Will the Disneyland measles outbreak lead to the end of non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates? (It should)

Need a hand in refuting an MMR point. I have a person claiming that the MMR is only effective on measles genotype A and not the B3 strain currently identified in the Disney outbreak. I suspect this is incorrect/ misleading but can not find a source to refute. Any ideas?

#2 Guest

This is a classic win-win gambit deployed by anti-vaccine activists:

– if the Disneyland measles virus was genotype A, it would have been a vaccine strain virus and they could claim it was caused by vaccines.

– if the Disneyland measles virus was not genotype A, they could make the claim that it is only effective against genotype A.

In reality, while there are differences between measles genotypes, there is only one measles serotype. Lab experiments and the global measles vaccine efficacy show that the vaccine is effective against all genotypes

“All vaccine strains and their wild-type progenitors are assigned to genotype A. Experiments with monoclonal antibodies have defined antigenic differences between the H proteins of genotype A vaccines and the H proteins of wild-type viruses grouped in other genotypes. However, there is only 1 serotype for measles, and serum samples from vaccinees neutralize viruses from a wide range of genotypes, albeit with different neutralization titers. More importantly, despite the presence of different endemic genotypes, vaccination programs with standard measles vaccines have been successful in every country where they were performed adequately. Suboptimal seroconversion after vaccination is likely the result of inadequate coverage; improper administration, transport, or storage of vaccine; or age of the vaccine recipients”

Rota, P. A., Brown, K., Mankertz, A., Santibanez, S., Shulga, S., Muller, C. P., . . . Featherstone, D. (2011). Global Distribution of Measles Genotypes and Measles Molecular Epidemiology. Journal of Infectious Diseases, 204(suppl 1), S514-S523. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jir118

@guest: sounds like a load of crap. this link might help you.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/meas.html

Thanks much, Emil Karlsson!

Chris @3: If a school has fewer than 20 kindergarteners, it’s probably in a small town. Most small towns have busybodies and gossip mongers who can keep track of such things. It may be as simple as the nurse at the local doctor’s office mentioning, over coffee at the local diner on various dates, that Johnny, Mike, Katy, and Sally have had their shots, so if the school has five kindergarteners and an 80% vaccination rate, then it must be Mary who didn’t get her shots. Or more likely, everybody knows that Mary’s mom and dad are “skeptical” about vaccines, so of course they know that when the school reports an 80% vaccination rate that Mary didn’t get her shots and everybody else did.

Maybe the Arizona Department of Health is being overcautious in setting the threshold at 20, but there is a valid concern here.

FWIW, I live in a small town, but not that small–the two elementary schools in this three-town school district typically have 80-100 kindergarteners each. It’s still small enough that news of this kind travels fast around town.

Instead, the law stipulates that the opinion of a child’s pediatrician that certain vaccines are medically contraindicated will be final and that the school must take it. You can see why antivaccine activists want this.

Ah, but you’re not as insightful as the happily departed Gerg, who “explains” at AoA that this was simply a misstep by “the elites,” who of course don’t actually vaccinate, in their effort to tailor their privilege.

What’s showing up locally about the Chicago outbreak is “they got it from a recently vaccinated child who is viral shedding!” and pointing to the baby who became sick after her MMR in Baltimore as proof.

That and the old “108 deaths from MMR” canard.

Orac, don’t sit on the fence like that. Tell us how you really feel about pedantry.

/not serious

Topically, my Google-fu is failing me, and I couldn’t track it down on Facebook, but I recall someone sharing an article suggesting that the answer to anti-vaccine parents was not to eliminate exemptions or otherwise cut down on un-/under-vaccination (because FREEEEEDOMMMMM!!!), but instead to deny publicly-funded health services to delinquent families. (Or something to that effect; my memory’s a little hazy and as I noted above I haven’t been able to track down the article to confirm.)

Suffice to say, this strikes me as a rather bad idea. Affluent anti-vaccine parents aren’t likely to feel the pinch. You know who will? People in poverty who aren’t necessarily anti-vaccine but have a hard time finding the money or time to get their children to doctors’ appointments for immunizations.

Punishing the poor for the sins of the wealthy. Really classy stuff.

Where does this “108 deaths from MMR” nonsense come from? Are they pulling that from VAERS?

There are already a couple of petitions on White House (dot) gov asking for no religious or personal belief exemptions, so I won’t reinvent the wheel and create another one. However, I’d like to petition POTUS and the Congress to pass legislation (or sign an Executive Order) mandating immunizations for all federal employees, all children attending daycare that is paid for with federal dollars, and all college students receiving federal financial aid. Only medical exemptions will be allowed through an affidavit by a licensed healthcare provider.
Enough is enough with this stupidity. Thousands of dollars are being wasted on these outbreaks (measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza) when they could be used for other things. If anti-vaccine people don’t want to vaccinate, fine. But they are not allowed to smooch off the rest of us anymore. No public schools. No college financial aid. No good-paying federal jobs.
Who’s with me?

Rebecca: of course that’s where it’s coming from. Don’t you know that every report in VAERS is conclusive evidence of causation?

Yes, the “108 deaths from MMR” is drawn from VAERS. I have also seen people quoting one or more reports from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Statistical Report (the most recent is February 2); since the start of the program in 1988, there have been:

19 death claims filed for the measles vaccine alone;
57 death claims filed for the MMR
1 death claims filed for the MMRV

One reading-comprehension-impaired meme I saw said that the death claims were for just one month.

Screw it… I created it: http://wh.gov/iTeUw

Let’s make it go viral?

@Eric #10–there’s a bigger issue of public health and safety for the child who needs to be in a school with high vaccination rates here. You mention and I agree that most electively non vaccinating parents seemed rather proud of their brilliance and like to tell everybody how they’ve chosen not to vaccinate. I disagree with health departments worrying about parents figuring this out. If health departments are not deliberately trying to identify the non vaccinating students, then they shouldn’t be liable for any breach of confidentiality if people figure it out from the data. what I have noticed in Arizona with a notification from the health department about whooping cough in schools is that the official notice will say that a child in your child’s school has whooping cough. They refuse to further delineate what grade or classroom that child is in. I find this inexcusable as if you are in the same classroom with that child for 8 hours and they’ve been coughing the whole time you’re at least is exposed as immediate family members are at their home. But for other infections such as a strep throat, the school will send home a note only for the children in the classroom of the child with strap and then it will specifically say that a child in your child’s classroom has strep. I’m really tired of public health departments bending over backwards to try and accommodate the confidentiality of electively non vaccinating parents when there is no law anywhere that says they have to be this accommodating.

Liz — what guarantee is there that the governor won’t castrate this bill?

Pan moved on to the California Senate; he is now sponsoring a bill that would remove the Personal Belief Exemption entirely.

And he has signaled that he’s willing to consider retaining a religious exemption.

How can someone support a “religious exemption” when no major religion (and the vast majority of minor ones) have no issue with vaccines?

Right from donkey’s mouth:
(from Bob Sears, via Liz Ditz #28)

What puts Californians at risk is that we have a Democratic majority in our state senate. Last year’s PBE law was voted very clearly along party lines – Republicans tried to fight it.

So much for antivax beliefs being the apanage of leftish hippies…

If I were a politician, I would preface pro-vaccine statements with “As my friend the Archbishop remarked the other day…”

I just love a good snark fest!

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/06/this_anti_vaxxer_childrens_book_is_getting_destroyed_in_amazon_troll_campaign/

-btw-
AoA is linking to Democracy Now’s presentation which features Paul Offit, Dorit Reiss and Mary Holland.

PRN will post Holland’s response to Offit ( Gary Null Show today) later; with Tenpenny. ( Non-existent) lord almighty! I think desperation is not attractive,even over the internet air

.

Melanie’ Marvelous Measles, according to an article at Salon is getting a well-deserved pounding in reviews at Amazon. The comments I read at Salon are uniformly hammering anti-vaxers.

Apologies if someone has commented on this previously.

Chris @27: I understand your reluctance to protect anti-vaxers to an extent beyond what the law appears to require. But keep in mind that some kids have medical contraindications to vaccines. Consider this variation in the small-town kindergarden class: Everybody in town knows that Mary has some kind of medical issue (though, because of HIPAA, only her parents, doctors, nurses, and possibly her siblings know exactly what it is). They don’t necessarily know that as a consequence, Mary can’t get the MMR vaccine. Until, that is, the school reports an 80% vaccination rate, and it’s obvious that Mary didn’t get the vaccine.

The point is that because of how HIPAA is worded, the health department has to take the small town rumor mill into account. If anybody can figure out from publicly available information that Mary (or any other specific child) is not vaccinated, than some piece of that information should not have been public. If somebody can figure it out without directly asking Mary or her parents and getting an answer from them, HIPAA does not allow it, no matter how they figured it out. A similar issue has arisen with state legislation that would require abortion providers to identify (among other info) the county of residence of their patients: it conflicts with HIPAA because somebody back in Overshoe County can correlate Jane Smith’s trip to Big City with the fact that a clinic in Big City performed an abortion on somebody from Overshoe County that day.

@Ren

Federal legislation that requires vaccinations for students or kids at day care receiving Federal dollars might run into challenges under states’ rights arguments. I’d agree that requiring them for Federal employees, however, could work.

Re: Dr. Bob

I would wager that forced disarmament of children attending schools is not something he would argue against, even though the right to bear arms is written into the Constitution. So why isn’t Dr. Bob arguing against laws and regulations that prohibit kids from bringing guns and knives to schools?

But the absurdity of his free-dumb argument aside, remember: school is a privilege, not a right. Privileges come with responsibilities. If you do not want to uphold those responsibilities, then you do not get the privilege.

I cannot imagine any exemption (including a genuine medical exemption) which does not explain to the parent(s) that their child(ren) will be barred from attending school, in the event of a measles outbreak.

Let’s face it, these selfish parents who opt for a personal belief exemption or a religious exemption, and who are quite willing to expose other children, lack a moral compass and lack empathy.

And here’s an interview with a mother who used to buy into the anti-vax message, and saw the light:

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2015/02/06/how-to-convince-anti-vaxxers-to-get-their-kids-vaccinated/

For any policy wonks out there willing to opine, I have a couple questions about a subject about which I know little…
Could private insurance companies stipulate in their insurance plans that they will not cover hospitalizations related to vaccine-preventable illnesses in unvaccinated patients lacking medical exemption? Is there a legal barrier here – religious discrimination, etc.? There have been several suggestions on the boards here regarding how to motivate vaccination apart from tightening school exemptions, screening Disneyland admissions, and of course, general public shaming…er, I mean educating. The valid concern of course is always that any financial penalties would disproportionately affect low income patients. If it were solely private insurers stipulating this and not, say, Medicaid, this would partially alleviate concerns about low income family impact perhaps?
Anyway, if insurers dump Snowflake’s parents with the constant risk of the $30K hospital bill, they may be inclined to vaccinate purely as a financial decision, or at least, keep their kids out of school by choice during outbreaks. On one hand, it seems like private insurers would have a financial incentive to do something like this. But I suppose such a policy would risk driving away the affluent SoCal populations that are otherwise statistically healthy, as well as reliable high premium payers.

What are the prospects for containing the measles outbreak?
Yes, it’s good to see so much pro-vaccination sentiment. The people who do get their children have been pretty quiet compared to anti-vaxxers – but now they’re speaking up.

@Liz Ditz #29:

We can thank Pan for last year’s Personal Belief Exemption form requiring a doctor’s signature

Pan?! Oh, wait, the senator. not the Greek god of fear and terror. OK. That’s alright then. No irrational fear involved.

Found it in the wild; have screenshot:

From a fact-challenged anti-vaccination activist who has been featured in this blog

There are 24 different measles genotypes or strains. The CDC finally did molecular characterization to determine the genotype implicated in the Disney outbreak, labeled “B3.”
MMR only targets “A.”
MMR is utterly USELESS and does absolutely NOTHING for the 23 other strains.
This REFUTES the following:
1. Unvaccinated children are spreading measles
2. Everyone needs to be vaccinated
3. The measles vaccine protects against measles
4. They will make more to sell

We need a vaccine against stupidity.

Why yes, lady, we do. The kind of stupidity you are exhibiting.

I think we need to publicize Roald Dahl’s story more:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/roalddahl.asp

Measles is not necessarily harmless!

KeithB @62 — What an utterly heartbreaking letter.

To elaborate a bit on my above post, it’s clear, then, that even the slowly-faltering rate of MMR uptake in the US is sufficiently high that special circumstances were required (e.g. measles hitting a large pocket of unvaccinated Amish in 2014) for measles to even breach 100 cases in any given year this century!

Quite the contrast with years past.

All the more reason, then, to prevent further decline in MMR vaccination.

Composer99: The measles outbreak (384 confirmed measles cases), in Ohio which was caused by some unvaccinated Amish people traveling to the Philippines where they contracted measles and returned home to infect other unvaccinated people in their rather closed society, was (relatively) easy to contain.

The Amish people who were exposed to the “index cases” were quite amenable to receiving MMR vaccine to contain, then stop the outbreak:

http://www.odh.ohio.gov/features/odhfeatures/Measles%202014.aspx

This current measles outbreak is far more difficult to contain/stop because it has resulted in confirmed measles cases in multiple States…and because we are dealing with some hardcore anti-vaccine parents.

re #34

How can someone support a “religious exemption” when no major religion (and the vast majority of minor ones) have no issue with vaccines?

Depends:
If it’s a “sincerely held religious belief exemption”., you support it BECAUSE no major religions have issues with vaccines. Thus, you can pass a nicely restrictive exemption policy while seeming ‘moderate’ ‘reasonable’, and not pissing off powerful lobbies.

If it’s an easy-to-get, undocumented religious belief exemption. you support it so you can appear pro-vax enough to fool enough people and still dogwhistle the “sacred value of ia parent’s right to make all health care decisions for their child.” crowd. Dr. Bob’s not stupid, here. His words are very carefully chosen to appeal to both the Christian Conservatives AND the Tea Baggers. As Rachel Maddow pointed out last night, these constituencies often don’t see eye to eye, and ‘vaccine freedom’ is a symbolic issue that can unite them. By “symbolic”, I mean it’s symbolic to these groups as they don’t care about vaccine policy or public health, don’t really believe vaccines cause harm, etc. Of course it’s a very real issue if you’re immunocompromised, but these folks could care less about you.

@Todd

“Federal legislation that requires vaccinations for students or kids at day care receiving Federal dollars might run into challenges under states’ rights arguments. I’d agree that requiring them for Federal employees, however, could work.”

The federal government has been quite successful at getting states to go along with things like blood alcohol levels and speed limits if highway improvement money is withheld. I see a similar situation with medicaid money: require universal vaccination (with exemptions for medical reasons, of course) or lose medicaid cash.

I’ve had acquaintances and friends make comments about how vaccinated people can get and spread measles, too – m essence trying to suggest it’s not necessarily the fault of the unvaxed.

This tends to hinge on one of three items:

1. The frankly absurd notion of contagious vaccine “shedding.” This will typically be accompanied by frantic waving at PMID 20822734.

2. Transmissible measles disease due to vaccination, which has but a single, inadequately documented exemplar in known history (PMIDs 2563426, 2563820). Measles disease itself due to vaccination in the immunocompetent barely has a leg to stand on (see, e.g., here and following).

Trying to rely upon the immunocompromised doesn’t hold water, either (e.g., PMID 23531102).

3. Transmission due to secondary vaccine failure, of which the use of the phrase “Measles Mary” is pathognomic. This is a reference to PMID 24585562 and is usually conflated with other NYC outbreaks because the dimwits trotting it out can’t be bothered to so much as read the title. There were zero tertiary cases. In fact, the reason it made scientific news is because there were four secondary cases (one immunocompromised, IIRC) out of over 100 contacts.

It’s desperate failure writ large.

@ Ren #72
Excellent example. I don’t know if Federal agencies can just impose such regulations, or if legislation is required. If the later, I hope someone puts it forward, if only so we could see where the opposition would come from, and get the anti-public-health crowd out in the open and expose the folly of their extremist “personal freedom” politics.

Note that it points out that even christian science does not forbid vaccines

It doesn’t matter. State endorsement of sects is off-limits.

Dr. Hickie – I would suggest contacting the state health department and urge publishing of more data. I know that often we land on the side of caution with small n data, but I think the cut off should be lower as well. If you can bring additional support to bear (several requests has more weight than one) perhaps you can see some movement. Best of luck. I am happy to see that pro-vaccine sentiment is rising. My parents were frankly appalled when I began explaining the anti-vaccination movement to them as it made no sense at all to them that people would willingly allow their children to get diseases like this on purpose by withholding vaccination. My mom had several of these infections as a child and I can guarantee she marched us in for shots at every opportunity. She tends to be a bit credulous towards some forms of woo (she had a magnetic bracelet for a while for arthritis) but she and my dad are pretty skeptical to truly outrageous claims. And absolutely no nonsense on medical care and vaccinations for the beloved grandchildren.

Random question: Does anyone know if people who are fully vaccinated for measles who end up getting it anyway are just as likely to spread it as an unvaccinated person who gets measles is?

I know there has only been one documented case but is that just because of how relatively rare it is for a fully vaccinated person to get measles or is there some kind of scientific evidence demonstrating they are less likely to?

Does anyone know if people who are fully vaccinated for measles that end up getting it anyway are just as likely to spread it as an unvaccinated person who gets measles is?

It’s necessary to distinguish primary vaccine failure – in which protective immunity wasn’t obtained – from secondary, where it wanes. The “Measles Mary” paper cites PMIDs 2278542 and 21666212 on the subject of the latter.

The more recent one is open access. It’s hard to even detect measles RNA in cases of secondary failure.

@Gray Squirrel (or others), do you have a link for over 150 cases? I have a friend who has been keeping track and she’s only managed to locate 145 confirmed (counting the Chicago babies) (and a cluster of not-yet-confirmed). I know the CDC plans to update on Monday, but if there is another good reliable source she’d love to know (she has been gleaning news articles for her count).

Making sure you all caught this:http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2015/02/05/the-money-behind-the-vaccine-medical-myth.cnnmoney/

We have a 13 percent personal/religious exemption rate here which is unacceptable.
I read Dr Bob Sear’s facebook daily post rallying the antivax troops and mumbling about informed consent posted above. He is hardly one to mention informed consent , since he doesn’t present accurate information from which people can make informed decisions. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to post comments to his facebook page and the ones I did post with links evaluating the risks associated with MMR vaccination in comparison to measles complications along with CDC information on measles complications were deleted. I thought he was known for letting contrary opinions and information to be posted on his facebook page.. He must have felt too challenged. lol

lilady, you may be correct. I need to research both of them more. I am undecided on whether they are merely motivated by money or whether they have fixed delusions and grandiosity, like I believe Wolfson exhibits. Either way, none should be given the privilege of their existing licenses to appeal to authority in scientifically misleading others.

@politicalguineapig #39: “Americans like the measles now, and don’t care if other kids get sick or die.”

Citation needed.

That’s unusually idiotic even for you, politicalguineapig.

LW: How is it stupid? It’s a logical deduction. Science and math have been extensively downsized over the years, and any woman who wants to parent ends up being pressured to use feelings rather than facts. Most parents shame other parents out of vaccinating, and mothers get the worst of the pressure.
Then we get an entire cohort in love with the measles. I think it’ll take at least two generations before Americans figure out that community, facts, and science are good things- if the country doesn’t fall apart before then.

“Then we get an entire cohort in love with the measles.”

Oh, I see. Americans don’t just *like* measles. Americans *love* measles. That’s different.

Also, even more idiotic than your previous statement.

“Most parents shame other parents out of vaccinating”

Which is of course why vaccination rates are over 90% in many areas. Though if *most* parents are doing this shaming I’d expect the rates to average less than 50% nationwide. But then I don’t have your extra-special ability to read the minds of millions of people.

Semi OT but Bill Maher was in special anti-vaxxer mode this evening. What is that I smell??? Some no- so-respectful insolence?

Lori, I’ve have never posted a comment…or received a reply from Dr. Bob Sears… except for one memorable rant on the Ho-Po when I reminded him that his deliberately non vaccinated patient was identified as the “Index Case”, responsible for the large 2008 San Diego measles outbreak. I “don’t do twitter or Facebook” where he posts his insensitive ignorant rants.

I’ve had plenty of contact with Dr. Jay Gordon here on RI and on the SBM blogs. He craves the approval of the bloggers and the regular posters on those blogs. He’ll ally himself with the occasional troll or crank poster, but he will never get approval from others, because he’s a proven liar and who is on record as stating he forms his “opinions” about vaccines on parents’ anecdotal stories which are not evidence-based.

He’s also a sexist who thinks he can cajole women who posts comments on the internet and , who, when those tactics fail, becomes nasty and abusive toward those same women.

“by far the largest contributor to pockets of low vaccine uptake appears to be the rise of non-medical exemptions”

That’s not really what the data in the Kaiser Study linked above (Lieu, et al) shows. It depends on how small or large you define the pockets. The most dangerous specific spots will have high exemption rates (crazy high in some cases). But for Marin County — THE (somewhat inaccurately designated) paradigmatic home of ‘granola cruchy’ low vax rates: the undervaccinated rate is 18.1% and the exemption rate 6.6%. In general the ‘badness’ of exemption rates and the ‘badness’ of vax rates do not correlate well for any geographic areas across which the data can be compared.

So there are areas (including different parts of the vast Bay Area) where there are few pockets of highly concentrated exemption-holding CT anti-vaxers – and neither the infected or the vulnerable are that likely to wander into the pockets – but there are still plenty of un-vaxed kids, and they’re NOT in tight pockets, but wandering around town generally. In Santa Clara County, the quarantine causing exposures occurred at a WalMart, a Costco, and a Dave & Busters in a discount mall.

All the data show that exemptions account for much less than half of the un-vaxed. We cant just assume the un-vaxed are ‘fence-sitters’, but there’s no warrant to assume every un-vaxed kid has a CT anti-vaxer parent either. We might consider the anti-vax loonies ultimately responsible for the low vax rates and the outbreak for being the primary agents that start the spread of vaccine fear through the broader public, but that doesn’t mean there are anywhere enough hard core CTAVers to enable the outbreak to spread as it has.

Basically, these folks ARE nut-jobs, and as un-science minded as J.Q. Public may be, not that many people are THAT crazy.

On one hand, this offers a measure of hope, as it suggests many parents with as yet unvaxed kids aren’t committed partisans and ca be turned around. There seems to anecdotal evidence that’s happening. There’s also been anecdotal evidence in the press that the die-hard hold-outs are indeed pretty ‘out there’. I noted that one news story covered a few ‘regular’ folk non-vaxers who were unmoved to change by the outbreak — over an apparent lifestyle range from NoCal ‘granola’ to SoCal ‘country club’. But on closer inspection all the moms were married to chiropractors.

On the other hand there’s cause for worry, as each day it becomes more clear that the peg “Politicians pander to anti-vaxers!’ is just flat out wrong in terms of any sort of national stage. They’re pandering to people and money who actually believe vaccination is harmless and a good thing, but for whom a certain dip to non-vaxing sentiment is a symbol of a broader ideological orientation. I.e. it’s a branding strategy.

In retrospect, this partly explains HRC’s now-abandoned commitment to “find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines.” In 2008, that position was acceptable for a liberal as it could be interpreted as a kind of ‘anti-corporate / power to the people / question authority’ trope — handy for Hil since she isn’t really any of those things. But it seems she was also actually pandering to two specific anti-vaxers who have a long-standing personal relationship with the Clintons and have been big-time fund-raisers for Democratic candidates. http://tinyurl.com/pchupub

That Hillary has just torched these close associates is a sign where the Dems are going, just as sure as Dr. Bobs pro-GOP FB post is a sign that anti-vaxers understand that in the wake of the outbreak their survival chances as anything but a fringe CT cult with the relative popularity as Moon Hoaxers depends exactly on their symbolic value to Tea Baggers and the Christian right.

The problem is that those groups are so strong, their collective grip on the House and ability to prevent any meaningful legislation from passing, that the symbolic value of ‘vaccine choice’ as a metonymy for ‘individual freedom / parents rights’ may carry enough political capital to keep the anti-vax afloat, and/or get in the way of efforts to help push the waffling non-vaxers off the fence.

Bill Maher just went full r****d tonight. What an absolute fucker. His ass needs to be kicked off the air, again.

@ lilady #107
I’ve been observing Jerry Brown for years. He actually acts on principle, though his principles evolve, and whatever his larger principles are, he doesn’t treat them dogmatically when it comes to policy. If Dr. Pan and his supporters can get anything to Brown’s desk, I would put the odds of him messing with it as zero to the nearest integer.

I’d say the question for Brown, as well as most other Dems at statewide or national levels is whether they’re going to take some leadership here, or just wait for somebody else to do the work.

Will the law in California require vaccination only for public school students? Rates are published by school in Calif. and private school rates are pretty poor.
And what about home schooled kids? Can they avoid getting their shots and contribute to outbreaks? After all, even if they don’t go to school, they no doubt participate in some group activities, and maybe even go to Disneyland.
If failure to vaccinate were considered neglect, all kids would need their shots, regardless of their parents school selection.

@ Laura

if statistically a doctor is granting too many medical vaccine exemptions, something is wrong

I could agree with the idea – fighting corruption and fraud is a normal and necessary part of any society abiding by the rule of the law – but I would advice great caution in how it is implemented.

Hunting cheaters of social welfare is a regular populist topic in French politics, but, to paraphrase that a compatriot of mine wrote, because 5 people are cheating, we shouldn’t end up harassing 100 people and expelling 50 of them. To which I added, even more so if the 5 cheaters are not among the 50 being punished.

To repeat, I fully support the idea that physicians convinced of fraud should be suspended, if not revoked. But I’m afraid exposing the fraudsters is going to be more difficult than looking at how many exemptions they gave. Because of some local demographic reason, a physician may end up with more than his/her share of immunocompromised patients. And I doubt the physician’s customers will come forward and accuse themselves of corruption.

At the minimum, another physician (or better, three of them) will have to look at the cases until enough clear-cut undue exemptions are found to make an accusation of known fraud sticks. That’s going to take resources in time and manpower (well, physician-power). Are we willing to spare these resources? Do we even have them?
Not to mention the big can of worm of such an investigation starting by what amounts to a revocation of the physician-patient confidentiality.

@Helianthus
Sure, any determination that a physician is unreasonably granting medical vaccine exemptions, needs to be based on a clearcut pattern of conduct long-term, reviewed by other doctors. Not just their rate of vaccine exemptions. Maybe they have a practice with a lot of HIV+ children (if such children need medical vaccine exemptions).
An article about this issue: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlipson/2015/01/30/anti-vaccine-doctors-should-lose-their-licenses/

Laura @116 — Pediatric oncologists would probably sign quite a few exemptions — but with good reason!

Incidentally, I’d think that kind of work would take quite a toll — I’d probably turn to drink.

View from the United Kingdom (1 min audio)

http://bit.ly/16uVpgj

View from the United Kingdom (1 min audio)

Heh.

Something in Dan’s interview ( on Sun with Agar) reminded me:
he’s asked if he has children and- after a pause- says he doesn’t.

He’s probably an anomaly BECAUSE most of them DO.They are fuelled by their reactions upon learning that their child has autism: the movement itself being an emotional coping mechanism not based in reality.

Thus the faithful can ( like Gaul) be divided into three parts:
distraught parents, those who profit from them and Jake .The first two categories may occasionally overlap: I doubt Jake will ever make money.

@cloudskimmer: the current law in CA does not formally distinguish between private and public schools. If all they do is abolish the PBE, both types of institutions will be subject to a school immunization requirement with only a medical exemption.

In Ithaca, being anti-vaccination is part of the cultural of being “natural”, “going with your feelings”, trusting the people around them more than the Establishment sources of information. People use this ideology to come to their conclusions, it makes life simpler.
You can probably tell this bugs me 🙂

In Ithaca, being anti-vaccination is part of the culture of being “natural”, getting their views from the people around them rather than trusting the Establishment sources of information.
People use this ideology to come to their conclusions, it makes life simpler.
A lot of anti-vaxxers are probably having problems with cognitive dissonance right now, because being “natural” brought measles back.

Looking at California Departmpment of Health figures, PBEs are higher and vaccination rates lower in private schools. This data from 2013-2014:

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2013_14_KindergartenAssessmentSummary.pdf

Perhaps the private schools have fewer students, so in terms of numbers, there may be less kids unvaccinated in the community from private schools, but it would appear they May cluster more in private schools. It would take more analysis to determine. Looking at lists by school, Waldorf schools in particular do seem to be far lower in vaccination rates than other schools.

DB @131 —

.. . and besides, Fukushima.

Brilliant!

I hope you’re aware that California is a radioactive wasteland.

He’s probably an anomaly BECAUSE most of them DO.

Cynthia Parker has already blown another aneurysm over it.

I also, for the record, feel it is critical to track vaccinations for home-schooled children which may be up to 4% of the population.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to once again observe that Va. Code Ann. § 22.1-271.4 mandates immunization of homeschooled children as well,* which throws a complication into the no-more-exemptions works. Nebraska is another, and I seem to recall finding a third the last time I went looking.

* SnuffPo royally f*cked this up recently, conflating it with record-keeping requirements.

“Homeschooled”, around here they meet several times a week to assist in the witnessed tests, to go to enlightening activities like museums, history centers and the like. “Homeschooled” does not mean isolated.

Empathy and compassion are rational quantities, not emotions.

They certainly aren’t purely rational qualities, though they require a certain amount of rational though. They have to be informed by emotion, though, as humans are emotional beings. Basically, you come by compassion and empathy by being able to place yourself in another’s shoes, emotions and all. That’s why reading literary fiction helps, for example – because as you’re reading a literary novel, you’re constantly being placed in another’s shoes, and you “read” a character by imagining what their drives and emotions are in a certain situation.

Emotions are irrational, annoying, and in women, weaponized.

Emotions are arational, not irrational. None of us makes every single decision based on rationality. “Do I feel like having Mexican food or Chinese food tonight?” is not a question that can be answered with a risk/benefit analysis – it’s based on what you feel like having. A lot of what makes up human experience is arational, or even irrational, but that doesn’t make it any less real or valuable. Falling in love is hardly a rational decision, but I highly recommend it.

As regards women, you’re making a huge generalization. Sure, some women use emotion as a weapon, but so do a lot of men. (Anger is an emotion, after all, and one that’s generally sanctioned for those of the male persuasion, and one that’s often used to shut down discussion.) There are plenty of women out there who are pretty awesome people, though, as you should well know. I know from experience that “mannish” women often get picked on in school, and some of the cruelest taunting can come from our own sex, but hell, people grow after high school. Most of my friends growing up were guys, but I’d say the gender ratio is about 50/50 at this point.

Unfortunately, due to conditioning, women tend to squish reason in favor of intuition and a lot of times are susceptible to persuasion and flattery. Look at how many women support Jay Gordon because they think he’s handsome and he’s mastered flattery.

This is anecdotal, but I’d say that men, as a group, are actually rather more vulnerable to flattery than women. They’re equally as vulnerable as women to attractive members of the opposite (or same) sex.

Men can have feelings in public, women shouldn’t.

Wait a second, are you just stating public opinion, or are you saying this is how things should be? Men and women are both emotional beings. We’re all human, and none of us are robots. I agree with you that women take more flak for showing emotion in public – it makes a man “more human,” it makes a woman “emotional” or “unstable.” I think this is a problematic situation, though, to say the least.

Look at how far medicine’s star has fallen since women started going to medical school. It’s no coincidence that people despise pediatricians when most pediatricians are women.

Dude, that’s just straight up misogyny. I’m not even sure what to say to that.

So. . . I’m 53. had vaccinations as a child. do I need to get a new MMR vaccine now, or am I covered ? opinions ?

2nd) can someone please tell Bill Maher to put a sock in it?
The guy actually thinks that the immune system is a muscle. Seriously. . .

@ sadmar:

I don’t know if I’d characterise either as you have. Both are, however, quite awful.
-Segal has his own org now – Focus Autism ( see website/ BFF Hooker)
-Habakus worked for him briefly as PR, IIRC
-BLF and Segal ( amongst others) showed up at the Health Freedom Congress ( see Bolen Report)
-Interesting research done with that money @ UBC ( Lucija T)

As is often said:
“Oh what a tangled web we weave” etc

@ JP:
PGP is not a dude.

This is anecdotal, but I’d say that men, as a group, are actually rather more vulnerable to flattery than women.

How do you reckon?

Like I said, it’s anecdotal

No, I got that. What does it mean?

@Narad:

Well, I’d say that academic men, at least, are more apt to be swayed or influenced by flattery. “Dr. So-and-so, I read your book on such-and-such, and it was such a huge infleunce,” is more likely to be a succesful conversation starter with a male professor than a female professor, again, only in my experience. (I’m also a female, which might have some bearing on the experience.) They’re thrilled that you’ve read their book, and they want to hear more about themselves. (It’s something I’ve mostly observed rather than participated in, at conferences and such. I’m very poor at kissing a$$. It can also be a strategy, and probably a smart one, that students use to score brownie points.)

A female professor is more likely to brush it off, and maybe even be sort of shy of the subject. That’s likely due to socialization, I suppose – women aren’t “supposed” to be “egotistical.” More often, they’ll turn the conversation around and ask you about your ideas or research. I’ve heard from other female students, as well, that women tend to be better mentors, in that they’re more likely to actually pay attention to your work and give you career advice. Most of my mentors have always been men, but I find the argument interesting and somewhat persuasive, and wonder if I shouldn’t consider applying it to my own grad student career.

@Narad:

I’d also say, anecdotally again, that my colleagues who are women are much better at taking criticism and using it to strengthen their work – or at least to question a statement like, “Oh, it’s great.” “Really? Can’t you say a little more?

If you want the lowdown on the wining and dining of Congressmen Issa, Buchanan and Posey and their wives and the contributions to their reelection campaigns by wealthy anti-vaxxers, I suggest you go to the Left Brain/Right Brain blog.

Babs receives a lot of her support for her NVIC organization from snake oil salesman Joe Mercola:

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2011/11/03/vaccine-injury-awareness-week-joe-mercol/

I have lurked and posted some silly comments. However it is important to me that how I respond to antivaccine folk in my community is relevant. Could my sample be judged by you lot.
I meet these people daily and they sort of scare me.

Joe Citizen Myself and 3 of my kids have all had Measels and we were All vaccinated Work that one out
Like · Reply · 3 hrs

Bert Burless.
You know how you referred to the logical fallacy abut reference to authority recently. There is another one. It is called the Nirvana Fallacy. It means that if a system [in this case medical] is not 100% effective it is mostly dodgy.
Like · Reply · 22 mins

Medical interventions have a scale of effectiveness. None are 100% effective. When I was ill recently I chose surgery even though the chance of me dying was about 10%. No surgery meant about a week of horror and a 30% chance of dying. To me, no issue. Vaccinations are effective for most people, mostly. I do not know when you were vaccinated or if you have had boosters. Vaccinations are mostly about 90% effective, that means that some vaccinated people can get diseases they are vaccinated against. When they do it is mostly milder and shorter. I get the sense your kids had mild doses. I hope this will help you to” work that one out.”If you you want references to independent science resources I will happily provide them.

@PGP

It’s no coincidence that people despise pediatricians when most pediatricians are women.

First, [citation needed] about people, on average, despising pediatricians. I will let you choose the country where this happens.

Now, if you mean that there are douchemen despising working women, there is nothing new here, but your generalization is not helping much.
I would actually assume that many patriarchy-bent people would be more annoyed with, heaven’s forbid, a woman doing a man’s job, like surgeon, pilot, university professor, military officer or company CEO, than with a woman following her maternal instinct and working with children *, so really, your opinion seems to me at odd with reality.
Seriously, PGP, if you see yourself as a promoter of feminism, you are doing an horrible job at it.

Second, how do you reconcile your opinion with the following fact:
The two most reviled pediatricians on this blog, the two we talk most about, are men.
Make it four if the Geiers count as pediatricians.
And we talk about them because they are at the front of the antivax sentiment, not because, AFAIK, we decided to overlook the women.

* I’m talking like Ridley Scott talks about Ripley, here. Not my opinion.

@Bert Burless
Socratic questioning is useful when people aren’t being rational, because asking questions of people induces them to think.
It’s different from arguing, which is telling them what you think.
Also, there’s a lot of research on persuasion (what works).
Don’t insult people, that’s Persuasion 101. Personal insults actually tend to cause negative persuasion – they harden people in their beliefs.
An article on advertisers’ suggestions about promoting vaccination: http://time.com/3693767/ad-campaigns-promoting-vaccines/

@DLC. While it has not been discussed, smallpox is likely the shot you don’t need to take. The last case of smallpox was in 1977, and the vaccination uses a live virus called vaccinia. While the vaccine saved untold millions, there is no point taking a “non-zero” risk for a “zero risk” event. I recently posted a curious case where there was a transmission of the vaccinia virus to the girlfriend of a soldier shortly to be deployed. Apparently there are several of these cases. As far as risk, the problems of vaccinia are mild compared to smallpox, but smallpox only exists in a few rogue nation’s stockpiles of terrorist weapons.

There could come a point where the measles vaccination is no longer needed. If there had been no reported cases for years and if it wasn’t such a damn fast moving disease. I don’t know if we’ll ever get, but we aint there yet.

@Bert Burless
For example, in a more Socratic sort of way:
JC says “Myself and 3 of my kids have all had Measels and we were All vaccinated Work that one out”
Q: What makes you think you had measles?
If their diagnosis seems valid, then
Q: How soon after the vaccine did you come down sick with measles?
Maybe they got vaccinated in a hurry because there was measles around.
If soon after, tell them it takes awhile to build up immunity.
Q: Perhaps one of you didn’t get both MMR vaccines (two are required) on the suggested schedule?
If they did,
Q: So do you conclude from this that the measles vaccine doesn’t work?
If yes, then you tell them there is research about the effectiveness of the vaccine, and it’s (whatever percent) effective. Very high for measles. Then
Q: Does your personal experience trump the research on this vaccine’s effectiveness, in your mind?
And why?
So we can step through this person’s reasoning, examining it for flaws.
There probably is a problem with JC’s original statement, since it does seem quite unlikely that 4 properly vaccinated people in one family would get measles anyway.
One advantage of Socratic questioning is that it’s easier than arguing. If someone is being irrational, they are the ones who need to think, not you.
Also, accusing someone of logical fallacies is likely to put them on the defensive. Instead, with the Socratic questioning process you can get them to see why their reasoning isn’t valid.

JP: I meant that evidence of emotions are weaponized against women. As for the misogyny, I was talking about how other people see female pediatricians, not my personal opinion of them.

Helianthus: How about this country? Every person at AOA and TMR has a horrible ‘pediatrician’ story to tell, and 80% of the time, the pediatrician their bile is directed at is a woman. On a related note, these women seem to have no female friends outside those movements, and tend to venerate the few men who post on the forums, even if the dudes in question are total creeps.

@Laura:

I’m not quite sure what in my comment you’re responding to; I wasn’t advocating living life solely by “going by your feelings.” I was merely stating the fact that humans do, in fact, have emotions, that they’re not going anywhere, and that it doesn’t really make any sense to wish they would go away, because they can, in fact, be useful. If, that is, one processes information in a way that jibes with a reality-based worldview.

For instance, going back to compassion and empathy – as a kid, I was very sad when people I loved died. As a young teenager, when we began our ill-advised war in Iraq, I recall a certain politician referring to Iraqi civilian casualities as “collateral damage.” Now, as somebody who was to some extent familiar with my own emotions, and also somebody who, by reading a lot of literary fiction, was accustomed to putting myself in somebody else’s shoes, was able to make the leap, requiring some imaginiation, to the conclusion that gee, those people over there in Iraq are probably devastated in much the same way I was, and in the same way the families of those in the twin tower were at the death of family members. My anti-war stance, which I came by independently at a young age, was not based solely on rationality, though it did take the facts into account. A lot of the decisions we make and the positions we take are informed by emotion.

When it comes to the “natural” types, I have plenty of experience. I’d say that probably the biggest personality flaw involved in things like the anti-vaccination movement is a lack of humility – wanting to believe that one has special knowledge, better knowledge than all those sheeple out there who listen to “authorities” like, y’know, broad scientific consensus. They often have to spin all kinds of interesting and bizarre conspiracy theories in order to explain why their special knowledge doesn’t line up with what appears to be scientific fact, or, more broadly, reality.

JP is talking about exactly what developmental ( and other) psychologists study:
how kids learn empathy and why some don’t.
It involves more cognitively advanced skills like ‘taking the role of the other’ and recursive thought ( thinking about what others are possibly thinking) which sometimes develop in synch with the development of more abstract advanced cognitive skills ( formal operations)
and sometimes doesn’t.
They’re interested in what causes differences across subjects too.

Social cognition also involves learning about how others are motivated and how they behave in various situations and how they attribute causality habitually, even as personality features. How people develop stereotypes for others. The material is virtually endless.

I often wonder if many of the alties we discuss- especially the anti-vax conspiracy mongers- have difficulty with person skills. As you know, ASDs are defined in relation to deficiencies in social and communicative abilities.

Food for thought, n’est-ce pas?

@Laura:

They (the anti-vaxxers you’ve met) might not seem arrogant in the usual sense, but it takes a certain kind of intellectual arrogance to actually believe that you and the small coterie of those who agree with you are right, while “mainstream” science – read “science – is wrong.

I agree that there is a cultural element with a lot of more mild support of woo. I, for instance, used to be sort of vaguely anti-GMO at one point, until I actually started looking into the science around GMO, and critically examining the claims of the “antis,” which turned out to be really dishonest and often silly. Same with organic foods – I used to just assume that organic foods were better, without having really checked that belief out. Anti-GMO and pro-organic are positions that sort of go along with the “package” of beliefs of your typical lefty, and I, like many people, accepted that package more or less whole when I was younger. Actually “thinking for yourself” requires questioning all of your beliefs and positions to see if they’re based on fact, which is why I find it funny when alties go on and on about “thinking for yourself.”

DLC: “So. . . I’m 53. had vaccinations as a child. do I need to get a new MMR vaccine now, or am I covered ?”

I was born in 1957. I have no indication on my very extensive “Dept. of Defense” dependent shot record of getting a measles vaccine, though it would have been before 1968 when there was a good chance of getting a less effective measles vaccine. I also have no memory of getting measles.

So I was either very young, or got missed due to moving around so much.

So, coming this week I will mosey on down to the local pharmacy to get an MMR. Even if our health insurance does not pay for it.

I think what we’re seeing here is a classic case of “English Major Syndrome”, “Liberal Arts Major Syndrome”, or (even better) “Non-Medical-Major Syndrome”.

I am, incidentally, a Liberal Arts Major, and am currently a PhD student in a Slavic Languages and Literatures Department. I understand basic science quite well, thanks, and was a deft hand at math once upon a time, though it’s not what ultimately caught my interest.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who don’t specialize in the hard or even “soft” science who aren’t inclined to be anti-science. A majority, I’d say.

I think that there’s truth in the Liberal Arts Major Syndrome – although it doesn’t hold across the board-, Science Mom.

Many of the AoA/ TMR ( Olmsted, Stagliano) contingent have that type of degree as well as degrees in business
( LKH, Blaxill, Larson), a few have psychology/ social work degrees ( Ginger Taylor, Katie Wright, MacNeil, TMR’s Saint) -altho’ I doubt that it’s in the more SB Psych ( Physio, Cognition, Perception) – and some studied education ( Dachel, others)

(-btw- my undergrad is in arts but I also studied bio ,chem, physio and lots of mathematics prior to grad schools).

HOWEVER- a science degree is not a vaccine against woo, as we’ve learned from Hooker, Lucija T, Jake and many others. Neither is a medical degree.( Oh guess) Or law ( Holland, Heckenlively, RFK, Andy’s friends)

Interestingly I think that being good at maths might be somewhat protective because these folk are not as flustered around numbers or frightened by statistical analysis. No guarantees however.

People with a LS type of background might feel intelligent and wrongly believe that they can automatically understand science because of their high basic literacy skills. Simlarly business people feel confidence and knowledgeable about their own areas of expertise ( Segal) and imagine that it translates easily to research-based material as well.

Interestingly enough, two woo-meisters who style themselves as scientists probably have little basic grounding in the scientific method from my surveyance:
Adams claims much but has a degree in writing and Null has a 2 year business degree, an alternative degree in nutrition/ dietary and a mail ordered doctorate.

Being a Liberal Science Major is not an automatic trip to woo city as we’ve learned from Orac’s minions and other realists.

@Lillady
Ahem, the only two countries on record of having the small pox virus are the U.S. and whatever the Russian Federation is called now. Who actually has the virus is a matter of some speculation. Practically, I would doubt that either the US or Russia would use smallpox as a weapon, given the other tools at their disposal. I would propose it only has use as a terror weapon.

@Colonel Tom:

It’s called the Russian Federation. Or Russia for short. 🙂

@Denice:

Dunning-Kruger seems to be a fairly equal opportunity effect. I know several people with MS degrees in various sciences who presume that their knowledge within their own discipline qualifies them to opine (incorrectly) on GMOs, water fluoridation, etc. If anything protects against DK, it seems to be humility. “Self-doubt is the beginning of wisdom,” one might say.

Interestingly I think that being good at maths might be somewhat protective because these folk are not as flustered around numbers or frightened by statistical analysis.

Oddly enough, several of the faculty and several of the grad students in my very small department were originally math majors. One of our professors even got the Soviet equivalent of a PhD in math and taught for a while before switching to literature. Not sure what the connection is, though I’ve heard through word of mouth that a mathematical background is not uncommon among Slavists.

People with a LS type of background might feel intelligent and wrongly believe that they can automatically understand science because of their high basic literacy skills.

Well, they probably are intelligent, just ignorant of many subjects, as we all are. Intelligence can often lead to arrogance if it isn’t tempered with a certain amount of humility. Even somebody like Mikey Adams probably has a certain amount of raw intelligence; his success at peddling his idiocy testifies to that. He’s arrogant as all get out, though. Christ, he practically has a messiah complex.

@ JP:

A science education/ doctorate will not provide immunity to woo either-
see Kary Mullis Peter Duesberg, Boyd Haley, Linus Pauling, Luc Montagnier….
Ooooh…. That last one really hurt!

Sorry, Denise, but you’ve got a logical fallacy there. The educational backgrounds of a small population of loonies says nothing about the broader populations with those backgrounds. Besides the people who write on anti-vax blogs are not necessarily representative of people who read them and support the position, and the authors and spokespeople will naturally be more likely to have some more ‘liberal arts’ ‘people oriented’ background.

All woo adherences do not come from the same set of psychological conditions, and anti-vax partisanship especially seems to have a certain specificity. In terms of outbreaks, we must also keep in mind that the hard-core conspiracy theorists are the minority among non-vaxing parents, many of whom have not rejected the science because they haven’t confronted the science.

For the hard core anti-vaxers, the reasons for their stances seem to be largely certain conceptions about ‘what my life is supposed to be’ interrupted by trauma – their child or the child of someone with whom they identify is diagnosed as ASD – triggering a certain kind of psychological reaction that is atypical in the population in general, and have the power to over-ride ‘normal’ processing of information.

That is, ‘denial’ is a very common human trait, directed at many kinds of facts, not limited to science by any means. I suspect persistent and unusual denial – ‘denialism’ – is only somewhat less broad in the range of things denied – and the majority of things denied could be categorized as ‘common sense’ rather than science.

Thus, it may be definitional of ‘denial’ that it over-rides any kind of educational background, as education is question of cognitive function, and the psychology of denial may be both figuratively and literally more primal — located in mid-brain functions.

Just from my point of observation, one common factor in anti-vax seems to be privilege, and more importantly a certain set of life expectations (X) that depend on privilege (P) but are not automatically generated by it.
(All X are members of class P. But all class P are not X.) Anyway, these expectations strike me as having very little to do with formal education in the vast majority of cases. Mostly matters of family, social grouping, subculture…

Now, granted that educational background is a minor factor here at best, we could identify a few specific fields more conducive than others in building a mental framework hospitable to anti-vax. But I’d argue one stands well above all others: business school. Part of that’s the privilege thing, part of it’s that business curricula are usually narrow with minimal exposure to other fields, part of it is that ‘critical thinking’ of any kind gets you in trouble in the corporate world, and part of it is the overwhelming emphasis on practical measures for short term profit that is antithetical to both science and philosophy.

That’s not something you typically pick up reading Thomas Hardy or Flannery O’Conner. And, on the other sid of the scale, I might venture that more skepticism has been fostered by folks reading Mark Twain than by folks taking Intro to Calc.

@ sadmar:

I am speaking about the leadership who are the only people about whom we know a great deal.
And we should factor in the fact that they are performing and presenting themselves to an audience.

Militant Agnostic @ 189: What in my statement and my link do you find fault with?

I don’t recall defending the fact that small stashes of smallpox virus are in U.S. and Russian high security labs.

@Michael M

CDC states that “no reports of transmission of measles or mumps vaccine virus exist from vaccine recipients to susceptible

People with a LS type of background might feel intelligent and wrongly believe that they can automatically understand science because of their high basic literacy skills.

Based on my extensive qualitative participant/observer research •• 🙂 •• I would say the opposite is true. The more literate/literary one’s outlook, the more alien actual scientific research tends to appear.

For one thing, science has it’s own special language that is
a) extremely arcane and impenetrable to non-specialists
b) purposefully artless and dehumanized
c) often just ugly as prose

Somewhere along the line, your typical English majors are going to have a Gen Ed class where the science goes beyond the written-for-lay-people intro-text to the point where they get an idea of what the real thing looks like. And what they typically learn from this is that hard science is something they do not get and do not want to get. They are, that is smart enough to know what they are ignorant about. (Again, I’m talking about a typical student in these fields, and the anti-vaxers are atypical of whatever they are.)

It’s not that majors in high-literacy-skill fields are necessarily weak in innate math and/or science ability (though, of course, many may be). It’s primarily that they don’t like that stuff past a certain elementary level. I offer my own case — only as i have reason to believe it’s not a total outlier. I was all about Math and Science in Jr. High, my favorite class ever was HS Sophomore Geometry, I was in AP all the way — but when we got to functions in 11th grade advanced algebra, my math gear just totally broke. Not only did I not get it, I didn’t care. It was 1969, and there was this war…

And yet 9 years later, having had no math at all I understood past that 10th grade Geometry, my GRE was 700 Verbal and 710 Math. Then, in Grad School, with only HS Chem, Descriptive Astronomy and Physics-for-Non-Majors as science classes past 8th grade, I aced Social Science Methods, scoring higher than the students who actually went on to careers in social science research.

Yet beyond basic logic principles, and the gist of the scientific method, I have no illusions of scientific literacy, advanced scientific knowledge, or that I possess the ability to do or understand something like medical science research. Most of the PubMed papers linked here on RI might as well be written in Klingon to me. And anything involving stats with an ‘n’-something leaves me with either ‘Huh!’ or, ‘OK, if you say so..’

In grad school, my hanging-out cohort were almost all from Arts/Humanities disciplines, but gang included some Math PhD candidates, too. They were at home with wiggy thoughts, could grapple poetic sensibilities, and were generally left-wing. (As my department had no jocks, I played staff-league softball with the Math Department for several years, and we all got along swell).

On the other hand, my cohort didn’t mix with the hard sciences at all — especially the Chemists, who might as well have been an alien race. They also leaned to the right, but as far as their actual research went, none of us imagined we had any kind of clue what they were doing. ( IIRC, the Math students didn’t get the Chemists either.)

That is, we were in some sense the language masters of the farm, yet we didn’t think we knew stuff about science.

So I’m going to argue a good humanities education tops the intellectual humility chart, and does NOT encourage Google U certitude and Dunning-Kruger at all. Of course, in every fields, there are poor educators and students who don’t learn their lessons. Part of ‘getting’ the humanities is exactly reaching the understanding that the humanities doesn’t know much at all in the sense natural science knows stuff. We’re always making educated guesses that are going to be argued in the present, may be totally discarded in the future, and will never attain definitive proof. What exactly is Citizen Kane about, and how does whatever it says about its subject(s) help us think about our own lives? What are the lessons of Viet Nam, and how do they apply to ISIS or the Ukraine, if at all? What is ‘knowledge’ anyway?

We know some answers proposed to these questions can be demonstrated to be false, but that none can be verified as ‘fact’. We believe some unverifiable answers hold up better than others, so we run them through the ringer, sift and winnow, and do the best we can to come up with smart ideas about human issues science can’t address.

If we ‘get it,’ we know we’re still only guessing on our own turf even after a lifetime of rigorous study, so we’re sure as hell not going to think we know f-all about medical science based on a few hours on Google. If all anti-vax discourse flunks science, over 99%of it flunks Humanities, too. [We do grade a little easier.. 🙂 ]

Julian: I can’t believe you’re defending anti-vaxxers. You of all people should know that they lack any sort of redeeming characteristics.

Sadmar: “In terms of outbreaks, we must also keep in mind that the hard-core conspiracy theorists are the minority among non-vaxing parents, many of whom have not rejected the science because they haven’t confronted the science.”

I’d quibble with this. A willingness to accept one conspiracy quickly becomes a willingness to accept all conspiracies. Otherwise, you’re on point as usual.

Nice strawman there PGP. I’m not defending antivaxxers, I’m calling you out for your frankly absurd generalisations.

@Sadmar – I have a lot of sympathy for parents who are scammed by the conmen leading the antivax movement. And I wouldn’t classify them as hard core conspiracy theorists. But they all believe in a conspiracy.

The only way vaccine schedules could be dangerous is if thousands of clinicians, researchers and health departments from all around the world, crossing ideological and economic boundaries, are either wrong or covering it up. That’s the definition of a conspiracy.

@Michael M
About the idea that people who’ve been vaccinated for measles might infect others by “shedding virus” –
That is a concern about the efficacy of the measles vaccine for the purpose for which it was designed – lowering the rate of measles.
The vaccine has been extremely effective at eliminating measles, when enough of the population is vaccinated.
How can that possibly be reconciled with an idea that someone might transmit measles as a result of having received the measles vaccine?

@ Laura:

That study illustrates what a UK focus group ( mentioned by Jon Brock/ Cracking the Enigma) found a few years ago:
parents were more accepting of information presented as being from other parents than from authorities.

Thus it make sense that vaccine supporters make use of testimony ( that fit SB advice) from other parents as spokespersons. And we do see blogs and public service announcements that follow along that line.

@ sadmar:

We don’t know a great deal about run-of-the-mill anti-vaxxers but we do know ( and AoA/ TMR constantly remind us) that they tend to be more affluent and more ‘educated’ than is the norm. Education may be defined by amount not type.

As I mentioned previously, we know precious little about these websites’ audiences whilst we do know more about the leaders, contributors and frequent commenters because they constantly regale us with stories. Websites like the aforementioned boast between 10K and 30+K on facebook ( and we know how reliable that is) : I assume that there is overlap between these groups ( imagine the Venn diagrammes resultant). Often the principals hold important positions in several advocacy groups ( AoA, Canary Party, Health Choice or AoA/ TMR).

Other research has shown that conspiracy theories appeal to certain people- IIRC two factors are less cognitive complexity and more paranoia. Psychologists like Seth Kalichman, who infiltrated a coven of hiv/aids denialists, remarked that leaders- who frequently set themselves up alone against the weight of international medical authorities and research- appear to have traits of a narcissitic personality. He includes well-known woo-meisters in his analysis also.

As you may notice, under the laws of crank magnetism, we can expect that those who swallow one type of woo may choose other woo as well. Right now, there seems to be some cross-pollination between anti-vaxxers and hiv/aids denialists – Farber and Montagnier step into the fray as well as true woo artists ( Adams, Null) who of course do so ( Adams seems to recently deny AGW whilst the other idiot doesn’t).

Psychologists like Seth Kalichman, who infiltrated a coven of hiv/aids denialists, remarked that leaders- who frequently set themselves up alone against the weight of international medical authorities and research- appear to have traits of a narcissitic personality.

A bit like a secular cult, perhaps. Cult leaders tend to be narcissistic.

Chemommo: Considering I’m making generalizations about awful people, I don’t see a problem. I mean, so what if an anti-vax person gets their precious feelings hurt? That’s like valuing the input of someone from the Westboro Baptist Church- they chose to join terrible organizations, they have no right to complain if everyone then decides that they are garbage and so are their opinions. Age of Autism and TMR people denigrate medical professionals, trash-talk their kids and any autistic person who dares to speak up (except for people who hate themselves like Jake Crosby does), send death threats to parents who have lost their kids, and generally behave in a manner that wild animals would consider appalling. So why do they need defenders?

PGP: A syllogism is no better than its premises. If one of the things you have as “if” is false, you can’t get anything useful

You could equally well argue that if all Americans own dogs, and dogs encourage people to go for long walks, all Americans take long walks every day.

Misogyny is not some unique flaw of anti-vaxxers/

Vicki: Misogyny is not some unique flaw of anti-vaxxers

I’m aware of that. However, anti-vaccination groups tend to be composed of women who should know better, who then proceed to tear down anyone who has the temerity to be exposed to the facts.

PGP@ 218

Vicki: Misogyny is not some unique flaw of anti-vaxxers

You’re quite right about that. It’s in the first sentence of yours I quoted in my previous comment.

Politicalguineapig:

Anti-vax sentiment flows from women such as Bill Maher, Chris Christie, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Andrew Wakefield, Bob Sears, and Jay Gordon?

When a man makes anti-vax statements, you don’t generalize about men. Why, when a woman does, do you generalize about women?

Not only can they kill you; but they don’t even work! http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/measles-transmitted-vaccinated-gov-researchers-confirm

Newcasle Upon Tyne

I’ll go another 2 quatloos.

@Bryan R Queen
I read the article. Nowhere does it say that “vaccines don’t work”. How does that conclusion follow from the article?

@ Lawrence:

I saw that!
Jake is probably angry because she is working for a relatively well-known magazine and may actually even earn real money.

OBVIOUSLY this is evidence of a plot hatched by the embedded powers-that-be to keep him away from his rightful place in the sun as a crime-busting scientist/ journalist or suchlike.

All media journalism is totally corrupt anyway -except for Sharyl Attkisson. See Anne Dachel today AoA.

Shay: I’m not blaming anyone, I’m just pointing out a facet that’s found in most cultures. A lot of men do work to overcome that conditioning, but some will still resort to gendered insults or take flagrant advantage of the women they work for. It’s just the way the world is.

No, you are once again slapping a blanket condemnation on an entire demographic because you’re morally and intellectually lazy.

@ PGP:

Really, so you’re telling me that the straight ones with whom I socialise just want to scht#p me and the gay ones merely want to nick my fashion savvy?**

And I thought that they liked the repartee.
**( Actually I don’t mind either )

PGP, just my observation that EuroAmerican men have no sense of balance towards women at all. While not everything I learned at the knee of my elders have stood the test of time, this one bit of education continues to be validated in every conceivable way at every conceivable opportunity. No wonder I make my own beloved one so happy, considering the poor specimens she’d have to deal with if she’d kept to her own ethnic cultural shallow pool.

Young Master Crosby has a new post up – his belief in his own self-importance is quite stunning…..

I have never before seen anyone call for a Congressional investigation over a case of asshurt about a site’s (viz., RW’s) comment policy. The nearest thing I can think of is Eileen Simon’s tedious whining about having received a form letter from POTUS.

PGP, just my observation that EuroAmerican men have no sense of balance towards women at all.

WTF? This is practically an Iron Eyes Cody doppelgänger of PGP.

@Narad Well, the whole discussion was going no where.
So I tried to kill it. Unfortunately, such things often refuse to die.

Iron Eyes Cody did not become an NDN until his marriage to a woman of the Heron Clan. Yet he sure looked like one.

PGP wrote: ” After puberty, men and women rarely associate outside of romantic pairings and work assignments. Most men subsequently develop very skewed ideas of women. ”

Hey, PGP used a “rarely” and a “most”. That’s progress! Some of the stuff PGP says have a grain of truth if you divide by five or so. I understand what she’s saying here. Given that “most” means >50% and if yu file down the very, yeah I’d say most men have skewed ideas of women and the difficulty of forming platonic straight-guy / straight-women friendships has a lot to do with that. I’m certainly not talking raging misogyny or anything – just basic stuff like the virgin/whore dichotomy and what not.

Well, for whatever it’s worth, I agree with sadmar:
I feel that PGP is SLOWLY making progress by speaking a bit more cautiously altho’ she still makes sweeping statements. Time is on our side. I hope.

In truth, subjects like misogyny and racism stir up emotional responses and this further lends toward hyperbole and a lack of careful speech by certain speakers. This can change.

Psychologists and pollsters DO study these questions but the problem involves how jawdroppingly vast and meticulously detailed this area of research is- it seems endless and ridden with controversy – and thus, people fear even wading into its oceanic presence. Most people aren’t aware of this sea of statistics. So there IS science for whomsoever wishs to study it. God luck.

The reason we get so many differing personal reactions here is because people ARE diverse in what they believe and how they behave as well as what they witness and how they interpret it. There are racists, non-racists, reformed racists, unintentional racists and situational racists- similarly for misogynists. AND there are regional factors as well as personality and educational factors and an age cohort effect.

Things have changed ( sang Bob Dylan):

I remember my mother predicting that someday there would be an elected female PM/ president of a major western country ( not India or Israel)..
and she was right ( too bad it had to be Thatcher) and she lived to see it. Now there are/ were quite a few. Not an issue.
Although some may carp about, it can happen. It’s history.

On to the next:
I have to comment on how much I am entertained by Colonel Tom’s comments- he’s clever, writes in an interesting manner and can contribute on SB material
AND in adition, he allows RI to become slightly less a haven of incredibly true, blue whiteys from North America and Western Europe.

Which it entirely is. If you doubt me, look at our esteemed and venerable host, Orac, and commenters who include photo avatars or who are pictured elsewhere on the ‘net. I give you Dr G, Dr Jay, Brian Deer, Liz Ditz etc. A few people have *Scandinavian* names ( Lund, Johansson) or admit their Norwegianess ( Calli, lilady, Chris, JP- yes, part counts!).
Then we have the English and Anglos who are often whiteness personified. And the Irish.You inow who you are.
Including me.

( and before anyone gets riled up – those last two paragraphs were partially tongue-in-cheek – an exercise in over-compensation- but it is STILL true, oh denizens of – mostly- Whitey Haven in cyberspace)

.

Well, for whatever it’s worth, I agree with sadmar:

Me too. And I agree with Denice, too.
And funny enough, now that I had read Sadmar analysis, I agree with PGP, too.

No sarcasm – indeed, “most men have skewed ideas of women” and “basic stuff like the virgin/whore dichotomy” would unfortunately perfectly apply to me. And many men I know.

I will do one better and propose the following aphorism:

“most people have skewed ideas of other people”
A bit broad and nondescript, but completely true.

I found out traveling abroad and meeting people did a lot to improve my provincialism.
Still have issues to resolve, though. Hence the topic being a bit of a berzerk button for me. Part guilt – I could do better, and part “I’m trying, damnit”.

Helianthus

How about “most people have skewed ideas of other people who are different from them to any significant degree”?

[In Minnesota at least, all the Northern Europeans got along pretty well, doncha know, and we could even deal with the Irish when they were sober, or on St. Patty’s day when, you betcha, everybody went over to St. Paul to get plowed. 🙂 🙂 ]

Women are a bit easier, but I’d be a fool to talk with any friend about anything that matters.

Wait, why? That is incredibly sad. I mean, who do you talk to about things that matter?

I suppose guy/girl friendships can be a little fraught, but I think they’re possible with a little faith in other people. (Same goes for friendships in general, I guess.) I am a woman of primarily Sapphic tendencies, so I guess it might be a little easier for to be friends with men. I mean, with a couple of my closest male friends, there were even a couple ill-advised episodes of fooling around, and we were able to laugh it off the next day as drunken shenanigans and carry on without thing even being awkward.

Wait, okay, I’m definitely just a freak.

But why wouldn’t you trust, say, a woman friend enough to confide in them? “Things by you” sound awfully lonely.

The thing is being friends with guys is very very difficult if you’re single.

For some people.

PGP, if you’d born into the right culture, you would have owned all of the property of your household, had final say on all issues of children, and under certain circumstances been allowed to use the wedding knife on a bad husband.

So you’re bragging on a society in which members of one sex have no rights to the marital property, have no rights to their own children, and can be killed by their spouse acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

So how’re things in Saudi? Great for members of the favored sex, right?

Oh wait, you said the favored sex is female. That’s entirely different, then.

I much prefer the old systems as compared to the EuroAmerican mess, stressful custody battles, children used as emotional pawn in proxy battles, young souls ripped apart by spouses that fight over who get the wedding china.

Well sure, I’m agreeing with you. There’s no fighting over the wedding china when the favored sex owns everything, and no quarrels over custody when the favored sex makes all decisions about children, regardless of ability, emotional stability, or intelligence.

And certainly when a member of the disfavored sex is killed, other members of the favored sex get to comment. No need for niceties like burden of proof or representation by counsel, no worries about cruel and unusual punshment. The Saudis brag on the virtues of their system all the time. It works great, for members of the favored sex.

You’re right, it’s all good.

I don’t recall its being mentioned yet, so… add another 10 to the linked cases. CBC reports that all were unvaccinated.

@Vicki, Pacifism was never a problem historically. In fact, the historical example that was set is an example that not all wars are men’s fault. It apparently was a complicated process which really has only be invoked in recent history at Oka, in which case battle was not started without approval of the Women and war end when the Women called it off.

As far as the problem of unfit parents, obviously, there are times when children become the responsibility of their aunts or cousins. There are civil procedures to move custody away from a distressed (nice word for alcoholic) mother.

Colonel Tom:

I hope you’re right, but we have another report of someone who was diagnosed with measles after commuting round-trip on the BART trains for three days. This isn’t something contact tracing can handle: Caltrans is getting the word out about which trains he took, hoping the estimated 25,000 people who were have been on one of them will remember the announcement if they get sick:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-measles-alert-riders-may-have-been-exposed-6075396.php

There are also ten new cases in Quebec, all in one family:
http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/lanaudiere-officials-identify-10-cases-of-measles

(What worries me is that I wasn’t particularly looking for stuff about the outbreak: those were both on news sites I look at regularly.)

Are there any states in which vaccination really is forced – not just to enter public school, but even for homeschooled children?
Many states do not require vaccination for homeschooled children.
But some do. Four states (MN, ND, PA, TN) require homeschooling parents to provide proof of immunization.
According to http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/policy-issues/current-policy/homeschool-immunization-requirements/

12 states require homeschooled students to be immunized but do not require homeschool parents to submit proof of immunization (CA, CO, IL, IN, KS, KY, MT, NM, NC, TX, VA, WY)

What happens if parents don’t immunize their children? Will someone come and get the child and stick a needle into them?
I know at least in some states, the law isn’t enforced as written. In New York State, the vaccination laws look quite strict on paper. Yet there are schools with low vaccination rates anyway. One school in Ithaca has only a 72% vaccination rate for measles. It’s not a religious school or a religious area, so it’s very unlikely that the parents of unvaccinated children really have a religious belief against vaccination (which is an extreme religious position).
In North Carolina homeschooled children are required to be vaccinated. But, according to http://www.sog.unc.edu/sites/www.sog.unc.edu/files/ImmunizationPPT0907.pdf

In theory, could enforce immunization requirements same as any other public health law (charge with misdemeanor, obtain court order)
In practice, issue of compliance with immunization requirements usually addressed when child enters day care or school

So it looks like in NC, parents who are so passionate about not vaccinating their children that they’re willing to homeschool them, can avoid vaccinating their children.
If a state requires immunization for all children and the law really is enforced, then there really is forced vaccination. But what’s the reality?

Pertinent to this topic, MMWR on the recent outbreak.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm64e0213a1.htm?mobile=nocontent

hoping the mighty Orac hammers this, because it looks telling to me about the effect that personal belief exemptions had on the disease spread & hospitalizations.

Johnny:

The Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Haudenosaunee (longhouse) or The Five Nations was formed before European contact. It has been called “the oldest participatory democracy on Earth,” and “one of the main influences on the framers of the Constitution”
http://tinyurl.com/qg8rxev

The Iroquois are a matriarchal Mother Clan system. The Clan Mothers appoint leaders. The chief of a clan can be removed at any time by a council of the women elders. The first European settlers learned Iroquois had matrilineal family structure. Children belong to their mother’s clan and gain their social status through hers. Women held property — including dwellings and horses. The work of a woman’s hands was hers to do with as she saw fit. A woman choosing to divorce an unsatisfactory husband was able to ask him to leave the dwelling and take his possessions with him.— her property before marriage stayed with her without being mixed with her husband’s. If a couple separated, the woman traditionally kept the children. [adapted from Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/2vl88f%5D

As leaders, the women closely monitor the actions of the men and retain the right to veto any law they deem inappropriate….Our women not only hold the reigns of political and economic power, they also have the right to determine all issues involving the taking of human life. Declarations of war had to be approved by the women, while treaties of peace were subject to their deliberations [http://tinyurl.com/o9t5lff]

Thus, one of the key distinctions between Makayla Sault and J.J.. The Saults are more cult-ish Evangelical Christians than native traditionalists, but their heritage is Ojibwe, a totally different society and culture from the Iroquois, one that is primarily patrilineal and patriarchal:

Women in general, are submissive and inferior compared to the men. Living not for herself but to find a mate, women focus on their craftsmanship in hope of impressing a man and forming a relationship. A woman’s passive nature can be concluded because they not only eat the leftovers of the men, but also always keep a distance from their husband. [http://tinyurl.com/ml2pwoo]

That could not describe Sonya Sault LESS. Formally, Makayla’s father Ken is the head of the household, and the church congregation. But in the news stories, Sonya does all the talking, and it’s pretty evident she’s running the show.

this is an open border problem