dumb vaccination question

[Phishin]

Originally Posted By: robertcope
Originally Posted By: Phishin
But I also think it should be free choice.


The problem is that one person's bad choice impacts everyone else in society in this case.

robert


So what!!!! People do all kinds of stupid things everyday that negatively impacts our society as a whole. People who steal (the price of goods goes up), people who live off welfare (our taxes increase), people who do drugs (the cost of them in our population is staggering), etc. etc.

The negative impact that people's choices have on our collective society is the price we pay for freedom. You can't eliminate people's ability to hurt a society without taking away all their freedoms and choices. But to be fair, it's the same freedom of choice that also has sooooooooooo many positive ramifications as well.

There are a few negatives that can't be avoided with having freedom of choice, but they are buried under the mountain of positive ones.

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
Reporting of such problems becomes a political issue with information carefully conditions for public consumption.


Yup, it's hard to say "disease spreads through brown people" without sounding racist.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: Koz1
I have had every vaccine known to man for my job several have made me very very sick, (hospitalization twice) in the end I have no immunity to anything I have been vaccinated for. My doctor tested me several times as she couldn't believe the results in the end she said Myself and my children more likely shouldn't have any vaccines since they make me sick and do nothing for me.

This is a great example of why the REST of us should be vaccinating.

 

[DoiInthanon]

It is a wonderful question. I know nothing professionally about the topic.

However, as a kid I remember those two or three in my little town with leg braces from polio. How my parents were so happy to have polio vaccine for us.

In the early seventies I helped the corpsman with Medcap visits in remote rural populations overseas. It would break your heart to see some of the presentations, especially as he described how it was preventable.

I am thankful to have medical science. The wife and I and our children all avail ourselves of vaccinations.

Everything in life has risks. The same folks railing against vaccinations may also expose their kids to risks like processed food, hours in front of screens, keys to the car when 16, modeling behavior such as consumption of alcohol, etc. If they are, they are hypocrites.

 

[javacontour]

Originally Posted By: DoiInthanon

Everything in life has risks. The same folks railing against vaccinations may also expose their kids to risks like processed food, hours in front of screens, keys to the car when 16, modeling behavior such as consumption of alcohol, etc. If they are, they are hypocrites.


You could say the same about those who are pro-vax. I'm not sure your point is salient, unless of course you are demonstrating the contradictions evident in nearly every human's reasoning.

I.E. I must get my child vaccinated to protect them.

Here, eat some chicken nuggets.
Happy Birthday, here is your new X-Box, Car, cough-cough first drink, depending on the child's age.

Life is full of risks. We each should have the freedom and responsibility to manage our risks as we see fit.

One cannot legislate risk out of life.

 

[crazyoildude]

My next door neighbors are both doctors and they get all their shots and their kids do also.

 

[eljefino]

The issue with presenting facts and logic to an anti-vaxxer is they've already set their mind, and it's like politics or religion to them. Once they've, in their first second, decided what side you're on, everything you say is just a conspiracy theory.

That tickles a certain part of the brain that either wants to believe, or disbelieve, from your point of view.

The public health PSAs do a poor job up here, IMO, because it's just a doctor in a suit coat saying take your medicine, it's what's best for you.

It'd be better for a scientist to drink a teaspoon of thimerosal (mercury), poop it all out, and demonstrate it's not biologically active.

Just random anecdata from my wifes' facebook acquaintances, the ones who skip vaccinations also don't wear deoderant, as it's just spreading ground up metals on your body, skip gluten, and do all this other fad stuff. Would be hard to correllate any statistical improvement in health/ IQ/ etc due to all the other wierd stuff they do.

 

[Phishin]

Originally Posted By: javacontour

Life is full of risks. We each should have the freedom and responsibility to manage our risks as we see fit.

One cannot legislate risk out of life.


Bingo. I doubt any harm will be done to the vast majority by a few or even many, who don't vaccinate. But if it does happen, that situation will take care of itself as well...either through natural selection, government intervention, or independent/individual intervention.

 

[Vuflanovsky]

I also think that it might be incorrect to label "anti-vaxxers" as a monolithic block with everyone having the same lock-step views. They don't in my experience and some are very well educated and can give you learned arguments about their particular position. Some children aren't able to receive vaccines due to a particular medical condition...I wonder how much of a pariah they'll become with this latest PR push.

One thing I learned from personal experience is that doctors and the medical community on whole are not the demi-gods they present themselves to be. You're often times better served by educating yourself and being the steward of your own health care if there's some question. I've known people who are better educated about conditions than their general practitioners and in some ways their specialists. Factory medicine yields factory results.

There's growing correlation between aluminum in deodorants / antacids, etc. and dementia and Alzheimer's. If someone wants to think that's the stuff of "earth cookies" they're welcome to think that...however, the science is growing. That's especially true for folks who want to believe everything their doctor tells them and defer to them totally...my experience tells me that's not always the most prudent course.

 

[DoiInthanon]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
Originally Posted By: DoiInthanon

Everything in life has risks. The same folks railing against vaccinations may also expose their kids to risks like processed food, hours in front of screens, keys to the car when 16, modeling behavior such as consumption of alcohol, etc. If they are, they are hypocrites.


You could say the same about those who are pro-vax. I'm not sure your point is salient, unless of course you are demonstrating the contradictions evident in nearly every human's reasoning.

I.E. I must get my child vaccinated to protect them...
Fair point. I withdraw my hypocrite comment.

 

[JHZR2]

Id rather generate natural immunity to things like the flu. I cant remember when Ive had the flu last. Ive had a cold a few times over the last few years, and it has lasted a day or two and then is gone. I travel 50% of the time to make matters worse for exposure...

So no flu shots for me. Id rather not be exposed to Hg/Al.

But one key thing - I CAN take sick leave. My wife CAN take sick leave. If our child is sick, we can take off for that too.

Being sick is uncomfortable, but given the negligible risk of flu for any of us, Id rather avoid the metals directly injected into my blood/muscle/fat. Ill take off, stay home, and not spread sickness that way.

Whats criminal is when people don't have sick leave and then go around sick.

So we should mandate vaccines, but not sick leave?

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

If you can't rely on the best available scientific findings, what are you going to rely on? Superstition and ignorance reigned for too many centuries and millennia. Far too many individuals believe what they hear from the pulpit rather than what they hear from their state health department. What do clerics and Oprah know about anything?

 

[Drew99GT]

Originally Posted By: Phishin
I'd always choose to roll the dice and have them vs. not. But I also think it should be free choice.


It should be a free choice AND because of that, society also gets to choose whether your kids goes to public or even most private schools. And most people have said no, if you don't vaccinate your kid, he can't attend school. Try getting into the military or even some private institutions without record of vaccination. It ain't happening.

I can't believe in the 21st century we're even having a debate about this. Communicable diseases wiped out millions of people throughout history, and a few conspiracy nuts using false data and outright hoaxes as evidence, don't want to vaccinate their kids?

Measles = freedom spots...

 

[dishdude]

This is a stupid argument and I can't even believe it's being discussed. Bringing "freedom" into this is absurd. This is a public health policy, children obviously can't make sound decisions and should be protected from idiot parents that decide they aren't going to vaccinate their kids for reasons that don't make sense.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
It should be a free choice AND because of that, society also gets to choose whether your kids goes to public or even most private schools.

I completely agree with your entire post, but this is my favorite part. Hear, hear.

Nowhere in this country is there a law that says you have to let a doctor inject you with anything. Nor should there be. What DO and SHOULD exist are:

1. Reasonable precautions in government-run facilities and sensitive professions, and

2. A tsunami of public disapproval that doesn't let up until enough people get dragged kicking and screaming back into the 21st century.

 

[Drew99GT]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d


2. A tsunami of public disapproval that doesn't let up until enough people get dragged kicking and screaming back into the 21st century.


Or enough people get fed up home schooling their kids because no public or private institutions will let them in their doors!

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
When I was in school-somewhere around 8th or 9th grade-2 kids contracted polio. The school was closed for a while to make certain it wasn't an outbreak.

The folks who don't get their kids immunized have never lived through something like a polio outbreak.


That means that at least 2-400 people around those kids contracted the Polio virus, 95% of them having no symptoms, but developing immunity, and the last couple having what appeared to be a case of a viral infection with no damage.

Last "wild" paralytic polio was allegedly in 1979, in the Amish. 154 of the 162 cases of paralytic polio between 1980 and 1999 were caused by the oral vaccine.

People think that being exposed to a germ is getting the disease...it's not, you quickly develop immunity to nearly everything that you come across (or you'd be pretty dead by now)...things like Measles, the death rate was down due to nutrition and hygiene (and natural immunities by healthy people being exposed to the bugs) before there was anything that resembled a vaccine.

 

[javacontour]

He tried, I don't think he was successful.

 

[Shannow]

How do you know if propaganda public service message is getting through ?

How people respond to it is a good measure.

Originally Posted By: dishdude
This is a stupid argument and I can't even believe it's being discussed. Bringing "freedom" into this is absurd. This is a public health policy, children obviously can't make sound decisions and should be protected from idiot parents that decide they aren't going to vaccinate their kids for reasons that don't make sense.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Drew99GT

It should be a free choice AND because of that, society also gets to choose whether your kids goes to public or even most private schools. And most people have said no, if you don't vaccinate your kid, he can't attend school. Try getting into the military or even some private institutions without record of vaccination. It ain't happening.

I can't believe in the 21st century we're even having a debate about this. Communicable diseases wiped out millions of people throughout history, and a few conspiracy nuts using false data and outright hoaxes as evidence, don't want to vaccinate their kids?

Measles = freedom spots...

with 350 million of us in the U.S. not including a hunred million illegals. You can have an awful lot of rogue opinions.

Quote:
This is a stupid argument and I can't even believe it's being discussed. Bringing "freedom" into this is absurd. This is a public health policy, children obviously can't make sound decisions and should be protected from idiot parents that decide they aren't going to vaccinate their kids for reasons that don't make sense.

I am also not in favor of the government enforcing many things. But were it not for the government we would still be driving cars without seat belts and with pointed center columns on steering wheels.