RRC Archives

that vaccine blinded me - with science

This talk reminds me of the Y2K doomsayers, one dude I worked with was convinced the world was totally screwed at the stroke of midnight. He had lots of guns, ammo, hardened room (to fend off the zombies I suppose), food and water for a couple of months.

Get enough bad beta people will do some weird shit!

what percent of infected individuals would live without the vaccine? of those that died of the infection or complications, well, you know, they kinda liked it? it was fashionable, like arsenic and nursing home joie de vivre.

Seriously folks, a very dangerous strain of influenza will strike again someday. In 1918 young, healthy troops reported to sick bay in the morning and died that night. They didn't die from secondary infections, the damned flu killed them, but quick. What this flu season is proving is that we aren't even close to being ready for the truly big bad pandemic. Laugh it off if it makes you feel better, but our public health care system really needs to get it's shit together on this before it's too late. Today millions are coming down with H1N1 while the government continues to assure us that "everyone that wants a vaccine will be able to get one". Just not yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR5p_bD3uLc

Just playing devil's advocate. We will not be giving the h1n1 shot to our children but don't pass judgement on those who opt to get one.

I don't care if its one in a million....I'll take my chances with the flu! I'll also take my chances with the common cold, and the common headache, and the occasional hangover. Ohh, now thats an idea - we should have a vaccine for the both occasional and maybe even frequent hangover.

Yeah, but out of your list only the common cold is communicable. People don't die from the common cold very often. It's not just about you and "sucking it up". This is quite different than a headache or a hangover.

But, I didn't get the vaccine either. I work from home and rarely make it out into the world.

Wes wrote:First hit with google:

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm

Just glancing it looks like serious reactions are about 1 in a million.

Yes, I know that CDC has those numbers up. I admit that I don't have high confidence in the numbers because the reporting of those reactions is very poor and the causative relationship is often difficult to establish. And it is still not a per-year data that I would like to see...

But I am not arguing with you about it, because I agree, the serious reactions are very rare, whether it is 1 in a million, or 10 in a million, it is still very rare.

Wes wrote: Number 2 isn't even a valid question, since today unvaccinated people will be mostly protected via herd immunity. Look at the stats where there is no vaccines and that should give you an idea, or just wait til an outbreak hits one of the unvaccinated clusters.

Looking at historical data is not valid either, because a lot of the outbreaks in the past have been due to sanitation (or lack of it) isssues.

The question a parent asks in the doctors' office isn't about historical risks or herd immunity.

It is a question along the lines of:"Here is my perfect child, absolutely healthy and happy. You tell me that if you stick this needle into her, I might get one-in-a-million chance that she will be brain-damaged or dead, a much higher chance that she will have seisures, local necrosis, and a whole bunch of scary things I don't even understand the names of, and almost certainly get one of the mild side effects that would be annoying at best. Yet you can't tell me what is the chance of her getting the disease if I don't stick that needle into her. So tell me again why do I need to stick that needle in her RIGHT NOW? This very moment?"

And surprizingly (NOT), herd immunity is not something that most people accept as a reason in this individualistic society.

But that is the real true answer to the question. You need to vaccinate your child NOT because there is an imminent danger to the child, YOUR child, right now, unless you vaccinate. He/she is not going to come down with polyo if you don't vax. In the last 30+ years there have been 126 cases of polyo in the United States, every single case was vaccine-induced (this is information for the little insert that comes with the polyo vaccine, by the way, reported by the company that produces the vaccine. This is the reason why they switched to the inactivated polyo vaccine... I believe after the switch there have been no cases of vaccine-induced polyo.)

But rather, you need to vaccinate to maintain that herd immunity. So other children who trully cannot be vaccinated because of serious health issues are protected. There have been a lot more than 126 polyo unvaccinated children i the past 30+ years, and not a single one of therm came down with polyo...


Tell that truthfully to an average parent, and see how fast they would agree to have their child vaccinated... I'll tell you what the average parent would do-- pass on that chance and let some OTHER kids get the stick, and the side effects. And as soon as that happens, the whole herd immunity is unraveled. So instead CDC has to emphasize the fear, the dangers of being unvaccinated. Blow it up some, in fact... Which in turn gives every anti-vaccine crusader a lot of room to blast at CDC's fear-mongering and conspiracy and endangering your child...


I don't know if there is a good way to get around this problem. Better science education? More emphasis on community and one's duty to the said community?


So many issues compound the problem... A child doesn't need to be vaxed against Rubella, for example. It is a really mild disease in kids. BUT, if a pregnant woman gets Rubella, it causes problems with the fetus. Getting a Rubella shot before trying to conceive would be a good solution, unless you had Rubella as a child. BUT... more than half of pregnancies inthe US are unplanned, so that's out of the window, and if you decide to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active, you need to get it done at the age of ~12, which causes the whole religious bunch to go up in arms, like they did for HPV vaccine, and anyway, you don't get as good a coverage as you do with childhood immunisations... So we are back to bundling Rubella with other vaccines and sticking it into toddlers along with Hepatitis B and a bunch of others...

dhuff wrote:Wes, I'd be ok with you calling me a 'fucking idiot' if only it wasn't true that the science czar, John Holdren, co-authored a book called "Ecoscience" in 1973 in which he says that an effective form of population control is putting sterilizing agents in the water supply, staple foods, and mass vaccines. Do some research before you decide to break out the insults, man, that's just not cool.

Well, it isn't true, so I guess you're OK with being called a "fucking idiot." I don't know if you are, but when you regurgitate BS from Michelle Malkin and the Washington Times, you're walking like a duck and quacking like a duck...

In reality Holdren co-authored a 1000+ page academic textbook, with one chapter of less than 70 pages, in which the authors examined the issue if overpopulation reaches crisis levels, what the responses could be. They survey, that is make a list of, the possible options in response to a crisis. Here's some of the sooooper scary quotes:

Dr. Holdren, et al. wrote:“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.â€