6 ms·

By the Numbers: Vaccines Are Safe

49 points by artsandsci 7y ago

charliesharding 7y ago
Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious. "Skepticism with vaccines crosses party and demographic lines, according to the Pew Research Center study released Monday, with about 5% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats saying vaccines are unsafe, and 11% of men and 8% of women saying the same. Younger people, however, were significantly more likely to believe vaccines are unsafe, with 15% of Americans aged 18-29 saying vaccines aren’t safe, compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65." https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-vaxxers/ https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-vaxxers/
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- open-source-ux 7y ago
  "Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious." The MMR vaccine (a 3-in-1 vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella) has been dogged by claims that it is unsafe and causes autism. These claims have been proven false, but the damage persists. I recommend anyone interested in this subject read this article: 'No link between MMR and autism,' major study finds https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-autism-major-study-finds/ https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-a...
  - the_af 7y ago
    It's even worse: there are no reputable claims that vaccines are unsafe (in the sense anti-vaccination advocates mean, anyway). The only semi-scientific paper was the one which sparked it all, by Andrew Wakefield [0], who is: > "a discredited former British doctor who became an anti-vaccine activist. He was a gastroenterologist until he was struck off the UK medical register for unethical behaviour, misconduct, and dishonesty for authoring a fraudulent research paper that claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism and bowel disease" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      Wakefield had a financial interest, as well. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_tried_to_capitalize.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_t... > In the new report, Deer describes a variety of efforts Wakefield undertook to make money from his work. For example, Wakefield and his associates predicted they could make more than $43 million a year from diagnostic kits alone for a condition he argued affected autistic children dubbed "austistic enterocolitis," according to one 35-page document.
- lliamander 7y ago
  > compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65 I.e. people who remember life without vaccines.
  - jpollock 7y ago
    My great grandmother lived through the last smallpox outbreak in Canada, where their boarder caught it and she had to be quarantined. My grandmother told us about how she come back to school after summer vacation and found out about friends that died from measles. I had a vice principal who had polio as a child. None of those are around now, although measles is making a run for it.
  - bjoli 7y ago
    There are still loads of men around that have decreased fertility or even infertilitt due to mumps. Without ever asking around I know at least three men that had fertility problems, probably due to severe orchitis after mumps. In Sweden they included mumps in the vaccination programme 1975ish, which probably means the USA got it sometime during the 60s. That means you have probably all met someone that had testicle or pancreas inflammation due to mumps. Both of them very very painful.
- NikolaNovak 7y ago
  In North America there is a sizeable, vocal, and vehement population who doesn't think they're safe. They tend to range from "I'm not certain that statistical pros and cons of vaccination make sense to my particular situation" to, very much, very explicitly "GOVERNMENT CHEMTRAILZ ARE IN VACCINES TO AUTISTIC EVERYONE!". I wish I were making up or exaggerating the latter - but on daily basis I scratch my head at any number of opinions and fervent beliefs regarding medical items. There is a tremendous amount of semi-open Facebook groups and other social communities which are actively and openly policed (i.e. it's explicitly in their rules) to prohibit any advice to see a doctor, take medicine, or consult any means but whatever that particular group believes is the fix-all "natural" panacea. There's people who believe chlorine bleach, coffee enemas, your own aged urine (topically, orally, or as a suppository), flesh-eating salves, or any other improbable substance will fix what ails them much better than vaccines or medicine. Like with religion (* within context of politics, persuastion/evangelization, and human rights etc - not on its own, where it's "to each their own" as far as I'm concerned), a lot of it is presented either consciously or subconsciously dishonest. Just like "Blind Faith" became "Creationism" became "Intelligent Design" to make it more palatable, mainstream, and pseudo-scientific (Hello, "Discovery Institute"); so are a lot of the most quack and dangerous opinions disguising themselves in public as being about rights, freedoms, parents' choice and informed consent. Meanwhile they're spreading pamphlets on how to shop for doctors, fake religion exemptions, create their own bleach for ingestion, and recruit others into their group/cult/whatever. This is not to say I don't empathize with some of the more earnest types' goals; some of them are just scared parents, overwhelmed by information on social media, without framework to judge, and picking whatever is most comforting, gives them most seeming control over their lives, and clutching to it for all the right or wrong reasons. A lot of it is heart-breaking: all the right intentions in all the wrong directions. Others are just koo-koo conspiracy types where the more woo the merrier.
  - the_af 7y ago
    As a soon to be parent, I've discovered the world of "coded" words that people use in facebook groups to refer to illegal health practices, including not vaccinating their kids. Context: where I'm from, education from age 5 up to the end of elementary school is mandatory (as in: as a parent, you're mandated to provide this level of education for your kids). Schools are in turn mandated to verify that students have been vaccinated with a list of vaccines for diseases deemed a threat to public safety (small-pox, measles, tuberculosis, and I forget what else). Therefore, there is a list of vaccines which are effectively mandatory and which are illegal to skip. Anti-vaxxers in "parenting" groups will ask for and provide references for "respectful" pediatricians. I've learned that "respectful" is a coded word which means "willing to forge a certificate saying my kid has been vaccinated". What truly puzzles me is that there are trained doctors willing to bypass public safety in this way. It's one thing for anti-vaxxers to be clueless about this, but doctors?
- DCoder 7y ago
  If you look at other areas of the world, Philippines is interesting [0]: > [I]n 2018, 32 percent of the surveyed 1,500 Filipinos trusted vaccines. In the 2015 iteration of the poll, 93 percent of the respondents said they trusted vaccines. > Health Secretary Francisco Duque III attributes the lowered trust on the government's immunization drive due to the Dengvaxia controversy. --- I also saw someone on Twitter questioning if that decline in trust was related to the Philippines' continued obsession with social media [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbr... [1]: https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worlds-top-social-media-user-study https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worl...
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  More Democrats than Republicans? I find that surprising.
  - dekhn 7y ago
    that's not the right breakdown; it's really far-left progressive democrats who associate with natural living.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      I can see that. But are there more of them than there are Republicans who don't believe in science?
      - dekhn 7y ago
        Take a look at the article the article links to (https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measles-vaccine-is-safe-for-healthy-children/ https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measl...) and you'll see it's more nuanced.
  - temp-dude-87844 7y ago
    A nontrivial amount of opposition to vaccines comes from communities, both online and in person, that circulate accounts of atrocities committed by authorities. Naturally, accounts of mistreatment, whether or not its systemic nature is seeming or proven, will weaken trust in institutions. Good actors are always having to compensate for the activities of bad actors, even if those bad actors were in the distant past. But it says a lot about our society and the quality of our institutions that the lack of trust isn't just among groups that have themselves been mistreated, but is also found in others who observe these issues of social justice from a position of relative privilege. Based on their observations, some of them have concluded that it's far from certain that malice, corruption, or lack of transparency don't factor into the mainstream stance on this issue today, likely because there is evidence that similar factors were at play in similar issues in the past, and the incentive structure of actors and organizations need not have meaningfully changed.
loxs 7y ago
Water is wet.
- sctb 7y ago
  We've asked you before to please stop posting unsubstantively. We eventually ban accounts that won't follow the guidelines, so could you please review them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - hnitbanalns 7y ago
    Vaccines are Safe How is this meaningful or substantive to HN?
aszantu 7y ago
so every dog gets vaccinated for certain diseases. If vaccines did cause anything, wouldn't people talk more about it in "that dog they knew" or "someone who knew someone with an authistic dog" ?
- dekhn 7y ago
  This would ignore any human-specific negative vaccine interactions so is not convincing.
- Florin_Andrei 7y ago
  Rational arguments don't work. This is just a bug in the OS we're carrying in our heads, and it hits a lot of people unfortunately.
nbabitskiy 7y ago
>> "Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die, the C.D.C. reports." So, after vaccines started, measles mortality grew an order of magnitude worse? (According to presumably conservative government's estimate). Am I the only one who thinks, that anti-vaxing has nothing to do with perceived safety of vaccines, and mostly reflects perceived safety of vaccine facilitators? edit: after boeing 737 max troubles, we learnt, that boeing employees serve part time in capacity of government regulators, approving their own creation. Isn't it possible, that the same goes in the HRSA injury program?
- pulisse 7y ago
  > So, after vaccines started, measles mortality grew an order of magnitude worse? (According to presumably conservative government's estimate). Am I the only one who thinks, that anti-vaxing has nothing to do with perceived safety of vaccines, and mostly reflects perceived safety of vaccine facilitators? You imply that vaccines cause that increase, but wouldn't a more plausible explanation be that people who contract measles despite being vaccinated are more likely to be people with subpar immune systems?
  - nbabitskiy 7y ago
    No, I don't imply that vaccines caused the increase, however, the NYT writers make it seem that vaccination caused it. Also the article doesn't say what part of added mortality is amid the vaccinated people. If your reading was correct, and doctors killed 7-15 times as many as nature, because they vaxed kids unfit for vaccination, it would make the argument much worse; but the authors didn't say that.
- yehosef 7y ago
  It's just a mixup in numbers - the number of 1/2 per 1000 is often thrown around (perhaps that's global.. not sure) and the 400/3M are the US numbers from the 50's (pre-vaccination). The measles hits people harder if they are weak/malnourished. A recent outbreak in Madagascar (https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/madagascar-measles-epidemic-1.5097610 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/madagascar-measles-epidemic-1...) hit a 10/1000 rate (1200/115,000), which is x100 the US rate in the 50's.
yehosef 7y ago
The misinformation/lies surrounding vaccine safety is nauseating. >Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die Anyone here gots math.. 400/3,000,000 is ~1/10,000. And note that this is the rate given 1950's medical care - I can't fathom the numbers would be like this today. And the entire concept of proving vaccine safety by showing filing rates for the VICP are low is wrong. Many people are not aware of the VICP or they are told that the reactions are not related to the vaccines - why would they file? I'm not arguing that you shouldn't vaccinate - but there needs to be more scientific and intellectual integrity in the process. The risks are whitewashed "Vaccines are safe". Anyone interested in doing a little more research can look and play with the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) dataset at https://github.com/yehosef/vaers https://github.com/yehosef/vaers or the grafana dashboard I built at https://vizvax.com/ https://vizvax.com/ You can do a simple adhoc search for DIED=Y to see some interesting results. Remember that the only 1-10% of the events are reported (CDC numbers) so you can estimate the numbers to be 10-100 times greater. feedback/suggestions appreciated.
- arthur_pryor 7y ago
  two things: >> Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die > Anyone here gots math.. 400/3,000,000 is ~1/10,000. And note that this is the rate given 1950's medical care - I can't fathom the numbers would be like this today. why'd you divide 400 by 3M? the article says, per your quote, that there were 400 american deaths per year. but 3M infected americans _total_. there is no per year qualifier on that part. also you forgot to address the part about: > One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized i don't know about you, but i'll take a vaccination over a hospitalization in most realistic situations i can imagine. also, while i can see how adverse events might be grossly underreported, i imagine the ones that _do_ get reported skew the data set towards the worst of the events. it seems to me that a really bad adverse event is much more likely to be reported than one that's mild.

49 points by artsandsci 7y ago

Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious. "Skepticism with vaccines crosses party and demographic lines, according to the Pew Research Center study released Monday, with about 5% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats saying vaccines are unsafe, and 11% of men and 8% of women saying the same. Younger people, however, were significantly more likely to believe vaccines are unsafe, with 15% of Americans aged 18-29 saying vaccines aren’t safe, compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65." https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-vaxxers/ https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-vaxxers/

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
open-source-ux 7y ago
"Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious." The MMR vaccine (a 3-in-1 vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella) has been dogged by claims that it is unsafe and causes autism. These claims have been proven false, but the damage persists. I recommend anyone interested in this subject read this article: 'No link between MMR and autism,' major study finds https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-autism-major-study-finds/ https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-a...
- the_af 7y ago
  It's even worse: there are no reputable claims that vaccines are unsafe (in the sense anti-vaccination advocates mean, anyway). The only semi-scientific paper was the one which sparked it all, by Andrew Wakefield [0], who is: > "a discredited former British doctor who became an anti-vaccine activist. He was a gastroenterologist until he was struck off the UK medical register for unethical behaviour, misconduct, and dishonesty for authoring a fraudulent research paper that claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism and bowel disease" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Wakefield had a financial interest, as well. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_tried_to_capitalize.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_t... > In the new report, Deer describes a variety of efforts Wakefield undertook to make money from his work. For example, Wakefield and his associates predicted they could make more than $43 million a year from diagnostic kits alone for a condition he argued affected autistic children dubbed "austistic enterocolitis," according to one 35-page document.
lliamander 7y ago
> compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65 I.e. people who remember life without vaccines.
- jpollock 7y ago
  My great grandmother lived through the last smallpox outbreak in Canada, where their boarder caught it and she had to be quarantined. My grandmother told us about how she come back to school after summer vacation and found out about friends that died from measles. I had a vice principal who had polio as a child. None of those are around now, although measles is making a run for it.
- bjoli 7y ago
  There are still loads of men around that have decreased fertility or even infertilitt due to mumps. Without ever asking around I know at least three men that had fertility problems, probably due to severe orchitis after mumps. In Sweden they included mumps in the vaccination programme 1975ish, which probably means the USA got it sometime during the 60s. That means you have probably all met someone that had testicle or pancreas inflammation due to mumps. Both of them very very painful.
NikolaNovak 7y ago
In North America there is a sizeable, vocal, and vehement population who doesn't think they're safe. They tend to range from "I'm not certain that statistical pros and cons of vaccination make sense to my particular situation" to, very much, very explicitly "GOVERNMENT CHEMTRAILZ ARE IN VACCINES TO AUTISTIC EVERYONE!". I wish I were making up or exaggerating the latter - but on daily basis I scratch my head at any number of opinions and fervent beliefs regarding medical items. There is a tremendous amount of semi-open Facebook groups and other social communities which are actively and openly policed (i.e. it's explicitly in their rules) to prohibit any advice to see a doctor, take medicine, or consult any means but whatever that particular group believes is the fix-all "natural" panacea. There's people who believe chlorine bleach, coffee enemas, your own aged urine (topically, orally, or as a suppository), flesh-eating salves, or any other improbable substance will fix what ails them much better than vaccines or medicine. Like with religion (* within context of politics, persuastion/evangelization, and human rights etc - not on its own, where it's "to each their own" as far as I'm concerned), a lot of it is presented either consciously or subconsciously dishonest. Just like "Blind Faith" became "Creationism" became "Intelligent Design" to make it more palatable, mainstream, and pseudo-scientific (Hello, "Discovery Institute"); so are a lot of the most quack and dangerous opinions disguising themselves in public as being about rights, freedoms, parents' choice and informed consent. Meanwhile they're spreading pamphlets on how to shop for doctors, fake religion exemptions, create their own bleach for ingestion, and recruit others into their group/cult/whatever. This is not to say I don't empathize with some of the more earnest types' goals; some of them are just scared parents, overwhelmed by information on social media, without framework to judge, and picking whatever is most comforting, gives them most seeming control over their lives, and clutching to it for all the right or wrong reasons. A lot of it is heart-breaking: all the right intentions in all the wrong directions. Others are just koo-koo conspiracy types where the more woo the merrier.
- the_af 7y ago
  As a soon to be parent, I've discovered the world of "coded" words that people use in facebook groups to refer to illegal health practices, including not vaccinating their kids. Context: where I'm from, education from age 5 up to the end of elementary school is mandatory (as in: as a parent, you're mandated to provide this level of education for your kids). Schools are in turn mandated to verify that students have been vaccinated with a list of vaccines for diseases deemed a threat to public safety (small-pox, measles, tuberculosis, and I forget what else). Therefore, there is a list of vaccines which are effectively mandatory and which are illegal to skip. Anti-vaxxers in "parenting" groups will ask for and provide references for "respectful" pediatricians. I've learned that "respectful" is a coded word which means "willing to forge a certificate saying my kid has been vaccinated". What truly puzzles me is that there are trained doctors willing to bypass public safety in this way. It's one thing for anti-vaxxers to be clueless about this, but doctors?
DCoder 7y ago
If you look at other areas of the world, Philippines is interesting [0]: > [I]n 2018, 32 percent of the surveyed 1,500 Filipinos trusted vaccines. In the 2015 iteration of the poll, 93 percent of the respondents said they trusted vaccines. > Health Secretary Francisco Duque III attributes the lowered trust on the government's immunization drive due to the Dengvaxia controversy. --- I also saw someone on Twitter questioning if that decline in trust was related to the Philippines' continued obsession with social media [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbr... [1]: https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worlds-top-social-media-user-study https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worl...
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
More Democrats than Republicans? I find that surprising.
- dekhn 7y ago
  that's not the right breakdown; it's really far-left progressive democrats who associate with natural living.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    I can see that. But are there more of them than there are Republicans who don't believe in science?
    - dekhn 7y ago
      Take a look at the article the article links to (https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measles-vaccine-is-safe-for-healthy-children/ https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measl...) and you'll see it's more nuanced.
- temp-dude-87844 7y ago
  A nontrivial amount of opposition to vaccines comes from communities, both online and in person, that circulate accounts of atrocities committed by authorities. Naturally, accounts of mistreatment, whether or not its systemic nature is seeming or proven, will weaken trust in institutions. Good actors are always having to compensate for the activities of bad actors, even if those bad actors were in the distant past. But it says a lot about our society and the quality of our institutions that the lack of trust isn't just among groups that have themselves been mistreated, but is also found in others who observe these issues of social justice from a position of relative privilege. Based on their observations, some of them have concluded that it's far from certain that malice, corruption, or lack of transparency don't factor into the mainstream stance on this issue today, likely because there is evidence that similar factors were at play in similar issues in the past, and the incentive structure of actors and organizations need not have meaningfully changed.

loxs 7y ago

Water is wet.

sctb 7y ago
We've asked you before to please stop posting unsubstantively. We eventually ban accounts that won't follow the guidelines, so could you please review them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hnitbanalns 7y ago
  Vaccines are Safe How is this meaningful or substantive to HN?

aszantu 7y ago

so every dog gets vaccinated for certain diseases. If vaccines did cause anything, wouldn't people talk more about it in "that dog they knew" or "someone who knew someone with an authistic dog" ?

dekhn 7y ago
This would ignore any human-specific negative vaccine interactions so is not convincing.
Florin_Andrei 7y ago
Rational arguments don't work. This is just a bug in the OS we're carrying in our heads, and it hits a lot of people unfortunately.

nbabitskiy 7y ago

>> "Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die, the C.D.C. reports." So, after vaccines started, measles mortality grew an order of magnitude worse? (According to presumably conservative government's estimate). Am I the only one who thinks, that anti-vaxing has nothing to do with perceived safety of vaccines, and mostly reflects perceived safety of vaccine facilitators? edit: after boeing 737 max troubles, we learnt, that boeing employees serve part time in capacity of government regulators, approving their own creation. Isn't it possible, that the same goes in the HRSA injury program?

pulisse 7y ago
> So, after vaccines started, measles mortality grew an order of magnitude worse? (According to presumably conservative government's estimate). Am I the only one who thinks, that anti-vaxing has nothing to do with perceived safety of vaccines, and mostly reflects perceived safety of vaccine facilitators? You imply that vaccines cause that increase, but wouldn't a more plausible explanation be that people who contract measles despite being vaccinated are more likely to be people with subpar immune systems?
- nbabitskiy 7y ago
  No, I don't imply that vaccines caused the increase, however, the NYT writers make it seem that vaccination caused it. Also the article doesn't say what part of added mortality is amid the vaccinated people. If your reading was correct, and doctors killed 7-15 times as many as nature, because they vaxed kids unfit for vaccination, it would make the argument much worse; but the authors didn't say that.
yehosef 7y ago
It's just a mixup in numbers - the number of 1/2 per 1000 is often thrown around (perhaps that's global.. not sure) and the 400/3M are the US numbers from the 50's (pre-vaccination). The measles hits people harder if they are weak/malnourished. A recent outbreak in Madagascar (https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/madagascar-measles-epidemic-1.5097610 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/madagascar-measles-epidemic-1...) hit a 10/1000 rate (1200/115,000), which is x100 the US rate in the 50's.

yehosef 7y ago

The misinformation/lies surrounding vaccine safety is nauseating. >Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die Anyone here gots math.. 400/3,000,000 is ~1/10,000. And note that this is the rate given 1950's medical care - I can't fathom the numbers would be like this today. And the entire concept of proving vaccine safety by showing filing rates for the VICP are low is wrong. Many people are not aware of the VICP or they are told that the reactions are not related to the vaccines - why would they file? I'm not arguing that you shouldn't vaccinate - but there needs to be more scientific and intellectual integrity in the process. The risks are whitewashed "Vaccines are safe". Anyone interested in doing a little more research can look and play with the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) dataset at https://github.com/yehosef/vaers https://github.com/yehosef/vaers or the grafana dashboard I built at https://vizvax.com/ https://vizvax.com/ You can do a simple adhoc search for DIED=Y to see some interesting results. Remember that the only 1-10% of the events are reported (CDC numbers) so you can estimate the numbers to be 10-100 times greater. feedback/suggestions appreciated.

arthur_pryor 7y ago
two things: >> Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die > Anyone here gots math.. 400/3,000,000 is ~1/10,000. And note that this is the rate given 1950's medical care - I can't fathom the numbers would be like this today. why'd you divide 400 by 3M? the article says, per your quote, that there were 400 american deaths per year. but 3M infected americans _total_. there is no per year qualifier on that part. also you forgot to address the part about: > One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized i don't know about you, but i'll take a vaccination over a hospitalization in most realistic situations i can imagine. also, while i can see how adverse events might be grossly underreported, i imagine the ones that _do_ get reported skew the data set towards the worst of the events. it seems to me that a really bad adverse event is much more likely to be reported than one that's mild.