The Primal Mother in a Modern Society

[oddlystrange]

I started on the Tamiflu today, it made me feel very wonky for most of the morning, but eventually kinda normalized, except for making me feel cranky. But I'm 35 weeks pregnant, and that could also be the cause of my overriding crankiness, too.

All this 2009 H1N1 drama has gotten me thinking that this is really the first outbreak of its kind in my

Comments

[greylock]

Since I have nothing to add (other than I am like that with the cats):
*hug*

[canticle]

Maybe because I'm a father, not a mother, or maybe because I'm just a heartless asshole, I really, really, DON'T get anti vaxers.

It could also be that I live in the only Canadian Province where there are enough of them to influence policy, and enough of them for me to notice, and consequently, enough of them for me to feel a burning, antipathy towards them.

I want to shove in their faces current death statistics, showing that 10 times as many children die today from pertussis as did before the take off of the anti vaccine crusade, a number that eclipses by an order of magnitude claimed deaths from vaccines themselves. Then I realize that anti vaccine zealots are just that, zealots wedded to a religion they don't even understand.

[oddlystrange]

This is how I felt until now. While, like you, I looked at the odds and logical brain said "not vaxing is stupid" my illogical primal urge to protect my child from what really in truth is a miniscule chance of something horrible happening to him with H1N1 gave me a sort of perspective on why parents who are more instinct driven would choose not to vax.

I still think it's a bad choice, but I kinda get why if confronted with "news to the contrary" parents would freak out like they do.

[luguvalium]

As someone living with a suppressed immune system (due to transplant) and thus one of those in a high risk group for death from flu and other maladies, I find ~others~ far more worried about my health than myself. Not that I never worry, but if I obsessed over all vectors of infection, I'd never leave the house. I follow simple rules: wash hands, avoid sick people, and in particular sick children. That the incidence of common colds has dramatically dropped since I had my transplant I attribute to these rules.

Oh, and I always get my flu shots and ask those I'm around everyday to get theirs too.

[oberstgreup]

I think it's the same basic instinct that leads to the more irrational conspiracy theories - we grow up being told that modern science and technology have made us the masters of the world, and when we are confronted with the stark reality that this isn't so, the lack of control terrifies us