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Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

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Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccines are less risky than infection for children even though the risks from infection are low. Are you somehow assuming that they aren't ever going to get infected?

"The vaccines are less risky than infection for children" Can you back up that claim with long term studies?

I mean, you can't back up the converse with long terms studies either.

Just infer the very reasonable "based on the information available". And it's not like the vaccines are a complete unknown. Making them work at all takes a huge level of understanding.

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that has a diagnosis and takes medication for it and and an educator, I understand better than most both sides of the situation. I apologize if it seems like I don't understand both sides. In asian culture there is still a very very strong stigma surrounding treatment for mental health issues. Sometimes hesitancy is cultural and other times it's religious and other times it's pride. My own struggles growin…

I appreciate your response and being willing to reconsider. It’s great that you found an approach that worked for you. But yes, I would still suggest humility in assuming that you can identify when the same approach will work for someone else, especially when that someone is a child and the parents, who know that child better than anyone else, don’t share your conviction. There are good reasons to be skeptical about…

Most of the parents I feel frustrated with show hesitancy about even testing, despite also being very concerned about their child failing in school. They treat a positive diagnosis and even testing like a conspiracy, and continually argue that it's simply a question of laziness and motivation.

I am not sure what age you define as young children. I think ages 13 and above, with the assumption they started puberty at minimum a year prior and are at least entering high school, is a fair time to seriously consider/start pharmacological treatment. That was my suggestion to some other parents who have directly asked me. Sometimes starting medication younger is necessary, but in my opinion most kids aren't doing anything where focus is critical to their long term success before starting high school.

I similary have reservations about the current way in which ADHD hyperactive is diagnosed in children younger than 12. I am mainly talking about primarily inattentive diagnoses, because that's what I have experience with and feel confident speaking about. I only teach kids in high school and older. On the other hand, there's a weakness in identifying girls who would benefit from being tested, and an issue of underdiagnosed women, because of the way ADHD symtoms present differently by gender.

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it's an inevitable thing when people are less ill. It's dishonest to demand testing something like "people coughing less spread less" and then use that to pad the rest of your weak arguments with that - like the last sentence about efficacy (straight after the anecdotal). The context of this is that there were voices calling for coercing vaccination. My mother-in-law lost her job because she refused to have…

> Not at all. Again and again, the @realjhol model was far more accurate than the Imperial College model. Many such cases. Sad to see my alma mater fail so badly. Did you forget to switch to a sockpuppet account?

I'm referring to myself in the third person.

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The vaccines are less risky than infection for children" Can you back up that claim with long term studies?

I mean, you can't back up the converse with long terms studies either. Just infer the very reasonable "based on the information available". And it's not like the vaccines are a complete unknown. Making them work at all takes a huge level of understanding.

I know, that is my point. Parenting is a juggling of risks.

"based on the information available"

And the information avaiable is confusing and partly contradictory.

I know that many researchers advised against child vaccination, because of the unknowns and the low risk for the children from the disease in the first place.

"Making them work at all takes a huge level of understanding."

It does, but it would be news to me, that the immune system is completely understood. Even less the immune system and long term effects of a immune system that is developing.

It was cutting edge research and to my understanding it was more of: this might work.

And it did and unlike the anti vaxx crowd told us, apparently we did not die from it, nor were there mass severe long term damages to be found. But there was damage, some likely did in fact die from the vaccines and so it is not a 100% clear obvious decision. It might have been for you, that is allright and it was allright for me, but for my infant children I did not feel like making that experiment.

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#175

There's a frightening crisis of trust in authority, and frankly those in authority are the only ones to blame. It's been brewing for decades. More recent causes of this decay: -mixed messaging on basics from NIH on COVID in the early days, including outright lies (remember when wearing masks was bad for you?) -> Elites are clueless -Mixed messaging from pretty much every global leader about the best approach to handl…

This is spot on. An average person will, consciously or not, perform a risk/benefit assessment for important decisions such as vaccination. But they may not have necessary resources to engage in deep research, and therefore must employ the traditional shortcut - trust. Trust is the most valuable asset an authority can have, but it was squandered with lightning speed by governments and corporations through mixed messaging, censorship of competent voices, and corruption.

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#176
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We will go to such lengths as taking the child away and raising it elsewhere if that is what's best for them Correction. " if we think that is what's best for them." Maybe it is, maybe it's not. It's kinda like the death penalty - the state can totally get it wrong, and mistakes have lifelong reprecussions. > People don't get to murder their children and get away with it. Again, this seems like a weird strawman. An…

It's not a strawman. If the state disallows you from murdering your child, they have authority over you. There are court cases every year where parents who kill their kids get convicted and sent to jail. Who had authority? The people who went to jail, or the people who sent them there? > I'd rather have a distributed system of parents putting a majority of their time and attention into figuring out what's best for th…

> I would rather have the state disallow murdering children rather than each parent deciding for themselves if they should be able to murder their kid.

You're the only one here who has said anything about parental authority overriding the murdering-is-bad laws that most countries seem to have. The state disallows murdering children in the same way it disallows murdering anyone else - via general laws that are nonspecific to parents and their authority over their children.

If you were talking about some other kind of crime where the state was claiming specific authority over the special case of parents' authority over their kids, then I'd understand why you brought it up. Like I said earlier. That's either a weird strawman, or you missed the point of what "ultimate authority" means here.

> Sometimes parents don't do what's best for their kid. In those cases, it's better for the state to use their Ultimate Authority to intervene in the interests of the child.

Except that what you're advocating for isn't intervention in just those cases. You're also advocating that the state intervene in cases where: the treatment is harmful to the child, and the well-educated parent knows it, but the state thinks it's for the best, and causes harm to the child. And you're justifying it by saying the parents shouldn't be allowed to murder their kid. Which is really weird logic.

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You are saying a lot for just being very anti social, anti human etc. No a public health system is not totaliarism. A gov has the responsibility to take care of all people. This also means that the individual might need to play a game they don't always like. That's how a good stable society works. And just because you are (I guess) in the position to pay for medical, your neighbor might not. What society would that b…

>gov has the responsibility to take care of all people.

This is where the fundamental disagreement lies. Many people including myself do not agree with this statement and view that statement itself as totalitarian

It IS NOT the government role to take care of me. I do NOT need or want the government to provide that service

In a free society the government is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties;

Anything beyond that "night watchmen" framework and you go beyond free society into authoritarian and totalitarian governance

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your response and being willing to reconsider. It’s great that you found an approach that worked for you. But yes, I would still suggest humility in assuming that you can identify when the same approach will work for someone else, especially when that someone is a child and the parents, who know that child better than anyone else, don’t share your conviction. There are good reasons to be skeptical about…

Most of the parents I feel frustrated with show hesitancy about even testing, despite also being very concerned about their child failing in school. They treat a positive diagnosis and even testing like a conspiracy, and continually argue that it's simply a question of laziness and motivation. I am not sure what age you define as young children. I think ages 13 and above, with the assumption they started puberty at m…

I respect your beliefs and can tell they come from good intentions and a desire to help.

That said, my personal inclination is that diagnosis and medication should be a last resort after first trying alternative approaches to education and learning, as well as looking at lifestyle issues like diet, sleep, exercise, screen time, etc.

My experience of education in the US is that it was mostly bad, and that most teachers were bad, particularly when it comes to helping intelligent, creative, and eccentric kids reach their potentials. If at all possible, I would always favor first trying to find a better environment for a child who is struggling rather than using drugs to force them to adapt to a low quality education system.

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#179
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would have effects on people's health but those effects would be both positive and negative. They'd both have to be summed together, but even then, health isn't everything. A healthy society run by totalitarians is still a deeply unpleasant society to live in. Whooping cough vaccines and vaccines in general would still exist without public health. The difference is that it would be an individual decision to b…

There are very few public health interventions that are deleterious to even a fraction of the population, because the prime directive is "first, do no harm" and that's a very much entrenched principle of public health. Regarding vaccines, I chose the whooping cough example on purpose. This vaccine is only 60% efficient. The risk of newborns being killed or gravely ill would be highly increased if used only at the ind…

"This vaccine is only 60% efficient."

How do you know? Because you were told by the same system that claimed Comirnaty was 95% effective?

For those of us who generalize from public health in the COVID years to public health in general, why is that generalization wrong, in your view?

Re: Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying a lot for just being very anti social, anti human etc. No a public health system is not totaliarism. A gov has the responsibility to take care of all people. This also means that the individual might need to play a game they don't always like. That's how a good stable society works. And just because you are (I guess) in the position to pay for medical, your neighbor might not. What society would that b…

>gov has the responsibility to take care of all people. This is where the fundamental disagreement lies. Many people including myself do not agree with this statement and view that statement itself as totalitarian It IS NOT the government role to take care of me. I do NOT need or want the government to provide that service In a free society the government is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It…

It's not about you.

It's about the society.

And I'm fine if people don't like this but I already said what this is: antisocial.

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