Slashdot Mirror
Study Finds Unvaccinated Students Putting Other Students At Risk
New submitter haroldmandel writes in with a story about the increase of certain diseases in school-age children due to parents not having their kids vaccinated. "Parents nervous about the safety of vaccinations for their children may be causing a new problem: the comeback of their grandparents' childhood diseases, reports a new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Despite the successes of childhood immunizations, wrote Penn Nursing researcher Alison M. Buttenheim, PhD, MBA, in the American Journal of Public Health, controversy over their safety has resulted in an increasing number of parents refusing to have their children vaccinated and obtaining legally binding personal belief exemptions against vaccinations for their children."
That is all i have say.
I suspect that, rather than "Despite the successes of childhood immunizations", it would be because of those successes that the 'controversy' is presently raging...
Because of the effectiveness of widespread childhood vaccination, we've had at least a generation of people with minimal firsthand exposure to all the wacky pathogenic fun that used to be quite common. Plus, depending on the herd immunity requirements for a given pathogen and vaccine, being part of the first n% of opt-outs is basically cost-free. It isn't until you get closer to herd immunity breakdown that being unvaccinated starts to carry any serious additional risk of infection.
If you have a situation where people's knowledge of the risks is largely historical and the odds are pretty good that you can free-ride your way past them in any case, it (sadly) seems only to be expected that there would be room for assorted controversy to flourish.
This is why vaccinations need to be mandatory. If you want to live in society, you have to follow society's rules and that includes rules that keep you from putting others at serious risk.
Wow what a slippery slope that is... So for instance should H1N1 vaccinations be required? What about flu shots? If everyone got the flu shot we would likely run out before the high risk people (the young and elderly) had a chance to get it. Not to mention the potential side effects of many vaccines. Personally I and my children are vaccinated for everything I consider a serious disease (polio, etc.), but not H1N1 for instance because the chance of death is practically non-existent. In a free society you have the choice to be stupid... If you take away that choice then its no longer a free society.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
No way!
Those that are vaccinated should be safe anyway.
If they are not, then there's no reason to vaccinate.
I've heard that mathematicians working at the cutting edge of theoretical statistics have recently hypothesized the existence of probabilities other than "0" and "1". It's pretty cool stuff, with potential implications in all sorts of areas...
I don't think they need to be mandatory, but I think what *should* happen is we need to publicly shame these parents. Every time a kid dies of Whooping Cough, those parents need to be on the news the same as if they'd drowned their kid in a bathtub.
At its core, the anti-vax movement is bad risk assessment for a few reasons. First of all, the horrors of the diseases that most vaccinations prevent against haven't been seen in a few generations. People my age (30's) with kids have never lived in a world where you could get polio or mumps at any moment and wind up dead, on an iron lung, deaf, scarred for life, etc. They score the risk of these infections as low because they don't see them. (The fallacy here being that the *reason* they don't see them is because of vaccines.)
Then, they hear scare tactics from certain people (Wakefield, McCarthy, etc) who claim that vaccines contain mercury/fetal tissue/generic toxins/etc that will harm their child. One shot and suddenly your child will catch The Autism. (Picture that in a much scarier font and cue a woman screaming off camera.) This would be so horrible and so, they conclude, we must stop all vaccinations until they are proven 100% safe.
The fallacy with this last one is that 1) there has never been a proven link between vaccines and autism, 2) even if there was, the diseases vaccines prevent are far worse than autism, and 3) no medical procedure is 100% safe. In fact, nothing anyone does is 100% safe. Driving in to work? You could get in a car crash and die. Better not commute to work until they can design cars that are 100% safe. Walking down the street? You could trip, hit your head, and die. Better not walk until they design 100% safe sidewalks.
The fact is that risk that vaccines pose is minuscule (and mainly limited to allergic reactions or slight fevers) and the threat these diseases pose is huge should they make a comeback. It is only bad risk assessment that makes vaccines look like a bigger threat than the diseases.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Jenny McCarthy body count
“I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's s___. If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.”
Jenny McCarthy in Time Magazine, April 2009
The only students at risk are those who do not get vaccinated
False. Some number of children can't be vaccinated for legitimate medical reasons, usually allergic reaction to the vaccine ingredients. Then there's a certain number, ranging from 1-5+% that the vaccine simply doesn't take, they are not 100% effective. These two classes of people rely on the fact that the diseases they are vulnerable to aren't present in the general population, if there is an outbreak, the sick people don't come into contact with enough vulnerable people for the disease to spread at a rate that can sustain itself. The numbers necessary are different for each disease, but generally range from 90-99% need to be immune to prevent a wide scale outbreak. These people are harming more than their own children (which would be bad enough), they put everyone else at risk too.
Having worked in the medical research field, I can tell you with certainty that vaccines are that profitable...
Finally when it's all said and done, the actual pharmaceutical company can bring in billions of dollars in revenue selling the vaccine, which is just about enough to fund the next few projects.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Oh noes, the chemicals!
First, most vaccines don't contain mercury anymore. Second, vaccines only ever contained very small amounts, as a preservative. If you eat fish even a few times per year, that plus your exposure through drinking water probably adds up to more mercury than you'd get from a vaccine, even if you did get one of the vaccines that still has mercury in it.
The preservative is necessary to keep the vaccine from going bad long enough that it can be reasonably distributed.
Your post could be shortened to "I don't know how vaccination works".
Almost every person with a healthy natural immune system exposed to Poliovirus will brush it off with no symptoms and gain additional lifelong protection.
That's the only slightly correct sentence in your post. But all the conclusions you draw are wrong.
Immunization via vaccination is based on exactly that fact: Given an healthy immune system, an exposition to the Poliovius will create an immune answer which a) stops the Poliovirus from spreading and b) gives you a lifelong protection. And that's how vaccination works. Your body gets a dose of dead or at least deactivated Poliovirus, your healthy immune system creates the immune answer, and you gain lifelong protection -- and that without the risk of actually catching Poliomyelitis, which an exposition to the real thing would yield.
Did you read TFA? or at least TFS?
These children which aren't getting vaccinated because their parents don't understand science are putting other children at risk.
So it may not be their own children which natural selection sorts out, it may be the children of parents who have accepted that vaccines work, aren't more likely to cause autism, and aren't part of some government conspiracy.
So their "personal belief exemptions" are putting the lives of other people at risk -- basically they've gotten the right to become potential carriers of disease:
You can't just have people opting out of things which is intended to prevent disease in greater society if it puts other people at risk. You're free to choose for yourself, but not when you're talking about communicable disease.
Someone needs to explain to these parents that the rest of the world shouldn't bear the risk of them being stupid. If it was only them and their offspring who might be affected, go ahead. But it isn't.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Unfortunately, the ones that suffer aren't only the kids of the parents who don't vaccinate. If it were only those parent's kids, I'd be in favor of vaccination being voluntary. However, when Parent A doesn't vaccinate his/her kids, they increase risk of infection for Parent B's baby (too young for vaccination), Parent C's child (can't be vaccinated due to valid medical reason such as allergies), and Parent D's child (vaccine didn't take). A person's rights to raise their kids how they want don't extend to putting other kids at risk.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yeah, you know who else used logical fallacies to support his arguments?
Hitler.
As someone who has some expertise in this:
The Flu vaccine is actually pretty effective. After all, they pretty much make a new one each year. They've had quite a bit of practice by now. However, getting a vaccine is not a full protection against the flu. The problem is twofold:
First, the flu virus mutates very quickly, and likes to mutate in ways that change its antigen "signature". Though there are some interesting attempts at more general vaccines, currently, you can't even make a vaccine for H1N1 flu strains. You have to pick a specific subgroup of H1N1 strains, because even within the H1N1 type, there are variations that appear differently to our immune system. The same holds for the "old" H3N2 flu, and the even older H2N2 flu. It's not uncommon for a strain to mutate enough over a single season that last year's vaccine no longer works.
Second, because there are so many different strains in the wild and they shift so quickly, you can't create a vaccine that is targeted against all of them. Why not? That wasn't part of my specialty. I think it has something to do with confusing the immune system with too many similar things. Anyway, the point here is simpler: Vaccine makers don't even try to protect against all the strains. They use clinical samples to determine which strains are looking to be the most common, pick the top four or five, and make a vaccine that protects against those.
So, what happens if they guess wrong, and a rare strain from the previous year suddenly spreads wildly? Well, you don't get vaccine effectiveness. What if one of the popular strains goes through some mutations early in the season? Well, same effect. You've probably got a vaccine that won't help much. Is this the fault of the vaccine? No. It's the fault of the virus that mutates faster than vaccines can be created and tested. They are trying to find ways to make them faster, but that would only work if you were willing to get multiple shots per year. The better solution is to find a way to make vaccines that apply to larger groups of strains, but it takes time and lots of data.
Of course, this all gets thrown out the window if you're a fan of Intelligent Design (aka: Creationism). In that case, vaccines don't work because God hates you and chose to use his powers to fiddle with a Germ Spirit and make it immune to the poisons created by the Unbelievers. He's punishing you for not having more faith in him. Of course, there's nothing you can do in this case, so there's no point in trying to understand exactly why it happened.
The fact is, there's profit being made here. The next question is what lobbying & what pressure is being put on legislators to insure these profits.
If that is your sole argument, that someone is lobbying the government to force people to get vaccinated so these companies can make money, you've lost any semblance of logical argument.
The fact that you consider homeopathic to be medicine, which it isn't, and choose to focus on the money aspect, which is completely irrelevant to the medically sound reason to be vaccinated, shows your lack of common sense.
I can assure you when people were being vaccinated for smallpox or polio, no one gave a rats ass about who was making a profit, or if a profit was even being made. All they cared about was that the yearly sweeps of infections that plagued the country came to a stop.
Are you now going to complain about all the money those big bad corporations made eradicating smallpox and polio? How about rinderpest, an equally devastating disease which has afflicted animals since before the time of Greeks? Are you going to complain about the money corporations made selling this vaccine to the animal industry to innoculate animals to prevent them from getting infected and making it the second time in human history that a disease has been wiped from the face of the Earth?
It seems counter-intuitive to complain these companies are making money to produce a product which will, eventually, make the use of that product unnecessary (in the case of smallpox and rinderpest). After all, wouldn't it be easier to make something which only treats the symptoms rather than cures it? That way they could have a perpetual source of income.
You and Jenny McCarthy would make a great pair. You should go on tour.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The introduction of the polio vaccine in 1955 in the US had a dramatic effect on polio. In 1937 there were 9,514 cases of polio, 12,450 in 1943, 33,300 in 1950, 38,476 in 1954. The polio vaccine was introduced in 1955 and in 1956 there were 15,140 cases, 1957 had 5,485 cases. The number of cases dropped through the 1960s. By the early '70s total polio cases were down to single digits. In the last decade most years have 0 or 1 polio cases. Sanitation was introduced well before 1955, and yet we see a rise in polio cases from the mid 1930s until 1955. Did sanitation suddenly get better in 1955? Did immune systems suddenly get better in 1955? The source for the polio statistics is http://www.post-polio.org/ir-usa.html.
Please explain for all the stupid people in the room how, if student A is vaccinated but student B is not, that this will make student A sick.
From the top of my head:
Vaccine aren't 100% efficient. There might by a few case where the student received the vaccine but didn't develop the antibodies. (Just an example: if you're sick with a fever, there's a risk that the ongoing inflammation will destroy the vaccine content (through macrophages) before antibodies are developped (through lymphocytes))
There might be student aren't anti-vaxx but who aren't up-to-date just yet (they missed a dose or whatever).
There are people who have a compromised immune system (that's an example from TFA) and can't get vaccinated.
There are people who have allergies and for whom the vaccine might be risky (another example from TFA). (As an example: for practical purpose, flu vaccines are grown on eggs. If you're allergic to the egg proteins, no shot for you, even if you're not anti-vaxx).
There are people who have been vaccinated but can't momentarily fight the disease due to a compromised immune system (AIDS, or even disease as simple as mononucleosis can momentarily b0rk the immune system).
etc.
(Case in point: with some disease (like the flu) it's better to vaccinate the population which is at risk of spreading the disease, rather than the group which is at risk of the disease - it better to vaccinate the care taking/nursing/medical personal, rather than the weak elderly patients.)
You end-up with a bunch of people who aren't anti-vaxx, but which still aren't protected against the disease.
- If the number of non vaccinated people is underneath a specific treshold. Nothing happens. When somebody gets the disease due to complex unlucky circumstances, nothing happens, because chances are the sick person will never meet another susceptible person. The disease just can't manage to find enough victims to spread among.
- If the number of non vaccinated people rises above a specific treshold, the shit hits the fan: the disease get a big enough and dense enough population among which to spread. There's a far greater chance that the disease in one sick person will get a chance to meet a susceptible person to whom to jump. Disease which were taught to be almost eradicated suddenly appear again and run epidemic.
By being selfish and refusing to vaccine, anti-vaxx will raise this number above the treshold. They will not only pose a danger to themselves, but to the population as a whole including all the "innocent" categories cited before who weren't anti-vaxx, but will suffer because of the anti-vaxx.
In a completely selfish way, it makes sense for the anti-vaxx to refuse the vaccine: vaccine aren't perfect and there very slight chance of secondary effect (ranging from simple inconvenience to more serious effect). Even rarest problem don't have a rate of absolutely zero but slightly above. And if the disease is almost eradicated chance, the chance to catch is are nearly zero.
But that behaviour is really dangerous for the community because as a consequence of it, the number of susceptible people is at risk at passing the treshold. They end up making the chance to catch the disease non-zero. By just wanting to avoid a statistically really rare inconvenience, they put the community at a bigger risk.
The example is the polio. In theory it has been recently almost eradicated, chance of catching it are nearly non existant. But vaccine against polio isn't a synthetic product, but a "stunned" virus. There a very slight but not completely null chance to develop a serious effect, something like a polio (sorry I don't remember if it was either because the virus wasn't stunned enough, or because the immune system was compromised).
So the reasoning inside the head of anti-vaxx goes "chance of problems with vaccine > chance of problems with polio" therefore "don't get the vaccine".
But the problem is that, in consequence of just a reasoning, the treshold has b
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]