Those are both public schools. Why isn’t proof of immunity required at registration?
It is likely I am just uniformed as to the California school system. Texas schools require immunization records.
It is likely I am just uniformed as to the California school system. Texas schools require immunization records.
Wrong. HPV vaccine is super important.
In 2018 nearly 580k women were diagnosed with cervical cancer. 70% of said cancer is caused by HPV (by two strains of it to be exact). So that is 406k women each year getting cervical cancer which could have been prevented if they were vaccinated, and that’s only counting people who were diagnosed. Now consider that HPV is also known to cause cancers in other organs, both reproductive and non-reproductive, and that these affect not only women but men as well.
Granted only 14 of the 100+ strains are linked to cancer, but still. That’s a lot of preventable cancer.
The CDC recommends the vaccine for basically everyone up to 26, and the FDA has approved a vaccine for up to 45.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-papil...
Edit: down-voters care to explain why I'm wrong?
This is patently absurd because if nothing else it's unfortunately a fact not all exposure to HPV is elective. Did you miss the recent article about a baby born with HPV nodes on her throat that damaged her vocal cords? By vaccinating the mother and the father and preventing them from having HPV there's no chance of in-vitro tranmission to the child. Just as vaccinating for tetanus, measles mumps and rubella and all the rest building herd immunity prevents current and future generations from passing on the disease.
And regardless of your implied moral judgements preventing a cancer-causing disease is a net benefit to public health.
A 100% effective vaccination? Also, I didn't imply any moral judgement, I'm simply stating it's not as important as others.
With respect to the baby story, was that a strain which was prevented by a HPV vaccination?
I understand there is a benefit, and wasn't disputing that. All I was saying was that it was elective and less important. There is a reason it is not required for schools as MMR is, and that it is not standard.
But if you want a morality-driven argument it is IMHO undeniably imperative to vaccinate the general public against disease including cancer causing disease regardless of the mode of transmission of said disease and that imperative and benefits outweigh any counter argument that simply abstaining from a given behavior lowers that risk.
If I can find the citation for the article I mentioned (I did Google for it but couldn't find it the first time) I'll happily address whether in fact it's one prevented by Gardasil, etc.
No, because I said nothing about pre-marital anything. There is still a risk, even in marriage, though people who take only one sexual partner are less likely to contract such diseases. That's not a judgement, as I am not saying whether anything is right or wrong, it is simply a fact.
> And your stance that it's "less important" is based on the idea that simply abstaining from sex prevents all HPV exposure, correct? That is not a science-based conclusion. HPV can be transmitted outside of sex by walking barefoot across a bathroom floor.
Correct. You are correct about some varieties, none of which are currently known to cause caner.
> But if you want a morality-driven argument it is IMHO undeniably imperative to vaccinate the general public against disease including cancer causing disease regardless of the mode of transmission of said disease and that imperative and benefits outweigh any counter argument that simply abstaining from a given behavior lowers that risk.
Again, I didn't say that it was necessarily bad, I was pointing out that it was less important than MMR or other such vaccinations, an assertion by which I stand.
> If I can find the citation for the article I mentioned (I did Google for it but couldn't find it the first time) I'll happily address whether in fact it's one prevented by Gardasil, etc.
I couldn't find it through internet-searching either, which is why I made the above point.
I still maintain that a HPV vaccination is less important than other vaccinations. This is especially true for men, as the largest cancer risk by far is for cervical cancer. You are unlikely to get major traction for people being vaccinated against a disease that will most harm another at their expense and pain. Why did you take such issue with a passing remark I made as part of a broader, positive point? I am not saying anything that is wrong; the risks are there and the benefits for a large part of the population that would be required to achieve herd immunity are not.
Again, there is reason it is not standard or required. The herd immunity argument is not as relevant because it is much less important for men (especially because existing vaccines focus mostly on strains that cause cervical cancer) and so a large portion of the population will remain unvaccinated against it.
Yes. Because stopping cancers at disease spreading vectors is just silly, right?
We don't vaccinate children and give boosters when they are young (at booster time and have great immune systems) for them to not be kinda sick for a while. We do it to prevent others, who are more vulnerable, from getting really sick and/or dying.
How are you missing the simple fact that most women get the cancerous strains from men?
How can you argue that virgins having sex with anything but another virgin and having no other sexual partners for life is what is needed for non-risky behavior? Because if any one has more than one partner and that partner is allowed more than one partner we are going to have spread of cancerous strains.
Moralistic arguments are what keeps us from mass-vaccinating against HPV-strains.
Literally 2019 and arguing on the internet for abstinence only?
[1] Of course you can choose to not have sex, and many people do, but my point wasn’t literal. Abstinence is absurd, regressive, arcane, etc, and doesn’t belong in 2019 nor does it work on 2019.
[2] Just to pre-emptively cover my base against pedantic people: I’m sure that the number isn’t 100% because of genetic mutations but those are exceptions not the rule.
Why do you call it these things? Your opinion is not a source. I think both of us can agree it is 100% effective with respect to disease prevention. We're running into antibiotic-resistant STDs because people won't stop sleeping around. From the CDC: "Gonorrhea has progressively developed resistance to the antibiotic drugs prescribed to treat it." [0]
> cervical cancer is just 2 of the 14 strains of cancer causing HPV that we know of.
"The main type of cancer linked to HPV infection is cervical cancer. Virtually all cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV." [1] Yes there are risks of other cancer, but they are very small unless you are gay.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/std/gonorrhea/arg/default.htm
[1] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
This is exactly the problem. How do you plan to convince men to get vaccinated to prevent a cancer that affects women?
> Moralistic arguments are what keep us from mass-vaccinating against HPV-strains.
This is not a moralistic argument; I made no argument about what is right or wrong. What keeps that from happening is that many people who would need to do so would get little benefit. It's a positive externality.
> Literally 2019 and arguing on the internet for abstinence only?
I didn't argue for it, but there's nothing wrong with it. What's bad about that approach? It's 100% effective at preventing the spread of disease. Literally 2019 and we have super-STDs because people won't stop sleeping around. From the CDC: "Gonorrhea has progressively developed resistance to the antibiotic drugs prescribed to treat it." [0] Show me another approach that will work. Vaccine? Oh wait, we don't have one for that, and our antibiotics don't work. It's for good reason that society used to shun this sort of behavior. Promiscuous people are causing a serious public health issue because they are too lazy to keep it in their pants.
It's also not correct. I have to pay for all my vaccinations, and have had to do so in all the various states I've lived in, including California.
The US does not have a program of free vaccines for the population.
If people have insurance that pays for it, the insurance covers it, but that's not the same as free.
Elsewhere in this thread a med student relates his experience of getting his MMR booster for "free", but administering it was $500 per shot, later raised to $700. The free was also not free, the student insurance paid for the shot itself and he merely had to pay for the administration. This is a more typical vaccination scenario in the US. Also worth noting is that very very few of the people commenting in any discussion of vaccines are up to date with their boosters because very few adults in general are up to date.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if that's the route the US is headed regarding vax policy.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/awardees/vaccine-m...
My grad school was CU Anschutz Med Campus. They also require immunization records to attend in the event of an outbreak. This is important as it is a med-campus and there are a lot of sick people, immuno-compromised people, infants, and a CDC infectious disease center. If you are not immunized, you will be staying at home in the event of an outbreak and you will fail your finals.
There were a few issues though.
One was that you had to send in your immunization records. Per various rules in various bureaucracies, Kaiser in CA would only send out faxes. CU-AMC would not ever accept a fax. Both cited HIPAA law as the reason. Many of the students, including the med students, spent years figuring these things out as each hospital system battled it out from the various states and countries that students came from. No joke, it took me just over 3 semesters to get it hammered out, about 1.5 years. Eventually, my records were sent out via snail-mail.
The second issue was the bilking of the students. Every single student that I personally knew was told that their MMR titers were out of date (essentially, the test to see if you are in fact immunized). Thus, they needed to get their titers pulled again. So, we all go down to the students' nurses office to get the titers pulled. Every single student is then told that they are deficient in their titers. So, we all then go to get our MMR booster shots. Wham, bam, you now have your booster shot. Mind you, this is all personal stuff. You don't really talk about it over lunch. Nothing was amiss to anyone at this point.
Then, the ~ $500 bill came to us. Yes, really. $500 for an MMR booster shot. Looking closer, it's not that the shots were themselves $500, the vaccine was itself free. It was the administration of the shots. Having that nurse give you the shot, a 5 minute process, was $500 after the student health insurance kicked in. Every single student I knew also received one of these bills.
Understandably outraged at this, we all go to our respective department heads and ask what the hell is going on. They, also are surprised. After a few months of meetings and whatnot, my department states that they will pay out for our costs. Nice, but not that it mattered. Many of us, waiting on these things to suss out, were sent to collections. Lab phones were ringing off the hook, PIs and advisors were getting calls from scummy collectors about our debts, there were loads of very threatening emails sent to official university addressed, etc. The insurance that the students all went through was not going to budge, you had to pay out. It was a mess.
Some of the other departments decided to try to just have the students sign religious waivers for the next incoming class. This worked. That next class that was in a department that had the students go off and sign waivers didn't have to deal with this nonsense. My department was not one of them. As such, some of my new lab-mates got ~ $700 bills for the MMR boosters (I assume the upped the price to make-up for lost revenue, but have no proof). My new lab mates had to go through all the rigmarole as I had to as well, with debt collectors, lazy departments, and bad billing.
Well, then all the departments figured this out. All the students are told to just go down and get religious waivers for the shots. This includes the med students, the dental students, the NPs, etc. This bypasses the insane student health insurance (no idea why it was still there after this, but, again, bureaucrats). In the event of an outbreak, all the students will need to stay home and fail all of their classes.
So, AFAIK, all/most of the students at CU-AMC are on religious waivers as of today, due to scummy insurance and a bureaucratic fight with the various departments.
To your larger point of what a mess this is, though: NYU refused to accept a vaccination history that didn't have a "doctor's stamp" on it so wouldn't take the email. After unsuccessfully trying to get a doctor to sign off on my vaccination history, I realized it would be easier to just get re-immunized. Luckily the health center charged less than $100 for that, but the whole thing was still way more annoying than it should have been.