A small but increasing number of children in the United States are not getting some or all of their recommended vaccinations. The percentage of children under 2 years old who haven't received any vaccinations has quadrupled in the last 17 years, according to federal health data released Thursday.
Overall, immunization rates remain high and haven't changed much at the national level. But a pair of reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about immunizations for preschoolers and kindergartners highlights a growing concern among health officials and clinicians about children who aren't getting the necessary protection against vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, whooping cough and other pediatric infectious diseases.
The vast majority of parents across the country vaccinate their children and follow recommended schedules for this basic preventive practice. But the recent upswing in vaccine skepticism and outright refusal to vaccinate has spawned communities of undervaccinated children who are more susceptible to disease and pose health risks to the broader public.
[...] The data underlying the latest reports do not explain the reason for the increase in unvaccinated children. In some cases, parents hesitate or refuse to immunize, officials and experts said. Insurance coverage and an urban-rural disparity are likely other reasons for the troubling rise.
Among children aged 19 months to 35 months in rural areas, about 2 percent received no vaccinations in 2017. That is double the number of unvaccinated children living in urban areas.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:31AM (30 children)
Return to a free market, with free association.
Schools should refuse enrollment of unvaccinated children.
Insurance companies should charge very high premiums for children who are unvaccinated.
One family should be able to sue another family for spreading some disease.
I could go on.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:40AM (1 child)
"Return to a free market, with free association."
-
The inane and unrealistic suggestions you pose are the diametric opposite of a free market.
Don't breed, son.
The world doesn't need any more idiots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:47AM
Go on.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday October 12 2018, @05:03AM (19 children)
The real solution is that the state be able to compel parents to get their children vaccinated.
One of the roles of a state is to impose sacrifices and actions to individuals for the greater good, that the individuals wouldn't usually do by themselves. Case in point: states raise taxes that nobody wants to pay, and spends it on things nobody really wants, like the military, for the greater good of society as a whole. Most taxpayers grumble when they have to pay up, yet understand the concept.
Vaccination should be one of these state-imposed things. Anybody who knows anything about the history of contagious diseases and how some of them were forcibly eradicated without asking anybody's opinion on the matter should agree.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:38AM (2 children)
How can something be for the greater good when nobody really wants it?
Diseases were eradicated through strictly voluntary means; WTF are you talking about?
-------
Anyway, the concept that taxpayers understand is this:
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
They understand that when someone does a service for you, then you pay them in return according to an agreement made in advance, otherwise nothing works. Unfortunately, that's not what's happening when the government taxes you. That's not an agreement in advance; rather, that's coercion at the point of a gun, and it tends to be arbitrary and capricious.
Fundamentally, the U.S. experiment in governance is that the government is NOT supposed to be all powerful; the government is supposed to be restricted as much as possible, with its sole role being the protection of each individual's innate, Universe-given rights, chief among which are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., pursuit of self-interest).
So, no. It is a mistake to think of the government the way you do. The government should facilitate the voluntary interaction between people, including their on-going debate about vaccination, and their right to associate or to disassociate or to seek a remedy for some duly processed grievance.
If your solution is based on coercion, then you are building a house of cards on a foundation of sand.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:58AM (1 child)
I think GP is talking about REALITY, where diseases that have actually been eradicated required forced vaccination in many parts of the world. Read about the eradication of smallpox sometime -- while a lot of vaccination was voluntary, it definitely would not have been eradicated only through voluntary means. In the early 1900s even in the U.S., "vaccination raids" where police would show up in the middle of the night and forcibly vaccinate lots of people and literally tear infected children away from mothers to quarantine them... Well, they happened more often then we like to talk about today.
But through those efforts, smallpox incidence decreased enough that by the time courts ruled such actions illegal, the U.S. was on the way to eradication. Similar scenarios played out around the world in lots of places.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:20PM
good luck trying that now you stupid authoritarian fucks. we'll fucking exterminate all you motherfuckers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:44AM (1 child)
The US's insanely bloated military budget and illegal foreign wars are not for the greater good, I assure you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday October 12 2018, @06:46AM
FTFY - there must be an explanation for which those things happen and, IMHO, that's a very probable one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Friday October 12 2018, @07:59AM (5 children)
How? I mean really, how are you going to do this? There are anti-vaxxers out there willing to use armed force to "protect" their children from vaccination, how are you going to make this happen?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday October 12 2018, @04:46PM (4 children)
Strictly as a practical matter, if they break the law, the police come. The police are armed, and there are more of them available (either immediately or eventually) than any family can muster despite how invested they are in whatever thought process that causes them to resist vaccination.
This is no different than if I started shooting a gun through the walls of my house in random directions. I might not shoot a neighbor doing this; then again, I might. Society doesn't allow it, and society should not allow it, and if I do it, the authorities will come for me and force me to stop, using armed force as required. As it should be.
Considering that anti-vaxxers are directly raising the risks of non-consenting others, including other children, to contract disease(s) A(,B,C...), it seems entirely appropriate to force them — as a matter of public safety, prevention of random spreading damage to the economy, and for the good of their offspring and the offspring of non-consenting others.
As to the last, I'm very much for "let the parents raise children as they see fit", but we don't let parents chain their children up in the basement or hang them in bundling bags, either, and I'm on board there. There have to be rational limits, and this issue is even worse: Not only are they putting their own children at direct physical risk, they are also putting others, including other children, at direct physical risk without the consent of those others, those children, or their parents.
I am all for liberty. But one person's liberty has to stop when it infringes upon the health and well-being of others. Otherwise, we're not talking about liberty any longer, but instead, about imposition of force — the very antithesis of liberty.
There's a terribly slippery slope indeed in forcing parents to raise their own children in any specific way, and dealing out laws there should be done with the utmost of care and reservation. However, this issue is not on that slope. This issue lands well and truly on the doorstep of raising the risk of severe harm to non-consenting others and so is an entirely appropriate area for legislation of use of force for non-compliance. It's imperfect, but it's better than the alternative of your children and/or others dying or being crippled because some few citizens can't be bothered to understand (or are incapable of understanding) the science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:23PM (1 child)
you don't get to use indirect things like risk to claim my rights violated yours, you fucking lying piece of shit. i'm not responsible for nature. if your goddamn vaccines worked you'll be fine. and your stupid little slave children will be fine too. nevermind the leukemia, bitch ass whore.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday October 12 2018, @10:02PM
Wrong. When you cause a direct risk to others, and you could have prevented or minimized that risk, society most certainly does. See the example of shooting blindly through one's home's exterior walls. It's exactly the same sort of thing.
There is no case under any sane model of liberty that can support that kind of use of blind force.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday October 12 2018, @11:02PM
Shoot somebody with a gun, no limit to your liability. Get sued, go to court, pay big damages. And possibly criminal charges. You kill somebody, maybe Death Penalty.
Shoot somebody with a bad vaccine, VERY VERY LIMITED liability. Very special vaccine court, they call it the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. That one's a Ronald Reagan number. They call it "no fault." You kill somebody, it's $250,000 MAX. Not a lot, folks. And it's been a disaster for our Country.
So many babies & kids getting sick from the vaccines. So many of our beautiful young people. Some dieing. Some damaged for life. And the manufacturers & doctors get away with it. Sad!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 13 2018, @05:15AM
*sigh*
How about some math? Let's say that 4 children in 100 are NOT vaccinated against - ohhhh - let's say measles. At some point in those children's lifetimes, there is a measles outbreak. It spreads - and affects that 4%. Your child, who has had all his vaccinations, is unaffected. Among that 4% of children who were not vaccinated, some remain unaffected. Some others get measles, and get over the measles, just as I did when I was a child. Some small percentage of that 4% are left with more serious complications. And an even smaller percentage of that 4% die from very serious complications.
Now, tell me - how are you and yours put at risk? You and yours have all been vaccinated, and are immune from the consequences of the 4% actions.
What do you care?
A far more serious concern is polio. Polio killed a lot of people every single year in this country, until the vaccine was developed. (Sorry, I'm not searching for numbers.) Polio crippled and maimed even more people, every single year, in this country. People my age should be able to remember cripples who were victims of polio. I remember two, and I remember the women chattering like magpies about all the dead and disfigured from their own childhoods. My parent's generation feared polio, and my grandparent's generation feared it even more.
Today - kids don't even get polio vaccines. I might make a case that the entire country, the government, it's citizens, and all of the medical community are being negligent. Polio has NOT been eradicated worldwide. It is very possible that polio finds a vector, and returns to the United States - or any other nation in the world. It would only take a very small number of people - perhaps even one person - to contract the disease, then pass through the United States during his/her infectious period. WHAM! In a matter of weeks, we have a million (or more) cases of polio.
How about this idea: Living has risks. Your risk of dieing of measles, or rubella, or any of those things we are commonly vaccinated against is your risk. You may manage your risk as you see fit. Allow others the right to manage their own risk.
Have YOU been vaccinated for polio? If not, do I have the right to demand that you get vaccinated? I was vaccinated - in - uhhhhh - I think it was 1960. You should be too!
(Score: 1, Troll) by ledow on Friday October 12 2018, @08:52AM (7 children)
Please name three human diseases that were forcibly eradicated by ANY vaccination program whatsoever.
Because there are only two in all of recorded history, one of those was only in animals and the other still exists in labs (which is how the last death occurred), and we think might be making a comeback by some convergent evolution from related strains.
Literally, the world has only ever eliminated smallpox and rinderpest.
That's *IT*.
Anyone who knows anything about the history of contagious diseases also knows that. And that smallpox is not only still around, but around to enough that the last two people who died of it were lab researchers studying it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:07AM
Are you serious?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication#Timeline [wikipedia.org]
1975 — 49,293
2017 — 22
Also, just to quell any illiterates out there (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication#Vaccine-derived_poliovirus) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:40PM (1 child)
I don't think GP meant worldwide eradication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diseases_eliminated_from_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday October 12 2018, @11:36PM
I looked at the first one. The Yellow Fever. After 1905, no more Yellow Fever -- except from IMMIGRANTS, they call it imported. But vaccine started in 1938. No vaccine until 1938. Nobody asks, why did Yellow Fever stop in 1905? Why did that one go away? I don't know, maybe nobody knows. I'll tell you, it wasn't vaccine. Because, they didn't have vaccine yet. Not for a long time. About 33 years, right? And probably it was CLEAN LIVING. But, sick & dirty immigrants kept coming in. 1996, they were bringing Yellow Fever. When Bill Clinton was in charge. And our boarders were out of control. We had open boarders. And it was a disaster!!!
Listen, ALL Dems in Congress -- every last one, even Joe Manchin -- signed the Open Boarders Bill. Written by Dianne Feinkenstien. Fortunately they don't have the votes to pass that one. But if we lose control of Congress, if they get the seats, Open Boarders will be the FIRST thing on their agenda. For the new, and horrible, Congress. We need to stop that one -- or it's the END of our Country (Treason). VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:29PM (3 children)
Careful. "Eradication" doesn't mean what you think it means anymore:
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/is-india-actually-free-of-polio/article7945687.ece [thehindu.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @02:16PM (2 children)
You're denying the antecedent.
Poliovirus is not the only cause of flaccid paralysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @02:38PM (1 child)
Yes, how interesting that the rates of non-polio AFP rise as the rates of polio-AFP drop. Almost as if the diagnostic criteria (eg blood tests) are being gamed for political reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:33PM
And lets not forget measles, where 99% of what would have previously been diagnosed as measles are now diagnosed as something else:
Walter A. Orenstein, Rafael Harpaz; Completeness of Measles Case Reporting: Review of Estimates for the United States, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 189, Issue Supplement_1, 1 May 2004, Pages S185–S190, https://doi.org/10.1086/378501 [doi.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Friday October 12 2018, @07:57AM (7 children)
Interesting that you mention this, I was talking about this with a neighbour, a retired doctor, just today. He was horrified that basic diseases he remembers from his childhood in the 1950s, which had been essentially eradicated, are now making a comeback when there's no reason for them to do so, and suggested the petri dish approach, you're welcome to choose to refuse to have your children vaccinated but they then have to go to a school with all the other unvaccinated children. After one bout of measles/polio/rubella/other easily preventable illness, all the anti-vaxxers will be queueing up to have their kids vaccinated, and the problem is solved. These people are choosing to put their children, and other children, at risk, let them bear the consequences. More importantly, show them the consequences of their actions so they can take corrective action.
OK, he's old and a bit cranky, but I think it'd be a pretty effective cure for anti-vaxxism.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday October 12 2018, @08:29AM (3 children)
See, there's a problem: their parents are idiots, but it will be the kids to suffer the consequences. Vaccines will do nothing once you have the true infection.
Some kids may die, others may become intellectualy impaired (high fever will do this to some) for no fault of their own.
E.g. measles [who.int]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Friday October 12 2018, @08:52AM (2 children)
Yeah, I know, that's the tragedy. The hope is that after a single serious outbreak that gets a lot of publicity, other parents will see sense. It'll suck if you're in the victim group, but someone has to be the canary in the coal mine, unfortunately. And I'm not being callous/flippant in saying that, unless the parents see the real consequences of their actions I don't think they'll ever change their minds.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday October 12 2018, @01:38PM (1 child)
Parents see autistic children and they learn the lesson. Now it is you who have to earn the trust back. It will take you a few generations.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @07:49PM
It's a pity that these parents never learned about the post hoc fallacy. [wikipedia.org]
Considering that many of these diseases being vaccinated against have been nearly eradicated, I would think that doctors and epedemiologists should have already earned that trust long ago. Seriously. How old are you? My guess is that you can't be more than 30 years old, maximum. You may find this incredible but the (near) eradication of many of these diseases is within the living memory of many of us. These diseases used to be KILLERS. Now it mostly just a visit to the doctor to get a shot to prevent these diseases. That's quite an astounding rollback, if you ask me.
God, I would hope that it doesn't take more than a few years to put an end to this stupidity! But I guess this is just another case where the stubbornness of willful ignorance is almost limitless.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 13 2018, @03:20AM (2 children)
Some idiots have been having "measles parties" so all their kids get the disease at once. While this works for generating immunity, it kinda defeats the purpose of immunity... not to mention these are not risk-free diseases.
Also, with some diseases, recovered individuals can be virus-shedding carriers, which endangers the non-immune (too young to vaccinate, immuno-compromised, poor vaccine response), and that virus-shedding can continue for years. So another reason why vaccine is better than infection.
I doubt the antivaxxers' brains will turn back on until their kids get hit epidemic-style with a disease that has a high mortality rate. And maybe not then, considering it's basically a cult.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday October 13 2018, @05:28AM (1 child)
Un fscking believable. The last time I saw something like that it involved a revolver, a single bullet, and an excess of testosterone/stupidity/alcohol.
"Here, have your kids eat this random crap from a complete stranger on the Internet! It's totally safer than getting vaccinated".
That story is actually so outrageous that I'll bet its a media-induced moral panic rather than any real event: "media reports surfaced about a multi-state ring of parents", I'm sure that actually happened, except it was a multi-state ring of satanic child abuser serial killers who harvested the livers and left the children in an ice-filled bathtub with a note saying "Welcome to the world of AIDS". I believe pox parties have happened due to credible media reports, but that particular aspect has all the hallmarks of an urban legend.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 13 2018, @07:20AM
Yeah, while there have been credible reports about "measles parties" -- when it gets into vague reports of cult-like abuse, like mailing infectious matter around, I start thinking someone leads an active fantasy life, and am reminded that news outlets exist to sell eyeballs to advertisers.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday October 12 2018, @04:48AM (9 children)
goes hand in hand with science skepticism, which is one of the symptoms of an increasingly dysfunctional schooling system and excessive religious thinking. That is a typical US problem.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:26AM (3 children)
Yea, lets let corrupt psychopaths inject secret shit into our children... Or is it they are only taking covert DNA samples?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:46AM (2 children)
This is unspeakable. No contents of a vaccine would ever be kept secret, and no one would use vaccination as an excuse to get blood samples.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:19AM (1 child)
Sounds like someone just binged watched The X-Files.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:01PM
This stuff is public knowledge:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna [theguardian.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kazzie on Friday October 12 2018, @06:32AM (4 children)
That point, coupled with an earlier comment that "Schools should refuse enrollment of unvaccinated children.", left me wondering: Are the skeptics that don't want their children vaccinated also likely to keep their children out of the mainstream education system, i.e. homeschooling?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @07:01AM (2 children)
... those parents still want their kids to play sports, or join drama groups, or participate in robot building, etc.
And, once you get to the University level, there's not much more homeschooling that you can do; many of those institutions can and already do require proof of various vaccinations, because dorm living is actually quite filthy, especially now that the moral decay of the Left has been hanging there for so many decades.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday October 12 2018, @08:43AM
What are you talking about? The moral decay of the Left is organic and always fresh, they change it daily for decades... nay, centuries... in university dormitories.
It's actually the Right's morals that inevitable succumb there. And they linger long after they died, 'cause nobody in their right mind (or is it left mind?) will touch that rotten corpse. This is called education, higher/tertiary education no less.
Just ask aristarchus, he sherley knows.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:35AM
I have a friend who quit work to homeschool her kids. Eventually they went into the public schooling system and despite being jumped two grades ahead went to the top in their school with nearly perfect SAT score sophomore year high school.
Best thing that ever happened to me is that I got a scholarship to a private school out of my public grade school. My best friend who was in the grade school's gifted program dropped out of high school halfway through freshman year, it was such a waste.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 13 2018, @03:23AM
In my observation, yes; the two go hand in hand: Not all homeschoolers are antivaxxers, but nearly all antivaxxers are either homeschoolers, or express a fervent desire to become same.
Which makes me think it's more about control-freakery than about protecting their children.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday October 12 2018, @05:32AM
No Jab, no play [abc.net.au]
here are some 'anti' sites:
https://www.avn.org.au [avn.org.au]
https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/six-reasons-to-say-no-to-vaccination/ [thehealthyhomeeconomist.com]
lots of strawmen, exaggerations, as well as some outright lies.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by jasassin on Friday October 12 2018, @07:13AM (4 children)
I haven't had a flu vaccine in five years and haven't had the flu since stopping. Whereas, when I got it I'd get the flu every year.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by ledow on Friday October 12 2018, @09:00AM (1 child)
You know that the flu vaccine gives you flu, right? That's how it works. It's gives you a symptomatic flu at the time you have it, that's less symptomatic than the real flu.
Also, you know there are dozens, if not hundreds, of flu types and you were only ever vaccinated against 5 or so each time, and probably a different 5 each year, which is why you "get" one of them every time.
What you didn't get was a flu that laid you up for a week.
Flu vaccines are not designed to STOP you getting all possible flus. That's not how they work, or could ever work. They are designed to make your body ready for them by... giving them a mini-flu.
Do you think your years of non-flu might also be affected by the fact that you're immune to several strains of them now?
(P.S. I've never had a flu vaccine and am rarely ill in any capacity. My workplace keep telling me that I've not had a day off sick since I started here 5 years ago, my previous workplace was the same for 5 years before that. It doesn't *prove* anything. Just that you have a better immune system or didn't come into significant contact with a flu virus.)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:14PM
The injected influenza vaccine uses inactivated virus and does not infect you with virus. There is only one influenza vaccine that contains an attenuated virus and it is the intranasal vaccine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inactivated_vaccine [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Injection_versus_nasal_spray [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_attenuated_influenza_vaccine [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:23PM (1 child)
Which diagnostic test did you use to confirm that it was influenza?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 13 2018, @03:30AM
There are a very few people who react to flu vaccine with symptoms like even-worse-flu.(A friend suffers from this.) I take this to mean they have hyperactive immune systems -- but might be at even worse risk if never vaccinated at all, thus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu [wikipedia.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday October 12 2018, @07:35AM (2 children)
War never stops
DEATH is definitely happy
Famine is coming back through cuts of assistance and food stamps
Pestilence is making a comeback through anti-vaxxers and drug-resistant strains
Kaos is definitely all over the airwaves
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @08:16AM
At last, a solution to the global warming problem.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @08:45AM
U.S.A. ... U.S.A... U.S.A...
MAGAAAA!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:09AM (21 children)
The real solution to finally solve the anti-vaccination movement problem is just to inform completely. Now we have two illogical trends in media:
1. Vaccines causes autism, diarrhea, cancer, pipes rust and lack of milk in nearby cows - from anti-vaccination movement.
2. Vaccines are gods' elixir, have no side effects, and when vaccinated citizen opens the tap, chocolate milk pours instead of water - from "mainstream" media.
These opinions are coming from lack of knowledge. The vaccines-related information from scientific papers is very scarce, and does not allow to audit the production, it's like trying to understand modern computer with instruction manual of a slide rule. Information about vaccines development, production and technologies are a very high secret, even if they're critical for human lives. They just can not be checked, verified, audited, so lots of false assumptions are coming from it. When they will be open, I'm sure that some of these anti-vaccination groups will collect money, buy some vaccine from storage, put it into spectrometer and literally count the atoms comparing to the open documentation. This will finally end trend 1, and will do audit to make trend 2 more rational.
But suddenly when you propose it, for some reason this makes all media screech like a weened piglet about "potential losses". Now they have what they ask for - if information is forbidden, the misinformation goes in.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:07PM (19 children)
This is wrong. They are ignorant, but that ignorance is not the origin of their opinions.
The information deficit model does not apply to anti-vaccination views. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Effective messages in vaccine promotion: a randomized trial. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24590751 [nih.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_deficit_model [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:22PM (9 children)
Its hilarious that they are studying how to best spread vaccine propaganda and think that will increase the trust people have in them.
There is a common error among academics here to think people are just idiots because they are too busy to be experts in everything, so they use argument from authority/consensus heuristics most of the time. The thing being missed is, once they do really care about something, the same people may not be able to really assess the facts and theories, but the first thing they figure out is you are trying to manipulate them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @02:28PM (8 children)
You must not have read the study.
The researchers knew that some people were duped into believing a fabricated study linking the MMR vaccine to autism and the researchers thought that if they corrected that misconception then those people would be more likely to vaccinate. The sad thing was that they were successful in correcting the misconception, but it either didn't affect the intent to vaccinate or it made them less likely to vaccinate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:05PM (7 children)
Here is the purpose of the study:
Ie, they are studying how to manipulate people into doing stuff. Whether that is via sharing (their version of the) truth or not is irrelevant in the end to them.
These people are already beyond using the CDC as an authority for the argument from authority heuristic. If they havent yet been exposed to this info (doubtful) they are going to look it up later or ask someone they do consider to be an authority for how to interpret it.
Like I said, the mental model these academics have of the people they are attempting to manipulate is so wrong it is hilarious.
Also this study is the usual worthless NHST trash wherein they think "not significant difference" means "no difference" and "significant difference" means their favorite explanation is correct:
No, all you can say is the people shown the cdc info responded slightly different on the likert scale survey. Eg, they answered somewhat agree rather than strongly agree because the information made them uncertain and they planned to go look it up later. It may have nothing to do with actual lasting agreement.
This is all wild speculation, they make no effort to distinguish between different explanations for their results:
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:21PM (6 children)
Oh no! Those public health epidemiologists are trying to manipulate people by showing them evidence that their unhealthy beliefs are based on "misconceptions".
How dare they assume that they actually know more than the common person does when they have merely studied the subject for years.
Nothing is truly knowable; therefore, objective reality does not exist and my truth could never be false.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:41PM (2 children)
Its interesting how the same people who trust and perform NHST (where you test a strawman null hypothesis instead of your hypothesis, then draw conclusions about your hypothesis) also tend to come up with strawman arguments in general. Its like a personality type, or mental state. Maybe I should email someone who studies the minds of NHST users, eg Gerd Gigerenzer [mpib-berlin.mpg.de], about this phenomenon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:13PM (1 child)
It's interesting how some people employ motivated skepticism to deny any evidence that goes against their preconceptions.
It sure seems convenient to always maintain your initial belief because you can find a reason why counter evidence isn't perfect and, therefore, inconsequential.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:39PM
Nope, I looked at the study and it was crappy in the same way as thousands (tens of thousands by now?) of other studies I have looked at and dismissed for the exact same reasons. Then on top of that they have this ridiculous conception of how their target audience thinks because they think in terms of populations instead of individual people. Those results are uninterpretable, one would hope they learned from that wasted opportunity and improve their methods but I doubt it from what I read in there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:42PM
the cdc are just lying whores pushing whatever soft kill weapons the completely unaccountable fucks at big Pharma and tax payer funded black ops want to inject into the slave children. the slaves are noticing their kids are now completely disabled so the sum doubles down along with their army of sycophantic brainwashed/brain damaged mob of zombies. keep it up and see what happens.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @07:31PM (1 child)
Indeed. It is rather astounding that the anti-vaxxers would trust the word of a former Playboy playmate touting a now discredited study over the considered opinion of the world's most renowned doctors and epedemiologists. *Shrug*
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 13 2018, @03:34AM
Some people are just too stupid to live. Maybe we should let natural selection do its job... behind a suitable quarantine wall, where they won't endanger the rest of us.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:10PM (6 children)
I've seen what the MMR has done to some kids. Many people seem to think all anti-vaxxers are ignorant, but I also believe those that think that can be ignorant too. Not all anti-vaxxers blindly believe what they do. First, some don't believe the vaccine is the problem, it's what is added to the vaccines to preserve it. Several people I know only skip the MMR vaccine. All the anti-vaxxers I know would get the MMR vaccine if it was offered in individual M, M and R shots, AND didn't use the current preservative. I don't remember the name of it now. Having said that, sure, there are also some crazy anti-vaxxers out there too.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:06PM (5 children)
I doubt that you've observed the MMR vaccine do anything. Just because something happened after something else, doesn't mean that the first thing caused the second. This is called the post hoc fallacy.
The people that believe a MMR vaccine autism link were duped by a fraudulent study.
People who believe that preservatives in vaccines cause autism are ignorant of the data that directly contradicts it.
People who believe that "too many, too soon" and believe that combination vaccines are harmful are ignorant of the mechanisms of immunological memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#1998_The_Lancet_paper [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy#Scientific_evaluation [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyclonal_B_cell_response [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:34PM (2 children)
Exactly. At the same time the measles vaccine was introduced there was also:
1) A reduction in people purposefully spreading the disease (ie, measles parties)[1]
2) The introduction of (unreliable)[2] blood tests to "confirm" the diagnoses based on symptoms alone[3, 4, 5, 6]
3) The biasing of doctors to not diagnose measles if told the patient is vaccinated.[5]
So how much did each factor contribute to the drop in measles diagnoses?
Refs:
[1] http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S4.full [oxfordjournals.org]
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17308917 [nih.gov]
[3] Walter A. Orenstein, Rafael Harpaz; Completeness of Measles Case Reporting: Review of Estimates for the United States, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 189, Issue Supplement_1, 1 May 2004, Pages S185–S190, https://doi.org/10.1086/378501 [doi.org]
[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17609829 [nih.gov]
[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2134550/ [nih.gov]
[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17609829 [nih.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:52PM (1 child)
Are you trying to argue that the measles vaccine doesn't work?
1. Your link is broken, but I doubt that a reduction in "measles parties" for children would dramatically reduce the infection rate for the entire population especially considering that it is an airborne disease.
Ref. 2: An ELISA doesn't measure the same thing as a NT. An ELISA measures antibody binding to target antigens while an NT measures the neutralizing capacity of antibodies. Not all antibodies neutralize and not all neutralizing antibodies are equal.
Ref. 3,4,6: I don't really get your point. Do you mean that a symptoms-based diagnostic is better than a blood test because the blood test is producing thousands of supposed false negatives or that a symptoms-based diagnostic is unreliable because it's producing false negatives since the doctors aren't used to seeing measles anymore?
Ref. 5: Are you saying that the lack of blinding in a small efficacy study (80% disease in unvaccinated vs 0% in vaccinated) from over 50 years ago proves the vaccine doesn't work?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELISA [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutralizing_antibody [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:52PM
Interesting...
The Clinical Significance of Measles: A Review. Robert T. Perry and Neal A. Halsey. The Journal of Infectious Diseases 2004; 189(Suppl 1):S4–16. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15106083 [nih.gov]
pdf here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b7e0/c83a2232536a507ef061563000b59d97db66.pdf [semanticscholar.org]
Once someone gets (full blown) measles they are immune for the rest of their lives. Since everyone is a child at some point and 95% of children got measles, it was pretty much only children that got measles.
No, I'm asking what was the relative contribution of each of those factors to the drop in measles diagnoses?
They have multiple blood tests for measles that don't correlate well with each other, so how are they considered reliable?
Before the vaccine, measles was diagnosed based solely on the symptoms. The vaccine was introduced at around the same time as the blood tests, and the clinical definition of measles was eventually changed to require a confirmatory blood test. The info in those citations shows that 90-99.5% of symptomatic measles cases are not confirmed as measles by the blood tests. Thus, it is possible that 90+% of what was called measles before vaccines and blood tests (~1965) was actually something else. Ie, in the worst case scenario the pre-1964 data here could be 10-200x too high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png [wikipedia.org]
Now the reality is much more messy since the blood tests were not adopted all at once. Some doctors would use it, others wouldnt, and it depended on the situation. Even by 1982, most people were not getting confirmatory tests:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6751071 [nih.gov]
Here we can see the progression of the measles diagnostic criteria. First thing to note is they started the vaccination campaign without even agreeing on the definition of "measles" until 15 years later. Second is the the definition becomes more and more strict over time, eventually only "laboratory confirmed" cases are counted.
1983:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001225.htm [cdc.gov]
1990:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00025629.htm [cdc.gov]
1996:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00047449.htm [cdc.gov]
So before 1979 there was no definition of "measles", it was just up to the doctor to decide. 1983 - 1990 no blood test confirmation was required. From 1990 - 1996 either a case confirmed by a blood test or two "linked" unconfirmed cases counted. And from 1996 onward only lab confirmed cases or a case linked to a confirmed case is counted.
The point is the doctors who know a child was vaccinated are less likely to diagnose measles based on the same symptoms. So you can get a drop in diagnoses just by telling doctors that people were vaccinated.
So to reiterate my point. I want to know how much all these other factors contributed to the drop in cases that were observed. Currently 100% of the drop is being attributed to the vaccine, which we know is wrong.
From ~500K cases/year to under 1K cases/year (~100 in 2018), whats the relative contribution?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:57PM (1 child)
whatever. maybe it's the pesticides. the rate of autism is exploding in such a fashion that it is highly alarming (don't even try to quote big pharma propagandists or their minions in 'government' for the numbers) and until these drug/chemical dealers are held accountable by The People you can't blame some for making their best guesses as to the culprit. these industries are (likely knowingly) making vegetables out of the whole nations' children. 1-2% of the parents are responsible enough to do something about it and the whores of power want to send the pigs in. good luck with that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday October 13 2018, @03:48AM
No, the rate of *diagnosis of autism* is rising, which isn't the same thing. This may be due to more actual autism (possible if we're seeing self-selection for carrier mates), or previously undiagnosed cases now getting diagnosed, or "now that we have a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
And it's also become highly fashionable among the Silicon Valley set, as a form of victimhood by proxy.
If it's environmental due to heavy metals or whatever, explain why China, presently drowning in its own pollutants, isn't the world hotbed for autism.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 13 2018, @09:52AM (1 child)
What I wrote in previous post is based on my experience and probably related to my environment. I have personally met a few people which were against vaccinations and I could classify them to two categories:
- Religious people who don't want to use vaccines because this is against their gods' intention, holly texts, it prevents salvation, etc. With them, any discussion is just not possible. As with all radically religious people, they are irrational not only in this part.
- People, usually who met with side effects personally or by their closest family, who got then ignored by doctors and want to know more about things I wrote earlier.
I'm not sure about other groups, the Internet now is full of American trolls, useful idiots, extremists (although I found that most of these Internet anti-vaccination groups are mostly made of people from my first category) so it's based on my personal discussions.
About this autism-vaccinations link, I found that the first group seems to indeed believe in this part, but this all autism stuff is based on research now repeated without success and the problem with previous research has been already discovered (although it's a hard pill to swallow in modern political propaganda). Now this debunked autism link seems to be used to distract from openness, which is a fuel for all other anti-vaccination groups.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 13 2018, @02:17PM
The call for openness and more information is a red herring.
Vaccines aren't made in some guy's bathtub with no oversight, procedure, or quality control and their mechanism of action isn't a trade secret or a mystery.
Side effects are not hidden, they are required to be listed as well as a code that is traceable to when, where, and which specific batch that dose came from.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System records every single adverse event that could even be tangentially associated with vaccination and the events can be reported or searched by anyone.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html [cdc.gov]
https://vaers.hhs.gov/reportevent.html [hhs.gov]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:33PM
Bullshit.
There is much more information available for and QC inspection of vaccines than small molecule drugs.
http://www.who.int/biologicals/vaccines/regulation_and_quality_control_vaccines/en/ [who.int]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Adverse_Event_Reporting_System [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vaccine_ingredients [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_manufacturing_practice [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_laboratory_practice [wikipedia.org]
https://extranet.who.int/prequal/sites/default/files/documents/Vx%20inspections.pdf [who.int]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:16PM
An entire special legal system has been set up to deal with lawsuits due to vaccination. Think about that one, there is nothing else like it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-vaccine-ruling-parents-cant-sue-drug-makers-for-kids-health-problems/ [cbsnews.com]
https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/ [hrsa.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:41PM
I'm afraid quite literally...