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posted by mrpg on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the Brawndo-Has-What-Plants-Crave dept.

Texas lawmaker says he's not worried about measles outbreak because of ‘antibiotics'

Texas state representative Bill Zedler says a resurgence of measles across the U.S. isn't worrying him.

Zedler, R-Arlington, is promoting legislation that would allow Texans to opt out of childhood vaccinations.

“They want to say people are dying of measles. Yeah, in Third World countries they’re dying of measles,” Zedler said, the Texas Observer reports. “Today, with antibiotics and that kind of stuff, they’re not dying in America.”

There is no treatment for measles, a highly contagious virus that can be fatal. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections and can't kill viruses.

It could be funny if it weren't so tragic.


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:57PM (4 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:57PM (#808431) Journal

    Mate, let's set the things clear. The context is of a human that hasn't had measles and has a choice between to or to not vaccinate.
    1. If you vaccinate, you immune system will know a weak form of measles but get to keep the memory of all the other enemies that it knows about. The result is a good chance of fighting off other germs and a reduced number of cases when antibiotics will be necessary
    2. If you don't vaccinate and get measles, your immune system will know measles by heart but forget everything else. The result is most of subsequent infections with other germs will require antibiotics and you may get extremely unlucky and catch one resistant to antibiotics.

    So, as a personal choice**, while it is true you may not need a vaccine to survive measles, it seems safer and more time/money efficient to have one. What motives would a politician have to not want that?

    ** not even got to introduce herd immunity consideration into the equation.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:23AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:23AM (#808476)

    Mate, let's set the things clear.
    [...]
    If you don't vaccinate and get measles, your immune system will know measles by heart but forget everything else. The result is most of subsequent infections with other germs will require antibiotics and you may get extremely unlucky and catch one resistant to antibiotics.

    You scenario is just speculation based on post-hoc fit model. I looked at that paper here [soylentnews.org]. Nothing wrong with it other than no one ever checked any predictions it makes (and the authors are confused between pre-diction and post-diction which makes them way overconfident in it, but whatever since it is difficult to find real science these days so I give them a pass for at least coming up with a model).

    Do you know about someone later verifying this model is capable of predicting something useful? Or do you just believe every random model that gets published? How do you decide what to believe? Because I assure you a contradictory model that fits all the same data is possible.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 01 2019, @12:34AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 01 2019, @12:34AM (#808483) Journal

      Do you know about someone later verifying this model is capable of predicting something useful?

      Nope.

      Or do you just believe every random model that gets published? How do you decide what to believe?
      Nope. Only those that pass my guts tests. Until someone certifies them.
      Do you have any other heuristic? Because any choice in this regard is gonna be a heuristic.

      Because I assure you a contradictory model that fits all the same data is possible.

      Shoot, let's see it.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:42AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:42AM (#808488)

        No, I'm not going to spend the time on this. But if you have ever modeled something you know it is not hard to get a fit to anything with enough adjustable parameters...

        If I were to do it though, I would take their model (if it is actually available somewhere) and add in "dark measles" cases (the 85% unreported ones) that make it show what I want.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday March 01 2019, @05:50PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 01 2019, @05:50PM (#808806) Homepage Journal

      Do you know about someone later verifying this model is capable of predicting something useful?

      Let's see. To do a double-blind study of this you would have to give measles to one group and not give measles to a control group without the subjects or the researcher knowing which group had measles.

      I kind of suspect that it might rapidly become obvious which subjects were in one group or the other...