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The saddest anti-science movement in the 2000s is the mass anti-vaccine movement. So much progress lost by Wakefield's nutjob paper that spawned the mass moveme

The saddest anti-science movement in the 2000s is the mass anti-vaccine movement. So much progress lost by Wakefield's nutjob paper that spawned the mass movement we see today. I hope we'll look back at this period 100 years from now and just shake our heads, and hope that it's not an ongoing concern then.

macintux 4y ago
[flagged]
- js2 4y ago
  They absolutely should not have done that, but it has nothing to do with the anti-vaccine stance in the U.S., and even in Pakistan: > "'The CIA is not exclusively responsible for the problems we have in getting children vaccinated but it certainly didn't make it anything easier,' says Anthony Robbins, the co-editor of the Journal of Public Health Policy. Robbins wrote an editorial denouncing the CIA use of fake vaccination programs back in August of 2012. Even before bin Laden was killed in 2011, the Taliban had banned polio immunization in the parts of Pakistan it controls. The Taliban claimed the polio drops sterilize Pakistani children and vaccinators were American spies.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Clandestine activity in Pakistan has nothing to do with nutters in Rockland County.
  - macintux 4y ago
    But it does have to do with our inability to wipe out polio forever.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - ars 4y ago
    This is an infection with VDPV2 - VDPV2 is not used in Rockland County, but it is used Pakistan. This infection came from Pakistan or Afghanistan.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      VDPV2 has also been in W Africa, are you in possession of all Jews' travel history worldwide? (VDPV was also in London and China where I hear Jews even dare to dwell let alone travel) I suspect ADL or Mossad would like to speak to you if you are...
  - mistermann 4y ago
    More than a few people are "unimpressed" by America's geopolitical adventures in foreign lands, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe that this may play more than zero of a role in willingness to be "a team player". Whether this is logical behaviour misses some important points about humans. Upthread someone blames it all on Wakefield. I suspect this is also less true than it seems. I often wonder: could having inaccurate models of reality be harmful?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  If there's anything the CIA is good at, it's fucking things up. These are the nutjobs that came up with operation Northwoods and actually implemented many other of their stupid ideas.
cies 4y ago
If you are right, the problem will fix itself. So just relax (unless you still believe in herd immunity: i certainly do not after the crappy C19 vaccines)
- epakai 4y ago
  Doesn't make sense. We already had non-herd immunity producing vaccines for flu. That covid vaccines produce the same outcome isn't a particularly special case. It's not even that complex to understand the WHY they don't produce herd immunity. I can understand being frustrated because herd immunity was touted as a possible benefit of mass covid vaccination, but that has nothing to do with whether it exists in general.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    The flu is a couple dozen different strains of influenza. The yearly shot is only for around 2-4 of those viruses that are expected to be most prevalent. "Bad flu years" are when they got it wrong.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  The polio vaccine is a sterilizing vaccine that completely protects against infection The SARS2 mRNA vaccines don’t even protect against infection, especially for Omicron variants. You may want to reconsider your opinion.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Not really, they take your chances down to dying from it by a factor of 10 fold. The vaccine is a success. Covid-19 is a much more unstable and mutable virus than polio so it changes so quickly we may always be just a couple steps behind, luckily the human immune system is also ready for such viruses for the most part after being primed by the vaccines. The antivax crowd turn their back on science and turn to mysticism and demagogues for their answers.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
tlogan 4y ago
[flagged]
- bobbyasdfasdf7 4y ago
- sofixa 4y ago
  How do masks not help curb the spread of a virus? Do you have any supporting literature on that matter?
  - soco 4y ago
    There's for sure some youtube account which is taken as definitive and sufficient proof by some.
  - overrun11 4y ago
    I've seen this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296 https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296 but I'm not qualified to really interpret it
  - SnowProblem 4y ago
    It's far from perfect, but I believe this to be the best RCT we have on masks out of Bangladesh: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069 We found clear evidence that surgical masks are effective in reducing symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2. Although cloth masks clearly reduce symptoms, we find less clear evidence of their impact on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the statistical significance depending on whether we impute missing values for nonconsenting adults. I don't believe we have any good studies out of the US or Europe. There's a discussion about this and more on the Econ Talk podcast this week: https://www.econtalk.org/vinay-prasad-on-the-pandemic/ https://www.econtalk.org/vinay-prasad-on-the-pandemic/
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      See my remarks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32195416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32195416
makomk 4y ago
The anti-vaccine movement is a problem but they're not really the big problem this time. Basically, the global effort to eradicate polio failed catastropically due to a major flaw in the strategy devised by the WHO and all the other groups involved in it, this directly caused a wave of new polio cases that is now starting to reach the western world, and no-one has figured out a way to fix it: https://www.science.org/content/article/polio-eradication-program-faces-hard-choices-endgame-strategy-fails https://www.science.org/content/article/polio-eradication-pr... (Notice also the date on that article: two and a half years ago. It took a while for this to spread out of Africa and I certainly didn't anticipate at the time how likely this was.)
frozencell 4y ago
The worst case is blaming anti-science people, it's absolutely their fault, relatively not their fault. The real issue lies behind policy, especially education right.

macintux 4y ago

[flagged]

js2 4y ago
They absolutely should not have done that, but it has nothing to do with the anti-vaccine stance in the U.S., and even in Pakistan: > "'The CIA is not exclusively responsible for the problems we have in getting children vaccinated but it certainly didn't make it anything easier,' says Anthony Robbins, the co-editor of the Journal of Public Health Policy. Robbins wrote an editorial denouncing the CIA use of fake vaccination programs back in August of 2012. Even before bin Laden was killed in 2011, the Taliban had banned polio immunization in the parts of Pakistan it controls. The Taliban claimed the polio drops sterilize Pakistani children and vaccinators were American spies.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Clandestine activity in Pakistan has nothing to do with nutters in Rockland County.
- macintux 4y ago
  But it does have to do with our inability to wipe out polio forever.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ars 4y ago
  This is an infection with VDPV2 - VDPV2 is not used in Rockland County, but it is used Pakistan. This infection came from Pakistan or Afghanistan.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    VDPV2 has also been in W Africa, are you in possession of all Jews' travel history worldwide? (VDPV was also in London and China where I hear Jews even dare to dwell let alone travel) I suspect ADL or Mossad would like to speak to you if you are...
- mistermann 4y ago
  More than a few people are "unimpressed" by America's geopolitical adventures in foreign lands, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe that this may play more than zero of a role in willingness to be "a team player". Whether this is logical behaviour misses some important points about humans. Upthread someone blames it all on Wakefield. I suspect this is also less true than it seems. I often wonder: could having inaccurate models of reality be harmful?
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
If there's anything the CIA is good at, it's fucking things up. These are the nutjobs that came up with operation Northwoods and actually implemented many other of their stupid ideas.

cies 4y ago

If you are right, the problem will fix itself. So just relax (unless you still believe in herd immunity: i certainly do not after the crappy C19 vaccines)

epakai 4y ago
Doesn't make sense. We already had non-herd immunity producing vaccines for flu. That covid vaccines produce the same outcome isn't a particularly special case. It's not even that complex to understand the WHY they don't produce herd immunity. I can understand being frustrated because herd immunity was touted as a possible benefit of mass covid vaccination, but that has nothing to do with whether it exists in general.
- Izkata 4y ago
  The flu is a couple dozen different strains of influenza. The yearly shot is only for around 2-4 of those viruses that are expected to be most prevalent. "Bad flu years" are when they got it wrong.
wrycoder 4y ago
The polio vaccine is a sterilizing vaccine that completely protects against infection The SARS2 mRNA vaccines don’t even protect against infection, especially for Omicron variants. You may want to reconsider your opinion.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Not really, they take your chances down to dying from it by a factor of 10 fold. The vaccine is a success. Covid-19 is a much more unstable and mutable virus than polio so it changes so quickly we may always be just a couple steps behind, luckily the human immune system is also ready for such viruses for the most part after being primed by the vaccines. The antivax crowd turn their back on science and turn to mysticism and demagogues for their answers.
  - wrycoder 4y ago

tlogan 4y ago

[flagged]

bobbyasdfasdf7 4y ago
sofixa 4y ago
How do masks not help curb the spread of a virus? Do you have any supporting literature on that matter?
- soco 4y ago
  There's for sure some youtube account which is taken as definitive and sufficient proof by some.
- overrun11 4y ago
  I've seen this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296 https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296 but I'm not qualified to really interpret it
- SnowProblem 4y ago
  It's far from perfect, but I believe this to be the best RCT we have on masks out of Bangladesh: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069 We found clear evidence that surgical masks are effective in reducing symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2. Although cloth masks clearly reduce symptoms, we find less clear evidence of their impact on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the statistical significance depending on whether we impute missing values for nonconsenting adults. I don't believe we have any good studies out of the US or Europe. There's a discussion about this and more on the Econ Talk podcast this week: https://www.econtalk.org/vinay-prasad-on-the-pandemic/ https://www.econtalk.org/vinay-prasad-on-the-pandemic/
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    See my remarks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32195416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32195416

makomk 4y ago

The anti-vaccine movement is a problem but they're not really the big problem this time. Basically, the global effort to eradicate polio failed catastropically due to a major flaw in the strategy devised by the WHO and all the other groups involved in it, this directly caused a wave of new polio cases that is now starting to reach the western world, and no-one has figured out a way to fix it: https://www.science.org/content/article/polio-eradication-program-faces-hard-choices-endgame-strategy-fails https://www.science.org/content/article/polio-eradication-pr... (Notice also the date on that article: two and a half years ago. It took a while for this to spread out of Africa and I certainly didn't anticipate at the time how likely this was.)

frozencell 4y ago

The worst case is blaming anti-science people, it's absolutely their fault, relatively not their fault. The real issue lies behind policy, especially education right.