>The AAP is now recommending that babies (I do not have the 
>youngest age up to 2 years old) be vaccinated against the flu.
>They stated that this population is at the same risk as the 
>elderly.  Now, I do not want to start a flood of posts on 
>immunizations, I want this to be about just this recommendation.  
>Why doesn't the AAP recommend breastfeeding for 2 years to 
>protect babies from these illness?  Why is the public so 
>into the quick fix or the magic pill?  

Speaking ONLY to this issue.  Influenza immunity doesn't not carry from year to year, even in those of us who fall ill with it and develop the antibodies.  The virus is highly volatile and mutates constantly.  Passive immunities in BF are highly unlikely to even a little effective.  The health benefits to simple good health go without saying.

In jurisdictions where universal immunization is offered have had dramatic drops in full-blown influenza cases, though this past year (when the vaccine best guess was not a very good fit) was not so dramatic.

Clean water, plentiful food and vaccination have proven to be the most effective public health care strategies in the past.  Vaccines are given (mostly) for diseases where there is a significant risk of mortality or serious morbidity.  Morbidity meaning patients who are debilitated or damaged.  (As an asthmatic every time I get the flu I become very sick, resulting usually in pneumonia and three weeks off work -- that' MILD morbidity.  I get my shot).

In dollars to the health care system, prevention of flu costs infinitely less than caring for the many who get a little sick, and the few who become very seriously ill and require hospitalization, etc.

Why do people buy in?  I can't speak for anyone else, but I buy in because all of the vaccine preventable disease carry an associated mortality.  I've actually seen the cases of preventable death and morbidity.  I've done follow-up for a measles outbreak, a meningitis outbreak, a polio outbreak.  They still happen (and in Russia in the last decade, significant outbreaks of diphtheria and the other immunized diseases followed the breakdown in government).  I've seen the kid retarded following hemophilus meningitis; seen the girl deaf following measles; seen the babies sent to PICU. They are real people and they carry a real face.  

And all the information of any SENSE says exposure strengthens the immune system, doesn't weaken it.  

Judith, in Public Health

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