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I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

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Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#81

Post by Grishnakh »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

I'm curious how far the label "anti-vaxxer" extends. Does it also include people who accept the science behind vaccination, but who as a political principle are opposed to it being made compulsory?

If you don't make it compulsory, then it doesn't work. Vaccination relies on herd immunity because the vaccination doesn't work for everyone; some people can't have the vaccine (allergic to one of its components), for other people it just doesn't take effect (biological systems are unreliable like that), so you have to have an over 90% vaccination rate for herd immunity to actually work. By allowing people to opt out, you're condemning a bunch of people to illness and death.

Lemme guess, you're a libertarian, right?

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#82

Post by Grishnakh »

bluedino wrote: post #30

I almost married an anti-vaxxer. And then I realized there are another couple million people in this country I could marry and not have to fight over that stuff about the rest of my life. It wasn't just vaccines she was worried about. She was also vegan. Only ate organic. I'm fine if those are your choices but I don't want them forced upon me, or a lecture when I eat a hotdog, take an aspirin, or drink milk. Constant…

You made the right choice. I wish someone had convinced me to avoid my marriage. My last wife wasn't a really strong anti-vaxxer (we never had kids, so it never was a big issue), but she did buy into it and closely related, she was really big into "alternative medicine". She spent a ridiculous amount of money on that crap, and of course that was one of the big factors that lead to our marriage failing.

I agree with the other guy though about you conflating things. You're right that being anti-vax and using alternative medicine is largely about fear (which she has problems with in many other areas too: she's afraid of terrorists, she's afraid of illegals, I could go on and on), but veganism, as far as I can tell, is not about fear, it's about an extreme philosophical position where those people don't want to hurt or abuse animals in any way. (The problem with the position, of course, is it's just not very practical.) I don't see the two as the same at all; my wife wasn't into veganism at all. She was into organic stuff though, which of course is based on fear, though not completely irrational as a lot of our food in this country is of shitty quality and many farming practices are questionable (for instance, giving livestock tons of antibiotics even when they don't need it, which is causing more antibiotic-resistant bacteria to arise).

If you're in the position of dating someone who you might have kids with, and she's anti-vax, I recommend getting out ASAP. You're going to end up having horrible fights over it. If you're past the age of having kids, it's less of an issue, but it's still a good indicator of a very different worldview, so I recommend avoiding those people.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#83

Post by cname »

condescendence wrote: post #66
cname wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the whole article, it's pretty clear that he hasn't missed any aspect of "the argument". From the article: "But vaccines only work when everyone buys in. Public health depends on anti-vaxxers confronting their greatest fears for the benefit of others."

I'm pointing out the fact that this person is playing mental mind games to justify the SO's point because he is head over heals so to speak. I read the full article, and your comment furthers my point. The author is playing on both sides of the fence. It's like my SO for example, I hate when people chew with their mouth open I find it a little disrespectful and yet she does it and I don't find it disturbing. My prefe…

It doesn't sound like his beliefs were affected at all. In the end, she decided to get her kid vaccinated. He was playing the long game, and it sounds like it paid off. It seems to me that you're the one missing the point.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#84

Post by zachrose »

sharemywin wrote: post #57
pc86 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be addressed with legislation making it a felony not to vaccinate your children by a reason early childhood age (e.g. 6 years or something), whether put in public school or not, and making proof of vaccination a requirement for federal aid for that person (e.g. student loans or assistance). There are certain things that should be up for public debate and discourse, left to the courts, or up to personal pref…

just like buying a gun since more people die from guns in the US than the diseases we vaccinate against. The troll is on the other foot now...

Yeah, as I was reading the article I noticed a lot of parallels to gun control in the US.

The harder one part of society pulls against guns, the more convinced gun rights advocates become that this is all a bigger conspiracy to to disarm them and take away their agency.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#85

Post by Grue3 »

Grishnakh wrote: post #81
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

I'm curious how far the label "anti-vaxxer" extends. Does it also include people who accept the science behind vaccination, but who as a political principle are opposed to it being made compulsory?

If you don't make it compulsory, then it doesn't work. Vaccination relies on herd immunity because the vaccination doesn't work for everyone; some people can't have the vaccine (allergic to one of its components), for other people it just doesn't take effect (biological systems are unreliable like that), so you have to have an over 90% vaccination rate for herd immunity to actually work. By allowing people to opt out…

So you're arguing that flu vaccine must be mandatory? All the other vaccines (there sure are plenty)? You're just plain wrong about vaccination relying on herd immunity. Vaccine is still effective for those who take it. And the oft-repeated number "90%" has no scientific basis whatsoever, the herd immunity threshold is heavily dependent on how infectious the disease is, and plenty of other factors.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#86

Post by _eyc9 »

jacquesm wrote: post #69
vdaniuk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>both medicine and the science behind drugs have been spectacularly wrong more than once On the other hand, non-medicine (alternative medicine) and non-science (pseudoscience) have been spectacularly right more than once. That's the point. Agree with empathy angle and need for emotional arguments, though.

Can you give some examples of what you're thinking of here?

My guess is that this demographic would tend to categorize traditional Chinese medicine as being pseudoscience – if you agree, here's an example from within that system:

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to a Youyou Tu, a Chinese pharmacologist who identified powerful antimalarial compounds in a traditional Chinese medical formula that has been used for centuries to treat Malaria:

> Youyou Tu in China turned to traditional herbal medicine to tackle the challenge of developing novel Malaria therapies. From a large-scale screen of herbal remedies in Malaria-infected animals, an extract from the plant Artemisia annua emerged as an interesting candidate. However, the results were inconsistent, so Tu revisited the ancient literature and discovered clues that guided her in her quest to successfully extract the active component from Artemisia annua. Tu was the first to show that this component, later called Artemisinin, was highly effective against the Malaria parasite, both in infected animals and in humans (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/20...).

There are plenty of other examples if you are curious and inclined to do the research.

As an aside, I would argue that the type of empiricism within this system of medicine is indeed a type of science (cataloguing pharmacological agents for thousands of years and recording their effects in the treatment of myriad medical conditions), but it probably has little to no examples of the modern day notion of randomized clinical trials.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#87

Post by henalye »

coldtea wrote: post #76
sharemywin wrote: post #6

How do you convince your wife when her kid got sick and went into a seizure after a vaccination. Especially when the CDC recommends against it for your child: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/should-not-vacc.htm then what do you do about the other child?

How do you convince your wife when your child gets the disease that vaccination would have protected them against (which is far more likely to happen, and has cost thousands upon thousands of recorded deaths in the past)? Your question is analogous to: "If you told you kid it's ok to go out and play, and while outside a car hit him, do you let the other child ever go out again?" probability wise.

But that's exactly what happens sometimes. Family was ridiculously overprotective of me and crossing roads because my sister got run over by a car. I was barely able to go out and do anything at all outside until I managed to get out of that environment because my older cousin got herself into drugs.

While this is merely anecdotal evidence, my story is not unique. The younger sibling paying dearly for the bias caretakers incurred thanks to correlation to a bad incident is far, far from a rare occurrence.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#88

Post by jacquesm »

vdaniuk wrote: post #79
jacquesm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of what you're thinking of here?

Medicine is usually right and only sometimes wrong, but alternative medicine is usually wrong and only sometimes right. The fact that medicine can be spectacularly or trivially wrong doesn't provide any inputs for change of personal healthcare strategy.

I understand what you wrote. I was asking for specific examples.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#89

Post by spleeder »

Alex3917 wrote: post #68
jacquesm wrote: post #21

The CIA did more for the anti-vaccination movement than any kind of scientific publication ever will. People that are afraid of vaccination are so for many reasons (some of them totally nonsense, others with some basis in fact). But to have actual proof that a three letter agency used a (fake) vaccination drive to gather DNA from large numbers of innocents in order to get at a fugitive was something we could have rea…

Also the HIV epidemic is thought to have been started by government vaccination programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS But a lot of 'pro-vaccine' folks just completely ignore the black swan problem, which is wrong. Also the flu vaccine lowers your chances of dying in any given winter, but many studies show that it increase your chances of the flu dying over the course of your life. This is becaus…

In my country (Romania) HIV was actually spread through vaccinations. Indeed that is how I got infected as an infant. The problem was supposedly not with the vaccines themselves though but with the fact that they were reusing needles.

Re: I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

#90

Post by RUG3Y »

calinet6 wrote: post #53

This article doesn't really dive into the issue in a real, honest way. Vaccinations are generally a public health benefit, no doubt about it, but there's also much we don't understand about how the immune system works. It's not completely, entirely, 100% irrational to desire to avoid messing with something you don't fully understand. The more science you learn, sometimes, the more you learn how little we really know…

Wow, someone who gets it. Science has really become the religion of our time, "scientists" are the priesthood. We should trust their recommendations unconditionally, without question.
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