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Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities
Vaccination rates across the U.S. don't neatly correlate with religiosity or wealth; Wired reports that one conspicuous pocket of low vaccination rates, according to California's state database of daycare records, is a place where you might not expect it: Silicon Valley — specifically, the daycare centers at some large tech companies.
A WIRED investigation shows that some children attending day care facilities affiliated with prominent Silicon Valley companies have not been completely vaccinated against preventable infectious diseases. At least, that’s according to a giant database from the California Department of Public Health, which tracks the vaccination rates at day care facilities and preschools in the state. We selected more than 20 large technology and health companies in the Bay Area and researched their day care offerings. Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state’s data. ... And those six have a level of measles vaccination that does not provide the “herd immunity” critical to the spread of the disease. Now, this data has limitations—most critically, it might not be current. But it also suggests an incursion of anti-science, anti-vaccine thinking in one of the smartest regions on Earth.
I'm not surprised by this. There's a particularly rabid strain of libertarianism that seems to hold anything related to authority in contempt, even when it's bound on sound science.
Since "the man" wants them to be vaccinated, libertarians automatically distrust vaccines.
Science denial is probably more strongly correlated with politics/emotions not intelligence level. The left and the right merely have different things they are in denial about, different things that touch on their politics and their emotions. And emotions lead people to stand by their beliefs regardless of rational thought and evidence, both on the left and the right.
"Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state’s data."
So half of the sample is below average? Hmmm!
-- "Oh. This guy again."
State laws provide guidelines for day care center vaccination requirements. Sometimes they are not equivalent to public school vaccination requirements; lawmakers aren't doctors, how many can recite the available vaccines by heart?
for a bunch of these kids to get chickenpox or pertussis and everyones tune will change on vaccinations.
I grew up with a grandmother who was a nurse during the 20's - 60's. She told me horror stories of what medicine was like before things like penicillin and vaccinations. People died from the simplest things, as they do still, but back then it was more dangerous. We take for granted that we live in a time with less disease than ever in human history.
People need to wake up.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The anti-vaxx movement has been almost entirely among liberals and environmentalist, who view Big Pharma and anything "unnatural" with deep suspicion. I've been highly amused at recent efforts to cast it as a conservative cause; there are some anti-vaxxers among the hard right, but the vast majority are on the left.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
We're not subject to the same rules as the little people.
I think it's a bit of a different issue here. Notice these are pretty much all computer related firms. As we all know, many people in this field think anything can be fixed in the software.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm not surprised by this. There's a particularly rabid strain of libertarianism that seems to hold anything related to authority in contempt, even when it's bound on sound science. Since "the man" wants them to be vaccinated, libertarians automatically distrust vaccines.
If you look at some of these enclaves of anti-vaxxers you will find that they are generally liberal enclaves, not libertarian enclaves.
Could a parent sue if their child who was legitimately unable to be vaccinated got the measels from a parents child who refused to vaccinate their child?
Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state’s data.
In other words, half the day care facilities were below average, and half were above. Isn't that kinda/sort the DEFINITION of average?
Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates
As many have suggested, no duh.
according to the state’s data. ... And those six have a level of measles vaccination that does not provide the “herd immunity” critical to the spread of the disease.
So that is legitimately worrying, if the anti-vax situation has gotten so bad that half the schools don't have herd immunity.
But it also suggests an incursion of anti-science, anti-vaccine thinking in one of the smartest regions on Earth.
It suggests the null-hypothesis, that one of the smartest regions on Earth is utterly typical in this respect.
I stole this Sig
Really? South Carolina Public Schools vaccination rate is 98.1%, but for Private Schools it is 96.02% For New York public schools are 99% and private schools are 88%. So you really expect me to believe that there is no correlation at all with being rich enough to afford private school, and poor enough to be stuck in public school?
Where would one find a large, concentrated population of the most selfish, inconsiderate, greedy, preening, risk-loving, egotistical, psychopaths on the continent?
Bingo!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Wow. Just. Wow. Clearly "one of the smartest regions on earth" isn't really living up to it's moniker.
You would sound like less of an idiot if you knew what engineers studied.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I prefer to keep the gluttons away from my lunches as well. It's hard to deal with gluten intolerance when they're eating all of my food.
It's not about being smart or dumb, conservative or liberal. Far too many people they think having money is a far better immunity than vaccinations, and not just in Silicon Valley. Around the country the most affluent areas are the ones with the worst rates.
Apparently, a person can be very smart and very stupid at the same time.
no, I don't have a sig
I absolutely 100% understand it and it is not 'anti science', it is anti herd.
AFAIC 'herd immunity' is an offensive term, I cannot even begin to fathom something more offensive than grouping of people together, thinking of people as of a 'herd'. Death is preferable to this level of groupthink. It is and it always has to remain a private/individual decision to vaccinate or not. As it says in TFA more than half of these day cares have below-average vaccination rates, so this means a large portion of the individuals decide against vaccination.
I must also say that I think vaccination is a calculated risk and I am not against it at all as a general concept. However to me, as an individual, the ability to refuse any kind of group ideology or group pressure is much more important than any and all health considerations combined.
You can't handle the truth.
Hush, you'll attract the hosts file guy.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This drives a silver stake through the heart of the idea that vaccines cause autism. You would expect that in a place where autism is a required skill on resumes everyone would be vaccinated.
More lies from the fringe:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2013/08/09/court-rulings-dont-confirm-autism-vaccine-link/
Exactly. Anti-science brought on by a superiority complex, thinking that they are smarter than the scientists who have done huge amounts of research. I can see exactly why this type of thinking is predominate in an area like Silicon Valley. "Don't bother me with the research. I'm smart enough to know everything I need to know already."
And the tired chorus of "Both sides do it!" spreads like a dirge across the land...
The only women that will marry the loser geeks are batshit insane, and the geeks have made the perfectly valid mental calculation that they are more apt to pass on their genes if they have kids and don't vaccinate them than if they fail to have kids altogether.
So I should trust the Italian court system more for health advice on this matter than the CDC, American Medical Association and the Autism Speaks organization? That's a lot of dumbed down Americans to ignore...
Greed is the root of all evil.
From the Wired article:
But Google has a simple explanation—a representative chalked it up to old data. “In 2013-2014, these two childcare facilities had immunization rates of 98 percent and 81 percent,” says a Google spokesperson, emphasizing that immunization is important to the company. “The reported numbers for the current year are lower simply because many parents have not yet provided updated immunization records. We’ve asked them all to do this, so we can update the figures.”
So it looks low right now only because the parents who have not yet updated their records are being counted as "unvaccinated".
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine Caused Autism ...
Was that the same court that convicted scientists for not predicting an earthquake? My great-grandfather left that place for a reason. Well, two, corruption and stupidity.
“They’ll line up around the block.” http://www.theglobeandmail.com... There are schools in the wealthiest parts of Los Angeles where the vaccination rate is on a par with that of South Sudan – fashionable tinder boxes of measles waiting to go up. Pertussis (the far-less-fun-than-it-sounds “whooping cough”) is making a dramatic comeback.
And the tired chorus of "Both sides do it!" spreads like a dirge across the land...
So you would prefer to deny and hide that fact? See, you "do it" too. :-)
You know what a vector is, right? What is a quaternion?
Maybe they're relying on everyone else to have their children vaccinated. Their own children, of course, are exceptional.
I prefer to keep the gluttons away from my lunches as well. It's hard to deal with gluten intolerance when they're eating all of my food.
I think you need to go to diversity training for that comment. We are all inclusive here at Slashdot, where we all are gluttons for punishment...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates
Half are below average? That's to be expected, or it wouldn't be a very average average.
Indeed, sorry you got modded down for an insightful reply. Science denial in this specific case however, seems to be across the political spectrum: (http://www.vice.com/read/weird-politics-of-anti-vaxxers-203) - as opposed to the generally right wing tilt of denying climate change, evolution, etc.
The valley has all but lost the ability to produce better tools and products to improve the world. Instead it focuses almost entirely on BS to make money off the hard work of the previous generation without providing value to the end user in return.
The lemming-esk groupthink that permeates industry as people mindlessly jump from one bandwagon to another without any understanding of what they are doing would be amusing if the stench of hubris and entitlement were not so overpowering.
Only measure of intelligence that at all matters is what you actually accomplish and spreading measles is quite the accomplishment.
They probably have gluten-free lunches there though.
FTFY
Protip: either post coherently, or use proper punctuation. Seriously, half your post is gibberish, and the conflicting run-on sentences make it all the worse.
Your point of view (as far as I can tell) requires you to care more about the strength of the species than you care about your own children. Either you don't have children, or you don't deserve them. You want to belive that aliens shot JFK? Fine. We'll just laugh at you behind your back. You want to ignore the proven evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines and risk your child's health over what's essentially an overblown old wive's tale? Your idealogy is more important than your children? Then do your unborn children a favor and get a vasectomy.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
You can't average a bunch of averages.
Oh sure you can... It's just not going to lead you to the answer you where likely looking for...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You're not a statistician.
Maybe you can't. Some people can.
You can't write either.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, that's not how that works, because you assume a number of propositions to be true about me that aren't. Thank you, come again.
They're dogmatic. They spend their entire university career learning formulas and recipes (excuse me, algorithms) without questioning them the way physicists or philosophers do ...
Perhaps its different overseas but here in the US arguing with professors over algorithms and concepts is hardly uncommon, and discussing the origins of things is sometimes part of this argument. As in that concept/algorithm made more sense back in the day when hardware/software attribute X was true, but its not true any more.
Pick up an operating systems textbook. Some of the most popular start with computers were once this way and this is why operating systems tended to do things a certain way. And the legacy of this persists today. I've seen professors of Intro to CS classes have students do things in extremely arcane obsolete ways to experience the ancient history that has a legacy to this day.
For someone that speaks against dogma and superficial understanding you seem to be strangely practicing what our preach against.
Oh this is pretty much crap you know...
First, this opinion was brought to us by ONE (that's 1) published study that found a POSSIBLE but not confirmed link between the compounds with mercury that where used in *some* vaccines at the time. Since then three things have happened.
1. The published study has been found to be invalid due to errors in their facts and methods and has been recalled by the publisher and the authors have been discredited for their shoddy work.
2. Multiple studies have been done since that verifies that the original findings where incorrect and that there is in fact no link to vaccines that used mercury compounds and autism.
3. ALL modern vaccines have stopped using the compounds in called into question by the now discredited and disproven study decades ago.
There is NO LINK to autism from vaccines....They don't use the chemicals in question anymore, and even if they did the link was disproven.
Not to mention that we now KNOW what causes autism and it's NOT mercury exposure as a child.
So go grab your kids and take them to the pediatrician and get them vaccinated unless the doctor has a reason they shouldn't be.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
you think it's _good_ to carry out mass-vaccination of a species
Smallpox killed more people in the 20th century than every war combined, and is now completely eradicated because of mass vaccination (sometimes coerced). Remember: vaccines are unnatural, but so is a life expectancy of 80 years.
Thimerosal (thiomersal) is metabolised into ethylmercury, which is far less toxic than the methylmercury commonly found in e.g. tuna, and breaks down into safe inorganic mercury a lot quicker. This has been a source of confusion to laymen (and the Italian court), who have incorrectly compared the levels of ethylmercury from a vaccine dose against WHO health guidelines on methylmercury.
Many studies have been done on the actual toxicity of thimerosal, and the results still come up as "safe for use" at the doses involved. No link with autism has been found, despite many years of looking.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The doggy day care I bring my mutt to won't take her unless she is up to date on all her shots.
But a people day care does not have this same rule?
That's just crazy.
Also, you missed the s in the wikipedia description. "QuaterionS are a number system ..."
Or perhaps the same court that accused Amanda Knox of everything from running a drug ring to witchcraft and devil worship.
Science denial is probably more strongly correlated with politics/emotions not intelligence level. The left and the right merely have different things they are in denial about, different things that touch on their politics and their emotions. And emotions lead people to stand by their beliefs regardless of rational thought and evidence, both on the left and the right.
I disagree. Having spent a lifetime around pig headed engineers (including myself), this is my reasoning:
I think it has everything to do with intelligence, or, at least self perceived intelligence. The smarter someone thinks they are, the less likely they are to listen to others who they think are somehow less intelligent. They consider it a personal affront that someone else would tell them they're wrong about vaccines. They consider only the superiority of their own intellect when deciding that they will either accept or reject the established science. That kind of hubris is concentrated in certain professions, many of which are concentrated in Silicon Valley. Politics doesn't enter into it at all. This kind of self righteous thinking permeates the self declared intellectual elite in every party, including the independents who tend to be the most effete among them ("anyone who is dumb enough to let a party tell them how to think is inferior"). They have considered whatever they consider to be important in their own mind and have come to a conclusion that you dare not question.
It's not the science they doubt! It's the implementation!
Corruption in the FDA causes mistrust of Government health initiatives. Here take a look for your self. This is just the tip of the Iceberg.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/fda_inspections_fraud_fabrication_and_scientific_misconduct_are_hidden_from.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/second-class-medicine-germans-unhappy-with-alternative-swine-flu-vaccine-for-politicians-a-656028.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-52mHIjhs
I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here, you seem to be implying that either one of the "left" or "right" are against vaccines, but not the other...
Considering just the left alone, there have been lots of high profile actresses speaking out against it, and Beverly Hills is another area with low vaccination rates. Politically Hillary clinton years ago said we should question if vaccinations were needed.
Lets be clear that as in so many aspects of life, misunderstanding science of a matter is not the province of just the left or right.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Having spent a lifetime around pig headed engineers (including myself), this is my reasoning: I think it has everything to do with intelligence, or, at least self perceived intelligence. The smarter someone thinks they are, the less likely they are to listen to others who they think are somehow less intelligent.
Sounds like every day politics not engineering. The far right and the far left both think those who disagree with them must be idiots, when the truth is both the far left and the far right are not nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be. Both want to be the nanny/supervisor, neither is qualified.
Go into any whole-foods in Silicon Valley, and you'll see plenty of herbal medicines that do nothing but empty people's wallets. Silicon Valley isn't some kind of pro-science paradise.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You are funny, plenty of useful engineering is done without quaternions. In fact, in the real world Euler angles and rotation matrices can be used in most fields instead.
Still doesn't change that it's only a court ruling, Not a medically researched fact.
If a court rules that during a flood the state is responsible for it and has to pay for damages because it didn't keep the water from rising doesn't imply that it had any way to actually do so.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Children have a greater chance of getting stuck by lightning than catching measles.
Kinda makes sense that people who commonly do risk assessment would choose not to vaccinate.
Especially when the majority of polio cases in the united states are caused by vaccinations than any other sources combined.
PS:Iâ(TM)ve had both vaccinations.
Did you mean to reply to yourself? Because you forgot the S in your own post.
Claiming that engineers just get "recipes" that they blindly follow is about as stupid an assertion as I've ever seen. Any working engineer knows that the recipes are just a starting point, or things start failing real quick. That's even more true of computer algorithms, where just plugging in "recipes" gets you no-where fast.
Hell, it's not even true of Chefs that use *actual* recipes, because it real life you need to alter what ingredients you use or baking time or cooking techniques to prepare something.
Engineers and computer programmers (and Chefs) have to do a lot more thinking and a lot less blind following than just about any other people on earth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's the point. When it comes to engineering, "in the real world" is the overriding concern, not "why is this this way rather than another?"
You see that a lot in 3rd parties and among the independents. It's not something that's tied to any "side".
It's more like the greedy selfish entitled-feeling bastard thinking. "Why should I vaccinate my kid and risk any side effects, if everyone else is getting the shot, the herd immunity will keep my kid safe, too".
Pity, though, if everyone's a greedy selfish entitled-feeling bastard.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
First: only allow vaccined kids into your kindergarden.
Second: if you feel altruistic, offer a second kindergarden for non vaccined kids only, but well, vaccined kids there would hurt no one.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's not so smart.
It seems that people have forgotten the autism/thiomersal hysteria of a few years back -- just in time to deliver a generation of unvaccinated kiddos into our schools. Unfortunately, the "thiomersal-autism-link" was promoted loudly by people like the well-meaning, but misinformed Jenny McCarthy as panicked parents sought answers for the "autism outbreak". Autsim is heavily over-represented in families that have engineers as family members. See this article from Scientific American (paywall, sorry): http://www.scientificamerican.... The referenced UK survey showed that families with engineers in them can have between 2.5 to 8.6 *times* the statistical occurrence of autism in their children. Even though the whole thiomersal-autism link has been debunked, in the intervening time a lot of people have sadly opted out of vaccinating their kids -- better "safe-than-sorry" seemed the prevailing wisdom -- until science can make a ruling on it, right? After all, when was the last time a kid came down with measles? ...This against the backdrop of seeing kids with a life-long devastating condition like autism -- nearly every family I know in Silicon Valley knows one or more families that are stricken with it. I personally know over half a dozen, including my own son.
Unfortunately, the success of vaccinations seems to have been blunted everyone's memory of why we did it in the first place.
As parents, all of us try to make the best decisions based on the most current studies/data available, but the tragedy is that current prevailing wisdom failed us on this one.
--Ace
The woo-woo section in Whole Foods disgusts me, but they have the best butcher and fish departments around.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's because engineers are not smart, they're dogmatic. They spend their entire university career learning formulas and recipes (excuse me, algorithms) without questioning them the way physicists or philosophers do. They spend the time, and they know their science, but they don't know why what they know is right, they just know that what they know IS right. [...] And because they only learn the results, not the history and argumentation that led up to the result, they're not as well prepared to deal with the barrage of idiocy that is spewed by people like anti-vaxxers.
There are plenty of incorrect assertions and generalizations made in this post. It honestly reads like a dogmatic diatribe.
As EE/CS undergraduate students, my classmates and I learned the fundamental physics behind various phenomena, not just the high-level equations. That is, we learned why, for example, transistors function they way that they do and why we can rely on simplified equations to characterize their behavior. Most of what we were taught is still covered in the MIT undergraduate curriculum (see courses 6.002, 6.012, 8.012, 8.04, and 8.044).
As EE/CS graduate students, my lab partners and I were responsible for furthering the state of the art. During these years, we had to understand why, for example, our experimental results diverged from our model predictions and how to revise those models accordingly. In some cases, we invalided long-standing, widely taught models and proposed new ones. If we didn't understand the fundamental physics behind these models, we wouldn't have made the contributions that we did. We also wouldn't have had our work published in Science, Nature, and PNAS.
I don't even need to lengthily address your comment that engineers aren't smart. There are plenty of people on Slashdot that can thoroughly invalidate that claim.
"_maybe_" you're a fucking idiot. I sure as hell hope you don't have any kids.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You are aware, I trust that the MMR-autism link was a fabrication of a con artist named Andrew Wakefield, who had his on MMR formulation that he wanted to put on the market, and so managed to get a fake research on the current MMR formulation put into the British Medical Journal. His fraud was completely exposed, his research demonstrated to be fake, and he was utterly discredited.
Science isn't determined in courts, no matter what a bunch of evil lawyers says.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Science denial is probably more strongly correlated with politics/emotions not intelligence level. The left and the right merely have different things they are in denial about, different things that touch on their politics and their emotions. And emotions lead people to stand by their beliefs regardless of rational thought and evidence, both on the left and the right.
In my experience, there's science denial, and then there's the more likely phenomenon occurring here which is the belief that one's personal interpretation of the evidence is vastly superior to anyone else's. If an anti-vax article sounds reasonable to them, its far more likely to their thinking that everyone else who considers it rubbish is wrong, because their own understanding is far superior.
That's not exactly science denial, that's narcissism masquerading as science denial. And this general belief is, in my experience, extremely prevalent in the various technology industries, particularly IT.
Being a self-perceived-intelligent pig-headed engineer myself, I think you're missing a critical component in that description. I'm right, until proven otherwise. Show me a trustworthy test, show me trustworthy data, show me trustworthy studies, show me proof from a respectable authority that I'm wrong and I will happily change my mind and apologize to you for wasting your time in having to convince me.
One thing I've noticed about software engineers is that too many of them are lacking the critical statistics skills they need to function effectively. Perhaps it's because we tend to think in Boolean terms of true and false. Thus, "I have a 1:450,000,000 chance of winning the lottery" turns into "I have a chance of winning the lottery", which is a different wording that is remarkably easy to misinterpret as a "50:50" chance, even though both outcomes are statistically equal to false. They apply that same lack of understanding to any risk, including vaccination (a 1:3,000,000 chance of a serious adverse reaction becomes "a chance of a serious adverse reaction".)
In the case of vaccines, I was initially a bit skeptical when it came to vaccinating my son. But it was extraordinarily easy to convince myself that they're safe and effective, and that the one study showing a purported link to autism was completely fraudulent. It took about an hour of research that anyone with a browser and half a wit could do. And because it was so easy to learn the truth, I now hold all anti-vaxxers in that extra-special contempt I reserve for the willfully ignorant. In this case I consider them parties to attempted murder. They threaten society as a whole, either because they're too stupid to do the research or too dull to change their minds.
John
sudo echo "127.0.0.1 your.post" >> /etc/host
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Geeks have had access to the internet, meaning information, for the longest out of anyone in society. Most geeks are aware of the dangers of how vaccine science (which is sound) is misused (killing off "useless eaters")
It's not one of the smartest places on Earth.
1. Most commercial software is designed fast, not well. Microsoft can't even manage to finish implementing the C++11 standard, as an example, to include simple comparison operations on containers. Silicon Valley is a software sweatshop that happens to have lots of money.
2. Most companies in Silicon Valley refuse to hire anybody who doesn't have at least a four year degree. Their definition of a competent programmer is somebody who doesn't spend their time programming and took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to not learn how to do it.
3. Most self-motivated developers move to Silicon Valley only AFTER achieving success independently; if they move there at all.
Silicon Valley is a social game, as evidence by the fact that rather than encourage little girls to study programming, or hell, *all* kids for that matter, they have jumped on the SJW bandwagon with, "Let's hire fewer white males." Brainless group think.
The programmers I admire coincidentally all live in Sweden, Denmark, or Switzerland. I'm talking about the ones you'll see post actual genius solutions to problems rather than regurgitate undergrad Calculus or a preview copy of the standard.
Basically, Silicon Valley is the Hollywood of software. It's a shallow culture grasping at anything "New Age" that gives it identity, while many, many of its residents excessively masturbate their egos. It wouldn't exist still if we weren't so soon into the Information Era still, as those companies will inevitably seek out the abundant more affordable labor available via telecommute and save millions. It's only a matter of time until that place is the new Detroit.
Now, if the article said the same things about the region around Los Alamos National Laboratory, then I'd be shocked.
I'm sure this won't be a popular post, but that's just evidence to support it. Big egos can't handle criticism, and certainly can't handle being told they're not the best of the best. However, just because they scream the loudest that they're the best, that doesn't actually make it true.
As many people on Slashdot have probably noticed, there are more than a few geeks who are infected with Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe syndrome. Since they've gone through their lives generally being a good deal more intelligent than their peers, but with poor social skills, it can lead to an arrogance that they are smarter than basically anyone else, and that their knowledge is supreme not just in their field, but in all fields.
Well that then is ripe for anti-scientific shit like anti-vaxxer crap. They believe they are in on a secret that normal people are just too stupid to see, that they are smarter and better than those sheep doctors and so on and so forth. It feeds their ego on their intellect to believe they know better than the medical establishment.
So this surprises me not at all. SV has all the right elements to be a hotbed of this kind of shit.
Science denial is probably more strongly correlated with politics/emotions not intelligence level.
One common thread in science denial is post-modernism. The American Right is dominated by post-modernists at the moment, and the Left has been for decades.
By "post-modernists" I mean people who believe that objectivity is not just impossible but actually pernicious, that truth is a social construct, and that "different ways of knowing" are equally legitimate and culturally dependent.
This is in contrast to the scientific mindset that understands that while there is no view from nowhere there is also no view of nowhere, and works hard to see that place that exists independently of the knowing subject as clearly as possible. Pro-science people are Bayesians, so they know certainty is impossible (knowledge is uncertain; faith is certain, and also an epistemic error) and that Bayes' rule provides the only consistent way of updating our beliefs in the face of new evidence, so it doesn't matter what your ancestors or you pastor tells you, there is only one way of knowing.
I'd bet a lot of these "highly educated" anti-vaxxers are victims of post-modernism in this sense. It should be relatively easy to find out how well they know their Derrida, Laccan, Leotard and Foucoult compared to their more vaccination-friendly neighbours.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe Syndrome. You see it all the time. One great famous geek example was Hans Reiser. He was so sure he was just smarter than everyone that he could get away with murder. No way those dumb cops could know more about criminal justice than him...
Geeks seem to have it the most, probably a combination of above average intelligence, below average social skills, and a culture that makes intelligence the be-all, end-all of being "better". However you see it in other areas too. My sister is really bad. Don't you dare to tell her about something she thinks she knows about, she'll jump all over your shit for that. As such, she's a fairly regular fountain of bad ideas. Mom calls me at least once every couple months to ask about some harebrained shit my sister is up on that is bad for her/necessary for her.
You want someone who will rake people over the coals about vaccination, get someone who had to see the horrible epidemic that was polio prior vaccination.
From the links provided above:
The risk of VAPP is not equal for all OPV doses in the vaccination series. The risk of VAPP is 7 to 21 times higher for the first dose than for any other dose in the OPV series. From 1980 through 1994, 303 million doses of OPV were distributed and 125 cases of VAPP were reported, for an overall risk of VAPP of one case per 2.4 million doses. Forty-nine paralytic cases were reported among immunocompetent recipients of OPV during this period. The overall risk to these recipients was one VAPP case per 6.2 million OPV doses. However, 40 (82%) of these 49 cases occurred following receipt of the first dose, making the risk of VAPP one case per 1.4 million first doses. The risk for all other doses was one per 27.2 million doses.
...
The last case of VAPP acquired in the United States was reported in 1999.
New cases per 100,000 population in 2011
Rubeola (measles) 0.06
That's 1 in 1.66 million for measles.
1 in 2.4 million for Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Polio - overall risk.
1 in 1.4 million for Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Polio - for first doses.
1 in 27.2 million for Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Polio - for all other doses.
Only thing is, that 1 in 1.66 million number for measles is for a single year, 2011.
Even the "worst" numbers for polio vaccine are from data FOR 14 YEARS. 1980 - 1994.
What are the numbers for that period for measles?
New cases per 100,000 population in 1980
Rubeola (measles) 5.96
New cases per 100,000 population in 1990
Rubeola (measles) 11.17
That's somewhere between 1 in 16778.52 and 1 in 8952.55 during a similar time period, vs. 1 in 1400000 to 1 in 27200000.
You can't really compare them for "new outbreaks" - AS THERE WERE NONE FOR POLIO SINCE 1999.
As for lightning strikes data...
That may be more relevant in the lottery discussion from the other day.
As those are both cases closer to pure mathematical chance, while measles and vaccines are preventable risks.
Though in reality those lightning strikes probably fail to match their average US numbers when comparing millions of people riding on subways and people climbing mountains.
I.e. You can significantly increase your chances to get hit by lightning, but not really for catching polio from a vaccine or for winning a jackpot.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So why is it that I can't send my child to preschool with a peanut butter sandwich, but yet I am expected to respect your decision to send your unvaccinated child to be with mine?
I hope that some day that some fucking imbecile parent goes to prison for willfull and depraved negligence manslaughter.
As an adult who picked up whooping cough after herd immunnity was lost, I can state with certainty that I would rather have a broken leg, and that any parent that gamlbes on that with their children is abusing them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I spoke about engineers in general. And as you know, as someone who apparently lives at the end of a bell curve, when speaking in general there are always edge-cases that can seemingly contradict the general statement being made, but that doesn't stop that statement from being true.
Your generalization would be true if I was just one of a handful of students who worked up to general engineering principles from rudimentary physics knowledge. However, I can point to hundreds of my peers at MIT who did the same thing, many of whom likely have a much deeper understanding than I do. Given my exposure to the curriculum at CalTech and Stanford, I feel rather confident in stating that engineering students at those schools weren't just given equations and told to memorize them. Instead, they slogged through a series of derivations of those principles and had to build up their own understanding of the meaning behind those derivations. I'm sure that others can chime in about their experiences at other top-tier institutions, such as Berkeley, CMU, and the Ivies.
As an aside, undergraduate research assistantships are becoming more commonplace at some institutions. I agree that most undergraduates will probably not come out publishing papers in prestigious journals or conferences. However, that does not mean that they don't enhance their knowledge and understanding of various concepts.
In short, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of engineers out there with educational experiences that either partly or fully mirror my own. Consequently, you really need to be cautious when you make sweeping generalizations like engineers only spend their time memorizing formulas without reflecting on how those formulas came to be.
And the Salem hypothesis is demonstrated once again.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
true, a smart person might say that.
but an informed and wise person would not. there's a world of difference between the two.
and a stupid person would try to beat cancer by eating carrots because that's what cavemen did and rarely died of cancer, so surely it must work? not grasping the reduction in mortality that vaccinations gave to the west is ignorant.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
One of the BIG REASONS that vaccine proponents want everyone (who can be) vaccinated is EXACTLY to protect the people who CANNOT be vaccinated, like your child, and those people for whom the shots simply didn't work. They want to protect people LIKE YOUR CHILD with herd immunity, which requires VERY HIGH vaccinations rates, especially so for extremely contagious diseases like measles.
No one advocates forcing vaccines on children who cannot take them for allergy reasons.
As someone who went to a relatively unknown university (internationally at least), I can also say that the only part of my degree that I simply had to accept with blind faith ("unless you've done maths post-grad, we don't have time to teach why all this is so and how it's derived") was much of two control systems theory subjects. The rest, I could usually derive from first principles. We certainly also studied semiconductors (Si, SiC, GaN - in conjuction with a quantum mechanics subject) such that we could model transistors and other elements from physical fundamentals: exploring different quite complex models and computational approaches, down to simplified formulae, when and which to use for convenience or accuracy.
I get the point you're trying to make, but I'd say most good engineering programmes are throwing up disclaimers in the course material whenver a "recipe" (as opposed to principles) is being taught due to lack of time. Good courses should provide caveats around such things, and make the students understand that they're applying something they don't understand. And hopefully also show what branches of knowledge a "faith item" is derived from so that students can explore on their own if they wish (I hope mose EEs are being taught how to teach themselves and know the limits of their own knowledge). In order to give the physical sciences and mathematics the depth that you would apparently approve of, it would squeeze out so much of the EE domain knowledge and analytical/process/systematics part of the discipline I'm not sure you'd be left with much other than an applied science degree.
I disagree. Having spent a lifetime around pig headed engineers (including myself), this is my reasoning:
I think it has everything to do with intelligence, or, at least self perceived intelligence. The smarter someone thinks they are, the less likely they are to listen to others who they think are somehow less intelligent. They consider it a personal affront that someone else would tell them they're wrong about vaccines. They consider only the superiority of their own intellect when deciding that they will either accept or reject the established science. That kind of hubris is concentrated in certain professions, many of which are concentrated in Silicon Valley. Politics doesn't enter into it at all. This kind of self righteous thinking permeates the self declared intellectual elite in every party, including the independents who tend to be the most effete among them ("anyone who is dumb enough to let a party tell them how to think is inferior"). They have considered whatever they consider to be important in their own mind and have come to a conclusion that you dare not question.
Yes; it takes a long time to learn the difference between intelligence and experience, and when to delegate important decisions about your children to people who might not be as smart as you, or whom you don't know terribly well, who still have a lot more experience in an area.
It's also harder if you've had exposure to people in those fields. When looking for medical help, for example, at some point you usually have to make a decision on faith to trust someone's surgical skill even though you know that some people with great reputations really suck with a scalpel. Like trusting a bank's electronic security even though you know how frequently they do it really, really badly, only maybe someone's life is on the line. It's not because the faith in their skill is justified, it's just an appeal to authority that you hope works that hasn't been disproven.
Fundamentally appeals to authority (or at least experience) are inferior to meaningful data, but are superior in most cases to anecdotal data or in-head reasoning.
But there's also a filtering function--the trick is finding the person with both experience and practical skill. It's really hard to find a good high school guidance counselor, for example, and a really hard job to do well... Mmm...
Why should I vaccinate my kid and risk any side effects, if everyone else is getting the shot, the herd immunity will keep my kid safe, too
At least they do believe the vaccine is effective. :)
You don't see it in the Libertarian party. If someone there thinks they are right, it's because they are.
\sarcasm
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
It is my opinion that my facts are right where as your facts are wrong.
it happens.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
US Media Blackout Of Italian Vaccine Ruling
Poor dumbed down Americans will never know the truth.
Rimini: 2012 – Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine Caused Autism [zengardner.com]
On September 23, 2014, an Italian court in Milan award compensation to a boy for vaccine-induced autism. (See the Italian document here.) A childhood vaccine against six childhood diseases caused the boy’s permanent autism and brain damage.
While the Italian press has devoted considerable attention to this decision and its public health implications, the U.S. press has been silent.
Italy’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program
Well. yes we've already heard of this in the USA. It's old news.
You may be surprised to learn that the media in the USA is not compelled to print every piece of bullshit that comes up. If you had been awake during the last few decades you would have known that news commentators that get caught telling stories that are later proven to be false are fired without a second chance.
From 2013, here's an article from Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/em...
And another from 2013:
http://www.skepticalraptor.com...
It appears that the courts depended upon the testimony of a single doctor who has never published in a journal, but yet who claims to have a cure for autism.
Science as applied to policy and the law is, however, determined in court.
I think a prerequisite to being in politics is to assume you know better than anyone else how to run things. ("why is everyone in the country an idiot except for me?")
I'll say this: all this seems that in a world where most freedoms are being curtailed, this seems to be one issue over which people can still have some control. However, dumb and idiotic it might be. Now, I know that there are many kids who - for some medical/health issue - can't get some of the vaccinations. I'm OK with that. But people denying their kids the vaccinations that could save them from a lot of trouble, I feel that's simply stupid, and dumb beyond any conceivable sane limit.
I mean measles? Really? In all my life I have never met anyone who didn't get the vaccine for it. When I heard about how people don't allow their kids to have it, I just stood really dumbfounded. It's just simply one of those things you'd never have believed existed. These people really want to leave their kids vulnerable to all kinds of preventable diseases? I'm sorry, but to me, and to a lot of other people I discussed with about this, it just seems insane.
The U.S. is generally very protective regarding the safety of the country and of its citizens, so why not regarding the children? If we'd make a list of freedoms curtailed or stepped on in the last let's say 50 years, the freedom to unnecessarily endanger your kids should have been the first to go.
You can bash me all you want for this opinion, but I couldn't care less. Why? Because my kids will never get the measles.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Indeed, sorry you got modded down for an insightful reply. Science denial in this specific case however, seems to be across the political spectrum: (http://www.vice.com/read/weird-politics-of-anti-vaxxers-203) - as opposed to the generally right wing tilt of denying climate change, evolution, etc.
The psychology of it is also rather different, like with the anti-gluten movement it's a side effect of how we have been trained to trust/reat advertizing keywords
Vaccine is injecting bacteria/virus into you and since weve been told by soap commecial that all microorganisms are bad for you and nobody remember that were also dependent on them to stay alive the natural instinctive common sense view is to think that vaccines are dangerous.
Gluten is similar about 1% of the population have an mutation that means they cant digest it properly, so it have to be declared along with allergens on packaging, and since the health and gourmand food advertizing have told people that sub ingredients are scary and since gluten is a sub-ingredient of wheat the Instinctive common sense response for some people is that gluten must be dangerous. Despite the fact that it is just as natural as nuts or dairy, which is declared the same way.
Where as the question of believing vs rejecting in climate models and evolution is almost entirely about declaring sociopolitical loyalties.
You *have* to get them a peer group made up of real peers including people more intelligent than they are.
Starting in 1999. There was no corresponding drop in autism rates. That fact alone, all by itself, tells you all you really need to know on the subject.
Now, this data has limitations—most critically, it might not be current. But it also suggests an incursion of anti-science, anti-vaccine thinking in one of the smartest regions on Earth.
Maybe Silicon Valley isn't actually one of the smartest regions on Earth.
The report states that "6 out of 12 day care centers have below average vaccination rates", right?
So, if you take a random sample of _anything_, how many would you expect to be below the average for that particular measurement?
The news here isn't that high tech daycare centers have low vaccination rates, but that they don't have particularly high rates, i.e. they are totally average.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Daycare measles herd immunity is impossible. It's straight math.
#1 Can't give MMR below 12 months in age. Period. Exception: infants traveling internationally warrant the risk.
#2 Second dose is usually given 1 year after the first dose (at annual checkup), but at least 4 weeks after first dose, and prior to age 4
* immunity level 4 weeks after first dose: 74.3 % - 25.7% failure rate for single dose vaccination
* immunity level 4 weeks after second dose: 87.5% - 12.5% failure rate for two dose vaccination
#3 6% of individuals cannot be vaccinate
#4 Herd immunity threshold for measles: R0 of 12-18 = 83%-94% must be immune (not just vaccinated)
#5 12.5% + 6% = 18.5% ; 100% - 18.5% = 81.5% ; 81.5% 83% -- herd immunity is not possible
By all means, get your kid vaccinated for measles *WHEN THEY ARE OLD ENOUGH*.
If you are able to insist upon it, in fact, get the daycare workers to have an antibody titer to verify they are in fact immune, and revaccinate the shit out of them until they test positive for immunity before letting them around your kids.
Just don't do it because someone appeals to your social conscience about "herd immunity" for measles; they are relying on you being bad at math.
If the same person comes back and preaches herd immunity for Diptheria, Mumps, Polio, Rubella, or Smallpox -- *YES*, herd immunity for *those diseases* is possible.
PS: Pertussis (whooping cough) has the same problem as measles (R0 12-17, threshold 92%-94%).
In almost all the outbreaks that have occurred in the USA, the source was someone who traveled to or from a region where the population there was generally not vaccinated and that had the inevitable high rates of infection and transmission.
Thank God we don't have people flooding into the U.S. who are undocumented to have been vaccinated, and who do not participate in local vaccination programs for fear of deportation; thank God those people do not make up 8.1% of the population, since herd immunity for the most virulent strain of measles requires 94% of people be vaccinated!
Slashdot really needs a sarcasm tag...
However, all of those outbreaks extinguished immediately. The reason they extinguished was due to herd immunity.
In New Jersey, anyway, the reason the Pertussis outbreak at the magnet school (which was caused by an infected teacher who had travelled abroad, and brought the disease back for "Show And Tell"), the reason in burnt out was they sent everyone home for 1.5X the contagious period. In other words, it was voluntary quarantine, not herd immunity.
Which does beg the question of why were are not giving immunity testing by titer to teachers and other school personnel likely to be primary vectors, and vaccinating them repeatedly until they test immune. It's much more likely for a teacher to take a trip to a disease hot zone like the Philippines or Thailand than it is for a student, after all.
The scientists in question were convicted because they predicted no earthquake, not because they didn't predict an earthquake. Not saying "there will be an earthquake" and saying "there will not be an earthquake" are two different things, clearly. I know it hurts one's argument to admit it, as then you can't instantly discredit the court's judgement, but it doesn't make you look particularly honest when you parrot these claims.
Science denial is probably more strongly correlated with politics/emotions not intelligence level.
It's really more of a STEM problem. It has to do with the type of education one has. If science was largely missing from your education, it's kind of obvious you wouldn't trust science, it wouldn't matter if you were intelligent or not, nor from the left or the right.
Normally, I would say that girls choosing to avoid sciences isn't a problem, it's actually their choice (for those choosing to do so). In this case however, I think it's important to have a much higher level of science literacy for everyone. It's important for the individual, but it's also very important for our modern society as a whole.
Vaccination works.
You are likely an idiot if you do not get yourself and your kid vaccinated, if you can tolerate the vaccine.
If your kid is immunocompromised, they will either (A) not vaccinate or (B) be very careful about vaccination.
If they go route 'B', then they will do single dose vaccines, rather than combinations (i.e. separate measles vaccine, rather than MMR), and they will do an antibody titer (a relatively expensive test) to verify a primary, rather than secondary, immune response to the disease. A secondary response is generally a response to the IgE response, and is likely to make your child *more* sick than if they had not been immunized. Then, if necessary, they will immunize until they get a primary response. Your child will not be one of the ones with unknown vaccine effectiveness.
You definitely want an immunity to measles. There's up to an 8% chance of untreatable encephalitis from measles (the protein coat makes most broad spectrum antivirals ineffective as a stop-gap), after which your child will at a minimum be brain damaged, if they do not end up brain dead or actually dead.
So get vaccinated. Get your kid vaccinated.
Just don't do it for Measles or Diphtheria out of some misguided sense of social responsibility.
Being good with computers does not automatically make you an expert in medicine, climate science, sexual politics or any number of other things.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I've heard it said that at the extremes, the left and the right are differentiated mostly by their choices in fashion and style, not by ideology. Political ideology often seems better described as a circular, not linear, scale.
The one time I sampled an Alex Jones show even he went through some mental gymnastics trying to explain his general support for Republicans despite agreeing with the far left on a bunch of issues.
I'm sure social scientists have some kind of way of identifying systems of beliefs based on clusters of belief which transcends the usual linear spectrum of ideology.
Only if the data is normally distributed. Vaccination rates in the US, however, aren't. Or shouldn't be, anyway. The median should be somewhere in the 90% range in what should be a highly skewed distribution.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm right, until proven otherwise. Show me a trustworthy test, show me trustworthy data, show me trustworthy studies, show me proof from a respectable authority that I'm wrong and I will happily change my mind and apologize to you for wasting your time in having to convince me.
The problem with that is that you are the one deciding who is trustworthy and reputable. For example, with climate change there have been some fake scandals about data being manipulated. Depending on who you consider reputable you might believe that or not, and thus consider the data to be trustworthy or not.
The basis on which you make this determination is your own investigation, which is probably biased by your pre-existing experience and views. For example, you would probably dismiss anything on Fox News out of hand, which is probably fine but what else could you be doing that isn't?
Just being an expert in one area isn't all that helpful and doesn't necessarily allow you to properly investigate and understand other areas.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I think it's a bit of a different issue here. Notice these are pretty much all computer related firms. As we all know, many people in this field think anything can be fixed in the software.
Plus, they and their kids will soon be able to upload themselves into the Matrix following the Singularity, which is due any day soon, so there's no need to worry about trivia like physical diseases.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The far right and the far left both think those who disagree with them must be idiots
Deep down, everybody thinks those who disagree with them must be idiots.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
One thing I've noticed about software engineers is that too many of them are lacking the critical statistics skills they need to function effectively. Perhaps it's because we tend to think in Boolean terms of true and false. Thus, "I have a 1:450,000,000 chance of winning the lottery" turns into "I have a chance of winning the lottery", which is a different wording that is remarkably easy to misinterpret as a "50:50" chance
"I'm not an hilariously fucking stupid knobend, I just tend to think in Boolean terms of true and false".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That's why engineers have to be smarter than you.
You live in a theoretical construct. We live in the real world. No amount of pontification will change that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Being a self-perceived-intelligent pig-headed engineer myself, I think you're missing a critical component in that description. I'm right, until proven otherwise. Show me a trustworthy test, show me trustworthy data, show me trustworthy studies, show me proof from a respectable authority that I'm wrong and I will happily change my mind and apologize to you for wasting your time in having to convince me.
Not everybody seems capable of determing what sources are trustworthy and what sources are not. Combine the same self-perceived-intelligence and pig-headded-ness with a distrust of "government" or "the man", and there you have it. At that point, the "mainstream" "trustworthy" sources are just a part of the conspiracy, so the only sources to be trusted are those on the fringe that are supressed and bringing you the real truth.
I have a good friend who is a very smart autodidact, but also a massive skeptic. You could probably put him in the "holocaust denier" camp because of this. I've gotten into arguments with him about it a couple times, and the sources that he always brings up are aryan nation affiliated internet forums or postings on these forums linking to sources elsewhere. The main contention is the number of Jewish holocaust deaths. Of course, the sources that I cite to counter his arguments are all part of the Isreali Jewish conspiracy.
Go into any whole-foods in Silicon Valley, and you'll see plenty of herbal medicines that do nothing but empty people's wallets. Silicon Valley isn't some kind of pro-science paradise.
I see the same thing where I live...I don't usually see many people shopping in that area though.
There is NO LINK to autism from vaccines....They don't use the chemicals in question anymore, and even if they did the link was disproven.
Not to mention that we now KNOW what causes autism and it's NOT mercury exposure as a child.
So go grab your kids and take them to the pediatrician and get them vaccinated unless the doctor has a reason they shouldn't be.
When did this happen? What is the cause?
Half of a given group of daycare centers is below average! I wonder if the other half might be above average? And the group as a whole would line up pretty well with the average. News indeed!
Some might be straight out denying. Others see how the facts we are told about what is healthy have been wrong so many times we don't want to just believe any old crap being spread about by companies that make money from it. Eating fat will make you fat, eggs are bad for you, carbs are good, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is the best thing ever invented for your health. Take antibiotics for everything, we don't have any gut bacteria or anything that is important for our health, and antibiotic resistant strains are not a concern. Well all these decades of taking their advice has led people down the wrong path and masses of people are sick and fat because of it.
This measles scare is just that, a scare. 50 something cases this year, 650 cases last year. I didn't hear about them. Measles is not a bad disease, our parents got it as a routine thing during their childhood. Very few turn serious or deadly, especially when you have modern medical care such as antibiotics. I have heard recently even the MMR is found to be not that long lasting and they are probably going to ask people to get it a third time. Plus, each time you get a vaccine they are less and less effective. People who get the flu vaccine each year are going to be in trouble when they are elderly and really need the extra protection if that is true.
It's like the chicken pox vaccine, which in a couple of generations will be just as scary as measles is purported to be. So they get everyone taking a vaccine for it, which runs out so you have to keep getting it. Or you just get chicken pox and get better. Then when you are elderly you get the vaccine for shingles. So you either take a vaccine your whole life, or just get it when you are old and your immune system is weaker. I'll opt for less crap being injected into my body, thanks! Besides, not getting sickness just keeps your immune system weak and screwed up. Some people have been cured of auto-immune diseases by getting a tape worm. If your immune system doesn't learn what it should be fighting, it will start fighting everything, even stuff it should not be.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
.I don't usually see many people shopping in that area though.
That's a good point....I don't tend to go their often to check, though.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
_maybe_ these people have had the thought, "y'know, humanity has survived up until this point, by fighting off disease and as a result each individual develops its own strong and healthy immune system, and the weaker ones don't survive. _maybe_ i am doing my child - and humanity - a favour by not following the herd".
Are you saying that these people come to the conclusion "if my child is weak enough to die from a disease, then that's good, because it makes humanity as a whole stronger." Because from a scientific perspective, that's wrong. And I doubt that's what the thinking behind the anti-vax folks comes to either.
The problem with that is that you are the one deciding who is trustworthy and reputable.
And why is that a problem? Ultimately the data comes from somewhere, so the more I understand about the source, the better I understand the results. How many studies on climate change were funded by the NSF? The U.S. Army? NOAA? Some land grant university? A private university? Were they funded by Greenpeace? Were they funded by the American Coalition for Clean Coal? Follow the money. If the source of the study's funding comes from someone vested in the outcome, and those results don't fall in the same direction as the other studies, it's not particularly trustworthy.
Rather than belabor my methodology, consider the alternative and look at how the typical person evaluates a topic like climate change: they saw it on Fox News, they saw it in the Huffington Post, they saw it on MSNBC, or they heard it on NPR. Maybe they saw it on Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. Or maybe they got it from their boss, or their preacher, or their social club. Maybe they heard it from their favorite politician, or a sports figure, or some random actress. Now look at who has a financial interest in how climate data is perceived by the public: oil, gas, and coal companies. Is it easier for them to manipulate the data, the studies, the politicians, or the media? Is there a reason they won't try to manipulate all of the above, when the difference could mean trillions of dollars over time?
How would you suggest I get better, more relevant, more trustworthy data than looking at the studies? I may put up a weather station and track temperatures over time, but that only tells me about weather, not climate. I'm not going to Antarctica to drill for ice cores myself, or dig up geological strata to look for evidence of palm fronds in the fossil record. And I'm certainly not going to have 100,000 children so I can track the efficacy of their vaccinations. I have to trust others, so I do what I can with what I can learn.
John
One thing I've noticed about software engineers is that too many of them are lacking the critical statistics skills they need to function effectively. Perhaps it's because we tend to think in Boolean terms of true and false. Thus, "I have a 1:450,000,000 chance of winning the lottery" turns into "I have a chance of winning the lottery", which is a different wording that is remarkably easy to misinterpret as a "50:50" chance, even though both outcomes are statistically equal to false. They apply that same lack of understanding to any risk, including vaccination (a 1:3,000,000 chance of a serious adverse reaction becomes "a chance of a serious adverse reaction".)
This says it all.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
This measles scare is just that, a scare. 50 something cases this year, 650 cases last year. I didn't hear about them. Measles is not a bad disease, our parents got it as a routine thing during their childhood. Very few turn serious or deadly, especially when you have modern medical care such as antibiotics.
According to the CDC, prior to mass vaccination in the 1960s the annual rate of measles infection was about half a million cases were reported in the US annually. Of those, just under ten percent required hospitalization, about a thousand had chronic disability and about five hundred died. That's per year.
Also, measles is caused by a virus, which means antibiotics have no effect on the infection. Treatment with antibiotics only occurs in cases with serious complications involving secondary bacterial infections, which by definition is not a minor case.
Plus, each time you get a vaccine they are less and less effective. People who get the flu vaccine each year are going to be in trouble when they are elderly and really need the extra protection if that is true.
That's a frighteningly wrong set of what I hesitate to call "information."
You know this reminds me a lot of STD's. AIDS and the really horrible ones more specifically. Some people walk around fucking whatever they want without even thinking of protection because "FUCK IT YOLO MY BODY". Iirc there have been some prosecutions against people who knowly spread AIDS to other people, you would think it would be possible to charge these Anti-Vaxers in a similar fashion.
Then you come along and add another lie.
They never predicted 'no earthquake' they said 'no higher risk of an earthquake than any other day'.
In any case asking a some shyster judge's opinion about a scientific question is just dumb.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The rate of measles infection was going down drastically before the vaccine was created. The antibiotics are for the secondary problems, not the measles. Better general health and healthcare will also have atbig impact on modern cases. Just because you aren't aware of the latest studies on the effectiveness of multiple vaccinations does not make it incorrect.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
You can't make good bread or pizza crust without gluten.
If your bread has any texture it contains gluten. Traditional bread making is all about _adding_ gluten via organic process (yeast).
More people eating gluten free will raise the price. Gluten free typically involves replacing flour with something in relatively short supply (e.g. almond flour).
How do I know? Mom makes awesome cookies with almond flour. Prices are up sense all the idiots started claiming 'gluten allergy'. Might partly be the Chinese demand for Almonds, which picked up at about the same time. It is hard to prove cause and effect.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Bullshit.
The best fish market in any town is the one that does the most business. It is not whole foods. You will have to get up early to get really good fish.
CostCo is the place to go for meat. Most of what whole foods has is grass fed hipster crap. No prime to be found anywhere.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So your theory is whole foods doesn't know how to manage their shelf space?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Childhood measles had about a 1/1000 serious complication rate.
If you got it when you were older you were fucked.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Name one right wing post-modernist?
That's a purely left wing delusion. Sokal is a lefty who mocked post-modernism because it made his political philosophy look like a bunch of idiots.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In Scandinavia they removed mercury from all vaccines in the 90s.
Their autism rate continues to grow along with the rest of the western world.
Nobody can say definitively what causes autism. But we can definitely say it is not caused by mercury in vaccines.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No disagreeing. But how are any of those any more irrational then the ones that worship a zombie Jew?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The rate of measles infection was going down drastically before the vaccine was created. The antibiotics are for the secondary problems, not the measles. Better general health and healthcare will also have atbig impact on modern cases. Just because you aren't aware of the latest studies on the effectiveness of multiple vaccinations does not make it incorrect.
I am fully aware. You are almost certainly referencing the McLean study which showed a potential reduction in effectiveness due to repeated vaccination controlled for a single virus strain. However, that study reiterated previous studies which showed no statistically significant vaccination interference between consecutive years of vaccination. They suggested the potential for such interference over significantly longer timeframes such as five years but also explicitly stated that the data in their study could not draw that conclusion given many other possible explanations for their results.
Assuming ignorance from refutation is another characteristic of the phenomenon I characterized earlier. In either case, there are reasons for repeated vaccination due to the nature of how the vaccine is constituted that would override this result even if it was conclusive. Furthermore, the study did not suggest escalating resistance which would incur the risk of the vaccine eventually becoming ineffective. They suggested the potential for successive interference which would more reasonably mandate switching to longer vaccination schedules instead.
As to the rate of measles infection going down, public health improvements did reduce the rate of measles infection in the early part of the twentieth century, but only by incrementally small amounts due to the highly contagious nature of measles. Mandated vaccination in the 1960s dropped the infection rate almost immediately to very low levels. There was no recorded trend that would have reduced the rate to current levels prior to mass vaccination in the United States. That is not even remotely credibly in dispute. Given the mortality statistics, mass vaccination has saved literally tens of thousands of lives in the last fifty years, and eliminated hundreds of thousands of cases severe enough to require hospitalization.
When this measles thing started up in the news, I even thought it was time for MMR. But a little research and I find the stats they are touting all over the news are such misleadings that I feel they are lying about it. The death rate they give is for the world, where our country has nowhere near the problems with getting the disease.
So, if they are trying to mislead us that much, then I know it's for alternative reasons. Trying to cover for their horrible fuck-up with the flu vaccine, or they want to make even more money by telling us that it is going to need another booster to be truley efective. I'll save my limited number of injections for the truely serious.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.