When I was in elementary school, this was a popular riddle:
A plane crashed on the exact border between the US and Canada. Where did they bury the survivors?
Much hilarity ensued after various guesses since you don’t bury survivors. Only those who died are buried.
I am reminded of that riddle when I read quack claims about the “superiority” of natural immunity.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Vaccine immunity is superior to natural immunity because there are dramatically more survivors of the disease itself.[/pullquote]
Why?
It is axiomatic among anti-vax quacks that natural immunity is superior to vaccine produced immunity.
Quaxpert Andrew Wakefield insists in regard to measles:
Measles vaccine has destroyed natural Herd Immunity and replaced it with a temporary and inadequate quasi Herd Immunity that necessitates a dependence on vaccination …
According to NaturalNews clown Mike Adams:
There is only one kind of immunity and that is natural immunity which is achieved by battling the infectious diseases itself. Vaccination is merely the artificial triggering of temporary responses to manmade pathogens…
Both Wakefield and Adams seem to think that the relevant issue is what happens to survivors. Indeed, in some cases, natural immunity among survivors can be more robust that vaccine induced immunity. If faced with a second outbreak of the disease, those who got the disease the first time may have superior immunity to those who were vaccinated against it and therefore missed it entirely. That is supposed to “prove” the purported superiority of natural immunity.
But just like the question about burial is the red herring in the elementary school riddle, the focus on post disease immunity is a red herring in the quack claims. Highlighting the immune status of survivors deliberately misses the point. Vaccine immunity is superior to natural immunity because there are dramatically more survivors of the disease itself.
History offers many examples of this basic fact. Approximately one third of the Eurasian population (75-200 million) succumbed to the Black Death in the mid 1300’s. No doubt the survivors had robust immunity to the particular strain of Yersinia pestis that was circulating at the time. A vaccine against plague, had it existed, might have resulted in less robust immunity among survivors but there would have been tens of millions of more survivors.
More recently, the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 afflicted approximately 500 million people and killed 50-100 million of them. Perhaps the people who survived had more robust immunity to the particular strain of influenza thereafter than a vaccine, had it existed, would have provided. But if a vaccine had existed, a substantial proportion of the 50-100 million who died would have survived.
Our experience with vaccinations makes the point even more dramatically.
Consider this CDC chart created in the early years of the anti-vax movement:
The results are extraordinary:
Vaccine immunity led to the extinction of smallpox, a feat that natural immunity never even approached.
Cases of such “mild” childhood diseases as pertussis dropped from more than 147,000 per year to less than 7,000. Annual measles cases dropped from more than 503,000 to less than 100. Diphtheria, polio and congenital rubella nearly disappeared. And if you don’t get the diseases, you can’t die from the diseases, can’t be rendered paralyzed, blind or deaf by the diseases.
The difference between vaccine immunity is the difference between prevention and treatment … and prevention is always superior.
Insisting that the purported superiority of natural immunity among survivors means that vaccines are unnecessary makes as much sense as insisting that diet and exercise are unnecessary to prevent heart disease because most survivors won’t go on to have a second heart attack. You have to survive the first attack for any concerns about a second heart attack to be relevant. Similarly, you have to survive pertussis, measles, polio, diphtheria or smallpox in order for your immune status thereafter to be relevant.
There is no question that vaccine immunity is superior because vaccine immunity saves millions of lives that cannot be saved by natural immunity. And that would be obvious if anti-vax quacks and charlatans weren’t so effective at distracting lay people with red herrings like the immune status of survivors.
There is an interesting book that has a detailed chapter about the smallpox epidemics in 18th century Boston and Cotton Mather’s efforts to at getting the public and the medical community of the time to try inoculation ( he got a Molotov cocktail thrown into his house for his efforts. but in the next epidemic people noticed that the people who had volunteered for his inoculation experiment did not get sick or if they did it was much milder…):
Medicine and the American Revolution: How Diseases and Their Treatments Affected the Colonial Army
Side note – Cotton Mather learned about the practice of inoculation from his African slave, Onesimus who had a smallpox inoculation scar on his arm and who explained how it was done in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
I will pick that book up! It’s a particular interest of mine. It’s a very, _very_ recent thing that more troops in war are killed in combat than by infectious disease. :p
Variolation, the process of purposely inoculating a healthy person with smallpox… Often, they would take pus from someone who had a relatively mild course of the disease, thinking that it would give the recipient a mild case and then immunity. In reality, there was no way at the time to control the amount of virus given, and a mild case in person A could be ugly in person B. So the ‘success’ of variolation had more to do with giving the disease when the person was otherwise generally healthy, rather than the crapshoot of getting it at any time, and the person getting supportive care from the get-go rather than the delay to them being obviously symptomatic.
It was still a horrible, horrible process. The smallpox vaccine was a massive improvement.
While sabelmouse is nothing but a troll, you gotta love parachuters like nrbrk who come in and spew nothing but the same old anti-vax tropes and then leave to allow them to be demolished. As a vaccine supporter, it really looks good.
It’s kind of like a creationist dropping in and posting, “If humans come from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys around?” and then leaving.
You basically get to answer by writing the answer from the talkorigins FAQ, and you get to do with without any cross examination, so you don’t even break a sweat.
“If humans come from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys around?”
I love that one. “If I descended from my grandparents, why are my cousins still alive? Checkmate, evolutionists!”
That’s why I used it as an example. Not only is it a standard creationist trope, it’s a really dumb one as well.
Kind of like what nrbrk dropped here.
Sigh. I’m a pretty hardcore fundie, but I cringe when my church members bring up evolution. We had some girls babysitting the other day, and before they were leaving they picked up one of our dinosaurs (I think it was an ankylosaurus, or maybe parasaurophilus) and asked, “But this one didn’t really exist, right?” (My kids didn’t even hear her, but I gave them a quick rundown on dinosaurs just in case they had.)
2 recent cases of Diptheria in Ireland.
Diptheria!!!
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/health/two-cases-of-diphtheria-in-ireland-after-almost-50-years-1.3125703%3Fmode%3Damp
Both in adults over 40. Both survived.
No cases for 50 years, two within 18 months.
Diptheria has a 5% mortality rate, and you die choking and suffocating.
Hopefully the drive to get all pregnant women DTP-aP boosters is going some way to get herd immunity in adults up a bit.
Somehow I doubt either is feeling stronger for the experience.
5%? I thought that was low and looked it up. It is up to 20% mortality in those older than 40 and younger than 5. Ugh!
Yikes. My grandma’s cousin, a healthy 20 year old, died of diphtheria while on vacation in the 1920s. Left home healthy, was stone dead a week later.
Few people alive today even know what this disease *is.* We don’t even know how good we have it…
The BBC had a nice little episode last night on vaccines, that told the story of Jenner and cowpox (the story that made me want to be an immunologist).
They also covered the push to eradicate smallpox from the wild, and showed many videos of children and babies suffering from smallpox prior to that successful effort. Horrendous.
There’s a horrible educational video on YouTube about rabies, I think one is from Russia and another is in English showing a patient from somewhere in Africa. It’s awful to watch-the Russian chap is being interviewed over the course of a few days about how he’s feeling and in the initial stages seems fairly rational and composed. We don’t have rabies in the UK, but only because there are very strict quarantine laws. Still, we get idiots trying to smuggle in pets from abroad from time to time.
Ugh, rabies is just horrible. I bought this book, and couldn’t put it down…
https://www.amazon.com/Rabid-Cultural-History-Worlds-Diabolical/dp/0143123572/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498474098&sr=8-1&keywords=rabies
Also, too, tetanus. How can you not vaccinate your kid against that?
3RD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH AFTER HEART DISEASE AND CANCER—MEDICAL ERRORS
Considering that iatrogenic causes (doctor errors, toxic pharmaceuticals used as prescribed, and dirty hospitals) are the 3rd leading cause of death in America, shouldn’t somebody be enacting laws that protect Americans from doctors and the pharmaceutical industry?
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/05/03/476636183/death-certificates-undercount-toll-of-medical-errors
And guess what, the more doctors and scientists figure out how to prevent death from sickness, the more “but the doctor made a mistake” will be what’s left over as a cause of death. Those people in the deaths records had to die of something or other after all.
Of course, if you broke it down by what disease’s treatment the mistake was made in, you’d still see that what you’re trying to paint as a problem here is a statistical artifact of lumping together the deaths during the treatment of heaps of different things.
Oh no need, we have people like you for that, for free, on the internet.
Have you no respect for the taxpayer dollar?
I’m just not sure what this nonsequitor has to do with anything. And the US does have laws protecting its citizens from pharma. Ever heard of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act? Supplements, now. The laws protecting US-Americans against Big Supplement are extremely weak. For example, the FDA has literally no right to stop a dangerous supplement from going to market and only limited right to stop dangerous supplements from staying on the market. It’s an $80 billion industry and has almost no safety checks on it whatsoever. Big Pharma is unlikely to kill you. Big Supplement…probably will.
1ST LEADING CAUSE OF SAVING LIVES – VACCINATION.
Please stay on topic nrbrk.
OUTBREAKS—A LESSON IN BIG PHARMA MEDIA RELATIONS
There’s never a major childhood disease outbreak. It’s the same number of children who would normally get these mild ailments.
What’s different is the media’s hysteria in reporting it—at the behest of big pharma, which includes all of the crooked legislators and governmental “health” agencies who are beholden to it. It’s all about vaccine sales and has nothing to do with public health.
In fact, they never track these stories beyond the outbreak. Because if they did, you would see that 100% of these affected children recover fine in a week or so. That’s the real story—the part of the story they always omit.
Now here’s real measles news you’ll never see in the mainstream media…
http://www.globalresearch.ca/measles-vaccines-kill-more-people-than-measles-cdc-data-proves/5429736
You can read about the MILD ailments here. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html
Because if they did, you would see that 100% of these affected children recover fine in a week or so.
latimes.com/local/california/la-me-measles-20150418-story.html
“California’s measles outbreak is over, but vaccine fight continues
About 1 in 5 who got the measles in California had to be hospitalized. One collapsed at home, was placed on a mechanical ventilator due to severe pneumonia and developed multiple organ injury. Another suffered acute respiratory distress syndrome and had to be treated with an experimental drug that required special approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”
From that article: “a single person with measles exposed 14 pregnant women and 98 infants, including 44 in the neonatal intensive care unit”
I can’t even. This right here is why people need to vaccinate. Imagine being one of the parents of these babies, the worry of dealing with a baby in NICU compounded by measles exposure. Ugh.
BUT that person helped them get NATURAL immunity so that’s totes ok, amirite?
Measles kills over 130,000 people annually. It’s not exactly mild. Before widespread vaccination, it killed around 2.6 million people per year, and we are nowhere near the 98% uptake rates we would need to truly eradicate the disease. But the more people are vaccinated, the less people die.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/
malnourished and otherwise compromised people in 3rd world countries, often despite being vaxxed.
Did you miss the news where a woman in the USA DIED in 2015?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/02/measles-death-washington-state/29624385/
But according to heartless anti-vax morons, because her immune system was compromised, she didn’t deserve to live, right??
Otherwise she was healthy, and definitely NOT in a 3rd world country.
Yes, most deaths happen in underdeveloped nation, but where do you think most of the measles cases in the US get imported from???
Measles stricken countries are only a plane ride away.
1 woman with a myriad of health issues who died in a way possibly vaguely connected to measles changes the fact of those 130000, that die because of other things.
pro vax logic!
and then you predictably mix up incidence and outcome. the outcome is determined by conditions, not incidence.
mot to mention vaccine caused infections.
You wouldn’t know logic if it slapped you in the face.
So people whose conditions are imperfect don’t deserve protection from incidence of infection. Gotcha.
It’s a tautology. Healthy people don’t die of VPDs because people who die of VPDs aren’t healthy.
Like all those NICU babies who that Facebook nurse will inevitably sicken and kill. But since she’s just doing it via VPDs, it won’t count as “medical mistake” in such a way as to put the blame on modern medicine, it’ll just be a tragedy we have to accept.
It’s so arbitrary. You could say that only unhealthy people die from car accidents, or tainted water, and advocate against seatbelts and municipal clean water.
The point is, fewer people die with vaccination than without, with practically no tradeoffs. Who cares where someone like sabelmouse arbitrarily defines ‘healthy’? I’m sure I could define ‘healthy’ to exclude him/her/it. Doesn’t matter.
Well, yeah, my grandmother died in a car accident (the so far – knock on wood – only person in my family in recent memory to do so). But she was unconscious at the wheel at the time, likely because of her diabetes. Ergo, seatbelts are unnecessary for healthy people!
wow! super stupid!
Oh, sabelmouse is one of those whose conditions are imperfect. Autoimmune disease, she claims.
Sabel, please provide reputable incidences of “vaccine-caused” infections…
Well the autoimmune disease was caused by vaccines, because having someone to blame is easier than realizing that bad things sometimes happen *without* conspiratorial intervention by shadowy Big Pharma bad guys. Besides, vaccine injuries are rare while protection from vaccines is common, and everyone wants to be special! God, it’s like saying that the existence of latex allergies means that no one should ever try wearing a condom to protect against diseases – after all, most STDs aren’t that bad, and pregnancy for millions of women who don’t want babies isn’t nearly as big a deal as protecting the much smaller population who can’t tolerate latex!
You know, if you’re currently pregnant, you can have sex without getting pregnant! It’s ‘natural immunity’ logic.
No you can’t! It will hurt the baby’s head!
(please say I don’t need to mention sarcasm….)
Oh, man, you’re reminding me of an episode of Louie where Louis CK is at a party and meets the surrogate mom for a couple who has the whole ‘natural’ pregnancy and childbirth planned out… surrogate is scared of all of it, she comes back to Louis’s place, one thing leads to another, they have sex. Then she goes into labor and he takes her to the hospital.
The couple gets to the hospital and is incensed that he ruined ‘their’ perfect OOH childbirth, and especially the idea that he got come all over the kid’s head…
Haha well at least that has the benefit of being *true*.
Not to mention that autoimmune disorders are strongly associated with HLA tissue type…which you are, you know…born with. As in, before you receive any vaccines.
There’s always the lambskin condoms, you know, the “natural” option instead of latex. But they aren’t as effective at preventing STD’s because they let viruses through.
And they aren’t vegan either. 🙁
If your body is so worthless and defective that it couldn’t withstand a mere vaccine, you might as well just die already.
shows how much you know about things. or want to know, for propaganda purposes.
That’s not an answer. Why don’t you just die now? You’re so weak that couldn’t even handle a vaccination, so you’re obviously just going to die of something sooner or later. Isn’t it wasteful for you to continue to exist?
how sweet.
Well, I’m just applying the same logic you apply to brown people. Why should anybody lift a finger to prevent either of you from dying?
i am glad you discredit yourself for anyone who accidentally found their way to kafka’s castle.
It’s your logic I’m demonstrating, so if anybody’s being discredited, it’s you. Try to keep up, would you?
It’s your own logic, sabel. Why should you be exempt from it?
it’s not, you’re just pretending it is [or comp challenged] for propaganda purposes.
Not at all. If you consider the people killed by VPDs to be an acceptable minority of weaklings, there’s no reason not to consider your imaginary vaccine injury to be an acceptable tiny fraction of that minority.
To care about you, we have to care about those killed and harmed by VPDs. Which your stance forbids.
such lack of logic/understanding.
“malnourished and otherwise compromised people in 3rd world countries, often despite being vaxxed.” are the ones dying of vaccine preventable diseases. You’re not denying that they die of measles, you’re just saying it’s not the measles’ fault because the people who died were malnourished and poor. Do…do you not see how awful that is?
it isn’t. it’s the malnutrition’s. and essentially capitalism’s.
the very system that you work for.
Hear that, everybody? Measles is blameless for people dying of measles.
I’ll have to remember that. You can kill people in the developing world with impunity, because they’re less resistant to death than folk in the developed world. Hit by a car, dosed with poison, infected with a disease – not the fault of anything but malnutrition. So for god’s sake, don’t give them vaccines or remove asbestos from their home or try to swerve out of the way to avoid hitting them. In sabelmouse’s world, that’s so un-worth doing, it should be actively avoided.
I think this is sabelmouse’s argument against efforts to bring clean water to the developing world. Malnourished people are less resistant to infections from tainted water, after all.
how does it feel to pretend to be this stupid for money?
It feels highly painful to follow your tortured logic to its conclusions, but nobody pays me a dime.
Oxygen thief.
Are you saying we should let people die of VPDs because there are other things out there that can kill them?
Says the person with the random auto immune condition believed to have kicked in after a vaccination.
i guess few come to these sites from the outside world so youse are free to embarrass yourselves all you like.
sabelmouse: “and then you predictably mix up incidence and outcome. the outcome is determined by conditions, not incidence.”
Hmmmm.. passed the ACME Logictron Detector 2001® over this one … needle didn’t move, not one iota.
Perfectly describes you, save for the dying part. Really, I may stop talking to such inferior beings. Can’t stand a simple vaccine when everyone around me tolerated it just fine.
What breed of subhuman ARE you?
i’m sure a whole lot of peeps are of to the doctors based on this.
Just a reminder as to sabel’s other motive for “amusing herself”:
Every time I see ‘a myriad of,’ it sets my teeth on edge. Yes, I know it’s probably Sabel’s smallest sin, but come on. Myriad is an adjective, plethora is a noun.
Oddly enough, that’s one of the few passes I give Saba (as an ESL speaker). OTOH, considering that her milk tongue is presumably German, I’d expect her to string words together in a more logical (if lengthy) fashion, so there’s that: more evidence of cognitive than linguistic barriers.
I do find her “covert” rebroadcasting of anti-vax and anti-gmo derp curated from disqus onto twitter and instagram mildly amusing, though. Who does she imagine is her target audience, if not the
already convertedchoirTrueBelievers™?And they don’t count, right?
what a weird reaction.
people die because of bad living conditions , often despite vaccines and YOU want to use them to flog vaccines rather than help improve living conditions.
No, I want them to have vaccines so they won’t get sick with vaccine preventable diseases.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/
they can just die from everything else, or the vaccine/s.
got it.
Well, when you eliminate one cause of death, what’s left is *everything else*. And yes, I’d rather die at 75 from cancer or diabetes than at 10 from a preventable/treatable disease (which could have happened to me).
i didn’t die from a childhood illness just like pretty much everybody at that time.
i was injured by the smallpox vaccine though and would rather not have spend my live with debilitating chronic conditions.
If you were ‘injured’ by the smallpox vaccine, as you seem to need to believe, how much worse would the full-blown disease have messed you up?
Ah, sabelmouse, the one who’s happy to throw the ‘weak’ ones under the bus when it comes to VPDs, but who is still so weak it can’t even deal with a simulated infection.
If you didn’t have something to randomly glom onto and blame for your condition, might you have to accept that you’re not a perfectly healthy person? That you’re as flawed, if not more so, than the ‘compromised’ people you shrug off as not worth being protected by vaccination?
you’re an idiot.
I’m merely using your own logic to describe yourself. If those who die of VPDs are ‘compromised’ and not worth considering, as you say, how much more ‘compromised’ is someone who can’t tolerate the vaccine?
no reading comp whatsoever. it’s amazing!
…and yet you can’t actually point out the problem with her rendition of your logic. Funny that.
I guess when all you have to offer is name-calling, you have to use it.
Isn’t this the point where they reach up and grab from their shelf of excuses something labeled “Aluminum” or “Thiomersal”? Except that smallpox doesn’t contain either of those.
You, uh, you have a little bit of survivorship bias showing. A lot bit, actually. See, you didn’t die of childhood illness, and neither did anyone else who didn’t die (yes, that is a tautology, shush everyone). Those who did die of childhood illnesses obviously aren’t here to tell us about it.
how about all the others who didn’t die, creating that mortality close to zero statistic?
How close to zero are we talking? 1 in 1000 die of measles, which is 0.1%. Is that close to zero to you?
I also have a debilitating chronic condition. Assume I agree with the logic that it was caused by a vaccine. I still prefer my chronic condition to being dead from a childhood illness that could have been prevented from a vaccine.
except most likely your chances of dying where close to zero, depending on several factors.
You really are a piece of work, aren’t you? You *really* think vaccines kill more people than the measles? You can’t possibly be that dense.
She also claims she isn’t antivax, somehow.
Reducing vaccine-preventable diseases in the third world reduces the money, bed, and manpower load on their healthcare resources. Money that doesn’t have to be spent on measles can now be spent on sewerage, access to fresh water, clean food, etc. Just because they’re brown doesn’t mean they might as well just shut up and die quickly.
lolollololol!
Is that your standard response when you’re shown to be ignorant and wrong?
it’s my standard response to extreme stupidity/shillines.
You might want to do better, since you’ve failed to show any reason why vaccination wouldn’t help improve health in the developing world.
And has it changed a single mind in your favor?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that lurkers have a chance to see that the emperor of your lunacy is utterly nude.
lurkers, you think this hive of insanity gets a lot of those?!
Oh yes.
*waves to lurkers*
So which is it?
Do the Disqus threads about vaccines get no lurkers because its a hive of insanity?
Or are pharmaceutical companies paying people to post on them to encourage more people to vaccinate?
.
Theres no point in both.
.
If the Disqus vaccine threads got no lurkers and were only read by the same handful of people who have already made up their minds, it would be a waste of money for pharmaceutical companies paying people to troll it as it would have no effect on the number of people who vaccinate.
i’m not talking about disqus threads but the kafkaesque hive mind that is bs med, skep and ob raptor.
i have to say , the ”poster/s” on these are so insane it’s hard to believe pharma would want it/them associated.
on the other hand, the name of the game is disruption at all cost and pharma is getting ever more desperate.
but i’ve never doubted that there are a few seriously fanatic actual provaxxers out there.
the handful, or fewer , posting here might well be it.
You need to get out more.
Seing as ‘pharma’ also provides me with the test kit to diagnose parvo and the medications to treat parvo, I highly doubt they are getting desperate over anti-vaxxers and a possibly lower rate of vaccination.
They really make much more money treating the sick then preventing the disease.
You are actually helping them make more money.
The biggest Pharma Shills are the anti-vaxxers.
Preventing HepB vs treating liver cancer? Way more money on the anti-vax side.
Preventing HPV vs treating cervical cancer? Way more money on the anti-vax side.
Preventing influenza infection? Lord, have you seen the cost of a single influenza hospitalization? Especially if you get pneumonia on top!
The antibiotics and hospitalization costs for infected chickenpox sores, the treatment for tetanus infection, the cost of a whooping cough hospitalization… man, that is not small potatoes. That’s Big Supplement level money.
Not to mention the Big Gubbmint costs associated with contact tracing, quarantine/isolation, post-exposure prophylaxis … necessary to control outbreaks. And in the case of measles, additional lucre poured into the Medical Mafia/Industrial Complex to deal with subsequent infections due to knocking out previously-acquired immunity and response to novel pathogens. Oh, and all costs associated with disabilty and death—lest we overlook BigKiddieCoffin.
I think the same thing about the comments on Natural News.
i don’t really read those. is it like a hive mind irrationally, and ignorantly attacking anybody with a different view?
with 99.999999999% of comments showing lack of reading and general comp, and plain stupidity?
also, are those comments by a couple of commenters with a dozen nyms?
Yeah, that pretty much describes it.
must check out but doubt that anything beats the hive.
You might agree with it though, so not find it as bad as the people who are critical of alternative medicine.
.
Some of the same names show up on Natural News, or maybe Green Med Info, or both, I know at least one has Disqus, that show up anywhere in the alternative medicine/vaccine discussions, so still the same level of trolling and rudeness that sometimes happens in all the other places. There are some rather “interesting” leaps of logic there though…
it’s not about dis/agreeing, it’s about style of comment.
the hive ones are extraordinarily aggressive coupled with extraordinarily stupid.
and go in circles to a ridiculous degree. that’s why i call them kafkaesque.
most of the hive [i’m guessing a couple of people with many nims] blessedly don’t seem to post on other disqus fora.
probs wouldn’t get away with some of the stuff that they say.
i agree that there are a few ”anti” vaxxers that seem a little off, but nothing compared to pros.
and most aren’t ”anti” anyways. just A, or none.
So when we argue with each other when you are not commenting, that’s just George, Alice, and I amusing ourselves? Bless your heart
You really seem to not understand what the “a-” prefix means. But I do love your paranoia about how we can’t possibly be several people who disagree with you, just a few people wasting all our time on multiple screen names.
Someone loves saying “hive mind.”
I am rather fond of honey.
and using sassy abbreviations like “comp” and “nymns” ahaha
The only fanatics here are you and nrbrk. Although I guess through the warped lens of a crazed mind, the rest of the world does look insane.
Yes.
Laughter is her standard response whenever a discussion of people dying of VPDs comes up. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/19e5c33f9cc0e67d2e379ebabdfa55d07f803956b98630ae6d378f690f40d571.jpg
sabelmouse doesn’t mind people dying. He doesn’t mind if he is shown to be ignorant or wrong. He really doesn’t have anything of importance in his life, any achievement or passion, or he wouldn’t be here trolling. He doesn’t even believe the things he’s writing.
All he wants to do is tie up *our* mental resources arguing with him. He’s like a social version of a VPD.
Most people who actually work to improve the living conditions of people in the developing world are capable of holding multiple thoughts in their heads at once, and working to, say, increase access to clean water in addition to vaccination, as well as many other issues critical to health on the ground.
It’s kind of like how I can both wear a bicycle helmet and brush my teeth, all in the same day!
Part of the calculus is that vaccines are little vials that only need to be given a few times, as opposed to clean water, which involves a multiplicity of logistical issues with the need to supply a fairly large volume every day/week. So vaccines can be implemented on the ground while you’re still working on the water issue.
As an example, the intensive vaccination campaign has eliminated smallpox from places in the world where clean water is still not implemented. I think it’s great that kids don’t have to suffer through smallpox, and it’s important to continue to work on a consistent supply of clean water. Sabelmouse thinks they should still have smallpox as well as tainted water.
(This post, like all posts in response to sabelmouse, are for the lurkers, since sabelmouse is singularly dense. In a neutron-star-sense.)
The eradication of polio from almost all “poor countries with dark skinned, starving children” (as Saba would say) in them is also proof of that point.
It may not be possible for you to do two things at once, sabel, but the rest of us manage.
2 years ago, there was a whopping cough epidemic where I live, 2 babies died. And no, I don’t live in a 3rd world country, they were not malnourished and they were not otherwose comprimised.
Those disease can, and often do, kill perfectly healthy babies and children.
Uh, no, most of the dead are not vaccinated. And many of those deaths occurred in developed countries before widespread vaccination- do you really think our sanitation and nutrition has improved in the US that much since the 1980s? Of course not. What changed is vaccination.
mortality was down post ww2, 50s/60s in western countries.
i ain’t talking incidence.
Yes, mortality was down. At its lowest, it was still 1 in 1000 from measles alone. That ain’t good odds in my book.
your numbers are wrong.
Tell us the correct ones.
maybe getting out more would help you?!
No, they aren’t. But feel free to provide some citations for your claim. My data is from the WHO and CDC.
no conflicts of interests there.
Of course there aren’t. I’m glad we’re in agreement here. Both WHO and CDC are independent agencies (the CDC is a US agency, the WHO is an international organization) whose sole job and purpose is to gather data about what makes us sick and/or die and then do something about it. The CDC is explicitly about diseases (Centers for Disease Control), though its mandate has grown to include other public health threats like gun violence. The WHO is broader in scope and focuses on all things that can kill people, including hunger/famine, disease, wars and displacement, etc. They’ve both got a whole lot of data that is available to people who request to see it, and they’ve both got very good reputations for honesty in their data.
Neither organization makes any money from vaccines, and the WHO actually loses money because it provides vaccines free to people in developing countries who can’t afford them. It requires a lot of evidence of efficacy for the WHO to take the time and money to do things like provide vaccinations for people whose villages cannot be reached except for, say, a 10 hour jeep ride followed by a 2 hour canoe trip up a river.
You just love trying to shift goalposts and refuse to answer questions, don’t you? We’ve all noticed. And you STILL haven’t provided any citations at all for your claims. Is it because you don’t have any?
cute!
Again, not an answer. I do not point this out for your benefit, because you seem beyond hope. I point this out for the benefit of anyone else reading this thread. I have provided citations and logical argumentation. You have provided insults and unevidenced insinuations. That’s all the anti-vax side ever has.
there’s no ”anti” vax side.
anybody using that term discredits themselves.
There are people who accept that current vaccination is as good as we can offer at present, and that it is better than not vaccinating.
And then there are people like you, who want vaccinations that are 100% effective, with 0% risk and who are unwilling to accept anything less, even if vaccine preventable diseases objectively cause far more harm than vaccines.
What would you prefer to be called if you don’t want to be called antivax?
Because I think “idiots” is a bit too general to be helpful…
it’s the benefit /risk ration that’s the problem
there’s still no ”anti” vax side.
there’s a vax safety side, and a
a vax side, and a
none vax side.
anti implies being against vaccination to the point of preventive people from doing it, the way pros want mandates.
it’s not that hard to understand.
Exactly. For example, I’ve discussed the chicken pox benefit/risk ratio here many times. The short answer is that it’s so completely and ridiculously in favor of vaccination that anyone who does not vaccinate their children for the chicken pox are either complete morons or they are fucking monsters. If you actually do the benefit/risk analysis for the chicken pox, the only way you can come out against vaccine is if you have an anti-vax bias.
Yet, this is the one that most of those who you don’t like when we call them anti-vax will not get. Why not? It’s certainly not based on a benefit/risk analysis.
except it isn’t.
Isn’t what? Isn’t based on risk/benefit analysis? I agree.
It’s based on assholery. Only a total asshole would subject their kids to chicken pox when there is a perfectly good vaccine alternative.
No, the risk/benefits ratio is not a problem.
It’s probably the best ratio there is out there. Vaccines are the safest medical procedure there is.
If you think vaccines aren’t safe enough, then you shouldn’t ever drive a car, because it it infinitely more risky than vaccines.
I hope you don’t have a pool either, because the risk of kids drowning is MUCH higher than the risk of vaccine.
You better not have a dog, because the risk of bite or even getting killed by it it also higher than the risks of vaccination.
Never teach your kid to ride a bike.
Never, ever accept for your kid to be put under general anaesthesia, and surgery is even worst.
Never give them any kind of medication for that matter.
If you live in the USA, I sure hope you home-school your kids, because their risks of being killed in a school shooting is just way to high.
Actually, you shouldn’t let them go out at all, because they could get hit by a car.
Probably shouldn’t let them stay in a house either, way too much risks of them dying in a house fire.
If you think that vaccines are not safe enough, you really have nothing but a hopeless idiot. Vaccines are safer than almost anything you can come up with, and they have enormous benefits. Even with all the money in the world, vaccines could hardly every become significantly safer than they are not.
You are wrong, plain and simple.
People who make claims and refuse to back them up with credible sources also discredit themselves.
Sure there is. You’re on that side. You are against vaccines, thus you are anti-vax.
it’s like not getting the difference between asocial, and anti social.
most don’t, you’re not alone.
Eyes on the prize, sabelmouse. Whatever you call yourself, you don’t think people should vaccinate, and you have absolutely zero evidence backing up your claims or stance. Your ability to move goalposts is impressive, I admit, but you should really stop.
i don’t think i will vaccinate. what others do in’t my business.
So you’re a free-rider and a leech. Gotcha. And why won’t you vaccinate? And why, if you don’t care what others do, do you keep spewing your nonsense around the Internet?
In other words, not buying it.
if you weren’t a shill i’d think you an idiot. as it is i think you’re a common and garden psychopath.
Aww,you’re trying to hurt my feelings. It’s adorable. It’s almost like you don’t realize we all see the projection going on here.
Numbers, sabelmouse. Facts. These things I require, and these things you do not have.
not really.
just facts.
Yes, just facts. That’s what I’ve been asking for repeatedly, and what you have repeatedly failed to provide. Are we working on our parroting skills now?
No, sabelmouse – when you spend as much time as you do on the internet arguing against the use of vaccines, you have earned the label “anti-vaccine” whether you want it or not.
If you don’t like the label, change your behavior.
utter nonsense!
typical propagandist.
Still waiting on those numbers. 🙂
what can one say to such stupidity?
You somehow keep finding words….
Except you don’t just not vaccinate, you spend a good deal of time making arguments against anybody else doing so either.
So, the possibilities are that you’re the one who doesn’t understand definitions, or you’re a lying sack of shit. Personally, I think it’s the latter.
Correct them then.
Especially given how many thousands got measles every year.
Of course you don’t want to talk about incidence, because it didn’t drop until vaccines were introduced.
Fuck off already.
you could always block me.
But that doesn’t actually make you stop spewing your dangerous idiocy, it just keeps me from seeing it.
it’s vv restful.
And it’s totes ok with you to add VPDs to the list of things that might kill people in 3rd world countries?
Humanitarian of the year.
Was Roald Dahl’s daughter malnourished? Are the United States located in a 3rd world country?
So because they’re malnourished and their health is compromised and they live in 3rd world countries, they deserve to die?
shows what sheeple people really are that they NEVER even wonder about the outcomes.
Like the one where I was sick for days and lost half my hearing to a common childhood illness?
sick for days! wow!!!
i was that sick from the smallpox vaccine and now have an autoimmune disease.
Did you miss the part where she lost her hearing?
Oh, Joy. sabelmouse has arrived. What’s the matter? Tired of getting your rear handed to you on SBM, sabelmouse? Note that many of the commenters here also comment on SBM.
So, sabelmouse – how old are you that you got the smallpox vaccine? What country did you live in at the time? How old were you when you acquired the autoimmune disease (I assume you are aware that they occur more frequently the older you get?)
But can you still hear out of both ears?
one is damaged from an ear infection. i have issues as well as sensitivity to high pitched noises.
Like that of the shrillness of your posts/comments, Saba?
Maybe you’re allergic to Wi-Fi.
Do NOT give her ideas.
???
She definitely has a reaction to logic.
“I have issues”
And don’t we all know it.
I don’t see how she can, with her head imbedded so far up her ass…
Well, I had the smallpox vaccine (Mom insisted) and I DON’T have an autoimmune disease. So mine trumps yours, as far as I’m concerned.
I did however, have chickenpox, a bad case and now I have had shingles twice. I’m too young for the shingles vaccine, so I just get to suffer. The last bout of shingles also developed a lovely secondary staph skin infection on top of the shingles rash.
So no. I am not pleased that I got chickenpox immunity the “old fashioned way”, nor do I believe that it is somehow “better” than immunity conferred by the vaccine. It is worse, because I now have the dormant virus lurking in my nerve endings, just waiting for a chance to ambush me. Fun times, that.
I was born the year smallpox was eradicated. The vaccine is highly unlikely to have caused your autoimmune disease. Which, by the way, is usually your immune system overworking
superfluous.
If only we could kill the millions of people whose lives were saved by smallpox vaccination and eradication, all so you wouldn’t have ever gotten that dirty, sick-making poison! If only we could take it all back!
Some of them wouldn’t even be here posting.
if only you could develop past a teen arguing with parents.
If only your body wasn’t a defective mess that obviously should’ve been written off and thrown in a dumpster at birth, like all those brown people, right?
i can finally understand what teachers face in a classroom of teens.
On the bright side, most of those teens are vaccinated!
Perhaps that’s what she means-confronted by a group of healthy energetic, vaccinated people.
Probably a different crowd to the one she usually mixes with.
explains a lot.
Like why they aren’t getting vaccine-prevented diseases?
Ooh, do tell. What exactly does it explain?
Why they’re not dead/scarred/months behind on their work?
No, you don’t.
What evidence do you have to connect the autoimmune disease to the vaccine? I mean, I went swimming when I was 5 and now I’m nearsighted, but I don’t claim that swimming causes nearsightedness.
strawstrawstrawstraw straw, to the melody of carl poppa.
So no evidence at all. Not that we’re surprised, we just like to check in with that every so often.
the bsmed/ob/skeprap hive mind?
So, that would be “I have no evidence and am going to fling random accusations around in the hopes that no one notices” then? At least explain why you think the argument was “straw”.
you know there’s only shill nyms here, right?
How do autoimmune diseases cluster in families?Genes and Autoimmune Diseases — A Complex InheritanceIf a hobbled virus (or smidgen of surface molecule) in a vaccine could set off autoimmunity, what do you suppose an infection would do?
My mom had psoriasis. It’s a pain, but she wasn’t foolish enough to blame her immunizations for it. And she had definite hippie elements to her personality.
blahdiblah, have i not blocked you yet?
“Blahdiblah, actual science, don’t wanna hear it”
Seems as though nothing likes you saba, not even yourself.
I’m sorry you have to deal with an autoimmune disease, but your lupus or psoriasis or whatever was not caused by any immunization. That’s not how they work.
funny how there’s research that says it does.
Would you care to share that research?
nope, not doing your work for you.
“nope, because I can’t produce anything to support my claims.”
sure i can but why would i bother. you’re not here to learn nothin’.
Neither are you. Some quandary, huh?/eyeroll
Why is she here? Why? Does it somehow stroke her ego to be the center of (negative) attention? Is she really that much like a small child?
I’m fairly sure you have no idea why I’m here. And you would bother because if you have groundbreaking information that would benefit people, I’m sure you would want to share it, right?
with a bunch of shills?
Huge loss of points there for total lack of originality. Again you resort to name-calling because you have nothing of substance to offer.
do i look bovered?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/68e648f0d11f870b7618f9023655f59bd062dbfae369b98437b85c65abdfce5f.jpg
If I am a big pharma shill, why am I carrying 80 grand in student loans? I seriously wonder where my money is, because I haven’t seen a dime of it.
Why can’t I afford health insurance? You’d think they’d be eager to pump me full of drugs.
i never expected it to pay that well, and i’m sure that you have living expenses.
else you’re handling your finances badly.
maybe shouldn’t have accrued all that debt?
So…because we’re “shills”, we have no right to this magical life saving information that you have. Got it. Oh, and when you talk to Shill Central, I only need about $5000 to get debt free. Tell them I’m disappointed in their tardiness.
Aaaaaand again. You don’t get to make assertions without being prepared to back them up!
Stop talking about yourself. YOU are the one who’s not here to learn anything.
I’m afraid this is another deduction; the person making the claim has the burden of providing evidence to back up said claim.
why would i care. i’m only replying to the hive mind for entertainment.
In other words, you admit you are just trolling.
Try reading a book. Much more entertaining.
i do that at night.
Sabel, as usual, has nothing.
Commonest trigger of autoimmune disease is infection.
Vaccination will help prevent that.
If you’re implying that the autoimmune disease was caused by the vaccine, by what argument? Surely you understand that “after” isn’t synonymous with “because of”.
no.
yes.
Why then did you append the part about now having an autoimmune disease to your post? If you’re not implying cause and effect it’s a non sequitor.
seriously? think!
If it was not to imply the smallpox vaccine caused your autoimmune disease I have no idea. Why don’t you tell me?
i did imply that. you asked me if it’s a given that correlation is causation, i said no.
2 different questions dear what logic evades you.
i’m amazed you even post outside the hive mind.
what has led you to believe the reaction to the vaccine caused your autoimmune disorder(if, that is, it’s anything other than a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c024d7f89151600253b5894877048b1c618a52bc7fbd62d7c13e4faaacef1d3.jpg
i guess we know why you don’t understand differences in questions, and answers.
Please, explain it for us.
…And I had a smallpox vaccine and now have a car.
Wow, me too! Darn Big Pharma, in cahoots with Big Auto.
I got a promotion shortly after my most recent diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis booster.
And my daughter started to walk just after her first MMR.
In fact I bet most people’s kids started to walk within weeks of the MMR vax – so what’s that all about, huh? …Solid, undeniable and incontrovertible proof that vaccination stimulates neurodevelopment, I’d say.
Don’t you have baby killers to be defending somewhere?
like the once who did in that recent measles epidemic?
Like the ones who shake shake their baby to death then blame it on vaccines.
Also, the measles epidemic has hospitalized tons of people.
L O L!
Yeah, child abuse is real funny, ain’t it, sabelmouse?
Ooh, I’m going to have to deduct some points for use of the cliche “sheeple.”
I think we’re going to have to count off for mention of shills too.
Outcomes from measles? How about 1 in 4 being hospitalized?
Why am I not surprised that nrbrk got the only upvote from you, sabel.
Of the children that recover “fine” in a week or so, they still face health risks directly relating to having had measles.
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) doesn’t make itself known for years after the patient has recovered from measles. It’s not pretty, and it’s deadly. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sspe-a-deadly-and-not-that-rare-complication-of-measles/
Also, measles appears to do a number on the immune system. When measles vaccines were introduced, deaths from other infectious diseases also fell (increased risk from other infections appears to last 2-3 years following measles infection). https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/measles-may-increase-susceptibility-to-other-infections/ and http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6235/694
While the mortality rate from measles is not necessarily that high in developed countries, it is still a deadly disease that can have significant health consequences for those who fall ill.
And they still had the fucking measles for a weak.
I guess torturing someone is also ok, too, because, you know, they get over it eventually.
I have said it before, I don’t care if the disease kills you, or even causes permanent damage. It still sucks, and if you can easily avoid it, why wouldn’t you do that?
Agreed 100%. I just hate the narrative that measles are a “minor” illness because they completely fucking aren’t.
I agree that avoiding illness through vaccination is (and should be) enough in and of itself.
My sister got measles as a child back in the early 70s (I didn’t, no idea why not, we shared a bedroom so in fairly close proximity). I was absolutely terrified-she had febrile convulsions, she was hallucinating having wakeful nightmares, she was crying endlessly in pain because an ear got infected as well and ruptured her ear drum. She didn’t eat for a week, she was listless and exhausted for weeks afterwards. The GP visited a few times but she wasn’t admitted to hospital, and mum nursed her day and night trying to get her to drink, leaving her exhausted too.
It’s not a benign illness, its not just a mild fever that leaves you a little snuffly, it’s awful and dangerous and kills. My sister eventually recovered, but she wasn’t herself for ages afterwards.
My husband’s still blind from congenital german measles. Prat.
No, no, he has natural immunity from sightedness. Easy mistake!
This made me laugh a bitter, bitter laugh. No offence meant to EotIP.
You’ve got to laugh at the callousness and ignorance of people, or you wouldn’t stop crying.
No worries. We tell blind jokes all the time; my sweetie is generally pretty easy-going about it. I actually forget that he has so little sight on a regular basis, which he thinks is adorable, even after 20 years, lol
There are literally THOUSANDS of diseases. Yet the only diseases we fear are the ones that a vaccine has been developed and marketed for.
We only started fearing measles and mumps in the early 20th century—because the media told us to.
To illustrate this, we are NOT vaccinated against:
(A)
Acinetobacter
African sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis) Trypanosoma brucei
AIDS
HIV
Amebiasis
Angiostrongyliasis Angiostrongylus
Anisakiasis Anisakis
Anthrax
Arcanobacterium haemolyticum infection
Argentine hemorrhagic fever Junin virus
Ascariasis
Aspergillosis
Astrovirus infection
(B)
Babesiosis
Bacillus cereus infection
Bacterial pneumonia (multiple bacteria)
Bacterial vaginosis
Bacteroides infection
Balantidiasis
Bartonellosis
Baylisascaris infection
Baylisascaris species
BK virus infection BK virus
Black piedra
Blastocystosis
Blastomycosis
Bolivian hemorrhagic fever Machupo virus
Botulism
Brazilian hemorrhagic fever
Brucellosis
Bubonic plague
Burkholderia infection
(C)
Calicivirus infection (Norovirus and Sapovirus)
Campylobacteriosis
Candidiasis (Moniliasis; Thrush) usually Candida albicans and other
Candida species
Capillariasis Intestinal disease by Capillaria philippinensis, hepatic disease by Capillaria hepatica and pulmonary disease by Capillaria aerophila
Carrion´s disease Bartonella bacilliformis
Cat-scratch disease Bartonella henselae
Cellulitis usually Group A Streptococcus and Staphylococcus
Chagas Disease (American trypanosomiasis) Trypanosoma cruzi
Chancroid Haemophilus ducreyi
Chickenpox Varicella zoster virus (VZV)….
The majority of the things you’ve listed, we DON’T have vaccines for. And yes, they are scary. However a lot of those things are ALSO bacterial infections which we can clear up with a course of antibiotics. Or in the case of candida, an antifungal.
Also, governments are beginning to acknowledge that chickenpox isn’t so mild. Here in NZ, the vaccine for it will now be given FREE to any child under 11 years of age.
The chicken pox CAN be mild. But you know what’s milder?
The vaccine.
It’s also cheaper if you consider lost time due to having a child home sick for 10 days.
Of course, if you assume once again that mother’s time is worth nothing, then it might be close.
We don’t have a vaccine for chickenpox? Really?
I guess the existence of Merck’s Zostavax is a shared delusion.
Or anthrax, or bacterial pneumonia 39 types?
Yep, I saw that. The spousal unit got the the anthrax vaccine, as I think I’ve mentioned before. Still waiting for him to develop the webbed feet and the third eye.
Technically, the meme says “we are not vaccinated against…” and most of us are not vaccinated against anthrax since it’s given only in specific situations where there is high risk of exposure. Almost as if physicians cared about the risk versus benefit ratio of a treatment and tried to give it only when it had the greatest benefit and least risk.
These memes go round and round the antivax community and no one notices that the information is decades out of date. It’s pretty funny if you read it.
Even when they’ve been shown the evidence umpteen times.
Clearly, no one is concerned about Ebola, West Nile virus, Zika virus, and any number of other awful diseases because
a) there’s no vaccine against them, and
b) they’re too far along in the alphabet.
Yeah no. This post of yours might take the “stupid of the day” crown.
https://youtu.be/I87CWIs2i2E
Oh, I don’t think my parents were scared of mumps because of the media. I think my parents were scared of mumps because 18 months old me got it while we were visiting relatives in south Italy. 40°C outside, 40°C of fever, no “real” doctor available, only a “witch” doctor. But hey, it can’t have been so bad as I survived unharmed, probably saved by the witch doctor. And yet, when my brother was born some years later and a vaccine against mumps was available, they got him vaccinated asap. Why, oh why did they do it, when a witch can heal it?
“Yet the only diseases we fear are the ones that a vaccine has been developed and marketed for.”
It’s almost as if the most feared diseases were the highest-priority targets for vaccine development…
We aren’t vaccinated against HIV/AIDS (which is one disease- AIDS is caused by HIV which stands for human immunodeficiency virus) because it mutates really fast so we don’t have one. People have been working on that for 20-30 years now, we just haven’t succeeded at making one.
We focused on getting the most easily transmitted, deadliest diseases first. That’s why measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough) were some of the earliest vaccines. They killed the most people and spread the easiest. We’re still working on vaccines for a lot of mosquito-borne viruses- West Nile, Zika, malaria (we sort of have one, but people don’t develop lifelong immunity to malaria and the parasite that causes it is rather sneaky), and yellow fever are all high on the priority list. Ebola became a high priority after the big outbreak, and we might actually have a vaccine for that now too. Initial trials are very promising.
My grandparents grew up before vaccines. One grandmother was quarantined for scarlet fever- she remembers the big chalk X on her door, and neither she nor her family was allowed to leave the house for weeks. They had someone from the local grocery dropped off food on their doorstep- she remembers him fleeing after dropping it on the lowest step furthest from the door. We don’t have a vaccine for scarlet fever either, even though it’s pretty scary. But all four grandparents remember being scared of all those diseases (except smallpox, which had been eradicated from the US before they were born). The media didn’t teach us to be scared of them- we are scared of them because they are scary. Measles still kills over 180,000 children a year, mostly in developing nations where the vaccine isn’t available.
There are THOUSANDS of diseases (actually many millions), but most of them won’t kill or maim you, and of the ones that can, most of them you are unlikely to get because they don’t spread easily. The ones that are deadly and easily spread we have tried to find vaccines for first. But have you ever read “Little Women”? They were terrified of all kinds of diseases and for good reason. They didn’t need media to tell them what could kill them (and what wound up killing one of them).
I have been begging for a hand/foot/mouth disease vaccine ever since my kids got it. So you can take your “we” strawman and shove it up your pooper.
Me too. Hand mouth foot, and stomatitis. They really suck.
Oh my god, what I wouldn’t give for a Norovirus vaccine. That stuff is miserable.
You don’t have to go more than 2 generations back in my family to find people dying of pertussis (3 years old) and diphtheria (20 years old). In America. People were plenty afraid of measles and polio back in the day.
I’m not a bit afraid of these diseases…because I and my children have been vaccinated. I’m afraid for people in other countries who don’t have access to vaccines, and I’m afraid for the children of anti-vaxxers who will suffer compromised health as a result of suffering from measles and pertussis.
“We”? Take it and shove it.
Don’t you DARE lump me together with you and the rest of you disease vectors. Me OR my great-grandparents who lost one child to diphteria and got the luch of another one, my grandmother, recovering. She still remembers these days with zero gratitude for this chance to acquire all natural immunity. Her 5 pound baby was vaccinated against everything under the sun.
Or, you know, we developed vaccines for the most dangerous diseases first.
So we didn’t make vaccines for everything…….and that proves what exactly?
If anything, that means that the medical community will actually look at the data and find out for which disease it is worth it to make a vaccine. So big Pharma isn’t trying to push unnecessary vaccines just to make money.
And vaccines are not magical. They generally work fine with viruses. But with bacteria they don’t work well and need boosters way too often (Natural immunity from bacteria infection isn’t great either, BTW). So it’s not worth it.
As for fungus or parasites, it’s even worst.
Also, there is a vaccine for chickenpox, we are trying hard to make a vaccine for AIDS/HIV, and there is a vaccine for anthrax.
Seems like someone is just not as educated as he thinks he is.
Actually, there is a VZV vaccine. It’s quite effective and long lasting immunity has been documented. Not to mention that it eliminates the risk of shingles later in life.
HIV vaccines have been tested, so far none have worked out. Also note that none are on the market. Almost as though regulatory agencies and maybe even Big Pharma care about efficacy and safety and don’t just allow any old thing on the market. At least for drugs and vaccines. Supplements now…that’s a different story, at least in the US, thankyouverymuchsenatorhatch.
Or are THEY just pretending when THEY gave my daughter the chicken pox “vaccine” 2 weeks ago. She was fine after a few minutes of hysterical crying (which she was also doing when the nurse measured her)
Pre-emptive vaccine injury?
/sarcasm
Funny, last I checked people were afraid of HIV, anthrax, babesiosis, botulism, bacterial pneumonia, and norovirus. And that’s just here in a first world nation. Chagas scares me enough that I never ever want to go anywhere near any place it is even thought to be endemic. Sleeping sickness is also pretty scary, but at least it’s much, much farther away.
It’s kind of hilarious that the poster thinks no one is afraid of HIV or anthrax. I’m sure Ebola would be on that list too except he/she got bored before they got that far into the alphabet. Nope, no one fears HIV or anthrax.
And most of us in the US aren’t all that afraid of African sleeping sickness or Argentine, Bolivian, or Brazilian hemorrhagic fever, because, duh, we do not live in Africa, Argentina, Bolivia or Brazil.
Why would that ever be a useful standard to judge anything? People have not feared things they should have all throughout history.
Plus it’s untrue! Several times now I’ve posted a quote from a New Jersey farmer in 1759, referring to measles as the “avenging angel”. If I weren’t on my phone I’d quote it again. Interested parties can search my posts.
Measles killed King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamamalu of Hawaii on their first journey to Europe. Their ‘organic,’ outdoorsy, GMO-free, vaccine-free lifestyle helped them not a bit.
Measles later swept the islands, along with whooping cough; records are not reliable, but the population was literally decimated across about two years (roughly 10% lower at the end of the epidemic). You won’t find the Hawaiians at that point to be blasé about measles.
It’s so nice to hear both “literally” and “decimated” used correctly…though of course that was an awful thing to happen to the Hawaiians.
I’m fine with people using “literally” to exaggerate their statements, because hyperbole is a valid rhetorical device. “Decimate” in place of “devastate” drives me crazy though, because they are understating the effects when they are trying to convey something really severe.
I suspect that, like anything forces conspired to create a wide variety of opinion. As medical science and hygiene improved – deaths – probably the hardest outcome to ignore – became less common. Couple that with the fact that information wasn’t anywhere near as available as it is today. I suspect that even by the 1920’s it was possible to grow up sufficiently isolated to think that measles wasn’t a big deal.
IIRC I was reading some of the letters of Robert E. Howard (the creator of Conan) who caught the measles and had to drop out of bookkeeping school temporarily. In one of his letters he talks both about people trying to avoid the measles as well as people going out of their way to get it. This was in an age where thousands were still dying every year.
HERD IMMUNITY?
“Nearly every year, there are outbreaks of infectious diseases in the U.S. in which the communities involved were highly vaccinated and, thus, supposedly immune.
The theory of herd immunity was never meant to be applied to a vaccinated population, but rather was co-opted later in the 20th century to help justify mass, mandatory vaccination campaigns to eliminate infectious diseases for the so-called “greater good.”
Consequently, a vaccinated herd is never really protected. There is an illusion of protection in such a scenario because those who have been vaccinated remain vulnerable to infection and, thus, so does the herd—vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.”
http://www.thevaccinereaction.org/2017/05/herd-immunity-theory-has-been-repeatedly-disproven/
Dude, can you even fucking math?
Just because there are MORE cases in vaccinated individuals, does not mean that PROPORTIONATELY more vaccinated people caught the illness.
Let’s work with some small, easy numbers so I don’t overload your tiny brain, okay?
So, say we have a population of 100 people. In that population, we have say 2 people who are medically fragile and cannot be vaccinated. Now, if the recommended 95% of people are vaccinated, then the odds of those 2 coming into contact with the disease are low.
Now, say instead that in our 100, 80 people are vaccinated (80%). Of the 20 remaining, 2 are those medically fragile from before, and the other 18 are unvaccinated for whatever reasons.
A measles outbreak occurs. Now, after it’s run its course, it’s found that there were say 78 cases. 18 were in the unvaccinated population, 60 in the vaccinated.
Ah ha, you go. See, more vaccinated people caught it, therefore the vaccine doesn’t work.
This is where the math comes in. Yes, more vaccinated people caught it, but more people were vaccinated for it. However in the individual populations (vaccinated/unvaccinated) this is how it works:
Vaccinated = 60 people out of 80 = 75%
Unvaccinated = 18 people out of 20 = 90%
So PROPORTIONATELY, in those populations, MORE unvaccinated people caught the disease, than those who had received immunizations.
And why vaccinated people still caught it?
1) The unvaccinated population gave the disease more of a foothold in the community and more chances to spread.
2) Vaccines are MOSTLY effective, but unfortunately there are still some people who, despite having the vaccinations, still don’t produce the antibodies to create immunity.
So there you go, learn to math and risk assess, THEN come back here. Also, I think it’s disgusting that you’re using Einstein as your profile picture when he was a man of science and you, you schmuck, clearly are not.
I guess that’s why unvaccinated children are 35x more likely to get the measles when exposed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5007135/
Is there smallpox any more? No, because of vaccines and herd immunity.
More people die from car accidents involving sober drivers than die in accidents involving drunk drivers. Clearly, drunk driving is better than driving sober.
Right?
Herd immunity. meaning the threshold beyond which we consider the effective R0 < 1 actually predicts (or at least allows for) outbreaks in vaccinated communities.
It’s probably better to say that the term “herd immunity” was poorly defined until it was used in reference to vaccines.
If only half of the American population is “properly vaccinated” where are all the epidemics?
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/295562-if-only-half-of-america-is-properly-vaccinated-where-are-the
The writer cites Russell Blaylock.
There’s no stupid like anti-vax stupid!
Quackspert would be you! Article is total BS!
Would you like to try and point out WHY you believe this article is, as you so eloquently put it. BS?
Catching the disease to gain immunity from it is the BS. Vaccines have minor side effects, as opposed to the life-altering/potentially fatal complications that occur from a ‘natural’ infection.
Here’s a SIMPLE example.
Chance of vaccine-induced encephalitis from the MMR vaccine: 1:1,000,000
Chance of encephalitis from exposure to actual measles: 1:1000.
Which one has the higher chance of happening?
One thing you need to add to this comparison is that, without vaccine, pretty much everyone will catch the measles.
This is a case where anti-vaxxers want to eat their cake and have it, too. Oh, they claim, the chance of catching the measles is small, so that 1/1000 doesn’t mean anything.
Of course, the only reason the chance of catching measles is small is because people like ME vaccinate and have our kids vaccinated. If everyone stopped vaccinating, everyone would catch the measles.
They fail to recognize that. Well, not all. Bob Sears, for example, knows darn well that his anti-vax patients need people like me to sacrifice our kids through vaccination to protect their snowflakes.
Apparently you’re not capable of rebutting it, though.
Channeling Yoda, are we?
I’m pretty sure a large proportion of antivaxxers believe that if you survive smallpox you will pass this immunity on to your children.
I’m pretty sure a large proportion of them think that as long as you wash your hands regularly and eat organic food, you’ll never get smallpox.
Don’t forget weekly chiropractic adjustments, essential oils, and homeopathy! And have you seen the wonderful crystals you can get on Amazon??
Gee Ken, you forgot “Reiki” again. Must fix those “chakras”
Reiki: I’m not even going to touch you! I’m just going to put my hands *near* you for half an hour!…..That’ll be $100.
I can beat that. My mother went to a “wonder healer”. You go to see him, tell him your story and leave him a picture of you. He will heal you in the following days/weeks, only by looking at your picture. 250 €.
It’s the woo of choice for germophobes and those with restraining orders.
Technically, it’s true that if you wash your hands regularly and eat organic food you’ll never get smallpox. It’s also true that if you never wash again and eat nothing but fritos you’ll never get smallpox–it’s extinct in the wild! The only way you can get smallpox today is a lab accident or act of bioterrorism.
Yes, many of them think Immunity is heritable. When you point out there’d be no disease in a couple of generations if that were so, well, they have some other answer, of course.
Or that tetanus is contagious.
Sometimes the stupid really does burn.
I have been watching a friend progress down the trail towards becoming a full-blown anti-vaxxer. She started with just a video and what looked like an honest question. Somebody had linked something for her. So several of us responded honestly with links and rebuttals to the content. She was resistant then but still claimed to be open. She wanted to see both sides. But the longer the conversation went, and the more she posted and reposted from the fake science and health sites, the less willing she was to even discuss it despite her claims to the contrary.
This past week, she has been posting about the Amish, about vaccine injury stories and declaring she respects everybody’s opinion but she knows the truth now. From the first I was aware of her posting things til now only took a few months. Although, some of her other forays into woo started earlier, so she was likely primed already.
I’ve been watching my husband’s bandmate and the bandmate’s fiancé fall farther and farther down the rabbit hole of woo. When my husband first started jamming with him, him and his fiancé were both kind of new-agey and she was a pescatarian (vegetarian who still eats fish), but nothing too crazy. Now here we are a few years later and they are both hardcore vegan, anti-vaxx, big believers in “The Secret”, believers in a few different conspiracy theories and – their latest woo belief – FLAT-EARTHERS. *headdesk*
I have literally been afraid for them to hear about “Breatharianism” because there doesn’t seem to be any woo belief too crazy for them to fall for and I’d rather not watch them starve themselves to death believing they can live on sunlight and air…
I thought it was on the “energy of the universe”.
To quote Po from Kung Fu Panda: “Its going to take more than dew and, uh, universe juice”.
OT: breaking news in Aus
Midwife Lisa Barrett charged with manslaughter over deaths of two babies following homebirths
Story at http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/law-order/midwife-lisa-barrett-charged-with-manslaughter-over-deaths-of-two-babies-following-homebirths/news-story/e677226d0d88248b03de7d7c13e531a6
Excellent news, but what took them so long?
Most likely this is a complicated case and getting enough evidence to prosecute is hard. Especially since this is a criminal investigation and not a malpractice one. It’s probably a very grey area of legality. Homebirth is legal, pregnant women have 100% the right to refuse to be followed by a doctor and have anyone they want assist them during the birth.
So basically, you have to prove that she knowingly and willingly lied to patient about their risks so they would stay with her, that she knowingly ignored and hid complications during the birth, and that her actions are directly responsible to the death of the baby.
A good portion of their case seems to hinge on the fact that she did a lot of cover up, told parents to stay silent, tried to destroy evidence etc, which proves that she knew what she was doing was dangerous, but persisted anyway.
And since you can only prosecute once, you want to be sure you can win.
Well, something has changed that appears to make a conviction more likely.
Possibly co-operation of witnesses who had previously protected Barrett. The fact that the identity of the second baby is protected means that it is possible that the family may be acting as witnesses for the prosecution and the secrecy is to protect them from abuse by her supporters. But that is a guess on my part.
Phone taps are mentioned in that story, so it may be evidence gathered in recent years through that route has swayed the balance towards a conviction being more likely.
Just remember- these are the babies born alive who died.
There are stillbirths and disabled babies she is also responsible for.
Not to mention this fact: the immune response to a vaccine antigen is the same, natural, immune response as what is mounted when invaded by the micro-organism itself – expect that one generally doesn’t have to survive the disease to develop the immune response. Isn’t science wonderful?
Wakefield and Adams also appear to have forgotten that there are diseases out there with near 100% fatality.
Fun story time:
My dog killed a raccoon last night (surprise encounter in my back yard, very young raccoon, large dog). Raccoons are reservoir species for rabies where I live, so I had a full day of dealing with the fall-out today. My dog went to the vet (miraculously without a scratch on him that we could find), I went to the doctor (cleaned up blood from dog without gloves and have a couple of scabbed-over wounds on my hands from other fun), TWO government agencies were notified, one of which will test the raccoon. Since my dog was already vaxxed, no unusual behavior was noted in either animal prior to the attack, and it’s been years since a raccoon tested positive in these parts, the end result is that the dog just needs to be watched until the testing results come back and I don’t need post-exposure treatment unless the test comes back positive.
All that for a relatively low-risk encounter. And you know what? If there had been even a hint that additional vaccination was required for me or my dog, I wouldn’t have hesitated BECAUSE RABIES IS ALMOST UNIVERSALLY FATAL ONCE SYMPTOMS START.
/ end fun story time
So yeah, Wakefield or Adams may want to roll the dice on so-called natural immunity, but I suspect their level of loyalty to this position would correlate closely with the mortality rate of the disease.
And if they accept that it makes sense to vaccinate for some diseases (like frickin’ RABIES) then they accept that the decision to vaccinate for any diseases comes in large part from a risk/benefit analysis (which I got to see up close and personal today). Shockingly, such analyses are how we ended up with the vaccine schedules we know and love today.
But-but-but I thought the schedule of today was the result of out-of-control Big Pharma and a government in its thrall!
Even though vaccines are nowhere near the money-makers other drugs are for pharmaceutical companies.
I know, right? There are a ton of vpds we don’t routinely vaccinate for, depending on where you live and other risk factors. This would not be the case if it was a Big Pharma conspiracy.
Thought process of conspiracy-minded wooist:
There IS a cure for cancer/diabetes/the common cold: homeopathy/acupuncture/this herb. The catch is that these ‘cures’ work much better when taken for prevention, so take your sugar pills NOW, before it’s too late. The reason your doctor didn’t tell you about it is because Big Pharma don’t want you to know; it’s much more profitable to treat symptoms indefinitely than to sell a cheap preventative/cure that, since it treats the cause and not the symptoms, you only need to take on the odd occasion.
Vaccines are a scam! Why take dangerous chemicals to prevent contracting a disease when you could just treat the disease if and when you get it? Big Pharma makes too much money out of vaccines to admit they’re unnecessary, that’s the only reason your doctor recommends them.
I was hoping that we’d invent a vaccine for cancer and it would make the woos’ heads explode. But then Gardasil came along and the wooists just went their standard ‘vaccines are evil’ route with a side of ‘HPV doesn’t cause cancer’ denialism.
But but but… Didn’t you know that all the foxes and raccoons have become autistic because of the oral rabies vaccines that are administered to them via baits? That’s why they are shy and don’t come up to people any more like they used to. Not because losing shyness is an early rabies symptom or anything.
And all the dogs and cats are autistic too! If your pet has behavioral problems, it’s from the vaccines and not from poor training, genetics, personality, etc.
That explains my rabbit!
…nothing explains my rabbit. She is a law unto herself.
Are you sure she’s not a cat?
I asked her, but she just begged for more food. I think she’s part dog, too.
It’s true. My dog hasn’t spoken a word since he got his shots.
Rabies is terrifying; if there’s a zombie apocalypse, that’s what will cause it.
I had the chicken pox as a child. I can look forward to maybe having shingles later in life. When I’m old enough, I will get the shingles vaccine to avoid it (hopefully).
My children had the vaccine. They have had confirmed exposure to the disease via a vaccine failure case at school. Guess what? They won’t need the shingles vaccine.
I tried the riddle on my kids (now both officially middle schoolers). The younger one answered “on the border.” The older one answered “in cemetaries.” When I repeated the question, the older one responded that everyone dies eventually and they would still be buried in cemetaries – therefore the answer is still correct.
Maybe that one has a future in law . . . .
When I was a kid I tried that riddle on my mom. She suggested that if you were a nice person you’d bury them somewhere that they could easily get out of.
Makes me think of that crazy woman who let her child suffer with whooping cough for months so she’d get natural immunity. And never have to get whooping cough!
Yeah.
That psycho lives in my area of the world. I hope my call to CPS based on her blog was one of the reasons she pulled her blog post.
I used her as the example of why I was glad my micro-preemie son had two doses of DTaP before he left the NICU – and the reason I scheduled his third dose on the day after he turned 6 months actual age.
It was children. Multiple children. And the kids were getting in descending age order moving closer and closer to her 9 month old infant.
Fucking psychopath.
Exactly. Not very logical to get the infection in order to avoid getting the infection. And immunity following full pertussis infection isn’t long-lasting anyway – it’s about the same as the vaccine.
As I paraphrase it, “remember when everybody was really healthy, and you could tell because everybody got sick all the time?”
And she (the crazy mom) didn’t get whooping cough, right? So the vaccine she got as a little girl was still effective…
Typhoid Mary had quite a robust immune system, too. Of course, she was a very unusual case, but they eventually locked her up because she was always passing on a really dangerous disease. Sure, many people survived it.
I just looked up her bio. Holy crap, she sounds identical to some of the woo-peddlers today! Since SHE didn’t understand the importance of hand-washing before cooking food (her job!!!), she ignored the authorities and went so far as to use aliases in order to keep working as a cook.
My maternal grandmother was a typhoid carrier.
Born in Germany in the 1880s.
When it was found out, she did follow all the precautions.
Egad! well, at least she did follow the precautions.
“There is only one kind of immunity…” I couldn’t even read Adams’ quote beyond that. Those seven words alone mean he knows nothing about immunology.
Thank you! This is the part I’ve never understood when they claim that natural immunity is superior. There’s just no logic to it.
The whole point of immunity is to not get the disease. That’s what we want immunity for, right? So what the hell good is immunity that requires you to get the disease? Their brilliant plan for avoiding measles is to get measles. (Substitute the VPD of your choice for measles here).
Yes, this. My 18mo just had his MMRV shot 12 days ago and is currently having the expected “light version” type reaction — fever, cough, sore throat, runny/stuffy nose. It’s uncomfortable enough as it is (his reaction to fever over 38.5C is vomiting, and the ibuprofen wore off at 4am the last two nights… joy!), and I hate to think what the real thing would look like for him.
Xactly. My 12 month old got her MMR and V shots last week. She’s been rubbing her nose a bit, but besides that she seems perfectly fine. 🙂
Better watch out. She may start walking within the next few weeks, It’s a frequent side effect of recent MMR vaccination.
Probably not, though. We’re a family of early talkers and later walkers; big brother and dad walked at 14 months.
My oldest got a nasty fever with the MMR/V shots; we had a miserable two days. And then the fever was over, and my daughter now has (most probably) immunity to four diseases that can carry very serious, longterm consequences.
Some antivaxers realise their claim is quite laughable and illogical as it stands, so instead they pretend that it is vital mothers gain natural immunity because that protects the newborn babies better than artificial maternal immunity. That might be a valid side-line argument, but it isn’t true (with the exception that for measles transplacental immunity passively gained from naturally infected mothers lasts around 2 months longer than from vaccinated mothers). It doesn’t work for anything else much, and immunity from breast milk is trivial and unaffected by whether moms were vaxed or had the natural disease, since it is quite nonspecific in nature.
In fact, we recommend mothers have pertussis boosters in pregnancy, which is way more effective (at preventing infants getting pertussis) than relying on the immunity mothers got from natural infection in childhood themselves, which has almost always waned by the time they become pregnant.
My grandmother had her natural immunity to many childhood diseases wiped out by cancer treatments and had to be vaccinated once the treatment protocol was finished. Something tells me she is grateful she didn’t have to regain that natural immunity at 64 years old!
My sister is only 32, and she’s been undergoing treatment for UC – which suppresses her immune system. Shock, horror, I have made sure my family is up to date on our vaccines!
Another point: YOU might get lucky and survive the disease, but what about those you pass it on to? Before the vaccine, for every one person who contracted polio, they could expect to infect 4 to 6 others. If you yourself survive the disease, it is entirely possible that any number of those you infect will not be so lucky. Getting vaccinated isn’t just saying “I refuse to get sick and possibly die.” It is also saying “I refuse to be a vector that spreads a disease that can get other people sick and possibly kill them.”