Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story:
That vaccine was licensed in the US in 1955. By 1994, polio was considered eliminated in North and South America. Today, wild forms of the virus have been eradicated in all but two countries.
But the polio vaccine story is not straightforward. There are two types of polio vaccine: an injected type that includes a "dead" form of the virus, and an oral version that includes "live" virus. This virus can be shed in feces, and in places with poor sanitation, it can spread. It can also undergo genetic changes to create a form of the virus that can cause paralysis. Although this is rare, it does happen—and today there are more cases of vaccine-derived polio than wild-type polio.
It is worth noting that since 2000, more than 10 billion doses of the oral polio vaccine have been administered to almost 3 billion children. It is estimated that more than 13 million cases of polio have been prevented through these efforts. But there have been just under 760 cases of vaccine-derived polio.
We could prevent these cases by switching to the injected vaccine, which wealthy countries have already done. But that's not easy in countries with fewer resources and those trying to reach children in remote rural areas or war zones.
Even the MMR vaccine is not entirely risk-free. Some people will experience minor side effects, and severe allergic reactions, while rare, can occur. And neither vaccine offers 100% protection against disease. No vaccine does. "Even if you vaccinate 100% [of the population], I don't think we'll be able to attain herd immunity for polio," says Abbas. It's important to acknowledge these limitations.
While there are some small risks, though, they are far outweighed by the millions of lives being saved. "[People] often underestimate the risk of the disease and overestimate the risk of the vaccine," says Moss.
In some ways, vaccines have become a victim of their own success. "Most of today's parents fortunately have never seen the tragedy caused by vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles encephalitis, congenital rubella syndrome, and individuals crippled by polio," says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit that conducts research on health risks to children. "With some individuals benefiting from the propagation of scary messages about vaccines and the proliferation of social media providing reinforcement, it's no surprise that fears may endure."
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday December 22, @01:16PM (2 children)
You jus' open a whole can o' whup-ass dere, bro. Vackzines dere cause awtism! Dey cause mout' breathin' and in-breedin'! I know!
Gives me polio befo' i gets a vaczine! Gurd bless 'Murica!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 22, @02:08PM
Poe's Law
(Score: 5, Funny) by turgid on Sunday December 22, @04:34PM
It's worse than that! They cause Liberalism!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 22, @03:14PM (7 children)
Why can't articles be rated as troll or flamebait?
I raised my kids without vaccines. Youngest is 16, the oldest is 29.
Zero health issues. None of them got the COVID shot either.
We're all fine.
We've taken ivermectin since before the government programmed you to call it horse paste, and we didn't get/die of COVID.
In fact...we were just commenting yesterday that everyone got a case of the sniffles. It's going around the community the last few weeks...and we realized it's been nearly two years since anyone got mildly sick.
Let's see if I understand this from a shitlib perspective. If I start a business and make money, I'm an evil CEO who only cares about profits, treats employees like slaves, and would gladly trade lives just so I can earn more money
...unless I'm a CEO of a company that makes vaccines. If I'm one of their blessed, holy CEOs that makes vaccines, I can earn millions...but I'm so goddamned much like Jesus that not even a single *penny* or motivation for doing anything...for the shareholders...was ever at the expense of human life.
Did I do it? Did I understand the shitlib religion?
Humans? Evil pieces of shit. Especially CEOs.
Humans that randomly decide to work for government? Magically saints (but only if there's a 'D' next to their name). Especially drug company CEOs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday December 22, @04:41PM
It looks as like you have already done so. But not everyone agrees with you. Tfs gives references in support of their claims.
Where are yours? Anecdotes don't count.
So aren't you human as well?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 22, @05:10PM (5 children)
I keep a pebble on my desk as a lion repellent. No lion attacks so far means it's working.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Sunday December 22, @06:30PM (4 children)
You are riding the herd's immunity. Your behavior is parasitic. It works, as long as there are not to many parasites. If I were you I would stop promoting your own parasitic behavior.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Sunday December 22, @06:33PM
Sorry, hit the wrong reply button, the above was ment for the troll....
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 22, @10:02PM (1 child)
That's the exact same reason I don't wear a seat belt. You're wearing one, so I'll still be safe, right?
Or does that dumbfuckery only apply to vaccine worship?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 22, @10:56PM
Couldn't tell if trolling or not.
Modded down just in case.
(Score: 0, Troll) by justanotherguy on Monday December 23, @06:00AM
yes, they are - for Diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, hep B, and Hib, measles, etc.. you know, things that have effective long term vaccines.
For COVID-19, and all the other cyclic upper respiratory viruses? No, not at all. As there are NO classical long term vaccines for them.
It is well established now that the COVIS 'vaccine' is not a classical vaccine at all, it does noting to stop catching or spreading, and it is only useful for minor symptom protecting for a short term (weeks to perhaps several months).
The problem is, people are stupid, politics has replaced knowledge and critical thinking for the majority (on both sides).
This is the cost of politicizing science. Actual facts that matter are now almost worthless.
People are avoiding real and important vaccinations because of the shitshow that COVID created around a forced non-vaccine that was never going to prove itself.
But hey, some people got rich, and some politicians did well out of it.. these days thats what matters, right?
Now watch the people who cannot see past their own politics get in to a frenzy.. sigh
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 22, @04:07PM (5 children)
I'm Gen X, and I have seen some of it. Heard more from my Silent Generation parents, who suffered through many of the childhood diseases, there having been few vaccines when they were kids. My 9th grade English teacher was a polio victim. Used a cane and looked 20 years older than she actually was.
There was no chicken pox vaccine when I was a kid. That disease was considered a lightweight, as it rarely killed, and so there wasn't as much urgency to create a vaccine. I ended up getting immunity to it the hard way, when I was 14. I so would rather have taken a vaccine than go through that week of misery. Covered in pustules that itched horribly but which you must not scratch because that will leave permanent scars. Drive you mad restraining yourself from scratching. To relieve the itchiness, calamine lotion was only a little better than nothing. Felt very sick and that kind of tiredness where you want to sleep but you can't. Couldn't lie down because contact with cloth made the itchiness worse, couldn't stand all day long felt too exhausted and sick to do that, so I ended up staying on my hands and knees. Soaking in the tub didn't help in the slightest to relieve the itchiness, instead making it worse. I had thought to pass time by playing video games or reading, but found myself too sick to concentrate on that.
One of the things so stupid about being anti-vax is that all a vaccine is, is info for your immune system. A vaccine is not a magic drug that itself directly prevents disease. Education for your immune system so that it and you don't have to learn immunity the hard way, risking the lesson being so hard that you die first. Either way, hard or easy, your immune system is doing the real work.
(Score: 4, Informative) by gnuman on Sunday December 22, @04:44PM (2 children)
Same here. Still have a few scars to this. Not best when one of them is on my forehead.
And it's education that doesn't always work. Some don't react to a vaccine.
Also, things changed in last 40 years. When I was growing up, I've only had one measles vaccine -- that was the policy at the time. I've had my MMR shot right as COVID started, though at doctor they insisted I get the Tetanus one first (ie. the most painful vaccine, thanks to immune memory). Which reminds me, people still get tetanus.
https://ourworldindata.org/tetanus [ourworldindata.org]
This is not a disease that will disappear either. You can only control it. In "the west", tetanus is mostly now in the old that were vaccinated as kids and had no exposure or vaccine since. Then when they are gardening at 70 years old, they get a surprise .... but do people get boosters at 60 for it? Hell no.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 23, @02:41AM
Well, I got a tetanus booster at 60 (along with a bunch of others, county health dept was giving them for free to anyone who stuck their nose in), and I'll get another at 70.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kell on Tuesday December 24, @03:07AM
My husband was bitten while rescuing a bird last week - he got a tetanus booster and associated inflammation. I am so grateful for vaccines. My god, I'm gen X and I remember seeing people crippled by polio at the local shopping center. The people today who think that vaccines are a myth are summer children who have never known the suffering these illnesses can cause. But don't worry - if they are listened to long enough, they will get to.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday December 22, @06:28PM (1 child)
When I first heard that there was a chicken pox vaccine, but that it didn't guarantee lifetime immunity, I thought that was the dumbest idea ever. But, boosters for vaccines that lose efficacy do exist and while it is far more dangerous as an adult, the reality is that it's a pretty big deal even for kids. Most of them did survive, but some didn't, and even for those that did it was often an entire week out of school and not a particularly pleasant week out of school.
Really, people should just get the vaccinations unless there's a medical reason why they can't. From what I understand, I wouldn't have been able to get the small pox vaccination due to an autoimmune disorder, but I'll get pretty much all of them unless I've got a very good reason not to.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 23, @02:45AM
I don't know the immunity timelines for human vaccines but I do for canine MLV vaccines. They give good immunity for about four years, then a few months of declining immunity, and after that ... light exposure may serve as a booster, but protection against heavy exposure takes too long to ramp back up, even with 'memory' in place. So occasional boosters are a good idea.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SvenErik on Sunday December 22, @04:19PM (1 child)
You just have to visit a cemetery that have been in use for the last 100 years or more and see the many graves for small children dating to before the 1950-60s and that were mostly gone after vaccines became common. Or do some genealogy.
"Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Bertrand Russell
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday December 22, @09:45PM
There's also stuff like Rubella, AKA the German Measles, that isn't usually fatal in terms of children and adults, but was a major issue for fetuses.
(Score: 0, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Sunday December 22, @04:33PM (11 children)
Propaganda pieces like this show how scared the vaxers are of someone who is not bought and paid for by big-pharma taking the reins of the FDA. I'm sure there will be many more to come. After all, shareholder value needs to be protected, right? Obligatory in such articles is a section containing something like the following.
"While there are some small risks, though, they are far outweighed by the millions of lives being saved. "[People] often underestimate the risk of the disease and overestimate the risk of the vaccine," says Moss."
The problem is, it's quite often not the case. It shouldn't come as any surprise that risks are downplayed, and even ignored, to get vaxes to market and earning a profit.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7268563/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Sunday December 22, @05:14PM
From your "study"
The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Dr Hooker is a paid scientific advisor and serves on the advisory board for Focus for Health (formerly Focus Autism). He also serves on the Board of Trustees for Children’s Health Defense (formerly World Mercury Project) and is a paid independent contractor of Children’s Health Defense as well. Dr Hooker is the father of a 22-year old male who has been diagnosed with autism and developmental delays. Mr Miller is the director of Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute and was a paid consultant to Physicians for Informed Consent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gnuman on Sunday December 22, @05:15PM (4 children)
Did you actually read this? Did you understand what you read? Or are you just trolling??
Let me spell it out for you. The "study" compromised of ~2000 kids.. They've found like 250 unvaccinated kids -- 12+% unvaccinated rate? Why so high?? And then they have numbers like 20 or 30 ear infections and other bullshit. Of course, their real aim was massaging the "developmental delays" category.
TWO THOUSAND kids between 2005 and 2018.
Is this a joke of cherry-picking or what? There are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of vaccinated children in these age groups. According to this joke of anti-vax propaganda, there should be "millions" of "development delays" all related to vaccines. Looks like the MMR vaccine gives autism paper.... Anyone with any ability of data analysis looks at this and it's less useful than toilet paper.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 22, @06:20PM (3 children)
There's been so much bullsh*t spread around that many of us have greatly improved at detecting it. Indeed, many bullsh*tters scarcely trouble any more to make their stuff sound somewhat plausible. That's too much work, you know. Real science is even more work.
Some years ago, I examined the work of a climate science denier by name of Roy Spencer. Went in with an open mind. Despite not being a climate scientist myself, I needed less than a minute per publication to see that he was full of sh*t. Massive cherry picking, with totally unjustifiable extrapolation. He loves him those sine and cosine waves, and argues that such a curve fits climate data, concluding that we are merely on the high temperature side of the wave and will be cooling off. Thanks to the passage of years, many of his extrapolations can be compared to what actually happened, and those comparisons show that he is very wrong. Not that anyone sensible needed to do that.
I am flabbergasted that such elementary and deliberate mistakes get a pass, and that this guy got a PhD and a faculty position at a university. And won awards! He's a fraud. A crank. If there are flaws in climate science research, he's not going to find any doing such shoddy work. I can only suppose it is political influence that floats his boat. He and his supporters, in so far as he is mistakenly taken to be a real scientist, are an embarrassment that undermines trust in science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 22, @09:19PM
Somebody should look for a vaccine against political flu.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23, @07:55PM (1 child)
Debate Spectacle is not scientific debate [youtu.be].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23, @07:59PM
And what you get from these folks:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=62963&page=1&cid=1386178#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=62963&page=1&cid=1386245#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=62963&page=1&cid=1386185#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=62963&page=1&cid=1386236#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=62963&page=1&cid=1386238#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
is "debate spectacle," and not scientific debate.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23, @03:03AM
While Sartre was talking about anti-semites, his reasoning applies to you, especially given your lack of intellectual rigor, not just with respect to vaccination, but in pretty much everything you post here. It's consistently sickening which is, I'm sure, your goal.
--Jean-Paul Sartre
(Score: 0, Troll) by ChrisMaple on Monday December 23, @03:15AM (3 children)
COVID was an emergency situation. Overall, we did what seemed right, and many people got 2 jabs. However, as time went on, problems became evident. At the same time, Pfizer and Moderna started pushing for 3rd, 4th, 5th... jabs, and alert people smelled a rat.
RNA injection designed to generate medical particles for a lifetime is probably a mistake. RNA injection designed to generate the spike particles for a lifetime is certainly a mistake. Promoting injections for youths, who have almost no risk for the disease and measurable risk for vaccine damage, is criminal. People getting more than 2 jabs were far more likely to be harmed by the RNA vaccine in return for a sharply diminished protection period. The heavy advertising for those added jabs, which continue to this day, is criminal.
Other medicines, such as the unfairly maligned Ivermectin, are often beneficial for persons fighting COVID. Most of those people who attacked Ivermectin were ignorant and malicious, and motivated primarily by politics.
There are lessons to be learned from the COVID story. There are people who are determined that those lessons not be learned. First among those is Fauci, who should be in prison.
(Score: -1, Interesting) by HeadlineEditor on Monday December 23, @03:50AM
An actual voice of reason. The MRNA injections were never a vaccine at all.
"Breakthrough infections" and "booster shots" in such a short period of time were just weasel words for "we didn't know, medium to long term, what the positive effects of this experimental injection would be."
Stands to reason that medium to long term, noobdy knew what the ill effects of the injection would be either.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23, @03:10PM
How lifeless is the heart that could yearn for the incarceration of a distinguished and educated public servant who did his best to assuage the suffering of a nation?
Your superstitions do indeed blind you.
--
-Queen
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23, @04:48PM
Who, exactly, other than you, ever said anything even approaching that?
Be specific. Name names. But you won't because you can't. Because no one said anything of the sort.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by srobert on Monday December 23, @04:45PM
The story of the anti-vaccine movement is rooted in how people respond to anecdotal narratives versus how they respond to statistical information. The stories of those 760 people mentioned here will gain more traction than the statistical 13 million because it will be told with names, ages, the impact on individual families, and a vivid description of their suffering caused by the vaccine. It's the same reason that some people insist that wearing a seatbelt or a motor cycle helmet makes you less safe or that smoking cigarettes may help you live longer.