11 ms·

The Vaccination Effect: 100 Million Cases of Contagious Disease Prevented

38 points by murtza 13y ago

phy6 13y ago
Does the average HN reader get vaccinations? How about for their children? I'm interested in peoples' critical thought, since we as a loose community often take an investigative/contrarian approach to assumed best practices. It seems many of us are acutely aware of herd mentality, collusion and corruption when it comes to the combination of tech subjects, the media and government/societal norms. Personally, I am for vaccination. I'm way over vaccinated due to trips to third world countries -- sometimes I would get 6 shots over 2 days. However the spacing for vaccinations in infants seems rushed, and the ingredients are something I wouldn't let my kid touch or eat. (kind of like how you wouldn't feed your kid honey until after they're one) I recently told our doctor we wanted an ingredient list of the vaccines they were planning to administer, so we could attempt to understand, before following their schedule in ignorance. I definitely don't want my kid to have the diseases our grand parents grew up with, and that means vaccinating. I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? Does herd immunity require herd mentality? Can one investigate, or at least try to be diligent without being vilified?
- fecak 13y ago
  I can't imagine any doctor would sign any type of document for liability. There is a special court that has heard vaccine injury claims (http://www.nvic.org/injury-compensation.aspx http://www.nvic.org/injury-compensation.aspx) for almost 30 years in the US, so expecting an individual doctor to be held to a standard of liability that could be perceived as above the liability for the vaccine manufacturer is probably unlikely.
- dmm 13y ago
  > However the spacing for vaccinations in infants seems rushed, What does that even mean?
  - DenisM 13y ago
    It means that some people have a "gut feel", and they believe their gut is more accurate than bazillions statistically validated studies on the proper vaccination schedule.
    - phy6 13y ago
      Your unwillingness to accept that some people want to learn before doing something irreversible is borderline trollish. Having a gut feeling does not imply an immutable opinion, especially after evaluating related facts. Every person has a responsibility to understand the consequences of their actions and in-actions. What you are seeing here is a person being more diligent with his kid than he was with himself.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    Vaccines come in multiple doses. Some countries space out each dose every other month, others do it every two or three months. It varies. The US schedule is similar but not the same as many countries in the EU. Big pharma also keeps pushing cocktail shots, multiple vaccinations in one single shot, whereas before you would take multiple visits and each time it would be a separate vaccine.
    - carbocation 13y ago
      The body can tolerate millions of antigens being presented to it simultaneously. In fact, it does every day. So do the bodies of children. This is not some push by the "pharma" bogeyman. It's a push by doctors to reduce the chance that a child fails to complete his or her vaccination series. If the probability of missing a visit is, say, 0.05, then the probability of missing a shot in a series of 3 is (1 - 0.95^3) ~= 14%, as opposed to 5% if you can actually do it all at once.
      - Fomite 13y ago
        Hell, the moment a baby passes through the vaginal canal they're probably exposed to more antigens than the entire vaccine schedule, let alone their first few hours in a hospital.
- DenisM 13y ago
  >I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? For one, there is a law in the US that removes vaccination liability from doctors. A bigger problem with your suggestion is problematic math behind it - if vaccines killed one person for every ten saved it would still be worthwhile, but your suggestion would quickly ensure no doctors ever willing to give any vaccines to anyone, ensuring higher death rate among you and your relatives. The actual incident rate is much smaller - for example between 3000 and 49000 people die of flu each year, and only about a 100 people die of vaccine complications (most of them of egg allergy, totally preventable if treated right away). It's precisely due such poor understanding of statistics is why there are large groups if people opposed to vaccination - they fixate on a smaller probability negative outcome in the immediate future and ignore large probability negative outcome three months down the road.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    I find the fact that people die of a treatable side-effect resulting from a voluntary medical treatment to be particularly terrible. >It's precisely due such poor understanding of statistics is why there are large groups if people opposed to vaccination - they fixate on a smaller probability negative outcome in the immediate future and ignore large probability negative outcome three months down the road. No, the probability of death or injury from all diseases (for people in the US) is small. It may be relatively large compared to the probability of death or injury from vaccination, but it is still small for each individual.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      That small probability is largely because of vaccination. But there's a huge herd effect, so your analysis is correct for the individual, while still badly wrong for society as a whole.
      - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
        >That small probability is largely because of vaccination. That's true. But I suspect that better sanitation and nutrition played a large part as well. >so your analysis is correct for the individual, while still badly wrong for society as a whole. I know. Which is why it is important to have safe and effective vaccines.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Two issues at stake. Are they effective and what are the side effects? Vaccines are good against a known thing, such as Hepatitis B or Polio. So you would want your kids to be vaccinated against things like that. However the flu vaccine is not really effective. Side effects? If you take a Flu vaccine shot or Whooping cough shot you get a different one from that given to pregnant women and babies. Think about that. One contains mercury, the other doesn't. So why doesn't everybody get the safer one? Manufacturer cost. Which leads to a third issue which I didn't mention - money. Corporations abuse whenever they can, why wouldn't it be the same in the pharma industry? Take the flu vaccine, the effectiveness is not proven, yet we are bombarded everyday with marketing/propaganda that flu shots are available and they only cost 60 bucks. The Andrew Wakefield MMR-Autism paper has been discredited but it did make a lot of people ask questions. Why are kids today getting so many more vaccinations than before? Why are more kids getting diagnosed with autism? Is there a causal link? Why instead of single shots are different shots getting combined into one super cocktail - to save money, cut corners? If you read Ben Goldacre's books on the pharma and health industry, you will quickly understand that most big pharma medical trials are poorly controlled experiements and mainly used as marketing tools for new products. They will sponsor/allow dozens of tests confirming a positive result, to crowd out one or two better controlled tests which produce a negative result. Obviously citations needed, but this is from memory. At the end of the day, parents have tough decisions, use common sense and understand that medicine evolves. The last few years, doctors recommended kids take Tylenol before vaccinations to help pain management. Now doctors say take Advil, because Tylenol in young infants and children may be linked to asthma and exczema - and some research indicates Tylenol reduces the effectiveness of the vaccine shot itself!
  - carbocation 13y ago
    > So why doesn't everybody get the safer one? Manufacturer cost. What is your evidence that there are unsafe vaccines currently on the market that are being promulgated over safer vaccines due to manufacturer cost?
    - yapcguy 13y ago
      Speak to your OB and ask if the vaccines given to pregnant women are the same as the ones from Walgreens or Safeway... and ask about the mercury.
- carbocation 13y ago
  > I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? I'm wondering if a programmer would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from their code submitted on a tight deadline. If they wouldn't put their career behind the belief in their code, should I believe them?
  - loceng 13y ago
    ... adding "tight deadline" imbalances this equation a bit. In a place where a vaccine will stop rampant spreading of a virus, then you could consider it a tight deadline - though in a place where it's mostly under control, the comparison doesn't hold as apples to apples.
    - carbocation 13y ago
      How much time do you think doctors have to spend with each patient, and would you consider that a tight deadline? The time pressure on programmers due to business needs limits the amount of time they get to spend with their code, much like the time pressure on doctors due to business needs limits the amount of time they get to spend with each patient, researching the latest anti-vax theories, etc.
      - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
        The amount of time a doctor takes in a patient consultation has zero effect on the probability of vaccine injury (also, vaccinations are typically administered by nurses).
        fecak 13y ago
        Is there a source for that? Someone in this thread mentioned things like egg allergies as a source for vaccine complications, and it isn't hard to imagine that increased consultation time (over no consultation at all) would result in better outcomes and fewer injuries.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Can you explain why you think the vaccinations for infants "seems rushed"? What's the basis for that? As for the ingredients, that goes for most medicine. Medicine is often stuff you wouldn't want to be eating or touching routinely, but that's because it's for non-routine use. I wouldn't give my kid a big bottle of acetaminophen to chow down on, but I will give some of it to her when it's medically indicated. As for signing a document of liability, would you sign one if you thought that the procedure was generally safe, but there was a one-in-a-million chance that, through no fault of your own, the procedure could go wrong and leave you bankrupt because of what you signed?
  - fecak 13y ago
    I wasn't the commenter, but as to vaccines being 'rushed', I'd imagine that most people feel a Hep vaccine for a 1 day old is probably not necessary due to the exposure a newborn simply wouldn't have to the virus. The CDC lists the common ways it is spread, and none are likely other than contracting from the mother (who can be tested before birth). How likely are any of these events for a newborn? Would waiting a week, a month, etc put an infant at risk? From CDC site: "Babies and children can get hepatitis B in the following ways: At birth from their infected mother. From bites from an infected person. By touching open cuts or sores of an infected person. Through sharing toothbrushes or other personal items used by an infected person. From food that was chewed (for a baby) by an infected person. From ear piercing needles that were not cleaned well." Source - http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/hepb/fs-parents.html http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/hepb/fs-parents.html Edit - added CDC info
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Is testing the mother before birth so much better than simply vaccinating the baby, especially since blood transfer from other people is not completely out of the question anyway? If you wait a week, that's a week-long window for infection. It's small, certainly, but what's the gain? Is there any advantage to waiting?
      - fecak 13y ago
- jdjb 13y ago
  > I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? Suppose a doctor vaccinates 20 kids a week, for 50 weeks of the year (1000 kids per year). Suppose each vaccination has an average of 3 different vaccines (i.e. against 3 different diseases). Suppose the average vaccine has a 1/10k chance of serious complication. So over the course of a year the doctor gives about 3000 vaccines each year with a 1/10k chance of serious complication. Suppose a single serious complication risks their career. This means the average doctor is risking their career over 1 incident just over every 3 years. I personally prefer a family physician with more than 3.3 years of experience. Meanwhile over those 3 years 9000 cases of disease were eliminated. Sure your kid may mean everything to you (mine sure does) but having a doctor put their career on the line for something that only has a probability of success is silly considering how many times they roll the dice in their career.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  I am pretty lazy about keeping up with my own. I tend to keep up with Tetanus (tdap?) because I like to be outside (Tetanus), and I have a little one (Pertussis). I never take flu shots[1]. I used to travel, and like you, I'd usually go get vaccinated for any weird/horrible diseases common to regions I planned to visit. My kids? We're cautious. Never more than one at a time. Didn't bother with Rotavirus (I suspect we paid for that). No Hep-B at birth. Oldest has had the MMR. So far the only out of the ordinary observation was with our youngest who had a horrible cough after receiving the DTaP. Would refuse Gardasil. > I recently told our doctor we wanted an ingredient list of the vaccines they were planning to administer, so we could attempt to understand, before following their schedule in ignorance. It is a shame that asking simple questions like that can get you labeled as a crank in some circles. Fortunately, most of that is published by the CDC, and other places. Childhood vaccination schedule for the convenience of anyone who is curious. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/child-adolescent.html#printable http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/child-adolescent.h... >I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability Even the companies that manufacture the vaccines want nothing to do with the legal liability for injury. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court [1] http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-i...
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    Fyi: The EU has a vaccine schedule tool. Schedules are somewhat similar to the US but not the same. http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Pages/Scheduler.aspx http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Pages/Scheduler.aspx Also women in France are filing lawsuits over Gardasil. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/25/frances-top-medical-expert-no-evidence-linking-gardasil-vaccine-to-multiple-sclerosis/ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/25/frances-top-medical-ex...
- grahamburger 13y ago
  I think a better question for your doctor is "Do you give these same vaccines to your own children on this same schedule?" The answer is almost certainly yes, and that means more to me than a document of liability, particularly considering the liability would mostly be transferred to the doctor's insurance provider.
  - phy6 13y ago
    I agree. This was the spirit of my original hypothetical question -- to ascertain the sincere belief from the practitioner. I apologize that my idea was so confrontational, when your suggestion does the same thing. The sum of the studies and education (I assume they are both untainted and unbiased) is expressed in their application to their own kin.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Does herd immunity require herd mentality? This is why I strongly prefer the term "community immunity" over "herd immunity". Can one investigate, or at least try to be diligent without being vilified? Yes, absolutely. If you stick to actual reputable provable science, you'll wind up in the "vaccines are safe" camp. If you follow crackpots who don't understand science, you'll wind up somewhere else.
dhughes 13y ago
It's nice to see such long term data put to use and to be shown in graphical form what everyone has been screaming vaccines save lives! Yes I get vaccinated yearly for the flu, I also got one for H1N1 (?) a few years ago. So many people across all age ranges it's sad, the comments in the NYT article are sad to see. A 20 something guy at work was telling me excitedly how "some guy" on YouTube "proved" writing the word hate and love on water bottles then freezing them makes the ice different. This same person is against vehemently against all GM foods and Big Pharma, the "some guy on YouTube" is the all-knowing answer.
- DenisM 13y ago
  I think we can safely diagnose an epistemological crisis in our society - indeed many if not most people cannot tell the difference some guy on YouTube and a body of statistically validated controlled studies. Not sure what the treatment should be.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
They've published their data, which is fantastic and by far the most important part of the article. http://www.tycho.pitt.edu/ http://www.tycho.pitt.edu/ I have to take issue with some parts of the article. Lohr (the NYT article's Author) cites 38,000 cases of Pertussis in the US. It may just be a coincidence, but 38,000 is the number of cases recently reported in Australia. The CDC reports[1] 27,550 for 2010 (an awesomely precise estimate), so, 38k doesn't sound out of line, but I didn't find a source for that number. Going back to Australia where they have 95% compliance according to this news article[2], they suspect that mutation of the pathogen is responsible for the rise in cases. The NYT article OTOH, lays the blame on non-compliant parents. Additionally, the acellular Pertussis vaccine apparently doesn't always prevent illness, but lessens the severity and duration of infection. So, it could well be that most of the reported cases were vaccinated as was the case in Australia. I wonder why authors feel the need to keep re-writing the standard pro-vaccination puff pieces. They don't seem to do anything to convince skeptics. I'd like to see a study of why people choose to refuse vaccines and apply those results to efforts to increase vaccination rates. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/whooping.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/whooping.htm [2] http://www.abc.net.au/health/thepulse/stories/2012/08/14/3567495.htm http://www.abc.net.au/health/thepulse/stories/2012/08/14/356...

38 points by murtza 13y ago

phy6 13y ago

Does the average HN reader get vaccinations? How about for their children? I'm interested in peoples' critical thought, since we as a loose community often take an investigative/contrarian approach to assumed best practices. It seems many of us are acutely aware of herd mentality, collusion and corruption when it comes to the combination of tech subjects, the media and government/societal norms. Personally, I am for vaccination. I'm way over vaccinated due to trips to third world countries -- sometimes I would get 6 shots over 2 days. However the spacing for vaccinations in infants seems rushed, and the ingredients are something I wouldn't let my kid touch or eat. (kind of like how you wouldn't feed your kid honey until after they're one) I recently told our doctor we wanted an ingredient list of the vaccines they were planning to administer, so we could attempt to understand, before following their schedule in ignorance. I definitely don't want my kid to have the diseases our grand parents grew up with, and that means vaccinating. I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? Does herd immunity require herd mentality? Can one investigate, or at least try to be diligent without being vilified?

fecak 13y ago
I can't imagine any doctor would sign any type of document for liability. There is a special court that has heard vaccine injury claims (http://www.nvic.org/injury-compensation.aspx http://www.nvic.org/injury-compensation.aspx) for almost 30 years in the US, so expecting an individual doctor to be held to a standard of liability that could be perceived as above the liability for the vaccine manufacturer is probably unlikely.
dmm 13y ago
> However the spacing for vaccinations in infants seems rushed, What does that even mean?
- DenisM 13y ago
  It means that some people have a "gut feel", and they believe their gut is more accurate than bazillions statistically validated studies on the proper vaccination schedule.
  - phy6 13y ago
    Your unwillingness to accept that some people want to learn before doing something irreversible is borderline trollish. Having a gut feeling does not imply an immutable opinion, especially after evaluating related facts. Every person has a responsibility to understand the consequences of their actions and in-actions. What you are seeing here is a person being more diligent with his kid than he was with himself.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Vaccines come in multiple doses. Some countries space out each dose every other month, others do it every two or three months. It varies. The US schedule is similar but not the same as many countries in the EU. Big pharma also keeps pushing cocktail shots, multiple vaccinations in one single shot, whereas before you would take multiple visits and each time it would be a separate vaccine.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    The body can tolerate millions of antigens being presented to it simultaneously. In fact, it does every day. So do the bodies of children. This is not some push by the "pharma" bogeyman. It's a push by doctors to reduce the chance that a child fails to complete his or her vaccination series. If the probability of missing a visit is, say, 0.05, then the probability of missing a shot in a series of 3 is (1 - 0.95^3) ~= 14%, as opposed to 5% if you can actually do it all at once.
    - Fomite 13y ago
      Hell, the moment a baby passes through the vaginal canal they're probably exposed to more antigens than the entire vaccine schedule, let alone their first few hours in a hospital.
DenisM 13y ago
>I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? For one, there is a law in the US that removes vaccination liability from doctors. A bigger problem with your suggestion is problematic math behind it - if vaccines killed one person for every ten saved it would still be worthwhile, but your suggestion would quickly ensure no doctors ever willing to give any vaccines to anyone, ensuring higher death rate among you and your relatives. The actual incident rate is much smaller - for example between 3000 and 49000 people die of flu each year, and only about a 100 people die of vaccine complications (most of them of egg allergy, totally preventable if treated right away). It's precisely due such poor understanding of statistics is why there are large groups if people opposed to vaccination - they fixate on a smaller probability negative outcome in the immediate future and ignore large probability negative outcome three months down the road.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  I find the fact that people die of a treatable side-effect resulting from a voluntary medical treatment to be particularly terrible. >It's precisely due such poor understanding of statistics is why there are large groups if people opposed to vaccination - they fixate on a smaller probability negative outcome in the immediate future and ignore large probability negative outcome three months down the road. No, the probability of death or injury from all diseases (for people in the US) is small. It may be relatively large compared to the probability of death or injury from vaccination, but it is still small for each individual.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    That small probability is largely because of vaccination. But there's a huge herd effect, so your analysis is correct for the individual, while still badly wrong for society as a whole.
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      >That small probability is largely because of vaccination. That's true. But I suspect that better sanitation and nutrition played a large part as well. >so your analysis is correct for the individual, while still badly wrong for society as a whole. I know. Which is why it is important to have safe and effective vaccines.
yapcguy 13y ago
Two issues at stake. Are they effective and what are the side effects? Vaccines are good against a known thing, such as Hepatitis B or Polio. So you would want your kids to be vaccinated against things like that. However the flu vaccine is not really effective. Side effects? If you take a Flu vaccine shot or Whooping cough shot you get a different one from that given to pregnant women and babies. Think about that. One contains mercury, the other doesn't. So why doesn't everybody get the safer one? Manufacturer cost. Which leads to a third issue which I didn't mention - money. Corporations abuse whenever they can, why wouldn't it be the same in the pharma industry? Take the flu vaccine, the effectiveness is not proven, yet we are bombarded everyday with marketing/propaganda that flu shots are available and they only cost 60 bucks. The Andrew Wakefield MMR-Autism paper has been discredited but it did make a lot of people ask questions. Why are kids today getting so many more vaccinations than before? Why are more kids getting diagnosed with autism? Is there a causal link? Why instead of single shots are different shots getting combined into one super cocktail - to save money, cut corners? If you read Ben Goldacre's books on the pharma and health industry, you will quickly understand that most big pharma medical trials are poorly controlled experiements and mainly used as marketing tools for new products. They will sponsor/allow dozens of tests confirming a positive result, to crowd out one or two better controlled tests which produce a negative result. Obviously citations needed, but this is from memory. At the end of the day, parents have tough decisions, use common sense and understand that medicine evolves. The last few years, doctors recommended kids take Tylenol before vaccinations to help pain management. Now doctors say take Advil, because Tylenol in young infants and children may be linked to asthma and exczema - and some research indicates Tylenol reduces the effectiveness of the vaccine shot itself!
- carbocation 13y ago
  > So why doesn't everybody get the safer one? Manufacturer cost. What is your evidence that there are unsafe vaccines currently on the market that are being promulgated over safer vaccines due to manufacturer cost?
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    Speak to your OB and ask if the vaccines given to pregnant women are the same as the ones from Walgreens or Safeway... and ask about the mercury.
carbocation 13y ago
> I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? I'm wondering if a programmer would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from their code submitted on a tight deadline. If they wouldn't put their career behind the belief in their code, should I believe them?
- loceng 13y ago
  ... adding "tight deadline" imbalances this equation a bit. In a place where a vaccine will stop rampant spreading of a virus, then you could consider it a tight deadline - though in a place where it's mostly under control, the comparison doesn't hold as apples to apples.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    How much time do you think doctors have to spend with each patient, and would you consider that a tight deadline? The time pressure on programmers due to business needs limits the amount of time they get to spend with their code, much like the time pressure on doctors due to business needs limits the amount of time they get to spend with each patient, researching the latest anti-vax theories, etc.
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      The amount of time a doctor takes in a patient consultation has zero effect on the probability of vaccine injury (also, vaccinations are typically administered by nurses).
      - fecak 13y ago
        Is there a source for that? Someone in this thread mentioned things like egg allergies as a source for vaccine complications, and it isn't hard to imagine that increased consultation time (over no consultation at all) would result in better outcomes and fewer injuries.
mikeash 13y ago
Can you explain why you think the vaccinations for infants "seems rushed"? What's the basis for that? As for the ingredients, that goes for most medicine. Medicine is often stuff you wouldn't want to be eating or touching routinely, but that's because it's for non-routine use. I wouldn't give my kid a big bottle of acetaminophen to chow down on, but I will give some of it to her when it's medically indicated. As for signing a document of liability, would you sign one if you thought that the procedure was generally safe, but there was a one-in-a-million chance that, through no fault of your own, the procedure could go wrong and leave you bankrupt because of what you signed?
- fecak 13y ago
  I wasn't the commenter, but as to vaccines being 'rushed', I'd imagine that most people feel a Hep vaccine for a 1 day old is probably not necessary due to the exposure a newborn simply wouldn't have to the virus. The CDC lists the common ways it is spread, and none are likely other than contracting from the mother (who can be tested before birth). How likely are any of these events for a newborn? Would waiting a week, a month, etc put an infant at risk? From CDC site: "Babies and children can get hepatitis B in the following ways: At birth from their infected mother. From bites from an infected person. By touching open cuts or sores of an infected person. Through sharing toothbrushes or other personal items used by an infected person. From food that was chewed (for a baby) by an infected person. From ear piercing needles that were not cleaned well." Source - http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/hepb/fs-parents.html http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/hepb/fs-parents.html Edit - added CDC info
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Is testing the mother before birth so much better than simply vaccinating the baby, especially since blood transfer from other people is not completely out of the question anyway? If you wait a week, that's a week-long window for infection. It's small, certainly, but what's the gain? Is there any advantage to waiting?
    - fecak 13y ago
jdjb 13y ago
> I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her? Suppose a doctor vaccinates 20 kids a week, for 50 weeks of the year (1000 kids per year). Suppose each vaccination has an average of 3 different vaccines (i.e. against 3 different diseases). Suppose the average vaccine has a 1/10k chance of serious complication. So over the course of a year the doctor gives about 3000 vaccines each year with a 1/10k chance of serious complication. Suppose a single serious complication risks their career. This means the average doctor is risking their career over 1 incident just over every 3 years. I personally prefer a family physician with more than 3.3 years of experience. Meanwhile over those 3 years 9000 cases of disease were eliminated. Sure your kid may mean everything to you (mine sure does) but having a doctor put their career on the line for something that only has a probability of success is silly considering how many times they roll the dice in their career.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
I am pretty lazy about keeping up with my own. I tend to keep up with Tetanus (tdap?) because I like to be outside (Tetanus), and I have a little one (Pertussis). I never take flu shots[1]. I used to travel, and like you, I'd usually go get vaccinated for any weird/horrible diseases common to regions I planned to visit. My kids? We're cautious. Never more than one at a time. Didn't bother with Rotavirus (I suspect we paid for that). No Hep-B at birth. Oldest has had the MMR. So far the only out of the ordinary observation was with our youngest who had a horrible cough after receiving the DTaP. Would refuse Gardasil. > I recently told our doctor we wanted an ingredient list of the vaccines they were planning to administer, so we could attempt to understand, before following their schedule in ignorance. It is a shame that asking simple questions like that can get you labeled as a crank in some circles. Fortunately, most of that is published by the CDC, and other places. Childhood vaccination schedule for the convenience of anyone who is curious. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/child-adolescent.html#printable http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/child-adolescent.h... >I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability Even the companies that manufacture the vaccines want nothing to do with the legal liability for injury. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court [1] http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-i...
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Fyi: The EU has a vaccine schedule tool. Schedules are somewhat similar to the US but not the same. http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Pages/Scheduler.aspx http://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Pages/Scheduler.aspx Also women in France are filing lawsuits over Gardasil. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/25/frances-top-medical-expert-no-evidence-linking-gardasil-vaccine-to-multiple-sclerosis/ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/25/frances-top-medical-ex...
grahamburger 13y ago
I think a better question for your doctor is "Do you give these same vaccines to your own children on this same schedule?" The answer is almost certainly yes, and that means more to me than a document of liability, particularly considering the liability would mostly be transferred to the doctor's insurance provider.
- phy6 13y ago
  I agree. This was the spirit of my original hypothetical question -- to ascertain the sincere belief from the practitioner. I apologize that my idea was so confrontational, when your suggestion does the same thing. The sum of the studies and education (I assume they are both untainted and unbiased) is expressed in their application to their own kin.
MartinCron 13y ago
Does herd immunity require herd mentality? This is why I strongly prefer the term "community immunity" over "herd immunity". Can one investigate, or at least try to be diligent without being vilified? Yes, absolutely. If you stick to actual reputable provable science, you'll wind up in the "vaccines are safe" camp. If you follow crackpots who don't understand science, you'll wind up somewhere else.

dhughes 13y ago

It's nice to see such long term data put to use and to be shown in graphical form what everyone has been screaming vaccines save lives! Yes I get vaccinated yearly for the flu, I also got one for H1N1 (?) a few years ago. So many people across all age ranges it's sad, the comments in the NYT article are sad to see. A 20 something guy at work was telling me excitedly how "some guy" on YouTube "proved" writing the word hate and love on water bottles then freezing them makes the ice different. This same person is against vehemently against all GM foods and Big Pharma, the "some guy on YouTube" is the all-knowing answer.

DenisM 13y ago
I think we can safely diagnose an epistemological crisis in our society - indeed many if not most people cannot tell the difference some guy on YouTube and a body of statistically validated controlled studies. Not sure what the treatment should be.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

They've published their data, which is fantastic and by far the most important part of the article. http://www.tycho.pitt.edu/ http://www.tycho.pitt.edu/ I have to take issue with some parts of the article. Lohr (the NYT article's Author) cites 38,000 cases of Pertussis in the US. It may just be a coincidence, but 38,000 is the number of cases recently reported in Australia. The CDC reports[1] 27,550 for 2010 (an awesomely precise estimate), so, 38k doesn't sound out of line, but I didn't find a source for that number. Going back to Australia where they have 95% compliance according to this news article[2], they suspect that mutation of the pathogen is responsible for the rise in cases. The NYT article OTOH, lays the blame on non-compliant parents. Additionally, the acellular Pertussis vaccine apparently doesn't always prevent illness, but lessens the severity and duration of infection. So, it could well be that most of the reported cases were vaccinated as was the case in Australia. I wonder why authors feel the need to keep re-writing the standard pro-vaccination puff pieces. They don't seem to do anything to convince skeptics. I'd like to see a study of why people choose to refuse vaccines and apply those results to efforts to increase vaccination rates. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/whooping.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/whooping.htm [2] http://www.abc.net.au/health/thepulse/stories/2012/08/14/3567495.htm http://www.abc.net.au/health/thepulse/stories/2012/08/14/356...