Upon firing, the bullet is accelerated over 6 inches or so (even longer for a rifle), while on hitting the armor it is stopped in a very short distance.
True, but as I understand it that's not really the significant factor here: the disparity in kinetic energy means the duration of the launch doesn't even really matter. Even wearing very thick armour with lots of area, you're still up against far more energy than the shooter.
In the end it will also not matter, because when these people reach the distant location, there will be no compatible civilization on earth left. If any at all. 10000 years ago we were sitting in caves. Reading books from medieval time in their original writing is almost impossible to most people today and that is only 500-1000 years.
You're referring to the divergent nature of the evolution of natural languages, right? The difference between the cave-man and the space-traveller is that the latter can be constantly beaming signals back to Earth.
Even if the languages diverge, and even if the distance between Earth and the space-ship is so great that conversation is impossible, Earth will still have an excellent record of the evolution of their language.
Wrong. In discharging a gun, the bullet is given much morekinetic energy than the gun, due to the disparity in masses. This follows from conservation of momentum, and the definition of kinetic energy.
This is why an armoured soldier can still be injured through his body armour, despite the armour stopping the bullet, whereas the shooter's shoulder is just fine.
I wonder if a machine-learning approach could be used. Train the system to align with curators' assessments of abusive behaviour by gamers.
Or just add a bunch of heuristics. Speech-to-text to pick out homophobic insults would go a long way. Sure, gamers could 'get wise', but if the end-result is morons politely insulting each other, that still sounds like a win.
No disrespect intended, but it would be remiss of me to pull any punches here:
I consider it to be a piece of sanity in the world of two extremes.
I don't believe my position changes any because I'm not arguing either side in the extreme games
This is the argument to moderation fallacy on a silver platter. Calling a position 'extreme' does not make it so. Sometimes, one position is right, and another is wrong. No midpoint should be sought.
The fact that some people oppose vaccination does not mean there is legitimacy to their opposition, and does not mean that the damn-near-uncontested view in the medical profession is wide of the mark.
The paragraph you paraphrase is nothing but empty scaremongering. Doctors do give advice regarding whether people are in an unfit state to be vaccinated. I sincerely doubt the medical profession has simply failed to notice an issue of the body not recovering from one vaccination before another is applied. The idea certainly might sound scary to a lay person, but I see no reason to give it serious consideration.
It's just scare talk. It's not medical science.
Extraordinary claims - such as that the entire medical community is dangerously mistaken about a widely-used technique - require extraordinary evidence. There is no body of evidence here at all. These objections would be laughed out of a medical hearing, and rightly so.
I think we're just about agreed. I couldn't say as to the actual concrete numbers at play here, but no doubt the per-individual numbers are very small assuming we're already well above the herd-immunity threshold. The example of the Texan with measles raises an interesting point regarding 'clusters of non-immunity', though.
I'm not convinced that there are significant risks associated with the 'standard issue' vaccinations. Regarding measles, for instance, this article is a far cry from a solid medical paper.
The country's safety net has become more porous in recent years, as like-minded parents who refuse vaccines have clustered in the same communities.
In August, for example, a visitor who had traveled abroad infected 15 people at a Texas megachurch.
I think the analogy holds ok. It's related to the the continuum fallacy in that no one raindrop can be said to have turned it from rain to flood, but it remains that each raindrop is a part of the problem and is making things worse.
Yes, the effect (on the population) of one person is small, especially when the population is already over the herd immunity threshold (~85%), but the effect is nonzero.
The point I have been trying to make is that the very few refusing vaccines don't make any difference in the equation!
Well, no, it does make a difference, it's just a small one. Perhaps a very small one, but still it's non-zero.
Also, there's a No raindrop thinks it's responsible for the flood going on here. Enough people opt-out and you drop below the herd immunity threshold. The harm done by an individual opting-out increases with the total number of people opting-out.
My points with the 100% is that you keep using it like it's either achievable or important.
For Pete's sake! I have repeatedly stated that I agree with you that it's not achievable! Did you not read I made it very clear that I'm not contesting this. Indeed, it's central to my point. in my previous comment? It certainly is important, however, as I shall explain again.
if a vaccine is not effective then vaccination will not matter for either the vaccinated or not vaccinated.
Nonsense. Effectiveness is not binary, it's a matter of proportion over the population. That's what 'not 100% effective' means. A vaccine might successfully make 90% of those treated immune, but not work on the remaining 10% that were treated.
Because a person that can NOT get vaccines is exactly the same as a person that chooses not to be vaccinated.
Of course.
Look: suppose I am vaccinated, but the vaccine didn't work for me, because I'm one of the unfortunate 10% for whom it isn't effective. Suppose also that although the vaccine would have worked for you (not that there'd be any way to know this, of course, but no matter), you chose not to get it. You then get infected, and then infect me. Had you taken the vaccination, neither of us would have become infected.
To your first 2 paragraphs: I was very verbose, so as to eliminate any chance of a misunderstanding. Did you actually read my previous comment?
Certainly there are a few vaccines that have very high rates of effectiveness, but I don't believe any of them are 100% (show me one).
I made it very clear that I'm not contesting this. Indeed, it's central to my point. From my previous comment:
The impossibility of a 100% guarantee (I agree, it is essentially impossible)
100% effective vaccinations are impossible
Once more: it is precisely because no vaccine can be 100% effective, that we are having this discussion. If they were effective for everyone who received them, then yes, the number of unvaccinated people would have no bearing on the risk of infection for the vaccinated people: the risk for the vaccinated would remain 0.
Then to the other way you could be using the 100%, that is in people receiving the vaccines. Again, this is impossible due to many medical conditions preventing people from ever getting a vaccine.
No, I did not conflate effectiveness and proportion of populated treated. (I believe that strictly the correct medical term here is 'efficacy', not 'effectiveness', but no matter). Also, agreed that a 100% vaccinated population won't happen.
There is no way for me to give you D if you have I. (I=Immunization and D=Disease
Assuming that I refers to has been vaccinated (and not the body has successfully developed immunity), this is false: you have assumed a 100% effective vaccine.
The more people with vaccines, the LESS the risk of a person WITHOUT immunization to get a disease.
True.
It can not work in the other direction because (I ! D) people with vaccines are immune to the disease.
Again, untrue. This would only be the case if everyone vaccinated really has immunity, which, as we've repeatedly agreed, is not the case.
How is it that you're using a dish and are getting very poor reliability and throughput, yet there are voice-call satellite phones barely larger than an ordinary mobile phone?
Surely if voice is 'easy', then an at-least-56k-dial-up-speed Internet link should be no problem, or is there more to this?
I am still unclear what you're referring to by 'dilemma'. Going back to the start:
I learned recently that the wife of the quarterback of my beloved Chicago Bears is one of these anti-vaccine people, based on the notion that vaccines have "chemicals" in them. So they don't get their kids vaccinated, endangering the lives of others.
To which you responded:
You do know what a false dilemma is don't you? If John Doe decides not to get vaccinated and you get vaccinated, how are you at risk? John gets polio and you do not, there is no issue.
I don't see any faulty reasoning in PopeRatzo's comment.
You just said probably, which is a correct statement. Then again you claim you want a 100% guarantee. No such guarantee is possible no matter what the circumstanc
Well yes, it was always going to be a matter of small degree, as we're discussing the decision of a single individual.
The impossibility of a 100% guarantee (I agree, it is essentially impossible) is not a factor regarding the soundness of my reasoning.
The point I'm really making is this: Unless the vaccination is 100% effective, then when someone makes the decision not to be vaccinated, that does increase the odds that vaccinated individuals (the ones for whom the vaccine did not work) may end up getting infected.
100% effective vaccinations are impossible, therefore, it's always the case that when someone makes the decision not to be vaccinated, that does increase the odds that vaccinated individuals may end up getting infected.
they plan on moving to something unsupported all the time
Pretty sure Linux isn't unsupported. If you're so inclined, you canpayforsupportif you want it
Unlike with Windows, you get your pick of providers (and yes, that includes big-name, management-friendly corporations), for any particular aspect/application of Linux.
Google is in bed with the NSA. The NSA have Google's keys. There is at best some level of inconvenience for the NSA, but nothing more. Nothing to stop them spying on millions.
You, the spied-on end-user, do not benefit. (Well, HTTPS might keep others out, but not the NSA.) You are not made aware of when the NSA spy on you.
Anyway, even before Gmail 'went HTTPS only', virtually all use of GMail was surely still through HTTPS.
Why go through all this effort when they could simply used one of the C-like strongly typed languages is beyond me.
Because they already have a huge PHP codebase. That said, Twitter moved from Ruby to Scala for their back-end; it seems it can be done. I suspect Facebook have more of a lots-of-programmers problem: they all know PHP, and they might not all know, say, Scala.
to creating a PHP-to-Java converter or something along those lines.
You mean take PHP source and translate it into readable, maintainable Java source? That's all but impossible. They're very different languages, and source-to-source translators tend to produce pretty unreadable code when faced with that kind of task. A human wouldn't design a PHP program the same way she'd design the same program in Java. Without some terribly impressive AI, there's really no way around this.
They could have translated PHP into totally-unreadable Java and then (run that through javac and) run the result on the JVM, sure, but then you're really just creating a rival PHP implementation. (Look like twoseparate projects have done just that, though, and apparently had pretty good results, outperforming the official PHP interpreter. All that says is that the official PHP interpreter is crap, which I think we all knew anyway.)
No, I won't attempt to teach the basics of rhetoric and logic here, I studied them for years in a formal environment as opposed to you pointing to Wiki articles for fallacy definitions.
I'm sure you're well aware, then, of the argument-from-authority fallacy. I dare not link to Wikipedia, of course. That would make me a bumbling amateur, right?
Attempting to nitpick the name of the fallacy won't change the fallacy from true to false either, so it's a poor argument all around.
I wasn't being obtuse. I really don't get you.
Herd immunity does not claim 100% is needed, so you are again using fallacy arguments. You said yourself that some people can not be vaccinated so you provide an impossible condition and you know it.
Well, you not being vaccinated probably means one more potential carrier, right? ('Probably' because of the chance it wouldn't have worked on you.) The only way this doesn't affect me is if I'm 100% guaranteed to be immune. (Or, I suppose, if I'm 100% guaranteed never to meet you, or if I'm already infected.) I don't see that I can be missing much here, but if this reasoning is unsound, please point out in what way.
You not getting a vaccination doesn't affect me much, sure, but without 100% effective vaccinations, it surely has to affect me some non-zero amount. (The impossibility of 100% effective vaccinations doesn't affect the reasoning here.)
I was not unclear with what you replied "What?' to, so try and work on your reading and comprehension skills.
Condescension doesn't strengthen your position, but I thought it was clear: I don't know where you're getting this from: the irrational and fallacy ridden separation you attempt to make between people that "can't" and people that "won't" get vaccinated. I certainly wasn't trying to make any such distinction.
Regarding the facts, then: thereseemsto be a 1 in 1,000,000 risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it's also not good for people with severe egg allergies. Regarding whether flu shots have saved lives, this source says it's unclear. (It's still possible it's saved many people from a few unpleasant days of flu, mind, and that alone could make it worthwhile.)
Even if you're right that flu shots in particular aren't worthwhile, vaccinations have proven themselves on other diseases. I don't think anyone would argue that flu shots are the most important vaccination.
GP stated that he was at a higher risk because someone did not get a vaccine.
That, is a false dilemma. He is at _NO_ higher risk because someone does not get a vaccine, and neither is anyone else that receives a vaccine.
Even if GP is wrong, I don't see how this fits 'false dilemma'. From Wikipedia: informal fallacy that involves a situation in which limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option. In what way has OP falsely presented only 2 options as being all there can be?
He is at _NO_ higher risk because someone does not get a vaccine, and neither is anyone else that receives a vaccine.
Please spell out for me which false dilemma you are referring to - I honestly can't see one.
divert the topic elsewhere (again)
It's hardly 'diverting': you still aren't understanding the core point that ignorant people not being vaccinated does affect you.
The theory claims that vaccinated people can act as a firewall for those that are not vaccinated.
Right. You get herd immunity when most the people are immunised with a treatment which works most the time. The anti-vac morons have compromised the previously-established herd-immunity, increasing the risk of infection not only for themselves, but also for those who have been given the vaccination, but for whom it did not work, not to mention those too young to have been vaccinated etc.
Nowhere in this theory does it claim that an un-vaccinated person increases the risk for a vaccinated person. The theory claims that vaccinated people can act as a firewall for those that are not vaccinated
I really don't see where the problem lies. This firewall effect is exactly what we're talking about. The only way you break the firewall is by a non-trivial subpopulation not getting vaccinated.
Suppose a population has herd immunity to start with, having all been vaccinated with a mostly-effective vaccine. Then, anti-vac morons decide not to vaccinate their children, introducing into the population a subpopulation of unvaccinated individuals. This can go on to break herd immunity: the disease gets a chance to spread, which it would never otherwise have had. If the anti-vac morons had not been anti-vac morons, this would not have happened. Agreed?
Now suppose you were one of the rare individuals who was vaccinated, but for whom the vaccine didn't work. Now you are at risk, all because of the actions of the anti-vac morons. Were it not for them, there would have been so few infectable people in the population that it would never have spread in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Upon firing, the bullet is accelerated over 6 inches or so (even longer for a rifle), while on hitting the armor it is stopped in a very short distance.
True, but as I understand it that's not really the significant factor here: the disparity in kinetic energy means the duration of the launch doesn't even really matter. Even wearing very thick armour with lots of area, you're still up against far more energy than the shooter.
It's a good point though.
In the end it will also not matter, because when these people reach the distant location, there will be no compatible civilization on earth left. If any at all. 10000 years ago we were sitting in caves. Reading books from medieval time in their original writing is almost impossible to most people today and that is only 500-1000 years.
You're referring to the divergent nature of the evolution of natural languages, right? The difference between the cave-man and the space-traveller is that the latter can be constantly beaming signals back to Earth.
Even if the languages diverge, and even if the distance between Earth and the space-ship is so great that conversation is impossible, Earth will still have an excellent record of the evolution of their language.
Wrong. In discharging a gun, the bullet is given much more kinetic energy than the gun, due to the disparity in masses. This follows from conservation of momentum, and the definition of kinetic energy.
This is why an armoured soldier can still be injured through his body armour, despite the armour stopping the bullet, whereas the shooter's shoulder is just fine.
Gather round folks, looks like we've got ourselves a clash of the intellectual titans.
I wonder if a machine-learning approach could be used. Train the system to align with curators' assessments of abusive behaviour by gamers.
Or just add a bunch of heuristics. Speech-to-text to pick out homophobic insults would go a long way. Sure, gamers could 'get wise', but if the end-result is morons politely insulting each other, that still sounds like a win.
No disrespect intended, but it would be remiss of me to pull any punches here:
I consider it to be a piece of sanity in the world of two extremes.
I don't believe my position changes any because I'm not arguing either side in the extreme games
This is the argument to moderation fallacy on a silver platter. Calling a position 'extreme' does not make it so. Sometimes, one position is right, and another is wrong. No midpoint should be sought.
The fact that some people oppose vaccination does not mean there is legitimacy to their opposition, and does not mean that the damn-near-uncontested view in the medical profession is wide of the mark.
The paragraph you paraphrase is nothing but empty scaremongering. Doctors do give advice regarding whether people are in an unfit state to be vaccinated. I sincerely doubt the medical profession has simply failed to notice an issue of the body not recovering from one vaccination before another is applied. The idea certainly might sound scary to a lay person, but I see no reason to give it serious consideration.
It's just scare talk. It's not medical science.
Extraordinary claims - such as that the entire medical community is dangerously mistaken about a widely-used technique - require extraordinary evidence. There is no body of evidence here at all. These objections would be laughed out of a medical hearing, and rightly so.
I think we're just about agreed. I couldn't say as to the actual concrete numbers at play here, but no doubt the per-individual numbers are very small assuming we're already well above the herd-immunity threshold. The example of the Texan with measles raises an interesting point regarding 'clusters of non-immunity', though.
I'm not convinced that there are significant risks associated with the 'standard issue' vaccinations. Regarding measles, for instance, this article is a far cry from a solid medical paper.
I was thinking of the recent rise of measles cases in the US. It's not pandemic though, sure, as the herd-immunity threshold is exceeded.
From the USA Today article:
The country's safety net has become more porous in recent years, as like-minded parents who refuse vaccines have clustered in the same communities. In August, for example, a visitor who had traveled abroad infected 15 people at a Texas megachurch.
I think the analogy holds ok. It's related to the the continuum fallacy in that no one raindrop can be said to have turned it from rain to flood, but it remains that each raindrop is a part of the problem and is making things worse.
Yes, the effect (on the population) of one person is small, especially when the population is already over the herd immunity threshold (~85%), but the effect is nonzero.
The point I have been trying to make is that the very few refusing vaccines don't make any difference in the equation!
Well, no, it does make a difference, it's just a small one. Perhaps a very small one, but still it's non-zero.
Also, there's a No raindrop thinks it's responsible for the flood going on here. Enough people opt-out and you drop below the herd immunity threshold. The harm done by an individual opting-out increases with the total number of people opting-out.
My points with the 100% is that you keep using it like it's either achievable or important.
For Pete's sake! I have repeatedly stated that I agree with you that it's not achievable! Did you not read I made it very clear that I'm not contesting this. Indeed, it's central to my point. in my previous comment? It certainly is important, however, as I shall explain again.
if a vaccine is not effective then vaccination will not matter for either the vaccinated or not vaccinated.
Nonsense. Effectiveness is not binary, it's a matter of proportion over the population. That's what 'not 100% effective' means. A vaccine might successfully make 90% of those treated immune, but not work on the remaining 10% that were treated.
Because a person that can NOT get vaccines is exactly the same as a person that chooses not to be vaccinated.
Of course.
Look: suppose I am vaccinated, but the vaccine didn't work for me, because I'm one of the unfortunate 10% for whom it isn't effective. Suppose also that although the vaccine would have worked for you (not that there'd be any way to know this, of course, but no matter), you chose not to get it. You then get infected, and then infect me. Had you taken the vaccination, neither of us would have become infected.
To your first 2 paragraphs: I was very verbose, so as to eliminate any chance of a misunderstanding. Did you actually read my previous comment?
Certainly there are a few vaccines that have very high rates of effectiveness, but I don't believe any of them are 100% (show me one).
I made it very clear that I'm not contesting this. Indeed, it's central to my point. From my previous comment:
The impossibility of a 100% guarantee (I agree, it is essentially impossible)
100% effective vaccinations are impossible
Once more: it is precisely because no vaccine can be 100% effective, that we are having this discussion. If they were effective for everyone who received them, then yes, the number of unvaccinated people would have no bearing on the risk of infection for the vaccinated people: the risk for the vaccinated would remain 0.
Then to the other way you could be using the 100%, that is in people receiving the vaccines. Again, this is impossible due to many medical conditions preventing people from ever getting a vaccine.
No, I did not conflate effectiveness and proportion of populated treated. (I believe that strictly the correct medical term here is 'efficacy', not 'effectiveness', but no matter). Also, agreed that a 100% vaccinated population won't happen.
There is no way for me to give you D if you have I. (I=Immunization and D=Disease
Assuming that I refers to has been vaccinated (and not the body has successfully developed immunity), this is false: you have assumed a 100% effective vaccine.
The more people with vaccines, the LESS the risk of a person WITHOUT immunization to get a disease.
True.
It can not work in the other direction because (I ! D) people with vaccines are immune to the disease.
Again, untrue. This would only be the case if everyone vaccinated really has immunity, which, as we've repeatedly agreed, is not the case.
I dislike Fox and MSNBC as much as anyone but for Christs sake at least they have some shred of integrity left
No, no, no.
How is it that you're using a dish and are getting very poor reliability and throughput, yet there are voice-call satellite phones barely larger than an ordinary mobile phone?
Surely if voice is 'easy', then an at-least-56k-dial-up-speed Internet link should be no problem, or is there more to this?
I am still unclear what you're referring to by 'dilemma'. Going back to the start:
I learned recently that the wife of the quarterback of my beloved Chicago Bears is one of these anti-vaccine people, based on the notion that vaccines have "chemicals" in them. So they don't get their kids vaccinated, endangering the lives of others.
To which you responded:
You do know what a false dilemma is don't you? If John Doe decides not to get vaccinated and you get vaccinated, how are you at risk? John gets polio and you do not, there is no issue.
I don't see any faulty reasoning in PopeRatzo's comment.
You just said probably, which is a correct statement. Then again you claim you want a 100% guarantee. No such guarantee is possible no matter what the circumstanc
Well yes, it was always going to be a matter of small degree, as we're discussing the decision of a single individual.
The impossibility of a 100% guarantee (I agree, it is essentially impossible) is not a factor regarding the soundness of my reasoning.
The point I'm really making is this: Unless the vaccination is 100% effective, then when someone makes the decision not to be vaccinated, that does increase the odds that vaccinated individuals (the ones for whom the vaccine did not work) may end up getting infected.
100% effective vaccinations are impossible, therefore, it's always the case that when someone makes the decision not to be vaccinated, that does increase the odds that vaccinated individuals may end up getting infected.
I hope you're right, but there's not much in this privacy/NSA game to inspire anything but cynicism.
What evidence do you have for this?
Got me there; not sure where I heard this actually.
Just so long as no-one ports KDE to JavaScript. That really would be going too far.
they plan on moving to something unsupported all the time
Pretty sure Linux isn't unsupported. If you're so inclined, you can pay for support if you want it
Unlike with Windows, you get your pick of providers (and yes, that includes big-name, management-friendly corporations), for any particular aspect/application of Linux.
For that matter, your right to have sex with your own gender shouldn't need to rely on being born that way as legal justification.
Good point.
No, no, turns out I wasn't born that way. I was just curious. doesn't make discrimination ok.
Google is in bed with the NSA. The NSA have Google's keys. There is at best some level of inconvenience for the NSA, but nothing more. Nothing to stop them spying on millions.
You, the spied-on end-user, do not benefit. (Well, HTTPS might keep others out, but not the NSA.) You are not made aware of when the NSA spy on you.
Anyway, even before Gmail 'went HTTPS only', virtually all use of GMail was surely still through HTTPS.
Why go through all this effort when they could simply used one of the C-like strongly typed languages is beyond me.
Because they already have a huge PHP codebase. That said, Twitter moved from Ruby to Scala for their back-end; it seems it can be done. I suspect Facebook have more of a lots-of-programmers problem: they all know PHP, and they might not all know, say, Scala.
to creating a PHP-to-Java converter or something along those lines.
You mean take PHP source and translate it into readable, maintainable Java source? That's all but impossible. They're very different languages, and source-to-source translators tend to produce pretty unreadable code when faced with that kind of task. A human wouldn't design a PHP program the same way she'd design the same program in Java. Without some terribly impressive AI, there's really no way around this.
They could have translated PHP into totally-unreadable Java and then (run that through javac and) run the result on the JVM, sure, but then you're really just creating a rival PHP implementation. (Look like two separate projects have done just that, though, and apparently had pretty good results, outperforming the official PHP interpreter. All that says is that the official PHP interpreter is crap, which I think we all knew anyway.)
but Google will have to know, so the NSA can't do it secretly anymore
Sure, but that doesn't matter. Google (will roll | have rolled | are rolling) over for the NSA, so you don't gain anything by this.
The moment the NSA have to ask you personally, that's when you're onto something. End-to-end crypto gives you that, of course.
Related: Tox secure IM, the Blackphone. Do keep an eye on those two projects. Promising stuff.
No, I won't attempt to teach the basics of rhetoric and logic here, I studied them for years in a formal environment as opposed to you pointing to Wiki articles for fallacy definitions.
I'm sure you're well aware, then, of the argument-from-authority fallacy. I dare not link to Wikipedia, of course. That would make me a bumbling amateur, right?
Attempting to nitpick the name of the fallacy won't change the fallacy from true to false either, so it's a poor argument all around.
I wasn't being obtuse. I really don't get you.
Herd immunity does not claim 100% is needed, so you are again using fallacy arguments. You said yourself that some people can not be vaccinated so you provide an impossible condition and you know it.
Well, you not being vaccinated probably means one more potential carrier, right? ('Probably' because of the chance it wouldn't have worked on you.) The only way this doesn't affect me is if I'm 100% guaranteed to be immune. (Or, I suppose, if I'm 100% guaranteed never to meet you, or if I'm already infected.) I don't see that I can be missing much here, but if this reasoning is unsound, please point out in what way.
You not getting a vaccination doesn't affect me much, sure, but without 100% effective vaccinations, it surely has to affect me some non-zero amount. (The impossibility of 100% effective vaccinations doesn't affect the reasoning here.)
I was not unclear with what you replied "What?' to, so try and work on your reading and comprehension skills.
Condescension doesn't strengthen your position, but I thought it was clear: I don't know where you're getting this from: the irrational and fallacy ridden separation you attempt to make between people that "can't" and people that "won't" get vaccinated. I certainly wasn't trying to make any such distinction.
Regarding the facts, then: there seems to be a 1 in 1,000,000 risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it's also not good for people with severe egg allergies. Regarding whether flu shots have saved lives, this source says it's unclear. (It's still possible it's saved many people from a few unpleasant days of flu, mind, and that alone could make it worthwhile.)
Even if you're right that flu shots in particular aren't worthwhile, vaccinations have proven themselves on other diseases. I don't think anyone would argue that flu shots are the most important vaccination.
GP stated that he was at a higher risk because someone did not get a vaccine.
That, is a false dilemma. He is at _NO_ higher risk because someone does not get a vaccine, and neither is anyone else that receives a vaccine.
Even if GP is wrong, I don't see how this fits 'false dilemma'. From Wikipedia: informal fallacy that involves a situation in which limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option. In what way has OP falsely presented only 2 options as being all there can be?
He is at _NO_ higher risk because someone does not get a vaccine, and neither is anyone else that receives a vaccine.
Assuming 100% vaccination efficacy, sure. Otherwise, no.
I won't even touch the irrational and fallacy ridden separation you attempt to make between people that "can't" and people that "won't" get vaccinated
What?
I'm anti Flu vaccine because the results don't offset the risk and the benefits of a Flu vaccine are extremely questionable
If you have a decent source explaining the higher-than-perceived risks here, I'd be interested to read it.
Please spell out for me which false dilemma you are referring to - I honestly can't see one.
divert the topic elsewhere (again)
It's hardly 'diverting': you still aren't understanding the core point that ignorant people not being vaccinated does affect you.
The theory claims that vaccinated people can act as a firewall for those that are not vaccinated.
Right. You get herd immunity when most the people are immunised with a treatment which works most the time. The anti-vac morons have compromised the previously-established herd-immunity, increasing the risk of infection not only for themselves, but also for those who have been given the vaccination, but for whom it did not work, not to mention those too young to have been vaccinated etc.
Nowhere in this theory does it claim that an un-vaccinated person increases the risk for a vaccinated person. The theory claims that vaccinated people can act as a firewall for those that are not vaccinated
I really don't see where the problem lies. This firewall effect is exactly what we're talking about. The only way you break the firewall is by a non-trivial subpopulation not getting vaccinated.
Suppose a population has herd immunity to start with, having all been vaccinated with a mostly-effective vaccine. Then, anti-vac morons decide not to vaccinate their children, introducing into the population a subpopulation of unvaccinated individuals. This can go on to break herd immunity: the disease gets a chance to spread, which it would never otherwise have had. If the anti-vac morons had not been anti-vac morons, this would not have happened. Agreed?
Now suppose you were one of the rare individuals who was vaccinated, but for whom the vaccine didn't work. Now you are at risk, all because of the actions of the anti-vac morons. Were it not for them, there would have been so few infectable people in the population that it would never have spread in the first place.