3 ms·

Wakefield was one of your own and VAERS takes reports from the medical community. Vaccine rates are pretty high. If they're effective then they should be effec

by logn 12y ago

Wakefield was one of your own and VAERS takes reports from the medical community. Vaccine rates are pretty high. If they're effective then they should be effective for the 90%+ people taking them. Meanwhile Ebola with >50% mortality is raging and the medical community is up in arms over measles.

smt88 12y ago
This comment proves that you don't understand what you're talking about. I'm not trying to be condescending -- I've learned a lot about this recently due to the outbreak, and I encourage you to do some reading as well. Some vaccines are very effective at the individual level. Others are not, and so the safety of any individual is reliant on herd immunity. So when you say "they should be effective", I don't know if you mean to prevent an individual's illness or to prevent an outbreak. Either way, vaccines are not just intended to be effective for the individual -- they're intended to protect an entire society. As far as Ebola: the medical community is certainly up in arms over that, as well. It's a huge crisis, and millions are being poured into its treatment and prevention. The problem with Ebola is that there's a massive cultural barrier. Many of the most at-risk people are afraid of vaccines, and some of them totally misunderstand how Ebola is spread. Those two situations are getting better, but it's much harder of a situation to solve. The reason you're reading so much about measles is that it's affecting a wealthy, educated country, and it's directly caused by misinformation from the "anti-vaxxer" movement. It's alarming because it's a backslide, and we know it's preventable because we did such a good job preventing it for so long.
Fomite 12y ago
VAERS takes reports from anyone, and isn't allowed to remove spurious reports. Someone once reported a vaccine turned them into the Incredible Hulk, and they cannot, by law remove it. Vaccination rates are not pretty high when you're talking about highly contagious diseases. Measles has an R0 of roughly 16-18, which translates to a critical threshold of ~94% needing to be vaccinated in order to have herd immunity, assuming 100% efficacy. There are many communities below that threshold. Wakefield isn't one of our own. We kicked him out for being a fraud. Ebola is subject to a major public health response. I have friends in Sierra Leone. The 101st Airborne, the CDC, Doctors without Borders and many other groups are all in West Africa. Access to intensive care is driving down the mortality for Ebola. Believe me, there are still a huge amount of resources being spent on Ebola containment. We're capable of being worried about more than one disease at the same time. Of course, we wouldn't have to be if people were vaccinated against measles.

by logn 12y ago

smt88 12y ago

This comment proves that you don't understand what you're talking about. I'm not trying to be condescending -- I've learned a lot about this recently due to the outbreak, and I encourage you to do some reading as well. Some vaccines are very effective at the individual level. Others are not, and so the safety of any individual is reliant on herd immunity. So when you say "they should be effective", I don't know if you mean to prevent an individual's illness or to prevent an outbreak. Either way, vaccines are not just intended to be effective for the individual -- they're intended to protect an entire society. As far as Ebola: the medical community is certainly up in arms over that, as well. It's a huge crisis, and millions are being poured into its treatment and prevention. The problem with Ebola is that there's a massive cultural barrier. Many of the most at-risk people are afraid of vaccines, and some of them totally misunderstand how Ebola is spread. Those two situations are getting better, but it's much harder of a situation to solve. The reason you're reading so much about measles is that it's affecting a wealthy, educated country, and it's directly caused by misinformation from the "anti-vaxxer" movement. It's alarming because it's a backslide, and we know it's preventable because we did such a good job preventing it for so long.

Fomite 12y ago

VAERS takes reports from anyone, and isn't allowed to remove spurious reports. Someone once reported a vaccine turned them into the Incredible Hulk, and they cannot, by law remove it. Vaccination rates are not pretty high when you're talking about highly contagious diseases. Measles has an R0 of roughly 16-18, which translates to a critical threshold of ~94% needing to be vaccinated in order to have herd immunity, assuming 100% efficacy. There are many communities below that threshold. Wakefield isn't one of our own. We kicked him out for being a fraud. Ebola is subject to a major public health response. I have friends in Sierra Leone. The 101st Airborne, the CDC, Doctors without Borders and many other groups are all in West Africa. Access to intensive care is driving down the mortality for Ebola. Believe me, there are still a huge amount of resources being spent on Ebola containment. We're capable of being worried about more than one disease at the same time. Of course, we wouldn't have to be if people were vaccinated against measles.