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Mutant Registration vs. Vaccine Registration
Responding to an editorial endorsing a national vaccine registry in Canada (though the same kind of registry could be and has been proposed in the U.S. with the same logic), an anonymous reader writes "Vaccine Registration makes me think of Mutant and Superhero registration. The reasons are similar. It's based on fear and misinformation. People fear that unvaccinated people will doom us all. Sound familiar? The difference is this is real. (Oh, and they probably won't use sentinels to track down the dangerous unvaccinated folks.) Thoughts?"
From the linked editorial: "A national vaccination registry would identify which Canadians have been fully vaccinated, those who have received less than a full dose of shots, and those who have not been vaccinated at all. Having a vaccine registry in place in the event of an outbreak of measles, whooping cough, and diseases like these would enable public health officials to identify the children and adults who need vaccinations. Getting them the shots they need would reduce the risk of anyone on the list getting sick, and would also reduce the threat of an outbreak in the community in which they live or travel to [and] from."
In the U.S., immunization records — at least, ones which have been put in electronic form at all — are maintained in a mix of databases, including at the state level, or maintained by cities, or by insurance companies and medical providers. Here, some people (like the reader who submitted this story) also see a potential for unwarranted privacy invasion in a national vaccination registry; however, their case isn't helped by often being tied to opposition to vaccination more generally.
Well except mutants aren't real and can't doom us all whereas unvaccinated people can.
Look, if you're a luddite and have chosen to not be vaccinated against infectious diseases, you are a public health risk.
If I or my children get sick due to contact with you, I want legal recourse against you.
If you are un-immunized, you really have no business going into places like hospitals where you will put the lives of others at risk.
If you solely bore the risk of not being immunized, and only you and your family might become ill -- well, good for you, you'll take yourself out of the gene pool and do us all a favor.
But, if you're a moron who hasn't vaccinated your children because you've been listening to Jenny McCarthy, I don't want you or your children anywhere me or my family.
You want to be a plague carrier? Fine, but you can't go into public.
Diseases which had been mostly eradicated which are suddenly making a resurgence are entirely due to idiots who think the vaccine is going to give them another disease. You're entitled to your stupid beliefs, but you are not entitled to spread disease.
If you choose to exercise your right to not be immunized, you give up some of your rights as far as you could infect others.
The reasons are similar. It's based on fear and misinformation
No, it's based on facts. It's the anti-vaxxers who operate based on misinformation.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
A Vancouver father is calling on parents to vaccinate their children for chickenpox after his son nearly died from the disease while his immune system was compromised during chemotherapy.
Jason Lawson's 10-year-old son Beckett has been in and out of hospital for most of his life for cancer treatment, but Lawson says one of the scariest moments came when the boy caught chickenpox from a classmate at school.
Try registering your kids for public school or enroll in a college in the US and you'll find that you have to have vaccination records. Many states also have public health laws that require doctors/nurses to keep records or notify the state when a patient has had a specific vaccine. If you're in the healthcare industry you also are tracked at a statewide level on your vaccination history.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Sure, the fundamentals are similar - building a list of people who are threats to the health of the rest of the population.
But, while super/mutant power are generally something innate and unselected, not getting vaccinated is, by and large, a choice.
If you are making a choice to ignore what science has earned human society, and that choice is putting other people at risk, get on the list.
Additionally, if I could not get vaccinated against something for some specific medical reason, I'd want to be on a list to be notified in case of an outbreak, so that I could lock myself away until it passed.
Go for a little walk, breathe some fresh air.
#DeleteChrome
It would be an invasion of privacy, sure. I mean, if this were any other sort of medical records, we probably wouldn't care at all. I mean, if anyone proposed a national registry of "broke their leg skiing" or "genetically predisposed to be an alcoholic", we wouldn't be having this conversation.
On the other hand, there are so many idiots (compared to, say, 15 years ago) out there refusing to vaccinate their kids because they are listening to idiot celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, that something should be done to protect people who cannot get vaccinated (like very young children).
I don't know. It's one of those things where I don't think there is a simple answer that would work.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Except when what can make you sick, can make others sick or even kill them.
If you want the ability to walk around un-immunized and risk your life, maybe you should have to accept civil and criminal liability in the event someone else gets sick.
Because if you being un-immunized causes people to die, and you knew that was a possibility, well, sounds like manslaughter to me.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How did this get on the front page? Comparing vaccination registrations with mutant registration? A remotely educated person would have at least tried to compare it to the real-life events that inspired the idea of "mutant registration", which were the treatment of Jews in Europe and of the Japanese in the US during WW2.
And this:
It's based on fear and misinformation. People fear that unvaccinated people will doom us all. Sound familiar? The difference is this is real. (Oh, and they probably won't use sentinels to track down the dangerous unvaccinated folks.)
Is this a joke? Is the suggestion that they won't use sentinels sarcastic?
And it's not "fear based on misinformation", it's fear based in real risk. When large numbers of people refuse to get vaccinated from serious infectious diseases, they're putting everyone else in the population at greater risk of infection.
Wow
Slashdot you really need add a +1 crazy to the moderation levels.
Someone might actually enjoy reading the nut jobs on Slashdot.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This is a sensible public health policy and a perfectly appropriate response to recent outbreaks, for example of measles in Calgary. But let's not let that get in the way of invoking poorly contrived analogies and imply that the government will harvest unvaccinated people for their superpowers. I wonder what Michele Bachmann's superpower is?
I'm trying to keep track of what kind of registries are acceptable for each (US) political party
No Fly Registry: It's Our Patriotic Duty (D&R)
Gun Owner Registry: Acceptable for (D), Unacceptable for (R)
Legal-to-work-in-US Registry: Acceptable for (R), Unacceptable for (D)
National ID card: Acceptable for (D), Unacceptable for (R)
Vaccination Registry: Acceptable for (D), Unacceptable for (R)
Superhero Registry: It's Our Patriotic Duty
Mutant Registry: Ditto
Windows Registry: Can't run Windows without it, and what else would you run?
I'd suppose the key difference between these stories, is one is a voluntary choice, one is something you are born as, and yeah I think a better analogy for fear mongering would be countries that make people register religions etc...
I know we're all supposed to buy into the mutants in X-Men as being corollaries for the civil rights movement, but actually registering mutants would be a very logical and beneficial step. A woman who can control the weather? A guy who can destroy buildings if his sunglasses fall off? A girl who can kill you by touching you briefly? People who can shape-shift, instantly teleport past security? People who can control your mind? Guess what? In the real world, having such people walking around controlling the weather on a whim wouldn't work. Gawker.com posted an editorial saying how the government should arrest Global Warming deniers. At the same time, shouldn't we arrest (or at least monitor) those that could actually make the the weather warmer? So yeah, the whole comparison in this story makes no sense. Mutants can (and in the comics are definitely) a menace and should be registered.
If we're really serious about this, governments and health agencies need to offer a variety of vaccines for a given disease, with different adjuvants, egg-free versions, etc, to accomodate those who have a nasty reaction to the most popular formulations. Then, offer people the choice between vaccine and quarantine.
Then again, this world is getting awfully overpopulated, and maybe we're due for another major culling, cold-hearted and horrible as that may sound...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
" which were the treatment of Jews in Europe and of the Japanese in the US during WW2"
Talk about two vastly different levels.
The treatment of Americans of Japanese descent in the US was shameful.
The the treatment of the Jews by Nazi Germany was a Holocaust.
The sad thing is that treatment of Americans of Japanese descent has become so politicised that much of the history about it has been rewritten and many of the triggers are not taught because of fear that people will be accused of trying to justify it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
i think this is a non-issue. people that don't get vaccinated and infect other people should be criminally charged for any negative consequences that their action have on others. if someone dies, then that's called manslaughter. also, they should bear the full costs of their treatment and of other innocent victims. they should make you sign a paper with all of this when you refuse a vaccine.
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The government has NO RIGHT to know what will and won't make me sick.
On the contrary, the government has every right to assure you are vaccinated. Your ignorant and paranoid refusal to be vaccinated threatens the health of others. The threat you pose if you are not vaccinated is not some misguided rant of a paranoid, but a real and present medical danger.
.
If you do not want to get vaccinated, then go live in complete isolation, far, far away from those who want their children to be healthy. The moment you choose to interact with society, then you have a responsibility not to make that society sick.
If I knew that specific neighborhoods were mostly populated with people who were unvaccinated, I could avoid going there. They could still have their privacy and I could have my health. While they may feel that they are better off facing the diseases that they refuse vaccination against, some of us have more to lose by contracting some of those illnesses.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
People with any number of diseases are a potential public health threat. HIV comes to mind. But putting health records into one big database might allow for the types of research to identify patterns of disease that don't rise above the 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 threshold that most studies are limited to. Picking on vaccinations rather than just linking all health records to a centralized database seems narrow and punitive rather that good public policy.
HIV (and other STDs) are a bit more charged than simple vaccinations because of the way it spreads. Someone with HIV should notify any sexual partners of this before any risky activities (I have a vague memory of someone charged with homicide for purposefully infecting as many people as possible). This information should also be divulged in activities where other participants may be infected (sports where bleeding is normal comes to mind). However, HIV doesn't pose a major risk of spreading through normal, everyday contact. Contrast that to someone with the plague coughing in a movie theater.
The nazi's made the Jewish do registration and later the rounded them up and took them to camps.
Of course, you can avoid this problem simply by GETTING YOUR FUCKING VACCINATIONS! Come on, dude. Grow up.
People with any number of diseases are a potential public health threat. HIV comes to mind. But putting health records into one big database might allow for the types of research to identify patterns of disease that don't rise above the 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 threshold that most studies are limited to. Picking on vaccinations rather than just linking all health records to a centralized database seems narrow and punitive rather that good public policy.
Except that you're not going to catch HIV from somebody standing next to you at the bus stop, just because they said hello to you and breathed in your general direction
You don't get to choose whether you are infected with HIV. You are not at risk of being killed by a woman who has had an abortion (or if you want to make the case that you are, let's see some data, Science Boy). If you don't get vaccinations, the science is really clear on what the consequences are.
People with HIV who have had deliberately had sex with people have been charged with attempted murder and for good reason too.
The problem is that parents are making decisions for just their own children. Their children can make other vaccinated kids or immuno-comprimised sick, where if they hadn't those kids wouldn't of. So the parents are making a decision which effects the well being of more than their children. Now how do you hold them accountable or liable for taking a risk with other peoples children, that's an interesting ethical question.
As far as your article goes, that information was based on a 8,000 responses on an anonymous web survey done by a homeopathic quack with no test controls and biased wording. It's about as far from science as you can go.
http://scienceblogs.com/insole...
Then, tell me you don't want your kids vaccinated.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Whats that? My idea is insensitive and wrong, but yours is ok?
Yes. My neighbor's HIV/AIDS status is none of my business because I don't have sex with my neighbor. My neighbor's abortion history is none of my business because abortions are not contagious. But my neighbor's vaccination record for measles and polio IS my business because those are contagious diseases that can spread through a community.
Someone with HIV should notify any sexual partners of this before any risky activities
Up here, that's legally required if they have a detectable viral load. If they don't, they can be charged with aggravated sexual assault.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You won't get HIV/AIDS by casual contact with someone. You might get one of these things not being vaccinated.
You say killed, I say removed unwanted tissue growth.
Possibly something your mother should have done.
As a Canadian I'm shocked that the government doesn't already do this. I alway just assumed that when I went to the hospital the medical staff could look up what shots I've had, what I'm allergic to, and any major surgeries I've undergone.
As a side note. I think this a good idea. I sure as shit don't want someone who isn't vacinated wandering around a hospital war full of people who's immune system is compromised.
Vaccinated person gets someone else sick = no liability. Un-vaccinated person = lock em up and throw away the key.
This is the same as: Sober driver kills someone in an auto wreck: Liability limited to an increase in future insurance rates. Drunk driver kills someone: locck em up and throw away the key.
Do you advocate legalization of all irresponsible behaviors, including drunk driving?
Listen bub
I see how you did that there...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
This is the most insane, paranoid thing I've ever seen posted on Slashdot. And that's saying a lot.
The same virus that cause chicken pox in kids will lurk in your body for decades and can come back and give you Shingles. For seniors it can cause nerve damage and crippling pain, even blindness if you are very unlucky. Chicken Pox may not seem like a big deal, but trust me you do not want Shingles.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
I don't think you understand the concept of criminal negligence, anon.
You have no idea the magnitude of the can of worms you are opening there. More like a wormhole that links to a series of universes completely filled with worms. Giant space worms with nasty sharp pointy teeth.
You are correct that unvaccinated people should live in isolation from others, but that clashes with your claim that the government should be able to force people to get vaccinated.
A better solution would be to leave it up to state or local governments to come up with such laws, perhaps based on recommendations from the Feds. Then there will almost certainly be some non-vaccine area that people can go who don't want vaccinations, and vaccine mandatory places where people can go to be safe from those diseases. Eventually, those places that allow non-vaccination will experience the higher costs and increased mortality that comes with that, and people will come to their senses or die out (or it turns out to not be that big a deal and vax-mandatory places abandon the checkpoints as they are too expensive to maintain).
In practice that would be hard to implement, though, as it would require internal checkpoints. Really this is all pretty Orwellian no matter how you look at it.
I wasn't saying those two things were equivalent. I'm saying that both helped to inspire the whole "mutant registration" thing in the X-Men. I'm surprised to encounter controversy.
I cannot remember when I had my last tetanus shot, and my doctor's records don't show it. I, for one, would welcome a national registry that could keep better records than me and my doctor.
The problem is that not everyone can get vaccines. Sone people have immune issues or other medical conditions which prevent them from getting a vaccine. Also not all vaccinations work for all people but the more people that are vaccinated the less exposure to that disease happens as well as preventing spread.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Thank you for that quote. It's an excellent one and very true.
I
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Vaccinated people don't have to worry about un-vaccinated people, unvaccinated people don't have to worry about vaccinated people, and nobody has to worry about the government.
Says who? Vaccines are not 100% effective. Vaccines wear off. And not everyone can be vaccinated
When did the government become responsible for protecting people from their own stupidity anyways? Stupidity used to be a self-correcting problem... now we all have to subsidize it - and the bureaucracy that surrounds it.
When it affects other people. The unvaccinated can/have cause epidemics. It is the same reason governments don't let people drink and drive but will allow you to get stupid drunk at home.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Find me any new vaccines that have a double blind placebo study.
Here is three from a simple google search. http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/...
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/...
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...
Yes, some new vaccines have their performance compared to existing vaccines for the same drug. The existing vaccines have been compared to placebos already... No need to test for placebo performance as it already been confirmed that the established drug is better than placebo, what you really care about is if the new drug is even better or why bother with the new one.
Also find me some scientific studies that show and follow children who get multiple different combinations of vaccines over the course of 10-15 years.
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/...
Check of the 15 sources on that paper. And a simple google search will give you way more than that...
No vaccine is 100% effective.
Marvel's stories have always been parables about racisim and homophobia, using mutants and superheroes as a cypher to teach kids that it's not okay to discriminate and to entertain old cheeto-stained adults (disclaimer: I pick up about 40 comics a month, but admit I am not actually cheeto-stained so I have not not been living up to the standard I set for our kind). They are not parables about ways to make sure that health concerns caused by misinformed individuals do not blow up in our face and cause loss of life. Terrible article premise, sorry.
No registration needed - if you are unvaccinated and get a disease, you pay for your own treatment.
I wish it were that simple. The fact is; we treat everyone one way or another. Get sick, walk into an emergency room and claim poverty. They won't throw you out (and who is going to check some hobo's ID to see if he really has assets available). So we pay for that.
The problem with the anti-vaccine crowd: They don't want themselves of their kids vaccinated. Might cause autism, you know. But they are the most militant about getting everyone else stuck. Because that's how they keep themselves healthy. I say, "F* it!" I'm getting vaccinated. So are my kids. So if some little unvaccinated snot-dribbler shows up at school, my family is safe.
Problem: The unvaccinated little snot-dribblers are out there. And we are going to pay for them one way or another. Jack up the insurance rates and they'll drop coverage and show up at the ER, sick kid in tow. Or they'll go on the public plan and still we pay.
Have gnu, will travel.
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My great-grandfather had fully webbed feet; my father and grandfather have partially webbed toes. Tell me again how mutants aren't real.
And since unvaccinated people have existed as long as the species has, it's pretty clear they cannot "doom us all".
Good job of expressing the know-nothing authoritarian viewpoint so popular on the Internet these days! Mike Godwin needs to come up with a new law - something like "in any Internet forum there is a 100% probability that overly simplistic authoritarian responses to complex propositions will be voted insightful by self-appointed experts".
I know it's a possibility that leaving a rock in my walkway may cause someone to trip and die. If they do, am I guilty of manslaughter? No. Your assertion is false.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
That link had several lies or used sources of bad science. They claimed that unvaccinated children had a ~50% reduced rate of autism according to whatever study. I have NEVER read of any study in the past decade that came to this conclusion. There have been numerous studies from very reputable Universities and research centers that came to the conclusion that the autism rate is identical.
Whomever did the study came up with results that fly in the face of every other trial that has ever happened. It is so far out that it cannot be explained by anything other than being purposefully false.
Whatever a drunk driver with a child in the car that had got involved in an accident would get, a parent that doesn't vaccinate their child for no good reason should get the same. This is considered child endangerment and is a felony in many states.
If this risk ever equals the risk that our governments (and the corporations that run them) are placing on everyone in the population with their anti-humanist policies, do be sure to let me know.
Quite frankly the hysteria over anti-vaxxers hasn't got much to do with real-life health risks, it's really about a whole lot of people who want to inflict their will on somebody - anybody - while still retaining a feeling of moral righteousness. It's the same psychology that drives religious crusades - lots of people have an unreasoning urge to lash out against other people, and anti-vaxxers are a target that has been designated as acceptable in our time. In other times and other places other groups have been vilified for similar reasons. People's (very real) fears serve as an excuse and a rallying cry, a way to designate a "Them" that is opposed to "Us".
Great, my local city has a rule about not having vaccinations, but how does that help if I decide to travel? What if someone comes to my town? What about people in another city or state that have an outbreak that creates a new strain that causes my current vaccinations to be useless? How do I protect myself against those jerks?
Of course there will be people from out of country, but if you're a resident of the USA, the most common people I have contact with, I should have some guarantees about the lethality of coming in contact with a given person.
Not getting vaccinated is akin to dumping barrels of mercury and lead into your well. Things you do to your property will affect others.
This video explains how herd immunity works and shows models of what happens when most of the population is vaccinated and when most are not: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-cKzzPkz2o This is why everybody that can be vaccinated SHOULD be vaccinated. Personally I think the government should take the money and instead of building a database which WILL LEAD TO ABUSE, and instead focus on educating the public how vaccines ACTUALLY protect us (and no, it is not on the individual level), and the risks involved with vaccination (although they definitely do not cause autism, there some health risks to some individuals), and why the trade off is overall worth it for society (the same reasoning why we do not ban cars even though they kill people and children).
Why only limit to vaccination database? Alcohol kills much much more individuals and is clearly a public hazard. Tracking those who buy alcohol and who consume has will reduce the number of casualties by 10 to 15 thousand people in United States alone. The annual cost for alcohol-related traffic accidents totals more than $50 billion per year. The #1 and #2 killers in US are cardiovascular diseases and cancer. We should monitor all those who do not exercise enough because they are a clear public hazard as well.
One key fact that TFS seems to miss is the concept of choice
X-Men comics are used to explore rasism, homophobia and other such biases partly because mutant powers aren't a choice. In the books, people are just born different, and it's all about learning to accept that as a culture.
The other key difference is inherent harm. Having super senses, the ability to fly, read minds, etc ... these do not actively cause harm without intent. Sure, some powers allow for a LOT of damage to be done, if the intent is there, but very few powers (there are a few) can hurt people around you, simply by existing.
By contrast to both of those, getting vaccinated (or not getting vaccinated) is an active choice you make, for yourself and your children. You aren't just born vax or non-vax. You decide. And if you decide to go without (for yourself or your kids) you cause harm everyone around yourselves. Your very presence is dangerous whether you mean to or not.
This signature is false.
Odds are the mutant registration has far more to do with the Holocaust than the Japanese internment camps IMHO the adding in of the Japanese internment is just a bit of political correctness pandering.
Are you saying that I'm pandering because I think that the fictional "Mutant Registration Act" was probably partially inspired by the real-life "Alien Registration Act"?
I think you're being overly sensitive and being weirdly reverse-politically correct. Instead of being "politically correct" by being sensitive and demanding that nobody say anything that might be construed as "offensive", you're being sensitive and demanding that nobody say anything that might be construed as "inoffensive". Lighten up.
In the Florida case the ACLU is in fact challenging the legality of the use of the prescription records. In the Dewhurst case, it appears that he revealed the information in a court deposition, which is a public record.
Regarding the Affordable Care Act, medical histories being used anonymously for research is way different from using individual vaccination records to identify possible disease vectors. HIPAA does allow use of anonymised data for research, but you still can't legally use individual records to identify vaccination avoiders.
Yes, you are liable actually. But you example if a very poor one. People can see and walk around the rock.
Not true with diseases.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You can says worms al you want,k but you are still using a slippery slope fallacy.
Look it up.
"You are correct that unvaccinated people should live in isolation from others, but that clashes with your claim that the government should be able to force people to get vaccinated."
Not in any way. Who do you think will need to enforce that isolation?
Mandatory Federal Vaccination should be restarted. All the kids in school line up, and get vaccinations.
Diseases do not care about borders.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No. I think Marvel was pandering if they added it in.
The issue with not saying things out of fear of being offensive when dealing with history is that it can and does lead to a distorted view of history.
For instance when learning about World War II and the Japanese internment almost no one is taught about the Nihau Incident. the shelling of Long Beach, or the attack on Fort Stevens in Oregon.
People need to understand why thinks like both the holocaust and the Japanese internment happened and why they actually seemed like good ideas to the people of the time.
Until you understand why you might have made that same mistake at that point in history you can not learn how to avoid mistakes like in the future.
Frankly the whole Japanese internment is a sore spot for me. The way is is taught is almost always along the lines of "look at what those terrible people did to the Japanese Americans for no reason!", which is just a way of saying look how great and enlightened I am because I would never do that.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm still waiting for superpowers to carve out a homeland - from other people's lands of course - for the Romani (Gypsies). Because they've also faced discrimination for millennia, and Nazis slaughtered them with as much enthusiasm as they slaughtered the Jews. But the Romani didn't get a homeland, billions a year in free weapons, and carte blanche to bomb and murder their neighbors.
Why is that?
Having a vaccine registry in place in the event of an outbreak of measles, whooping cough, and diseases like these would enable public health officials to identify the children and adults who need vaccinations.
If they were against getting the shots in the first place, how would you now force them to get the shots?
Drunk driving laws are wrong in principle and are at best a necessary evil. Hopefully technology will one day replace drunk driving laws. Like you can drive your car drunk, but it's aware of when you're going to cause an accident and prevents it.
You could use your same line of reasoning as an argument for prohibition. Hey if you're drunk you make poor decisions. If you're drunk you may go out in your car because you don't realize at the time that you're taking a big risk, even though when you're sober you would never dream of driving drunk. So you shouldn't be allowed to drink to begin with! Prohibition, for the children!
We have laws against drunk driving because it's a serious problem that requires a one-off, compromise solution, not as a general principle against irresponsible behavior that affects others. ALL your irresponsible behavior affects others, right? For instance, moving away from drinking, do you want to make it illegal to stop paying your mortgage because once a neighborhood loses "herd immunity" to foreclosures it begins dramatically lowering property values even for healthy homes?
Will you stop spreading that lie, please?
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes. My neighbor's HIV/AIDS status is none of my business because I don't have sex with my neighbor.
1. Why do you think people who have sex deserve less protection?
2. You can catch HIV/AIDS from someone without having sex
In fact I believe it is illegal to hide the fact that you have AIDS and have sex with someone. For instance: http://www.nbc-2.com/story/231...
But my neighbor's vaccination record for measles and polio IS my business because those are contagious diseases that can spread through a community.
So don't associate with him or people he associates with. Problem solved from your end!
On the contrary, the government has every right to assure you are vaccinated. Your ignorant and paranoid refusal to be vaccinated threatens the health of others.
Boo-hoo. You're threatening the health of others. Guess what, most people threaten the health of others. You may be infected with a communicable disease and not even know it! That disease can be deadly to some people!
If you do not want to get vaccinated, then go live in complete isolation, far, far away from those who want their children to be healthy.
Better idea, if you want to be 100% guaranteed not to be around any impure people, you go far far away and live in isolation, or with the nut-jobs who agree with you and will let you personally verify their medical history.
Oh that's not fair? Too big of a burden? Yup!
"..hasn't got much to do with real-life health risks,"
it ahs EVERYTHING to do with it. Their decision are harming others. They are exerting their will onto others, and making them sick.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Considering the lifespan of typical vaccinations, there are likely far more "unvaccinated" than vaccinated in the western world. Probably just a given on the rest of the planet.
http://www.traveldoctor.co.nz/...
1. Why do you think people who have sex deserve less protection?
If you're about to have sex with someone, you deserve to know if they have a deadly disease. But not before. Before that, it's none of your business.
2. You can catch HIV/AIDS from someone without having sex
Yes, but it requires actual action on their part to spread it and there's no vaccine to get rid of the disease or prevent its transmission. It doesn't just spread by itself, like the Measles or Mumps or Chicken Pox or the Flu.
If you're about to have sex with someone, you deserve to know if they have a deadly disease. But not before. Before that, it's none of your business.
So are you saying you support HIV/AIDS registration with public access so that when you're about to have sex with someone you can verify that they're not infected? As long as you attest that you're going to have sex with them soon?
Yes, but it requires actual action on their part to spread it and there's no vaccine to get rid of the disease or prevent its transmission.
It doesn't necessarily require action on their part. They could get in a car accident for instance and bleed everywhere.
The fact that there's no vaccine makes it more important to be forewarned, doesn't it?
There are valid medical reasons that some people can't get immunized. (Allergies, compromised immune systems, etc.) Those people benefit from herd immunity.
Correct. However I have an ethical problem with requiring someone to undergo a medical procedure for someone else's benefit because where do you stop? If it is shown that having your tonsils removed reduces the spread of tonsillitis do you mandate that everyone have their tonsils taken out? Taken to an extreme do you mandate living organ donation e.g. lobe of a liver, one kidney etc because you can survive quite well on a single kidney or reduced liver and it would save someone else's life.
The problem with taking away people's choice about which medical procedures to have is not something to be done lightly. A better approach is to immunize people from idiocy by "vaccinating" them with a good education. Like a vaccine education will never be 100% effective but if you can inoculate enough of the population you will get a herd immunity that will be proof against more than just anti-vaccine stupidity.
Let's just take it a step further. We need a Megan's law style 'refused to vaccinate' registry, which shows where unvaccinated children and adults go to kingergarten/school/work. Or at very least require schools and kindergartens to make public what percentage of their students have not been vaccinated, so I can make intelligent decisions about where to send or not send my kid.
So are you saying that Mutants shouldn't have a choice to be put on the registry, whereas unvaccinated folks should?
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
*sigh* If only....
I think he's not so much using X-Men (I think the mutant registration thing was Days of Future Past, which wasn't even that good of an arc)
It wasn't? Days of Future Past is commonly cited among comic readers as being among the very top, if not the #1 X-Men story ever published. Days of Future Past, Dark Phoenix Saga, and Age of Apocalypse seem to be the most well regarded.
It didn't revolve around the Mutant Registration Act though. I mean, a Mutant Control Act was mentioned once as something that would happen in the future, but the story arcs that dealt with the Registration Act came around in the mid-to-late '80s (Freedom Force, etc) with references to the Act mostly disappearing after the departure of Chris Claremont. Then Civil War happened..
Where is this "isolation"? A place where you are not legally required to have health insurance simply because you exist? A place where you are not liable for exhaling CO2? Where your earnings aren't pilfered for the purpose of murdering babies or teaching someone's else's views about the origin of species to children?
Because that place sounds better than here, and I don't think it exists anywhere.
Well, I am glad I didn't have to, and that the moderation shows that sanity still prevails.
Yawn.
I have lived all my life with the possibility of contracting a fatal disease from some other person. The fact that I've been vaccinated, and others haven't, doesn't provide me with some magical immunity to death.
We all die. Stop being such an alarmist and live your life without this unseemly and childish fearmongering.
And stop looking for scapegoats among the foolish and weak. If you want to attack someone, show some spirit, and attack the rich and powerful who are doing more to hurt you than any stupid anti-vaxxer ever will.
Sure, there's always a perfectly valid excuse. That minority took our jobs, that other minority runs all the banks, that one is lazy and corrupts our youth.
The chance that any third party - YOU for instance - will be harmed by anti-vaxxers' stupid refusal to vaccinate their children is incredibly small. It's far more likely our government's unwillingness to stop corporations from poisoning our air and water will kill you, or your children, or your grandchildren. But people aren't going to do anything about that, because the government and the corporations are big and scary and they'll fight back.
Meanwhile anti-vaxxers are stupid and easily set up as punching bags, and people want someone weak to punch, someone that won't punch them back.
I'm not trying to offend you, although it probably looks that way. I'm just telling you what I see. The anger and venom directed towards anti-vaxxers is very familiar to me, I've seen people scapegoating minorities before. It's a very old story, and one that shows no sign of ending soon.
I'm appalled by the polarity and extremism on this topic, even from a /. standpoint.
Different vaccines are not created equal. Many have been so successful in eradicating disease, that there's no question about their effectiveness.
But lately, the medical industry has grown accustomed to hiding large parts of unfavourable test results, as we are now starting to find out.
There's ample evidence (or lack thereof) to be worried about and avoiding some vaccines.
As with anything, extreme measures require extreme amounts of evidence.
Enforcing isolation is different from mandatory vaccination, which is what you called for in your original post.
Yes, it IS a huge can of worms. Once you start the government down the road of regulating people's health, it doesn't end until you have 1984 style mandatory calisthenics every morning and computer screens screaming at you that you jack off too much and you need to go make more babies for the motherland.
There wouldn't be so many anti-vaxers if these vaccines were more trust worthy, but the reality is that vaccines are manufactured by large corportations.. and the goverment isn't real fast to protect us... if you need more proof.. here is the story of how the CDC (30 years later) finally acknolodged the polio vaccine contained a cancer causing substance.. http://www.thehealthyhomeecono...
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
And any number of people who were/are allergic to the medium in which the vaccine was delivered and thus had to exempt themselves.
Most people who have objections to vaccines don't object to the vaccine itself, but to the preservatives used to keep it viable. Figure out a way to get rid of the preservatives and most objections will be removed.
For seniors it can cause nerve damage and crippling pain, even blindness if you are very unlucky.
You do not have to be a senior to start experiencing nerve damage. It can start in your mid 40s. :(
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I got very lucky, I went to my doctor within a few hours of the pox appearing, and he had me on antivirals about 5 minutes later. Stopped it in its tracks.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
you choose to put alcohol in your body to get drunk, you choose to avoid putting anything in your body to get unvaccinated. See the difference?
By not getting vaccinated, you're choosing to allow harmful microbes into your body. You choose to become a factory that create billions more of them and then spread them into to to the bodies of your unwilling victims.
BTW, do you think that driving drunk is safer than not being vaccinated?
It can be. If people like you were around when they started vaccinating for smallpox, you would have been responsible for countless millions of deaths by now. It would have made all of the drunk driving deaths in history look like a drop in the bucket.
Drunk driving laws are wrong in principle and are at best a necessary evil.
It's wrong in principle to outlaw recklessly endangering the public by wielding deadly heavy machinery in an irresponsible manner?
Is it wrong in principle to outlaw firing a gun on public streets while blindfolded? Even if, statistically, you're unlikely to hit anybody with just one shot?
Like you can drive your car drunk, but it's aware of when you're going to cause an accident and prevents it.
In that case you aren't driving. This is like riding a taxi while drunk, which is perfectly legal and often encouraged.
I am *perfectly* okay with robot cars driving drunk people around (and sober people for that matter).
You could use your same line of reasoning as an argument for prohibition. Hey if you're drunk you make poor decisions. If you're drunk you may go out in your car because you don't realize at the time that you're taking a big risk, even though when you're sober you would never dream of driving drunk. So you shouldn't be allowed to drink to begin with!
If you can't definitively state that you won't choose not to drive once you're drunk, then yes, you shouldn't be allowed to drink. At least, not without relinquishing your ability to drive beforehand (eg. handing the keys off to a trusted sober party). Much like, if you can't trust yourself not to go out shooting random people when you're drunk, then you should not have simultaneous access to guns and alcohol.
The thing that allows us not to live in prohibition is the idea that people aren't so helpless that they can't handle making these decisions while sober.
For instance, moving away from drinking, do you want to make it illegal to stop paying your mortgage because once a neighborhood loses "herd immunity" to foreclosures it begins dramatically lowering property values even for healthy homes?
...it is illegal to stop paying your mortgage, and rightly so. It's called "breach of contract", and it violates contract law.
I can only assume that you're using "illegal" to mean against criminal law instead of against civil law, or some similar distinction, which is really separating out illegal acts by the legal remedy. The legal remedy for failing to make mortgage payments is often (though not always!) less severe than that given to drunk drivers, because the harm done is less severe. Drunk driving, and remaining unvaccinated for no reason to easily-vaccinable bad diseases, both endanger the health & welfare of others. Drunk Driving also endangers property. Not paying mortgages only endangers finances. Yes, finances can parlay into health and welfare but it's indirect and to some degree insurable.
It doesn't necessarily require action on their part. They could get in a car accident for instance and bleed everywhere.
The fact that there's no vaccine makes it more important to be forewarned, doesn't it?
You want to be forewarned so that you won't get into a car accident that leaves your neighbour spilling their blood into your bloodstream?
That's your argument? "We all die"? Sure, we all die, so might as well play Russian roulette. Why all the childish fear mongering about Russian roulette? "Putting a loaded gun to your head and pulling the trigger is DANGEROUS!" they say. They're historical. They should wake up and attack rich people!!
Or maybe you're a paranoid retard.
Ah you're confused because you think that one example of someone exposing others to AIDS without consciously taking action to do so means it's the only possible way.
Well you got me. Car accidents are the only possible way for someone to bleed without taking purposeful action to do so.
Yup. Well done.
The issue (in the United States anyway) isn't that people aren't secretly not vaccinating their kids and sneaking them into schools. It's that they aren't vaccinating their kids, period. They're being quite open about it! I think 99% of them aren't terribly smart, but why create a national registry that will cost money and just freak people out?
Wait, maybe I'm a paranoid retard because I'm not living in a hysterical frenzy of fear over other people's stupid health decisions?
Yeah, that makes sense. Glad you were around to clear that up, I got other things to do today.
But are you sure you're not just looking in a mirror? I haven't proposed attacking rich people, I've just pointed out that the people who want to attack anti-vaxxers are pretty much all too chicken to agitate against any people who are actually a real significant threat to them. Anti-anti-vaxxers are mostly bullies and cowards, and it shows in how they bluster and name-call and belittle anyone who disagrees with their extremism.
If you really want to make a difference, you don't have to "attack rich people". Hey, you could start working on real world vaccination initiatives, rather than screaming at bumbling idiot anti-vaxxers. But that, of course, would be much harder than beating up on chumps, and less immediately emotionally satisfying. So I think most people will continue to vent their spleens on the anti-vaxxers, indulging their anger, instead of doing something more helpful.
Re-reading my earlier post, I see that I did say " If you want to attack someone, show some spirit, and attack the rich and powerful ".
Although I hope this was clearly rhetoric to my point, I guess in the most technical reading of the language I was inciting an attack on the powers that be, and should have more carefully worded my scoffing at the lack of courage of anti-anti-vaxxers.
Not that the rich and powerful have anything to worry about from you or me, of course. We're like bugs to them, they would barely care if I was inciting to riot.
Wait, maybe I'm a paranoid retard because I'm not living in a hysterical frenzy of fear over other people's stupid health decisions?
No, because you're taking a legitimate concern and interpreting it as a method of persecution, that is to say, as being "really about a whole lot of people who want to inflict their will on somebody... a way to designate a 'Them' that is opposed to 'Us'." Some suggests that it would be bad for polio to have a resurgence, and you're interpreting that as people coming after you personally, and instead suggesting that we all attack rich people as the villains-- as though those concepts are connected.
It's either ignorance or a mental health issue. Take your pick.
Nobody's coming after me; I'm standing aside and watching the mob stream by with their pitchforks and torches.
My children are vaccinated. As am I! Although admittedly I did research each vaccine carefully, and in two cases required that a different preparation be used than the (cheaper) ones our pediatrician was selling. He's a good guy, and did as I asked.
Pretty much 100% of the time, if I say anything about not living in abject terror of disease, people's insistence on an Us .vs. Them dichotomy causes them to repeatedly ignore (as you apparently have) my pretty clear statements that I'm not part of "them". I think avoiding vaccination is both stupid and self-punishing.
But I guess it's hard to accommodate a conscientious objector like me, who has contempt for both sides, when you've got an emotionally fueled "with us or against us" meme running.
I can accommodate a conscientious objector when he's honest and decent, but you seem to be merely a contrarian, and an apologist for people who are putting whole populations in danger of serious illness through smug stubbornness and willful ignorance.
I don't like the us vs. them mentality either, but that doesn't keep me from calling out assholes for being assholes.
Because vaccines are not 100% effective, just like no other medical treatment or preventive is 100% effective.
Google "herd immunity," too.
See, that's where we differ, right there. You apparently think it is "honest and decent" to call people assholes, and to openly encourage intolerance towards people you consider smug and willfully ignorant. You can't conceive of an argument of conscience that results in disagreement with your viewpoint and dismissal of your ridiculously overstated fears ("whole populations in danger" hyperbole for example), so it must be contrarianism or apologism.
But how many people have you vaccinated, that are biologically unrelated to you? I'm betting none, although I'd actually love to be wrong.
Meanwhile, not only has my family adopted children and vaccinated them, I've contributed financially to vaccination campaigns in Afghan orphanages. So what's wrong with contrarianism again? Why do you consider it "decent" to engage in negative actions like spreading fear and inciting intolerance, while it's "apologism" to encourage bravery, social change, and ideological tolerance? Which in practice has resulted in positive action?
I think I can be proud to bear the title of "contrarian" in this particular debate, so I'll continue to refuse to play for either team, and continue to vaccinate, and continue to defend anti-vaxxer's right to make wrong choices.
But it doesn't sound like we're ever going to reach a meeting of minds. We're both too convinced of our own righteousness.
You can't conceive of an argument of conscience that results in disagreement with your viewpoint and dismissal of your ridiculously overstated fears...
It's not about people who "disagree with my viewpoint". It's about people who are are spreading misinformation which results in deaths. You do understand that people have died, and people will continue to die, as a result of people who refuse to vaccinate their children, right? And it's not just their children who die. It's other people who would not have been infected.
Those are not "overstated fears". Those are facts. I'm not ranting about the possible dangers of the anti-vaccination zealots. I'm saying those people are kind of assholes because they've killed others through their own willful ignorance. It's like if I suddenly decided that I believed that arsenic was important for a balanced diet, so I went around to different schools leaving bags of poisoned candy sitting around. Your response shouldn't be, "We should all be tolerant to different belief systems and accept this person's right to do what they like." You should be thinking about ways to stop such things from happening.
And if your response is, "People trying to get rid of the bags of poisoned candy is just another example of the government coming to get me, and people trying to inflict their will on me!" then you're paranoid. If your response to the whole controversy is, "I'm a better person because I'm tolerant of these alternative beliefs. Don't be so self-righteous!" then you're an asshole.
I don't particularly think it's "honest and decent" to call people assholes. But I don't think it's dishonest or indecent to call assholes assholes. You've shown yourself to be a paranoid, smug, willfully ignorant asshole, and the most honest and decent thing I can do is tell you that.