At some point it stops being about science or understanding and starts being wholly about politics. There's a lot more "well these demographics or institutions f-ing hate me so I'm sure as shit not taking their word for anything" going around than there was a decade ago.
This would be fine. It goes further: not only rejecting the institutions, but concluding adversely based on their advocating for something.
180€ per injection. The normal schedule is 3 injections. (first, 1 month, 6 month). However I checked and NHS (UK) did a study on it that showed a single injection provides the same protection as 3, so they changed their injection schedule to single injection for people under 25, and 2 injections (first + 6-24 months) for over 25s due to the expectation that older immune systems take longer to adapt.
The German (StIKo) recommendation is still 3, but I prefer listening to the NHS here because they have been more scientific about this in the past and seem to be actively studying this stuff.
I asked my doctor and they said I can pick the schedule I want, since it's not insured anyway. So I picked the two injection schedule. So that makes 360€ for me. If the NHS study holds you could probably pick a single injection and already have most or all of the protection. I picked two because I figured it's still recommended for my age group that way.
>And the doctors say there isn't much point because I've probably been exposed already (considering number of partners that's likely).
My doctor said the same, but the NHS says it's still useful from their studies. Especially since Gardasil protects against 9 variants. It's unlikely you've been exposed to all 9 variants.
I am not a doctor, so I can only tell you what I've found helpful in making my decision.
I forgot to link the sources the 9-valent vaccine is the current Gardasil:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/single-dose-of-hp...
Some people you just can't reach. I stopped arguing at that point.
The vaccine (Gardasil) protects against 9 strains. Even if you've been exposed to 1 strain, it protects against the other 8 strains.
>Also at one point in time, it wasnt linked to cancers affecting men, and men were seen only as carriers. Now it seems any area of flesh exposed to HPV strains are at risk of cancer there.
Even if it didn't do anything in men, it's stupid not to vaccinate as many people as possible to get herd immunity. We understand this for a hundred years now with other vaccines, why not this one?
Apart from that it's not a bad guess to think that if it causes one cancer it will be causing other types of cancer as well. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
>The age of male coverage has been expanded to like mid-40s by now.
Sadly in Germany it's still only for younger men. And older men weren't offered the vaccine at all when they were younger, so they never got the offer. I paid out of pocket for it, but it's still stupid that we're still putting a part of the population at unnecessary risk for cancer, and also decreasing herd immunity at the same time.
Lack of HPV vaccination is just a symptom of lack of understanding of science and statistics in politics.