7 ms·

The Worst Measles Outbreak In The European Union

40 points by dsr12 8y ago

notacoward 8y ago
I was close to a potential measles outbreak this summer. Close enough that had to be tested because my vaccination decades ago in another country was considered insufficient. (I was found to be already immune, as expected, but got a booster anyway.) I also got to work with epidemiologists who were working to contain things, and fortunately the outbreak did fizzle out . So I take this issue pretty personally. Whatever people's concerns about vaccines might be, and I'll concede that manufacturers' lack of transparency about ingredients and adverse-reaction risks is part of the problem, those totally pale in comparison to the importance of maintaining herd immunity to prevent the disease itself from spreading. There are people who are too young to be immunized, or who have conditions that preclude it. Also, vaccines do fail. The current rate is around 2% and that's what led to the case I was involved in. There is a very small chance that someone will avoid problems that might have occurred if they'd had their children vaccinated. There's a much larger chance that in the process they'll put someone else's child at risk. It's stealing others' lives for their own, so I think it's quite reasonable to compare vaccine refuseniks to vampires. Don't be a vampire. Get your damn shots, make your sure children get their damn shots, and do your part to keep this killer from roaming around freely.
- rixrax 8y ago
  URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo& Penn and Teller on Vaccinations. This really drives home the point of herd immunity ( in ~ 90 seconds ).
- downer60 8y ago
  It's great to say "but what about the children" and all, but immunized individuals really don't need to involve themselves in the lives of those choosing to avoid medical treatment. By definition, the immune won't be harmed by my choice to not immunize myself. If I get sick, and you are immune, my choice to take risks won't harm you. If you're worried about those other than yourself, who might be harmed by my hypothetical decision to risk illness and injury, your advice should be phrased to them as an audience. Meanwhile, the waters are still muddier. There are a wide array of other terrible personal choices that are defended maximally, despite conceptual harm being part of the package. The choice to consult a doctor, or not, the choice to not be resuscitated, to not seek treatment for terminal diseases, to not suffer treatment when quality of life is not rewarding. All of these choices matter as much as choosing to have a child at all. Ultimately, I think some children would be better off as orphans in foster care, but I'm not about to try and make that happen. I think it's more about letting nature take its course. The immune live. The others die. Darwin's theory prevails.
  - wolf550e 8y ago
    Some children are at an age when they are both too young to get vaccinated and too old to be protected by antibodies from their mother. They rely on herd immunity to not get infected. Vaccinations don't always take, so some people who have been vaccinated are not immune and rely on herd immunity to not get infected. Some people are immunocompromised and cannot take vaccinations and rely on herd immunity to not get infected.
    - downer60 8y ago
      If my quality of life is low, even while otherwise healthy, what do I care about the well-being of the herd? If I'm held down, and made to work two or more low-paying jobs, and still can't escape poverty, you're going to have to hold me down even harder, and force me to take care of myself. If I'm unhappy in life, I'm not going to see a doctor to keep that life going. Does this make sense yet?
      - lovich 8y ago
        That does make a point, but it's not what's happening here. You don't get to 30 years old before you decide to get vaccinated. You get them as young children. Following your analogy it would be more like "I don't like my life, so I'm not going to take care of my children" Also we do take steps to hold people down and make them take care of themselves or just do it ourselves, when it's gets so bad that they affect other people. If you let your home start collapsing it'll get condemned. If you let trash pile up on your property and attract dangerous animals into the neighborhood you'll get increasing fines until your forced to clean up. If you go into a drug fueled bender all the time and wander the streets attacking people, you'll be arrested. This is just another case of people creating negative externalities that everyone else has to deal with, and then hiding behind the idea that personal freedoms mean they can do whatever they want without limit
        downer60 8y ago
        Well, the argument goes something like: I'd euthanize my kids and spend the rest of my waking life in one of your jails, dying childless, rather than let them live in your world, raised by you, and not me. If I'm in your jail, I'd rather dispell all illusions about it, and not live a life pretending my children are more than your playthings. Furthermore I wouldn't even want kids, if they'll be raised by you. They're better of dead or aborted. Let's be clear, I'm playing devil's advocate, and I don't really think or believe this myself, but this is the root of the argument. My reason for surfacing the foundation of the premise for such behavior, is because I think different strategies are needed to confront emerging biological hazards of the future. It's not going to be enough to just ask people to jump on a band wagon, and it's barking up the wrong tree, to remove an individual's choice from the equation. People have to want to live, and biological epidemics have to be attacked with a variety of strategies. Vaccinations are good, and so are antibiotics, but they won't save us in all cases, and they won't save all of us even when they do work. Other brute force methods like area denial take over, when the sophisticated medical tactics fail. It's important to look ahead, and recognize that in scenarios where vaccines and antibiotics don't work, to consider the situations that emerge even when other plans fail. Basically, the oldest option on the table is quarantine. It's low tech and appeals to biblical sensibilities. Some people are willing to try it instead. The argument is going to go that way. Strategies for dealing with people who think like that are going to have to chart a different course. My actual position is that life sciences are going to radically change in the next decade or so, anyway. Why bother haranguing people about vaccinations, when five years from now, biological agents might very well be a solved problem, rendering vaccinations as obsolete as brute force quarantines?
Angostura 8y ago
> In France, for instance, 41 percent of those surveyed said vaccines are not safe — more than three times the global average of 12 percent. That’s a pretty astonishing statistic
- Kuinox 8y ago
  Well, it's because of the government that once lied to the population on this subject. And, here we think that the vaccine is not safe, but the benefits are worth the small risk. But there is also a bunch of idiots thinking it's better to not get vaccinated and don't vaccinate their childrens.
  - frereubu 8y ago
    "Well, it's because of the government that once lied to the population on this subject." Can you elaborate on this? It's a strong claim and I'd be interested to know exactly what you mean.
    - _red 8y ago
      Generally vaccines are fairly safe, however the government has created numerous incentives for their to be a lack of accountability, thus its to be expected that safety will fall over time. Specifically, they made it illegal to sue vaccine companies (making it so you must go to special vaccine court with predefined minimal damage awards). Have you ever wondered why you see "get your vaccine shots" at every grocery you go in to? Its precisely because its almost risk free for big pharma. Those that have permanent or fatal reactions have little recourse. Imagine trying to create a startup company whose business model was you were injecting strangers with some substance you created and your pitch was "we can just inject this into everyone at the local Walmart"...think that idea would get past the lawyers? Easy to do if you get congress to pass laws saying you will be held harmless.
    - Mtinie 8y ago
      Here is the original paper where the statistics about vaccination sentiment come from: “The State of Vaccine Confidence 2016: Global Insights Through a 67-Country Survey” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235239641630398X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235239641...
HarryHirsch 8y ago
The gem is in the accompanying paper: https://www.ebiomedicine.com/article/S2352-3964(16)30398-X/fulltext https://www.ebiomedicine.com/article/S2352-3964(16)30398-X/f... They are asking about safety and effectiveness, and in France there has been a debate about the HPV and Hep B vaccination, yet French children are still mostly properly immunized. The big European measles outbreaks happen in hardline Dutch Reformed communities.
- adventured 8y ago
  > The big European measles outbreaks happen in hardline Dutch Reformed communities. That's definitely not correct. Greece had the most cases of measles in the EU over the last year, at 3,049. France had 2,771. Italy had 2,599. Romania had 1,821. The UK had 1,019. Germany had 542. Slovakia had 471. Ukraine had 23,000+ in just the first half of the year. That's not a problem with dutch communities. The biggest outbreaks over the last 10-15 years in Europe have occurred in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, France.
purplethinking 8y ago
I'll use this as an opportunity to plead for some rebuttal to the anti-vaxxers' arguments. My wife doesn't want to vaccinate our child so this very personal. She's highly educated, knows statistics and reads research papers, but is now convinced by the arguments of this movement. The thing is that no debunking source I've found on vaccines does much to address their arguments, which include, but are not limited to: * the profit incentive of the vaccine manufacturers * herd immunity being questionable * dangerous substances in the vaccines (mercury) * the effectiveness of vaccines at all being in question * the decline of disease mainly being due to better sanitation and conditions rather than vaccines The whole autism thing is really a minor part of it. There are many arguments backed up by various cherry-picked research articles or spread by a few anti-vaxxing doctors and even previous researchers, just like with global warming. What I need is some rebuttal, that is not by some random blogger, that addresses all their concerns without treating the anti-vaxxer as a high-school dropout stay at home mom. At this point the problem is much wider than a few uneducated people spreading nonsense. Edit: interesting that I'm getting hammered with down-votes. If you're down voting, is it because this is too personal, off topic or what? I think the answer to my question can be very helpful to others facing similar situations.
- jlangenauer 8y ago
  Well, there's these visualisations about polio and measles in the United States, which are very compelling for the last two points. http://www.randalolson.com/2016/03/04/revisiting-the-vaccine-visualizations/ http://www.randalolson.com/2016/03/04/revisiting-the-vaccine...
  - megous 8y ago
    Better sanitation as a reason would lead to cutoff lines to be not so sharp and to be around the same time for most diseases. I guess. So this throws serious doubt on better sanitation being a reason for decline in diseases.
  - purplethinking 8y ago
    That is very useful, thank you
acd 8y ago
An issue that there is alternative fear truths spreading on the internet as they are real facts when they are not. With vaccines a majority of the population need to be vaccinated that prevents the disease from spreading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity Here is a graph of Measeles in the United states. Before and after vaccine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#/media/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#/media/File:Meas... "Vaccine controversies have occurred since almost 80 years before the terms vaccine and vaccination were introduced. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus[1][2] that vaccines are safe and effective,[3] unsubstantiated scares regarding their safety still occur, resulting in outbreaks and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation
- cmroanirgo 8y ago
  The thing is, as a kid we got measles and we got time off school (Yay!), but we'd get a booster shot at the time and the wheels of society keep turning as we'd stay at home until we got well enough to go back. I got mumps, german measles and a variety of things kids nowdays get vaccinated for. I've had the chicken pox 3 times and it's relative, shingles, twice (somehow my immune system doesn't learn this one!). So...why is there now all this fuss to be pre-vaccinated? To me it's like the tetanus shot, if you get pricked by a bit of rusty metal and it's been 10 years, you go and get a shot. One of the main things that I can think of is that due to a modern society, both parents are working and absolutely need to send their kids to school. This of course can be a big problem without a mandatory, herd-immunity system in place. > unsubstantiated scares regarding their safety still occur This is probably because they're not exactly unsubstantiated: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy_investigations_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy_investiga... - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-23/the-fallout-from-a-batch-of-flu-vaccine/2347906 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-23/the-fallout-from-a-ba...
  - slavak 8y ago
    What does "pre-vaccinated" mean in this context, exactly? Vaccinations only come in the "pre" variety; once you've caught the disease, vaccination is unlikely to do any good. Some diseases (e.g.: rabies) have a long enough incubation period that post-exposure prophylaxis is effective, but this is very much the exception. Sure, kids can get measles, and they'll probably be just fine. Measles only has a 0.1%-0.2% mortality rate, after all... On the other hand, that means 1-2 of every 1,000 children who get the disease will die a completely pointless and preventable death.
beefman 8y ago
Better source: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/fatal-inaction-how-measles-made-a-comeback-11-30-2017 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/fatal-inaction-how-m...
xvilka 8y ago
Easy to solve - just calculate the economical and moral expenses of the outbreak, split them between all anti-vax proponents and make them pay.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mort96 8y ago
  What would you write down as the exact monetary value of a human life? How do you arrive at that number?
  - falsedan 8y ago
    Ask an actuary
  - YokoZar 8y ago
    The same way any large policy maker does. This is a recurrent theme in social science, as you have to make big decisions such as whether it's worth spending an extra billion dollars on a slightly safer bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life
    - mort96 8y ago
      I don't know if that feels entirely applicable. People who advocate that people shouldn't vaccinate their children simply increase the chance of large amounts of people dying from preventable disease; if they didn't, nothing would've been lost. Calculating how much should be spent on a bridge, on the other hand, is simply necessary in a world where there is demand for bridges even though there's not enough resources to ensure that both enough bridges are built, and that every single bridge is guaranteed to be 100% safe.
  - Isinlor 8y ago
    Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life In general the term refers to the cost of reducing the average number of deaths by one. In US it would be little bit less than 10 million dollars.
partycoder 8y ago
You can all thank Andrew Wakefield, the physician that published the fraudulent paper that linked vaccines to autism. "Immunization rates in Britain dropped from 92 percent to 73 percent, and were as low as 50 percent in some parts of London." Then he directed a documentary against vaccination, making things even worse.
Waterluvian 8y ago
Can't we just make it really @#$_ing inconvenient to decline vaccines? Bar kids from school and whatnot. Wouldn't this filter people who anti-vax only when it's convenient? I have a sense that a lot of anti-vaxers would change their tone if it's actually inconvenient every day to be one. But I don't have the facts on this one and can't find anything with a short Google.
- emerongi 8y ago
  It would. I remember reading that something like this was enforced in some region (non-vaccinated kids couldn't go to school, I believe) and the vaccination rate jumped.
- roel_v 8y ago
  Yes, this is the approach in e.g. Belgium and Germany.
JetSpiegel 8y ago
https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=669228140 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=669228140 Text version for us Europeans, blessed by GDPR.

40 points by dsr12 8y ago

I was close to a potential measles outbreak this summer. Close enough that had to be tested because my vaccination decades ago in another country was considered insufficient. (I was found to be already immune, as expected, but got a booster anyway.) I also got to work with epidemiologists who were working to contain things, and fortunately the outbreak did fizzle out . So I take this issue pretty personally. Whatever people's concerns about vaccines might be, and I'll concede that manufacturers' lack of transparency about ingredients and adverse-reaction risks is part of the problem, those totally pale in comparison to the importance of maintaining herd immunity to prevent the disease itself from spreading. There are people who are too young to be immunized, or who have conditions that preclude it. Also, vaccines do fail. The current rate is around 2% and that's what led to the case I was involved in. There is a very small chance that someone will avoid problems that might have occurred if they'd had their children vaccinated. There's a much larger chance that in the process they'll put someone else's child at risk. It's stealing others' lives for their own, so I think it's quite reasonable to compare vaccine refuseniks to vampires. Don't be a vampire. Get your damn shots, make your sure children get their damn shots, and do your part to keep this killer from roaming around freely.

rixrax 8y ago
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo& Penn and Teller on Vaccinations. This really drives home the point of herd immunity ( in ~ 90 seconds ).
downer60 8y ago
It's great to say "but what about the children" and all, but immunized individuals really don't need to involve themselves in the lives of those choosing to avoid medical treatment. By definition, the immune won't be harmed by my choice to not immunize myself. If I get sick, and you are immune, my choice to take risks won't harm you. If you're worried about those other than yourself, who might be harmed by my hypothetical decision to risk illness and injury, your advice should be phrased to them as an audience. Meanwhile, the waters are still muddier. There are a wide array of other terrible personal choices that are defended maximally, despite conceptual harm being part of the package. The choice to consult a doctor, or not, the choice to not be resuscitated, to not seek treatment for terminal diseases, to not suffer treatment when quality of life is not rewarding. All of these choices matter as much as choosing to have a child at all. Ultimately, I think some children would be better off as orphans in foster care, but I'm not about to try and make that happen. I think it's more about letting nature take its course. The immune live. The others die. Darwin's theory prevails.
- wolf550e 8y ago
  Some children are at an age when they are both too young to get vaccinated and too old to be protected by antibodies from their mother. They rely on herd immunity to not get infected. Vaccinations don't always take, so some people who have been vaccinated are not immune and rely on herd immunity to not get infected. Some people are immunocompromised and cannot take vaccinations and rely on herd immunity to not get infected.
  - downer60 8y ago
    If my quality of life is low, even while otherwise healthy, what do I care about the well-being of the herd? If I'm held down, and made to work two or more low-paying jobs, and still can't escape poverty, you're going to have to hold me down even harder, and force me to take care of myself. If I'm unhappy in life, I'm not going to see a doctor to keep that life going. Does this make sense yet?
    - lovich 8y ago
      That does make a point, but it's not what's happening here. You don't get to 30 years old before you decide to get vaccinated. You get them as young children. Following your analogy it would be more like "I don't like my life, so I'm not going to take care of my children" Also we do take steps to hold people down and make them take care of themselves or just do it ourselves, when it's gets so bad that they affect other people. If you let your home start collapsing it'll get condemned. If you let trash pile up on your property and attract dangerous animals into the neighborhood you'll get increasing fines until your forced to clean up. If you go into a drug fueled bender all the time and wander the streets attacking people, you'll be arrested. This is just another case of people creating negative externalities that everyone else has to deal with, and then hiding behind the idea that personal freedoms mean they can do whatever they want without limit
      - downer60 8y ago
        Well, the argument goes something like: I'd euthanize my kids and spend the rest of my waking life in one of your jails, dying childless, rather than let them live in your world, raised by you, and not me. If I'm in your jail, I'd rather dispell all illusions about it, and not live a life pretending my children are more than your playthings. Furthermore I wouldn't even want kids, if they'll be raised by you. They're better of dead or aborted. Let's be clear, I'm playing devil's advocate, and I don't really think or believe this myself, but this is the root of the argument. My reason for surfacing the foundation of the premise for such behavior, is because I think different strategies are needed to confront emerging biological hazards of the future. It's not going to be enough to just ask people to jump on a band wagon, and it's barking up the wrong tree, to remove an individual's choice from the equation. People have to want to live, and biological epidemics have to be attacked with a variety of strategies. Vaccinations are good, and so are antibiotics, but they won't save us in all cases, and they won't save all of us even when they do work. Other brute force methods like area denial take over, when the sophisticated medical tactics fail. It's important to look ahead, and recognize that in scenarios where vaccines and antibiotics don't work, to consider the situations that emerge even when other plans fail. Basically, the oldest option on the table is quarantine. It's low tech and appeals to biblical sensibilities. Some people are willing to try it instead. The argument is going to go that way. Strategies for dealing with people who think like that are going to have to chart a different course. My actual position is that life sciences are going to radically change in the next decade or so, anyway. Why bother haranguing people about vaccinations, when five years from now, biological agents might very well be a solved problem, rendering vaccinations as obsolete as brute force quarantines?

Angostura 8y ago

> In France, for instance, 41 percent of those surveyed said vaccines are not safe — more than three times the global average of 12 percent. That’s a pretty astonishing statistic

Kuinox 8y ago
Well, it's because of the government that once lied to the population on this subject. And, here we think that the vaccine is not safe, but the benefits are worth the small risk. But there is also a bunch of idiots thinking it's better to not get vaccinated and don't vaccinate their childrens.
- frereubu 8y ago
  "Well, it's because of the government that once lied to the population on this subject." Can you elaborate on this? It's a strong claim and I'd be interested to know exactly what you mean.
  - _red 8y ago
    Generally vaccines are fairly safe, however the government has created numerous incentives for their to be a lack of accountability, thus its to be expected that safety will fall over time. Specifically, they made it illegal to sue vaccine companies (making it so you must go to special vaccine court with predefined minimal damage awards). Have you ever wondered why you see "get your vaccine shots" at every grocery you go in to? Its precisely because its almost risk free for big pharma. Those that have permanent or fatal reactions have little recourse. Imagine trying to create a startup company whose business model was you were injecting strangers with some substance you created and your pitch was "we can just inject this into everyone at the local Walmart"...think that idea would get past the lawyers? Easy to do if you get congress to pass laws saying you will be held harmless.
  - Mtinie 8y ago
    Here is the original paper where the statistics about vaccination sentiment come from: “The State of Vaccine Confidence 2016: Global Insights Through a 67-Country Survey” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235239641630398X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235239641...

HarryHirsch 8y ago

The gem is in the accompanying paper: https://www.ebiomedicine.com/article/S2352-3964(16)30398-X/fulltext https://www.ebiomedicine.com/article/S2352-3964(16)30398-X/f... They are asking about safety and effectiveness, and in France there has been a debate about the HPV and Hep B vaccination, yet French children are still mostly properly immunized. The big European measles outbreaks happen in hardline Dutch Reformed communities.

adventured 8y ago
> The big European measles outbreaks happen in hardline Dutch Reformed communities. That's definitely not correct. Greece had the most cases of measles in the EU over the last year, at 3,049. France had 2,771. Italy had 2,599. Romania had 1,821. The UK had 1,019. Germany had 542. Slovakia had 471. Ukraine had 23,000+ in just the first half of the year. That's not a problem with dutch communities. The biggest outbreaks over the last 10-15 years in Europe have occurred in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, France.

purplethinking 8y ago

I'll use this as an opportunity to plead for some rebuttal to the anti-vaxxers' arguments. My wife doesn't want to vaccinate our child so this very personal. She's highly educated, knows statistics and reads research papers, but is now convinced by the arguments of this movement. The thing is that no debunking source I've found on vaccines does much to address their arguments, which include, but are not limited to: * the profit incentive of the vaccine manufacturers * herd immunity being questionable * dangerous substances in the vaccines (mercury) * the effectiveness of vaccines at all being in question * the decline of disease mainly being due to better sanitation and conditions rather than vaccines The whole autism thing is really a minor part of it. There are many arguments backed up by various cherry-picked research articles or spread by a few anti-vaxxing doctors and even previous researchers, just like with global warming. What I need is some rebuttal, that is not by some random blogger, that addresses all their concerns without treating the anti-vaxxer as a high-school dropout stay at home mom. At this point the problem is much wider than a few uneducated people spreading nonsense. Edit: interesting that I'm getting hammered with down-votes. If you're down voting, is it because this is too personal, off topic or what? I think the answer to my question can be very helpful to others facing similar situations.

jlangenauer 8y ago
Well, there's these visualisations about polio and measles in the United States, which are very compelling for the last two points. http://www.randalolson.com/2016/03/04/revisiting-the-vaccine-visualizations/ http://www.randalolson.com/2016/03/04/revisiting-the-vaccine...
- megous 8y ago
  Better sanitation as a reason would lead to cutoff lines to be not so sharp and to be around the same time for most diseases. I guess. So this throws serious doubt on better sanitation being a reason for decline in diseases.
- purplethinking 8y ago
  That is very useful, thank you

acd 8y ago

An issue that there is alternative fear truths spreading on the internet as they are real facts when they are not. With vaccines a majority of the population need to be vaccinated that prevents the disease from spreading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity Here is a graph of Measeles in the United states. Before and after vaccine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#/media/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#/media/File:Meas... "Vaccine controversies have occurred since almost 80 years before the terms vaccine and vaccination were introduced. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus[1][2] that vaccines are safe and effective,[3] unsubstantiated scares regarding their safety still occur, resulting in outbreaks and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

cmroanirgo 8y ago
The thing is, as a kid we got measles and we got time off school (Yay!), but we'd get a booster shot at the time and the wheels of society keep turning as we'd stay at home until we got well enough to go back. I got mumps, german measles and a variety of things kids nowdays get vaccinated for. I've had the chicken pox 3 times and it's relative, shingles, twice (somehow my immune system doesn't learn this one!). So...why is there now all this fuss to be pre-vaccinated? To me it's like the tetanus shot, if you get pricked by a bit of rusty metal and it's been 10 years, you go and get a shot. One of the main things that I can think of is that due to a modern society, both parents are working and absolutely need to send their kids to school. This of course can be a big problem without a mandatory, herd-immunity system in place. > unsubstantiated scares regarding their safety still occur This is probably because they're not exactly unsubstantiated: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy_investigations_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy_investiga... - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-23/the-fallout-from-a-batch-of-flu-vaccine/2347906 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-23/the-fallout-from-a-ba...
- slavak 8y ago
  What does "pre-vaccinated" mean in this context, exactly? Vaccinations only come in the "pre" variety; once you've caught the disease, vaccination is unlikely to do any good. Some diseases (e.g.: rabies) have a long enough incubation period that post-exposure prophylaxis is effective, but this is very much the exception. Sure, kids can get measles, and they'll probably be just fine. Measles only has a 0.1%-0.2% mortality rate, after all... On the other hand, that means 1-2 of every 1,000 children who get the disease will die a completely pointless and preventable death.

beefman 8y ago

Better source: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/fatal-inaction-how-measles-made-a-comeback-11-30-2017 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/fatal-inaction-how-m...

xvilka 8y ago

Easy to solve - just calculate the economical and moral expenses of the outbreak, split them between all anti-vax proponents and make them pay.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mort96 8y ago
What would you write down as the exact monetary value of a human life? How do you arrive at that number?
- falsedan 8y ago
  Ask an actuary
- YokoZar 8y ago
  The same way any large policy maker does. This is a recurrent theme in social science, as you have to make big decisions such as whether it's worth spending an extra billion dollars on a slightly safer bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life
  - mort96 8y ago
    I don't know if that feels entirely applicable. People who advocate that people shouldn't vaccinate their children simply increase the chance of large amounts of people dying from preventable disease; if they didn't, nothing would've been lost. Calculating how much should be spent on a bridge, on the other hand, is simply necessary in a world where there is demand for bridges even though there's not enough resources to ensure that both enough bridges are built, and that every single bridge is guaranteed to be 100% safe.
- Isinlor 8y ago
  Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life In general the term refers to the cost of reducing the average number of deaths by one. In US it would be little bit less than 10 million dollars.

partycoder 8y ago

You can all thank Andrew Wakefield, the physician that published the fraudulent paper that linked vaccines to autism. "Immunization rates in Britain dropped from 92 percent to 73 percent, and were as low as 50 percent in some parts of London." Then he directed a documentary against vaccination, making things even worse.

Waterluvian 8y ago

Can't we just make it really @#$_ing inconvenient to decline vaccines? Bar kids from school and whatnot. Wouldn't this filter people who anti-vax only when it's convenient? I have a sense that a lot of anti-vaxers would change their tone if it's actually inconvenient every day to be one. But I don't have the facts on this one and can't find anything with a short Google.

emerongi 8y ago
It would. I remember reading that something like this was enforced in some region (non-vaccinated kids couldn't go to school, I believe) and the vaccination rate jumped.
roel_v 8y ago
Yes, this is the approach in e.g. Belgium and Germany.

JetSpiegel 8y ago

https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=669228140 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=669228140 Text version for us Europeans, blessed by GDPR.