Joe Mercola plays the religion card against vaccines

Julia @1:

What do you mean? Is this a plea to Mercola or Orac?

For completeness’ sake, what are the cells in question and what is their purpose in creating the vaccines?

one of every two people receiving vaccines might have opted out of them based on religious beliefs alone, had they been given truthful and complete information

Interesting question – if one argues that people have a right to complete and truthful information about vaccines, in order to ensure compatibility with their religious beliefs, wouldn’t the collateral be that they should also be given complete and truthful information about their religion or church at the same time, in order to make a really informed decision?

I’ve got to admit that my first reaction on reading the quotes was: how on earth could anyone get enough aborted foetuses to make those billions of doses if vaccines come from “cell cultures derived from aborted human fetuses” (the implication being that evil pharmascientists are taking aborted BABIES!!! and using them to make vaccines).

It doesn’t even pass the test of “would this really be a reliable and regular source of culture material”, the way hen’s eggs are for ‘flu.

I need a drink, and I haven’t even had lunch yet. Antivaxers are really bad for your health.

Mercola:

For someone who is Pro Life to discover that a vaccine contains the DNA from aborted fetuses is like a Muslim finding out that a vaccine is derived from pork.

ORAC:

Actually, that line has been tried before, where fundamentalist Muslims have claimed that vaccines are unclean because of gelatin derived from pork. … It’s nonsense; Muslim authorities in, for example, Britain have out and out said, …

That’s not a good argument. It’s an appeal to authority. Muslim authority.

It’s perfectly reasonable to religiously abstain from these vaccines for viruses that most likely they will never EVER die from or have any permanent injury, only lifetime immunity.

If they listen to the tin god who says they will most likely die if they don’t take the god’s sacrifices, well then, that’s idolatry.

Seems like a whole mash of fairly inane arguments with no actual evidence or substance (and has Mercola come out against stem cell research? Since some of the stem cell lines did come orginally from aborted fetuses.)

Given the replication series necessary over the years – this would be like charging someone today for murder, based on the actions of their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, etc. grandfather.

And in Nigeria, one of the remaining Polio hotspots, it was a full-blown conspiracy theory (that the vaccine was manufacturered in Israel to steralize Muslims) that was spread by the religious hierarchy that almost ended the vaccination program in that country – and caused the continued spread of the disease (and set back the eradication campaign by years, if not over a decade).

I should clarify — Senomyx uses cells from such a line to test their flavors, not IN their flavors.

Thanks for the clarification Becky, you had me going there for a second.
As for Augie, corrected it for you
It’s perfectly reasonable to religiously abstain from these seat belts for accidents that most likely they will never EVER die from or have any permanent injury
And I can’t wait for his rant against the radioactive smoke detectors Big Nuke is making him put into his kids bedrooms.

Mercola:

How can a person be pro-life and NOT object to the use of these vaccines?

By believing in the greater good; by not wanting that child who was aborted in the 1960s to have died in vain; to want to save far more children; in short, by loving LIFE. But Mercola probably knows this. He’s not a true believer; he’s a charlatan, and he only invokes the pro-life argument in order to pander to his base. He’s cultivating an image, nothing more.

SteveHT:

For completeness’ sake, what are the cells in question and what is their purpose in creating the vaccines?

The cells in question are immortal cell lines originally obtained from aborted fetuses. (The cells themselves are not immortal, but they can be replicated endlessly.) If memory serves, there are three different cell lines, from three different babies, which are used in vaccine manufacture. They are also used in a great many more things, including basic research and safety testing of new drugs or ingredients. (Basically, they’re a supply of human cells which can be exposed to various substances to find out what happens. That’s one form of in vitro testing.) The cells themselves were not harvested from the fetuses; they are distant descendents of the cells which were harvested from those fetuses, who were aborted for medical reasons in the 1960s. Apropos for this discussion, one of the babies was aborted due to maternal rubella, which can cause devastating effects on the baby.

For vaccine manufacture, they’re used to manufacture the antigens that will be put into the vaccine. For most viral vaccines (not sure about other pathogens), you need to infect some cells with the virus (or a genetically modified version of it) so that the virus can do what it does and coopt their machinery to churn out more copies of the virus. The cells are then killed, the viruses extracted, and additional work is usually done to attenuate or outright kill the viruses. This crippled or dead viral stock is then put into a vaccine form and injected into a patient so the patient’s immune system can see it, believe that it’s a live virus, and activate the biologically machinery to form an immunity to it.

What sort of cells can you use to make the original viral stock for producing a vaccine? Well, that depends on the virus. Influenza infects a wide range of animals, and in particular, it infect birds. This is very convenient, because it means they can use fertilized chicken eggs as the growth medium for the virus, and eggs are cheap.

Not all viruses are so handy. Measles, for instance, is unique to humans. It cannot infect anything else. That means that if you want to grow enough of it to make a vaccine, you need human cells. There aren’t very many options for that, apart from these old stem cell lines. That is why they’re used. But it is not a case of profiting off of abortion. This is more a case of making sure that a child did not die in vain. It’s more like tissue or organ donation — making a death more meaningful so that out of one tragedy can many lives be saved. Given the wide range of uses these cell lines have, I think it’s not unreasonable to suggest that, at a very low minimum, tens of thousands of lives have been saved for these three deaths. And they didn’t die to produce vaccine. They were already dead; their parents chose to donate the bodies to medical science that some good might come of their terrible tragedy.

And none of these cells wind up in the finished vaccine. Some proteins from them doubtless do (just as chicken albumin winds up in flu vaccine), and yeah, there’s an “ew” factor. But it’s not like what Mercola and his ilk are claiming.

Hey! Thanks for posting this Orac. Just yesterday I got in a fight on Facebook over this very Mercola article. Managed to get two awesome posts by searching your site to debunk this idiocy, and then here you go and address Mercola’s part of it too! Perfect. I mean, I’m probably going to get unfriended soon because I won’t back down, but what the fuck do I need scare mongering idiots hanging around for anyway?

I must admit to agreeing with a bit of what Mercola says. It is true that many people in the US would want to know this fact. It is also true that many people in the US would probably consider this a reason to avoid vaccination. I think they’re out of their gourd, but that doesn’t change what they believe.

It’s very hard to say that people would want to know this, we KNOW they would want to know this, and yet we don’t specifically tell them about it. If that would require manufacturing procedures to be changed to use other cell lines in order to address such irrational objections, so be it. Ideally education would change people’s minds, but I doubt that would actually work.

If the cell lines had been derived from miscarried fetuses, would this objection just melt away? Or would the objection simply adapt?

Mercola is obviously appealing to his scientific principle “Once in contact, always in contact.” I mean, it must be a scientific principle if you can use your intuition to test and discover that the principle is obviously a true one.

Even the Vatican ist not amused using cells derived from abortions to produce viral vaccines.

But Ratzinger (now pope) claimed that vaccines have benefits and therefore the moral arguments have to stand behind- but in the future new vaccines should not be derived from human fetal cells derived from abortion.

Details here

http://www.immunize.org/concerns/vaticandocument.htm

so the position is clear: immunize !

DLC @15

I wonder if Mercola is also a creationist ?

I am sure he is one when there is money in it for him.

There is an element of creationism/ID in most alt-med since much of it is based on a belief that nature/the universe was designed for us and cares about us ie. herbs were designed for our health. Flora brand herbal products have the slogan “For every disease we know God allows a herb to grow.” Alt Med is a religion.

More here on the cell cultures used to produce vaccines. The two major cell lines cited were originally obtained following legal abortions in the 1960s. In neither case were abortions obtained for the purpose of vaccine research or manufacture. Vaccination itself has prevented many abortions:

“…the RA27/3 rubella vaccine (made using one of the cell lines developed from a fetus) has prevented many thousands of spontaneous and induced abortions by protecting pregnant women from infection…The Vatican Academy also noted that “the parents who did not accept the vaccination of their own children become responsible for the malformations [due to rubella infection] in question.”

So the moral question here is a bit more complicated than Mercola is letting on.

I doubt Mercola’s disingenuous appeal has much effect on Catholics. A small percentage of anti-abortion activists may feel differently. One wonders if they are also busily collecting information on all the drugs they will have to abstain from since they were developed using these fetal cell lines.

One wonders if they are also busily collecting information on all the drugs they will have to abstain from since they were developed using these fetal cell lines.

The second link in the last paragraph of Orac’s original post is to an organization doing just that: http://www.soundchoice.org
They seem awfully focused on vaccines to near-exclusion of other uses of fetal cell lines, for some strange reason.

Augustine, if you can’t engage us like a rational adult, please leave.

@Jen

Science mom talked about being able to read the package insert but that seems a bit of a cop out. For a lot of people it could be quite upsetting to feel “blindsided” by this news.

Blindsided? Really? Would those same parents feel blindsided by their precious children getting whooping cough or measles?

First you have to pay attention, a difficulty in today’s world. Then you have to understand the implications of the information presented. That is especially difficult when the likes of Mercola spout lies and twist truth beyond recognition. Mercola (Null, Adams and others) have found a rich and lucrative vein of stupidity, ignorance and fear which they leverage for their own benefit.

Informed consent depends strongly on the intelligence (or gullibility) of the consentee.

That’s not a good argument. It’s an appeal to authority. Muslim authority.

In the context of discussing the demands laid upon one by one’s choice of religious authorities, if there is an alternative to appealing to authority then I would like to hear it.

@Jen: I know this is pointless, but I’ll try anyway:

so many parents obviously question vaccine safety

Do you have a citation for this opinion? Maybe you can opine on a percentage of parents make up “so many”?

Comment inexplicably caught in moderation. Some perspective: a pin head weighs more than 12,000 times as much as the human DNA in a vial of rubella vaccine.

Beamup, I agree with you. Science mom talked about being able to read the package insert but that seems a bit of a cop out. For a lot of people it could be quite upsetting to feel “blindsided ” by this news.

Typical, “Science Mom said this so I’m going to be contrary” response from Jen. It’s not a cop-out by any stretch. If vaccine excipients are that important to a parent, they have the information easily available; it’s not the physician’s job to intuit what left-field concern a parent may have. Just because you wish to make more of an issue than you should, doesn’t mean that the medical profession should be on board.

It is amazing that you seem to be able to find what information suits you on the interwebz but suddenly become blindingly computer-illiterate when you wish to create some faux indignation, e.g. cell cultures. No one is blind-sided who doesn’t want to be.

Rabies vaccine is made with aborted fetal cells…so morally upstanding pro-life/anti-vaxxers should refuse a rabies shot if they are bitten by a wild animal, right?

JayK, that is an incredibly intriguing thought. Would the people who object to aborted fetal cells in their vaccines (and if there’s a list somewhere of medications containing or developed with same, we need it posthaste!) be equally loath to get blood or tissue from one kind of sinner or another? Would they suffer in a burn unit rather than get skin grafts from a morally incompatible donor? Would they be willing to wait, in case of a medical emergency, for blood that has been certified free of premarital sex/history of abortion/atheism/democratic voter registration/etc.? I mean, really, if you’re going to stand on principle, you should be consistent.

Alison, I have to disagree strongly that all the things you’re grouping together are so similar that they must either all be rejected or all be accepted in order to avoid inconsistency.  Whether or not you yourself are religious, certainly you must have heard of the principle “hate the sin, but love the sinner”?  Your examples do not observe that crucial distinction.

Let me be frank about this, first: I think Mercola is full of horsecrap.  He may pretend that he’s concerned about whether people are getting the information they need in order to observe their religious beliefs – but I’m certain that if he ever realized the reasons why people with certain religious beliefs should vaccinate (such as it being a way to help the weak and vulnerable who would suffer in an outbreak!) he’d do his best to suppress that information.  In fact, I think he comes perilously close to violating the commandment about taking the Lord’s name in vain, which actually has little to do with yelling “Jesus Christ!” when you drop a hammer on your toes and more to do with people who think things like “I don’t want people to vaccinate” and say things like “God doesn’t want you to vaccinate.”

But if you do belong to a denomination that regards abortion as a sin (and there are of course many of them) then a medical treatment using cells from an aborted fetus is not merely something associated with a sinner, it is itself the fruit of the sin.  A sinner is a person who does many things, some of which may be very good and some of which may be very bad; it would be against the principles of most modern religions to reject everything ever done by a sinner because then a sinner could do no good works to atone for their sins.  But the fruit of a sin is something that is in existence, or in its current hands, because something bad was done.  It’s hardly unreasonable to regard that differently.  A reformed mugger could donate his time to a charitable cause without giving anyone cause for hesitation; if he starts donating the personal effects of people he robbed, it’s a different story.

Of course, there’s far more to the issue than just “does the treatment come from the fruit of a sin?”  The fact that the sin in this case (for those who believe it is one) was not committed for the fruit comes into play, as does the fact that especially when “the treatment” in question is vaccination, not taking it could constitute a serious sin of omission.  It’s just not as simple as “if you are leery of a treatment that came from fetal cells originally, you should also be leery of blood donated by atheists” either.

@Krebiozen:

There is 200 nanograms of single and double stranded human DNA in a vial of Merumax II 200 nanograms = 0.2 micrograms = 0.0002 milligrams 2.5 / 0.0002 = 12,500)

Any idea how many base pairs that is?

Julia @7

Thanks for the clarification. Your post @1:

racking his obsessed brain for reasons to never admit to his ego and the world he may have been wrong in the past

didn’t refer to who ‘he’ was.
Knowing now you meant Mercola, it makes sense to me.
FTR I think he’s a crank, too.

Reading yet another atheist blog from an SBM linker on here I can’t help but wonder how many are socialist democrats yet they support capitalist PHARMA.

Hypocrisy thy name in politics is Scientism. Scientism Based Medicine (SBM).

Well, to those folks made squeamish by the origin of these cells: just what source of human cells would be acceptable to you?

Augustine, why do you even come here? Nobody really wants to read anything you have to say and you obviously don’t like anyone here or what they have to say so perhaps you should do everyone, including yourself, a favor and just go away.

Antaeus Feldspar@48:
Thank you for saying what I wanted to say, only much better.

@Matthew Cline,
The entire human genome contains approximately 3 billion base pairs and weighs 6-7 pg. As 200 ng is 200,000 pg, it is the equivalent of approximately 31,000 human genomes, or about 100 trillion base pairs. This is close to Science Mom’s estimation. The ratio of single to double stranded DNA in the rubella vaccine is approximately 4:1, and single stranded DNA doesn’t have base pairs, obviously, but the estimate gives an idea of how much DNA we are talking about.

That makes it sound like a lot, but bear in mind that a drop of water contains around 1 billion trillion molecules (according to my rough calculations).

According to the reference I gave at #37 the average size of the double stranded DNA fragments in rubella vaccine is 210 base pairs. These are very small fragments of DNA when you consider there are 220 million base pairs in human chromosome 1.

@Antaeus Feldspar: I wasn’t talking about the religious aspect, for once. One of the arguments used against fetal cells in vaccines is that the foreign DNA “might” be able to move beyond the blood/brain barrier and (insert random medical conspiracy theory). The religious angle at least has an appeal to religious logic, but the DNA/blood/brain thing fails, at least due to the limited number of base strands available in vaccines. But when you’re talking a transfusion, well then you’re talking about replacing a significant amount of a person, or something. Sorry I wasn’t more explicit, I meant to indicate a shifting of goal posts.

I remember that veto, and I remember some ridiculous setup Bush had where he had some kids sitting around on a podium as he made a speech where he said something to the effect of ‘these kids are not spare parts.’ It was a yell-at-the-TV moment for me.

I’m not convinced that people who objected knew what the bill was about. I think it was spun as being ‘generate embryos just for research’ or even ‘abort for research.’

(I’m no fan of IVF, given overpopulation and so many parentless kids who would love to be adopted, but that’s another debate. If it’s going on, we should at least use the cast-offs for good.)

@Fred: so you would rather those aborted fetuses from the 1960s for cripe’s sake (which, by the way, was before Roe v. Wade, therefore these abortions were done for medical reasons and women had to jump through a LOT of hoops to get them) had gone to waste rather than save thousands of lives over the past 50 years? So out of the evil (in your mind), NO good can come? Right. Remind me not to ask you about YOUR ethics. Because obviously, if you were hiding Jews during WWII, you would tell the Gestapo they were there if asked, because lying is a sin also.

Fred, why do you think it is better to not vaccinate for rubella than to use the vaccine? Do you want us to relive the days of hundreds of stillbirths and babies being born with disability due to Congenital Rubella Syndrome?

What kind of Christian are you that you don’t care of the results of not preventing rubella?

why do you think it is better to not vaccinate for rubella than to use the vaccine?

It’s nice to hear that Chris is vigorously promoting her usual infection-promoting agenda.

As ‘deaths’ are defined in Th1Th2’s world as ‘the structural beams supporting the floors in traditional Tudor mansions’ and ‘783,936’ means ‘those little bits on the ends of shoelaces’ to her, I can’t say I have any opinion on it at all.

In related news:

Today ( @ AoA), Kent Heckenlively goes absolutely biblical : characterising the vaccine debacle as a battle between good and evil (*a la* Stephen King’s, “The Stand”), he cites “Dark forces which in the past have destroyed the careers of those who have found clues to the afflictions of our children” and “wicked people keep our children from getting better”. Speaking about “evildoers”, he opens the bible- at random -to Psalm 94**. “I know why they fear us so much”: he obviously believes that God is on their side.

I know they don’t like us but isn’t this a bit overboard even for KH? The comments are somewhat… extravagant- “smiting” and all..

** Isn’t that the one that inspired Luther to write “A Mighty Fortress”? Wait, I’m an atheist how do I know that? Calli, Gray Falcon?

Isn’t it obvious that Th1Th2 and augustine post here to make Orac’s opponents look stupid? Why else would Orac let them post here? Unless augustine/Th1Th2 can convince me that Orac is honest and open-minded enough to allow people who oppose him to openly post here, there is no alternative but to conclude that they are Orac’s shills.

So Troll1/Troll2 how many shots is one influenza vaccine? Is it one or three? Are you counting H1N1, H3N2 and influenza B combined as one illness?

Anyway, the point of the other vaccines that have multiple strains went over your head completely. You wouldn’t recognize real science through your self imposed delusions. Either get help for your mental illness, or actually sit down and learn the real science.

Isn’t it obvious that Th1Th2 and augustine post here to make Orac’s opponents look stupid? Why else would Orac let them post here? Unless augustine/Th1Th2 can convince me that Orac is honest and open-minded enough to allow people who oppose him to openly post here, there is no alternative but to conclude that they are Orac’s shills.

You are an idiot. Because by your thinking all of the herpesviruses, including varicella, are the same thing. The antigen counting meme is pointless due to the sheer number of ones a person encounters from birth. A concept that has confused since you first showed up at SBM.

The problem is that you do not understand we can educate the body’s immune system to mount a defense without the consequences of the worst of the full blown diseases. You still have not presented any real science to support your delusions.

Get help.

Th1Th2, you have been known to grossly misquote people’s comments and then argue the warped version of their comments as if they were the originals. Why should we debate you when you clearly have no interest in honest discussion?

Obviously, Gray did not get to read post #589 from that link.

Troll1/Troll2: For anyone who cares to review your commenting history at Science-Based Medicine or here at Respectful Insolence, it is established beyond reasonable doubt that you are incapable of honestly and reliably engaging anyone else on the subject of vaccines, or indeed, on the subject of medicine in general (as compared to, say, the ugh troll, who is probably just unwilling to do so).

You look particularly bad compared to, say, the good faith disagreement expressed by Antaeus Feldspar to Alison upthread.

It seems clear that you cannot argue a point without resorting to pullng numbers out of thin air (or from sources who pull them from their nether regions), making up peculiar and personally idiosyncratic definitions for words which no one else shares, failing to back up assertions which are diametrically opposed to common knowledge, and setting up armies of strawmen to beat the stuffing out of.

Watching others beat their heads against the brick wall of your ignorance and mendacity is painful, and reading the drivel you spew in such massive quantities is more agonizing still.

I believe I can speak for many of the other commenters here when I suggest that you kindly piss off.

Gray Falcon:

Do you even understand the concept of honesty?

Or opening her mind and actually learning. The DTaP, MMR and influenza vaccine for three different flu viruses are one vaccine each.

And we vaccinate for rubella because we do not want to repeat the tens of thousands of CRS tragedies of the early 1960s rubella epidemic.

Th1Th2,
Saying “We don’t want to die of a preventable disease” is not the same as saying that everyone who gets said disease will die from it.
You have built up a Statue of Liberty sized strawman, you are blatantly misrepresenting what was said, and you have no idea how much we are smirking at your stupidity.

@Christian Cynic

The trolls’ postings here remind me of a quote from Voltaire.

I think it was, “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

Julian,

Saying “We don’t want to die of a preventable disease” is not the same as saying that everyone who gets said disease will die from it. You have built up a Statue of Liberty sized strawman, you are blatantly misrepresenting what was said, and you have no idea how much we are smirking at your stupidity.

No, you’re the one who’s stupid for not reading the entire post made by the original poster. Here it is:

Thingy, my entire sentence was this:
Thingy, get it through your head—the rest of us think that getting “infected” with attenuated or dead “germs” so that our immune system will be primed to deal with real, wild-type infections is a damn good idea, because we don’t want to die of a preventable disease.

Clearly, the poster does not want to die from a vaccine-preventable disease. So it was not a strawman. You only made the poster look stupid too for disavowing of what was said.

Th1Th2,
To reiterate, Saying “We don’t want to die of a preventable disease” is not the same as saying that everyone who gets said disease will die from it. Please learn the difference between “might happen”, and “will happen”.

Mentally healthy adults will never be able to conduct a serious conversation with Thingy until she gets the help of dedicated mental health professionals. We are talking about the risk/benefit ratios of the various options that exist in the real world, and she will always be talking about the delusional option she believes exists called “due diligence” which, unlike anything in the real world, has a risk of 0%. We’re never going to believe in this imaginary option her mental illness tells her exists, and she is not going to stop believing in it and start dealing with reality until her underlying mental illness is treated.

I feel slightly sorry for Thingy; mental illness is an awful thing to deal with. But it doesn’t excuse everything, and whether or not her mental illness is what causes her to falsely misrepresent someone saying “protection against wild-type infections is good” as someone saying “catching wild-type infections is good,” it’s not acceptable behavior for mature adults.

Rev,

Answer one question, you boneheaded freak: Is 1,000,000 a larger number than 100?

Of course, 1,000,000 is a larger number than 100 but you’ve forgotten than smart people do not play the game of death therefore 100 is also greater than 0 so we choose 0. Now go bark somewhere else.

Julian,

To reiterate, Saying “We don’t want to die of a preventable disease” is not the same as saying that everyone who gets said disease will die from it. Please learn the difference between “might happen”, and “will happen”.

Death “will” happen in 1:100, do you agree? And besides you’re also supporting my original contention as to why you and the rest of vaccine apologists always tend to put the cart before the horse, such as the automatic 1:100 death sentence takes precedence over having the rash, cough, missing out school and work. Go and read #88.

Of course, 1,000,000 is a larger number than 100 but you’ve forgotten than smart people do not play the game of death therefore 100 is also greater than 0 so we choose 0. Now go bark somewhere else.

In other words, given a choice of 1,000,000 or 100, Thingy chooses 1,000,000. 0 is not available as a choice at this time. However, if everyone were to choose 100, 0 would become available in just a few years for many (but not all) diseases, like what happened with rinderpest and smallpox.

Antaeus,

Nothing that Thingy said at #88 on this post, #589 on the post previously referenced, or anything Thingy could say, could make it acceptable that she took a statement that recommended protecting against wild-type infections and mutilated it to pretend it recommended catching wild-type infections. End of story.

Talk about dishonesty. There’s no such thing like “protecting” in the original post. You just made that up. On the contrary, the original poster even recommended the rest of getting “infected” with the vaccine because they don’t want to die of a vaccine-preventable disease.

So long as you eat, breathe, and drink, you’re playing the game. So unless you choose to starve, dehydrate, or suffocate yourself, you are unable to refuse to play. The only way out of the game of life is death.

Antaeus,

Thingy tries to excuse herself by pointing to her belief that wild-type viruses and vaccine viruses have no significant difference between them, but it’s no excuse; her beliefs do not give her the right to misrepresent other people’s beliefs.

Haha. How far more can you go with your deliberate ignorance? You merely posted one quotation from one poster ignoring the other poster’s remark immediately following that which are BOTH the central jist of my contention. Here is the original post:

The Very Reverend Bull-Axe,

You: “wild-type infections is a damn good idea, because we don’t want to die of a preventable disease.”

Krebiozen: “Then they get a rash,[…]cough[…]time off work[…]miss some schooling.”

So how’s the horse in the rear view mirror?

Not only that you got lost in the wilderness, you also moved the goalpost by creating another issue as a result of your misunderstandings (bolded part above). I have to answer nonetheless:

The immune response to a live attenuated vaccine is virtually identical to that produced by a natural infection. The immune system does not differentiate between an infection with a weakened vaccine virus and an infection with a wild virus.

In fairness, you are right. It’s not an excuse. It’s a basic fact and you are damn too ignorant about it. But then again, I’m not making excuses whatsoever. Some people are not just smart.

Kevin,

So long as you eat, breathe, and drink, you’re playing the game. So unless you choose to starve, dehydrate, or suffocate yourself, you are unable to refuse to play.

Haha. Another terrible analogy as usual. Eating, breathing and drinking are man’s physiological need. It is not a game, like playing the Russian Roulette, where if I refused to eat, breathe and drink I would still live to see another day. And besides what’s so physiological about the Russian Roulette that you are forcing me to engage in anyway?

The only way out of the game of life is death.

Exactly the way you play the game of Russian Roulette. Nobody will leave the room alive.

So don’t be surprise if there are smart people (the unvaccinated and uninfected) who wouldn’t just engage to such fatal game.

Here’s another quote from the pamphlet that Th1Th2 cites:

Although live attenuated vaccines replicate, they usually do not cause disease such as may occur with the “wild” form of the organism. When a live attenuated vaccine does cause “disease,” it is usually much milder than the natural disease and is referred to as an adverse reaction.

So in other words, they aren’t identical. That Th1Th2 thinks that pulling out a passage that almost suggests what he/she believes is true while ignoring parts that flatly contradict said claims is an honest debate tactic says much about him or her.

Heliantus,

Battleaxe’s sentence was not

wild-type infections is a damn good idea, because we don’t want to die of a preventable disease

I have clearly explained that already in #109 and #114 and you’re not paying close attention both quotations in the original post.

True, but the infection itself is not as harsh (or not as often as harsh) than with the wild virus, which is the whole freaking point of using a weakened virus.

But I’m not an infection-promoter and I don’t play that game. Do you have any problem with that?

You have to remember Thingy thinks an infection is an immune response (even to things that aren’t alive), so the vaccine eliciting the same response as the pathogen to her means they both cause the same infection.

Understanding the troll’s ‘logic’ makes my head hurt.

Just don’t give me the gun and force me to play your game of death.

Dude, you started playing this game the second your Da’s seed met your Ma’s ovula.
(which brings us back to teratogenic diseases, like rubella)

It’s not “we” which is forcing you to play Russian roulette. It’s life itself.

@Todd W
I was meaning ‘contact’ in the very loosest sense of the word, but you are right. Without living in a bubble or otherwise avoiding breathing the same air as the rest of humanity, or relying on herd immunity established by other people getting vaccinated, it is impossible to avoid getting infected.

Oh, this ought to be good…

That’s why there are red flags, signs and symptoms to alert you to stay away not engage.

Do tell us what “red flags, signs and symptoms” you can use to stay alert/not engage when you enter a room where no one is present, but where someone who was infected with measles had been up to two hours previously?

Krebiozen,

Dude, you started playing this game the second your Da’s seed met your Ma’s ovula.
(which brings us back to teratogenic diseases, like rubella)
It’s not “we” which is forcing you to play Russian roulette. It’s life itself.

Reproduction of healthy offsprings not CRS babies which of course is everyone’s desire. Unlike you, they are not playing around with rubella virus. Get that?

I would have to advise anyone to distance away from any symptomatic individuals regardless

But measles is at its most contagious for 4 days before any symptoms appear. You can’t avoid contagious people who don’t have any symptoms, unless you avoid all people.

I do not promote the virus, you do

Where measles is concerned I promote vaccination with the attenuated live virus which causes serious problems in fewer than 1 in a million people. You are promoting the wild virus that causes serious problems or death in at least 1 in a thousand.

I also promote vaccination with dead viruses or viral proteins that were never part of a virus (like hepatitis B vaccine which is made by genetically engineered baker’s yeast), and which don’t cause infection at all by any scientifically accepted definition of infection.

Telling people they can prevent infection by not getting vaccinated and simply avoid contact with symptomatic people is promoting infection. We know what happens if you rely on such useless methods of infection control.

“There have been over 12,500 cases of measles and at least 6 deaths this year in France, with 444 cases of severe pneumonia and 14 cases of encephalitis.”
http://pediatrics.about.com/od/measles/a/measles-outbreak.htm

If only those foolish French people had exercised “due diligence” (that’s sarcasm Th1Th2, in case you didn’t get it).

Based on past form, we can expect an explosion of word salad about squirrels and trees or similar nonsense any minute.

Oh that’s nothing compared to live measles vaccine virus in every doctor clinics that never leaves the room yet continues to infect naive children everyday for as long as they are being used and until they are discarded. How’s that sound?

Hold on, let me do a risk-benefit analysis…

Sounds good to me.

BTW, Thingy, while you read this, you were breathing in pathogens that your immune system will have to fight off. Click, click, click…

How fortunate are those who haven’t hit the loaded chamber yet.

Krebiozen,

But measles is at its most contagious for 4 days before any symptoms appear. You can’t avoid contagious people who don’t have any symptoms, unless you avoid all people.

Ignorant fool. Why did you stop measles communicability during the 4-day pre-rash period when the maximum communicability is up to 4 days after the rash appears? Yes, you can’t avoid contagious people who are asymptomatic including the recently vaccinated. That’s why MOST infectious diseases are symptomatic to alert you that distance and length of exposure is essential to break the chain of infection. You don’t do that during vaccination.

You are promoting the wild virus that causes serious problems or death in at least 1 in a thousand.

Liar. Isn’t it clear that I am both an anti-vax and anti-pox. Neither do I promote vaccine-induced infections nor natural infection. I know you’re getting desperate.

I also promote vaccination with dead viruses or viral proteins that were never part of a virus (like hepatitis B vaccine which is made by genetically engineered baker’s yeast), and which don’t cause infection at all by any scientifically accepted definition of infection.

I do not promote HbsAg, you do.

Telling people they can prevent infection by not getting vaccinated and simply avoid contact with symptomatic people is promoting infection. We know what happens if you rely on such useless methods of infection control.

Idiot. The shortest distance between the uninfected and the infectious agent is the vaccine, otherwise, you’ll have to pay me to get infected somewhere else. But no I don’t do that. I’m not crazy.

If only those foolish French people had exercised “due diligence” (that’s sarcasm Th1Th2, in case you didn’t get it).

I’m uninfected, do you want me to go to France?

That would be in a hospital or in a clinic where, in fairness, they would have then initiated terminal disinfection of the room. A simple policy procedure. Outside of the hospital and in the community, then I will have to doubt it’s measles unless proven otherwise. There are more measles infection happening inside the doctors clinic everyday that are not reported (intentionally) than a measles infection caused by a floating measles virus seen in a fantasy room with no one else around. When was the last you have heard of the latter?

You still have not answered my question. If you enter a room where an infected person had been up to two hours previously but is no longer there, what “red flags, signs and symptoms” would alert you to stay away? Let’s say it’s the foyer in an apartment complex, just as an example.

Ignorant fool… Idiot.. Liar…

You can insult me as much as you like, it doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t alter the facts. You have repeatedly claimed that vaccination is as bad as infection by the diseases it protects against. You repeatedly claim that people can avoid infection by “due diligence”, which anyone with the slightest understanding of how contagion works knows is ridiculous. You are encouraging people to put their lives and the lives of their children at risk. That’s infection promotion, and I think it’s despicable.

I’m not crazy.

I’m no psychiatrist, but it really does look to me as if you are.

If people would stopped vaccinating, there will be less infection and life would go on as usual.

And the craziness becomes visible for all to see clearly.

In France in 2007 there were around 40 cases of measles. Vaccination rates dropped, just as they are dropping in the USA at the moment. This year in France so far, 11,500 cases of measles, 6 deaths, 444 cases of severe pneumonia and 14 cases of encephalitis. Life didn’t go on as usual for those 464 unfortunate people and their families did it?

In many ways the health care system in France is better than it is in the USA. Is there any reason to think things will go any differently in America if people continue to listen to idiots like you, and don’t get their children vaccinated?

No big deal.

Hundreds of people with severe pneumonia, encephalitis or dead is no big deal to you? And that’s just from measles. Despicable.

JayK,

Considering that carriers are infectious for days before showing any negative signs of measles, they are likely to have spread the infection long before they ever went to a doctors’ office, right?

Same with the recently vaccinated, they are contagious for days. Now, are the unvaccinated and uninfected contagious?

Oh that’s nothing compared to live measles vaccine virus in every doctor clinics that never leaves the room yet continues to infect naive children everyday for as long as they are being used and until they are discarded. How’s that sound?

It sounds like a classic tu quoque argument being used by a mentally ill person to deflect attention away from the fact that her “due diligence” strategy does not work.

Krebiozen,

In France in 2007 there were around 40 cases of measles. Vaccination rates dropped, just as they are dropping in the USA at the moment. This year in France so far, 11,500 cases of measles, 6 deaths, 444 cases of severe pneumonia and 14 cases of encephalitis. Life didn’t go on as usual for those 464 unfortunate people and their families did it?

Oh I’m pretty sure the unvaccinated and uninfected didn’t cause that since they don’t have any evidence of the disease. Therefore, they have 0 risk, 0 complication and 0 measles-related death. So who’s harboring the virus? Those people who’s playing the game.

In many ways the health care system in France is better than it is in the USA. Is there any reason to think things will go any differently in America if people continue to listen to idiots like you, and don’t get their children vaccinated?

If people would listen to you and vaccinate, you are promoting primary measles infection concomitant with risks, complications and death because you’re giving them the gun and forcing them to play your game of death.

Hundreds of people with severe pneumonia, encephalitis or dead is no big deal to you? And that’s just from measles. Despicable.

Life without vaccines is no big deal. Life will still go on. You should be happy for there are unvaccinated children who are not exposed and uninfected. Maybe you need to check, recheck and check all over again on how ignorant doctors should treat a simple, benign and uncomplicated case of measles. You see, iatrogenic death is on the top of the list you know.

Antaeus,

It sounds like a classic tu quoque argument being used by a mentally ill person to deflect attention away from the fact that her “due diligence” strategy does not work.

By staying away from the pathogen, I have prevented measles infection. No risks, complications and death. Due diligence really works! No sweat.

@Th1Th2:

A succinct example of a bias diagnostic screening. No wonder whenever infectious diseases cases are down amidst high vaccination rate, an epidemic would always follow and then the numbers are deliberately reversed. Amazing.

Nope, you’re still a liar. If you can’t find citeable evidence for your bullshit, go away.

Same with the recently vaccinated, they are contagious for days.

With the exception of smallpox and polio, the available LAV vaccines are not generally contagious (on very rare occasions they can, usually requiring the second person being immuno-compromised). And even in the case of smallpox and polio, the vaccines are considerably less contagious.

Rule 14, everyone. Rule 14.

Still waiting for an answer, thing.

If you enter a room where an infected person had been up to two hours previously but is no longer there, what “red flags, signs and symptoms” would alert you to stay away? Let’s say it’s the foyer in an apartment complex, just as an example.

I’m sorry, Composer, I’m new here. What’s rule 14? Never point out that someone is insane without an actual diagnosis? I simply cannot believe that anyone capable of typing on a computer could make a statement as ignorant, idiotic, and just plain dumb as thingie just made.

Yes. The lack of due diligence. Herd immunity is a myth. Vaccination, inherently, plays no role in disease prevention.

The return of Thingy’s “due diligence” delusion. Like I said, she’s never going to start talking about the real world, she’ll just continue talking about this delusional world of hers where the most deadly diseases that millions of years of evolution have produced are polite enough to always give advance warning of their intent to infect so that any potential host can exercise an option to decline.

I find it passingly interesting, though, that she’s managed to adopt definite opinions on the subject of herd immunity, clearly without understanding in the least how herd immunity works. Herd immunity is not tied to vaccination. Herd immunity is a mathematical consequence of a sufficient percentage of the population possessing resistance to infection, no matter what the means by which that resistance is conferred. If Thingy’s delusional “due diligence” strategy actually protected individuals, a sufficient number of individuals practicing it would create herd immunity.

Rilke’s Granddaughter: I assume he’s referring to Rule 14 of the Internet. Anyways, if you stick around, you’ll witness Thingy set some real records for stupid things to say. I’m still fond of the time she claimed that if a substance winds up eventually in the human veins, regardless of how it actually got there, it was administered “intravenously.”

@Science Mom

I’m just doing it for the entertainment value.

Thing, you still have not answered my question. Why is it so hard? Share your wisdom with us. What red flags are there that alert you that the measles virus is still in the air in a room if we do not see anyone who is showing signs of infection because they left the room before we got there? You said to pay attention to the “red flags, signs and symptoms” to alert you to avoid being infected. You agreed that someone who is infected is contagious. So, without any foreknowledge that a contagious person was in the room before you arrived, how do you know to avoid the room? Surely you can share, from your vast, galactic intellect, what to look for so that us poor, benighted souls stand a chance of avoiding infection ourselves. Do stop being so coy.

For some reason, the anti-vaccine people sound amazingly like the anti-nuclear people.

Todd W.,

What red flags are there that alert you that the measles virus is still in the air in a room if we do not see anyone who is showing signs of infection because they left the room before we got there? You said to pay attention to the “red flags, signs and symptoms” to alert you to avoid being infected.

I will have to doubt that it was measles. The burden of proof is yours.

The lengths to which the moron will go to avoid answering a direct question are highly amusing. Obviously Thing knows that the answer is “none” but admitting that would be admitting to the stupidity of its entire position.

What? You insolent fool! You’re giving vaccines the credit for infections? How disrespectful.

It is us pathogens who make you sick and even kill you. We maim, we desolate, we’re hard to contain or isolate.

Each outbreak is one more warning that you need to get your act together and use the tools at your disposal – the greatest of which are vaccines – to stop us before our time comes… Our time to return you all to the dark ages with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and rampant viruses.

And your “to exercise due diligence and to be smart” amounts to denying that there is any possibility that anyone with measles could ever be in any room you might later enter.

Don’t just focus on measles – what about someone with the flu on an airplane? Or taking the elevator with someone with a cold? Or just sending your kids to daycare, where they will get exposed to all kinds of germs & definitely bring them home to the rest of the family.

The only way idiot troll’s worldview even holds water is if people live in a sterile bubble from the moment they are born.

Please stop feeding the troll.

Todd W.,

Ah, so before you enter any room, you wait outside until at least two hours has passed since anyone went in? You mean you aren’t actually looking for “red flags, signs and symptoms” like you said earlier? You’re just waiting for hours before entering any enclosed space and running out if someone that might be infected comes in. Got it.

Hahaha. Because you’re too dumb to realize that I have already answered that question that I have to doubt that it will be measles because of your lack of evidence. But instead, you shifted to being obtuse by extrapolating red flags, signs and symptoms to the fantasy “room”, the timer clock I used as an example is to verify that you don’t really care about who went into that room at an earlier time.

No, I don’t use any timer because I don’t need to. We only use that in the hospital for terminal disinfection of the room previously occupied by a known infectious patient.

Seems a pretty paranoid and time consuming way to live one’s life, but hey, if it works for you…

No you’re the one who is being paranoid. Again practice what you believe. Where’s your timer?

@Beamup

My eyes are all teary from laughing. I think I’m beginning to understand Thingy. If I have it right, she believes that sick, contagious people are only ever found in hospitals and doctors’ offices, but never anywhere else. Ergo, in her version of reality, she need never worry about being infected unless she happens by a health care facility. But on the off chance that they are elsewhere, there are, I dunno, giant neon signs or something hovering above them, letting her know that they are contagious.

If I hadn’t seen Thingy in action for such a long period of time, I would just chuckle at how good a Poe she’s pulled. The sad and sobering part is that she actually believes the drivel dribbling from her fingers.

So, according to the “zero risk due diligence” hypothesis, any person whose infection status is unknown can be said to be uninfected with 100% certainty, unless that person is in a healthcare facility.

If this is not true, “zero risk due diligence” is falsified.

Kevin,

So, according to the “zero risk due diligence” hypothesis, any person whose infection status is unknown can be said to be uninfected with 100% certainty, unless that person is in a healthcare facility.

Or in a chickenpox party.

I’m sure she doesn’t – accept that is. Nothing exists outside of her warped “understanding” of the world or reality for that matter.

I, for one, have never gone anywhere or interacted with anyone to intentionally get sick. It is a fact of life that this just happens – never had the flu vaccine & gotten the flu plenty of times; had innumerable colds; had Lyme Disease three times now (not fun at all) – so Thingy’s notion that you can go through life & avoid all illnesses with a bit of “due-dilligence” is stupid beyond pale.

Gray,

Th1Th2, do you understand the concept of hypothetical situations? We don’t have to prove that there was someone with measles in the hypothetical room, we merely have to prove that situation is possible and likely, and thus the situation we described was possible.

That’s what I’m saying. You guys are arguing from ignorance. You don’t have to prove a thing but you wanted me to deny it. Amazing.

Anymore fairytale stuff?

Anymore fairytale stuff?

You mean like your supernatural ability to detect infectious people?

Now stop ignoring and answer my question, once measles is common again due to vaccination stopping (which is what you advocate), how are you going to protect yourself given that pretty much every single susceptible person will get the disease at some point?

Th1Th2, if you actually bothered to observe the real world, you’d learn that measles killed people before the vaccine existed.

If I told you that people got measles through the internet would you go away and never come back?

CG,

And if you stop vaccinating, then airborne transmission of the wild type virus will be extremely common, just like before the vaccine. Everyone will get infected at some point, just like the old days.

No. When people stopped vaccinating, there would be significantly less infection since measles virus uptake will be less as the vaccine, the leading source of infectious measles virus, will be eliminated. Eventually, wild-type infection will be eliminated for as long people will exercise due diligence.

Currently, you can avoid measles through sheer chance because it is extremely rare. Once it is common, you won’t be able to avoid it.
You benefit only as long as other vaccinate.

No. I don’t have the measles because I exercise due diligence. I do not inoculate in the first place.

They obviously were not duly diligent. Apparently, every single other person in history is an incompetent idiot who can’t instantly identify people who have (even asymptomatic) infections, as well as any place such infected people have recently been. Yet people today aren’t and therefore diseases will be avoided successfully now.

By idiot troll’s logic, diseases shouldn’t even exist today – obviously in the thousands of years before vaccines existed, it would have been plenty of time for all known pathogens to just die out, right?

Wow – what utter insanity.

So Thingy is exercising “due diligence”, presumably walking around in a sealed suit of some kind and breathing air out of a SCUBA tank or something…my question is: How does she know that nobody who passed anywhere near the area where her SCUBA tank was filled for a few hours beforehand had an asymptomatic measles infection? I say “asymptomatic” because I’m sure nobody with a visible rash ever walks anywhere near a diving shop!

JohnV,

If I told you that people got measles through the internet would you go away and never come back?

How exactly do you do that? Download the virus? Share the virus P2P? Torrent, .iso, .rar or what? Press Cancel or Ctrl-Alt-Del to stop? No wonder you’re wearing N95s.

How exactly do you do that? Download the virus? Share the virus P2P? Torrent, .iso, .rar or what? Press Cancel or Ctrl-Alt-Del to stop? No wonder you’re wearing N95s.

And instead of answering a question, it avoids them by harping on a joke.

CG,

I thought #198 was a joke.

Word Salad – what you wrote makes no sense (not that anything you write makes any sense at all to a rational human being).

Since your definitions of just about everything differ from what the rest of the world considers the proper use and definition of the language, your posts are meaningless & irrevelant to any discussion.

But, in this case – since nearly 100% of the population was exposed to Measles before the vaccine & suffered both the actual disease itself (meaning the real symptoms) and the normal rate of side effects (1 in 5 to 1 in 100 for the various afflictions, including blindness and pnuemonia – and 1 in 1000 for deaths) – compared to today, where nearly 100% of the vaccinated do not suffer the normal intensity of the disease (or any outward symptoms at all) and suffer side effects in the range of 1 in 1 mil for any serious complications, your logic does not hold any water whatsoever.

If no one vaccinated, there is no reason to believe that measles prevelance would not return to its pre-vaccine levels of infection – where nearly 100% of the population would once again be exposed & suffer the magnitude higher rates of both direct effects of debilitation and death, plus the side-effects of blindness, pneumonia, etc – which may be more survivable today, but no less severe.

Again, since your definitions are uniquely your own & have no basis in any kind of reality, this will fly completely over your head & be ignored. But it is a blast to laugh at your complete inanity.

Idiot Troll – CG asked why no airborne diseases had been eliminated by your methods (and also in the pre-vaccine era) – by your own admission, diseases should just die out, right? So why didn’t they in the past?

Infectious areas only exist in hospitals? How does one “terminally” disinfect public places?

I get it now! Th1Th2 is a solipsist!

Lawrence,

Infectious areas only exist in hospitals? How does one “terminally” disinfect public places?

That’s the problem your leader didn’t teach you how it is done instead they taught all of you how to get the virus easily and directly through injection. Don’t ask, don’t doubt, no sweat.

CG,

You will somehow manage to evade the question since it is a hypothetical and you’ll go back to your talking point about deliberate infections.

Kindly read #192.

Krebiozen,

In the USA? About half a million cases of clinical measles, thousands of cases of otitis media, thousands of cases of pneumonia, hundreds of cases of encephalitis and hundreds of deaths each and every year.

With 11 and a half million more cases of subclinical measles caused by the vaccine every year intentionally not reported because of bias diagnostic screening “amidst thousands of cases of otitis media, thousands of cases of pneumonia, hundreds of cases of encephalitis and hundreds of deaths each and every year”.

Again, what have you prevented?

I did not exist in the pre-vaccine era

If only you had been around to advise me on how to avoid measles back in the 60s when I caught it. It’s too late for my children too, but at least you can tell me how my future grandchildren can avoid getting measles without vaccination.

Should I tell them to leave the classroom immediately any child sneezes or coughs? What do I tell their teacher? How does that work on the school bus? Or will they have to be home schooled and never have any contact other children at all? Won’t that mean they will turn out like Augustine? What about if they go on vacation on a plane and someone near them starts sneezing? “Stop the plane I want to get off!”?

Please explain, I’m one of those “less smart people” who don’t understand how this works.

“No, I don’t use any timer because I don’t need to. We only use that in the hospital for terminal disinfection of the room previously occupied by a known infectious patient.” (Thingy at #182 above)

That statement infers that Thingy actually works in a hospital…what a joke. Terminal disinfection of a hospital room takes place after the patient is discharged from the hospital and before another patient is assigned to the hospital room. There are completely different isolation protocols put in place when a suspect case of measles may have contaminated a hospital, clinic or doctor’s waiting room or examination room and it involves “a timer” that Thingy never uses.

Thingy is not qualified to work within the health care setting in even the most menial categories; uneducated and unlicensed. The closest Thingy ever gets to the health care professions is possibly his/her/its collection of scrubs that he/she/it wears in a variety of colors.

Thingy doesn’t even qualify as a troll…dumbest category.

you have created another source of infection hence diseases progressed.

Which is why there are SOOOOO many deaths from measles, smallpox, polio, Hib, ect. these days….

CG,

Which means my prediction was completely accurate. You can’t answer the question so you avoid it.

You’re just repeating the same crap they have asked me before and you’re not paying close attention. I have answered that a couple of times and I will say it again that I will have to doubt it was measles. Do you have any problem with that?

Your prediction that you’re dyslexic is completely accurate and there is clear evidence.

Again, what have you prevented?

You are seriously suggesting that the measles component of MMR is responsible for “thousands of cases of otitis media, thousands of cases of pneumonia, hundreds of cases of encephalitis and hundreds of deaths each and every year”? Any evidence for that at all? Thought not.

Here’s some evidence that you are utterly wrong.

that I will have to doubt it was measles.

Which is a reasonable assumption given the current rarity of the disease.

But you advocate not vaccinating. That will make measles return and it will become common again. Your assumption then will be wrong. Everyone will come into contact with the virus. You cannot prevent that.

You just keep avoiding answering any hypothetical questions. Probably because you don’t have any real answer.

The shortest distance between the uninfected and the pathogen is a vaccine and they cannot prevent that. And they are hungry for more.

Except for those vaccines that contain only the good, immunogenic bits of the virus or bacteria. But you’re all about ignoring things that go against your theory. So don’t even bother addressing those “acellular” vaccines.

@ Thingy “Give me one example. Please just one.”

Here’s more than one example for you to peruse:

CDC HICPAC (Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee)

2007 Guideline for Isolation Precautions: Preventing Transmission of Infectious Agents in Health Care Settings

Thingy, it is a rather voluminous (225 pages) guideline…but with all your many credentials and your education background and experiences working in the health care field, you should be able to “blow through” it in record time.

(Dumbest troll ever)

lilady,

Hey senile nurse. This is how you have defined terminal disinfection and I quote ad verbatim

Terminal disinfection of a hospital room takes place after the patient is discharged from the hospital and before another patient is assigned to the hospital room.

Now, do you consider this as part of the 2007 Guideline for Isolation Precautions: Preventing Transmission of Infectious Agents in Health Care Settings?

Yes or no.

Haha. Dumb. Acellular vaccines contain endotoxins.

Which according to you is sufficient to cause an infection, but only if it’s from a pathogenic organism.

However, E. coli K12 LPS can’t cause an infection because it’s not a pathogen, despite the fact it is actually the most potent activator of TLR4.

Everyone should know that is how Thingy’s mind works.

@ Thingy: you brought up “terminal disinfection” at # 182 above regarding measles transmission in a hospital setting:

“No, I don’t use any timer because I don’t need to. We only use that in the hospital for terminal disinfection of the room previously occupied by a known infectious patient.”

I cannot believe that you are so dumb as to simple precautions implemented in health care settings when dealing with a suspect measles case exposure.

Why not read the advisory issued recently by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene:

June 8, 2011 ALERT # 9 Increase in Measles Cases and Hospital Exposure

Note that the recommendations are to isolate the patient and to close off any examination room that the suspect patient used for at least TWO hours. Dumb troll, it is a respiratory-borne disease spread via droplet route. Terminal disinfection does not apply here. You might also read the entire ALERT #9 issued by NYC to see that cases of actual (natural) measles exposed 1600 people to measles and that each unimmunized exposed person including babies too young to have received measles vaccine, were prophylaxed with immune globulin.

I’m sure the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Health would be interested in your “unique” talents and views based on your vast educational and clinical background in immunology and infection control to revise the recommendations issued by the Health Department; why not email the Commissioner and do let us know how that all works out for you.

(Dumber than the Dumbest Troll, Ever)

Luckily we have you, don’t we – all blah, blah, blah, blah….makes for good entertainment, playing what’s its reality look like today with the idiot troll.

I’ve had my fill.

lilady,

Note that the recommendations are to isolate the patient and to close off any examination room that the suspect patient used for at least TWO hours. Dumb troll, it is a respiratory-borne disease spread via droplet route. Terminal disinfection does not apply here.

Another of the “duh-hello-WTH” in the life of lilady. Can’t you read?

environmental measures (e.g., cleaning and disinfection of the patient care environment and equipment,

I know your eyes are failing you and you’re too damn lazy and slow but let others do the job for you. Don’t just close the door for two hours. That is gross negligence.

Th1Th2, at no point did lilady say environmental measures weren’t involved. Do you believe that isolation and environmental measures are mutually exclusive, that one only can do one or the other? Are you aware that’s about as nonsensical as thinking one can only wear pants or a shirt, but not both?

@ Dumber than Dumb Troll Thingy: You’re good for a couple of laughs now and then when we want to have some fun.

I have implemented “terminal disinfection” of my computer monitor every time I read one of your dumber than dumb troll postings. Let us know how your unique talents have worked for you when you email the Commissioner of the NYS Department of Health and Mental Hygiene…we are waiting with bated breath.

(Dumber than Dumber than Dumb Troll)

Gray,

Th1Th2, at no point did lilady say environmental measures weren’t involved.

She vehemently denies terminal disinfection plays an important part in infection control of airborne diseases like measles. According to her, simply closing the door for two hours is enough.

@ Krebiozen: Thingy dwells in a bat cave and should start marketing the bat guano that he/she/it stores there as a “terminal disinfecting” chemical. Why not ask Thingy in what health care field he/she/it practices in…and how he/she/it gets past the pre-employment requirement for full immunization against vaccine-preventable diseases as well as yearly seasonal flu immunizations…for continued employment in a clinical setting?

I’m still “terminally disinfecting” my computer monitor after reading Thingy’s latest posting and Thingy shouldn’t limit his/her/its email to the NYC Commissioner of Public Health. I’m sure the megalomaniac Thingy would want to spread the bat guano around to every State’s health department and share those communications with us.

@ Herr Doktor Bimler: How about rabies, babesiosis, Ehrlichiois West Nile Virus, Y. pestis, plague, cat-scratch fever and a plethora of other vector-borne or zoonotic diseases? Thingy uses “direct inoculation” to describe his/her/its unique “theories” of disease transmission of vaccine-preventable diseases…dumber than dumb troll “theories”.

lilady,

Note that the recommendations are to isolate the patient and to close off any examination room that the suspect patient used for at least TWO hours. Dumb troll, it is a respiratory-borne disease spread via droplet route. Terminal disinfection does not apply here.

Ouch. Oh please I beg you to self-impose Rule 14 STAT.

Category B.
This category covers infections spread from the respiratory tract via droplets eg. chickenpox, measles, mumps.
Terminal disinfection of isolation rooms – all surfaces and walls must be washed thoroughly with warm water and detergent and dried (wipe over with a disinfectant if indicated) All bed linen, curtains etc. that is sent to the laundry should be clearly marked “infected” The bed mattress and pillow should be wiped with warm water and detergent and dried thoroughly. Occasionally, a disinfectant may be indicated. All heat-sensitive items of equipment that are for common ward use should be wiped with 70% alcohol mixture. All autoclavable items should be sent to the CSSD. All disposable items should be discarded in containers for clinical waste and the room should be aired and open for admission after 24 hours. If the isolation area is a bed on an open ward, then the entire surrounding area up to the next bed, including curtains, should be treated as above.

(P.S. Don’t forget to close the door.)

If I remember correctly, the advantage of vaccines is that the virus inside is 1)inert, and 2) cannot be transmitted from person to person. True? (Not to mention, you don’t see that many people becoming deaf or blind from the vaccines.)
Jeez, I’ve only had one college-level biology course, and I just can’t understand the conclusions that some of the commentors here reach. So it’s better to have one’s children risk death, blindness or deafness than to give them a few harmless jabs?

Who is joejoe?
A shill for Bigpharma. Who else would denounce a wonder of fucking scientific medicine but someone who would stand to gain from all of the countless treatments for diseases that could be prevented by vaccines.

Seriously. Thingie is a Poe. No one, truly no one who could operate a computer could be this stupid.

@ Dumber than Dumb Troll Thingy: Now instead of being fixated on “terminal disinfection”…which by the way is part of “Standard Precautions” (blood and body fluid precautions) you now state that “Standard Precautions” are sufficient to prevent transmission of measles in a health care setting. Dumb Troll did you ever hear of “Transmission Based Precautions”, among them “Contact Precautions” and “Airborne Precautions”?

(hint) Measles is transmitted by droplet nuclei and “Airborne Precautions” are implemented by hospital staff for suspect and confirmed cases of measles. Obviously, you didn’t read the CDC Guidelines that I provided to you…or perhaps they were too difficult for you to understand.

And Thingy, don’t let the door hit you on your Troll posterior on the way out.

@Politicalguineapig

I didn’t know that the oral vaccine could be transmitted person to person. I guess that’s why it went obsolete so quickly.

Well, it’s a bit more complex with something like the oral polio vaccine. Of all vaccines, OPV is one of the few that is as close to 100% effective as you can get. In locations where polio is widespread and where vaccine delivery is difficult, OPV works quite well. Immunize one household member with it, and there’s a good chance that other household contacts will be exposed to the vaccine strain, as well, thereby also gaining immunity. The risk, though, is that it reverts to a virulent form and, instead of just granting immunity, actually causes a full-blown infection.

In the U.S., once polio was mostly eliminated, the risks of OPV outweighed the benefits, and the switch was made to the slightly less effective but far safer (no risk of polio from the vaccine) inactivated polio vaccine.

This is becoming an issue in some of the few countries where polio can still be found. Vaccination rates are not quite high enough, giving the vaccine strain ample opportunity to mutate to virulence. There’s a lot of discussion around whether to make the switch to one of the IPVs, but since they are less effective, there is concern that they will not be able to wipe out polio (IIRC, there are 3 or 4 IPV versions, one containing 3 polio serotypes and then versions that only containing 1 serotype each).

I know how the measles is spread and I also know that there exist an incompetent and lazy nurse named lilady who would just close off the door for two hours after the measles-infected patient has left the room.

Note how Thingy actually recognizes that her own behavior is inadequate but tries to rewrite reality and displace her own flaws onto someone else. Nothing lilady said indicated that any precaution she spoke of was the only precaution she would take. On the contrary, it’s been Thingy all along who’s been saying “You just have to exercise this magic ‘due diligence’ and it gives you risk-free protection against measles.” I suppose it says something that Thingy can at least recognize the flaws of her own thinking, even if frantic denial keeps her from recognizing it in her own thinking.

Todd W.,

Of all vaccines, OPV is one of the few that is as close to 100% effective infectiveas you can get.

You sounded more like a salesperson to me. Oh I see because you’re an infection-promoter and you provide them with infectious OPV.

In locations where polio is widespread and where vaccine delivery is difficult, OPV works quite well.

Tactic employed to make sure OPV will not be in the position to be the sole cause of paralytic polio when they can always blame the wildtype poliolovirus where available. Nice. Now, let’s bring OPV back in the US soil and see what would happen. Anyway, polio is just a plane ride away right?

Immunize Infect one household member with it, and there’s a good chance that other household contacts will be exposed to the vaccine strain, as well, thereby also gaining immunity contracting the disease

You do realize that you’re also on the side of pox party people whose same rituals are also the one you detest, don’t you? Quite a salesperson you are.

The risk, though, is that it reverts to a virulent form and, instead of just granting immunity, actually causes a full-blown infection.

It does not take to have a paralysis to suffice a polio diagnosis. The mere fact you’re inoculating them with the virus is already the start of an infectious process. OPV does not grant immunity (that’s submission to poliovirus, not resistance) instead it makes everyone acquire the infection.

Vaccination rates are not quite high enough, giving the vaccine strain ample opportunity to mutate to virulence.

Haha. Ridiculous assumption. Here’s a basic fact: The more people gets inoculated with OPV the more of a chance VDPV and VAPP will thrive for the OPV is the only cause of VDPV and the only reason why VDPV still pursues.

@ Politicalguineapig

I’m a rank amatur compared to you guys, so I wasn’t too sure of my facts.

I had some training in microbiology, but it’s getting dusty, so my facts are a bit fuzzy, too. I am refreshing my knowledge on this site and reading linked articles.
And don’t be afraid to ask questions. As my teachers said, there is no such thing as a stupid question (on the other and, there could be dishonest questions and answers, as experienced daily in these threads…).

@ Todd

Well, it’s a bit more complex with something like the oral polio vaccine.

Yes, I totally agree. I tried to keep my wall of text short, and ended being simplistic.
I should have at least added that person-to-person transmission of the live attenuated virus is not necessarily a bad thing, as it will provide a modicum of vaccination.

I personally liked the passage quoted by Lawrence:
“Since WHO and partners began their attempt to rid the world of polio in 1988, officials have slashed the disease’s incidence by more than 99%”

OPV does not grant immunity (that’s submission to poliovirus, not resistance) instead it makes everyone acquire the infection.

What a very strange assertion. Of course OPV grants immunity, very effectively, as Todd wrote. How can you continue spouting this nonsense in the face of such a dramatic reduction in cases of paralytic polio? Only one case in the whole of Asia this year so far!

OPV reverts to wild in about 1 in a million cases, but you make it sound as if it always does. You’re like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, refusing to admit you have been defeated in the face of overwhelming evidence.

And do you think everyone who is given OPV has polio for the rest of their lives since they have “submitted to the virus”? I suppose that means I have polio from having the OPV as well as hepatitis B, cholera, typhoid, tetanus and yellow fever (among other diseases) from vaccination. It’s astonishing I’m still alive, considering how many life-threatening disease I’ve been infected with.

@ TBruce: Hmm, perhaps so…but I was thinking about the locus of Thingy’s intellect…presently. I suspect the Troll’s posterior is where he/she/it pulls the factoids from.

“Now that’s what you call an assertion. You just merely take things at face value. Could you explain how OPV grants immunity against infection without causing infection?”

We’ve been over this. But you’re too stupid, dishonest and quite frankly, probably tweaking too hard to realize it.

Only less than 0.5% of all poliomyelitis cases leads to paralysis.

This is irrelevant by your very own standards. The question is where the paralytic cases have gone and, if a consequence of vaccination (sorry, “infection”), why your prescription of ritual purity is or would have been a superior option.

It’s a fact. There is evidence and you cannot deny something that exist.

You wrote “OPV does not grant immunity”, but that’s simply not true. Numerous studies have shown that it does, both by measuring antibody titers and by looking at rates of infection by the wild virus after OPV. Getting wild-type polio grants immunity too, assuming you survive it. I would greatly prefer the OPV to polio though.

Could you explain how OPV grants immunity against infection without causing infection?

Where has anyone suggested that it doesn’t cause infection? You seem very confused indeed about this. It’s an infection so mild that the majority of people don’t notice anything but minor symptoms like tiredness or irritability.

Oh please stop being so dramatic you could win an Oscar. Only less than 0.5% of all poliomyelitis cases leads to paralysis.

You really don’t understand that 0.5% of a very large number of people is a large number of people? This reminds me of Father Ted explaining to Father Dougal how far away things look small. There are 4 billion people living in Asia. If only 1% of them was infected with polio, you would expect 200,000 people to suffer paralysis. A small percentage of a big number is a big number, get it?

There were 1,997 cases of paralytic polio reported in 2006, many of them in Asia. A reduction to only one case in the whole of Asia five years later is extraordinary. What’s dramatic about stating that? I have been to India and Africa and seen the effects of polio for myself. Anything that reduces the incidence of such a horrible disease can only be a good thing.

OPV reverts to wild in about 1 in a million cases, but you make it sound as if it always does.

Well, it should.

It “should” mutate into a virulent form? Whatever do you mean by that? It’s a fact that it very rarely does, and unfortunate that it ever does. You seem to think that leaving the wild virus alone to kill and maim is better than a 1 in a million chance of this happening (I think it’s actually between 1 in a 500,000 and 1 in 750,000 since we’re being pedantic).

Oh BTW, the OPV does NOT revert to wild-type form bozo.

OK, it mutates to a form that has the same virulence as the wild-type virus, if you insist on being pedantic. You know perfectly well what I meant.

one circulating poliovirus dancing in the wild

You make it sound like a beautiful wild creature. It’s not.

Everyone who got inoculated were infected with poliovirus. And the evidence of the disease will remain for the rest of their lives. Sorry to disappoint but you are no longer naive to polio. You’ve been harassed one to many.

The only evidence of the disease is that my immune system is primed to produce antibodies if I’m ever exposed to polio in the future. Why would I be disappointed by that? I’m delighted!

I don’t think you can deny the evidence you had received.

I don’t know what you mean. I was injected (or sucked on a sugar lump), had no reaction at all, and then went to countries where these diseases are endemic but didn’t catch any of them. That’s the only evidence I “received”.

It’s astonishing infectious diseases are not automatic death sentence as you have portrayed them to be.

No one has claimed any of these diseases are an automatic death sentence, as you well know. You can look up the mortality of each of them treated or untreated, if you are interested. According to you I have survived infection with hepatitis B, cholera, typhoid, tetanus, yellow fever, and TB (forgot that earlier), not only without dying, but without experiencing any noticeable symptoms at all, apart from a sore arm.

It is debatable if Thingy is over the age of 11, but if Thingy is beyond that age then he/she/it started the polio series of vaccines with OPV, then completed the series with IPV. OPV use in the United States was totally discontinued in 2000.

It’s not a native English speaker. It could well be unimmunized.

Antaeus,

K., it’s just Thingy’s idiotic refusal to acknowledge that there is a significant difference between actual wild-type infection and the ‘infection’ that comes from vaccination

You sound like a broken record or simply dylexic. When will you ever learn? Read #114. No mouse wheel? No problem.

The immune response to a live attenuated vaccine is virtually identical to that produced by a natural infection. The immune system does not differentiate between an infection with a weakened vaccine virus and an infection with a wild virus.

I’m not even a native English speaker.

To people in touch with basic reality, putting on a lap-belt is what prevents the horrible damage that results from a collision; in the topsy-turvy world of Thingy, though, putting on a seatbelt is “submission to collision, not resistance.”

Again the seatbelt analogy to the rescue when they can’t explain Science thus avoid getting humiliated. Gee whiz. I’m not even a native English speaker. Now if you’re going to use the seatbelt analogy then you have to prove that everyone who drives and uses seatbelt must submit themselves to collision (in parallel where OPV recipients were deliberately made to submit to poliovirus), otherwise, you’re just recycling old crap all over again and ends in the usual epic failure.

Since the option of “due diligence” which reduces the risk of infection to 0% is nothing but the delusion of a mentally ill person, we have to decide between the options which actually exist in the real world. So far the Thing-troll has not offered any sort of plausible reasoning why “hide your head in the sand and pretend you could never encounter a wild virus” would be a better option than “prime your immune system.”

there are smart people on Earth who happen to choose not to play around with poliovirus

Not smart enough to come up with a coherent explanation of how to avoid infection, evidently.

The truth is is you leech off other people who vaccinate. Without us you would get infected just like everyone else.

Krebiozen,

You wrote “OPV does not grant immunity”, but that’s simply not true.

OPV is a vaccine- a pathogenic preparation. It does not contain immunoglobulins. Hence, you’re acquiring the infectious poliovirus.

Numerous studies have shown that it does, both by measuring antibody titers and by looking at rates of infection by the wild virus after OPV. Getting wild-type polio grants immunity too, assuming you survive it.

That is just measuring the immune response against the infection that you have acquired either from natural infection or from the vaccine. It just means that an infection has occurred.

Where has anyone suggested that it doesn’t cause infection? You seem very confused indeed about this. It’s an infection so mild that the majority of people don’t notice anything but minor symptoms like tiredness or irritability.

More than 99% of polio cases range from asymptomatic to nonparalytic events. Of course, these numbers were derived from the unvaccinated. So how many from the vaccinated were deliberately excluded from the diagnosis? The number will be astronomical.

You really don’t understand that 0.5% of a very large number of people is a large number of people?

How about 0% if people would just opt out? What are you going to do now? Spin the cylinder again?

It “should” mutate into a virulent form? Whatever do you mean by that? It’s a fact that it very rarely does, and unfortunate that it ever does. You seem to think that leaving the wild virus alone to kill and maim is better than a 1 in a million chance of this happening (I think it’s actually between 1 in a 500,000 and 1 in 750,000 since we’re being pedantic).

That OPV should cause poliomyelitis. It is a must.

OK, it mutates to a form that has the same virulence as the wild-type virus, if you insist on being pedantic. You know perfectly well what I meant.

A different creature you guys created.

You make it sound like a beautiful wild creature. It’s not.

And neither does a VDPV.

The only evidence of the disease is that my immune system is primed to produce antibodies if I’m ever exposed to polio in the future. Why would I be disappointed by that? I’m delighted!

That’s not unusual since the immune system would be more quicker and more effective upon re-exposure or re-infection. Like I said, I’m sorry to disappoint but you are no longer naive. You’ve been breached. I am happy because I still remain uninfected and unexposed while you’ve already had primary infection with polio. Primed it is.

I don’t know what you mean. I was injected (or sucked on a sugar lump), had no reaction at all, and then went to countries where these diseases are endemic but didn’t catch any of them. That’s the only evidence I “received”.

I could get a sugar cube from the pantry right now but will it work?

No one has claimed any of these diseases are an automatic death sentence, as you well know.

I wouldn’t be too sure about that.

You advocate not vaccinating. If people actually listened to you in great numbers, people would die. Far, far more than if vaccination stayed at current levels. Posted by: CG | July 13, 2011 5:18 PM

Thingy, get it through your head—the rest of us think that getting “infected” with attenuated or dead “germs” so that our immune system will be primed to deal with real, wild-type infections is a damn good idea, because we don’t want to die of a preventable disease.Posted by: The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge Author Profile Page | June 9, 2011 6:02 PM

According to you I have survived infection with hepatitis B, cholera, typhoid, tetanus, yellow fever, and TB (forgot that earlier), not only without dying, but without experiencing any noticeable symptoms at all, apart from a sore arm.

You’ve had primary infection with those diseases. Since you claimed that vaccination grants immunity, why don’t you re-infect yourself the same manner you received those vaccines. This time with live components.

Thingy: You need some remediation in both reading comprehension and logic. The statement

If people actually listened to you in great numbers, people would die.

does not equal “automatic death sentence” (which is semantically equivalent to saying that death is inevitable). It means that death can occur (and, in larger populations, diseases will cause many deaths even if the mortality rate is reasonably low). Are you denying that death is even a possibility from any vaccine-preventable diseases?

And the second quote you used is saying that since death is a possibility from diseases that can be prevented by vaccines, we should want to avoid those diseases by getting vaccinated for them. The possibility of death can be a motivator to get vaccinated, just as the possibility (not inevitability) of getting thrown from a car is often a motivator to wear a seatbelt.

But I suppose you’ll respond by spouting off about how vaccines aren’t cars or some asinine objection that the non-certifiable will recognize as idiocy.

Idiot troll – you are so dense, you make Lead envious.

No one has claimed any of these diseases are an automatic death sentence, as you well know.

I wouldn’t be too sure about that.

You advocate not vaccinating. If people actually listened to you in great numbers, people would die. Far, far more than if vaccination stayed at current levels. Posted by: CG | July 13, 2011 5:18 PM

There’s no conflict between the statements Thingy quotes. Take an ordinary coin. What are the chances that, if flipped, it would come up heads? 50%, right? It is not, by any means, an automatic means of generating a heads. But flip a great number of coins, and the chances of not getting any heads vanishes fast.

In just the same way, refusing to vaccinate against a deadly disease is not an automatic death sentence for any individual, but when a large number of people have made the decision to leave themselves vulnerable, it only takes the return of the infectious agent and deaths will follow.

Thingy will continue to deny, continue to misquote and misinterpret…it is the nature of his/her/its mental illness. He/she/it has got to be the dumbest troll that we have ever encountered on RI. Stick a fork in him/her/it because he/she/it is done.

“I’m invincible!” “You’re a loony.”

Thingy’s obsession with “Purity of Essence” a la General Jack Ripper leads me to believe that she is either unaware, or due to some psychotic break has managed to shut out of her consciousness, that she’s “infected” with innumerable bacteria and viruses already, of any number of types. (Mostly E. coli, of course, but a lot of other kinds as well). Your immune system deals with them as appropriate.

Thingy, here’s something to ponder—if you’re average, 90% of the cells in your body don’t even belong to you! Think about that. You’re not only “infected”, you’re outnumbered. You could get a vaccine against some new “pathogen” every day for the rest of your life and it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket.

Seriously, I’ve talked to hippy-dippy numbnuts who don’t know, and refuse to believe, that there was any such thing as radiation before 1945. Thingy’s mindset seems similar to me.

Antaeus,

It’s pathetic that Thingy can’t distinguish between simple propositions like “herd immunity infection results from vaccination” (true) and “herd immunity is not tied to vaccination” (also NOT true.) Seriously, how could it be any easier to understand??

Blasphemy!

Herd immunity applies to immunisation or infection,[…] Herd immunity and herd effect: new insights and definitions.

The best scientific evidence has failed to identify any method that protects individuals against infectious diseases even nearly as well as vaccination. But if such a method did exist, a sufficient number of people in the population practicing it would create herd immunity!

Are the unvaccinated and uninfected part of herd immunity? Or do you consider them like parasites who “leech off other people who vaccinate”?

Thingy is idiotic enough when she tries to deny the massive base of evidence showing that vaccination does confer resistance to infection.

In fact, you even check for it through antibody titers.

But she reaches a whole new plateau of stupidity when she claims that herd immunity is a myth, because if her delusionary “due diligence” strategy actually worked, and a sufficient number of people employed it, it would create herd immunity! uneventful, ordinary days.

First off, I do not associate myself as part of a herd. So how did you get branded? Do you still carry the indelible mark? Seriously, don’t get too serious.

It’s a mathematical consequence; you don’t even need empirical evidence to figure it out!

Just like I said. It’s a myth. There’s no Math involved, just your faith—a nonthinking process. You don’t even know how to count for goodness sake.

Because there are smart people on Earth who happen to choose not to play around with poliovirus. Do you have any problem with that when they opted not to get infected with poliovirus especially with your infection-promoting agenda?

Let’s reexamine that to which this is a putative response:

This [“Only less than 0.5% of all poliomyelitis cases leads to paralysis”] is irrelevant by your very own standards. The question is where the paralytic cases have gone and, if a consequence of vaccination (sorry, “infection”), why your prescription of ritual purity is or would have been a superior option.

The only thing that your reply seems to be be able to refer to is the question why your prescription is or would have been better. And your answer is “because there are smart people on Earth”? I believe the term is “nonresponsive,” Th1Th2, aside from just the part of skipping the bit about where the paralytic cases have gone.

I am very temped to find Thingy and cough in its general direction. Should be interesting.

Narad,

And your answer is “because there are smart people on Earth”?

I’m pretty sure my answer did not stop there.

^ “which is simply”

Why the hell is anyone engage the Thingy? She lives in a nether land of her own making. It is paranoid, unable to carry on any cogent conversations and would not know truth from fiction if it smacked it in its face. You all are just feeding into her mental disorders…too numerous to mention. Just stick a fork in the Thingy…it is so burned and way beyond “done”. What a waste of time to play with this sick sick troll who is in desperate need of some sort of life outside of the cave…after it has some major therapy and some major anti-psychotic medications.

You’re right I’m sure Lilady, but I do want to say a bit more about epidemiology, as I find it fascinating. You never know Th1Th2 might learn something, though I doubt it.

If you introduce an infectious disease into a naive population, as happened to Native Americans when Europeans arrived, there is an epidemic. Every person with the disease infects more than one other person, and the number of cases grows exponentially. Eventually enough of the population that has survived has adaptive immunity to the infection so that each person with the infection infects, on average, only one other person. At that point the disease declines and becomes endemic, and the number of cases stabilizes.

If the average number of people an infected person infects drops below one, the disease will eventually die out in that population. That’s how smallpox was eradicated, by surveillance, isolation and vaccination which reduced the infection rate low enough that the disease died out globally.

Without vaccination what tends to happen is that because there is a steady supply of non-immune people (aka children) an infection either becomes endemic and mostly affects children (like measles), or there is an epidemic, more and more people are infected until enough people are immune and the disease declines until the number of non-immune people is high enough for another epidemic to begin. That was the pattern for a number of contagious diseases before vaccination. Exactly how this works depends on a number of factors, including the size of the population, how contagious the disease is, how long a person is contagious, birth rate and death rate.

The thing I find really fascinating is that all of this can be accurately modeled mathematically.

It’s laughable that someone can deny the existence of something that is so well understood and has so much evidence to support it.

Can anyone put together all of thithtwo’s ramblings in one document, so we can all have a good laugh?

Ms. Hamilton, where in the USA are vaccines forced on people? How so? Even in the two states that do not allow religious exemption there are private schools and homeschooling.

Also, yes, vaccines have caused adverse effects. Now please tell us exactly what the specific risks are from the MMR vaccine versus measles, mumps and rubella. Be sure to use real evidence, not random websites, news reports or studies from doctors who have had their license to practice medicine revoked or suspended, and definitely not Mercola nor Ratajczak.

Thank you.

Oh, and do you really own all of Yahoo.com? Because that is a weird URL for your own website.

may i recommend Calli Arcale (July 11 2011) and Krebozien (July 18 2011) for simply and intelligently stated posts, the former a nice concise explanation of some of the process involved in making vaccines. I wish we could ignore the folks who are clearly too dense to even think, but they are part of our reality and occasionally will even get elected to offices where thier ideas could prevail. So we gotta be diligent, teach our children well cause if they get to where they call the shots, we are in deep bad smelling stuff. You folks to whom I am referring disparagingly, I am sorry to have to be this way. It’s one thing to be skeptical, that’s a good thing, it’s another to exhibit such total obtuseness as to be scary. I will not engage you here, so don’t bother to reply. I have an open mind, but prefer to avoid wasting my time with non-thinkers. Let’s both practice “due diligence” and avoid even this remote contact.