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Anti-vaccine nonsense spurred NY's largest outbreak in decades
Health officials in New York are cautiously optimistic that they have a large measles outbreak under control after tackling the noxious anti-vaccine myths and unfounded fears that fueled the disease's spread.
Since last fall, New York has tallied 177 confirmed cases of measles, the largest outbreak the state has seen in decades. It began with infected travelers, arriving from parts of Israel and Europe where the highly contagious disease was spreading. In New York, that spread has largely been confined to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. As measles rippled through those insular religious communities, health officials ran into members who were wary of outsiders as well as those who harbor harmful myths and fears about vaccines. This included the completely false-yet-pernicious belief that the measles vaccine causes autism.
To quash the outbreak, health officials met with rabbis and pediatricians in the community, who in turned urged community members to be vigilant and, above all, get vaccinated, according to The New York Times. "Good people, great parents were terrified," Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, founder of Darchei Noam yeshiva in Monsey in Rockland County, told the Times. Despite the fears, he insisted parents vaccinate their children. "They felt that I was asking to give their children something that would harm them."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 19 2019, @04:11AM (2 children)
No True Scotsman fallacy. Science IS a human endeavor. It will always be tainted by social dynamics. Acting like some sort of "pure science" exists that is immune to such forces isn't very reasonable given that science is always performed by humans.
I actually agree with a lot of your criticism of the corporate medical systems in the U.S. and elsewhere. But your conclusions are just wacky. You really think medical research is immune to things like profit motives and ambition elsewhere? I agree the U.S. system is out of control, but crappy science can and has come out of all of the countries you say you'd "trust."
Anyhow... I'm not trying to engage in whataboutism, but it's important to note flaws can be found everywhere, and thus one needs to find pragmatic solutions... which yours is not.
Yes, they most certainly are. Whether you want to define "science" as your lofty idealistic vision that cannot exist in the real world (where there is no corporate influence, no individual ambition, no motives other than bettering knowledge) or whether you want to define "science" to mean what actually exists in the flawed human sphere -- the anti-vaxxers are most definitely ANTI- both of those definitions of "science."
You have some stuff that makes sense (which I assume is why you've been modded up), but you throw all of that in service of defending anti-vaxxer behavior! Absurd! Even if I am to accept your assumption that the corporate medical system in the U.S. is so utterly screwed up, it would still be a rational choice to vaccinate given statistics!
If you and your anti-vaxxer friends really want to behave like this, we should make a special place for you and all of them to go, where your kids can slowly die off in droves from all the childhood illnesses that used to run rampant throughout human civilization. What's that? You want modern medical treatment to help lower that deathrate?? Sorry, but you can't make use of any materials or supplies or services from the corrupt medical/scientific/corporate system you've rejected your vaccines from.
In sum -- you are correct that the system is screwed up. You are correct that it is perfectly valid and important to recognize this, to fight it, to criticize it, to call it out and yell about it. But to do so in the context of defending anti-vaxxers as if their choices were somehow rational and not anti-science!?! If you truly believe that, icanreed's criticisms of you are wholly justified here -- you must hate your children and wish them to die. That's the only rational conclusion, based on statistics and scientific empirical evidence of what would happen were people to adopt your philosophy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday January 19 2019, @04:53AM (1 child)
You're arguing semantics here. Science is a METHODOLOGY, or framework. It can exist wholly separate from humanity, and for that matter, you presume only human life in the universe, and that science as a methodology and process only occurs within humanity. I do not. The "pure science" I alluded to is not unreasonable at all, and entirely possible. However, just like you pointed out, it's tainted by social dynamics. It doesn't have to be, and saying that it can't is tantamount to just giving up and settling for shitty non-reproduced poorly reviewed agenda driven science. There are many things that can be done to improve how human beings perform science.
I reject your conclusion and see science just like math, in that both most certainly exist beyond humanity.
I never alluded to perfect. What I said was better, which isn't hard since the USA sets the bar so damn low. I believe they are more accountable, and their culture is better, meaning the executives are less sociopathic or willing to engage in bad behavior.
You've fallen into the same damn trap as the rest. Denigrate and call these people stupid, when the base issue is the lack of trust, and then blame them for the problems that exist in science and corporate culture that cause the very same lack of trust. That's what I'm pointing out. If you really want to reach people, then science and corporate culture needs to change and become better. You've given up and are willing to settle for shitty science, which will only ever perpetuate the problem.
EARN their trust back, and that happens by the FDA actually dissolving bad pharma companies (regardless of size), selling their IP to compensate the victims, and then moving forward. Executives MUST be imprisoned for murder when it comes out that they knew people were going to die, but allowed it to happen to push a product to market. This has happened, and the Too-Big attitude allows them to be unaccountable.
But.. Yeah... let's blame the least sophisticated here for their fully justified levels of distrust in the system.
Go fuck yourself.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @08:54PM
No humans, no scientific discovery. Kinda that simple.
Is there still objective reality that science and math attempt to describe? As far as I can tell, sure. But you've acknowledged science is a process, a methodology or framework is what you said. It is not the reality itself. Science is the description used by humans for that reality, and without humans you have not science.
And it matters because otherwise you're holding humanity up to a standard it can never reach. (A perfect modeling of that objectivity). No wonder it won't meet your standards.
Aside from that I also think you have one of the worst cases of the grass being greener in a different country that I've ever seen. But I could be wrong. Either way I'm satisfied with the vaccines I've received and promote others to have. Then again, international travel is out of my economic reach.... And the reality is that many of the largest drug recalls in history were from countries other than the U.S. Many were inside the U.S. also, of course. But nowhere near universally. It would be interesting to look and see how many recalls of medication actually originated from work done in countries outside the U.S. (i.e. why is it always in the U.S. that the bad drugs seem to be discovered, but I might be wrong there, too). Greed does not know boundaries, and nor does government corruption (if that is what it be).