In Calif. Study, Most Kids With Whooping Cough Were Fully Vaccinated 293
An anonymous reader writes with this extract from a Reuters article: "In early 2010, a spike in cases appeared at Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, and it was soon determined to be an outbreak of whooping cough — the largest seen in California in more than 50 years. Witt had expected to see the illnesses center around unvaccinated kids, knowing they are more vulnerable to the disease. 'We started dissecting the data. What was very surprising was the majority of cases were in fully vaccinated children. That's what started catching our attention,' said Witt."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
So... either their was something wrong with the vaccine, there was a mutation, or else this particular vaccine is less effective than most other vaccines. Unfortunately, most people will take this and generalize it to "vaccines don't work!!!"
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we will generalize it to "vaccines don't always work".
Then you're not "most people".
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No, we will generalize it to "vaccines don't always work".
Then you're not "most people".
Neither is OP.
To quote the famous author, all generalizations are false...
including this one.
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Speak for yourself. Vaccines never work, pass it on!
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The general population is insufficiently rational to come to that conclusion.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
So... either their was something wrong with the vaccine, there was a mutation, or else this particular vaccine is less effective than most other vaccines. Unfortunately, most people will take this and generalize it to "vaccines don't work!!!"
There's also the possible effect of non-vaccinated kids lowering the herd immunity. Basically increasing the chances of those who got the vaccine which for some reason or another wasn't effective in immunizing them to come in contact with the virus.
Like you said, lots of variables, more study needed. We do need to verify the effectiveness of the vaccine (or even the effectiveness of a particular batch of the vaccine) is not being compromised.
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If it was herd immunity, you would still expect to see a significantly higher number of infected amongst the unvaccinated.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was herd immunity, you would still expect to see a significantly higher number of infected amongst the unvaccinated.
That's not necessarily true.
Say the vaccine is 96% effective and we're studying a population of 1000 kids. If they were all vaccinated, and they all come in contact with the virus, you'd expect roughly 40 of them to still get sick. If 30 of those do not get vaccinated, and all 1000 were exposed to the virus, you'd have a cap of 30 non-vaccinated kids getting sick, but still roughly 39 of the vaccinated kids will be sick, simply because there are more of them.
The total amount of people with the disease goes up significantly, but most of the people coming down with the disease are still people who were vaccinated. If you stop assuming all those people came in contact with the virus, the fact that there are now 30 kids who weren't vaccinated increases the chance of 39 kids for whom the vaccine didn't work to come in contact with the disease, so there's a larger proportion of vaccinated kids getting sick.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
Say the vaccine is 96% effective and we're studying a population of 1000 kids. If they were all vaccinated, and they all come in contact with the virus, you'd expect roughly 40 of them to still get sick. If 30 of those do not get vaccinated, and all 1000 were exposed to the virus, you'd have a cap of 30 non-vaccinated kids getting sick, but still roughly 39 of the vaccinated kids will be sick, simply because there are more of them.
The total amount of people with the disease goes up significantly, but most of the people coming down with the disease are still people who were vaccinated. If you stop assuming all those people came in contact with the virus, the fact that there are now 30 kids who weren't vaccinated increases the chance of 39 kids for whom the vaccine didn't work to come in contact with the disease, so there's a larger proportion of vaccinated kids getting sick.
I wish I had some mod points from you because this is the critical piece that most people miss. Vaccines aren't 100% effective, and small number of unvaccinated kids can be the tipping point to infecting the kids with responsible parents.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Bingo!
Not only that: the non-immune kids, once you break past herd immunity numbers, become the incubators of the mutations that break out of the vaccination wall.
Of the 132 patients under age 18, 81 percent were up to date on recommended whooping cough shots and eight percent had never been vaccinated. The other 11 percent had received at least one shot, but not the complete series.
So:
81% fully vaccinated.
11% incomplete.
8% unvaccinated.
Threshold for herd immunity: generally considered to be at 92% minimum [wikipedia.org] for pertussis.
In other words: the unvaccinated/incompletely-vaccinated 19% broke herd immunity. Once that happens, you have an incubation dish for mutations, you have transmission vectors to those for whom the vaccine is out of date or has not worked as well as hoped.
The rate of cases for each age, two through 18 years old, peaked among kids in their pre-teens. Among fully immunized kids, there were about 36 cases for every 10,000 children two to seven years old, compared to 245 out of every 10,000 kids aged eight to 12. "The longer you went from your last vaccine, the greater your risk of disease," Witt told Reuters Health. At age 13, the number of cases dropped, presumably because that's the age when children are eligible for their booster shot.
Aha! The REAL pattern begins to emerge:
Broken herd immunity lets the disease in: those with incomplete vaccinations begin to be affected at higher rates than those who have received the booster shot. In essence, age 12 - due to the pacing of the booster shots - is effectively a risk zone.
This is why "religious objections" for booster shots are such fucking bullshit: being unvaccinated DOES cause societal risk. We need 92% minimum coverage for herd immunity and we do not have it.
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You don't understand vaccines. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pointing out the inevitable consequences of not vaccinating isn't "bashing".
Not everyone can be vaccinated, and many (such as the elderly) don't develop a strong immunity when vaccinated. For example, in my son's kindergarten class, there's a kid who have to have a liver transplant, and hence is on immunosuppressive drugs. Having my kids vaccinated helps protect that kid's life.
You don't understand how vaccines work.
They expose the adaptive immune system to the virus/bacterium in question. The adaptive immune system develops (in a pretty much evolutionary way) a response. It's unique to every individual - no two people produce the same antibodies. Some of them are more effective than others (hence the differing strength of immunity people display after being vaccinated, and why some rare people get really lucky and develop robust immune responses even to outliers like HIV [scienceagogo.com]) but there's such a variety that disease organisms can't "evolve immunity" in the way you're talking about.
Some fast-mutating viruses - like the flu, or even more, the cold viruses - can change enough to require new vaccines periodically, sure. But (a) that's not 'evolving immunity to a vaccine' and (b) the old vaccine remains just as effective against the old variants.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
So... either their was something wrong with the vaccine, there was a mutation, or else this particular vaccine is less effective than most other vaccines.
Or the booster given at 11-12 should be given at 8-9.
Unfortunately, most people will take this and generalize it to "vaccines don't work!!!"
Yeah, there is that. Though there really isn't enough detail in the article to make that conclusion.
Of the whooping cough cases, 81% were fully vaccinated, 11% were partially vaccinated, 8% were not vaccinated. If more than 8% of the population was not vaccinated, then you could start down the path to building a case against vaccination.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
The story point to the vaccine schedule in California needs to be updated to the CDC recommendations. Nothing more.
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Unfortunately, most people will take this and generalize it to "vaccines don't work!!!"
Yeah, there is that. Though there really isn't enough detail in the article to make that conclusion.
I don't think that's ever stopped the anti-vaxxers.
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No, you should count everybody (ill and not ill).
Perhaps 100% of the unvaccinated 8% got ill, but only 10% of the vaccinated 81% got the whooping cough.
And there is another thing: when you get ill, you build antibodies, so you won't become ill for at least 10 years.
With vaccine, you need to vaccinate after a few years.
I don't think that whooping cough is deadly, so not vaccinating against it is not unwise.
But if the illness has a letal risk (like measles), it's just stupid to avoid vaccines.
Between autism a
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No, you should count everybody (ill and not ill).
Perhaps 100% of the unvaccinated 8% got ill, but only 10% of the vaccinated 81% got the whooping cough.
Read his post again. That was the point he was making: if more than 8% of the student population was _not_ vaccinated, then the non-vacciated people had a lower rate of infection than the vaccinated people. Of course, if less than 8% of the student population was not vaccinated, then the non-vaccinated people had a higher rate of infection than vaccinated pe
Re:So... The vaccine did work. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the vaccine worked. The reason most of the children who got infected also had the vaccines, was that 81% of all children had recieved the vaccine. The risk of getting the infection was still greater for the children who newer got the vaccine.
So the correct headline would be "Vaccine not as effective as previously thought".
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I think TFA's headline was pretty accurate: Whooping cough vaccine fades in pre-teens.
The CDC is apparently now recomm
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No, the vaccine worked. The reason most of the children who got infected also had the vaccines, was that 81% of all children had recieved the vaccine.
No, as I read it it's 81% of those with whooping cough who were infected. I can't see the proportion of the population who were vaccinated. It's an important point, though, and was my first thought. If 99% of the population is vaccinated, 100% of those not vaccinated get whooping cough and only 10% of those vaccinated get it then most kids with whooping cough would be fully vaccinated, by a factor of almost ten to one. Could they really have made such a basic statistical blunder, though?
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
So... either their was something wrong with the vaccine, there was a mutation, or else this particular vaccine is less effective than most other vaccines. Unfortunately, most people will take this and generalize it to "vaccines don't work!!!"
Not so. If the anonymous reader had read the entire article from which he or she posted, s/he would have seen that what was found is that researchers had overestimated how long the whooping cough vaccine was effective. So if a kid had gotten the original shot or booster shot fairly recently (didn't say how many years out it was good for), that kid did not develop the disease.
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Or herd immunity. (Score:3)
Sadly, with fewer people getting vaccinated, there's more of a chance for pockets of disease to linger, and catch not only unvaccinated people but also those who didn't respond strongly
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
There's another possibility. I did not RTFA, so I don't know if the absolute numbers were in there, but if the number of unvaccinated kids is small relative to the number of vaccinated kids, then it could just be an artifact of the small numbers. There is a theorem in probability about this IIRC, but I forget the name. It's often mentioned with respect to false positives in blood tests, for example.
If a blood test for a disease is 90% accurate for both positive and negative results (for simplicity we use the same value), but only 3% of the population truly has the disease, then the following can occur:
Of the 3% that have the disease, 10% (0.3% of the total population) will show negative
Of the 97% that don't have the disease, 10% will show positive - more than three times as many as the number who actually have the disease. This is the key fact - the results may be purely due to this kind of imbalance.
Only the 2.7% that have the disease will correctly show positive. In the total population about 12.7% will show positive, of which over 3/4 will be false.
Substitute vaccination for blood test - some small percentage of vaccinations will fail, but if the incidence of the disease is relatively quite small, that failure will show as a majority of those who have the disease.
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something wrong with the vaccine
There's something wrong with every vaccine - 10% or so of the people don't get a sufficient immune response to get immunity. That's why it's more useful when more people get the vaccine.
Unfortunately, some people take this as justification to use violence to vaccinate people against their will. I see far too little vaccine education in popular media venues (and the science is not taught in most schools).
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Don't forget that there are vaccines that only decrease the likelihood of infection and death. For example, tetanus vaccination only prevents outbreak for a few years, but prevents death from it for life. Well, mostly, were vaccinated people have a pretty high risk of death.
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That should of course read "...when vaccinated people..."
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As a card carrying liberal I feel safe admitting that antivax crowd tends to be on the left-wing end of the fringe political spectrum. There's always some overlap when it comes to people who's opinions are that far out, so there's definitely some right-wing fringers that will hop on the antivax bandwagon, but it's mostly the raving frothing end of my political peeps that love the: "modern medicine is bad, man. Takes some herbs, go to chiropractor, and use tinctures to live forever!" game. Much though it
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What do you me "the charm"?
They wear off.
And the pregnancy shots are for the fetus's sake.
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Not exactly shocking (Score:2)
Vaccines aren't perfect, and with pertussis it's important to get them vaccinated as soon as most of them can mount an effective response. So if enough kids are vaccinated, the odds that the ones who do come down with it are vaccinated becomes greater than that they're unvaccinated.
All in all a pretty basic exercise in high-school probability algebra.
I doubt it's the vaccine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I doubt it's the vaccine (Score:5, Informative)
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Let's put it this way. When you have a vaccine that works 95% of the time, and 99% of the kids are vaccinated. You'll have ~5% of the population contracting the disease despite being vaccinated. And the 1% of the population will contract the disease because they weren't vaccinated. You end with way more students that are vaccinated with the disease than those who are not vaccinated (absolute number wise). But it also ignored the fact that 94% of the population was protected against the disease.
I'd like to know what % of children in CA are not vaccinated for whooping cough. TFA had the figure of 8% for the number of unvaccinated children in the population with whopping cough. If the number of unvaccinated children is much less than 8%, that'd be clear demonstration of the danger of not vaccinating.
I also wonder if that 8% figure is low. Some folks don't vaccinate because of lack of education or access to medical care. But for the folks who actively avoid vaccination, how many of them refuse o
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I read a quote somewhere that I thought was similar to your statement, that it is better (less likely to get a disease) to live in a community 95% are vaccinated and you are not, than to live in a community where you are vaccinated and 95% are not. It is called group immunity. Being vaccinated is not a guarantee that you won't get the disease, but when a large portion of the community is vaccinated, even those that are not vaccinated are less likely to get the disease.
This makes perfect sense (Score:5, Interesting)
This actually makes perfect sense. Consider the following:
1. Most children -are- vaccinated.
2. Vaccinations do not really make you "immune" to catching a disease, they train your body to more efficiently fight it off.
So, what happens is that the small percentage on unvaccinated children are bringing Whooping Cough back into contact with the rest of us, and those vaccinated children who perhaps don't have their immune system running at full capacity (tired, stress, fighting other illnesses, etc) catch it. Since there are statistically so many more of the latter available, it makes perfect sense that there are more cases in vaccinated children than unvaccinated.
A more interesting statistic would be if every outbreak could be traced back to an unvaccinated "patient zero". I strongly suspect this is the case.
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I don't know why everyone blames the unvaccinated.
If there is anything that this article shows it is that the infected unvaccinated are a tiny minority and as such not significant.
It also shows that vaccination is not a perfect shield/solution to decease, so your all outbreaks are caused by the unvaccinated is illogical.
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Another possible theory (and I use the term theory because there are presently no unbiased studies that have looked thoroughly into both short term and long term effects of multiple vaccines being administered simultaneously to a human) is that the average child's immune system, which is known to be in its development stage until approximately eight years of age, has been partially compromised by receiving 21 vaccines (or more if they have received their yearly flu shot) by the age of six. Therefore the re
TDaP is also required for college (Score:3)
I caught whooping cough when I was 25 because I had not had the booster since I was 12. I was also required to get a fresh TDaP at age 31 to start attending graduate school, again because the booster was assumed to wear off after 20 years.
Perhaps they need to change the booster recommendations from every 20 years to every 10 years.
I hope that Dr.s quote is out of context (Score:2)
It is known the shot wears off, it is know that a booster at 13 should be done, and again in adults.
There is no surprise here.
The headline should read:
"Study shows CDC correct. Booster should be given at 11, and not 13.'
""The longer you went from your last vaccine, the greater your risk of disease," Witt told Reuters Health."
Oh really? How is an infectious disease Doc not already aware of this? I'm am not a Dr, but I have spent 12 years reading vaccine studies and even I am aware of that fact.
I hope it's ju
mountain grown (Score:2)
We're here at Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, where we've secretly replaced the fine vaccines they usually serve with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!
They were vaccinated for Autism (Score:2)
Unfortunately the Autism vaccine causes Whooping Cough. I read it in a scientician paper.
Bayes tells us that this is no surprise. (Score:2)
No vaccine is 100% effective, so some people who are vaccinated will catch the disease. Since the vast majority of people are vaccinated, it's no surprise that most of the victims were vaccinated.
Lying with statistics (Score:3)
According to the article, only 8% of kids were unvaccinated. So even if they were ten times as likely to get the disease, most of the cases will still be vaccinated kids.
What TFA actually says is that vaccinated kids are LESS likely to get the disease, and kids with multiple booster shots are even less likely to get it. The article's conclusion is that the vaccines work, but they work even better with a booster. The misleading Slashdot headline and summary implies the opposite conclusion.
Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Get your Tdap booster! (Score:2)
WTF? Antivaxxers on Slashdot (Score:3)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here we go (Score:5, Informative)
Thimerosol hasn't been in childhood immunizations for over 10 years (except seasonal flu, and even there it's available thimerosol-free). No corresponding drop in autism rates.
Re:Here we go (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Here we go (Score:5, Informative)
> that could not cause guillain-barre syndrome ... n the US we used a worse adjuvant that caused
> various incidents of guillain-barre syndrome
Considering that no one knows exactly what causes GBS, I think what you meant was: "that caused less GBS than the adjuvant used in the US vaccine".
> Why?
Presumably because no one knew that there would be increased incidence of GBS?
> So the pharma companies could save a few cents per vaccine?
Sounds like you've been wearing that tin-foil hat for too long.
GBS is a very rare side effect of vaccination. AFAICS, you don't show me any evidence that it was the adjuvant rather than, for example, a mismatch between the adjuvant and the flu antigens.
Re:Here we go (Score:4, Informative)
Right. Now let's work on improving the adjuvants used. For example during the swine flu scare a few years ago, Germany used a quality adjuvant that could not cause guillain-barre syndrome. In the US we used a worse adjuvant that caused various incidents of guillain-barre syndrome, narcolepsy, and death? Why? So the pharma companies could save a few cents per vaccine?
This is not right at all.
In some countries in Europe they primarily used the ASO3 adjuvant (produced in Germany I believe), which was 10x more powerful than other adjuvants. This means they could reduce the amount of virus in each vaccine 10x, and thus treat more people in less time and with less costs. It seems very likely that this is involved with a dramatic increase in the incidence of narcolepsy (now believed to be an auto-immune disease). Germany might have used the other new adjuvant MF59 adjuvant, I don't know, which wasn't as associated with an increase in narcolepsy.
There was another variant of the ASO3 adjuvant that was produced in Quebec that seems to not be as related to the incidences of narcolepsy. I think there might have also been a difference between the use in Canada and Europe, in regards to whether they did 1 dose or 2 doses.
The US did not use these new adjuvants (at least now ASO3 not sure about MF59), and didn't see the increased incidence as much in narcolepsy. US healthcare is also kind of a hodgepodge of actions, so we tend not to do the same thing to everyone even if we wanted to. That's not the case in Europe.
You can read the FDA transcipt from the time-period evaluating the use of the new adjuvants.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/BloodVaccinesandOtherBiologics/VaccinesandRelatedBiologicalProductsAdvisoryCommittee/UCM167162.pdf
IMO, I do think it's essential to create better adjuvants, the only problem being is that I don't think we understand the immune system well enough yet to do that. I mean I think we can find adjuvants that are more "powerful", but that's not necessarily what you want. You don't want the immune system to get overly broad in its response. You'd like it to stay specific to the virus and its potential variants. And I think if you use a more powerful adjuvant you might need to reduce the inherent contaminants in your provided dead virus even further.
Re:Here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I understand adjuvants are used so that less viral material is needed. Why not use more viral material and eliminate adjuvants? Is this feasible? How much more cost would it add for the vaccine manufacturer?
Today, there is a significant disagreement on how to improve vaccince safety. One large camp advocates the use of acellular approach (using non-living chemical compounds) that the immune system can learn on to attack the real virus, instead of having dead viral material. The reason for going to the acellular approach is that it is deemed safer, and easier to manage quality control (e.g., effectiveness from batch to batch, odds of residual live active virus contaminatio). Unfortunatly, our immune systems aren't trained as well on this acellular bootstrapping immunity boost technique and the reasnon appears to be that it is "too-clean". This "too-clean" effects was initially found in early standard vaccine production: researching why some batches were more effective than others, they found the batches with fewer contaminants actually produced a weaker immune response. You might think of it as an analogy to the immune system having "book" knowledge or "real-world" knowedge of how to do something (okay, maybe that's a poor analogy). Or having some extra "dirt" helps build the immunity.
To combat this, the adjuvants are added which amp-up the immune response. This allows for more control of effectiveness across batches (rather trying to control the contamination levels to small, but non-zero amounts) and this makes the production costs lower for virus based vaccines and is probably required to make acellular vaccines as effective as dead-virus vaccines.
The WHO (world health organization) and the makers of acellular vaccine technology are the biggest advocates of adjuvants as it allows for cheaper vaccines to be made. So the right question to ask is not how much cost it would add for the vaccine manufacturer, but how much cost it would add to vaccination programs administered by the WHO? and how those economics that affect what is available on the market? (vaccine makers don't want to trial too many variants, so if a big customer wants something one way, the rest of the market pretty much has to live with their choice).
Of course there is still the problem of quick response production (like flu vaccines). Sometimes there isn't enough wall clock time to even mass produce the viral material you need (this happened in the H1N1 epidemic, but in other cases, certain strains of viruses were found to be hard to culture in eggs). So in these situations, you have a choice: Innoculate fewer folks, or spread out the viral material that you do have and augment the immune response with adjuvants. Of course for H1N1, we know now that they did the latter in many cases (and in all the acellular production it was pretty much required anyhow).
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'zactly. Mind control nanomachines.
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I love how "chemicals" somehow is implied to mean something opposite of "natural".
Idiot...
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I read on prisonplanet that your BLOOD is full of chemicals! ahhh! Get it out of me!
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If one wanted to, one could argue that the only non-natural materials are the transuranian elements. I will say that with this definition I certainly wouldn't want to be eating any non-natural ingredients!
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I try to avoid using any elements higher than iron. Doing otherwise just encourages more supernovae.
Re:Here we go (Score:4, Informative)
I know it's slashdot, so you can't be bothered to RTFA, but the article says the kids most vulnerable were ages 8-12. It then when on to address why there was a sharp cutoff at age 12, and points out that at age 13, kids are eligible for a booster shot. So it seems the vaccines DO work, and we just need to readjust the booster schedule.
Re:Here we go (Score:5, Informative)
And if you continued to read you would see that the CDC did not think this was necessarily a good idea because the vaccine is not tested in the younger age group, the infection rate is lower than this author says (they probably have more/better data) and note that severity is lower for vaccinated people.
Thanks to this article, I now understand why care givers for newborns need to get a booster right before they have their child (or, in the case of mothers, shortly after birth b/c it is not approved for pregnant women)--the vaccine loses potency rather rapidly and so you have to weigh vaccine risks against the level protection provided. In the case of new borns, the herd is the family/care givers, and they all need to protect the little one. In other cases, some infections are okay so long as outbreaks are relatively small.
Re:Here we go (Score:5, Informative)
Whether you get chicken pox from another person or shot, it's still the same virus. Except the vaccine virus is already dead, so it's harmless. I don't know why you would be opposed to doing it.
BTW thanks for the reminder. I need to get my adult vaccinations. (It's been 20 years since last time.)
Re:Here we go (Score:5, Informative)
Chicken pox vaccine is a live virus vaccine, but it's a weakened form of it. It likely gives some amount of protection for life, but due to relatively low amounts of data they recommend boosters for now. Even so, since your body now forever hosts the weakened virus, it's hoped that later episodes of shingles will also be less severe and prevalent. Hopefully once everyone vaccinates we can eliminate this painful and sometimes disfiguring, debilitating or deadly disease from humanity forever.
Dead bass ackwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you think shingles came from before there was a CP vaccine? "Shingles" is the reactivation of the same freaking virus you had long ago -- because herpes is forever.
The vaccine, unlike the wild virus, does not take up residence in nerve roots and does not have the potential to cause shingles later. However, both the wild immunity and the vaccine immunity wane with age, so if you're not routinely exposed to the wild virus you need a booster to prevent shingles.
Which, thank you, I will be getting along with my pertussis booster in about two years. Both I and my (now adult) children have had the wild flavor of chicken pox, and I can do without another round with it. Unlike some, I can read the medical literature on this stuff. I even talk to my doctor, believe it or not.
Now, get off my lawn.
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Hmmm.
I had both the vaccine and the illness (about age 12). It gave me sores but no fever. I just played games like usual as if I was healthy. In contrast my nieces got it just one month later, and they felt very very sick. 2 different variants I guess?
Re:Dead bass ackwards (Score:4, Informative)
Where's the moderation option for WRONG when you need it?
How can you blame the tin foil heads with so many errors made by the pro crowd? First, from cpu6502's post:
Except the vaccine virus is already dead, so it's harmless.
This is false. The chicken pox vaccine is an attenuated vaccine, meaning it is weakened but very much still alive.
From the parent post:
The vaccine, unlike the wild virus, does not take up residence in nerve roots and does not have the potential to cause shingles later.
This is false. Either version can cause shingles later in life. In fact, early research is bearing out predictions that mass chicken pox vaccinations will lead to increased shingles rates.
Unlike some, I can read the medical literature on this stuff. I even talk to my doctor, believe it or not.
The hospital where I used to work routinely provided chicken pox boosters to employees. I was advised not to get the booster because I did not have chicken pox as a child. The doctors told me that I had an increased risk of contracting shingles from the vaccination and that I'd be better off taking my chances without the booster. In my research of the literature, I've found nothing to support this. In fact, the CDC recommends the vaccine specifically to adults who never had chicken pox as a child.
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The good news, though, is that the rates will decline again because (you can look this up) the vaccine strain does not cause the same latent infection...
Actually, I have looked it up and that information is not easy to come by. For what little it's worth, Wikipedia says you are exactly wrong:
Some persons exposed to the virus after vaccine can experience milder cases of chicken pox (and usually then harbor both the attenuated vaccine or oka strain as well as the wild type or natural chickenpox strain which are both subject to reactivation as shingles).
However, this information was pulled from a CDC web site years ago and apparently has been significantly ov
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So I could have skipped shingles if I had been vaccinated? Darn.
No, wait, I contracted chicken pox in 1962. No vaccine for me.
Re:Here we go (Score:4, Insightful)
"Most times once you get Cpox as a kid, your immune for life, and if you do get it a second time it's much milder."
I wonder if anyone informed you of shingles? cPox parties seem to not mention that for some reason.
Glad you did the right thing.
You son probable got it because some other ass wipe made the wrong decision and didn't have their kids vaccinated.
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The Army boosted me for just about everything (Including Small Pox and Anthrax which I'd never had) before I went to Iraq, but now that I think about it I don't hink they hit CPox. I should talk to my doctor. I'm old enough to have had the actual disease, not the vaccine. Wouldn't relish doing that shit again.
I wonder how closely you could guess my age based on me not having had either Small Pox or CPox vaccines as a kid.
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Re:Here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal choice only goes so far. If your personal choice puts my family at risk, then it ceases to become a personal choice. You do realize that there is a compromise between "ALL HAIL THE GOVERNMENT OVERLORD" and "FUCK THE FED", right?
Perhaps vaccinations aren't bad? If they're properly researched and proved effective, they might even be good?
Re:Here we go (Score:4, Insightful)
You are using hyperbole to state your case. That is rarely an effective conversational tool (although I do love it, and regularly use it).
There is always compromise. I am a firm believer in the 2nd amendment. I personally own several firearms, and am an avid hunter. I also firmly believe in concealed carry laws. What I don’t believe in is that any idiot should be allowed to own and carry a firearm without training. There should be a strict licensing procedure, training series, and background check (kind of like the ones we currently have in most states). To conceal carry, YES, you should have to register. If I am a cop, and I’m pulling you over, I don’t want a gun to surprise me. What if I try to grab that gun, because it surprised me, and it harms you or myself? Who is at fault there? I was protecting myself in a shitty situation (in my head) you were simply exercising your right.
It's not always black and white, anonymous internet person called wisnoskil. Most of life is shades of gray. I do not have the solutions, you are correct there. BUT, I'm not willing to discount immunizations because of a random article that says that maybe this immunization isn't going to last as long as we previously thought, and therefore we need to re-evaluate our SPACING IN TIME that the shots happen.
In other words, please don't leap to conclusions that aren't stated. Again, my original post simply called for compromise and rational thought.
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Except for the people who can't take the vaccines, for whatever reason (allergies, etc). But screw them , right? Or the fact that vaccines are not 100%, but tough luck for them. So feel free to go around infecting people like a little happy Typhoid Mary, because damn you're a free person, not a slave, and don't give a damn about anyone besides yourself.
Depends on the country. (Score:4, Interesting)
If your local health authority depends from a democratically elected body and is monitored by an independent body, then yeah, common sense indicates that I should trust their judgements in general terms.
This is not to say you should not be vigilant, but in general terms if you are not vigilant you are still likely to be OK (the decrease of infant mortality, longer life spans and better conditions of life later in life are proof that such optimism is not misplaced).
In other places you may have no choice: health service would be so precarious that it would not be a major concern, or you would be forcibly vaccinated to protect the fatherland.
So at the end, yeah, you as an individual have limited choice, because whatever the quality of your society you live on one and your choices don't take place in a vacuum (the day they do you are most welcome to do whatever you see fit), by limiting our choices within reasonable limits we benefit from joint action against diseases.
If everybody acts on his own, we can as well go back to the Middle Ages and wait for the next bout of the pest.
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What do democrat elections have to do with scientific truth? A democratically elected group can decide that the best way to avoid plagues is prayer.
And what do they have to do with individual freedoms? .00001% less likely to get an infection you want the governmental to force it on me?
Once upon a time someone invented vaccines, and people where able to take them to reduce their risk of infection.
Now you are telling me that since forcing me to get a vaccine makes you
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Wait, what? Dude have you ever read a history book in you life? Shit people used to die of all the time has been eliminated or reduced to levels that occasional stories like this allow you to give your uneducated opinion on the matter. Small Pox alone, a completely eliminated disease by the way, has killed countless millions throughout history. Scarlet Fever, Whooping Cough, Mumps.Polio: all killers and destroyers of lives that you almost never hear about anymore. Do you think they just got bored and de
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That's not how math works...
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that is a horrible out of context quote, btw.
What it means is:
Kids between 11 and 13 who have the state recommended schedule see an increase in whooping cough. This is because the vaccine wears off. It's also why the CDC recommends 11,12 and not 13 for the booster.
and this: ..."
" since he's more likely
Is a complete misrepresentation of the facts.
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I have kids -- and I *DO* vaccinate them.
I, however, have suffered massive reactions to vaccines in the past and now refuse them. The worst was a HepC which knocked me on my arse for a month. Never finished the full course of that vaccine.
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HepA is "required" in Texas - gave our 2.5yr old a 108 fever and a trip to the ER for an ice bath.
Re:Blame the unvaccinated kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider: Allowing them to choose to be unvaccinated significantly increases the risk for you and your children.
Diseases like this only vanish when everyone is vaccinated, otherwise local outbreaks can still spread from the unvaccinated into the general population.
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I think you are mixing up your diseases. There hasn't been a case of smallpox since 1978 and there hasn't been a case in the wild since 1975. Perhaps you mean polio.
Also, pertussis is a bacteria, not a virus, and the form found in cattle is not the same as the one that causes whooping cough in humans.
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How many people died of smallpox each year before vaccinations? Now it's zero. While we'll never be able to completely eliminate the theoretical possibility that smallpox may come back at some point in the future, the smallpox vaccine has done tremendous good for mankind.
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Really? You have no problem with murder? You don't want "The Man" saying you have to drive on the right side of the road or stop for red lights?
I'm sorry, but until you can have a planet all to yourself, complete freedom is a fantasy.
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>>>Really? You have no problem with murder?
Dumbass question. You already know the answer because it's obvious. Nobody has the right to infringe upon another's rights (damage to their body or property (car)).
"Nobody has the right to harm another. And that's all the government should restrain him." - Thomas Jefferson; author of the Declaration, coauthor of the Bill of Rights, founder of the Democrat Party, second highest IQ among our presidents (estimated at 150-160).
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How about forcing people to get a basic education?
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Of course not. There are lots of ways to get an education besides forcing people to attend government-owned schools or government-scripted syllabi. Reading books for example..... that's pretty much how all Americans did it prior to 1850 (example: Lincoln) or 1900 (people living on farms). Even today there are private colleges where the entire curriculum is based-around reading books from Greeks, Romans, renaissance authors, et cetera. They do not follow the government-proscribed model.
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Great, the you won't mind if I build a coal fire plant next to your home? Cause that's my choice.
Also, I drive on the left side of the road, because I'm an 'merican and that's my choice, fuck all of you.
'merica FUCK YEAH.
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>>>Great, the you won't mind if I build a coal fire plant next to your home?
Nope.
Modern coal plants are cleaner than the exhaust coming out of my and my neighbors' cars. It's just water vaper coming out of newly-built coal stacks. So go ahead and build it.
Re:Blame the unvaccinated kids (Score:4, Insightful)
That's called parenting. Until your kids reach the age of majority or are otherwise emancipated, you have to make these decisions for them. You're legally obligated to do so, in fact.
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You're right except I can't take the risk of my child getting a deadly illness until he or she is age 20 (when the brain reaches full maturity). I make the decisions.
Besides: My house; my rules. Outside my house people can do as they please (I will not force them), but inside my house then they obey the rules. No smoking. No cursing. No stealing. No illegal immigration through my front door unless they ASK first if they may enter. And so on.
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So, is a booster shot really worthwhile? Particularly for their own health?
Nope, it's for the health of others (babies). Welcome to society; enjoy your stay!
I got a DTaP because I had a daughter on the way and knew my previous shot had worn of loooong ago. The shot was not for my sake, but for hers.