3 ms·
The list of "concerns" you post indicate that you and/or your wife in fact have not read the literature or understand the statistics involved. If you had, you'd
by notacoward 8y ago
The list of "concerns" you post indicate that you and/or your wife in fact have not read the literature or understand the statistics involved. If you had, you'd surely know that very few vaccines have contained mercury for a long time. You'd know that even though mercury in some forms and doses can be harmful that doesn't necessarily extend to all forms or doses (as is the case for almost all chemicals). Do you also go out of your way to avoid other sources of mercury - areas near or downstream of gold mines, some fish and shellfish, some electronic equipment? Or is your "concern" limited to (usually non-existent) mercury in vaccines? Studies of herd immunity from either the mathematical or epidemiological perspective are trivial to find. Saying it's questionable is like saying "teach the controversy" about evolution or climate change.
It's hard to see any good intent here. Given the tactics already in wide use among anti-vaxxers, I'm not going to rule out the possibility that this is less about a sincere search for strong arguments than about taking the opportunity to repeat a series of already discredited anti-vax tropes.
- purplethinking 8y agoI think it's pretty clear from my post that I do not believe those arguments. I'm asking how to debunk them because I'm a software engineer, not a biologist or doctor. I do not have the time nor competency to read research papers in medicine. I think it would be very useful if there was some trustworthy source that put together all the facts, debunking anti-vaxxing all together, all at once.
- notacoward 8y agoThimerosal in vaccines (which it mostly isn't): https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.... https://www.nvic.org/faqs/mercury-thimerosal.aspx https://www.nvic.org/faqs/mercury-thimerosal.aspx Herd immunity: https://thoughtscapism.com/2015/04/20/the-simple-math-of-herd-immunity/ https://thoughtscapism.com/2015/04/20/the-simple-math-of-her... Effectiveness of vaccines: https://medium.com/@visualvaccines/graphic-proof-that-vaccines-work-with-sources-61c199429c8c?hc_location=ufi https://medium.com/@visualvaccines/graphic-proof-that-vaccin... It's no accident that measles outbreaks have started to recur in the US, with a very strong correlation to rates of vaccine refusal. California is a good example; multiple outbreaks there have been directly linked to the prevalence of parents abusing the "personal belief" exemption to refuse vaccinations. The OP here is another example of this exceptionally close relationship. Correlation doesn't equal causation, of course, but the "experiment" has been done over and over many times in many different populations and the results are always the same: failure to vaccinate allows previously eliminated diseases to come back.
- purplethinking 8y agoThanks, the post on herd immunity looks very good.