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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: 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?