Confronting public idiocy saves lives, literally. I'm intolerant to idiocy, and will shoo away any loonie I come upon, sometimes physically.
Maybe stupidity should be ridiculed? We've tried taking it seriously and it isn't helping.
It's irrational to not consider the question of whether taking a vaccine is right (for yourself [or dependents], and for the population).
The point is that society already evaluates these hazards/risks very effectively so that individual parents don't need to. Indeed any individual parent's risk analysis about vaccines is likely to put their children at greater risk.
The Tetra Fluenz flu vaccine, according to UK medical authorities, has some negative effects (flu like symptoms, not just a pain in the arm) on ≥1:10 recipients, https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/29112.
The problem with the simplistic "just get vaccinated" approach is when it fails you've nothing to fall back on because you weren't honest to start with.
"Take this and you won't get flu, it's _perfectly_ safe", the child gets sick from the vaccine, then gets flu anyway. So, now I should trust you? That would be irrational.
Vaccines are absolutely right for public health, they may not (in rare cases) be right for specific individuals. As vaccination rate increases (close to full vaccination) the mathematical reasoning based on not becoming personally sick sides with _not_ get vaccinated.
Moreover, vaccination advice from medics does change, infant flu vaccinations has been pushed back recently. Presumably you'd have people ignore that advice and vaccinate anyway because 'not getting vaccinated is always "idiocy"'? In your opinion it seems 'just disgusting whether vaccination is right is idiocy'?
tl;dr people lying that vaccines always work for individuals is bad in the same way as those lying that vaccines don't work.
Every single Flu-vaccine has a high probability of showing flu-like symptoms. These are from a medicinal standpoint nothing compared to the seriousness of the real flu.
Even MMR-Vaccines are expected to cause a harmless form of "vaccine-measles", which can show up as mild rash, low fever, etc. Again, no these are not to be concerned about.
These vaccination-associated symptoms are widely harmless and there is no reason to mingle them with ongoing side-effects caused by vaccinations.
People act as if vaccination is perfect and has no risks and that people who try and consider the risks are thus stupid.
>"These vaccination-associated symptoms are widely harmless"
So, mild symptoms are mild, got you.
But you accept that there are people getting life altering illnesses from vaccinations?
Eg https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/guillainbarre.htm says about 1-2 per million vaccinations.
>The data on the association between GBS and seasonal flu vaccination are variable and inconsistent across flu seasons. If there is an increased risk of GBS following flu vaccination it is small, on the order of one to two additional GBS cases per million doses of flu vaccine administered.
They clearly never state your conclusion, they said 'If there is such an increased risk, it is incredibly small'.
Now the question is, why would you do that?
Answer this - does vaccination have any major health risks?
Fully agree with you, pbhjpbhj. The nuance in the discussion is missing(no surprises). To add to the confusion we have both the govt and pharmas involved, and both entities are know for coverups. So who should a person trust? Yes a vaccine can potentially work very well, but it is only to the extent that it has been well designed and tested, no different from any other product or medicine.
Huge part of the needless discussion about the risks of vaccines happening in well educated parts of the population are misattributed effects of vaccines.
Everyone I know apparently knows someone that has a child that has a serious condition because of a vaccination. Yeah, right, if it was so clear cut and widespread, these vaccines would be pulled from the market yesterday.
That argument is empirically false, as there have been multiple medications and vaccinations which did widespread harm.
Granted, nearly all of them occurred 30+ years ago. However I don't think we should ever claim we've advanced to the point where we _know_ that there are _no_ medications or vaccinations that are causing problems we aren't aware of yet, especially given how long it might take for those problems to manifest themselves.
Not an argument against vaccination at all, just an argument for intellectual humility.
Once a vaccine has shown to be just remotely as dangerous as the illness it is trying to prevent, it becomes pointless and is no longer available. The respective regulative bodies in either country are rather strict about which vaccine is allowed to circulate.
Something like 1 in million do have a serious side effect of the vaccine. This is far less than the 6000 dead in Congo because they don't have the vaccine, but it isn't zero. The fact that it is far less is reason to vaccinate anyway - but if doctors can determine that your child is one of that 1 in a million before hand (they normally cannot!) it would be wise to skip vaccination for just those kids.
Some people do not know they are in one of those groups, and ARE likely to experience harm. These groups (unaware immune issues) are statistically insignificant compared to the entire population, of course.
But ignoring them is in fact contributing to the antivax movement; primes are statistically rare but if you told people they don’t exist, you would be working for the antimath movement.
The problem is: Even to well educated parents the summary "Everyone could be affected by life-long effects due to vaccination" has a drastically different meaning compared to an objective bystander that looks at the real numbers, and this leads to (seemingly irrational) decisions. Some even are mislead into feeding crusades against this "well known danger called vaccination".
bipson, Ever read of Vioxx or Thalidomide? Yes it was pulled, a tad late though. What is the point that you are trying to make that somebody doesn't already know?
2. These are not vaccines, but medications. So this has virtually nothing to do with "known vaccine-induced ongoing illnesses"
Then you have not read of Vioxx or Thalidomide in sufficient detail. There were also massive coverups (or being dismissive of reported negative effects) did you notice that when you read it?
> These are not vaccines, but medications.
bipson, what the point that you are trying to make? Is it that the production/administration of vaccines (but not medications) are not prone to incompetence and coverups by govt, pharma? It is not a rhetorical question.
Scarlett fever vaccine (decades ago) made me very ill. Flu vaccine this year seemed (it could be coincidental) to make one of my children ill enough to be off school. These are expected consequences.
It's also expected that some few people will die and others will have life altering conditions. These vaccines should still be used, because vaccines address the needs of a population in the first instance.
Although I can't prove the sentence incorrect as such, it is stated in such a vague and alarmist way, that it could easily taken as an example of fueling the FUD?
You know crossing the road can kill too. You'll probably be fine, but I'm not going to lie and say you'll never be the one who gets hit. If I did lie to you, then you heard about someone getting hit, you should then not trust me and be hesitant about taking advice from me. Now, do you see how this works with something like flu vaccine? "It's perfectly safe" and "≥10%" get minor illness from it are not the same thing - saying the former when the evidence supports the latter means someone won't trust you for health advice even if you're objectively the best source because they can no longer be as objective about it.
The risks are small, and most definitely worth it from society’s point of view, and likely from a personal point of view - They are, however, harder to assess from a personal point of view.
I am somewhat familiar with a case where a serious underlying autoimmune condition was apparently triggered by vaccination. It would have surely manifested at some point, but for this condition - the later it is triggered for the first time, the better the overall outcome. (The parents in these cases often believe that the condition was caused by the vaccination, rather than revealed by it - the truth is any significant provocation of the immune system might trigger it). There have also been cases where live polio and flu vaccines where not sufficiently weakened and caused the disease.
It is also not helpful that most vaccine proponents discount anyone who considers risks a heretic.