6 ms·

Unless you actually need to argue with them because, say, you share custody of your child with one, you probably shouldn't bother. I am neither an anti vaxxer

• danieltillett 9y ago
  This is one case where one side 'choice' affects the other side. Thanks to herd immunity the anti vaxxers imperil not only themeselves, but also those that are vaccinated.
  • Mz 9y ago
    That street runs both ways. Your insistence on herd immunity and that they, thus, must get vaccinated also impacts their right to do with their body as they see fit. I have a medical condition where most people get the flu vax annually. I stopped getting mine because all of the people actually helping me get healthier after doctors basically wrote me off for dead were strongly antivax in opinion. I am not, but I decided to go with skipping my flu vax because these people seemed to know what the hell they were talking about. I have gotten steadily stronger ever since. I have had people on the internet give me hell for choosing to forego my flu vax on some theory that maybe I would be some danger to their child with respiratory problems, though there was no reason to believe they would ever actually run into me. I sleep in a tent in the wilderness and I have minimal contact with people. I am not harming anyone and no one is catching my germs. (I also have not had the flu in many years.) There are ways to handle germ control other than vaccines. I don't know how humanity will sort this question out. But as someone who needs a high degree of control over my body to have any hope of staying well, I think both sides are equally assholish here.
    • danieltillett 9y ago
      Herd immunity is disease specific and there is no vaccine induced herd immunity for influenza [1]. In your particular case unless you are working with seriously ill (or old people) you are only endangering yourself by not getting vaccinated. For other diseases like pertussis herd immunity is critical to their success. 1. We actually do have an influenza vaccine that would provide herd immunity protection, but our regulatory system is so stuffed that it will never reach the market - this is another rant though.
      • Mz 9y ago
        I am not endangering myself. As I said above, I haven't had the flu in many years. That is prejudice and assumption talking. I do remote work. Because of my genetic disorder, I have arranged my life to be able to avoid exposure to infection. The need for herd immunity is posited on the premise that people have no choice but to be crammed together with large groups of unrelated people at school, work, etc. This is a) a very modern idea that did not exist all that long ago and b) not actually a given.
        • krapp 9y ago
          Unless you're suggesting that we all leave the cities and return to nature, it is actually a given for a lot of people.
          • Mz 9y ago
            Remote work is increasingly popular. I pursue it for reasons of germ control, but lots of people prefer remote work for various reasons. It isn't a given. I spend my days in a large city. I just have freedom to get up and walk away from people coughing and sniffling, an option I did not have at my corporate job.
    • dv_dt 9y ago
      I've been forgoing the flu vax because of some sort of reaction to it a couple years running - I had never been so extremely sick with flu symptoms (or actual flu, I don't know for sure) then after taking annual flu shots. Now, I skip the flu vax and keep up on all other vaccines - so neither side is happy with me. When I looked into it, the thing that bothers me about the flu vaccines vs most other vaccine formulations is that the flu vaccine is basically constructed every year as new from a mixture of flu strains. While they do have safety monitoring systems, and the way of replicating them is the same, the core portion is new. The safety monitoring is basically keep track of reports of side effects and try to detect if too many hit a warning threshhold. So between that, and my past experiences, I pass too. For the other vaccines, I think I agree with especially school requirements for a standard set of vaccinations. I think that in CA they should go a bit further and limit ratios of students accepted with waivers at individual schools if it brings the numbers below that of needed for herd immunity benefits. Edit: For the flu shots, it seems from my layman's reading of the literature that their efficacy is low and highly variant compared to other vaccines, enough that there is no consistent herd immunity to be gained from current flu formulations.
      • Mz 9y ago
        I homeschooled my sons. I am fine with schools et al having such requirements, as long as people have options to walk away from that system and make choices like homeschooling. That in no way means that some random stranger on the internet is more qualified than I am to judge what is best for my health.
        • stephenr 9y ago
          Depends if that stranger is a doctor. Also, if it's your children not getting the vaccines, it's their health, not yours. Chances are you did have vaccinations as a kid.
          • Mz 9y ago
            No, being a doctor on the internet changes nothing. Exchanging a few comments online is no substitute for a medical exam, knowing my medical history, etc. Any doctor that imagines they know what is best for me merely because they are a doctor, without taking a medical history, etc, is a quack and a dangerous person. I have certainly met such people online. You should be a lot more worried about the behavior of those folks online than about my personal health choices.
    • krapp 9y ago
      >I sleep in a tent in the wilderness and I have minimal contact with people. I am not harming anyone and no one is catching my germs. (I also have not had the flu in many years.) You're an outlier. You, in your tent out in the woods are not the problem. Thousands or tens of thousands of people sending their non-vaccinated children to schools and living in the same cities as everyone else weakening herd immunity is the problem. It's not an issue of bodily autonomy versus freedom, it's an issue of bodily autonomy versus the likelihood of mass death.
      • Mz 9y ago
        We have a lot of mystery diseases currently that are occurring in large numbers. Autism is just one widespread issue of the modern world. Anti vaxxers believe at least some of these problems are being caused by the widespread use of vaccines. Given that we don't really know what is causing them, pro vaxxers are not really in a position to argue that vaccines are not part of the problem. But, they do it anyway and are at least as closed minded as they accuse anti vaxxers of being.
        • krapp 9y ago
          >Anti vaxxers believe at least some of these problems are being caused by the widespread use of vaccines. Great, but people believe a lot of things, so show me some evidence. Believing some vaccines to be harmful is, at least, a defensible (and scientifically testable) position. But that's not the same as believing vaccination as a whole should be avoided. Vaccines do work, and herd immunity is a thing. Even if we didn't truly understand the long-term ramifications of vaccines, we do already understand what happens in their absence. Pro-vaxxers aren't being closed minded, we just don't want our children to have to worry about whooping cough and polio.
          • Pffffffff 9y ago
            >we just don't want our children to have to worry about whooping cough and polio. Your children don't worry about either as they don't know what either is. If you do (which of course you should) why is your type always for open borders? There's a form of polio in California now that has crippled thousands of children the past year and no one talks about it. The LA Times has ligtly touched on it the past few months and that's about it. It's almost as if your type would rather see their child crippled then say something a foreigner didn't like. Very important that Mexicans you don't know think you aren't 'racist' rather than, your child being healthy. Third world people bring third world problems like diseases that have been previously erradicted. Germany is seeing things hey haven't in over fifty years. But you keep shooting your kid up with mercury and aluminum like a good goy. Never mind that it can kill them or make them a retard and that the drug companies have complete immunity. Oh yeah, try and find a study on what happens when you give a large group a cocktail of these shoots. You won't find one. That seems strange, doesn't it? Go on PubMed, whatever and try and locate one. There's some doctors talking about giving children several dozen of these AT ONCE. There's also 200+ vaccines in the works. New DNA ones. That Guardasil was the first of it's type. Look into how safe that was. Also, how UNNEEDED it is. Maybe then you'll be less of a lemming and more of a parent.
    • stephenr 9y ago
      I don't bother getting flu vaccinations personally - if I get the flu I will deal with it, and feel like shit. But that isn't the issue I have with anti-vaxxers: They are against all vaccinations, even for things like fucking polio, smallpox, mumps, and they apply it to children, not themselves. They have the benefit of the vaccine, but decide their child is better off going the maverick route. Polio is not the flu. You're not going to recover from polio with chicken soup and bed rest. Do whatever the fuck your want to yourself, but refusing a child medically proven vaccines is child abuse, plain and simple.
      • danieltillett 9y ago
        Even worse when your unvaccinated child infects my vaccinated child (because vaccines are not perfect and we need herd immunity to make them effective) you have crossed the line from child abuse. The solution to the problem of anti-vaxxers is simple. If you don't want to vaccinate then you need to take out a massive insurance policy to cover the risks you push onto the community. 99.9% of the anti-vaxxers when faced with a massive bill each year will find some mental contortion to make vaccinating OK.
  • Pffffffff 9y ago
    hahahaha oh my... rather than confront the safety and ineffectiveness of most vaccines, you choose to tell yourself that, hahahaha thanks for the chuckle.
• msla 9y ago
  > I am neither an anti vaxxer nor pro vax. I get hated on by both camps. So, is the world flat or is it a geoid? Hint: Halfway between wrong and right is wrong.
• muzani 9y ago
  Assuming both sides have credibility, there is still a clear choice. It's clear that vaccination is a successful way of eradicating diseases like measles, smallpox, polio. It's not so clear whether it causes autism and it's possible that the person doing such research was scapegoated. But which would you choose? A world with no polio or smallpox, or a world with 2% less autism?
  • true_religion 9y ago
    Some people will not make decisions on the basis of "what kind of world do I want to see", but rather the more immediate concern of "is my child going to be disabled?". Vaccines weren't taken up by the masses because they wanted to eradicate polio for example, but rather because they wanted their children to be safe from it. Parents would gladly vaccinate themselves, even at a risk that they'd get a full infection, just to guarantee that their children would be safe. The anti-vaxxer issue nowadays is a tragedy of the commons scenario. Every individual who does not vaccinate their child, doesn't give up herd immunity immediately, and (if true) get's to avoid any complications associated with vaccine. They have others bear the costs of herd vaccination, and gain a benefit by defecting.
• msla 9y ago
  You seem amazingly invested in making a moral equivalence between the people who save children through vaccination and people who kill them through non-vaccination resulting in epidemics of vaccine-preventable disease.