from the smart-phones-but-no-smart-people dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Emergency declared near Portland for measles outbreak in anti-vaccine hotspot
Health officials in Clark County, Washington have declared a public health emergency for a measles outbreak in an area with a high rate of unvaccinated children.
[...] Nearly eight percent of children in Clark County were exempt from standard vaccination for the 2017-2018 school year, according to state records reported by the Washington Post. Breaking down that eight percent, about seven percent of kids had personal or religious exemptions and the remaining one percent or so had medical exemptions. Factoring in the rest of the population, the county is below the 92 percent to 94 percent range some experts consider required to prevent the spread of highly contagious diseases such as measles.
[...] “It’s really awful and really tragic and totally preventable,” Peter J. Hotez told the Post. Hotez is a professor of pediatrics and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Portland is a total train wreck when it comes to vaccine rates,” he added.
[...] Correction: This article has been updated to correct the state in which Clark County resides. It is in Washington State, not Oregon.
(Score: -1, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:46AM
Just like the one last Friday. And maybe Beth is doing favors for the Editors. Who knows? But, she says it's an emergency. Because 23 people, supposedly, have the Measles. It's not a lot of people. And it's not much of a "disease." But, "oh, emergency!" Over a nothing. And it looks like 3 of those people had the shots. Possibly had the shots. Beth doesn't say. And the Health department, the DOHMH says "unverified." Maybe they know, maybe they don't know. And maybe they don't want to know!!!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:48AM (31 children)
That not being vaccinated against measles has been the default here in Italy at least until the 90s. You recall the news about the death of Italian schoolchildren due to measles parotitis varicella? neither do I. So it was either mundane, but how come mundane things did not happen in my school? spent years in it you know, or not happening at all.
Of course now the situation is different because: 1. compared to back in the day, children now have the stamina of zombies. 2. getting measles meant getting immunized, children could only catch it between themselves, but now children can infect adults and this is a problem.
Also, I would investigate the actual rate of vaccination instead of letting the media spout it. Sometimes outbreaks occured in regularly vaccinated population, because the illness is alive and life naturally selects solutions when faced with the problem of spreading.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:03AM (10 children)
Another moronic comment. But you can't fix stupid.
Why don't we go back to the world of polio? Only kids will be able to catch it too and only the weak will develop problems. At least by your idiotic reasoning.
Fuck. Living in a world that allows you too good of a standard of living and you forget how fucked up 100 years life used to be. All you "remember" is your glorified imagination of the past that you never lived in. Careful, or you'll start living your life in straw+clay+shit houses again. But it happened in Italy before a few times like that. Maybe you are overdue for another Dark Ages again.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:13AM (6 children)
About 1/3 of doctors in the US have seen a disease that looks exactly like polio, but isn't.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-mysterious-polio-like-disease-affecting-american-kids/381869/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by kazzie on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:44AM (1 child)
1/3 of Child Neurologists (at a particular conference), but interesting, nonetheless.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:53AM
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:35PM (3 children)
That you've never seen one is due to outbreaks being preceded by several days of I think itching.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:45PM (2 children)
I was just a kid, and didn't keep a journal or anything - but I think there was a day or two of headache/nausea/lethargy, in the middle of which the spots began to appear. The spots don't itch at first, but after several hours, or a day, then they start itching. And, you can't go back to school til the spots are gone, and Mom won't let you out of the house because you're "sick", so all the kids drive Mother bug-fuck crazy. And, at that point, you learn the real danger: Mother may perform a VERY late term abortion on your ass!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:23PM (1 child)
Was this a peer reviewed journal?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @07:51PM
I peered into his window, and yep, there was a journal on the table.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Thursday January 24 2019, @12:56PM
> Why don't we go back to the world of polio?
Why don't we go back to hunt and gatherers?
My question is related to your post as much as your post is related to mine.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:33PM (1 child)
Ignorance must be bliss if you think that the measles are a major issue for the population. The vaccine for measles causes more injuries than the naturally occurring disease. How come in the 60's nobody was worried about the measles, ie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7zwNZOg8mE [youtube.com] . You are gonna whine about polio too? Polio can only be transmitted anal to oral, so I dunno maybe people should wash their hands or maybe we should be more careful about what to do with our waste water, eh? If the guy you are slamming is moronic, how is it that Italy not having the measles vaccine forced on people and the entire boot hasn't died?
8% not vaccinated for measles and they are the cause for the other 92% to get the measles, really? You can clan all day long that it takes the herd immunity, but if you have your magic stick to keep away the dreaded mild diseases, like measles and chicken pox, then you should be all protected and the not vaccinated are the ones at risk only, that is if your magic stick actually works, which is a dubious claim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:12PM
Great video. The reality distortion field these miseducated/misinformed people live in is ridiculous. And they go around calling everyone else idiots...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:57AM (15 children)
If you think measles is mundane because you never heard about a serious case you are an ignorant idiot.
Unfortunately for you there is no known cure for being an idiot.
But the ignorant part can be fixed if you really want to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @12:01PM (13 children)
FTFY:
Just pointing out how stupid your "argument" is.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:47PM (12 children)
> Unfortunately for you there is no known cure for being an idiot.
Yes there is. It's called reality, and certain aspects of it are over 99% fatal. Play Chicken or Russian Roulette frequently, and the odds will catch up with you. That's what Darwin Awards are for.
People have forgotten the horrors of the childhood illnesses. Everyone who grew up with that was eager to avail themselves of vaccination for their kids when they became available. The only one I suffered through was the chicken pox, only because there was no vaccine for it when I was a kid. Chicken pox is about the least dangerous of the childhood diseases, but the victim is still in for a miserable week of feeling horribly ill. Day 4 was the worst. That's when the rash is itchiest, but you must not yield to the temptation to scratch, unless you don't care about sporting scars from the disease for the rest of your life.
Measles can be much worse. Leaves you fragile for several months. Makes you more vulnerable to other diseases. If pneumonia strikes while you have measles, your chance of dying jumps to 30%.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:50PM
Just corrected this false "reality" you live in for someone the other day on here. Most parents did not consider measles a big issue, they considered it "generally an unproblematic illness" and were apathetic towards "just another childhood disease":
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=29667&page=1&cid=788566#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=29667&page=1&cid=788579#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:59PM (8 children)
Even in 1959, the percent of people getting pneumonia and/or dying after getting measles was about 5x less than the percent of people who currently come down with meningitis or encephalitis after the mmr vaccine:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20789272 [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12415036 [nih.gov]
So the issue you are worried about is actually less common than possible vaccine injury, and would be considered statistical noise by that paper I cited.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:38PM (3 children)
From that very paper you cite, and which you seem to think supports your contention that the MMR vaccine is possibly more dangerous than suffering those diseases:
> We did not identify any association between MMR vaccination and encephalitis, aseptic meningitis, or autism.
Those 712 out of 535,544 cases happened around the same time as the MMR vaccine was given. But correlation is not causation. That rate is about equal to the rates that those infections occur during other periods of a childhood.
Maybe you overlooked that part of the paper. Or maybe you did see it, and deliberately ignored it. You know what is terribly unhealthy? Cherry picking your facts.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:07PM
I didn't overlook anything:
How do you think a pneumonia death is attributed to measles? The person gets pneumonia while or soon after they get measles...
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday January 28 2019, @02:01PM (1 child)
Kids get measles. And kids get so many ear infections -- measles or no measles. But when somebody gets measles AND gets an ear infection. The Vaccine People say, "oh look, secondary infections as a result of the measles virus, so horrible!" They call it result. But, how do they know? I don't think they know. And, if they knew -- Antibiotic. They could say, if your kid has the measles. Give the Antibiotic. So there are no problems with the Ear. And in the Ear. So easy. But, they don't want to say that. They want Vaccine. And it's a lot of shots, dozens of shots coming all at once. Into tiny children. Very hard thing, very rough on their tiny bodies. And so many times, autism -- many problems. But the Vaccine People say, "oh, correlation, not result!" They don't want to say result when bad things happen after the Shots. Total U-turn!!!
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:32PM
I have this urge to indulge in a little spurious logic. It's catching, you know, catching like a horrible disease.
You know what the thing about ear infections is? That Proctor and Gamble is evil. They sell tissue. And blowing your nose on tissues can force mucus into your ear. And Proctor and Gamble doesn't care. Why, for all we know, they get kickbacks from Big Pharma for the increase in antibiotic sales for dealing with ear infections!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:13PM (3 children)
You also forgot to look at the number of deaths from traffic accidents after mmr vaccines. Mmr is obviously incredibly deadly, Q.E.D.
-eyeroll-
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:20PM (2 children)
Where do you see me attribute any causality? The only info is person got measles (vaccine) then soon after they got pneumonia (brain damage).
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday January 25 2019, @01:25AM (1 child)
The only thing that would be interesting here is if the rate of brain injury / autism / pneumonia / Tourette's / sore finger differs between the vaccinated and unvaccinated population at the same age. This is the simplest argument for proving that the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism - the autism rates are the same between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @01:54AM
1) I assure you it does differ and would be detectable with sufficient sample size/etc. Whether that difference is interesting is an entirely other question.
2) I'm ignoring the autism because that is longer term. The pneumonia/encephalitis/meningitis appear quickly, the association in time with the measles/vaccination strengthens the relationship.
But anyway, there has never been a blinded measles vaccine RCT so better info on this will probably never be available. That is why I presented the info as-is in the form of correlations.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:58PM
Actually - I grew up with measles, mumps, chicken pox, and rheumatoid fever. I mean, personally - I got all four of those. I seriously have never met anyone who suffered serious complications from any of that. Uhhhh, yeah, I guess it happened, from time to time. But, also, from time to time, people suffer complications from the vaccinations. I share the opinion that vaccinations are mandatory, because SOMEONE MAKES MONEY OFF OF THEM!!
No, you don't get to compare measles with polio. I knew several people who were seriously and permanently debilitated by polio. Probably everyone my age met a couple people who were crippled by polio. When you've met them, you don't forget them.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday January 25 2019, @12:34AM
Yeah, looking forward to that shingles vaccine here too.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:54PM
To be fair, for those with predominantly European (or probably Asian) ancestry measles is a minor disease compared to polio, cholera, typhoid, smallpox, etc. Most people get through it with no lasting permanent effects. The only really common danger is to pregnant women who are likely to give birth to a deformed child. https://www.google.com/search?q=measles+pregnancy+birth+defects [google.com]
OTOH, Polynesians, Native Americans, and several other groups that were isolated from central Asia may find it deadly.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday January 24 2019, @12:13PM
Those diodes on your left hand side? They were recycled from a previous bot that had its shot - you may experience some pains as you age, but not measles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:33PM
Heroin addicts are unable to eat much other than sugar. It's quite common for them to eat naught but ice cream. My lady dines only on artificially fruit juice concentrate. Doubtlessly she gets lots of Vitamin C but that does her no good as White Blood Cells require protein.
Vitamin B12 is required to transcribe DNA to Protein. It's widely regarded as necessary only for production of Red Blood Cells, but that's because they have the shortest lifetime of any human cell.
"Sarah" - not her real name - will happily eat real food when I specifically give it to her. I left her quite a lot of truly tasty and nutritious food at work three or four days ago but even so, she has not picked it up yet.
She agreed that she would welcome my visit while she was "working" last Friday night but we were unable to connect as she kept getting dates all night long, each far away from wherever we at first agreed to meet. In the end, she advised me to go to my office so I wouldn't be stuck in the cold all night after the trains stopped running.
She's at risk of death from exposure as "Getting Well" usually leads her to pass out. To shoot up out in the cold usually wakes her up, but one time she woke up in the back of an ambulance after an EMT saved her life with Narcan.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:23PM
Why am I not surprised that you're an anti-vaxxer on top of everything else? Jesus, just when I thought you could not possibly sink any lower...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:37PM
That's from the Wikipedia article on Measles, so millions died before widespread vaccination.
Also:
From this piece, which indicates that Italy is vaccinating for measles. [vaxopedia.org]
This is a good idea. Vaccination is good for everyone.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 24 2019, @12:06PM (3 children)
Not correct, rather politically conservative.
As much as Portlandia likes to keep it weird, Clark County repeatedly elects a Trump supporter to the house. Crystal Meth is the drug of choice here, Heroin in Portland.
And yes: I live in Clark County. Portland is getting all the news because everything thinks that by "Vancouver", one refers to Vancouver British Columbia despite that the one in Washington was the first, having been an early nineteenth century British Army fort that was later turned over to the American Army when the US and The Great White North established the border that we have today.
Captain Vancouver was an early Columbia River explorer.
Some joker attended a Portland Trailblazers game with an active case of Measles but so far he seems not to have spread it to others.
Fortunately for me, the Measles in Vancouver is mostly in the rural parts of Clark County such as Battle Ground to the north. But the skyrocketing job opportunities in Portland led to a building boom in Battle Ground and other North County communities, so there's lots of kids in the schools there to breathe each others' sneezes and coughs.
As for me, while not actually Germophobic - not yet anyway - I've quite suddenly become meticulous about washing my hands. I even use a dry paper towel to grasp the door handles as I exit public restrooms.
_Thorough_ hand washing really does remove both bacteria and varii as bacterial cell membranes are viral capsoids of made of lipids - grease. They adhere to our skin oil; to strip that skin oil leaves them nowhere to stick. That soap dissolves grease while not as effective as alcohol does kill some of them.
After I sing this afternoon I'll pick up some Cough Masks for use on public transit.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:17PM (2 children)
One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get. I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:52PM (1 child)
We all know it's really because shaking hands shows off how small your hands are.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Snow on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:15PM
You can use photoshop to fix that problem. [theweek.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday January 24 2019, @12:37PM (16 children)
The problem is likely: both side of the political spectrum have anti-vaxxers. There is the progressive left that cares more about being woke than about science. And there is the religious right that cares more about their fundamentalist beliefs than about science. Either alone can lead to inadequate vaccination rates; put both together, and you can have a nice train wreck.
OTOH, most of the children affected belong to the anti-vaxxers. Kids with a genuine medical reason to skip vaccinations are a tiny minority. So these group will be the hardest hit - who knows, maybe they'll wake up and join reality?
Being a little-l libertarian, I do believe it's fine for you to not vaccinate your kids. However, as a libertarian, I also believe your choices should not come at a cost to others. Therefore your kids may not go to school, may not go to the swimming pool, may not go to camp, in fact may not leave home for any reason at all. Ever. Enjoy your isolated little commune, and please pardon the fence we will erect around it.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Bot on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:09PM (5 children)
> And there is the religious right that cares more about their fundamentalist beliefs than about science.
LOL talk about fundamentalism. Let me guess yours.
1. whatever criticism towards the current situation means NO VAXXER WHO DOES NOT RECOGNIZE ANY USEFULNESS IN ANY VACCINATION SINCE LOUIS PASTEUR AND WHO CANNOT POSSIBLY WANT THE WELFARE OF HIS SONS OR THE SOCIETY AT LARGE
2. all vaccines are created EQUAL in a perfect environment
3. all illnesses are created EQUAL so if somebody suggests vaccination only for serious stuff let it be anathema
4. all outbreaks will only happen because of lack of vaccination, pathogens do not mutate
5. it is ok to cause 10 adverse reactions to mass vaccinate people to avoid 1 immunocompromised guy to catch an illness, same guy is safe since his only risks come from pathogens for which a vaccination policy is in place
maybe they are not all yours, but I found all of these assumption among the anti anti-vax camp.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:49PM (1 child)
Wow, you're an idiot.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 27 2019, @01:13AM
One of the best arguments against my positions so far.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:52PM (2 children)
I don't hold any of those beliefs, which are all either strawmen or based on fundamental misunderstandings. It is reasonable to criticize various issues in the medical industry, but 99% of the stuff I hear from anti-vaxxers about their concerns over specific vaccines or ingredients in vaccines is based on misinformation.
Also just to address a couple of the misunderstandings -- measles is "serious stuff." Before vaccination, it caused roughly 2.5 million deaths worldwide each year. That rate is now down to around 100,000/year, mostly deaths among small children who are either unvaccinated or immunocompromised (or both). So yeah, I'd say it's a pretty good trade to cause mostly very MINOR adverse reactions to avoid millions of deaths per year.
(Note: it's hard to estimate what the exact death rate would be today, as treatments for symptoms have evolved in the decades since the vaccine became available. But pretending that measles and most standard vaccines are not advocated for "serious stuff" is just nonsense. These diseases have historically tended to cause huge numbers of deaths and/or serious complications.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @12:15AM (1 child)
Bbbbut Runaway survived measles and 3 other illnesses! Tell those kids to man up and get their immune system fighting!!@!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 26 2019, @02:44PM
Ok, I have death by measles with probability p
And I have this with probability q
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cancer-pioneer-martin-gore-dies-after-jab-for-yellow-fever-vccwwxdq2 [thetimes.co.uk]
p or q can be determined only by trusting that pharma and authorities honestly collaborate for your welfare.
What do I do? hm
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:06PM (8 children)
Evidence indicates that vaccine rejection is a right wing phenomenon [nih.gov] as much as it's played by the media as a way to "both-sides" science denial. I can't find the study again, but in the past I've seen reliable research indicating the libertarians are even worse than conservatives.
So here you have the basic dysfunction of american politics. Conservatives fucking sucking balls, but blaming the left for their own bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:17PM (7 children)
Wow a correlation of -0.17 using one of those study designs that allow you to prove that shark attacks are crucial to swinging elections.
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/votes-sharks-lottery-tickets-voters-assess-incumbents/ [aspeninstitute.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:34PM (6 children)
Oh, yes, the evidence says the exact opposite of the dumbshit libertarian's opinion, but it's not opposite enough?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:04PM (5 children)
Im not the one drawing confident widely - applying conclusions from a 0.17 correlation in a phone survey... do you really trust this stuff? Do you believe anything as long as some gold stars get placed next to a p-value nearby?
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday January 25 2019, @01:36AM (4 children)
The lack of credulity angle is likely valid. There's been plenty of distrust fostered in conservative circles for scientific authority over the years (and understandably in some cases.)
Conversely it is liberal voices that are publicly and stridently anti-vaxx. That certainly has an influence on those who trust those voices.
I tend to be a bit skeptical regardless. For example a glaring problem is here:
Was nothing learned from polling in 2016? Conservatives are quite mistrustful of admitting their world view in polls and surveys and have been conditioned to give invalid responses when asked simply to avoid the fight or censure that results.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:04AM (1 child)
A correlation of 0.17 is literally nothing. Here is what it looks like:
https://i.ibb.co/yW9sQkj/lowcor.png [i.ibb.co]
You can see from how I generated the data there really is a relationship, but no one should care about it.
And that doesn't even get into the problems with telephone surveys (I would never do one for example...).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:08AM
Forgot to include:
So this correlation is "statistically significant" with p-value of 6e-9!!! The LIGO and CERN people only use ~3e-7 as a cutoff. That is (only one of many reasons) why literally the only people who care about statistical significance and use it to draw conclusions are those who do not know what it means .
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 25 2019, @03:54PM (1 child)
I bet you can point to zero fucking self-identified liberals pushing this shit.
I can point to the fat fuck retard of a president you dumbshits elected to prove that your party has public figures who are antivax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:54PM
If the correlation was only 0.17 in that study you cited, it means about as many "liberals" were on the anti-vax side as "conservatives". Apparently you have no comprehension of what you are reading and citing...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @08:03PM
Being a little-l libertarian, would you also agree to build a fence around the country so third-world peasants, who haven't even heard of germs and don't wash their hands after they crap, can't come here and get employed under the table to work in the field picking our food?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by eravnrekaree on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:49PM (4 children)
Much of the fear about vaccines came from the mercury preservative additive to vaccines, and the oblivious attitude of the industry to these concerns, rather than the vaccine itself. The fact is, I can't blame them for being suspicious, mercury is a toxin and it really is rather suspicious injecting it into children. If vaccines did not contain mercury, the vaccine skeptic movement wouldn't be significant. Rather than being anti-vaccine, for many people, its more vaccine skeptic.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:44PM (1 child)
Uh, you mean the fact that the industry has removed the mercury preservative from basically all vaccines given to children? There are a couple vaccines that are still processed with it, but it is removed later and the final vaccines contain only a very tiny amount. The only common vaccine still containing it as a preservative is multi-dose containers of flu vaccine (because they are subject to more potential contamination when used for multiple doses).
The industry used this preservative in vaccines from the 1930s through the 1990s. There is absolutely no empirical evidence of any bad effects of this chemical at the dosages in vaccines, despite this widespread use and a huge number of studies. In 1999, some organizations recommended removing it where possible as a precautionary measure, given increasing concern about mercury exposure to children in general in the 1990s. And the industry has complied.
I can. Or rather, I can't blame them for concern. I can blame them for ignorance and stupidity.
You know what's suspicious? Feeding tuna to children. It's really suspicious that so many parents feed fish to children, knowing that it contains known toxins.
You know what's suspicious? Using fluorescent light bulbs in homes and schools. It's really suspicious for so many people to put these devices around kids, knowing that they contain known toxins and a broken bulb could send up a dangerous cloud of mercury vapor.
Do you think I'm joking? A single can of tuna contains approximately as much mercury as the typical dose of the compound in these vaccines. (And note that fish tends to contain methylmercury compounds which are absorbed faster and are more of a concern than the ethylmercury form in vaccines. So a can of tuna is clearly a greater health concern.) Fluorescent bulbs also contain very little mercury, but when they break, studies have shown they often produce a cloud of mercury vapor in the short term that is more exposure than these vaccines. (There have been cases of kids getting ill from mercury poisoning around broken fluorescent bulbs -- though they are rare; I believe the case I read about was a shed that had a bunch of large old bulbs broken, but still.)
Dosage is everything. Yes, I agree it's better to produce vaccines without any mercury exposure to kids, but we're also talking about pretty miniscule amounts, introduced for good safety reasons.
The mark of a true "skeptic" is to question and evaluate ALL evidence presented from ALL sources. A true skeptical attitude would question not only the vaccine industry but whether the mercury dosage is significant, what it compares to, and whether it was introduced for reasonable reasons. Here's [cdc.gov] what the CDC has to say (also signed on by such groups as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians).
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 26 2019, @02:47PM
> Uh, you mean the fact that the industry has removed the mercury preservative from basically all vaccines given to children?
has removed or has never put?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:28PM
Uh, not really. Much of the fear came from lies told by a then-doctor who wanted to make money selling his own vaccine. Mercury was just one of the bullshit reasons to not-vaccinate.
Actually, that's perhaps the biggest irony: Andrew Wakefield was not trying to stop people from vaccinating their kids: instead, he wanted people to use the vaccines he planned to patent and profit from.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 24 2019, @05:06PM
No. The mercury was present, but it wasn't the cause of the fear. That was started by a fraudulent paper published in a British medical journal.
OTOH, the readiness with which that thin straw was seized upon indicates that it merely stimulated an already present desire to believe...but what? Probably that the corporations were attacking their children. This was&is true, but why they seized on a fake result rather than one of the many true ones is to me a mystery. They didn't notice the Barbie dolls that were reporting all nearby conversation to headquarters. They didn't notice the baby monitors that broadcast what was going on in the nursery to any interested passer-by. (P.S.: It's not clear that anyone did anything with the information being broadcast by the Barbie, but they *could* have, and eventually would have...unless it's been cleaned up [HAH!] they will, and perhaps are. But IOT and Amazon Echo has made this almost obsolete.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 24 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)
Not just lives:
I think there are so far twenty-three confirmed cases; that would come to $1,347 per case so far. Twenty-two of the cases are unvaccinated, also twenty-two are children.
That's just "so far"; the continued quarantining will cost more. Quite likely some of those children are on Medicaid and so will cost mostly the Federal Taxpayers several thousand in hospital bills.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:12AM
Sounds like an idiot tax to me. No one is making them freak out except themselves.