Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated • Hacker News Board

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#121

Post by aestra » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 12:47 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #23

I saw a kid with polio deformed legs a few months ago. Something that I have never seen while the immunization calendar was state mandated and I was young. I have also never seen a case of autism. In a few years we will have outbreak of something preventable. I just feel poor for all the kids that had real reasons not to get the shots. A friend of mine after very bad Hodgkin was with compromised immune system for 10…

>I have also never seen a case of autism.

What? You can't tell just by looking at someone if they have autism. You must have some sort of preconceived notions of what autism looks like. For example, here is two people in my family with autism (they are identical twins)

http://i.imgur.com/9PP5O6T.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aedlKYR.jpg

Rather than saying something incredibly ignorant like "I've never seen it," why don't we use science?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673699...

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=197365

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134

Those are just some peer reviewed scientific publications disproving any association between autism and vaccines. If you aren't looking at real facts, you are just as bad as the anti-vacciners.

NOW, lets talk about how this got started.

The association was started by one study authored by Andrew Wakefield and published in The Lancet. Andrew Wakfield had serious conflicts of interests and it was later found he was paid money by British trial lawyers to prove the vaccine was dangerous so the lawyers could get rich suing. Hundreds of thousands of pounds we are talking. It was found he had manipulated evidence and broken other ethical codes to publish that paper in The Lancet.

The Lancet paper was partially retracted in 2004 and fully retracted in 2010, and Wakefield was found guilty by the General Medical Council of serious professional misconduct in May 2010 and was struck off the Medical Register, meaning he could no longer practice medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#122

Post by Steuard » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 12:49 PM UTC

sitharus wrote: post #16

I've had the fun experience of debating with anti-vaccine people. Outside of the religious 'god will protect us' line, which I can't really argue with as it's a matter of faith, the vaccines cause autism line keeps coming up. Unfortunately for us a condition that we don't really understand is far more prevalent than the side-effects of preventable diseases. I've never met anyone who's experienced post-polio syndrome…

Personally, I've seen a lot more vaccination refusal among left-wing anti-corporate types than among the devoutly religious. That may be a function of my usual peer group, but to solve this problem it's going to be important to recognize how widespread it can be.

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#123

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 12:51 PM UTC

raphinou wrote: post #109

jlgreco wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the expertise to make that call, and neither I suspect do you. I am comfortable with the CDC making that call. Moderated positions should not be your priority. Rather factually correct and defensible positions should be.

Looking at the facts lead me to a moderate position. I let you feel confortable following the cdc, i prefer to keep a critical mind, though i agree it is hard for non experts like us to get good and objective information.

>Looking at the facts lead me to a moderate position.

Mention them, rather than "moderation", and people may not downvote you.

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#124

Post by dhughes » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 1:02 PM UTC

dtf wrote: post #66

robbiep wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a few years there will be an outbreak of something preventable There's an outbreak of preventable childhood measles in England at this very moment

I think it's south Wales that copped the worst of it. 1,219 cases of measles, 88 hospitalisations and one death. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-23168519 National newspapers are very much involved. Journalists like to present two sides of the story as equal rivals for "balance", even when one side is science and the other is paranoid quackery. When it comes to public health, this is a disaster.

A family from my region went on a trip to Wales and both kids contracted measles and were sick when they returned. When the children were young the parents never had them vaccinated and now they're sick.

It was just sheer luck this happened when school was out, the school system here doesn't require kids to be vaccinated as most places in Canada require.

It's so easy for a stupid thing to escalate into a world-wide event all because of a few anti-vaccination idiots.

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#125

Post by dhughes » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 1:04 PM UTC

jmadsen wrote: post #101

jared314 wrote: post #4

> Most people have not lived in a time of plagues or remember their effects. Most people do not read history or look at the morbidity and mortality of vaccine-preventable illnesses in the third world. This is another great example of why people need to be taught actual history, not the version censored "for their young minds". The people who change curricula and edit textbooks to remove the unpleasant memories, or fo…

The sad thing is, one of the worst pandemics in human history is fairly recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic There are (a few) people alive today who remember it. It killed between 1.5 and 3 times as many people as the earlier WWI - but isn't as sexy as war, so hardly anyone studies it (relatively speaking)

Killing about 5% of the entire population of the world about 100 million people, just imagine now with seven billion if a flu outbreak killed 350 million people.

Even people on remote islands in the middle of oceans died from the flu.

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#126

Post by dalke » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 1:08 PM UTC

raphinou wrote: post #80

dalke wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Read my comment without considering me as anti-vaccines" I didn't regard you as such in the first place. I regarded you as making the incorrect appeal to argument by moderation. Now you have switched the topic, from the implication that the US health policy and/or supporters in this forum are "unconditionally pro" vaccination, to a question about a specific vaccine and disease. I do not wish to discuss this new topi…

I don't understand why you think I'm discussing US policy... It seems we don't understand each other and ending our discussion is indeed the best option.

I never said you were talking directly about US policy. I both times used the word "implication." You say there are two camps. I point out that the majority view, which includes the views of the CDC and WHO, and described in their publications, is in neither of those camps that you proposed.

Specifically, you say "Sadly both camps (pro and anti vaccines) have too extreme positions to have a constructive debate."

The US health policy is decidedly pro vaccine. Therefore, I can use it an exemplar to determine if it has "extreme views" which are "too extreme positions to have a constructive debate."

I then showed that there is a lot of debate and cost/benefit analysis on the use of different vaccines, including a change in the vaccination policies over time as conditions change. Nothing about the debate looks "extreme".

Therefore either you don't understand the majority view or you are using an very different reference frame than the others on this forum, without explaining the context shift.

That's the likely source of the downvotes that you complained about.

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#127

Post by aestra » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 1:22 PM UTC

rentAchop wrote: post #73

jlgreco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, those are "big" (as in, serious, though rare; or serious, but doesn't fucking happen...) but do you know what is bigger? Somebody who could not get immunized dying because you refused to get immunized. That is why it is selfish. Incredibly selfish.

If one was forced to immunize their child, that child then dies from a reaction to that vaccine. Is that the "unselfish" act? You might of well have said it's against your "morals". Your full of it, might as well say we should cull the autistic kids from the herd, you know to protect the herd.

Your comment made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#128

Post by eru » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 1:29 PM UTC

Volpe wrote: post #38

auctiontheory wrote: post #31

Yes, I think we should all be vaccinated, as the powers that be confidently tell us. And as a consumer of medicine, I observe that doctors are equally confident when they really don't know what they're talking about, and when their opinions aren't substantiated by science. (The command to wear padded running shoes, for instance.) And I know that the CIA organized a fake "vaccination drive" to get Osama bin Laden. So…

> The command to wear padded running shoes, for instance. Physio's I've spoken to describe the pros and cons of both (barefoot, and padded) and let me decide. What command are you referring to?

Barefoot versus padded is a false dilemma. There are non padded shoes.

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#129

Post by wusher » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 1:31 PM UTC

jmadsen wrote: post #101

jared314 wrote: post #4

> Most people have not lived in a time of plagues or remember their effects. Most people do not read history or look at the morbidity and mortality of vaccine-preventable illnesses in the third world. This is another great example of why people need to be taught actual history, not the version censored "for their young minds". The people who change curricula and edit textbooks to remove the unpleasant memories, or fo…

The sad thing is, one of the worst pandemics in human history is fairly recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic There are (a few) people alive today who remember it. It killed between 1.5 and 3 times as many people as the earlier WWI - but isn't as sexy as war, so hardly anyone studies it (relatively speaking)

Also, the pandemic was made worse due to over medicating the sick http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091002132346.ht...

Re: Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated

#130

Post by pkennedy » Sat, Sep 07, 2013, 1:37 PM UTC

Steuard wrote: post #116

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing in the Netherlands. No surprise: all in the Bible Belt. This is a map of the Dutch Bible Belt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt_%28Netherlands%29 , and this is a map of the epidemic: http://www.nrc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ANP-23877900-56... And just for clarity: these are areas with a low population density.

At least in the US, my impression is that vaccination refusal is more common among left-wing anti-corporate types than among fundamentalist Christians. It thrives any time there are non-rational beliefs, but it doesn't seem to be too picky about which kind.

One of the current big US measles outbreaks is church-related: http://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217746942/texas-megachurch-at-...

My anecdotal experience among anti-vaccination people I've known is that they're only weakly correlated with religion or politics--leaning slightly left but still all over the map.