chickenpox
Chickenpox shot clinics in our schools?!?!
Okay, I really thought I would be finished expressing my concerns about the new mandate in Alaska that requires all school-aged children to have a chickenpox vaccine. Honestly, I was going to be finished. But then the cutesy little school newsletter comes home yesterday and announced that my children’s school will be hosting a free chickenpox shot clinic during school next month. Oh…My…God! So, I am once again compelled to discuss my concerns about this mandate and this strategy to meet the mandate.
I understand the schools are trying to make this as easy as possible for those who are comfortable with the vaccine and I can respect that. However, my concern is that parents really aren’t being informed as fully as they should be about the disease, the vaccine and the possible side effects. What happens if a child suffers an immediate and severe reaction to this vaccine being administered at school without their parents around? Who is going to document just what occurred and when? Why should parents feel pressured to allow medical services to be provided to their elementary aged-children when they are not present?
Let’s talk about chickenpox. I am baffled as to the sudden concern about children NOT getting the chickenpox when it used to be that parents exposed their children so they WOULD get the disease and thus create their own natural immunity to it. Chickenpox is rarely serious and mostly just inconvenient. An antiviral medication can be administered to treat chickenpox so that the disease runs a very mild course. Now, let’s talk about the vaccine. It contains the live virus, sugar, saline, gelatin, MSG, potassium, human DNA cells, EDTA, neomycin, and cow fetus serum. Animal and human tissue that we hope to Hell has been screened for any infectious disease. In the late 50’s and early 60’s some of the monkey tissue used for the production of the polio vaccine contained the SV-40 virus which is known to cause certain types of tumors and cancer. Let’s hope the screening of the tissues used today is effectively catching our most serious viruses, such as Mad Cow Disease.
If you chose to vaccinate for chickenpox I would encourage you to accompany your child to your pediatrician. Make sure they are healthy and not fighting any bugs. Read all the paperwork and witness the administering of the shot. You should spend time with your child afterwards to make sure they aren’t having some kind of reaction. If they do have a reaction, you need to document it, get your child back to your doctor and make sure they are treated immediately. You need to be sure the reaction is reported to VAERS which is the CDC database that tracks reactions to vaccines so they can be further studied.
Vaccinating for the sake of convenience troubles me. But, what troubles me even more is systems put into place that allow for drive-by or mass vaccinations of children while their parents are absent. Unfortunately, some families will pay much too high of a price for such convenience.
Varicella (chickenpox) vaccine mandate in Alaska
Last week when I was in Salt Lake City in a meeting with thought leaders from across the country dealing with vaccine safety policy issues, my local school district held a community meeting to discuss the newly mandated varicella vaccine for school children. I’m sure my Wasilla readers were probably surprised that I wasn’t in attendance at this meeting and you can only imagine my frustration at not being there.
First, just to simplify things let’s drop the fancy titles and call this vaccine by it’s layman terms…the chickenpox vaccine. That alone changes many people’s perspective about this mandate. Varicella sounds very technical and scary but chickenpox is just a normal childhood vaccine that most people my age experienced as children. It was unpleasant, but for the most part we all stayed home from school for a while, tried not to scratch our pox, watched a lot of Sesame Street and then got back to being a kid. No big deal. That’s right…for the strong majority of children, the overwhelmingly vast majority, chickenpox is no big deal. And, it’s certainly a much smaller deal than the potentially devastating side effects of the vaccine.
At my Salt Lake meetings I met some of the most interesting and educated people on this topic. The folks who were from Oregon were particularly interesting. Oregon is a state that allows for a philosophical exemption (not exactly, but they have a “personal beliefs” option within their religious exemption). The state immunization and public health officers really look at the vaccine issue much differently than we do in Alaska. They understand parent concerns and they seem to be willing to accept that parents may want to use alternative schedules when it comes to vaccinating their children. The state of Oregon does not mandate the chickenpox vaccine, either.
Alaska has a long way to go if it’s leadership wants to support parents rights when it comes to their children’s health. In fact, Alaskans have some the fewest rights when it comes to vaccines compared to parents in most other states. And, with this this fresh, new mandate coming from our leadership to force every single child in the State to have a chickenpox vaccine, I must say that any chance of gaining back our rights seems quite unlikely.
If I had been in attendance at our community meeting last week it would have been to hold state and school district officials accountable to telling parents all the facts. I would have made sure parents were given the Vaccine Information Statement on the varicella vaccine that outlines all the risks of the vaccine (soreness, fever, rash, seizures, pneumonia). I would have made sure that parents were informed of their rights to use religious or medical expemptions for vaccines and that these forms were readily available (found in Appendix C of the Alaska School and Child Care Immunization manual). And, finally, I would have made sure that that “risk communication” (yes, that is an official CDC term) about chickenpox was as neutral and fact-based as possible and not just a big scare tactic.
My hope is that my work on federal policy will help improve parental rights where vaccines are concerned. Perhaps that will pave the way for states like Alaska to take a hard look at their own policies and mandates. How ironic that a conservative, Republican state that is run by leaders who pay constant lip service to “less government” and “protecting personal freedom” would be so hardline on virtually eliminating any parental rights or informed consent when it comes to childhood vaccines.
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National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
