Measles Cases Top Last Year's Total 419
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: So far this year there have been 387 confirmed U.S. measles cases, more than 2018's full-year total and the second-largest number since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000 (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease has spread to 15 states in 2019, with six continuing outbreaks of three or more cases each in Washington, New York, New Jersey and California. The development has sparked new policies aimed at boosting inoculation and curbing misinformation about the measles vaccine.
Measles cases have has risen since 2000 as infected travelers bring the disease to the U.S. Those travelers -- unvaccinated foreign nationals or Americans who become infected abroad -- have spread the highly contagious disease to others in the U.S. who aren't vaccinated or hadn't previously had measles. These cases have fueled outbreaks in communities where large numbers of people haven't been inoculated because of personal or religious exemptions to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The largest growth in infections since measles was eliminated totaled 23 outbreaks and 667 cases in 2014. Last year there were 17 outbreaks and 372 confirmed cases. The number of cases in 2019 could increase in the coming months. Measles is a seasonal disease, with cases rising in late winter and early spring in temperate climates, according to the World Health Organization.
Measles cases have has risen since 2000 as infected travelers bring the disease to the U.S. Those travelers -- unvaccinated foreign nationals or Americans who become infected abroad -- have spread the highly contagious disease to others in the U.S. who aren't vaccinated or hadn't previously had measles. These cases have fueled outbreaks in communities where large numbers of people haven't been inoculated because of personal or religious exemptions to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The largest growth in infections since measles was eliminated totaled 23 outbreaks and 667 cases in 2014. Last year there were 17 outbreaks and 372 confirmed cases. The number of cases in 2019 could increase in the coming months. Measles is a seasonal disease, with cases rising in late winter and early spring in temperate climates, according to the World Health Organization.
Something missing in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
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Necessary bills for unnecessary outbreaks are being paid by all of us.
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com] The true dollar cost of the anti-vaccine movement
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Far less than the damage done by open-heart surgeries.
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That's not going to help, since the major problem for everybody is that some people aren't getting vaccinated. Honestly, I wouldn't be nearly so mad at the anti-vaxxers if they were only hurting themselves. Unfortunately, since they are helping to spread contagious diseases, they're not.
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Conspiratorial thinking, in largest part. (Score:5, Informative)
In order of magnitude, antivaccination attitudes were highest among those who
(a) were high in conspiratorial thinking
(b) were high in reactance
(c) reported high levels of disgust toward blood and needles
(d) had strong individualistic/hierarchical worldviews.
In contrast, demographic variables (including education) accounted for nonsignificant or trivial levels of variance.
The Psychological Roots of Anti-Vaccination Attitudes: A 24-Nation Investigation [semanticscholar.org], Hornsey, M. J., Harris, E. A., & Fielding, K. S. Health Psychology (2018)
I don't know what you can do with that, but that's what's wrong with them: Conspriacy theorists who are bolshie, but not from any particular education level or demographic group.
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Are they people who are already prone to conspiratorial thinking and being bolshie, or were they made that way when they fell down the anti-vax rabbit hole and got "radicalized"?
A journalist in the UK did test that was only semi-serious, but which had interesting results. He cut out all sources of news except for the Daily Mail. He reported feeling more paranoid and being more angry after a month of exposure, having come to view all sorts of groups with suspicion and hostility.
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Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
Its called an IQ, they just don't have any.
That's not the problem, everyone has an IQ.
It's most likely that some of these people are actually quite intelligent, they just aren't very good at collecting correct information about the world. Some of them actually spend a lot of time and effort into researching the topic, so you can't even say they are lazy. What is it that they are missing that prevents them from collecting accurate information about the world? A lack of knowledge about statistics?
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a lack of critical thinking skills and/or logical reasoning ability.
These people are like large children, unable to think things through or weigh them with any sense of proportion. They're prone to magical thinking and jumping to conclusions.
Reasoning with them usually just makes them dig in their heels because a) they don't want to feel dumb, and b) they don't want to lose face.
At some point eventually even they'll know they're wrong, but they'll go down with the ship rather than admit that they bought into a load of bullshit.
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Interesting)
So why is the anti-vaxxer movement so heavily tied in many countries to the especially affluent, highly educated? They wouldn't get where they are lacking critical thinking skills and/or logical reasoning ability. Hell there's massive swaths of people teaching in universities(i.e. subject expert professors) here in Canada, and they're the core demographic of the anti-vaxxer movement.
Here's my guess. They've become so specialized in the areas that they teach, that they've become literal retards outside of it. It's why you'll see country kids vaccinated, and city kids not. Kids who grew up in small towns vaccinated, but the kids in major urban areas where government, science, and various specialty sectors live, not. We grew up with various diseases that would threaten animals like turkeys, chickens, pigs, cows, and so on. And know just how much vaccinating can make a difference. The urbanites on the other hand don't, have never seen it, it's especially bad with the "but food comes from the supermarket" lot.
Your point about losing face is right, but it has far more. Listen to an educated anti-vaxxer go on about how they "know" they're right, because of their education.
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:4, Insightful)
Affluent parents are also much more likely to be home schooled and vaccination optional, poor parents have to send kids to public schools where vaccination is mandatory.
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Affluent parents are also much more likely to be home schooled and vaccination optional
Think you meant to say affluent parents kids are more likely to be sent to private schools, where vaccinations can be optional. In Canada, you're more likely to home school especially if you're on the poorer end of the scale as well.
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It's why you'll see country kids vaccinated, and city kids not.
Is that really true? Country kids are much more likely to be vaccinated than city kids?
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:4, Informative)
Is that really true? Country kids are much more likely to be vaccinated than city kids?
I can't speak for the US, but in Canada it's around 93% rural vaccinated vs 61% urban. Got a bit different a few years ago when the laws got changed that if you have a kid in public school they must be vaccinated here in Ontario. There was a huge outbreak of measles and chickenpox in the Ottawa/Hull area a few years ago, basically one year after the other. Only 13% of the kids were vaccinated, all of their parents worked in government, or education, or were in various specialty areas relating to government work(NGO's and such). And all of those kids attended private schools. You can dig up the articles on it from the globe and mail, or ottawa times if you're really interested in it.
Personally having had chickenpox during the big outbreak back in the 1980's, I sure as hell wished that the vaccine was covered by OHIP at the time instead of being $400/pop(about $850 today). Something my parents couldn't afford. Seeing the reactivation of it in shingles with my grandparents was pretty bad, my one grandmothers reaction was bad enough it put her into the hospital.
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One issue I have heard from people who have concerns is the sheer number of vaccinations. According to the CDC [cdc.gov], 19 vaccinations are recommended by the time a baby is 6 months old!
This creates a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water. That is, rather than spread out the vaccinations, or just get the really important ones, get none. When everything is top priority, nothing is.
It doesn't help that there's a ton of mis-information attributing every possible bad thing that may happen to a vaccination
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
While "19 vaccinations" sounds like a lot one have to understand that that very same child will be exposed to more than a million bacteria proteins during and shortly after birth so 19 is a drop in the ocean for an infants immune system.
When measuring the immune system of an infant Scientists have calculated that they can handle over 10000 vaccines at any one time: https://pediatrics.aappublicat... [aappublications.org]
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The whole "but it's too many vaccinations" bit is pretty stupid. If anything, the whole mass "everything must be sterile, wrapped in a bubble and protected along with air tight homes" has done far more damage to a persons ability to fight off infections. Think of it this way, an urban kids immune system in some countries is so weak that doctors actually recommend sending them to "go play on a farm" for a week or two. Or be repeatedly exposed to barn air before their 1st birth day for a total time of 6 we
Re: Something missing in the head (Score:5, Informative)
First of all new borns basically have no immune system. Vaccination before about 6 weeks is completely pointless
Nonsense. Newborns have a poorly developed immune system, but that's a far cry from "no immune system".
If you'd bothered looking at the list, the only vaccination given prior to 6 weeks is the Hep-B vaccine, and that's due to the high risk of developing chronic Hep-B. And despite your protestations, plenty of European countries also give the Hep-B vaccine at birth:
https://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.... [europa.eu]
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> Good luck figuring out what is true :P
That's pretty simple. In (B)
> where is the high risk of infection if everyone is vaccinated at birth?
you generalize/exaggerate from a statement "plenty of European countries also give the Hep-B vaccine at birth" to "everyone is vaccinated at birth". Europe is not the entire world, and the original statement did not even imply that the vaccine was mandatory, something which should be obvious from the topic of conversation.
Which leads me to question whether anythi
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:4)
So why is the anti-vaxxer movement so heavily tied in many countries to the especially affluent, highly educated?
That’s where the partisan tilt comes in. Antivaxers on the right are tied to the Christian fundamentalist movement, with some help from the Nye County desert conspiracy community. As such, they are as far outside the nation’s conversational mainstream as the creationists are.
On the left, meanwhile, the antivaxers went to the same schools as the No Nukers and food faddists. They dominate in Hollywood and The East Coast intellectual community. In milieux like this, old faiths like Communism find a natural successor in anti-science.
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So why is the anti-vaxxer movement so heavily tied in many countries to the especially affluent, highly educated?
One contributor might be their lack of experience - first hand witness or heard - of all the horrors of communicable diseases which killed and ruined so many lives in the poorer countries. Most people from rich countries haven't seen an iron lung before unless they're very old.
Measles in USA, even at 387 cases this year, is probably perceived as a very remote threat, "things that just doesn't happen often in developed region; not in my neighborhood", compared to other perceived threats like drowning fr
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Here's my guess. They've become so specialized in the areas that they teach, that they've become literal retards outside of it
This isn't unique to the highly educated. Your average plumber is not going to do all that well on an astrophysics test even though they are astonishingly good at plumbing.
The difference is these people believe that they are smart due to their greater educational attainment. So they assume they are smart in every subject, even when they're woefully uneducated in that subject since it was not part of their degree program.
If you'd like an example, take a gander at pretty much any Slashdot article regarding,
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If you threaten my well-being or the well-being of my family, I should be free to shoot you on sight. If not vaccinating only affected the unvaccinated, no one would care.
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If you threaten my well-being or the well-being of my family, I should be free to shoot you on sight. If not vaccinating only affected the unvaccinated, no one would care.
Hot lead vaccination lol
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If I wasn't so lazy I would not vaccinate out of anti-collectivist principle, not because of any potential harm a vaccine can cause.
Then you're free to fuck off and die of smallpox, except you can't because it was eradicated by vaccination. It's not a choice thing like getting a tattoo.
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just anti-vaxx, but there's a strong resurgence in conspiracy theories in general. It's social media spreading this stuff mostly, with a strong theme of "we're smarter than all the experts, so join us and you'll be one of the smartest people on the planet too!" Anti-vaxx, flat-earth, faked moon landing, and just this week there's a conspiracy forming around why the rapper Nipsey Hussel was killed.
Add to that a strong anti-education movement that seems to be forming, and an anti-science movement, and you can see this here on slashdot even.
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It's because the experts keep discrediting themselves. You might not think they are, but to an increasingly large number of people, science and government institutions are not trustworthy, for what they consider good reasons. The decades of constant spittle-flying extremism from those advocating the positions of these experts, from climate to vax, does absolutely nothing to help instill faith in anyone.
I consider myself a scientifically-minded person and I no longer have any faith in the scientific institut
No. Sometimes you can't reach stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
Can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. You can deluge anti-vaxxers with an exceptionally polite list of facts and research and it just makes them dig in even more. So what do you do with people that can't be reasoned with?
1) Mocking. The Daily Show h
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Media put that in your head (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Something missing in the head (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm still not convinced that any of the flat-earthers are actually serious.
I know one. I have bad news for you. They are really, really serious.
See here for someone explaining it from a supposed "biblical" standpoint:
http://www.jaymc.com/FlatEarth... [jaymc.com]
and this graphic in particular, with Bible verses:
http://www.jaymc.com/FlatEarth... [jaymc.com]
They conveniently leave out the verses that say the earth is round (meaning, a sphere) and hung in the heavens. Even the ancients understood this stuff to some extent, they use allegories which people now are taking literally.
Not just social media (Score:3, Insightful)
Russia Madcow has been pushing a stupid conspiracy theory for almost three years on MSNBC. Whereas people who call BS on crap like false flags in Syria or a DNC worker being shot twice in a robbery where nothing is taken are smeared as "conspiracy theorists".
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'smeared as "conspiracy theorists"'
Some of these theories have some supporting evidence, though not to the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level of proof. Others have no evidence at all. The latter are conspiracy theories, not the former.
Take for example the Seth Rich case. No evidence at all has turned up to back the claim that he was assassinated. On the other hand, Seth Rich himself said it was a mugging gone bad and the perps ran away... You did remember that Seth Rich lived long enough to get to the hospi
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Re:Something missing in the head (Score:4, Funny)
My wife is anti-vax. She is intelligent and educated.
I had 2 MicroVax IIs, and one VAXStation 3100, all set up in a cluster.
She made me get rid of them once we were married and were thinking of having children.
She did let me keep the collection of Sparcstations, but only because they could sit on the desk, rather than being the desk.
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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Isaac Asimov, Column in Newsweek (21 January 1980)
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One of the main problems here is believing the fraud perpetrated, due to lack of critical thinking skills.
It's even been measured scientifically to an astounding degree of accuracy. One heartfelt testimonial is given the same weight as a stack of scientific papers 2.74948 miles tall.
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that vaccines were too successful. Most parents nowadays have no first hand knowledge of how bad these diseases were. This is a good thing, of course, but it also means parents can easily assume that a low severity for measles ("you just get a rash for a week and then you're fine") and other diseases (Whooping cough: "you just cough for a bit"). Combine this with Internet misinformation inflating the risk of vaccines ("They've got toxins... TOXINS!!!") and you have a recipe for a bad risk calculation. Sadly, it might take a few more outbreaks before some parents really get the message that the vaccination risk is much lower than the disease risk.
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1 death every 3 years on average from 387 reported measles cases per year
And how would that number change with reduced levels of vaccination ?
So let's not overreact quite yet
Suppose your car is parked next to the river, and you notice it ever so slowly rolling towards the edge. What would be a good time to start reacting ?
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Well, if the car rolls slow enough, the river might dry out before it reaches it? Lets watch and wait!
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Or we could pull our heads out now. What if a simple shot could prevent all those deaths from sharks, fireworks and train crashes. And the consequences of measles don't just include "death". It can also make you blind or deaf or leave you with brain damage.
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Yeah, who the fuck cares about preventing a pandemic? Let's just wait for people to start dropping like flies, and then we'll consider action!
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From the CDC:
In the decade before 1963 when a vaccine became available, nearly all children got measles by the time they were 15 years of age. It is estimated 3 to 4 million people in the United States were infected each year. Also each year, among reported cases, an estimated 400 to 500 people died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 1,000 suffered encephalitis (swelling of the brain) from measles.
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Speaking of a sense of proportion.... in the United States you're three times as likely to die from a shark attack (1 death per year on average) as you are from from the measles (1 death every 3 years on average from 387 reported measles cases per year).
To put that into further perspective, the U.S. averages [ufl.edu] 11 deaths from fireworks and 24 from train crashes per year. Death from a literal lightning strike is 141 times as common than dying from the measles in the United States.
So let's not overreact quite yet.
And more people die in the bath than by terrorism but where does all the money go? I don't see many anti-bath teams running around, do you?
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of a sense of proportion.... in the United States you're three times as likely to die from a shark attack (1 death per year on average) as you are from from the measles (1 death every 3 years on average from 387 reported measles cases per year).
To put that into further perspective, the U.S. averages [ufl.edu] 11 deaths from fireworks and 24 from train crashes per year. Death from a literal lightning strike is 141 times as common than dying from the measles in the United States.
So let's not overreact quite yet.
Yes, there are things that kill you other than measles. The difference is that measles is pretty easily preventable - people just have to get vaccinated.
The other issue with measles - and most of the "childhood diseases" - is that they have other complications besides death.
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/ab... [cdc.gov]
"About one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability."
"Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a very rare, but fatal disease of the central nervous system that results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life. SSPE generally develops 7 to 10 years after a person has measles, even though the person seems to have fully recovered from the illness. Since measles was eliminated in 2000, SSPE is rarely reported in the United States."
That last line is ironic.
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"some of these people are actually quite intelligent, they just aren't very good at collecting correct information about the world"
This. Without naming names, there is a blogger I used to read. A very intelligent guy, but...over the last couple of years, he has somehow fallen into the world of conspiracy theorists. Out of curiosity, I looked in on his blog a couple of days ago: he is now busily denying that the Apollo moon landings ever happened. It's really bizarre, watching the convolutions an intelligent
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I think people are attracted to the idea of feeling special because they "know". Also, the idea that there's an invisible cabal of elite that's shaping the world may be more palatable than the idea that it's nothing but chaotic forces of nature. At least if somebody is in control, there's perpetual hope of a simple fix.
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If all the "research' you do is anti-vax research, then you will get a distorted picture. I think the anti-vaxers go in with mind-set waiting to be validated. So they "research" anti-vax stuff. Lo and behold, their preconceptions are confirmed. Now they are "informed" anti-vaxers.
They are not unlike the 9/11 conspiracy crowd. They band together for mutual recursive backscratching and no new scientifically vetted information is allowed. Try arguing with one and sooner or later you run into, "you haven't seen
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Informative)
Not true, stop repeating this. It's not a partisan issue. I have run across strong conservatives who are opposed to vaccination, and will justify it by saying the government has no right to tell them what to do. It's a stupid stance but definitely a common conservative view.
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Informative)
Not true, stop repeating this. It's not a partisan issue.
Indeed. Anti-vaccination beliefs don't follow the usual political polarization [theconversation.com].
Right-wing kooks see vaccinations as a government conspiracy. Left-wing kooks see vaccinations as a corporate conspiracy. Moderates vaccinate their kids.
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Not true, stop repeating this. It's not a partisan issue.
Indeed. Anti-vaccination beliefs don't follow the usual political polarization [theconversation.com].
Right-wing kooks see vaccinations as a government conspiracy. Left-wing kooks see vaccinations as a corporate conspiracy. Moderates vaccinate their kids.
This,
This kind of nutty thinking is the fault of extremism, not of any particular left/right view. In Australia, Anti-Vax typically follows the well-off hippie crowds who aren't short of a few bob but are typically far left voters (well far left for Australians) which we call "Champagne Socialists" here in the UK. Australia tends not to have the far-right religious kooks that plague the US, at least not in the numbers the US has and the few that they have are far more concerned in getting the government
Re:Illegals (Score:5, Informative)
The vaccination rate in Central and South American countries exceed the vaccination rate of the US.
So no, it's not "illegal aliens". They get their shots. We don't.
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Not true, stop repeating this. It's not a partisan issue. I have run across strong conservatives who are opposed to vaccination, and will justify it by saying the government has no right to tell them what to do. It's a stupid stance but definitely a common conservative view.
I'd have thought there's be more conservatives in the anti-vax movement - the religious ones.
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The issue is exactly partisan because asshats like Alex Jones has support of POTUS.
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Yes because one of the interesting things about people is that all of their complex multi-dimensional complex points of view, flaws, beliefs, intelligence, past experience . . . this can all be distilled down to produce a point, upon a one dimensional line. And that line has a clearly defined centre point. People will either fall to the left or the right of that polarising centre point. Once there, that's it. You'd better stick with your own kind, because there will never be reconciliation with the other si
Re: Something missing in the head (Score:2)
I've discovered that vaccines saves hundreds of thousands of lives, and billions of dollars in medical costs annually.
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What you mean with "post-vax"?
She got symptoms right after vaccination? That can happen, after all the vaccine consist out of virus fragments of the virus it should vaccinate against.
She got sick later? Can happen, too. Vaccine is not guaranteed to work!!
You can even get sick from the vaccine, but that is rare, and it should not be any different than getting sick from the real thing.
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Re:Hallelujah, praise the vax! (Score:5, Funny)
Water is toxic. Please stop ingesting it.
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We're gonna FORCE everyone to shoot up with CRAZY CHEMICALS!!!??1!!!1!!!! Hallelujah, praise the vax!
Totally full of DHMO. The most deadly chemical known to man, fatal in all forms and its everywhere, completely unregulated. Mobilise the masses, something must be done!
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Waiting for people to be dying is both bad policy and utterly immoral.
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Interesting)
In the USA vaccine makers have blanket immunity from lawsuit. You can not sue them due to harm, vaccine makers have no accountability. If you were a profit making corporation with no liability for harm, would you maybe give less of a crap sometimes and maybe use the old familiar trick of adding mercury to boost the vaccine production in some batches? Maybe, who cares if you did? No one can sue you for damages!
This system was created to insure vaccine makers would continue creating vaccines. It is fallout from the incident at Cutter labs where their polio vaccine was produced according to government guidelines but still gave some people polio. The company was sued for negligence even though they hadn't actually been negligent.
Re:Something missing in the head (Score:5, Informative)
In the USA vaccine makers have blanket immunity from lawsuit.
You misunderstand the law. It's not that they are immune to lawsuits. The government has assumed the liability.
So you can indeed sue due to vaccine injury. You'll just be suing the government instead of a corporation.
And you don't actually have to sue. The government set up a vaccine injury program where you can file a claim and get paid without a lawsuit. You are still free to sue if you'd like.
Also, the FDA stops a whole lot more vaccines than lawsuits ever could. It's not like there's nothing between the corporation coming up with something and the free market, as you imply. And if you want to claim regulatory capture, you'd have to show some vaccines that would not pass trials yet got released.
use the old familiar trick of adding mercury to boost the vaccine production in some batches?
:faceplam:
Thiomersal is a preservative. It has nothing do do with boosting production rates. It was introduced into vaccines in order to let doctors use one vial to treat multiple patients. Pull out a new, empty syringe, fill it with a dose of vaccine from a vial, give the patient the shot, toss the syringe. The alternative is syringes pre-loaded with vaccine, which cost you a lot more money.
Thiomersal is also ethyl-mercury, which you pee out. Not methyl-mercury that stays in your system. If you want to say something stupid like "it's got mercury so it's all the same!!!" consider ethanol vs methanol. One will get you drunk. One will kill you very quickly. They're almost identical. Ethyl-mercury vs methyl-mercury is similar.
So, congrats on making vaccines cost more. Also at a higher profit to "big pharma". Also, Thiomersal was removed from childhood vaccines in 2000, with no reduction in autism rates, so you did all this for nothing.
Before you go off half cocked, don't forget, migrants carry disease
Only if the vaccination rate in their country is lower than the vaccination rate in the US.
And since you're making a very obvious dogwhistle, the vaccination rate in Central and South American countries is higher than the US.
migrants expose themselves and their new host community to new strains of pathogens
This doesn't matter for the MMR vaccine. The different strains on the planet are still covered by the vaccine. You need a high-mutation-rate disease like influenza for strains to be relevant.
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Well, ... I _had_ all those diseases kids in our days get vaccinated against. Perhaps if child doctors don't insist hard enough, young parents (20, 30 years old) who never had those diseases (probably never saw/met one having them) simply underestimate the risks?
I'm 52
Exactly right. They grew up in an age where these diseases had been eradicated and they have no idea what life was like before.
Say goodbye to the anti-vaxers. (Score:5, Interesting)
This latest outbreak is going to jump start more laws to stop this stupid crap. If you go to a public school I want no exceptions to MMR and DPT except medical ones. Don't like it? Pay for a private school that doesn't care. If that doesn't work, we need to stop the un-vaccinated from going into public places like grocery stores.
Lets clamp down on these jackasses until they can't live in the society without getting the vaccine, or all go live on their own private island.
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Then it sounds like you would choose option number two: go live on your own private island. That's fair.
Re:Say goodbye to the anti-vaxers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Say goodbye to the anti-vaxers. (Score:2)
I'm gonna sue the MTA. No way they should be allowing people with the common cold to ride the Subway. What are they, deranged murderers??
Stupidity Is Winning (Score:5, Interesting)
This shit just makes me shake my head....all the work and effort and time and money that went into developing vaccines, and these ninnies won't use them.
And it's all because discredited former British doctor (Andrew Wakefield) published a bullshit medical paper claiming that vaccines were unsafe. That's all it took- the morons and dumbshits ate it up and stopped vaccinating their children.
Now we have measles epidemics again, yay.
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There's a big difference between someone who doesn't get vaccinated for measles and someone who doesn't get a yearly flu vaccine.
You're also ignoring the fact that some vaccines are harmful, albeit to a small number of people. Guillain-Barre syndrome is real and people who received the flu shot in the 2008-2009 season possibly at greater risk of H1N1 [umn.edu].
It's just as misleading to claim all vaccines are totally safe as it is to claim they cause things like autism.
It's a self-solving problem (Score:2)
In the context of Darwinism, those who refuse to vaccinate their children (and those who associate with such people) are unfit when it comes to genetic survival. I'm not saying it will be fast or clean but ultimately, this problem will solve itself.
If people don't wise up, I'm pretty sure there will be revenge killing where parents who refused to vaccinate their child are killed by the relatives of a child who died as a result. This could also result in possible sociological solution where doctors enable
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child are killed by the relatives of a child who died as a result. ...
Then the other child was not vaccinated either
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Measles vaccine, as an example, is only about 97% effective. It's good enough to stop the spread of measles, but not good enough to absolutely guarantee that you won't get measles....
Wny Vaccinate. (Score:2)
Measles is eradicable (Score:5, Interesting)
The only infectious human disease we have ever eradicated is smallpox, which was eradicated way back in the 1970s. From an eradication point of view, measles and smallpox are very similar: they are viruses, they are highly infectious, they do not mutate super-fast, they infect only humans, it is obvious when someone has the disease, there is a very effective vaccine. From a technical point of view, eradicating measles is a very similar task to eradicating smallpox.
However, there is one significant difference: measles is a fairly worrying disease, whereas smallpox is absolutely terrifying. This means there hasn't been the social and political will to push an eradication program. If the will did exist, we could wrap it up in about 10 years (wild guess on my part), and then nobody would ever need a measles vaccination ever again. Don't like vaccinations? Push for eradication. Your kids will get the jab, but your grandkids, great-grandkids, etc. forever, will not.
The list of diseases considered eradicable (as of 2008) is quite short. For example, influenza is not - it readily jumps species (so eradication from humans would require vaccinating wild ducks, for example) and it mutates rapidly, so new vaccines are constantly needed.
The list: [wikipedia.org]
Smallpox (eradicated)
Polio (on the verge of eradication, probably 5 to 10 years off)
Dracunculiasis/Guinea worm (on the verge of eradication)
Yaws (on the verge of eradication)
Malaria (eradication still decades away)
Hookworm
Lymphatic filariasis
Measles
Mumps
Rubella
Lymphatic filariasis
Cysticercosis
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Is Malaria on that list because of vaccination or taking out the mosquitos? Because I know some people have talked about intentionally wiping out that species.
Re:South of the Border (Score:5, Informative)
Most cases are spread by returning unvaccinated travellers, sorry to ruin your dog whistle.
Latin America has better MMR use than USA (Score:4, Informative)
Latin Americans are generally vaccinated (MMR) at a higher rate than people in the USA.
I can tell you that when I looked it up online (google search) I found that Latin American countries had higher reported rates of MMR vaccination of their people than the USA does, by and large.
I don't know who brought measles to the USA (illegals or unvaccinated travellers, or vaccinated travellers who got sick anyway), but looking at the stats, it's more justified for Latin America to bar immigration from the USA to them than vice versa.
Kind of took the wind out of any ideas I may have had about illegal immigrants from Latin America bringing disease to USA. Either exaggerated or not true, more likely driven by racist bigotry than fact, at least when it comes to measles/mumps/rubella.
In fact, given that I have heaps of evidence of racist bigotry, (black people get criminal convictions and far harsher punishments in USA for the *exact same crime* and with the *exact same criminal record* (look it up!)) and no real information about immigrants bringing disease, I'm just going to assume claims of immigrants bringing disease in at larger rates than native spread are more likely racist bigotry than fact. Occam's razor--not guaranteed to be correct, but a good heuristic.
--PeterM
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Your reading comprehension is non-existent, so there's no hope for a resurgence. Elimination is defined by region, not world-wide. The cases in the US spread from people who came from outside the US.
Re: Liability (Score:5, Insightful)
But why, pray tell, do you think the death count from measles are so low?
Re:Interesting question is (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even that won't work, if there's an animal reservoir and/or vector for the disease. That's why it's impossible to completely eradicate bubonic plague, for example.
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It kind of does if the animals are also vaccinated.
That's how Belgium and Germany eliminated rabies, by spreading vaccinated bait for the foxes.
It is far more difficult to achieve for the plague, though.
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May illegal immigrants are coming from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Not sure of their vaccination rates, but I'm sure it's not good.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
and these are just the ones they catch. Others are disappearing into society, going to schools and using emergency facilities when they get really sick.
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Interestingly, EVERYONE who got the measles had been vaccinated.
This fact has been suppressed by the mainstream news outlets.
Vaccination isn't the same as immunisation. Hence two completely different words.
MMR is 97% effective. Or 3% ineffective (2 doses) (Score:3)
I didn't get the context about the claim that EVERYONE who got the measles had been vaccinated. I know that in some of the outbreaks in the USA right now, they're mostly raging amongst the unvaccinated.
That said, vaccines aren't always perfectly effective. People's immune systems differ. MMR is 97% effective against measles after 2 doses. That means that 3% of people are susceptible despite vaccination.
When you have an insanely contagious disease like measles, which can infect 20 new people for every ca
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Citation?
I've seen several articles discussing the current outbreak as happening to people who were not vaccinated in areas where lack of vaccination was more common than normal for the USA as a whole....
Re:Interestingly... (Score:5, Informative)
Replying to myself.
A quick check of Clark County, WA, indicates that of 73 cases reported at the time of the article, 63 were NOT vaccinated, three had had only one vaccination (as opposed to the two that are standard), and the remaining seven were "vaccination status unknown".
So, I repeat, where is the evidence that "EVERYONE who got the measles had been vaccinated"? Evidence seems to support at least 90% NOT vaccinated....