Oh I get it now, I read all your texts. You're insane! There's a consistent theme of paranoia and extreme anger in your writing. All the best for the future. - Kel
Michaela that's awesome! Mind if I borrow? - Prue
When travelling through Eastern Europe by myself, if things got a bit hairy or the old lemon of homesickness bit I would repeat (sometimes out loud): 'You can go home if you're desperate but you're not dead and you've got a credit card'. I managed to stay my allocated 4 month stay and had the time of my life. - Prue
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Thank you Sharon , you've confirmed what I thought , what a worry . I believe in immunisation and have tried , carefully , to convince her of the dreadful consequences of Polio , Hooping Cough and TB etc but she insists that her children are protected . Maybe I can convince her to watch tonights show . - Carole/m
Hi DP, it may not be a case of laying blame on the basis of whether an individual has or has not been vaccinated. What the community does as a whole appears to be more important. It seems that the rate at which a disease spreads through a community is determined by the proportion of the population that has been vaccinated. The situation where most of the community are immune to an infection is apparently called 'herd immunity'. 'This situation provides some protection to any people who are not immune as there is less opportunity for the infection to spread.' (http://www0.health.nsw.gov.au/PublicHealth/Infectious/whoopingcough/facts.asp; http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/2/07-040089/en/) Apparently the level of 'herd immunity' (the proportion of the population this has immunity) required depends on the nature of the infectious disease and whether it is viral or bacterial. If you believe medical researchers, the herd immunity threshold for pertussis (whooping cough) requires 92-94% of the population to be immunised whereas measles requires 83-94% immunisation. (http://www.who.int/vaccine_research/documents/WHE_Smith_presentation.pdf) Reaching that level of immunisation is a big ask in today's Australia. Alice Smith neatly encapsulates the dilemma: "I hate the idea of vaccinations and believe they can be harmful individually but we are part of a community and as such, we have responsibilities to each other, so my son’s vaccinations are up to date. I believe that immunisation benefits the community as a whole and am very thankful and full of admiration for the selfless contribution of Australians like Alice to the health of us all. - Matilda
Carole/m sounds like your daughter in law has been told to homeopathically vaccinate which essentially is a misnomer and means paying good money for water, and no protection against disease. I'm very sorry to say she's been given terrible advice by a person who is not qualified to provide information regarding vaccinations. - Sharon
No, Kel, I like my social justice served with a big helping of evidence based results, not empty symbolism. *That* is the difference between people of common sense and those who stand on their high moral ground wearing their lefty t-shirts and sipping their Socialst Chardonnay. The fact that Hooplarians are happy with the ABC is proof that it leans very heavily to the left. That's evidence enough for me. - Gee
Like other highly emotional topics (recovered memory, global warming, UFOs, religion etc) this should be an interesting discussion. It is not just the logic behind decisions we need to understand but also the underlying emotions, especially fear. And also the emotion tied up with taking one stance or the other and not budging as one has already invested so much time and emotion etc into taking a particular stance. - Me

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