I've heard this..."You could have had a blood test." Oh, really? And how would a 20-something know this?
So let's turn that around, shall we? Those "good" people at the good ol' State University of NY at Albany could have offered titers to test for immunity, yes? Their responsibility to give fully informed consent, yes, and offer options, yes? So, why didn't they? Line up here for a blood test for immunity; line up here for yer shot.
Instead, not a thing about testing for prior immunity...On a population the majority of which probably had had measles. Nope. Just easier on these "good" people to shove a needle in thousands of arms and pat themselves on the back.
No quarter given here. None. It was the beginning of the end of whatever little respect I had for the white coats and the blue scrubs. I'll remember this forever. In fact, I still have the little card those losers gave me after they injected me. Just a little "souvenir" in case I ever need reminding of how readily this cohort will force themselves on others.
Absolutely they should have offered you serology, or at least told you it was something you could seek out, particularly since you didn't want vaccination. The adults (though technically you were one, we all know that being 20 isn't the same as being the people running a university) should have loved you (their neighbor, so to speak) as themselves. One of my teacher-mentors did a serosurvey of Army recruits, published in 1991, so the work would have been done about the same time as your incident (and that was when measles was rebounding), and found that "Seronegativity rates, directly adjusted to the 15- to 24-year-old US population in 1980, were 20.7% for measles, 15.6% for mumps, 17.5% for rubella, and 6.9% for varicella." Looked at the opposite way, about 80% had antibodies indicating likely immunity to measles. That may be close to what was the case on your campus, too. I will admit that during my career I had no idea how damaging vaccines can be nor how unhelpful so many are. I don't think my teachers in medicine and public health were lying to me; I don't think they knew, either. The other side of the coin is that people in medicine see one part of the elephant more so than does the general population, e.g., people who end up with encephalitis from measles or other complications. (I'm still on the side of allowing people to decide what is injected into their bodies, however.)
Thank you, Fla Mom. Do you happen to know when these types of tests became available? Did they follow closely the introduction of the needle for measles? This was 1987...
The other part of this is the hysteria, the panic. Grown people...Revolting.
As for knowing that I can ask for a test to prove to those telling me I needed to protect myself or others from something I'd already had is in and of itself an insult. Had my mother been alive, I have a feeling I'd have had a better chance of avoiding that needle. Yet there we were -- in a country alleged to be "Frist World" -- with people crapping their pants over an illness most (in my cohort) had immunity to or would survive easily. Instead? The "grownups" announced:
You are barred from this campus. You are prohibited from attending class. You will not graduate. Unless you submit...
I don't know the history of measles serology, but I don't think it was new then. I was in medical school when you were in college, and while they offered the measles vaccine to us, also because of the increasing rates of illness and the extreme infectiousness of the virus, even we, working in hospitals and clinics, were not forced to get it. (I was immune from what was then still called 'usual childhood disease.' On our forms documenting our patient interview, it was abbreviated as 'UCHD,' and it meant all of those that we now call vaccine-preventable, from the '70s-'80s - measles, mumps, chicken pox, e.g.)
The lack of telling you about getting a titre done instead of the measles shot is similar to how public school children are treated. At no time will a school nurse offer the information that a religious exemption is available in lieu of taking the shot.
You can get titers drawn that show immunity.
I've heard this..."You could have had a blood test." Oh, really? And how would a 20-something know this?
So let's turn that around, shall we? Those "good" people at the good ol' State University of NY at Albany could have offered titers to test for immunity, yes? Their responsibility to give fully informed consent, yes, and offer options, yes? So, why didn't they? Line up here for a blood test for immunity; line up here for yer shot.
Instead, not a thing about testing for prior immunity...On a population the majority of which probably had had measles. Nope. Just easier on these "good" people to shove a needle in thousands of arms and pat themselves on the back.
No quarter given here. None. It was the beginning of the end of whatever little respect I had for the white coats and the blue scrubs. I'll remember this forever. In fact, I still have the little card those losers gave me after they injected me. Just a little "souvenir" in case I ever need reminding of how readily this cohort will force themselves on others.
Absolutely they should have offered you serology, or at least told you it was something you could seek out, particularly since you didn't want vaccination. The adults (though technically you were one, we all know that being 20 isn't the same as being the people running a university) should have loved you (their neighbor, so to speak) as themselves. One of my teacher-mentors did a serosurvey of Army recruits, published in 1991, so the work would have been done about the same time as your incident (and that was when measles was rebounding), and found that "Seronegativity rates, directly adjusted to the 15- to 24-year-old US population in 1980, were 20.7% for measles, 15.6% for mumps, 17.5% for rubella, and 6.9% for varicella." Looked at the opposite way, about 80% had antibodies indicating likely immunity to measles. That may be close to what was the case on your campus, too. I will admit that during my career I had no idea how damaging vaccines can be nor how unhelpful so many are. I don't think my teachers in medicine and public health were lying to me; I don't think they knew, either. The other side of the coin is that people in medicine see one part of the elephant more so than does the general population, e.g., people who end up with encephalitis from measles or other complications. (I'm still on the side of allowing people to decide what is injected into their bodies, however.)
Thank you, Fla Mom. Do you happen to know when these types of tests became available? Did they follow closely the introduction of the needle for measles? This was 1987...
The other part of this is the hysteria, the panic. Grown people...Revolting.
As for knowing that I can ask for a test to prove to those telling me I needed to protect myself or others from something I'd already had is in and of itself an insult. Had my mother been alive, I have a feeling I'd have had a better chance of avoiding that needle. Yet there we were -- in a country alleged to be "Frist World" -- with people crapping their pants over an illness most (in my cohort) had immunity to or would survive easily. Instead? The "grownups" announced:
You are barred from this campus. You are prohibited from attending class. You will not graduate. Unless you submit...
Sound familiar?
I don't know the history of measles serology, but I don't think it was new then. I was in medical school when you were in college, and while they offered the measles vaccine to us, also because of the increasing rates of illness and the extreme infectiousness of the virus, even we, working in hospitals and clinics, were not forced to get it. (I was immune from what was then still called 'usual childhood disease.' On our forms documenting our patient interview, it was abbreviated as 'UCHD,' and it meant all of those that we now call vaccine-preventable, from the '70s-'80s - measles, mumps, chicken pox, e.g.)
The lack of telling you about getting a titre done instead of the measles shot is similar to how public school children are treated. At no time will a school nurse offer the information that a religious exemption is available in lieu of taking the shot.