For Some Medical Workers, a Flu Shot Or Possible Job Loss 541
theodp writes "Want to work at Winthrop Hospital? Roll up your sleeve, and we'll talk. TIME reports that every employee at the Long Island hospital — from doctors and nurses who care for patients to the administrative, housekeeping and food-service personnel — must be vaccinated against both seasonal and H1N1 flu or face termination. The mandate comes from the health department of New York, the first state to require all health-care workers to be vaccinated against influenza. Meanwhile, two-thirds of parents say they'll avoid flu shots for their little ones like, well, the flu. So who should you believe — Dr. Bill Frist or 'Dr.' Bill Maher? Before you decide, perhaps a consultation with Dr. Google is in order."
Why is it you can't sue. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is it you can't sue. (Score:5, Informative)
"Why is it you can't sue the makers of vaccines, if the vaccine makes you sick?"
In order for vaccination to "work" - from a public health standpoint - a majority of the population needs to be vaccinated. (I think the number's 75%.) If you are giving that many people a shot someone is going to get sick, even if there is nothing "wrong" with the vaccine. Add to that the fact that vaccines are a low margin product - per the supply/demand curve, it needs to be cheap as possible so the most people will get it.
So, you have a product that:
1) will definitely make someone sick and/or kill them
2) You are barely making any money on it
3) there is no "informed consent" defense - most vaccines are mandated.
Why would any company make such a product when they will inevitable get sued for far more than the profit from it? No one would. So the US government, in order to induce the production of vaccines, gave vaccine manufacturers immunity from suit and set up a fund to compensate the people they KNOW will be hurt.
Short answer - you can't sue for injury from a vaccine because, if you could, there would be no vaccines.
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Add to that the fact that vaccines are a low margin product
I have trouble believing that. :P
Even $6 profit on a vaccine is still 1.2 billion dollars profit if you have 200 million vaccinations.
But honestly, I've seen the way some of these vaccines are produced, so I have trouble believing they cost more than $0.50 per dose. I haven't kept up on what an H1N1 vaccine costs our governments per dose, but I'm betting the profit is higher than $6.
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In order for vaccination to "work" - from a public health standpoint - a majority of the population needs to be vaccinated. (I think the number's 75%.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why is it you can't sue. (Score:5, Informative)
The vaccine if they really worked it wouldnt matter how many people got the vaccine. The people who got the vaccine would be protected, and the people who didnt would only be harming themselves.
That would be true if "really worked" was a binary, 100% or 0% status. This is not the case.
Vaccines do not protect everyone they are given to (the vaccine merely trains immune systems, after all, which differ from person to person). Even if they were foolproof, vaccines cannot be administered to everyone - even if the risk of complications is far less than the risk of the disease in most people, there may be individuals (e.g. very young infants for the flu vaccine) for whom that is not the case. These still-vulnerable individuals benefit instead from "herd immunity":
One way to make yourself safe from a disease is to make yourself immune, so you can't get the disease. If that is impossible, another way to make yourself safe is to live in a population who have mostly made themselves immune, so you have no contact with anyone who can give you the disease.
Unfortunately, herd immunity also allows people to "defect" from their vaccinations; that's the entire reason why people would even consider skipping a vaccination in the first place! Why expose yourself to the nocebo effect, when you can simply free-ride off the immunity of others? They say that confusing correlation and causation leads to autism, you know!
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You're correct that vaccines don't protect everyone, but it's not because they "just train" the person's immune system. It's all about whether or not the strain of a particular disease you catch is the one you were vaccinated for.
Every year, before flu season, some medical people get together and make a list of what they feel will be the most common strains of flu t
Re:Why is it you can't sue. (Score:5, Insightful)
And you've apparently not been educated in immunology, or contagion. If a disease is moderately virulent (like the common cold, or the flue), but the vaccine is prevalent (such as 90% or better of school children, who are incredibly susceptible), outbreaks are very small and likely not to spread. If the vaccine is rare, the disease can still spread as a serious contagion: a plague, if the disease is dangerous enough.
AIDS is a fascinating example. It takes serious work to get AIDS: blood-to-blood transfer is unusual. But the idiots who first got it spread it _virulently_ through the susceptible group, so broadly that it's entered the general population in places like South Africa. And a hospital is a festering ground for infection: the sick people go there, otherwise healthy people get the disease and spread it to other patients unless their clean procedures are ver, very good, and the same staff person may see many other patients or clean many other rooms or handle many other cafeteria trays and spread the disease wildly among otherwise weakened people. They _should_ be vaccinated, for the safety of the patients.
Re:Why is it you can't sue. (Score:5, Informative)
"Does the 2009 H1N1 flu shot have an adjuvant or squalene in it?"
"Adjuvants are agents that are sometimes added to a vaccine to make it more effective. There are no adjuvants (such as squalene) in either the 2009 H1N1 or seasonal flu shot used in the United States."
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My girlfriend's mom got a flu shot years back and got nerve damage from it, the settlement is supposed to be in the 6 figure range.
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I'd bet there is more to that story than just a bad reaction to a vaccine. Not that is makes it any better for your GF's mom :(
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You are most infected with the virus before you get a single symptom, because the symptoms are your body mounting a response to the virus. Just beca
First Flu? (Score:2, Insightful)
First Flu Shot?
I wonder what happens if a worker has an existing health immune system based condition that can be adversely affected by a flu shot?
--jeffk++
Re:First Flu? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you've got a compromised immune system, then working at a hosipital is the last thing that you want to do. Getting fired would probably save your life.
Re:First Flu? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It sounds like he's allergic to horse serum. Whooping cough doesn't have anything to do with that, so it would probably a much lesser risk. (Still, he shouldn't be in a line of work where he would be likely to act as a vector.)
Re:First Flu? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just hospital workers (although that's what TFA is about.) Plenty of people are required to get a flu shot that you wouldn't expect need it.
The one that surprised me are local refinery workers. There is one refinery in our region that produces virtually all of the petroleum based fuel consumed locally. If the flu were to incapacitate 50% of the employees, the refinery would have to shut down. These are trained people needed to produce a critical product, and the refinery wouldn't have the time to train temps to take over for them. Pipelines don't exist to bring in refined products from elsewhere, and the rest of the nation's refining capacity would be strained to meet the demand.
Refinery workers are exposed to a lot of things you probably wouldn't want to be exposed to, but viruses aren't commonly among them. It'd probably be a great place to work if you wanted to avoid contact with other people.
We're all getting them (Score:5, Informative)
On our volunteer fire department. Particularly the EMS people. We see a lot of people with chronic respiratory diseases, COPD, and the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. The flu could kill them. Since they spend most of their time shut in, first responders are a possible vector.
So, yeah, we're getting flu shots and so are the ambulance and hospital people. If you're in the military, they vaccinate you against shit I've never even heard of.
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So, yeah, we're getting flu shots and so are the ambulance and hospital people. If you're in the military, they vaccinate you against shit I've never even heard of.
If you're in the military, you waive your right to even know what they're injecting you with. NO THANKS. I am not a number, I am getting the fuck out of here.
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I currently work for an electricity transmission and distribution company. The company policy regarding swine flu is to track anyone who has been exposed because their acquiried immunity may be critical in keeping services operating in the event of the second wave of infections. We have documented procedures based on keeping operator shifts separate to minimise cross infections between teams of operators in key positions.
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Actually, the cafeteria is not the same food establishment that prepared meals for patients. They are generally close together but separate with separate staffing because the food for the patients need to meet strict dietary requirements where cafeteria food doesn't. Most hospital cafeterias are not large enough to feed all the patients in the hospital.
As for radiology, well, I already said the janitors are wearing sanitary protections and using disinfectants. They also do not go in while the patients are t
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Dr Google is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
With the degree of hype H1N1 is getting, people are going to be searching all over at the first signs of anything - even if they don't have ANY kind of flu!
So it's a great chart to show you the regions of greatest hypochondria, but little else at this point (in other times I'm sure it's a good indicator).
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They claim they calibrated the model against historical data, so the searchprevalence relationship at least has some validity. The relationship between searches and prevalence of infection might be different in the current situation than in previous years, of course, but they didn't just make a base assumption that searches=prevalence, but rather estimated the relationship from data.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Aggressive vaccinations are a good thing. Think we could have practically wiped out polio or smallpox in this country if we just kicked back and waited to see what happened? Of course the flu isn't the same, and I know it's not going anywhere. But if you think for a second that every healthcare worker shouldn't get the flu shot, you don't know a lot about healthcare. This sort of thing isn't to protect the workers, it's to protect the immunocompromised people in the hospital. They need our healthy immune systems to protect them, too.
Not Same Severity (Score:3, Interesting)
Think we could have practically wiped out polio or smallpox in this country if we just kicked back and waited to see what happened?
No, but the case for these vaccines was clear since both small pox and polio are incredibly serious diseases resulting in high mortality rates or permanent handicap. For these diseases the rate of serious complications from the vaccine is far, far lower than the rate of serious consequences from the disease so it is very clear that you should vaccinate.
The problem is that we are now developing vaccines for diseases which have far, far lower rates of complications and fatalities. An example is chicken po
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
No you won't be fine, flu is an airborne disease. Besides I'd much rather have a jab and a hypothetical chance of aches and pains in old age than going full OCD for the rest of my life.
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Remember how everyone was panicking about the 151 deaths from swine flu when it first started? Everyone trumpeted that number. You don't hear them being equally loud about admitting that the number was totally bogus, that the actual death toll was 7! Gee, I wonder why? Oh, maybe because it would make them look stupid and ruin their credibility the next time they tried to pull some more numbers out their rectums?
Where is the summary getting two thirds from? (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is a little sensationalistic. It says 2/3 of parents are avoiding 'flu shots, whereas the article quotes 22% as the figure, with the remainder saying they would definitely vaccinate, or that they would try to vaccinate.
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But 57 percent of parents were still concerned about their child getting sick with swine flu.
See, that number is almost 2/3 and it's right there on the same page as the bit about parents refusing to vaccinate their children. It makes perfect sense!
Re:Where is the summary getting two thirds from? (Score:4, Insightful)
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My question is why paranoid parents opinions of their children
Pretty sure this is based on their opinion of health care professionals, who with the aid of insurance companies have been fucking the public over at every turn since the AMA gained its stranglehold on health care here. I don't trust health care professionals, and as a group they have done nothing to gain that trust.
Sounds like a healthy policy (Score:2)
But I will accept the common wisdom that you can vaccinate against flu, this added to the for me credible reports this flu is nastier than usual I understand the rule given by this hospital.
Because when this breaks out in earnest they'll need all their personnel and some.
Re:Sounds like a healthy policy (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, there's a bit of confusion. The H1N1 swine flu that they're vaccinating against (as soon as the vaccines are prepared) isn't that much worse than the ordinary seasonal flu. It's the H5N1 that's the reputed killer. And that one isn't spreading widely. (Doesn't seem to be spreading widely?) So this seems to mean that we currently have 3 flu strains in circulation.
The problem is that if someone gets multiple flus at the same time, the genes are likely to do some swapping. This could easily result in a flu that spreads as easily as the seasonal flu and is as deadly as H5N1 (bird flu). So this year it's especially important to keep the level of flu in the population as low as possible.
Well, at least that's how I understand it. If someone connected with the health profession could correct any errors, it would probably be beneficial.
Hmmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see; people who have a very good chance of coming into direct contact with those infected with H1N1 flu on a daily basis and then subsequently coming into contact with others who may be in high-risk groups for said virus being required to get vaccinated against it? Madness, I say. This is what happens when you let government have control over health care. Socialism. Communists. Sky...falling etc.
Now termination may be a bit harsh, but removal from front-line duties for those who refuse the vaccination seems more than reasonable to me. H1N1 may not be the epic disaster that was predicted, but that doesn't mean we should just ignore it entirely.
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... or they could install sinks and hand-washing stations in every room.
More people pick up infections in the hospital than anywhere else, and one of the reasons is that basic sanitary procedures are lacking. Simple things, like doctors washing their hands after contact with a patient (and those clipboards holding charts have a LOT of nasty bugs floating on them).
Simply having doctors washing their hands between patients reduced infections by 20% in one study.
Then again, we have grown adults who still
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Informative)
It's kinda obvious that you have never worked in health care. Let me 'splain Lucy:
Aside from actually getting health care providers to _actually_ wash their hands, sinks and hand washing don't do much against aerosolized particles especially when someone is coughing in your immediate vicinity.
You can also spread nasties in all sort of interesting ways, like say, EKG leads, which have been proven to be a vector for MRSA. That reusable blood pressure cuff in the emergency room triage that has been used on all sorts of patients? Think it gets "disinfected" after every patient by the triage nurse? Ha!
Then, why FluMist? (Score:2)
The insert on FluMist, which is being given to all healthcare workers states:
FluMist® recipients should avoid close contact with immunocompromised individuals for at least 21 days.
Why would it say that? Since it is not a killed virus, it can stay in the nasal passage for 3 weeks and easily shed and infect others. Health care workers spend a lot of their time with people who have compromised immune systems. I thought the point of vaccination was to not spread it, yet they'll be doing that by using this vaccine. Many hospitals around the country have recognized this and won't be giving FluMist to their workers
Removal from front lines.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And the big deal is??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe my tin foil hat isn't adjusted right, but of all the vaccines out there, the flu shot (or mist as most people get it these days) is about as safest of them all. Incredibly low side effect rate, very effective, and a guarantee that you're going to get a mild version of the flu before everybody else does. Plus, if you are working in a medical care facility, you won't be an oxygen-burning flu contamination source, making it possible to keep the spread of these viruses down to a minimum.
Yes, the Swine Vaccine in the 70's was very poorly executed and there were many problems. But holy cow folks, it's been over 30 years and medicine has come just a short distance since. For the last 18 years getting a flu shot has been a federally mandated condition of my employment and I don't even work in a health care related field--what the heck is the big deal with getting a flu shot?
Re:And the big deal is??? (Score:4, Insightful)
You see, this story is the perfect combination of 3 key fears of people lacking the facts (In the US, at least - most of the rest of the world doesn't care about point 1):
1. Government control of health care
2. Government using vaccinations to brainwash people (or something equally stupid)
3. Flu vaccinations killed some people once at some point in history so therefore this one will kill you if you have it
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Well I live under federally mandated, provincially funded health care. Let me just say, free flu shots are nice.
If the government can brainwash people with vaccinations, awesome. I now have a plan to rule the world.
The flu vaccine kills people every year, it is however less than those who die from the flu.
So, let me continue on. Anti-vaxers on the other hand, are idiots. I've always believed that if they want to die, get deformed, or pick up something that I've already got an immunity to great on them.
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The reality is quite different.
The flu vaccine has to be produced several months before flu season. So, if the experts pick the wrong strains, or even if they pick the right ones and the flu mutates in that time, you're no better off.
In fact, you are worse off, as your immune system is likely to be worse off, trying to fight this new strain of the flu that is similar
Re:And the big deal is??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Freedom to make one's own decisions about medical treatment is a big thing in the US, and people dislike when they are compelled against their will. I'm no exception.
See, though-- there are some things you just can't control. Boo-hoo, it's raining. No, you can't park your car there. No, you can't keep dumping industrial pollutants out your back door.
Vaccination is often all or nothing. Call it tyranny of the majority if you like-- most of us want to live. Deal with it.
Being cognizant of the spread of the virus has a much higher success rate in preventing infection than does immunization.
I call bullshit. Citation, please.
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Vaccination is NEVER "all or nothing".
If the vaccination works, you won't get sick, no matter what the rest of the world does. So why do you believe forcing it on everyone is a good idea?
It's easy to "call bullshit" when you're completely ignorant of a subject, and just insist on enforcing your dogma on everyone else...
On the off chance that you do actua
Re:And the big deal is??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Vaccination is NEVER "all or nothing".
If the vaccination works, you won't get sick, no matter what the rest of the world does. So why do you believe forcing it on everyone is a good idea?
You misunderstand vaccination's main benefit as protecting the vaccinated individual, when it is instead protecting those who would otherwise have been made sick by the now vaccinated individual. If most people get the appropriate vaccinations, all of society is better off, since even if non-vaccinated individuals get sick the illness will have a more difficult time propagating. In other words, vaccination as a society-wide strategy is only effective if a high-enough proportion of people get vaccinated. That's why, if we're vaccinating at all, it's fair enough to force it on everybody who would reasonably find it effective. If you want to be the exception, then you're putting not just yourself but also other people at risk.
Re:And the big deal is??? (Score:5, Informative)
If the vaccination works, you won't get sick, no matter what the rest of the world does.
Incorrect. With a sufficient number of vaccinated individuals in a population, an effect call heard immunity comes into play. This protects people who cannot get the vaccine (people allergic to it, etc.) or who the vaccine does not work on.
There has been a 4 year study done in Ontario on this with respect to seasonal flu vaccines and found favorable results.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/science/july-dec08/fluvaccine_10-31.html [pbs.org]
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Bill Maher is funny, but an idiot in this matter.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why? If someone is stupid enough to take medical advice from a comedian/political satirist then any negative outcome of that is just natural selection. It's not like he's pretending to be a licensed doctor.
Re:Bill Maher is funny, but an idiot in this matte (Score:5, Insightful)
That was essentially Maher's ploy.
By interviewing Frist, a former Senator who was the Senate Republican leader during part of his time in office, instead of some other well-known physician, Maher interposed wholly unrelated politics into the discussion about whether or not to get an H1N1 vaccination. The end result is to convince some people who disagree with Frist on other issues to accept what is essentially a "reductio ad Hitlerum" [wikipedia.org] argument: that if Bill Frist believes you should get a flu shot, then clearly, that's reason enough not to.
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Re:Bill Maher is funny, but an idiot in this matte (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess all I'm really saying is that in the debate about vaccination -- and I don't even think there's enough evidence to support a reasonable anti-vaccination position -- a discussion between Bill Maher and Bill Frist adds nothing. You might as well have Cheech and Chong talking about it.
If you listen really carefully (Score:2)
If you listen really carefully that noise you hear is a 1000 lawyers licking their lips.
Extend this policy to websites (Score:2)
Alternative health advise (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd put down "handwashing" as the biggest. Or just general hygene after learning about microbes. The number one killer of women up until the early 1900s wasn't bad water, it was childbirth. And one of the reasons being that they'd bleed, and they'd have people touching them in places with open wounds. Gunsh
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The statistics are hard to make out, but it seems that doctors were more likely to kill you than cure your for a large portion of history
You might enjoy reading Trick or Treatment [amazon.com]-- they cover this topic in some detail. You right, statistics are hard to come by, mainly because no one was keeping statistics at the time. Florence Nightengale [wikipedia.org] changed that.
And water had nothing to do with that.
Clean water and disease/infection are two sides of the same coin. In fact, Florence Nightengale herself worked over the course of her life to show that things like water quality, open sewers, air pollution, and nutrition had dramatic effects of the health of a population.
Standard safety equipment (Score:5, Insightful)
On construction sites: hard hat, steel-toed boots, and when appropriate, gloves and safety glasses
At hospitals and other health-care facilities: immunization for the kinds of diseases that are likely to come through the door, especially those with the potential for arrival en masse.
Of course it is within your rights to refuse. But no safety equipment? No, you aren't allowed on-site in the areas where the relevant hazards exist. If that precludes you working, tough.
Seems reasonable to me. It's still a choice, even if it is a harsh one. But anyone who chose to work in health care should have realized years ago what might sometimes be necessary to do the job.
Seasonal vs pandemic = two different strategies (Score:2, Insightful)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that when the H1N1 flu vaccine is ready, the first people to get it should be children and young adults between age 6 months and 24 years. That strategy is expected to result in 59 million swine flu cases, 139,000 deaths and cost $67 billion. But there is a better way, according to researchers from Yale and Clemson universities. Flushot If vaccine doses were first distributed to children between age 5 and 19 and to adults age 30 to 39, there would be 15 million fewer infections and 31,000 fewer deaths, write mathematician Jan Medlock and epidemiologist Alison Galvani in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Their strategy would also save $14 billion, they calculate.
This is an outrage! (Score:5, Funny)
next thing you know, they'll be forcing construction workers to wear hard hat and astronauts to wear space suits. It's a slippery slope people!
And the point is? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to have a tetanus shot and have First Aid, CPR, AED certs. Those are a condition of my employment. No shots, no certs, no paycheck.
I also have to wear steel toe boots, a hardhat, and a dayglo safety vest if I'm on a job site.
Let's face it, if you work in a high-risk area, your employer would be negligent in *not* requiring you to take reasonable and practical precautions.
If you don't like, the door swings both ways.
Understandable and justifiable (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, from a public health point of view it's perfectly reasonable to insist that *all* nurses, MDs, and hospital support staff are vaccinated against most diseases that hospitals are likely to encounter, and against *all* diseases that threaten to become a pandemic (and for which vaccines are available).
The reason is very simple: health-care workers will get into contact with large numbers of weakened patients (old, infirm, very young, diseased, suffering from trauma etc.) and you don't want them to:
- (a) become infected themselves (because they weren't vaccinated) and then infect scores of vulnerable patients because they are carriers
- (b) become unavailable for work due to illness right when they are needed most.
So, by and large and taking one thing with another, we are better off without health-care workers who don't wish to be vaccinated. This simple consideration consideration is enough to warrant *mandatory* vaccination for all health-care workers.
The risk to at-risk individuals (and health-care workers) from the disease itself is much greater than the risk from a vaccine, so (statistically speaking) the only rational course of action is to take the vaccine.
The only thing that I think might be done differently is to dismiss such health-care workers as refuse vaccination. But then again, what do you do with people who can't be kept in their present function?
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Re:Captain Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
If the influenza pandemic will kill off Extreme Programming, now that's something I can get behind.
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Re:Captain Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
Read what you wrote - "They prime your own immune system to start building up the immunities on its own." Unfortunately, antibodies aren't all that discrete. For example, the same antibody reaction that's been implicated in type one (juvenile) diabetes, where cows milk ends up leaking into the infants' bloodstream and provoking an antibody reaction; later on in life, the same antibodies start destroying the isles of langrahen; once enough are gone, no more insulin production [ttp].
Repeatedly injecting foreign substances to provoke immune responses has also been implicated in rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases later in life.
And no, doctors aren't necessarily up on the latest and greatest. Look how many decades they told people with peptic ulcers to see a shrink to learn to handle stress. The flat-out refused to believe that ulcers were caused by an infection. Ditto with certain forms of cancer and viruses. Heck, they thought they could "cure" gays and lesbians for over a century. Some even wanted to "cure" the "disease" of being left-handed up until a decade ago.
Even now, some doctors are saying thatyou should pick your nose and eat it [damninteresting.com], despite the fact that the boogers are there FOR YOUR PROTECTION, and picking your nose short-circuits that process, damages tissue (allowing direct access to the blood stream), and helps spread contaminants (stop wiping your snot all over the place - it's like a culture medium for bacteria).
In other words, doctors can also fall victim to simplistic logical fallacies. Or are you going to start picking your nose and chewing it because some doctor mistakenly thinks it's the right thing to do?
Dumbass (Score:3, Insightful)
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You're absolutely right about prevention being key, and handwashing is an extremely neglected, important way to fight disease (disclaimer: of _course_ i am not any kind of doctor).
But there's nothing wrong with getting a flu shot, and it can only improve matters in the vast majority of situations. There may be circumstances where getting a shot would be unhealthy, sure.
Forcing people to get one seems like it causes other, ethical, problems, though, which I didn't mention in my post which is now modded flame
Mods (Score:3, Insightful)
How did the GP get +5 informative?
Sure an ounce prevention is worth a pound of cure but the GP does not seem to recognise vaccines as prevention. My guess is the GP is a fit and arrogant man who is way too young to remeber polio or smallpox. I'm sure he will change his opinions after he wakes up one morning and experiences his first bout of pneumoni
Re:Mods (Score:4, Informative)
Rapidly mutating
This is _exactly_ why we need to all get some immunity to H1N1 now- the vast majority of the population has no previous exposure to H1N1. Luckily whats currently circulating isn't that bad. If it mutated to a more deadly variety- and there was _no_ natural immunity and _no_ artificial immunity (via the vaccination) then things would be bad.
Only in danger if you're a 'fat slob'? Then you're a fucking idiot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic [wikipedia.org]
'Most of its victims were healthy young adults'
'global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but it is estimated that 10% to 20%'
I'm not panicking, but I'm going to take my 1 in a million chance of negative side effects and get the shot- not just for myself, but in the hope the world never sees 1918 again. We have the means to prevent it, its cheap, its simple, and it'd be a fucking travesty if morons like you were the vector for another occurrence.
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And if you've had one, keep away from me - you're more, not less, likely to have a compromised immune system in the long run if you get annual flu shots.
May you please provide some evidence for this claim? If you are talking about antigenic sin, that only applies if you get the shot regularly, but then skip a year:
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392095 [sciencentral.com]
The flu shot is a crap-shoot in terms of effectiveness
From http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113154000 [npr.org],
"If you are vaccinated with the injected vaccine, you have about a 70 percent chance of preventing influenza."
70% is a crap-shoot? Really?
latest virus is no more fatal than the average
About 36,000 a year die on average from the flu each year.
Anyway, the flu s
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I'm a healthy skeptic. In both senses of the word. Never had a flu shot, because I don't buy into the hype - I do my research when something doesn't make sense, and this whole H1N1 crap has been exaggerated from the beginning.
"151 dead from Swine Flu in Mexico", on recounting, turned out to be 6.
turns out that a lot of the numbers from around the world were similarly inflated. Also, people "coming down with H1N1" isn't the same as people dying from it. Millions die from the flu every year. Why the
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Why is H
Re:Captain TwatObvious (Score:4, Informative)
That is a FAR cry from saying that vaccines "cause disease" or that this is a manufactured pandemic to make money.
At least 62% of the U.S. population is under the age of 45 [infoplease.com]. How does conferred immunity from the 1957 asian flu help them? What about the world?
You may have only gotten the flu once. The plural of anecdote is not data. Epidemiology is data, and it argues against you.
If your car never fails in the 10 years that you drive it, does it mean that mechanics are perpetrating fraud? Think about it.
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Just so you know, and not really related to 'swine flu'.
I recently noticed how much more encumbered my years are now that I don't get regular flu shots. As a part of my work in the past, I got flu shots yearly and seemingly never got the flu. I never noticed how 'good' I had it until the last 4 years where I've been a student and haven't gotten the shot.... And so now I spend at least one, if not 2, weeks out of the year suffering.
It took me 4 years to realize how good I had it back then and to take note
You are completely wrong, at least 85 died (Score:5, Informative)
"151 dead from Swine Flu in Mexico", on recounting, turned out to be 6.
I don't know where your non-cited figure of "6" deaths from the original swine flu outbreak in Mexico came from, but maybe it was from a misinterpretation of a report detailing the deaths of 7 patients at a single tertiary care hospital in Mexico city during a single month. The New England Journal of Medicine article [nejm.org] that detailed the fate of the 98 patients acutely ill with the swine flu in that hospital at that time also references that 85 people in Mexico were known to have died as of May out of 4910 confirmed cases, a fatality rate of 1.7%.
Fortunately only Mexico during the initial outbreak reported such a high fatality rate. This is very fortunate as almost no young person in the world had any kind of immunity to this strain. In all likelihood when you come down with it you will be 'lucky' enough to only have to suffer a few days of bed-bound misery.
I'm a healthy skeptic.
Skepticism is good, but you've jumped way beyond that into conspiracy theories and paranoia.
I'll stick with preventative measures, as opposed to a shot that may or may not be effective this season
Doing nothing does not count as a preventative measure. It is true that usually with the seasonal flu vaccine scientists must guess months beforehand what strains to put in the vaccine and since they don't always guess right the vaccine is usually only about 70% effective, but as for pandemic H1N1 the vaccine is an excellent match and it should give almost everyone who gets it protection.
Re:Captain TwatObvious (Score:4, Insightful)
You sir, are not a healthy skeptic, to quote you from another post:
This is woo woo non-science , i.e. you are full of shit, please try better next time you want to pose as a healthy skeptic.
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Look through the thread. Read the link I posted (along with quotes) from The Lancet. You know, that peer-reviewed, internationally respected medical journal. The article that talks about specific cases of vaccine-caused auto-
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"A flu shot does not mean you won't get the flu [it is based on] predictions are made a year in advance"
Yeah, but they usually work. Have you ever had a flu? I'd rather a prick on the arm and a bit of nausea for a day, even if it wasn't 100% likely to stop the flu.
I'll agree that the swine flu is bad, but not catastrophic (it might mutate into something really deadly over the next 5 years, just like the Spanish one but the vaccine will be useless), and that big pharma will do anything for a buck, but it's s
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This is only partly true (only a very small part) and much less so now.
The drug companies did sponsor some thin "throw-away" quick reference books on narrow topics. With the crackdown on drug companies, this is much less true now.
Drug companies didn't and still don't fund or write any of the major medical reference texts that are used primarily. They would sometimes buy them to give away to doctors (again, this happens much less now), but they didn't have input on the content. I've edited major medical text
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Actually, those mouthwash commercials are bogus. Gargling with crap like Listerine (active ingredient - 27% booze) actually strips the mouth and throat of a protective layer of mucous, and can contribute not only to you catching diseases, but also to a higher risk of throat cancer.
Booze is for drinking, not spitting out.
If you have to gargle, use a salt-water solution. It's cheaper, safer, and also environmentally friendlier than mouth wash.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently someone else has been into the Jim Beam mouthwash.
*smile*
Re:Forced Medication of Citizens? (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't new; if anything, mandatory vaccination laws have become much more lenient in the United States than they used to be. In the early 20th century, 11 states had fully mandatory vaccination laws, not just "must get vaccinated as a condition of attending public schools" or "must be vaccinated as a condition of working in certain occupations" sorts of things. Rather, it was a requirement for living in the jurisdiction that you must be vaccinated. Massachusetts's mandatory smallpox vaccination law was upheld by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1905, which is still the main precedent on the subject.
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30%. That's crazy, and kids will end up dying from whooping cough because of it. I have a libertarian worldview, and don'
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But most disease requires immunization rates of about 85% to confer herd immunity.
There are well documented cases of small religious communities not vaccinating there kids then having perfectly predictable numbers of kids dying of measles and other preventable disease.
Measles in Wales [bbc.co.uk]
Outbreak of measles in Religious communties [nih.gov]
Not vaccinating your kids is a terrible decision that puts them at risk of permanent crippling injury and death.
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It's been too cold and rainy to go out at night lately.
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Your not paranoid man. They really are out to get you!
You know, THEM. Thats right, THOSE PEOPLE.
And dude, that book does not say what that web page claims it says. Don't be suckered by irresponsible conservative politicians using conspiracy theories to stir up the whackjobs against public health.
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What politicians? There are no politicians involved. I just want John Holdren fired because he's not worthy of being in a non-totalitarian government. If he were fired, it would be a sign that the Obama government isn't irredeemably despotic.
The book clearly does say what that web site quotes it as saying.
Re:Once again... (Score:4)
And once again you're incoherent. Go away and die.
Re:Once again... (Score:5, Funny)
I got all those side effects just from reading your idiotic post!
Re: (Score:3)
cancer virus
Virus - meaning of "agent that causes infectious disease"
Cancer is not infectious, ergo cancer is not a virus
This just in, tin foil hats cause the following:
* Stupid inane comments
* Uninformed decisions
* Leaping to conclusions
* Paranoia
* Annoia
* Repetitive posting in the hope that it won't be marked as a troll eventually
* Trolling
* A sub 50 IQ
* The inability to reason
You do realise that the source that you have cited is a website called "Fluscam" right? When making a reasoned and informed decision on anythi
Re:What you don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice try, but squalene and other adjuvants are forbidden in U.S. vaccines by the FDA. With regards to the mercury, if it's that big of a concern to you, I hope you are on a tuna-free diet because there is more mercury in a tuna sandwich than in the thiomersal of any vaccine available in the U.S..
As for your scary-sounding list, yes, it's a list of possible adverse effects that a person may experience - but it is not an indication of likelihood. No medication is without risk, but in general, people take the medication because the benefits outweigh the risks by a significant margin.
To put it in a grossly exaggerated, probably flawed slashdot-style analogy, the documented possible side effects of flying in a plane are motion sickness, legionnaire's disease, food poisoning, lice infestation, mental anguish, deep vein thrombosis, alcohol abuse, insomnia, halitosis, delayed departure, poverty, or becoming part of a suicide mission that turns your plane into a bomb. But more likely than any of those you'll get to your destination with very little lasting impact on your personal health or safety - as long as you remember that stupid 4-1-1 rule.
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Nice try, but squalene and other adjuvants are forbidden in U.S. vaccines by the FDA.
Yes, but they are not in Europe. It is still a concern.
Given that the article was about a U.S. hospital, and the bulk of the concerns in the comments were about U.S. vaccination policy, the fact that adjuvants are allowed in Europe really didn't warrant comment. Those vaccines aren't coming here unless the pandemic worsens significantly and there is no way to manufacture additional adjuvant-free vaccine.
With regards to the mercury, if it's that big of a concern to you, I hope you are on a tuna-free diet because there is more mercury in a tuna sandwich than in the thiomersal of any vaccine available in the U.S..
Sure about that? First of it's a ridiculous argument, indeed the level of mercury in tuna are alarmingly high, it doesn't make it right. And regardless, you would have to eat a heck of a lot of tuna to equal even one flu shot.
The FDA lists the mean methylmercury content of canned albacore tuna to be .353ppm. That means 6 ounces (170g) of tuna contains approximately 59.5mcg of methylm