I mentioned the "Bringing the Plague home to infect the baby" in my initial rebuttal post, as that is exactly what happened in the 2008 San Diego measles outbreak. Patient 0 was an intentionally unvaccinated boy who picked up the disease while on vacation in Sweden. Brings it home, exposes 893 people to the disease. Only 12 out of 893 were infected, because he was in a highly vaccinated area. 11 of those twelve were other intentionally unvaccinated kids (The entire audience is shocked. In other news, water is wet. More at 11) It's the 12th that bothers me. The 12th was a 4-8mo infant, from a vaccinated family. That baby was hospitalized, and survived, but there was no reason for that baby to have become infected in the first place. It was entirely the fault of Patient 0's parents. This was (say it with me now, kids!) ALSO IGNORED! *blows kazoo*
I seriously want to know why they do this. The personal choice issue is completely an excuse: because nobody has the right to kill other people's kids. that kid's parents should've been criminally liable for that baby. Never mind that even if you have the choice to not vaccinate your kids you should still choose to do it because it's the right thing for them and for society. Likewise the whole " it gives you autism" thing is bogus and they know it. Anyone who believes that is clearly not basing it on facts. So seriously why? Why do that to your kids, to other people's kids ? What is the benefit?
I read an article somewhere that classism factors in? The thought is like,"My child would never get those filthy diseases." Because, y'know, those diseases are in third-world countries, not 'Murica. It's not because those countries don't have vaccines, the disease is just part of that country, not 'Murica. 'Murica just doesn't have those diseases because *mumbling* Also HUGE DISCOVERY!! sensationalist media soundbites, celebrity/political endorsements, and pure dead-set stubbornness/refusal to admit they're wrong.
THE REASON AMERICA DOESN'T HAVE THOSE DISEASES IS BECAUSE WE VACCINATE *froths at the mouth* although i did see that doctors without borders has pretty much vaccinated entire countries' children for polio, so polio is pretty much gone on a worldwide scale at this point--but only if you vaccinate for it, of course
Unfortunately polio still infects other primates :( (I still remember watching footage of a polio outbreak devastating a group of chimpanzees. It was so sad.) I wonder how they'd feel about an ebola vaccine
In a weird, callous, evolutionist way, it's kinda heartening? Like, we, as a species, have advanced to the point where basically the only things that can kill us are -- Old age -- Cancer -- Our own fucking stupidity and we're slowly conquering the first two, as well. We've developed vaccines for just about everything, and if we don't have a vaccine for it, we probably have something to nip it in the bud. Even autoimmune stuff like HIV! We've become so healthy that some parts of our species have started to believe that we don't need almost a century's worth of immunology, pathology and virology. Between herd immunity and our post-infection healthcare, those idiots and their measles parties* are surviving anyway! That's amazing! This is basically the only thing keeping me from frothing at the mouth. Anti-Vaxxers are a sign that Science has done a Good Job. We beat the bad guy thoroughly enough that people have time to complain about methodology and that's great. That's really *grinds teeth* really great. *Yes I know Measles Parties weren't an actual thing (I hope) but you get the idea.
Re: the classism thing, from memory, a recent study showed thst the suburbs in Sydney with the lowest vaccination rates were... wait for it... the wealthiest suburbs. Ah yes, I found it. http://www.smh.com.au/national/heal...tion-rates-research-shows-20140326-35iy3.html Actually, nationally, my city has the lowest rates of vaccination in its wealthiest suburbs. Amazing.
Yeah, I checked out a map of which states in the US had the lowest vaccination rates. ~shockingly~, most of them are blue states.
i'm officially on the fence re: vaccines, because i don't currently have the spoons to study it myself and i don't want to form an opinion before i look at the evidence. but i'm biased towards the anti-vax side for two reasons. first, my mother is anti-vax, and i generally trust her judgement and her ability to research. second, the holier-than-thou attitude i see a lot from the pro-vax side really puts my back up. it's a bit exhausting to try and evaluate the pro-vax arguments and evidence when i'm having to tamp down an irrational irritation with the person presenting the evidence the whole time. for that reason i have a bookmarks folder where i stick vaccination-related stuff to read later, when i have spoons and am not emotionally compromised. anyway, i don't have links because i mostly just bookmark stuff i come across, and i mostly come across pro-vax stuff, but here are things i've heard from anti-vaxxers. (i don't know if any of them are accurate, if anyone wants to drop links relating to these so i can bookmark them for later, that would be cool.) 1. claim that studies on the safety/efficacy of vaccines are funded by companies producing the vaccines. conflict of interest! this is probably part of why anti-vaxxers do things pro-vaxxers interpret as "ignoring evidence" - they believe that the evidence is biased or that results are fudged or something. 2. belief that the danger of complications arising from vaccination is greater than the danger of an un-vaccinated child contracting a serious disease that could have been prevented by vaccinating them. this one is sort of a buy-one-get-one-free deal with: 3. belief that vaccinations are not as effective as advertized, and/or not effective enough for the possible-benefit to outweigh the possible-risk. my mother isn't in the vaccines-cause-autism camp so i don't know the anti-vax side for that (and i think seebs and some others have mentioned that it was discovered that the guy who did the original study later turned out to have lied about some things?) i saw a few people worrying about the danger intentionally un-vaccinated kids pose to can't-be-vaccinated kids and infants, and wondering why anti-vaxxers don't consider that. i'm guessing here, but it's likely that 2 comes into play here, combined with parents' desire to protect their children - they're not going to say "oh, i see, that makes sense!" to an argument that sounds to them like "you should do a very-likely-harmful thing to your child in order to protect other children from less-likely-harm."
@anon person the resources that people earlier in this thread have posted are awesome and reliable. I'm gonna leave it at that because this subject kinda makes me angry. Also re: Gardasil, it hurt like the dickens but there's a history of multiple types of cancer in my family so I'm much happier knowing cervical is off the list.
after poking around wikipedia a bit: it doesn't seem that pro-vaxxers are denying that vaccines sometimes cause complications, but are just asserting that the benefits to the general population outweigh the danger to the individual (while anti-vaxxers believe that the danger to the individual is sufficient reason to refuse to vaccinate for the greater good.) is that correct? because i think i've seen at least one anti-vaxxer claiming that pro-vaxxers refuse to acknowledge the possibility of vaccines harming people, and that doesn't seem to be the case. oh and also @prismaticvoid thanks! bookmarked them.
legitimate concerns, but then there's studies by the NIH and the FDA. still, you're right, a lot of people don't check conflicts of interest when they cite studies. still, if it's good enough for the NIH/FDA, usually it's good enough for me. i also think big pharma is the devil because they evergreen their patents and generally abuse the fuck out of the intellectual property system and are intellectually dishonest. i still like vaccines. i do actually want to see a side by side on some of this, but i suspect it'll prove what i've known for a long time: that reported side effects, even negative ones, happen in a demonstrable minority of the population. also, the reporting system for vaccines is a little whack: you're supposed to report any "reaction" you've had to it, but the problem is, correlation (that is, that the health decline in question happened after the vaccine was administered) does not equal causation, and the reporting system takes none of this into account. i think it might be an important distinction to make as to which vaccines we're talking about. i remember in 2013, i went to get a flu shot, and i was advised against it by the people at goddamn CVS, when (because of health insurance) the shot would have been provided to me free of cost. it was explained to me by the pharmacist that the particular formulation of the flu shot that year (a vaccine) was remarkably ineffective because it didn't cover some of the more prominent strains going around that winter, and that it was likely that exposure to the flu would mean you caught the flu anyway because the vaccine wouldn't actually have vaccinated you against it. but then there's vaccines like polio, where the possible benefit (no iron lungs, no crippled legs) imho definitely outweighs the possible risk (oh no, my arm will hurt and maybe i'll have a sniffle). i do like this, though! this is a basic cost-benefit analysis and i think it's important for everyone to do. he's had his license to practice medicine revoked in, i think, australia and maybe nine other countries (can't remember if the u.s. is among them, but i think specific states have issued pronouncements from their boards of certification against him/his methodology--i'd have to look this up too!). i'd have to look up the article later for confirmation, but yes, his studies were that badly done and that unethically promoted that he lost his license. which is kind of a big deal. especially for multiple countries. the presumptions need challenged in that case. presumption #1 is that vaccines are a very-likely-harmful thing to do to your child. presumption #2 is that the illness the vaccine guards against is less-likely-harm, to not only your child but to other people's children. the issue with a lot of anti-vaxxers is that their feelings are facts, so they will not challenge their feeling that vaccines are very-likely-harmful or their feeling that the harm from the illness the vaccine vaccinates against is less-likely-harmful. i guess what you can gather from this is that i'm an informed-consent vaxxer, but this also requires people to apply logical principles to things and to accept that there is a middle ground between pro- and anti-vaxxing. and, of course, there's also supreme court precedent from the 1920s that the government has the right to force you to get your kids vaccinated because of the risk to the public health if the edict were otherwise.
@pixels covered just about everything I wanted to say. I'm definitely pro-vaxx, but I'm also aware that adverse reactions do happen and need to be researched extensively. Ex: Gardasil and their "Eh, two weeks is plenty time to check for serious adverse reactions, right?" That was just disappointing. Come on, guys. I know you're excited about cancer vaccine holy shit! but for fuck's sake finish the job. However, the net positive results tend to outweigh the adverse reactions or potential for adverse reactions, so I'm still for it. Also, @anon person, you've clearly put more thought into the debate than the people I was arguing with, even with lack of spoons. I sincerely appreciate that. I never actually got real concerns/reasons out of them, it was just "Because PERSONAL BELIEFS" with no further explanation. If I were to pursue this further I actually have something to work with, going off your post. I hadn't even thought of "conflict of interest" as a concern.
@pixels i respectfully disagree, big pharma is at least seven devils. maybe forty. but yeah. i wonder if this has something to do with distance? what i mean is, if you decide to vaccinate your child you will have to, in the near future, take them to the doctor and watch them be poked with needles, often to their intense distress. whereas if you decide not to vaccinate, all of the things they could potentially catch are faraway in some kind of nebulous possible-future and may not seem as dangerous as they actually are? in which case, even a side by side showing that the risk of negative side-effects is lower than the risk of illness might not convince someone who's already anti-vax, because their brain is going on red alert over the near-danger and ignoring the far-danger. thanks for your response!
@anon person at least twelve whole devil. it's a logical fallacy, but it's at least an attempt at explaining why anti-vaxxers think the way they do. also has a lot to do with "my child is special" soccermomming that helps no one. i'm just so happy that at this point polio is a far-danger, y'know? that i don't ever have to worry about it. a lot of people just don't appreciate that the reason these diseases are far-dangers is because people vaccinate. science is just really cool, y'know? also reminds me of a gary gulman joke. he points out that a lot of people are antisemitic, and he's like, that's fine, but if you're going to be that way, then you can't use things jewish people make. polio vaccine was invented by a jewish person. so was color tv and the television remote, and birth control. "so the next time you're in bed, having protected sex with legs that aren't crippled by polio, changing the channel on your color tv without having to walk to it on polio-crippled legs, just look at each other and go, thank god for the jews!" just a joke, really, but. makes you wonder if some of the subtle classism isn't... more... idk. just blatant racism.
I think the "distance" idea has merit. More of the "My child wouldn't get those diseases!" Because you/they/whatever are a good parent, you give them their vitamins, love , feed and shelter them well and don't let them play with smallpox-flea-infested rats and no one's had those diseases for years anyway, those diseases are gone, we don't have to worry about them! (Forgetting the fact that 1. They're not completely gone 2. They're almost gone because, especially in cases like measles, polio and smallpox, of vaccination.) Ninja'd by @pixels
@pixels the classism and racism tend to go hand in hand with this sort of Suburban Hippie White Parent. It's the whole "our kids won't get sick because we're not like those people!" idea.
@pixels unfortunately, from what i can tell, some people think entirely in logical fallacies. oh, also! i know some anti-vaxxers believe that the decline in certain diseases is due to better hygiene rather than vaccinations. but when i was poking around earlier, i forgot where, i also saw someone saying that diseases were still prevalent even though hygiene was improving, but after the introduction of certain vaccines, the mortality rate (i think it was mortality rate and not incidence) of the diseases they targeted fell to "nearly 0." and correlation does not equal causation, but if that happened multiple times with different vaccines, that's a trend, so.... @Aviari heh, thanks. i begin to be a little glad that i don't encounter many anti-vaxxers, given that my instinctive reaction to "but my emotions!" and "i strongly believe (with little or no evidence!)" is auto-defenestration. honestly, i think i don't have any objections to vaccinations in theory; really the only thing that worries me about them is what you mentioned, that some of the adverse reactions are due to lack of research. and i think that wouldn't bother me as much without the insistence on everyone vaccinating. i ... don't know how to word this exactly, but why would anyone insist that you ought to vaccinate when even the vaccine developers don't know what the side-effects are going to be? what about long-term side-effects? even if they say they know, how do we know that they know? what if they don't know that they don't know? hmm. yes, that is definitely the thing that bothers me the most. it's kind of caught up with another mostly-unrelated issue, though, so probably not completely rational. and if you consider that general public health is important enough to risk a few vaccine-related illnesses or deaths, then it wouldn't even factor in unless bad vaccines were causing enough deaths to compete with all the illnesses they're protecting people from.
