October 11, 2009

From Louise Kuo Habakus

NEW JERSEY WILL RALLY AGAIN!!

Join us on Friday, October 16

Join us in person or in spirit this Friday, October 16, 2009 starting at 4:00 pm in Wayne, New Jersey at the William Paterson University, the location for the Governor's second televised debate, outside the Shea Performing Arts Center.

Yes, the date does sound familiar! It will be exactly one year to the day since last year's "Freedom of Choice" rally in Trenton, when we sent a message to New Jersey legislators and to the entire country that, in response to an ever increasing number of mandated shots for school attendance, New Jersey's parents demand vaccination choice.

Governor Corzine has failed to respond to our appeal for choice. Do you have something you want to say to New Jersey's next Governor? And to the entire New Jersey Assembly which is also up for re-election (or retirement) on November 3rd and will be reading the press after Friday's rally?

Click HERE for details about the rally. And click HERE for the flyer. You'll want to make signs, arrange a carpool, get childcare (or bring the kids), and send the flyer out far and wide. Check back later for instructions on how to submit a debate question on vaccination choice for the three guys running for Governor.

FORCED SHOTS MAKE PEOPLE MAD... AND THEY BACKFIRE!

When you force people to get shots, it makes them mad. People know that vaccination can sometimes go terribly wrong and government should not apply such a heavy hand.

If the risks and benefits are fully disclosed and we are permitted to make our own decisions, we will figure out the best thing to do for ourselves and our families. We will also understand that it is our decision to make. Above all, parents want to protect their children.

If the risks are underplayed and people are forced to get shots, if further steps are taken to insulate government, industry and doctors from liability so we are entirely on our own when injuries and death occur, we stop trusting. There's a big trust gap. And the system becomes broken... perhaps irrevocably, as officials ironically bring about the very thing they most dread: lack of confidence in the national childhood vaccination program.

Here's an interesting case study to that will ultimately prove the growing vaccine trust gap. New Jersey's exemption rate during the 2007-2008 school year was 0.8%. At that time, New Jersey already required more shots than any other state.  In late 2007, the Garden State announced four additional mandated shots for school admission. Parents got mad, organized and protested. And it appears that fewer parents may be vaccinating.   

Read this March 2009 article: U.S. Survey Shows Fewer N.J. Children Getting Vaccinated and stay tuned.  The story isn't over yet.

There are 32 states in our country that don't offer vaccination choice. Will they get a clue? Or will vaccination rates continue to decline as parents battle public health officials over the turf that has become our bodies? Who gets to decide?

YIKES! SHOULD I GIVE MY KIDS THE SWINE FLU SHOT?

Read my blog post!

On Friday, the CDC announced that sixteen kids died of the swine flu in one week. And then we hear that H1N1 flu is taking off. We know where this is leading. In the inimitable words of Nancy Snyderman, "Just get your damn vaccine!"

"The H1N1 sky is falling" comes on the heels of reports that very large numbers of parents and adults don't want the shots, for their kids or themselves.

Now this is a very large problem. We're in a recession. No one is in the mood to hear about government wasting our tax dollars. People don't want the swine flu shots? But we've spent billions of dollars buying them! We have ordered 251 million doses of them, for crying out loud! Not to mention the big bucks spent on Tamiflu, face masks and Elmo.

So what to do? How to increase the uptake? I don't pretend to live inside the mind of our intrepid public health officials. But it seems we have two viable choices. We force people to get them. We scare the heck out of them. Or we try both of them out at the same time.