Mailbag: Parents who don’t vaccinate put kids at risk

During my recent annual physical examination, my physician cautioned me about the whooping cough epidemic in Newport Beach. Given this unbelievably bad news, I had a Tdap booster vaccination against pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus.

Why is there a whooping cough epidemic in Newport Beach and Marin County, Boulder, Col., The Hamptons, New York, and many other wealthy areas? Why are mothers and fathers under age 40 practicing dangerous, all-natural child-rearing?

An article in Mother Jones explained the real reason why parents are exposing their children to deadly diseases. “The Real Reason Kids Aren’t Getting Vaccines” walks through today’s mothers practicing an unreal improbable belief. While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has proven autism is not caused by childhood vaccinations, parents continue to expose their own kids to horrible diseases that can lead to their children’s deaths. Furthermore, the highly contagious whooping cough disease also infects other children and older people.

Some subjects are better described through personal experiences, and my recent whooping cough booster is certainly mine. Somehow medically uneducated actor Jim Carrey of “Dumb and Dumber” fame became the pied-piper of rich parents. Carrey, according to CBS, believes vaccinations are morally wrong.

What will the all-natural moms do next to hurt their children? I suggest these uninformed “natural” mothers and fathers spend time in Africa and other underdeveloped nations so they can experience firsthand what it means when they spout, “I don’t want anything for my child that does not come from nature.”

Travel to Africa, and see how malaria kills. Look at the innocent dying children. Think about your own lopsided dangerous pattern of environmental religion.

Carole Wade

Newport Beach

*

We need leadership on group homes

I viewed the Costa Mesa City Council meeting of Sept. 2 and heard Mayor Jim Righeimer’s continuing comments about the difficulties in regulating the alcohol/drug group homes. He stated such regulation, through a Costa Mesa written ordinance, would bring the “mother of all lawsuits” but the city continues to work on such an ordinance.

I ask, then why would you do it? Why didn’t you lead to mitigate this problem by negotiations, working together or adopting an ordinance, such as the one working in the city of Orange?

That is not leadership. It is not something a fiscal conservative would do. He is not a leader; he is not taking care of city finances or city services. He must be defeated in November.

Margaret Mooney

Costa Mesa