Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Unvaccinated kids in community

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

The advantages of vaccination overwhelm the reasons to opt not to do
so. Vaccination needs the vast majority to be vaccinated to work.
Refusing to vaccinate children seems like individualism run amuck and
seems contradictory to the collective vision of intentional community.
I would have great difficulty living in a community who considered not
vaccinating an acceptable option.

Note that a few people have allergies ( or immune compromise ) that
prevent them from receiving Live Interacting Vaccines but the numbers
are quite small and do not significantly reduce the effectiveness of
vaccination programs. These people would be vulnearable to getting
disease from voluntarily nonvaccinated people.

"view[ing] the kids' medical records' should not be neccessary, simply
ask if people have/will have children vaccinated.  If you can not
trust their response you have much bigger problems.

Thanks for bringing this up, it would not have occured to me to have
this on a standard questionaire for potential members.

Newcommers should also be aware if there are unvaccinated people
(or plans) in the community so they can decide if this is acceptable
to them.  (I'd likely look elsewhere.)

Fred Olson and Becca Brackett, MD

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
     Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org         My org:
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