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posted by janrinok on Monday November 27 2017, @08:27PM   Printer-friendly

England's National Health Service is urging parents to get their children vaccinated for the flu ahead of the holiday season to protect grandparents and other vulnerable relatives:

Flu vaccines administered through a nasal spray rather than an injection have been rolled out this autumn for two and three-year-olds, and children in reception class and years one to four in primary school. Children are super-spreaders because of the greater likelihood of them contracting flu at nursery or school, where germs are passed on at a rapid rate. But only 18% of school-age children have had the nasal spray immunisation, according to the latest figures.

Prof Keith Willett, NHS England's medical director for acute care, said: "Flu can be spread more easily by children, especially to vulnerable relatives such as older grandparents, those with heart or lung conditions and pregnant family members. Last year, millions of people missed out on their free vaccination and yet it's one simple, common sense step to help us all stay healthy this winter."

With less than a month until Christmas, the NHS is urging parents to book their children in for the free vaccination to help curb infection over the festive season, when family get-togethers can spread the infection.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror (a tabloid) claims that Russian agents are spreading anti-vaccination propaganda in the UK in an effort to destabilize the country:

Russian cyber units are spreading false information about flu and measles jabs in the UK, experts warn. [Ed's Note: The current flu immunisation is applied via a nasal spray - there are no 'jabs' involved.] Vladimir Putin is believed to want to erode trust in US and European governments. The state-sponsored units are spreading the lies on social media to destabilise Britain, it is claimed. The Kremlin has previously been accused of attempting to influence Brexit and Scottish independence. Now, it is feared it is trying to create distrust over flu jabs and the MMR measles vaccine.

[...] Security services are so concerned over the threat to public health and security that Government departments have been ordered to monitor social media and flag up risky articles. Health chiefs have had emerg­ency meetings over the spread "fake news" over vaccination campaigns. [...] We can reveal public health officials are investigating whether an outbreak of measles last week in Liverpool and Leeds was fuelled by parents not vaccinating children due to "false information read on the internet".

Also at BBC. BBC's collection of newspaper covers.


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by stormreaver on Monday November 27 2017, @09:12PM (12 children)

    by stormreaver (5101) on Monday November 27 2017, @09:12PM (#602177)

    Sign up for your dose of mercury now.

    And that's on top of the absolutely idiotic notion that Person A not getting vaccinated somehow puts vaccinated Person B at risk.

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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Entropy on Monday November 27 2017, @09:18PM (5 children)

    by Entropy (4228) on Monday November 27 2017, @09:18PM (#602179)

    Yes, that's the new myth. Because people noticed hey! these vaccines don't seem to do anything(or even worse--They make you sick) they swapped from "help yourself" to "you're killing vulnerable people if you don't inject your annual dose of mercury!"

    • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:50AM (4 children)

      by Aiwendil (531) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:50AM (#602426) Journal

      Bad phrasing but a somewhat valid point.

      Many vaccines do make you sick, that is kinda the entire idea of it - to make you sick to a very low load of a less active strain in order to increase your chance of to have a better defence against a higher load or a more active strain. (Fun example here: the original smallpox vaccine was to be infected with cowpox - a lot less damaging and less potent but close enough to teach the body how to deal with smallpox)

      So yeah, it does make you sick but on average it makes the entire group of vaccinated people less sick than they would have been otherwise.

      A great example of this actually is polio. It exists in multiple varieties but since the 90s all cases of polio type-2 was caused by the vaccine - it has gotten to the point where polio type-2 got wiped out in the wild due to the vaccine and the few cases caused was in those unlucky whose body would have had no chance of meeting the common variety of type-2.
      They did remove type-2 from the vaccines recently and basically updated the stock globally so if your polio-vaccine are made after 2015 it doesn't protect against type-2 since that strain is functually wiped out.

      And the "doesn't seem to do anything" also is a great example of why the average person can't make informed decisions about modern medicine. For instance having iodine in your diet doesn't seem to do anything - but a long term deficency in it causes goitre (enlarged thyroid gland).

      Or tl;dr: Vaccination is a numbers game, they just try to have the numbers massively in their favour.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:59AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:59AM (#602447)

        Vaccination is a numbers game, they just try to have the numbers massively in their favour.

        With "they" being pharma execs, and "the numbers" being their account balances, this is precisely the problem.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:17AM

          by Aiwendil (531) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:17AM (#602450) Journal

          Holy crap. You mean the labtechs, national economists, doctors and statiticians I'm drinking with are all pharma execs, holy crap. I didn't even know we had that many pharma execs living here.
          Also, you mean that 10th century chinese and indian doctors was big pharma execs? Or Edward Jenner? or Louis Pasteur? or Maurice Hilleman? or the friggin WHO when they wiped out the smallpox.

          And I am curious about your theories about why the nurses I know that works in the infectious diseases ward doesn't drop like flies (nor the rest at the same hospitals).

          And the account balance of the ECDC (EU CDC) isn't exactly increased by selling vaccination either.

          Vaccination isn't exactly a new science, nor are the statistics needed show when it is useful... But in all fairness, if you don't want to "support the man" or whatever today's lingo is then just pick a socialist state and see what vaccination they use (fun thing really, socialistic states tend to be very strong proponents of vaccines - since it lowers the overall cost of healthcare)

      • (Score: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:52PM (1 child)

        by Entropy (4228) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:52PM (#602568)

        Since they are usually mismatched the flu vaccines on more years than they don't, then I guess they just make you sick with no corresponding immunity boost?

        • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:53PM

          by Aiwendil (531) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:53PM (#602688) Journal

          No. For a several reasons, but let's pick one commonly missed:
          Even a mismatch can give protection up to about 60% (ok, that isn't common, the common range is in the 30-50% while the entire range 20-70% is represented [which roughly is the effectiveness of a matched vaccination in the elderly]) (they did a meta analysis about it a few years ago)

          Quite frankly even a 20% protection means it is still worth it if enough people get the shot, just like a 100% protection would be almost useless if very few got it (mainly due to the viruses by the sick people near them would mutate into something that would break through - this is how we create new strains)

          If you think "mismatch" means "we accidently put vaccine in for the rabies in there" instead of "we just didn't get as good a protection as we could have" then I guess it is understandable if you are sceptical about it.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by julian on Monday November 27 2017, @10:56PM (3 children)

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 27 2017, @10:56PM (#602223)

    That's called herd immunity and it's absolutely not an idiotic idea. Some people cannot get vaccinated for a variety of reasons; they rely on everyone else being vaccinated for their protection. So yes, in aggregate every person who can get the vaccine and doesn't puts people who cannot at risk.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday November 27 2017, @11:26PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Monday November 27 2017, @11:26PM (#602232)

      You forgot the case of the person who thought they were vaccinated, by the vaccine didn't ... vaccinate.
      They did the right thing, but the immunity didn't take, please don't make them sick.

    • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by stormreaver on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:35AM (1 child)

      by stormreaver (5101) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:35AM (#602291)

      That's called herd immunity and it's absolutely not an idiotic idea.

      Yes, I know what it's called. And yes, it is absolutely idiotic for a number of reasons.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:18PM (#602668)

        And yes, it is absolutely idiotic for a number of reasons.

        ...that I can't be bothered to fabricate at this moment.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:31AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:31AM (#602314) Journal
    Most vaccines aren't perfect. They merely increase the subject's immunity to some level where the disease won't easily infect the person and propagate through the overall group (or "herd immunity"). When in this case you have a subpopulation that isn't vaccinated, the subpopulation will more readily catch the disease and then infect some vaccinated people as well. The vaccinated person is still better off than the unvaccinated in this situation (and as the other replier noted, there will always be some unvaccinated just due to allergies and immune system diseases), but they don't get the full benefits of herd immunity.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:02AM (#602385)

    And that's on top of the absolutely idiotic notion that Person A not getting vaccinated somehow puts vaccinated Person B at risk.

    It's an completely idiotic idea how a person can even have such an idiot idea. Oh wait ... do you actually realize that vaccines are not 100 effective?