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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.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by edIII on Monday November 27 2017, @09:55PM (16 children)
It's not the government you need to trust though. I'm anti-vacc because I do *not* trust the big pharma companies. Vaccinations is a simple science, but that does not instantly translate into condoning or agreeing with their method of delivery. I don't give a shit, the human tolerance for mercury is ZERO. I've yet to hear about the miracles of material science and how mercury turns into a vastly more effective vaccine.
At the end of the day when you're injecting this shit into yourself, you can be assured on one thing above else; The shareholder's views and desires were satisfied above and before yours. It's already demonstrated that you cannot trust a shareholder to act in the best interests of anything except more and more profit.
I want more transparency about what went into the vaccinations, and more accountability within the ranks of the executives and shareholders. Basically, I wished that science ran the vaccines, but it's monied interests instead.
Yeah, when monied interests are involved, I'm afraid of injecting their shit into my body, or the body of a child I love. It's a game of percentages to them, not life or death.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday November 27 2017, @10:12PM (3 children)
If you're worried about the mercury in vaccines, don't go outside, and get pure O2 delivered to your house daily.
Air pollution demonstrably kills thousands a year. Vaccinated people (everybody by your sorry ass) are living longer and healthier lives than ever.
Stay inside, breathe canned air, and keep your kids away from mine.
Yes, crazy CEOs can make terrible decisions. But the people executing those decisions are not all so trapped in their job that they will execute them silently, and be okay with poisoning millions of people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:46AM
That's demonstrably false with Big Pharma. Too Big To Jail has already played out. I forget which company, but if the rules were enforced, the whole company should have been destroyed and sold for parts. Instead, they were too importantly economically (read: it made rich people poor). There have been many in that industry complicit with the harm that has happened in studies carried out in bad faith. From the junk scientists just wanting a job, to the sales marketer aware of inconvenient data being suppressed, to the doctor who only cares about kick backs.
They've already been let off the hook in cases where people have died under the delusion they were receiving medical care, and not a pawn for shareholders to get richer.
You're not benefiting from science, but rolling the dice with greedy people, in the *hopes* you're not one of the ones who rolls craps.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Troll) by edIII on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:00AM
You roll the dice that the CEO of the company making your vaccines isn't an avaricious piece of shit. Personally, I think that's a bad fucking bet.
Be unhappy me with all you want. What you can't do is create an argument engendering trust back in Big Pharma giving the metric fucking shit tons of proven examples where they don't give two shits about our health when greater profits are to be had. Too Big To Jail is an unfortunate reality, and when an entire industry is bereft of both regulations and consequences, it's the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us that reap what has been sown.
You show me pharma companies with a multi-billion dollar bonds, bunches of those executives rotting in prison (justly for their actions), and maybe I might start trusting again. Till then, it's as crazy to trust them with their products, as it to use the products with blind trust.
If I did have a child you can bet our ass that I wouldn't accept them being subject to the endemic corruption of the American Medical Industry.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:17AM
Ah, the good old "either go out of your way to avoid everything unhealthy, or be fine with twice as much harmful stuff". Yet another argument from the pro side that helps the anti side more than it helps themselves.
The anti side doesn't need Russian help, they are getting plenty of help from the pro side.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @10:19PM (3 children)
regardless of whether you think this is crazy, it's not Flamebait. *maybe* Troll at worst. deluded/foolish != necessarily arguing in bad faith
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 27 2017, @10:33PM (2 children)
It's true. I am having a great deal of trouble figuring out how to mod that comment, it's obviously stupid and ill-informed, but that's not really a troll or Flamebait.
Maybe we should get something like -1 Mental Health Problem.
(Score: 0, Troll) by edIII on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:51AM
How bout you go fuck yourself? Big Pharma has fucked up more than enough times, not faced consequences, and been shown to kill people for profit. Hey, it's easier to stick your head in the sand right? Ill-informed? You mean investigative reporting, statements from the FDA, proof of faked studies, studies in general showing major problems in medical research? That kind of ill-informed? When you have somebody very high up giving Congressional testimony about the corruption and unsafe science, you just what, ignore it?
It would be one thing if I was arguing that vaccines were intrinsically unsafe science, but that is not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that avarice in Big Pharma leads to people dying, and THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES TO BLAME FOR THE MISTRUST. They EARNED it.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:24AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:08AM
Not going to do the work for you. There have been *hundreds* of medium and long-term studies of the efficacy and safety of vaccinations, as well as their *enormous* effect on public health.
Here's a little light reading for you, Jenny [scienceblogs.com].
https://www.google.com/search?q=peer+reviewed+longitudinal+stuides+of+vaccinations [google.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:11AM (2 children)
If you eat fish once a year, that gave you a far higher dose of mercury than all the vaccines you've been given your entire lifetime. And that tuna won't protect you from lethal diseases.
I'm fine with not trusting big pharma. However, your response of "I'm going to disagree with nearly all doctors and all public health officials the world over who all agree that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks by a long shot" is irresponsible. Unless you've set up a lab yourself and done a bunch of testing, which I'm fairly certain you haven't, the fact is that (a) you don't know, and (b) the people who are likely to know all disagree with you.
Also, mercury is among the more expensive materials used in vaccines, so I highly doubt a for-profit business trying to keep its costs down would use more of it than they really have to.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:23AM
You mean "if you inject fish".
Anything that gets into the blood stream (or the lungs, but you don't usually inhale fish either) causes a lot more damage than simply eating it.
Look, I assume you a for vaccines, so how about some argument actually helping the pro side, rather than these shitty arguments that only help the anti-vaxxers?
Such as admitting that mercury was a mistake, but for most vaccines it has actually been replaced with things that aren't nearly as bad for you.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:24PM
Your response is one large logic error (Appeal to Authority).
Nearly all doctors and public health officials just blindly accept what the pharmaceutical companies tell them. And all the meta-studies that make the evening news are funded, conducted, or published by companies with funding ties to those same pharmaceutical companies.
We have no credible evidence that vaccines have had any positive effect, because we have had no independent research that extended beyond superficialities. We have only the propaganda departments of pharmaceutical companies trying to sell products.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:16AM (1 child)
So you (a) don't trust the CDC and FDA; (b) don't trust the professional scientists that have proven ethyl mercury to be safe; (c) don't trust the professional scientists who've done the meta-studies to confirm that; (d) haven't even bothered to research what's in the drugs you avoid - you're afraid of salt, sugar, egg-whites and gelatin, apparently.
> I've yet to hear about the miracles of material science and how mercury turns into a vastly more effective vaccine.
Oh, and (e) don't even understand the subject matter, there's nothing to do with effectiveness in its use - ethyl mercury is a preservative for vaccines that come in multi-dose containers, that's all. It's not even needed in single-dose contexts.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:34AM
Good job supporting the anti-vaxxers.
a) He's saying he doesn't trust the CDC and FDA to ensure that the big pharma CEOs go to prison when they get caught. If you disagree with that, please provide examples.
b) Proving ethyl mercury to be safe is quite simple in concept. You simply need to prove that there are no dangers to it. Which in scientific terms are known as "proving a negative", and considered to be scientific impossible.
Are you by chance one of those Russians the article claims are supporting anti-vaxxers? Because if you are not, you are proof that they don't need Russian help. The barely disguised disinformation from the pro-vaxxers is plenty of help.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:21AM (1 child)
Even in pre-industrial society a few atoms in your body would have been mercury (with volcanoes going off somewhere on the planet, rivers leeching metals and all that jazz) and since we started to burn coal this increased significantly (if you live with a few hundred miles of a coal plant today your mercury content is notably higher than it would be otherwise, and if you live within a dozen miles you are really building it up*).
Or maybe, just maybe, the tolerance is higher than "ZERO". :)
(Unless you used some weird definition of "ZERO" where it is greater than zero).
(But yeah, in ages from conception to about one-two year old there might be a cause to avoid this - but in all fairness just not living in a city would have a greater benificial effect on the health)
* = In pretty much any country with enforced enviornmental protection laws this is quite a bit below the levels usually considered safe.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:44AM
Oh, now it's getting funny. I thought pro-vaxxers were generally the same as the man-made global warming proponents.
But apparently, pro-vaxxers are also pro coal burning and pro living near volcanos.