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Influenza used to be much worse especially with out the knowledge we have today to treat it. You are eventually going to die of something better cancer or heart disease at 80 than the flu before before 50. http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/hi...
 

No, I won't attempt to teach the basics of rhetoric and logic here, I studied them for years in a formal environment as opposed to you pointing to Wiki articles for fallacy definitions.

I'm sure you're well aware, then, of the argument-from-authority fallacy. I dare not link to Wikipedia, of course. That would make me a bumbling amateur, right?

Attempting to nitpick the name of the fallacy won't change the fallacy from true to false either, so it's a poor argument all around.

I wasn't being obtuse. I really don't get you.

Herd immunity does not claim 100% is needed, so you are again using fallacy arguments. You said yourself that some people can not be vaccinated so you provide an impossible condition and you know it.

Well, you not being vaccinated probably means one more potential carrier, right? ('Probably' because of the chance it wouldn't have worked on you.) The only way this doesn't affect me is if I'm 100% guaranteed to be immune. (Or, I suppose, if I'm 100% guaranteed never to meet you, or if I'm already infected.) I don't see that I can be missing much here, but if this reasoning is unsound, please point out in what way.

You not getting a vaccination doesn't affect me much, sure, but without 100% effective vaccinations, it surely has to affect me some non-zero amount. (The impossibility of 100% effective vaccinations doesn't affect the reasoning here.)

I was not unclear with what you replied "What?' to, so try and work on your reading and comprehension skills.

Condescension doesn't strengthen your position, but I thought it was clear: I don't know where you're getting this from: the irrational and fallacy ridden separation you attempt to make between people that "can't" and people that "won't" get vaccinated. I certainly wasn't trying to make any such distinction.

Regarding the facts, then: there seems to be a 1 in 1,000,000 risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it's also not good for people with severe egg allergies. Regarding whether flu shots have saved lives, this source says it's unclear. (It's still possible it's saved many people from a few unpleasant days of flu, mind, and that alone could make it worthwhile.)

Even if you're right that flu shots in particular aren't worthwhile, vaccinations have proven themselves on other diseases. I don't think anyone would argue that flu shots are the most important vaccination.

I'm sure you're well aware, then, of the argument-from-authority fallacy. I dare not link to Wikipedia, of course. That would make me a bumbling amateur, right?

As stated, nitpicking a fallacy name does not make a fallacy true. A fallacy is still a fallacy, and falsity is still falsity. Faulty logic most often can be described using numerous "named" fallacies depending on the point of reference. Continuing to debate the point will never make faulty logic good logic, it's nitpicking and diversionary.

Well, you not being vaccinated probably means one more potential carrier, right? ('Probably' because of the chance it wouldn't have worked on you.) The only way this doesn't affect me is if I'm 100% guaranteed to be immune. (Or, I suppose, if I'm 100% guaranteed never to meet you, or if I'm already infected.) I don't see that I can be missing much here, but if this reasoning is unsound, please point out in what way.

You just said probably, which is a correct statement. Then again you claim you want a 100% guarantee. No such guarantee is possible no matter what the circumstanc

No, I won't attempt to teach the basics of rhetoric and logic here, I studied them for years in a formal environment as opposed to you pointing to Wiki articles for fallacy definitions.

I'm sure you're well aware, then, of the argument-from-authority fallacy. I dare not link to Wikipedia, of course. That would make me a bumbling amateur, right?

Attempting to nitpick the name of the fallacy won't change the fallacy from true to false either, so it's a poor argument all around.

I wasn't being obtuse. I really don't get you.

Herd immunity does not claim 100% is needed, so you are again using fallacy arguments. You said yourself that some people can not be vaccinated so you provide an impossible condition and you know it.

Well, you not being vaccinated probably means one more potential carrier, right? ('Probably' because of the chance it wouldn't have worked on you.) The only way this doesn't affect me is if I'm 100% guaranteed to be immune. (Or, I suppose, if I'm 100% guaranteed never to meet you, or if I'm already infected.) I don't see that I can be missing much here, but if this reasoning is unsound, please point out in what way.

You not getting a vaccination doesn't affect me much, sure, but without 100% effective vaccinations, it surely has to affect me some non-zero amount. (The impossibility of 100% effective vaccinations doesn't affect the reasoning here.)

I was not unclear with what you replied "What?' to, so try and work on your reading and comprehension skills.

Condescension doesn't strengthen your position, but I thought it was clear: I don't know where you're getting this from: the irrational and fallacy ridden separation you attempt to make between people that "can't" and people that "won't" get vaccinated. I certainly wasn't trying to make any such distinction.

Regarding the facts, then: there seems to be a 1 in 1,000,000 risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it's also not good for people with severe egg allergies. Regarding whether flu shots have saved lives, this source says it's unclear. (It's still possible it's saved many people from a few unpleasant days of flu, mind, and that alone could make it worthwhile.)

Even if you're right that flu shots in particular aren't worthwhile, vaccinations have proven themselves on other diseases. I don't think anyone would argue that flu shots are the most important vaccination.

Hell-loooooo!

Anyone thinking in there?

Mars is already post-apocalyptic, times a factor of a million!

And it's tens of millions of miles away, on a good day.

If we're worried about catastrophe, we should be looking for ways to prevent it for everyone's sake, not just helping the super-wealthy and astronautically psychotic avoid it.

obligatory
695

What I've heard from doctors and nurses around the DC area is that if you have flu-like symptoms outside of the flu season (which starts week 40), then they can be reasonably certain (99%) that it is H1N1.

Gimme a break. EVERY cold I've ever had in my life matched the symptoms of H1N1. The symptoms we are told to look for are so vague and all-inclusive that they would fit nicely into the newspaper astrology section. --And guess what? I've had plenty of colds which hit me before "week 40".

-FL

So every cold you've had in your life included at least two and possibly more of the following; fever over 100 F, chills, severe aches, significant nausea, with possible vomiting and diarrhea? Those are the symptoms used by the CDC to define H1N1. Granted even the CDC admits that they are similar to seasonal flu symptoms but could be worse in severity. However, if these are the symptoms for all your "colds" it appears you've never really had a cold in your life. Instead you must have contracted various flu strains both inside and outside of the normal flu season.

It's not the same virus. H1N1 is a general description of a class of flu viruses, not a name for a specific one. This one is a mix of previously-known swine, avian and human flu viruses.

http://www.flu.gov/individualfamily/about/h1n1/index.html

gr8_phk: Considering your personal experience with the individuals you happen to have known is not a scientifically valid way of determining the severity of the threat that seasonal flu or H1N1 pose to different demographic groups. Only scientific studies of large groups and retrospective studies of particular groups (e.g. reviewing the demographics of those who die of flu/H1N1 vs. demographics of the population as a whole) can accurately determine risk levels. See http://www.flu.gov/individualfamily/parents/pregnant5tips.html, which notes "Pregnant women, even ones who are healthy, can have medical complications from the seasonal and H1N1 (Swine) flu."

You are correct that infants do get a partial immune boost from antibodies they receive from the mother. However, you are not correct in concluding that infants therefore have "very good immunity" to seasonal flu, H1N1, or pathogens in general. In fact, infants younger than 6 are both more generally vulnerable to disease (because they have not yet been exposed to germs and developed the diverse immunity of an adult) and also particularly vulnerable to seasonal flu and H1N1. That is why cdc.gov notes that "people who live with or care for children younger than 6 months of age" are one of the priority groups for H1N1 vaccination: not to protect them, but to reduce the risk of transmission to their infants under 6 months who are especially vulnerable. See http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2009/r090729b.htm

It's true that you could volunteer to participate in a study, and I'm glad you're willing to help advance science in that way. However, consent from the subjects is not (alone) sufficient to guarantee that conducting a study is ethical. Scientific ethics guidelines require that the study be deemed inherently ethical by a Human Subjects Research review board. Regardless of what level of risk the subjects are willing to accept, it's only ethical to conduct a study that exposes them to a level of risk that is commensurate with the scientific benefit to be achieved, and not in excess of some absolute limits as well. For example, even if there were human subjects willing with full informed consent to allow their syphilis to go untreated, it would not be ethical to conduct a study that studied the long-term effects of untreated syphilis by deliberately denying available treatment to participants with syphilis (a la the infamous Tuskegee study, which of course compounded the injustice further by using prison inmates as subjects, not getting their informed consent to boot, and selectively using subjects from a particular ethnic group rather than others, among other issues).