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: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @08:51PM (53 children)
Secretly, I want you to keep your filthy offspring away from me.
Oh, sure. I'll give him/her a hug and smile and play games, but deep down, I'm deeply upset that I have to pretend to be unaffected by their dripping noses and sticky fingers. BLECH!
Does it have to be that way, or do children just exhaust their caretakers to the point of slobbery?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:03PM (52 children)
They exhaust them. My kids don't have sticky fingers or put them in their mouth anymore. I managed to parent them out of that behavior by being consistent in my messaging. If you aren't consistent, children either don't understand what you are telling them or do it out of spite. Of course, you have to be disciplined in your use of positive and negative reinforcement, along with positive and negative punishment. It seems to me that most parents don't do that anymore. The reason I suspect is that with mom and dad both working jobs now (or sbsentee) and less support systems available, that leaves the parents with less energy to properly parent. Parenting is work, but most people not actively doing it seem to forget that, pretend it isn't, or don't realize it is.
Yes, I understand the concept of picking your battles, but if you can't really fix the big stuff due to the above, you can't ever get to the small stuff.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:36PM (51 children)
Discipline is unpleasant. People get uncomfortable seeing it and dishing it out. Some parents are blessed with kids that need relatively little, then assume that all other kids have similar personality.
There exist busybodies who will actually call 911 over normal discipline. Nobody seems to call due to lack of discipline, which is certainly a form of abuse. The mind craves order and a role in the world, and discipline helps to provide that.
Well-intentioned parents won't always be perfect. Discipline can get screwed up. An "oops" can easily lead to abuse charges in the cruel machinery of our criminal justice system.
Kids get torn from their families. This is typically far more traumatic than the original "abuse" ever could be. Kids get scarred for life. Sex abuse is pretty common in foster homes. Serious violence of a non-sexual nature is common too.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday November 27 2017, @10:06PM (40 children)
> Discipline is unpleasant.
Too many idiots see enforcing discipline as a failure on their part. "I should be able to talk them out of this behavior". It's reinforced by silly books and media ideas, and in totalitarian places, by the fear that witnesses will call the authorities on you at the first chance, to prove themselves to be good citizens. Children are also free to be brats at school, without noticeable consequences (behave, you have to be in school, misbehave, you get expelled and get vacation, it's fucking upside-down!).
Nobody wants to be seen failing at trying to enforce discipline, it's better to blame children, their friends, and their teachers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday November 27 2017, @10:28PM (38 children)
Exactly, and what this all adds up to should be the realization that we need to, as a society, abandon this idea of people raising children.
Think about all the other activities in society that we've determined are usually best left to professionals: growing food, building buildings and bridges, building or repairing HVAC units, etc. Sometimes amateurs will do some things out of personal interest, and may do a great job at them too (or not), but the vast majority of people will instead leave these tasks to trained professionals. So why do we have this idea that child-rearing should be something done by rank amateurs who have little or no training, and frequently zero experience? Even worse, people of all different genetic backgrounds are breeding together, so there's no quality control whatsoever.
The book "Brave New World", written in 1949, shows what we should aim for as a society: reproduction is controlled by the state, done in factories using fine-tuned industrial processes to minimize problems due to variations and imperfections in biology, with humans designed for the role in society, and finally with them being raised by trained professionals who themselves were specifically bred for the task. This also allows society to create the optimal number of new humans, instead of having either shortages or surpluses that we get when we allow people to reproduce based on their own whims. Instead of taking on an unpaid full-time job of child-rearing, adults should concentrate on living and enjoying their own lives, and contributing to society and the economy in the profession that's best-suited for them, without worrying that enjoying relations with other adults will create an accidental new human that gives them massive legal and financial liability and even in the best case will consume all their free time and then some.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:12AM (37 children)
FTFY
I realize, and enjoyed the fact, that most of your statement is snark.
But I think you missed a key point. By ignoring child care as part of
having a healthy society (e.g. having double income be the norm for
families and discounting parenting because there is not an easily
quantifiable affect on GDP), we have already decided as a society
not to raise children.
We should perhaps think of real solutions to this problem as opposed
to your rather amusing :) snark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @01:23AM (7 children)
There is no secret, no need to figure out much anything new. Inequality must go down, lack of sufficient income is the biggest driver of stress and fear which creates most of our modern problems.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:21AM (6 children)
A typical non sequitur. What you earn in a year is deeply relevant to your "sufficient income". What Bezos earns in a year is not.
The game here is that income and wealth inequality are here to stay because some people want wealth, are willing to sacrifice a lot to get it, and are competent at acquiring wealth, while other people aren't. The only way to achieve absolute wealth equality is to fuck over the people who produce and are competent. So some wealth inequality is desirable. I have yet to hear why the current level of wealth inequality is supposed to be a bad thing.
Similarly, stress and fear are here to stay because some people need that. They will find something to stress and fear over even no matter how imaginary it happens to be. I consider "inequality" to be of that nature.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:05AM (5 children)
It all depends on what people with piles of money are doing with their piles of money. I'm sure there are some who spend it all on hedonism. We probably don't hear about them as much. Then there are those who choose to risk it on something that may have broader impact like SpaceX/Tesla. That's fine by me. What I don't want are George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, the Clinton Foundation, etc., etc. buying politicians and crafting media disinformation campaigns to further their own interests. I am also not thrilled about people like Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and Bill Campbell conspiring to screw over employees for a buck (I am referring to the Silicon Valley "Techtopus" wage-fixing case).
Having a pile of money is OK. Wielding it as a weapon or worshipping it as a god is not. There are plenty of examples of bad behavior occurring with inequality at current levels. Inequality may not be the cause of such problems, but it does enable and amplify them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:14PM (4 children)
So what? Spending it on hedonism means they don't have it anymore and the wealth has moved on to someone else.
I see a considerable lack of relevance to inequality here. Let us keep in mind that a fair number of people and organizations don't use their own wealth for this purpose, but other peoples' wealth, such as financial institutions or government agencies. CalPERS (pension fund for California public employees) or the CIA don't come about due to extremely wealth people and hence wouldn't be affected by attempts to reduce or eliminate inequality.
I disagree. It's not very impressive as a weapon. And if someone wants to build an expensive altar to money and grovel before some pieces of shiny paper, let them do it. There are actual problem in the world that we probably should concern ourselves with instead.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:46PM (3 children)
So what? Spending it on hedonism means they don't have it anymore and the wealth has moved on to someone else.
I don't think he was complaining about that one.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:52PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)
No, I think you're misunderstanding. Right after he listed that point, he mentioned the ones like Musk with Tesla/SpaceX, and it was clear he thought that was a positive. *Then* he got to the stuff he didn't like: Soros/Kochs/etc., and then after that the tech billionaires who screw over their employees. It's pretty clear to me that he thought the hedonist spending was somewhat neutral. He was complaining about the Clintons and Kochs, not the hedonists and obviously not the Musks.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:59PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:05AM (21 children)
Child care was a big problem even before double incomes became normal in western societies. Lots of kids grew up in abusive or neglectful households; it wasn't unusual at all. Parents beat them, parents were drunks, parents had too many kids and ignored them, etc. The idea that somehow there was some wonderful era where kids all were raised in healthy, non-dysfunctional families is nothing more than a myth. Childhood has been a terrible experience for countless children (especially poor ones) ever since civilization was invented.
As for double incomes, that *should* be the norm, otherwise one person (usually the female) is taking a *huge* risk that the relationship will work out and not result in divorce. Looking at today's stats, that's a foolish risk to take since roughly half of marriages fail. And the high divorce rate isn't even a bad thing: in older times, couples stayed together and hated each other because divorce wasn't socially acceptable, and countless women suffered in abusive relationships (and many men did too, though those usually weren't physically dangerous the way it was for women with abusive husbands).
Considering all this, and today's plummeting birthrate among non-poor people, it should be obvious that the current situation is simply unsustainable. As soon as humans have 1) gender equality, 2) easy access to reliable contraception, 3) wealth (middle-class or better), they don't want to have many kids, not enough to sustain the population. And it should be obvious that one solution to this is to delegate reproduction and child-rearing to the state. The other option I could see is normalizing polyamorous relationships (so that groups of parents lived together and raised kids as a sort of village), but that's fraught with legal problems, plus a lot of stigma, the way our societies are currently structured, so I think Brave New World-style institutional reproduction and child-raising is much more likely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:06AM (18 children)
As for double incomes, that should *not* be the norm, because without women taking a risk in the event of divorce there is little incentive to resolve relationship problems. We also don't get many children.
We'll fix this. If not via the law, we'll fix it with evolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:59AM (10 children)
We have 7,000,000,000 people on planet. Soon 10,000,000,000. So WTF are you talking about?? There are more than enough people on this planet already. Human race is not enough to die off because we don't breed. On contrary, we may die because we over-breed.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:54AM (1 child)
> We have 7,000,000,000 people on planet. Soon 10,000,000,000. So WTF are you talking about??
Ah, but you see, most of those are browns and yellows, not good, honest, God-fearing Murricans and other superiors!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:29PM
Why is black pride supposedly OK, but white pride is not? Why do you hate me and my kind? In the world, I'm a minority. There are relatively few white people.
Without my kind being preserved, you lose diversity. It's like having mountain gorillas go extinct.
I happen to like the preservation of my sub-species.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:56PM (7 children)
We have 7,000,000,000 people on planet. Soon 10,000,000,000.
No, current projections show (IIRC) the global population leveling off around 8-9 billion, and probably falling after that.
There's a couple of problems here:
1) it's easy for the population to fall drastically, if everyone turns middle-class and starts having only 1.2 kids. Within a couple of generations, your population is cut in half or worse.
2) our economic systems and social services are not set up to handle population reduction *at all*. You need more productive younger people to support the not-as-productive older people. (And killing off the older people to remove them as a burden won't work, because then the younger people won't bother being productive any more since they can't even look forward to retiring.)
3) a bigger population results in more innovation; we've only enjoyed the technological pace we have because of a very large population.
4) the planet can handle a LOT more humans than it has now, the problem is that it can't handle billions more living a middle-class American lifestyle with a McMansion in the exurbs and 3 gasoline-powered cars. Build more cities like Manhattan or Tokyo with everyone taking public transit and living in small condos, and figure out how to grow meat artificially, and grow food in vertical buildings with robots, and the planet can comfortably support 3-4x the current population, probably more. Build giant rotating artificial habitats in space and we can support many billions more.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:00PM (6 children)
Cut back on the services, and you've fixed that problem.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:36PM (5 children)
Then you either have what I already mentioned in the parentheses, or you have a shitty dog-eat-dog society that only sociopathic libertarians (like about half of all tech workers) really want to live in.
One thing that'd help is eliminating aging medically, so that there's no more retirement and no more ageism.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:27AM (4 children)
Well, do you want to solve the problem or do you just want to whine impotently about it? Reminds me of the patient complaining to their doctor "It hurts when I do this." The doctor's reply? "Then don't do that."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:02PM (3 children)
Other, less-dysfunctional societies seem to get by just fine with plenty of services, and enjoy a higher quality of life than Americans do as a result.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:32PM (2 children)
You get what you pay for. Americans are paying to increase the price of various services (particularly education and health care) not paying for higher quality services. While I applaud your interest in higher quality services, that's not the point of US government services for the most part and hence, becomes yet another reason to cut back on those services.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:37PM (1 child)
Americans pay more per-capita for education and healthcare than other industrialized nations, and get much poorer-quality services for their money. (Their healthcare money isn't coming so much from tax dollars though, it's coming directly out of their bank accounts or paychecks.) Having higher-quality services for the same tax money we pay is certainly possible, though perhaps not in America just because we're too dysfunctional as a society.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:17PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:39PM (6 children)
As for double incomes, that should *not* be the norm, because without women taking a risk in the event of divorce there is little incentive to resolve relationship problems.
All that does is lead to virtual slavery for women and pushing people to stay in monogamous relationships leads to abuse and unhappiness. Abusive relationships were the norm before double incomes, because women had nowhere to go if they were unhappy.
We'll fix this. If not via the law, we'll fix it with evolution.
We'll fix it by having the state assume responsibility for child-raising, which is basically how it was before we stupidly invented monogamy. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, there was no marriage, and children were raised collectively by the village. We just need to go back to that, except with the modern version which involves governments.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:21PM (5 children)
Village != government. It's not even wrong.
And while we weren't data collecting back in the prehistoric era (by definition), marriage is ancient, wide-spread, and thus, probably predates agriculture. Tribes are well-known for have a huge variety of social systems and values. So it is likely that we had tribes back to the beginning of humanity who had monogamy relations (as well as other sorts of relationships) just like we do now.
And emotions aren't a recent invention of modern man. Things like jealousy and cuckoldry would have been a problem from ancient times. Monogamy is one way to manage that.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:44PM (4 children)
And while we weren't data collecting back in the prehistoric era (by definition), marriage is ancient, wide-spread, and thus, probably predates agriculture.
There's no evidence to support this.
So it is likely that we had tribes back to the beginning of humanity who had monogamy relations (as well as other sorts of relationships) just like we do now.
It's possible, but again there's no evidence to support it.
Pre-contact Hawai'ian culture had no monogamy among non-royals, and that was until relatively recent times.
Things like jealousy and cuckoldry would have been a problem from ancient times. Monogamy is one way to manage that.
Monogamy arose along with agriculture and the concept of land ownership. Jealousy and cuckoldry are only an issue in a culture where men care about their "legacy" or who's going to inherit "their" land. (Notice that, in traditional cultures including American culture until recently, it was only sons who were valued, and daughters were not.) In a communal village, such concepts simply don't exist. People have relations with whomever they please, whenever they want, and any children that result are raised by the community at-large.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:13PM
The fact that marriage is wide-spread in unrelated cultures is the evidence. Tribes in the remote Amazon rainforest have it; unmarried women get gang raped.
Jealousy and cuckoldry are issues wherever women historically needed male support for survival. It's strongly in the DNA of people from cold climates. Modern life may be different, but the imprint of the ancient environment has yet to be purged from our DNA.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:59AM (2 children)
Well, obviously no one wrote such things down in prehistory. But we have oral tales. For example, I can think of a number of ancient deities who had a single spouse such as the Greek or Norse pantheons. And many origin tales of humanity start with a man and a woman.
And once again, there is huge variety in hunter-gathering cultures today, including monogamy.
I disagree. Jealously and cuckoldry are clearly ancient emotions which are exhibited in similar fashion among other mammals and aren't particular to monogamous situations. I'm sure there were plenty of cultures that did as you indicate above, but I also am sure there were cultures which did not.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:58PM (1 child)
Well, obviously no one wrote such things down in prehistory. But we have oral tales. For example, I can think of a number of ancient deities who had a single spouse such as the Greek or Norse
No, we don't. Those mythologies you cite come long after the invention of agriculture, and sure as hell don't extend back to hunter-gatherer times.
And once again, there is huge variety in hunter-gathering cultures today
I'm sure there were plenty of cultures that did as you indicate above, but I also am sure there were cultures which did not.
Which proves that monogamy isn't a necessary part of human culture. If it were, they'd all be monogamous, but as you admit, they aren't by a long shot. As I've said before, monogamy only became really universal among human cultures with the invention of the notion of land ownership and agriculture.
Jealously and cuckoldry are clearly ancient emotions which are exhibited in similar fashion among other mammals and aren't particular to monogamous situations.
They're particular to situations where there's a shortage of one of the sexes (usually females). Eliminate that problem (and the sexual frustration that comes with it), along with the notion of parents being completely responsible for raising their offspring, and these emotions (which are simply a by-product of fear) go away. The whole idea of "cuckoldry" after all comes from the notion that a man "owns" a woman, and also from the modern idea that a man is responsible for providing for all the children of "his" women. Eliminate marriage and this idea of owning another person and then "cuckoldry" disappears as an idea, and jealousy has little place: if a guy gets mad that some woman is sleeping with another man, he can just go find another willing partner. It's only in monogamous marriage-oriented societies where this is somehow a problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:15PM
OTOH, if marriage was present in some form from at least the human population bottleneck of 75k years ago (Toba eruption), that would easily explain its prevalence now.
Moving on, even when pure monogamous marriage is not the only form of marriage, it often remains the most common sort, perhaps due to economics, lack of availability of mates, or desires of the couple. For example, almost 40% of listed cultures [uci.edu] (data comes from the Ethnographic Atlas [wikipedia.org]) are "occasionally polygamous", that is, have the potential to marry multiple times, but don't on average.
Emotions don't work that way. They're biological and hence, inherited from a time when they were preferentially propagated, perhaps because they were an evolutionary advantage.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:53AM (1 child)
Equality is a good thing, there's no reason a man and a woman shouldn't divide work and child care equally. What we don't need is the necessity of 2 parents both having full time jobs. It's time to reduce the work week to balance out both parents working. We might eventually need to address the birth rate, but given the current world population, we have a few centuries where we could stand a slowly declining population.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:24PM
That's a solved problem. Parents can already choose to work less. Of course, it means less pay as well, but that's their choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:24AM (5 children)
The fact that school quality is tied to neighborhoods is a factor that drives up house prices and keeps young couples from starting families early. We can bring back bussing. This is when kids get put in non-neighborhood schools. Another thing we can do is to nationalize the funding, prohibiting all local sources of funding. Local sources include PTA groups, school fundraisers, teachers paying for things, and parents being asked to bring in school supplies.
We could get rid of things that led to broken families: no-fault divorce, child support, alimony, per-person welfare increases when the man is not in the household, hiring preferences for women, and generally women working outside the home. We could apply a large tax to working women, perhaps 70%. We could apply a large tax to unmarried men, again perhaps 70%. We could increase the child tax credit. Better yet, divide family income up by the number of people before applying the normal progressive rates. We could criminalize adultery and allow the wronged party to sue for damages.
Even more unreasonable: Get rid of TV and similar distractions. Births tend to happen roughly 40 weeks after lengthy power outages. People fuck more when the electronics aren't entertaining them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:56AM (4 children)
Your ideas fall in 2 categories:
So, alternatively, get the Government the fuck out of our lives.
Get the Government out of schooling. Get the Government out of marriage. Get the Government out of charity. Get the Government out of business; get the Government out of resource allocation.
If your solution is "Get the men-with-guns to make people do what I believe would be a good idea!" then your solution is probably stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:41AM (3 children)
Dissolve the government, and a new one will form. More than one may form, each fighting to be the sole winner. While they fight, it's like Somalia. The winner will likely be awful.
So it is thus established that we need men with guns.
It's like that with lots of things. Libertarian idealism crashes and burns in the real world. (as does the opposite, socialism and communism)
FYI, the government did bus kids around. It was done in the 1960s in many American cities. People rightly hated many aspects of it, but it did help to deal with the problem of good schools only being available to people in expensive areas. The actual goal was race-related.
Nations rise and fall. Decisions that impact fertility have a huge impact on this, though they take decades to become obvious. By the time the population is overrun, it is too late to do anything. We can and should do something to delay the collapse of our nation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:30PM (2 children)
Irrelevant. We don't need to completely dissolve government merely to get it out of all the harmful interference the grandparent post described.
Just like the Irish, Jews, and Poles did to the US back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? The problem is grossly exaggerated. There are problems with high volume immigration, but it's not a recent problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
We've been lucky. Historically, the least integrating have been mostly non-destructive.
To use modern names: Lebanon was not so lucky. That was recently a Christian nation. Recovery is not happening. Death is happening. Afghanistan was Buddhist. Bangladesh was Hindu. Iran was Zoroastrian. Egypt was Christian. There has been a lot of death.
We ourselves did it to the North American aboriginal tribes. Once our numbers got big enough, we dished out death. Immigration did not allow for survival of the pre-Colombian cultures.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:32PM
Modern developed world countries have more going for them than weak corrupt societies of the past. I believe the violence in the Islam world is in large part due to radicals losing badly on today's culture front. Women, for example, will choose heavily a Western-style culture, given a choice between traditional Islamic role as a slave with no legal say outside her home and a culture where she not only has the full rights of a man, but also everyone has much greater rights and power.
Further, recent EU immigration has been curbed from the peak in 2015 by a huge amount [reuters.com].
It's not the same situation any more.
And every one of those countries you mentioned above improved in early centuries with the advent of Islam (particularly, the countries subject to Hinduism and its caste system). That includes the countries dominated by Buddhism (which had developed notable corruption problems since around 0 AD, among other things disappearing from most of India by around 600 AD). Islam had a lot going for it in the early days. Today is a long ways off from back then.
Finally, there are many other immigration populations to choose from than just Islamic ones. The US is more balanced, for example, with immigrants from the rest of the Americans, non-Muslim Africa, and Eastern Europe.
Sure, high levels of immigration from places without strong democratic or capitalist traditions can destabilize a Western-style society. But for the most part, that's not actually a problem in the developed world. Everyone has implemented some sort of gate system for immigration, which has been effective enough. We'll see in the future what happens. But so far, Islamic immigrants have not been very different from any other immigrant, particularly in the US.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:02PM
Actually, the current situation as you describe it is really the best case. Many children live in households with a single parent working full time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:57AM
I have an almost-3 year old. We have a new game, and she was putting pieces in her mouth. A few stern words about how I don't want to play with her if she puts them in her mouth solved the problem. Usually, talking is enough to stop undesirable behavior. Physical punishment is an extreme measure. Yeah, I'm sure she would follow my orders better now if she was more scared of me. But there is a long-term cost to authoritarian parenting. Once kids are smart enough to get sneaky and lie, they will make you regret taking such a hard line.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:59AM (9 children)
What exactly do you mean by "discipline"? Based on your post, it sounds like what you mean is spanking and other forms of corporal punishment.
My experience, as someone who has worked with all kinds of kids professionally, is that such actions are pretty much always unnecessary and do more harm than good. Even with kids who are seriously screwed up due to past abuse and mental illness and such.
Most misbehaviors fall into one of these categories:
1. The kid knows it's against the rules and is doing it to test whether you'll do anything about it. You respond to this one by making it abundantly clear that you noticed, and doling out a punishment as needed.
2. The kid has no clue what they're doing is wrong, or why it's wrong. You respond to this by teaching them both the rule and the reason for it, and then work with them to figure out some kind of appropriate punishment. Yes, this actually works - kids who made a mistake often come up with ways to punish themselves that are appropriate and proportionate to what they did wrong.
3. The kid knows intellectually that the rule exists, but because kids have emotions they overrode the brain telling them not to do something. This one's really annoying, but you basically have to get the kid to calm down enough to get them to realize what they've done, and then you work on the punishment angle.
The other thing is you want to use punishments that build rather than erode trust between the kid and the adult. The best possible punishment is one where you do absolutely nothing and the kid learns why your rule exists - e.g. "Don't touch the hot stove!" doesn't need a punishment associated with breaking the rule because the kid will burn themselves the first time they try it. The next-best thing is where the punishment involves undoing the damage they caused - e.g. you made a mess, you clean it up. The next-best option there is to pick a punishment related to the crime in some way - e.g. a kid who broke a dish on purpose but has no money to buy another one (because they're a kid) has to wash all the dishes for a while to "earn" back the money they cost you.
Corporal punishment is basically authoritarian - do what I say or I will hurt you. And the problem with that is that it only works when the authority figure is around to enforce the rules. The goal of discipline is to have the little brats doing what you want 'em to do without you having to tell them or force them, and you don't get that if you have to smack them around whenever they're disobedient. Kids who have been raised in this kind of environment usually end up going overboard the moment they are out of their parents' clutches. It basically is a lack of creativity on the part of the adults leading to discipline that doesn't actually work very well in instilling values in the kids that leads to them actually wanting to do what you want them to do.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:46AM (8 children)
My first paragraph features you. As I said, "Discipline is unpleasant. People get uncomfortable seeing it and dishing it out. Some parents are blessed with kids that need relatively little, then assume that all other kids have similar personality."
That supposed "lack of creativity on the part of the adults" reminds me of our constitutional ban on unusual punishment. Are you going to come up with something new each time?
Corporal punishment is quickly over and done with. It avoids the manipulative psychological abuse so often seen in families that avoid it. It also works on kids who can't have a reasonable discussion.
OK, since you think you know everything, help me out. I've got all the minor things handled perfectly well, mostly with spankings from infancy. My kids are way better behaved than most. The big troubles are homework and internet use. Now, before you come up with a totally impractical solution, note that I have 11 kids. Even with a full-time stay-at-home mother, there is no hope for solutions that involve isolation and huge amounts of parental time. Also, we aren't going to play cruel and abusive psychological games, and we aren't going to tolerate reward inflation. There may be ADHD or Asperger's in the family; we won't be drugging everybody.
We homeschool. Each week, the older 5 have a chapter of AP Physics BC Mechanics to do. We read it, and then there are about 50 problems for the week. There is also a section of a calculus book, targeting AP Calculus BC probably. This is usually 1 or 2 days per section, with perhaps 7 to 10 multi-part problems. The work doesn't get done. They chat, read books, find "useful" tasks like baby care, pace around, doodle, nap, and snack. (no TV or video games here) Remember that I work and the wife is busy with 6 smaller kids. If even one kid fails to complete the work, we have a huge problem. Continuing on means that they become unable to do future chapters. Providing extra time only rewards the failure; they are then able to halt the education that they find so distasteful. A complaint from them has been that getting work done seems to be "rewarded" with more work, which is kind of true when they are successfully slowing things down.
For all but the oldest one, computer use is banned. This is a sad state of affairs. It'd be great if they could learn to program or could read/watch something educational. The reality is that they would burn through their time -- hours upon hours each day -- playing games and watching the most pointless videos. It's a Linux household. I tried blacklisting for a while, but there are too many alternatives on the internet, plus video sites mix the educational with the idiotic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @05:13AM
Maybe they find the school work distasteful because you are making them to do it, and they associate your orders with spanking (and probably yelling). It's not like AP calculus and physics exercises are fun, even for people who are good at it. That's some pretty dry bread to chew.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:22AM (1 child)
Maybe they need some instruction on time management. If there are 50 problems for a week, set a target for finishing 10 per day and after they do that then they can goof off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:57PM
Uh, well, I'm not so great at this myself.
What if they fall behind? One day they do 5 problems. The next day, is it 15 problems they must do? If only 10, should they skip the 5 from the previous day or should they start from there?
It really is a disaster if they fall behind. Test days can not be moved. The other kids have to move on; if they don't move as a group then teaching becomes inefficient. If somebody gets away with being lazy, then the others expect to be lazy for fairness.
Suppose they sit down to work, and nothing happens. What then? (for me as parent, and/or for them hopefully being self-motivated) How does one make the studying happen?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by t-3 on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:39PM (1 child)
Fear only motivates a coward. My dad would apply "discipline" when I didn't do well in school, it just made me hate him. The efficacy of punishment is nullified when there is no emotional attachment, and creating an environment based around physical dominance quickly erodes any emotional attachment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:50PM
I guess I just give up then. The kids get no education. When they turn 18, I'll just drop them off at homeless shelters.
FAIL
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 29 2017, @12:15AM (2 children)
I'm not actually a parent: I've worked with kids professionally, which means interacting regularly with probably a couple hundred kids who've all been raised by somebody else up until that point. I've interacted with and been responsible for keeping in line a wide range of kids, from the spoiled brats to those with ADHD to those with autism to those who've suffered sexual abuse to those who are well-adjusted and well-behaved. And even a 9-year-old who can't talk due to severe cerebral palsy.
As for your specific problem (and whoa, that's a *lot* of kids, I'm guessing you're Catholic):
1. I think you and the stay-at-home mother need to do an assessment and plan a bit. You need to know about each of your kids is what activities they crave and what activities they avoid. You also need to know what privileges you are comfortable doling out. They don't have to be big, just stuff they want to do. In general, it sounds like you need the carrot more than the stick, and that means figuring out what actually is a good lure.
2. I'd take a hard look at how you're trying to teach physics and calculus: Do they get any practical experience using their knowledge of math and physics to solve real-world problems? Is there a time at work where you encounter problems along these lines that they could help you solve? If your teaching methods are limited to what's in the book, I'm not surprised they find it boring - textbooks and the questions in them are often frightfully dull even when they're covering fascinating subjects. For example, the best possible way to teach about pulleys is to use pulleys to do something.
3. Look at how the kids can be contributors to solving your household challenges rather than burdens. For instance, if the older kids are dodging your textbook work by wanting to take care of their younger siblings, then why not use baby care as a reward, and when they're doing that your wife gets a bit of a break?
4. As for the computer, it can be a great teaching tool if you can limit it properly. For example, the Kerbal Space Program [kerbalspaceprogram.com] might give your kids more of an understanding of physics and mechanics than your textbook will. As for preventing them from doing things they shouldn't on the computer (e.g. pr0n), the way you solve that one is to ensure that the computer is always in a place where the rest of the family can see it.
5. What books are they reading on their own? How can they be used to help teach? Are there other books you could add in that might do a better job of teaching?
It sounds to me like your kids are bored, miserable, and putting most of their effort into avoiding punishment. At a very young age, you taught them to be afraid of you and your wrath by spanking them. And it sounds like you still maintain your authority basically by hitting them if they don't do as you ask. You also seem to be denying them most forms of entertainment, which is leaving them bored and desperately looking for something they can do. It doesn't sound like they leave the house all that often, or socialize with anyone other than their immediate family, which isn't healthy.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @02:14AM (1 child)
My wife is Catholic. I was raised that way, but I can't make myself believe.
Carrot instead of stick sounds nice, but kids will do the bare minimum and then inflation takes hold. They lose the motivation and demand better carrots. Money and time are limited.
Currently, we're limited to the book. We did AP Chemistry with some amazing labs, but half way through the year I had to drop the labs. Lab reports weren't getting done and the labs were taking time that was needed for working through the problems. We then did AP Biology without labs, and 4 kids passed the test. Physics labs seem to usually need lab-specific costly oddball equipment like air tracks and mercury lamps and spark gaps; chemistry labs at least tended to reuse the same equipment over and over again.
I'm not going to get bothered by kids seeing naked people. The trouble with the computer is stuff like the Annoying Orange videos, political news, and games with tank battles. It's not that I mind the stuff, but that it is an unproductive time sink. Uh, there was the 9-year-old girl who secretly signed up for OkCupid and chatted up guys in their 20s, but that was not the norm. The norm is just time wasted on nonsense. There is a bit of potential for computer damage too if they fight over the computer; there is no way I can have enough computers for everybody.
The 12-year-old twin girls read fiction like Warriors (weird books about cats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_%28novel_series%29 [wikipedia.org] here), a bunch of disturbing Manga translated from Japanese, and stuff that looks to be romance novels. The 18-year-old boy prefers books about politics, war, getting women, and interacting with people. It's both fiction and non-fiction. He read some Tom Clancy stuff. He really liked 1984 and The Prince. The 14-year old boy reads whatever his sisters and older brother have; he isn't too fussy. The 16-year-old dislikes reading.
I suppose I should make it clear that spanking tapers off with age. I wouldn't put a hard limit on it, but the oldest 7 kids (age 7 and up) almost don't get spanked. There comes a time, gradually, when punishment is really not an easy thing. Years go by with nothing viable, and then on their 18th birthday I get the harsh option of telling them that they don't live with us anymore.
They may be bored. Of course they don't get entertainment: they haven't done their work! They seem to convince themselves, wrongly, that there is no possible way to complete the work and get to fun activities. The obvious defective conclusion is that there is no reason to try.
They do get out a bit. I've been limiting some of it due to the homework issue, but not totally. The boys do scouting, and the girls are in American Heritage Girls. The oldest is finishing up paperwork to be an eagle scout. The oldest has a job, 6 or 7 hours on one day per week. Several are alter servers. They all attend kid activities at the church. They all can unicycle for miles; some go 20 MPH. The twin girls play instruments in a summer band and sometimes at church. They get half a day per week with a homeschooling group, studying history and English with kids of similar age.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:13PM
The thing about your concerns with "reward inflation": The goal is that by the time they're leaving the nest, they can manage themselves without your guidance or assistance most of the time. So the kinds of rewards you dole out should basically amount to steady increases in both freedom and responsibility, until they basically can do whatever they like, because "whatever they like" falls squarely in the categories of things you'd like them to do.
For instance, the 18-year-old ought to, provided he has a drivers' license, be able to drive a family car when you or your wife don't need it, on the condition that he contributes to gas, insurance, and maintenance, out of the money he earns from his job. He loses that privilege the moment he gets a ticket (that's the responsibility part). And yes, that means he should be able to drive around town, meet up with that cute girl he's had eyes for, etc.
The same sort of balance applies to computer time, to academics, to everything: Show that you've learned something, now you earn the freedom to use that knowledge to do something fun, with the responsibility of not misusing it. For a simple example, I taught many many kids how to safely use a pocket-knife, and they were allowed to use them once they'd passed a test demonstrating that knowledge, but if they broke the rules we taught them they would lose that privilege again and have to wait a few days and retake the test in order to get their knife back.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Redundant) by frojack on Monday November 27 2017, @08:56PM (1 child)
Because blaming our own celebrities doesn't seem to work.
https://jezebel.com/heres-a-fairly-comprehensive-list-of-anti-vaccination-c-1714760128 [jezebel.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:12PM
Nice whataboutism.
Here's a hint: we can blame them both.
(Score: 5, Touché) by stormreaver on Monday November 27 2017, @09:01PM (19 children)
This is where the article loses all credibility, because Putin is smart enough to know that US and European governments have lost the trust of their citizens all by themselves. There is absolutely no need for Russia to intervene.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:31PM
of course they have, but being pathological figures doing what someone else is telling them, their own character structures deny them access to this knowledge. so they project it onto someone they would like to take down. .. its like hillary accusing people of colluding with russia.. make them look away, by way of 'think of the children' rhetoric.
(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.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(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.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:22PM
There is absolutely no need for Russia to intervene.
Then why are they intervening?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Entropy on Monday November 27 2017, @09:05PM (35 children)
Allowing hoards of terrorists into the county have done 100000x more to destabilize it than the stupid flu. This is just a lame attempt to get the money machine flu vaccine rolling at full speed and blame the evil russians if it isn't. Sign up for your dose of mercury now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:09PM (8 children)
Most certainly.
They seem to be at fault for everything these days.
[Citation needed.]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Entropy on Monday November 27 2017, @09:32PM (7 children)
Here's a citation..
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm [cdc.gov]
Rather than call it Mercury, you know..something universally recognized as awful they renamed it Thimerosal. You'd really think this sort of thing would have been phased out with lead pipes. Heck, we don't even use Mercury in most thermometers anymore because it's awful stuff but according to the flu vaccine fundraising machine it's just dandy to inject into your veins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:54PM
There was one thing I couldn't find at that link. Is it more or less toxic than dihydrogen monoxide?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:59PM (4 children)
And in the spirit of the season let us not leave ignorance hanging Thimerosal [cdc.gov]
Some short points for the lazy.
-- The human body eliminates thimerosal easily.
Thimerosal does not stay in the body a long time so it does not build up and reach harmful levels. When thimerosal enters the body, it breaks down to ethylmercury and thiosalicylate, which are readily eliminated.
-- Thimerosal has been shown to be safe when used in vaccines.
-- Thimerosal use in medical products has a record of being very safe. Data from many studies show no evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines.
-- Thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines in the United States in 2001.
(Score: 1) by mobydisk on Monday November 27 2017, @11:42PM
Not entirely, and not all of them. [archive.org]
I know it was used as recently as 2014, since my wife and I had a discussion about it when we were offered the Flu vaccine for our son. They had 2 versions: one with it, and one without.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:39AM (1 child)
Yep, perfectly safe to inject mercury. Nothing to worry about there.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:33AM
- It's in "trace" amounts, such that
- To FDA standards, it's not even there at all.
One piece of gravadlax or one small sprat contains more mercury than all of the vaccines you'll ever be encouraged to take. If you eat fish, you're not just ignorant, you're a hypocrite.
Ditto bananas - because you wouldn't want to be eating radioactive material, would you.
Oh, you're gonna have to give up breathing to be entirely consistent.
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, @08:41AM
See, if you had started out with this, you would have had a great argument for vaccines. But no, you just had to give credibility to every anti-vaxxer argument by pretending that injecting mercury wasn't a huge mistake (one that pharma CEOs, government officials and doctors should be in prison for, even). And then hiding the only argument that supports the pro-side down at the bottom where nobody reads it.
The anti-vaxxer side doesn't need Russian help. They are getting more help than they need from people like you.
(Score: 5, Informative) by julian on Monday November 27 2017, @10:54PM
Mercury has been part of the environment for longer than humans have existed. Your body can easily eliminate levels far above what's found in a seasonal influenza vaccine. If you enjoy eating large predatory fish (tuna, shark, swordfish) then you get more mercury from that than from your yearly jab.
Skip a few tuna salads and get the vaccine.
(Score: 0, Troll) by stormreaver on Monday November 27 2017, @09:12PM (12 children)
And that's on top of the absolutely idiotic notion that Person A not getting vaccinated somehow puts vaccinated Person B at risk.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Entropy on Monday November 27 2017, @09:18PM (5 children)
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)
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)
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
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)
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
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)
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
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)
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
...that I can't be bothered to fabricate at this moment.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:31AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:02AM
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?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Megahard on Monday November 27 2017, @09:32PM (12 children)
Odds of dying from influenza: 1 in 70
Odds of dying from a foreign terrorist: 1 in 45000
http://www.businessinsider.com/death-risk-statistics-terrorism-disease-accidents-2017-1 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Entropy on Monday November 27 2017, @10:16PM (11 children)
You seriously believe it's 1 in 70 chance of death from the flu? With 326M people in the US, that's about 4.65M deaths from the flu. How about--No. Of course statistics are quite open to manipulation. You can do things like lump pneumonia in with the flu to make the flu statistic seem higher which is exactly what the article you cited did. There many, many a few cause of death by Pneumonia such as cancer(especially lung cancer), fungal infections, etc.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/cdc-inflates-flu-death-stats-to-sell-more-flu-vaccines/ [healthimpactnews.com] - CDC inflates flu statistics in order to keep the flu vaccine money machine rolling.
"According to the National Vital Statistics System in the U.S., for example, annual flu deaths in 2010 amounted to just 500 per year — fewer than deaths from ulcers (2,977), hernias (1,832) and pregnancy and childbirth (825), and a far cry from the big killers such as heart disease (597,689) and cancers (574,743)."
And yes, I agree the odds of dying from a terrorist attack in the united states are quite low. Why? Because we haven't allowed mass migration like France/UK/Germany. Over there suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks are becoming a common occurance whereas over here it's quite rare. Before the "immigrant" crisis ? Terrorist attacks were not really a concern there either.
(Score: 5, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday November 27 2017, @10:35PM (3 children)
I live in Germany; I should have noticed if suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks by immigrants were becoming a common occurrence.
The only thing that seems to somewhat rise is domestic right-wing extremist violence.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @10:53PM
There ya go, ruining the narrative again! For shaaaame
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:59AM (1 child)
Your media purposely avoids covering terrorist attacks. Some can't be hidden, so they get covered, but little minor ones (the most common) don't get coverage.
Your media purposely avoids covering the high levels of violence, particularly rape, committed by the non-European Islamic migrants.
Your media latches onto anything that could be considered "domestic right-wing extremist violence". Any little thing gets lots of coverage. It's really disproportionate.
There are many reasons for this. Culturally, it is no longer acceptable to be proud of your own country. There is video, astonishing to Americans, of your prime minister being handed a flag and then disrespectfully disposing of it as quickly as possible. She doesn't want to be seen with it! You don't have freedom of speech. If you dare to say the "wrong" thing about migrants or muslims, you get put in prison. Normal people will self-censor. Normal people won't take even a small chance of going to prison, so they don't even say many things that are perfectly legal. Your government is busy fighting facebook to get all anti-migrant and anti-islam and pro-german comments blocked, allowing for zero failures. You simply aren't allowed to see alternative viewpoints. They treat you like a small child.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:11AM
Just for the record: We don't have a prime minister. Which highlights how "well informed" you actually are about Germany.
The only thing that is true is that many Germans have a problem with the concept of being proud of your country. This has good reasons, as this has been abused in the past (and is abused in lots of countries, including the USA, although generally to a lesser degree). However you don't get into prison for saying the "wrong" thing about migrants or Muslims (otherwise there would be lots of publicly very visible figures already in prison).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday November 28 2017, @01:49AM (4 children)
You messed up here. Do you see your mistake.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Entropy on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:36AM (2 children)
That website took pneumonia deaths(from stuff like lung cancer) and then added on flu deaths and made the 1 in 70 statistic. That's like taking deaths from cancer and adding on people that are impaled by pogo sticks.. Then saying your chance of dying from pogo stick impalement is 1 in 70. It's more like 500 deaths per year to Flu. Sure, it happens, but so to pogo stick impalements: It doesn't mean it's something to worry about.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:52AM (1 child)
The freaking CDC has pages and pages on such topics, all fully sourced - why do you remain willfully ignorant?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:32AM
Take my father-in-law for example.................
The real cause: he lived on fast food with lots of soda and he mostly sat on his fat ass
That led to: obesity and edema, then being sent home from a hospital with persistent weakness and possibly infection, then hallucination due to infection
The death certificate: has almost none of that, with the death being listed as a heart failure
Take my uncle for example.................
The real cause: buttfucking
That led to: HIV, AIDS, etc.
The death certificate: pneumonia
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:57AM
And not all 326 million people are going to get hit by a terrorist attack. So for the numbers to be comparable, that would mean that only 1 in 45000 people hit by a terrorist attack is going to die from it. In which case, terrorists are doing a really bad job. That's about 1% of a dead person from blowing up a Boing 747.
Which makes even less sense.
Which gets us to the last option: That the numbers are not comparable, which weakens the pro-vaxxer argument. I'm not surprised that the anti-vaxxer side seems to be winning, when the pro-vaxxers are giving them all the ammo they need.
(Score: 4, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:48AM (1 child)
You're doing it wrong. Here's how it works [medicalnewstoday.com]:
Keep in mind the usual caveats for 5 digit precision here. These numbers are probably off a few percent just due to errors in reporting and classification.
The numbers of deaths attributed to influenza above are a bit lower than 1 in 70, but not greatly so. And some years, influenza exceeds 1 in 70 deaths (highest annual toll was 48,614 deaths for 2003-2004, deaths in 2004 were 2,397,615 so about 1 in 50 deaths for that year).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:35AM
That's actually pretty good. So in US you are as likely to die from flu in your life, as you are from getting shot or killed in a car crash because some drunk went through the red. Awesome.