Thursday, October 26, 2017

An Interesting Take on Vaccines

Most interesting is the doctor's comments towards the end on how well vaccines work for those who get them and also about some new vaccines coming out.



 

-RW

17 comments:

  1. Let's say there's a .01% chance of the vaccine making your kid debilitated or dead and a 3% chance of the vaccine not working for your kid (about 1900 "serious" reactions reported annually per VAERS). Let's say if you don't vaxxed there's a .01% chance of your kid getting sick with a disease the vax could have prevented (1000 cases or less per year per 21 million kids under 5 for all vaccinate-able diseases). Of that .01% chance of your kid getting sick, there's a 1% chance that the illness seriously debilitates or kills your kid.

    You are statistically better off not vaccinating your kid. That is, your child has a better chance of becoming debilitated or dying from an adverse vaccine reaction than he does from becoming sick from a preventable illness and having that illness cause irreparable harm or death. Stated another way, the statistical risk of harm is greater in vaccinating your kid than not vaccinating.

    I would limit this analysis to communities where 99% of the people are from the USA. Wherever there are large swaths of 3rd world immigrants - Mexicans, Somalians, Puerto Ricans, etc. - the disease rates increase. All 3rd world immigrants and tourists should be vaccinated upon entry to the United States so as not to spread their 3rd world diseases.

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    1. Puerto Ricans are US citizens

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    2. True, but it's still a third-world shithole and anyone travelling to or from Puerto Rico should be vaccinated.

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  2. keep in mind, though, that even when effective, vaccine immunity is temporary, so unless you want to commit to lifetime "booster" shots, you are only postponing your susceptibility to any of the few viruses targeted by vaccines. This is a problem. For example, mumps is relatively harmless for males during childhood but has more permanent adverse effects post puberty. So here we are vaccinating children but leaving them vulnerable when they need immunity. If they had been exposed as children, they would have lifetime immunity.

    Different problems for females for whom temporary immunity leaves them exposed during childbearing years just when the lifetime immunity should be transferred to newborns through breast milk, protecting newborns during their vulnerable stage while their bodies are building their own immune system.

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  3. Airplanes vs Vaccines: We're not forcing babies to take 100 airplane flights before they are even out of the maternity ward. Oh, and before their immune systems are fully developed, so it's like having them take 100 airplane flights outside of the cabin on the wing or in the wheel well. Hey, they might be alright after that. Nothing to worry about here.

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  4. I recommend watching the film Vaxxed. It was the most rented film on Amazon recently.

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  5. Bottom line is, as Stuffed Pimento illustrated, vaccines cause ill effects on some individuals. As Peter De Baets illustrates, the current vaccine regiment equates to a huge amount of medicine (including stabilizers and preservatives) induced at a very early age. Bernadette Sandoval points out that some of these vaccines are for ailments that typically do no long term harm and by allowing your natural immune system to deal with them it is more beneficial in the long run.

    Vaccines are responsible for the (close to) eradication of some very wicked diseases. But the statistics that Stuffed Pimento included make for a difficult decision for parents. If I had to make the decision now I would study to determine what is in each vaccine and the risks of the vaccines and the disease they proclaim to immunize against. A big part of the decision would be the quantity to time ratio. I imagine that I would decide to eliminate some vaccines all together and delay others.

    Now we get into the Libertarian part. All US States have different laws and allowed exemptions. After the 2015 Measles outbreak, States have become less accommodating to exemptions. California no longer allows exemptions for religious or philosophical reasons, a medical exemption is necessary. I realize this is mostly about public schools but we are talking mandatory vaccination – forced medication.

    We can all imagine how vaccinations would be dictated by property owners in a PPS and the debates about such things as Herd Immunity that would ensue.

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  6. A good dose of tetanus would shut up all you anti-vaxers.

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    1. Tetanus is a bacteria not a virus so contracting tetanus as a child never conferred any immunity. As a bacterial infection it isn't even contagious. Once infected, antibiotics and muscle relaxers can be administered along with immunization and immunoglobulin.

      Antivaxers? I haven't heard of anybody trying to ban all vaccines. Maybe rethink your labels for people you don't know.

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    2. That you wish for the shutting up of those who dare to disagree with you tells us a lot about the strength of your position.

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    3. Shows how crazy these people are.

      People who take medical advice from movie stars are nuts.

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  7. The question is who decides the risk, the state or the individual?

    Furthermore the question for vaccines is made all or nothing. Why? To force people to extremes. Obviously the risks vary for the vaccines and what they aim to prevent. Naturally people would pick and choose.

    And that's how the whole thing got started. Wakefield's paper, actually read it, it's not all that remarkable, it's conclusion was that separate vaccines were a lower risk than MMR combined vaccine. It wasn't anti vaccination, but rather for slower vaccination. When the paper became known to the public people in the UK started going for the separate vaccines. The UK government then pulled the approvals for the separate vaccines to force people to use the MMR. That's when some parents stopped vaccinating. When the government forced the extreme. The government claimed the separate vaccination cost too much. So if it were a free market the problem would have happened. People would make their market choice.

    In the USA vaccination has to be opposed on religious grounds or one has to go through the entire state required list. There's no picking and choosing except for vaccines that haven't yet been made mandatory. All or nothing.

    If people had the ability to choose the vaccines and the rate at which they are administered as they would in a free market then the entire vaccine debate would probably fade away. People would get vaccinated for what mattered and slow the rate for their children for safety. Of course this bad for profits and bad for the state so it won't happen.

    It will continue to be all or nothing or all or else set up.

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    1. In a free market, vaccine manufacturers would be required to be held liable for injuries caused by vaccines. This liability caused most manufacturers to stop producing vaccines. In 1986, the childhood vaccine injury act artificially capped liability which allowed many more manufacturers to bring vaccines to market at a profit.

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    2. There is liability which would force improvement of the products to some established standard like many other products and likely eliminate vaccines for things that pose little or no risk. But that question of how the market would handle liability can only come after the nature of debate is changed from all or nothing.

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  8. The above comments are the reason I avoid vaccines. I can find very well qualified medical experts on both sides of the debate, which is decidedly undecided. And I can find the amateurs declaring that anyone who disagrees with them is a whacko, bribe-taking, conspiracy-theorizing, fool who doesn't understand that the debate is over and their side won and it's settled science.

    Since there are some huge companies making billions from selling this stuff, bribing politicians to pass laws, bribing the news networks with advertising dollars to promote their products - on the news shows - I am very suspicious. I do not claim to have scientific certainty either way and watch with amusement all the amateur debaters smearing and insulting each other like sports fans who have "decided" which team to root for.

    I just think its safer - when uncertain - to stick with the natural and avoid the costly and controversial. Good food, healthy habits, lots of rest are better safeguards than something I can't understand bio chemically from people I can't trust politically.

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  9. My wife and I have 8 kids, none of them had, or have had any of the “shots”. They are all perfectly healthy. They are sick way less than, if ever, their friends who were vaccinated. 5 were born at home, so the option wasn’t a issue then, but the hospital goons try to make you out to be a criminal if you don’t get the shots when your child is born there.

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  10. Joshua, without knowing the ages of your kids or your location, just an fyi: you may want to informally survey your local medical clinics, urgent cares, ERs and doctors to discover if any of them stock single tetanus shots for emergencies. If you wait until one of your kids needs a shot urgently, you may find that you arrive at a facility where just a tetanus shot isn't an option because they only stock Dtap which may be a problem for your family if you happen to have a newborn at home when you bring home a kid after dtap. Just a heads up. the single shot tetanus vaccine that was so effective is now very rarely stocked and maybe obsolete by now. Best of luck.

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