Shit Hits The Fan In Battle Against Vaccination Denialists

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Quote :

THE family who lost their four-week-old daughter to whooping cough have revealed the insensitive harassment they have endured at the hands of the anti-vaccination campaigners.

Toni and David McCaffery have broken their silence on the four years of vilification they have endured since baby Dana died in March 2009.

The attacks against the family include anonymous letters, cyber-attacks and heartless, abusive messages telling them to "harden the f ... up".

They have been accused of lying about their daughter's death and being part of a conspiracy to force vaccinations on others.

The irony of this is most of the media have soundly ignored the whole problem until the New South Wales government finally got their shit together (thanks in no small part to the Daily Telegraph) and are passing a law to ban unvaccinated children from daycare centres.

Quote :

Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) founder Meryl Dorey even posted her own anti-vaccination information on Dana McCaffery's memorial website.

Ms Dorey also demanded medical reports from public health officials the day before the four-week-old baby's funeral on March 13, 2009.

When asked by The Sunday Telegraph to comment on these allegations, Ms Dorey declined, saying she would answer the questions on her own website.

Toni McCaffery said: "The lunacy and the venom directed at us has just been torture - it's been frightening, abhorrent and insensitive in the extreme."

Dorey has also been travelling around my state giving seminars, including one in my hometown which I tried to convince the club it was being held at to cancel on ethical grounds. Unfortunately they let it go ahead. Fortunately, the turnout at those seminars was quite low and most people who attended weren't convinced. The AVN has taken some legal hits, too: they're being ordered by the authorities to change the group's name because it misleads the public (an order which they're trying to fight), Dorey herself was recently denied a restraining order against her critics and new powers have been granted to the Health Care Complains Commission to give them the ability to combat vaccine denialist groups who spread misinformation.

Quote :

"Instead of Dana in our lives, we had this madness," Ms McCaffery said, adding she endured two miscarriages in the year following Dana's death at the height of the vilification.

"When someone disrespects your loved one, it hurts. But people mocking your child's death - it's just not human."

Try telling that to people who troll memorial pages on Facebook.

xerrofoot wrote:

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Quit reading after I saw the website name.

What the fuck is this site now, the Australian Weekly World News?

Fucking, ew

The world doesn't bloody revolve around the USA, you arrogant Yank.

xerrofoot wrote:

The world doesn't bloody revolve around the USA, you arrogant Yank.

Pot, meet kettle, kettle meet pot.

xerrofoot wrote:

The world doesn't bloody revolve around the USA, you arrogant Yank.

Yes it does.

Besides, unless Raine comes back, NO ONE here cares about the pissy little issues Australia is dealing with. The Americans don't give a shit, the Europeans don't give a shit, and the goddamn Canadians don't give a shit.

Quote :

Dorey has also been travelling around my state giving seminars, including one in my hometown which I tried to convince the club it was being held at to cancel on ethical grounds.

Don't know how things work over there, but in America we have the whole freedom of speech thing. Which means that Nazis can give seminars on stuff as long as it's not on "LETS KILL EVERYONE!!!!111"

xerrofoot wrote:

The world doesn't bloody revolve around the USA, you arrogant Yank.

What makes you think I'm an American, you wallaby

Follow some of the links in that article, like this one. Anti-vacc people are not only ignorant, they're callous pieces of shit. The worst part is that they're placing their own innocent children at risk.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Follow some of the links in that article, like this one. Anti-vacc people are not only ignorant, they're callous pieces of shit. The worst part is that they're placing their own innocent children at risk.

Quite true. Young infants who get whooping cough have a high mortality rate. The vaccine isn't 100% effective (I got a whooping cough booster in 2011, then caught whooping cough in 2012), but if everyone gets the vaccine, it lowers the risk of transmission in people for whom it is ineffective by a lot (herd immunity). Whooping cough is highly contagious (by the time I was diagnosed, several students, the principal, and the guy who appraised the damage on my car after someone hit it in a parking lot were also sick). I'd been coughing for four weeks by the time I was diagnosed (the first doctor I saw said I had a cold, and I took her word for it, even though it didn't feel like a cold; the second one I saw said I had a cough--no shit; and the third one acceded to my demand to be tested for whooping cough after the district nurse listened to me cough, gag, and make strange noises and said I should be tested). By the time the test results came in, I was leaving for the winter break, three weeks long, and so there was no question about not allowing me to come to work--I was off anyway. I reported it to the district and my doctor reported it to the health department, but I was never asked to stay quarantined. Oddly enough, I felt fine except for the cough, so I went right on going to work for those four weeks--and so far as I know, the district has no policies on any diseases except pinkeye and tuberculosis (you can't come to work if you have either).

Lady Anne wrote:

Cyberwulf wrote:

Follow some of the links in that article, like this one. Anti-vacc people are not only ignorant, they're callous pieces of shit. The worst part is that they're placing their own innocent children at risk.

Quite true. Young infants who get whooping cough have a high mortality rate. The vaccine isn't 100% effective (I got a whooping cough booster in 2011, then caught whooping cough in 2012), but if everyone gets the vaccine, it lowers the risk of transmission in people for whom it is ineffective by a lot (herd immunity). Whooping cough is highly contagious (by the time I was diagnosed, several students, the principal, and the guy who appraised the damage on my car after someone hit it in a parking lot were also sick). I'd been coughing for four weeks by the time I was diagnosed (the first doctor I saw said I had a cold, and I took her word for it, even though it didn't feel like a cold; the second one I saw said I had a cough--no shit; and the third one acceded to my demand to be tested for whooping cough after the district nurse listened to me cough, gag, and make strange noises and said I should be tested). By the time the test results came in, I was leaving for the winter break, three weeks long, and so there was no question about not allowing me to come to work--I was off anyway. I reported it to the district and my doctor reported it to the health department, but I was never asked to stay quarantined. Oddly enough, I felt fine except for the cough, so I went right on going to work for those four weeks--and so far as I know, the district has no policies on any diseases except pinkeye and tuberculosis (you can't come to work if you have either).

First of all, thank you for explaining Cyberwulf's and Penny's points in the LONGEST fucking possible manner.

Secondly, a silly and off topic question: would antibiotics commonly prescribed for bronchitis, such as Azithromycin or Clarithromycin, also cure whooping cough?

I thought australians were supposed to be polite and efficient?

ViewSonic wrote:

I thought australians were supposed to be polite and efficient?

That's Canadians you're thinking of.

Reidmar wrote:

xerrofoot wrote:

The world doesn't bloody revolve around the USA, you arrogant Yank.

Pot, meet kettle, kettle meet pot.

You took the words right out of my mouth, Reid.

Disco Stu wrote:

xerrofoot wrote:

The world doesn't bloody revolve around the USA, you arrogant Yank.

What makes you think I'm an American, you wallaby

Probably the same mental deficiency that makes xerrobrains think it's OK to lust after underage girls and make rape jokes.

ViewSonic wrote:

I thought australians were supposed to be polite and efficient?

Xerroballs would be a jerk no matter what his nationality was.

TheHedonist wrote:

ViewSonic wrote:

I thought australians were supposed to be polite and efficient?

That's Canadians you're thinking of.

Well that's us too, except we dont throw jars of piss at people. I wonder how many people will know what we're talking about

the asylum wrote:

TheHedonist wrote:

ViewSonic wrote:

I thought australians were supposed to be polite and efficient?

That's Canadians you're thinking of.

Well that's us too, except we dont throw jars of piss at people. I wonder how many people will know what we're talking about

I do.

And Canadians aren't efficient.

ViewSonic wrote:

I thought australians were supposed to be polite and efficient?

Jesus Christ, that is a long and ugly signature. Play with your font sizes and text alignments or something.

Also, if you have short posts, it helps if you space out the sentences.

I'M NOT A CRAZED GUNMAN, DAD.

Also, thanks for the advice. I am still a n00b here.

Gawd. I hate this new mobile version of this forum. I was scrolling up. Realized I had been quoted. Got excited. Felt a tiny connection. It was Chris91.

Felt my excitement shrink to nothing.

And felt bad to admit it. Not because Chris is a bad poster- I could care less, that man has a heart of gold

I just confused him for someone else and got nostalgic :')

Can't put a finger on who, however...

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Secondly, a silly and off topic question: would antibiotics commonly prescribed for bronchitis, such as Azithromycin or Clarithromycin, also cure whooping cough?

Sad to say, no. Whooping cough is just something you have to live with until it resolves itself.

Disco Stu wrote:

Gawd. I hate this new mobile version of this forum. I was scrolling up. Realized I had been quoted. Got excited. Felt a tiny connection. It was Chris91.
Felt my excitement shrink to nothing.

Fucking lol'd, I have no idea why this is so funny, damnit Stu.

Wait...there's a xerrofoot AND a xerrobrains? Holy hell.

Xerrofoot is my user name, xerrobrains is what Chris likes to call me. (Before that he was calling me "Snotty McAsshole".) Doesn't matter either way, I have him on ignore.

Also, yeah, Canadians are the polite ones. We're the overly-casual but friendly ones.