease-free population on earth.  We're talking here about major
scourges like polio and whooping cough.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this development is that
the mechanism requiring 100 percent coverage of a given population
in order to eliminate disease epidemics has been established for
over a century.  There is nothing even remotely controversial
about this.  To believe at this point that vaccination against
these killers is a matter of personal choice is like believing
that the earth is flat.

Given the drift of this thread, I wouldn't be surprised to see
someone come back and insist that it's his right to believe that
the earth is flat.  But such a belief wouldn't threaten me
personally, whereas the equally ignorant belief that epidemics can
be prevented through personal choice does threaten me personally.
If you want to turn back to a nineteenth-century view of the
universe, that's your business.  But turning back to a
nineteenth-century level of infectious disease is everyone's
business.

I abhor the intrusion of government into our personal lives as
much as anyone, but I have to say that running into someone who
genuinely believes that diseases like diphtheria and tetanus can
be controlled by "diet and lifestyle" makes me oddly grateful that
it's there.

Jon