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Reminder that vaccines may not always be safe. Often when vaccine safety comes up, people with concern are "voted down".` The fact is, not all immune systems ar

Reminder that vaccines may not always be safe. Often when vaccine safety comes up, people with concern are "voted down".` The fact is, not all immune systems are the same and some cannot handle particular vaccines. An attitude of "most scientists think it's safe" is not real science; it's a appeal to authority. We need to figure out why some are endangered by some vaccines.

josephpmay 13y ago
The attitude towards vaccine safety isn't "most scientists think it's safe," it's "extensive research has shown that the societal benefits of this vaccine outweigh the potential risks". In this article, it's clear that the infected weren't "endangered by the vaccine." The reason why it mentioned that the children were vaccinated against polio was to show that the outbreak was likely a different virus, not to say that the vaccination in any way caused the infection.
epochwolf 13y ago
The number of people harmed by the vaccine is much lower than the number harmed by an infection. Vaccines are ineffective if even a small percentage opt out.
- kordless 13y ago
  That's not necessarily always true. The halo effect varies depending on the transmissibility of the disease AND the number of people vaccinated. Even small numbers of vaccinations can decrease the spread of an infectious disease.
  - bsder 13y ago
    > Even small numbers of vaccinations can decrease the spread of an infectious disease. Only of the vaccine is particularly effective in individuals (95%+). Pertussis seems to be a good counterexample. You really do need the herd immunity to keep it under control since individual immunity seems to be below 70% or so. In addition, non-vaccinated people tend to be clustered since anti-vaccination is a function of shared social situation (shared belief, religious affiliation, or low socioeconomic status). Consequently, you need MORE people vaccinated to control it, not fewer.
  - Fomite 13y ago
    Specifically, the critical % of people needed to be effectively vaccinated is 1 - (1/R0), where R0 is the "Basic Reproductive Number" of the disease. In English, how many people a single infective individual can be expected to infect in an entirely susceptible population.
- MikeTLive 13y ago
  If an evenly distributed percentage opt out, i can see where a vaccine may be less effective. like widening the holes in a net. However, is there a partial vaccination protocol which would strategically place an immunization net around an area of insufficient vaccination which could combat nonvaccination impact and thus prevent or limit spread?
  - Fomite 13y ago
    The process you're referring to is "ring vaccination", and is quite commonly used in epidemiology to limit the spread of outbreaks from a known point source. They are however quite resource intensive to implement - you have to do tons of contact tracing to know who belongs in the net. It would be extremely difficult to do something like that for those avoiding routine childhood vaccinations.
- Domenic_S 13y ago
  > The number of people harmed by the vaccine is much lower than the number harmed by an infection. This this this this this. This is the way vaccines should be presented. But in my experience as a new father vaccines seem to be presented as a magic cure that never does any harm. When's the last time your doctor/nurse discussed the potential side-effects with you? If the number of folks hurt by vaccines was infinitesimally small, as some would have you believe, we wouldn't have the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. (http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html)
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    >When's the last time your doctor/nurse discussed the potential side-effects with you? On the one hand your right and doctors should be honest about the risks and it should be your choice. On the other hand it's just going to get kids killed when parents hear the doctor tell them about the potential side-effects and decide not to vaccinate. >The thought that occurred to me was that, innumeracy being so widespread, no one would dare put numbers on that sheet of paper. If "amputation" is listed as a consequence with a probability of 0.0001%, patients will run screaming out of the office, crying, "Not my toe! I don't want to lose my toe!" No amount of patient explanation will suffice to convince them that they ought to diminish the emotional force of their fear by a factor of one million. Each extra zero after the decimal point would only be one more symbol for their eyes to glaze over; it would not diminish the emotional force of the anticipation by an additional factor of ten. (source http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/)
aasarava 13y ago
No -- An attitude of "someone on HN says 'vaccines may not always be safe'" is not real science. Unless you want to provide any actual studies to back up your claim, you're just spouting the sort of pseudoscience that gets children killed. While it's true that some very small percent of the population can have an allergic reaction to some vaccines, the risk of your child dying from, say, polio is much much higher than the risk of him/her dying from the vaccine.
- tosseraccount 13y ago
  Do you have a specific objection to anything I said?
  - tosseraccount 13y ago
    "vaccines may not always be safe" is a true statement.
- scrabble 13y ago
  While I don't take the attitude that vaccines are to be avoided -- and myself, my wife, and children are vaccinated against all the standard stuff aside from the yearly flu shot -- my grandfather was in a coma for 18 months from Guillain–Barré syndrome which was a reaction to a vaccination. It's scary stuff, but incredibly rare.
  - aestra 13y ago
    >my grandfather was in a coma for 18 months from Guillain–Barré syndrome which was a reaction to a vaccination I'll follow up your useless anecdote with another useless anecdote. I had a close family friend die of the flu. In his 50s. The chance of developing Guillain–Barré syndrome is under one additional case per million vaccinations. [1] and catching the flu the regular way can contribute to developing Guillain-Barré syndrome and getting infected by influenza itself increases both the risk of death (up to 1 in 10,000) and increases the risk of developing Guillain-Barré syndrome to a much higher level than the highest level of suspected vaccine involvement (approx. 10 times higher by recent estimates). The WHO reports "Every winter, tens of millions of people get the flu. Most are only ill and out of work for a week, yet the elderly are at a higher risk of death from the illness. We know the worldwide death toll exceeds a few hundred thousand people a year, but even in developed countries the numbers are uncertain, because medical authorities don't usually verify who actually died of influenza and who died of a flu-like illness." [2] As I said before, all medical interventions go through a "Risk–benefit analysis" and no medical intervention is without risk. But do the benefits of getting the flu shot far outweigh the risks? That's for you to decide, but anecdote does not make data. Your family is far more likely to contract Guillain–Barré syndrome from the flu than the flu vaccine. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syn... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza
Fomite 13y ago
Note that this is not due to polio, and as such any argument that it's caused by the polio vaccine (a flawed argument to begin with, as the live-attenuated vaccine is no longer in routine use in the U.S.) is entirely spurious. Polio-like paralysis can be caused by a number of viruses, including non-polio enteroviruses, and these do cause disease regularly - not quite at this scale, but also not astonishingly rare.
aestra 13y ago
Any medical intervention goes through something called a "Risk–benefit analysis" where the potential risks are weighed against the potential benefits. We accept a certain level of risk as necessary to achieve certain benefits. Vaccines that are widely used have displayed very high benefits with very low risks, especially on a population level. No medical intervention is without some risk, however low.
jmcqk6 13y ago
"Most scientists think it's safe" is indeed an appeal to authority. Instead of fear mongering and appeals to reason, let's introduce some real facts into the conversation: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-side-effects-and-adverse-events http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-si... Hell, if you want to, you can even get the raw data for yourself: http://vaers.hhs.gov/index http://vaers.hhs.gov/index The conclusion that I draw is that the dangers presented by vaccines are far less dangerous than the dangers presented by the diseases they protect against.
bsder 13y ago
Reminder that your infant getting whooping cough (now endemic in the US again) is a good way for it to wind up DEAD.
- ars 13y ago
  If only the whooping cough vaccine actually worked well. It works OK, but not great. They may have to switch from the accelular vaccine since it's less effective, but it causes major reactions in people.
  - bsder 13y ago
    The acellular vaccine worked well enough until clumps of people decided that they knew better than several decades of medical research. Now, we're going to have to switch back to a vaccine that is more individually effective but with more individual side effects because of a bunch of anti-vaccine nitwits.
noonespecial 13y ago
All of that is true. None of that means that anyone should hesitate for even a moment in getting their children fully vaccinated.
- tosseraccount 13y ago
  What if a relative was maimed by a vaccine?
  - ars 13y ago
    > What if a relative was maimed by a vaccine? What if a relative was maimed by NOT getting a vaccine? One of those two options is far more likely than the other. Far too many children die simply because they were not vaccinated. It's stupid to let people die for a completely preventable reason.

josephpmay 13y ago

The attitude towards vaccine safety isn't "most scientists think it's safe," it's "extensive research has shown that the societal benefits of this vaccine outweigh the potential risks". In this article, it's clear that the infected weren't "endangered by the vaccine." The reason why it mentioned that the children were vaccinated against polio was to show that the outbreak was likely a different virus, not to say that the vaccination in any way caused the infection.

epochwolf 13y ago

The number of people harmed by the vaccine is much lower than the number harmed by an infection. Vaccines are ineffective if even a small percentage opt out.

kordless 13y ago
That's not necessarily always true. The halo effect varies depending on the transmissibility of the disease AND the number of people vaccinated. Even small numbers of vaccinations can decrease the spread of an infectious disease.
- bsder 13y ago
  > Even small numbers of vaccinations can decrease the spread of an infectious disease. Only of the vaccine is particularly effective in individuals (95%+). Pertussis seems to be a good counterexample. You really do need the herd immunity to keep it under control since individual immunity seems to be below 70% or so. In addition, non-vaccinated people tend to be clustered since anti-vaccination is a function of shared social situation (shared belief, religious affiliation, or low socioeconomic status). Consequently, you need MORE people vaccinated to control it, not fewer.
- Fomite 13y ago
  Specifically, the critical % of people needed to be effectively vaccinated is 1 - (1/R0), where R0 is the "Basic Reproductive Number" of the disease. In English, how many people a single infective individual can be expected to infect in an entirely susceptible population.
MikeTLive 13y ago
If an evenly distributed percentage opt out, i can see where a vaccine may be less effective. like widening the holes in a net. However, is there a partial vaccination protocol which would strategically place an immunization net around an area of insufficient vaccination which could combat nonvaccination impact and thus prevent or limit spread?
- Fomite 13y ago
  The process you're referring to is "ring vaccination", and is quite commonly used in epidemiology to limit the spread of outbreaks from a known point source. They are however quite resource intensive to implement - you have to do tons of contact tracing to know who belongs in the net. It would be extremely difficult to do something like that for those avoiding routine childhood vaccinations.
Domenic_S 13y ago
> The number of people harmed by the vaccine is much lower than the number harmed by an infection. This this this this this. This is the way vaccines should be presented. But in my experience as a new father vaccines seem to be presented as a magic cure that never does any harm. When's the last time your doctor/nurse discussed the potential side-effects with you? If the number of folks hurt by vaccines was infinitesimally small, as some would have you believe, we wouldn't have the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. (http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html)
- Houshalter 13y ago
  >When's the last time your doctor/nurse discussed the potential side-effects with you? On the one hand your right and doctors should be honest about the risks and it should be your choice. On the other hand it's just going to get kids killed when parents hear the doctor tell them about the potential side-effects and decide not to vaccinate. >The thought that occurred to me was that, innumeracy being so widespread, no one would dare put numbers on that sheet of paper. If "amputation" is listed as a consequence with a probability of 0.0001%, patients will run screaming out of the office, crying, "Not my toe! I don't want to lose my toe!" No amount of patient explanation will suffice to convince them that they ought to diminish the emotional force of their fear by a factor of one million. Each extra zero after the decimal point would only be one more symbol for their eyes to glaze over; it would not diminish the emotional force of the anticipation by an additional factor of ten. (source http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/)

aasarava 13y ago

No -- An attitude of "someone on HN says 'vaccines may not always be safe'" is not real science. Unless you want to provide any actual studies to back up your claim, you're just spouting the sort of pseudoscience that gets children killed. While it's true that some very small percent of the population can have an allergic reaction to some vaccines, the risk of your child dying from, say, polio is much much higher than the risk of him/her dying from the vaccine.

tosseraccount 13y ago
Do you have a specific objection to anything I said?
- tosseraccount 13y ago
  "vaccines may not always be safe" is a true statement.
scrabble 13y ago
While I don't take the attitude that vaccines are to be avoided -- and myself, my wife, and children are vaccinated against all the standard stuff aside from the yearly flu shot -- my grandfather was in a coma for 18 months from Guillain–Barré syndrome which was a reaction to a vaccination. It's scary stuff, but incredibly rare.
- aestra 13y ago
  >my grandfather was in a coma for 18 months from Guillain–Barré syndrome which was a reaction to a vaccination I'll follow up your useless anecdote with another useless anecdote. I had a close family friend die of the flu. In his 50s. The chance of developing Guillain–Barré syndrome is under one additional case per million vaccinations. [1] and catching the flu the regular way can contribute to developing Guillain-Barré syndrome and getting infected by influenza itself increases both the risk of death (up to 1 in 10,000) and increases the risk of developing Guillain-Barré syndrome to a much higher level than the highest level of suspected vaccine involvement (approx. 10 times higher by recent estimates). The WHO reports "Every winter, tens of millions of people get the flu. Most are only ill and out of work for a week, yet the elderly are at a higher risk of death from the illness. We know the worldwide death toll exceeds a few hundred thousand people a year, but even in developed countries the numbers are uncertain, because medical authorities don't usually verify who actually died of influenza and who died of a flu-like illness." [2] As I said before, all medical interventions go through a "Risk–benefit analysis" and no medical intervention is without risk. But do the benefits of getting the flu shot far outweigh the risks? That's for you to decide, but anecdote does not make data. Your family is far more likely to contract Guillain–Barré syndrome from the flu than the flu vaccine. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syn... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

Fomite 13y ago

Note that this is not due to polio, and as such any argument that it's caused by the polio vaccine (a flawed argument to begin with, as the live-attenuated vaccine is no longer in routine use in the U.S.) is entirely spurious. Polio-like paralysis can be caused by a number of viruses, including non-polio enteroviruses, and these do cause disease regularly - not quite at this scale, but also not astonishingly rare.

aestra 13y ago

Any medical intervention goes through something called a "Risk–benefit analysis" where the potential risks are weighed against the potential benefits. We accept a certain level of risk as necessary to achieve certain benefits. Vaccines that are widely used have displayed very high benefits with very low risks, especially on a population level. No medical intervention is without some risk, however low.

jmcqk6 13y ago

"Most scientists think it's safe" is indeed an appeal to authority. Instead of fear mongering and appeals to reason, let's introduce some real facts into the conversation: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-side-effects-and-adverse-events http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-si... Hell, if you want to, you can even get the raw data for yourself: http://vaers.hhs.gov/index http://vaers.hhs.gov/index The conclusion that I draw is that the dangers presented by vaccines are far less dangerous than the dangers presented by the diseases they protect against.

bsder 13y ago

Reminder that your infant getting whooping cough (now endemic in the US again) is a good way for it to wind up DEAD.

ars 13y ago
If only the whooping cough vaccine actually worked well. It works OK, but not great. They may have to switch from the accelular vaccine since it's less effective, but it causes major reactions in people.
- bsder 13y ago
  The acellular vaccine worked well enough until clumps of people decided that they knew better than several decades of medical research. Now, we're going to have to switch back to a vaccine that is more individually effective but with more individual side effects because of a bunch of anti-vaccine nitwits.

noonespecial 13y ago

All of that is true. None of that means that anyone should hesitate for even a moment in getting their children fully vaccinated.

tosseraccount 13y ago
What if a relative was maimed by a vaccine?
- ars 13y ago
  > What if a relative was maimed by a vaccine? What if a relative was maimed by NOT getting a vaccine? One of those two options is far more likely than the other. Far too many children die simply because they were not vaccinated. It's stupid to let people die for a completely preventable reason.