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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Feb 7, 2015 11:06:33 GMT -5
The thing is that you are not talking about an even vaccination rate across the US. Right now, the most measles cases are in those states where personal belief exemption is allowed and the vaccination rates for children are lower.
A great example of this was the Amish congregation that the measles swept through. However, as that tends to be a more insular society, it didn't have the repercussions that we are seeing today.
So in certain area of the US, herd immunity HAS broken down when the immunization rates dropped and in that community, it is less than 10s of millions.
This is along the lines of why it is highly suggested that any adult that might have contact with a newborn be immunized against pertussis. You are trying to produce a mini herd immunity around that child, to protect it.
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Pants
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Post by Pants on Feb 7, 2015 11:26:24 GMT -5
I do wonder what it will take. I mean, pertussis has been killing babies lately and no one seems to care. A couple dozen dead babies every year isn't enough to make anti-vaxxers vaccinate. So what would it take?
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justme
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Post by justme on Feb 7, 2015 11:29:42 GMT -5
The Walk of the Penguin Mich got what I was saying. Angel! too. If you need 95+% to have herd immunity, and then you take out children too young to get vaccinated, those who got vaccinated but didn't gain immunity, and all those that can't get vaccinated due to medical reasons the number of those choosing to not vaccinate needed to tip us below herd immunity isn't as much as you think. Furthermore, like Mich said, the numbers to tip below herd immunity are even lower when you're looking at small communities. Even if the US vaccine rate is 95%, if it's only 70% in your town herd immunity has already been broken and didn't need even "ten of millions" to put those that can't have the vaccine at risk.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Feb 7, 2015 11:30:06 GMT -5
The law or being sued or being sent home. Amazing the anti-vaxxers, when faced with having their children home, got them vaccinated! Have you heard about Germany and measles?
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Feb 7, 2015 12:28:00 GMT -5
I do wonder what it will take. I mean, pertussis has been killing babies lately and no one seems to care. A couple dozen dead babies every year isn't enough to make anti-vaxxers vaccinate. So what would it take? Knowing someone who died? When I was a child and we got these childhood diseases, it was rare not to actually know someone who was either disabled, disfigured or died from childhood diseases. I remember my mom talking about friends that were hit by polio. Hell, I had a playmate die from measles Because of this, our parents were first in line to make sure that it ever happened to their children. So essentially, the problems today are a function of the vaccination program's success. Even now, those people most likely to get flu vaccines are those who have been hit by the flu themselves, and the flu vaccine has a far lower success rate than those for childhood vaccinations. So a couple dozen babies dying of a preventable disease in the grand scheme of things really has not impacted the anti-vax's life much. It's not personal. My best guess is that if Ebola ever became as prevalent in the US as it is in Africa, that they'd be first in line for vaccination. It's a horrible death, with a death/disability rate 50-60x higher than that of many childhood diseases. That combination would probably have an impact on them. Also, as I mentioned, when rare happens to you it becomes personal. Me winding up with the double prosthetic infection is an incredibly rare rate - just a little higher than the possibility of dying form a childhood disease. As it happened to me, it's a slap in the fact that Murphy is a sick bastard and things can happen to anyone. I couldn't do anything to prevent what happened to me, but vaccines can prevent Murphy smirking at them.
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Pants
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Post by Pants on Feb 7, 2015 12:48:03 GMT -5
I do wonder what it will take. I mean, pertussis has been killing babies lately and no one seems to care. A couple dozen dead babies every year isn't enough to make anti-vaxxers vaccinate. So what would it take? Knowing someone who died? When I was a child and we got these childhood diseases, it was rare not to actually know someone who was either disabled, disfigured or died from childhood diseases. I remember my mom talking about friends that were hit by polio. Hell, I had a playmate die from measles Because of this, our parents were first in line to make sure that it ever happened to their children. So essentially, the problems today are a function of the vaccination program's success. Even now, those people most likely to get flu vaccines are those who have been hit by the flu themselves, and the flu vaccine has a far lower success rate than those for childhood vaccinations. So a couple dozen babies dying of a preventable disease in the grand scheme of things really has not impacted the anti-vax's life much. It's not personal. My best guess is that if Ebola ever became as prevalent in the US as it is in Africa, that they'd be first in line for vaccination. It's a horrible death, with a death/disability rate 50-60x higher than that of many childhood diseases. That combination would probably have an impact on them. Also, as I mentioned, when rare happens to you it becomes personal. Me winding up with the double prosthetic infection is an incredibly rare rate - just a little higher than the possibility of dying form a childhood disease. As it happened to me, it's a slap in the fact that Murphy is a sick bastard and things can happen to anyone. I couldn't do anything to prevent what happened to me, but vaccines can prevent Murphy smirking at them. Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of numbers required in an outbreak/epidemic. What %of the population would have to get sick? What % would have to have serious complications or death? Apparently I'm in a morbid mood today.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Feb 7, 2015 12:58:06 GMT -5
The thing is that you are not talking about an even vaccination rate across the US. Right now, the most measles cases are in those states where personal belief exemption is allowed and the vaccination rates for children are lower. A great example of this was the Amish congregation that the measles swept through. However, as that tends to be a more insular society, it didn't have the repercussions that we are seeing today. So in certain area of the US, herd immunity HAS broken down when the immunization rates dropped and in that community, it is less than 10s of millions. This is along the lines of why it is highly suggested that any adult that might have contact with a newborn be immunized against pertussis. You are trying to produce a mini herd immunity around that child, to protect it. If you go back to my original argument, you'll note that the paradox is independent of scale. Take any closed population P, which can be as tightly confined as "Amish communities" or as broad as "children in the United States" (which is what I'd intended P to be in the context of the discussion). Apply the logic in Reply #300 to P. Regardless of the size of P, you're either a) disregarding the express wishes of a population significantly opposed to compulsory vaccination (and very likely distrustful of medical authorities), or b) disregarding the express wishes of a population not significantly opposed to compulsory vaccination, but where the risk to others due to non-compliance is negligible. In the spirit of completeness, there is also c) disregarding the express wishes of a population significantly opposed to compulsory vaccination and where the risk to others due to non-compliance is negligible. This would comprise populations where non-compliance ranged between ~10-15%. If we choose P to be everybody in the US, the fact that there are "pockets" of significantly greater risk doesn't affect the overall risk. For every community with less-than-average compliance and greater risk there must necessarily be a community with greater-than-average compliance and less risk. Over the population in aggregate, we characterize the average risk in terms of the average rate of compliance. Letting P be "children in the United States", and assuming that anti-vaccination sentiment is uniformly distributed over all broadly identifiable groups such that we're not in (a) territory, it would take between 4-19 million unvaccinated children total to breach the loss-of-herd-immunity threshold in the average American public school. Hence my statement about "tens of millions", which I've since amended to "ten of million". If it so happens that all the non-compliance (and thus risk) is concentrated in certain identifiable groups (poor Hispanics, say, or conservative Christians), then it is readily seen that ( a) applies to this restriction of P. Either way, at least one of (a) or (b) always applies, which is my point in Reply #300.
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justme
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Post by justme on Feb 7, 2015 13:02:54 GMT -5
Knowing family members that were moderately to severe adversely affected by now vaccinatable diseases doesn't seem to provoke my bro into pushing to vaccinate his kid. Even with one of them his own mother. So I'm not sold on death being enough to shake them...but that's the pessimist in me.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Feb 7, 2015 13:16:49 GMT -5
I have an older cousin who got polio. Some of Those who survived were disfigured. He has a leg much shorter than the other. Now because he's in his late 70's his body is breaking down and he's all twisted up and in huge pain. He won't even let his siblings visit. I remember my mom and aunt talking about him when I was just a little kid and I asked them what was polio? They both just about cried.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Feb 7, 2015 13:17:23 GMT -5
Sorry, that was supposed to be a sad face. Fat fingered.
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justme
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Post by justme on Feb 7, 2015 18:29:02 GMT -5
They're not sheeple....they're sheep following the crazy wolf to their peril.
Maybe it's my bias, but the anti-vaxxers seem way more like they are blindly following a path.
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Post by weltschmerz on Feb 8, 2015 3:43:55 GMT -5
They're not sheeple ....they're sheep following the crazy wolf to their peril.
Maybe it's my bias, but the anti-vaxxers seem way more like they are blindly following a path. More like sheep following a Judas Goat to the slaughterhouse.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Feb 8, 2015 7:19:02 GMT -5
They're not sheeple....they're sheep following the crazy wolf to their peril. Maybe it's my bias, but the anti-vaxxers seem way more like they are blindly following a path. If it was just their peril I'd say let Darwin sort it out but they can harm others.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Feb 8, 2015 12:29:03 GMT -5
So in other words you don't have any problems taking away someone's free choice over their body because you lose personal benefit if they choose the 'wrong way'? Basically what Zib said. Freedom of choice ends when you are risking harm on others. That's why driving drunk is illegal. That's why kids have to ride in car seats even if as a parent you don't believe in car seats.
As far as my personal choices...I can't think of any examples where I would be so self-centered & arrogant to not care that my choices could harm or kill others.
Note - I don't think MOST anti-vax folks are self-centered or arrogant. I think most are misinformed about vaccines & scientifically illiterate.
risking harm to others is not a problem, so long as they consent to it. we all take risks in life. the problem is ASSUMING that others would consent to that risk rather than asking them, informing them, or surveying them.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Feb 8, 2015 12:30:20 GMT -5
So in other words you don't have any problems taking away someone's free choice over their body because you lose personal benefit if they choose the 'wrong way'? Basically what Zib said. Freedom of choice ends when you are risking harm on others. That's why driving drunk is illegal. That's why kids have to ride in car seats even if as a parent you don't believe in car seats.
As far as my personal choices...I can't think of any examples where I would be so self-centered & arrogant to not care that my choices could harm or kill others.
Note - I don't think MOST anti-vax folks are self-centered or arrogant. I think most are misinformed about vaccines & scientifically illiterate.
there is an expression that i won't quite get right, but here it goes: "your freedom to swing your fists ends at my face".
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Feb 8, 2015 12:33:03 GMT -5
Interesting article. Nothing scientific or medical. I am not a scientist, but I am a mother — I know why my son has autismLast week I was surfing the Internet and came across a headline proclaiming autism and circumcision are linked. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud. In no certain order, I have read the following explanations for autism over the years: Autism is caused by mercury. Autism is caused by lead. Autism begins with poor maternal bonding. Certain pesticides may trigger autism. Plastics. Gluten aggravates autism spectrum disorder. People with autism should eat more strawberries. Too much automotive exhaust is a leading cause of autism. Chemicals found on non-stick cookware may trigger autism. The one about maternal bonding is sort of painful for me. The truth is, I did have a hard time bonding with infant Jack. The little guy shrieked and whined and cried for a solid year. He started sleeping through the night at six weeks, and stopped at three months. I am not a scientist, but I am a mother — I know why my son has autismthe maternal bonding one is an impossibly cruel invention. i would be well pleased if i never heard that again.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Feb 8, 2015 12:36:41 GMT -5
Basically what Zib said. Freedom of choice ends when you are risking harm on others. That's why driving drunk is illegal. That's why kids have to ride in car seats even if as a parent you don't believe in car seats.
As far as my personal choices...I can't think of any examples where I would be so self-centered & arrogant to not care that my choices could harm or kill others.
Note - I don't think MOST anti-vax folks are self-centered or arrogant. I think most are misinformed about vaccines & scientifically illiterate.
there is an expression that i won't quite get right, but here it goes: "your freedom to swing your fists ends at my face". Your freedom to swing your fists ends at the non-zero probability that one might strike my face.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Feb 8, 2015 12:39:45 GMT -5
the bolded principle is called "universalizability", and it has been considered the gold standard of moral philosophy for over two centuries. by this i mean that any ethical system that fails to pass this test is considered by most to be invalid. this list includes hedonism, relativism, selfishness, survivalism, and a whole slew of other popular ideas. it is a shame they don't teach normative ethics in school.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Feb 8, 2015 12:47:39 GMT -5
there is an expression that i won't quite get right, but here it goes: "your freedom to swing your fists ends at my face". Your freedom to swing your fists ends at the non-zero probability that one might strike my face. nah, that's not it......
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