Before I delve into the next topic, I can’t help but congratulate John Oliver yet again for his excellent deconstruction of the antivaccine movement on Sunday night. As I noted on Tuesday, it clearly hit the mark, given how angry one antivax blogger got over it. As of yesterday, over at that wretched hive of scum and quackery, that antivaccine crank blog known as Age of Autism, resident “Media Editor” Anne Dachel was still sputtering over Oliver’s segment, labeling it Oliver’s vulgar treatment of vaccine-injured and their families and posting a line about how allegedly “mocking and berating the vaccine-injured is the new sport of media bullies.” Of course, as I pointed out Tuesday, Oliver did anything but “mock” or “berate” the families of special needs children. Indeed, he did exactly the opposite, although he did mock leaders of the antivaccine movement, all of whom richly deserve far worse for their spreading of misinformation that frightens parents into not vaccinating and thereby threatens public health. As I’ve noted for at least ten years now, though, whenever antivaxers are criticized for their views, one of their go-to moves is to wax all indignant and accuse the critics of “attacking,” “belittling,” or “mocking” parents of autistic children. If they can do it to John Oliver, who bent over backwards to empathize with parents victimized by misinformation, then you know it’s just a tactic to try to shame critics into silence. This has real consequences.
As many of you know, I will be giving a talk at NECSS on Friday morning as part of the Science-Based Medicine session. My talk will be on recent developments in antivaccine activity and politics. Because I just came across an article today from last week that demonstrates another effect of antivaccine misinformation. It also illustrates a point that I plan on making Friday about how vaccine policy is becoming increasingly politicized and antivaccine ideology is becoming increasingly associated with the small government/anti-government right and how, as a result, what was once a bipartisan consensus on the importance of school vaccine mandates is becoming dangerously politicized. The best example to illustrate this problem is, once again, Texas. I also love how it illustrates the hypocrisy of the antivaccine movement as well.
If there’s one thing antivaxers love to claim they’re for, it’s transparency. It’s the free access to information, which, of course, according to them is being withheld from them by big pharma, the government, and the medical profession. To them, all three are “covering up” information showing that vaccines are dangerous.
Now take a look at what’s going on in Texas:
Texas isn’t Minnesota — yet. But when it comes to vaccination, the links are too close for comfort. Non-medical exemptions in Texas — where parents opt their kids out of vaccines — have been on the rise since 2003, increasing 19-fold to close to 45,000. Worse than these raw numbers are small pockets of vaccine resistance across the state where close to 30 percent of children are unvaccinated, and maybe more. That level needs to be at more like 5 percent in order to prevent a measles outbreak like the one in Minnesota.
But bills that could prevent such a scenario in Texas died during the last legislative session. In fact, most of them never even got a hearing.
Here’s where the issue of transparency comes in:
Here in Texas, there may be public schools with similarly low vaccination rates — but parents have no way to find out about them. It’s impossible to get information on whether your child’s school has a vaccination rate far below safe levels, even if you’ve got a child who can’t be vaccinated because they’re undergoing chemotherapy or taking immunosuppressive drugs for other medical conditions.
But sick kids aren’t the only ones affected by this lack of information. The measles vaccine is 97 percent effective among people who receive both doses. That still leaves 3 out of 100 children unprotected, despite their parents’ best efforts. A few of those kids stricken in Minnesota were vaccinated. Perhaps even more frightening is that this highly contagious and very dangerous disease can be spread to babies too young to have been vaccinated.
Yet even Texas’ House Bill 2249, a bill to bolster transparency and parents’ rights to vaccine information, didn’t make it into law this session, though it was the only pro-vaccine legislation passed by a legislative committee. The Parents’ Right to Know bill would have required the reporting of vaccination rates at individual public schools. Anti-vaccine groups raised straw-man arguments about how this would reveal families’ personal decisions about whether or not to vaccinate. No, it would not.
This is an argument that we frequently hear from antivaxers whenever laws mandating school vaccine rate transparency are considered. Of course, the Texas bill would have required de-identified information to be made available at the school level. Unless parents are speaking out or doing something to let it be publicly known that they are suspicious of vaccines, it’s hard to imagine how such school-level information would make it easier to identify children who are unvaccinated or udnervaccinated. Certainly, antivaccine groups have a hard time making coherent arguments about how this could happen or to produce compelling examples of this ever happening.
Another claim about such a law is that the state already reports data by school district. That, however, is not enough. Vaccine uptake and exemption rates can vary widely from school to school. It’s not enough for parents of an immunocompromised child—or parents who just want to keep their children as safe as possible from vaccine-preventable diseases—to know district-wide vaccination rates. Aren’t antivaxers all about giving parents the information they need to choose for their children? Apparently not, except when it’s their children and the children of parents who agree with them.
Instead, they come up with BS excuses like this, parroted by a representative of Texans for Vaccine Choice named Jennifer Lewis:
Lewis said during the hearing the bill “makes a very misguided presumption” that children with vaccine exemptions are responsible for spreading diseases and vaccinated children are not. She said the bill would make it easier for people to find out which children have exemptions.
“There is other information more relevant, such as the number of students with HIV, hepatitis and lyme and the number who receive live vaccines that can put the medically fragile at risk,” Lewis said.
This is all, of course, nonsense. There’s a difference between shedding and causing disease. For one thing, the strains of virus used in live attenuated virus vaccines are just that—attenuated. They’ve been weakened in some way so that they don’t cause the actual disease. Otherwise, a live virus vaccine would be the equivalent of giving the disease to the person vaccinated, which would rather sabotage the whole point of vaccination, which is to produce immunity to the disease without the vaccinated person actually having to suffer through the disease itself. (Scratch that, it would be exactly the same as giving the person the disease.) The question, then, is whether secondary transmission (transmission of the vaccine strain virus to others who haven’t received it) is a major concern. The answer to that question, is no, as these articles entitled Secondary Transmission: The short and sweet about live virus vaccine shedding and Live Vaccines and Vaccine Shedding. Also, yes, vaccinated children can sometimes be infected with the pathogenic organism their vaccine prevents against. That’s because no vaccine is 100% effective. However, if you look at the actual attack rate, the risk of contracting a disease vaccinated against, the unvaccinated are always at a much higher risk.
If there’s a disturbing development on the antivaccine front over the last few years, it has to be the increasing alignment of the antivaccine movement with libertarian, small government, and anti-government conservatives. It’s a development that threatens to shred the social contract and the hard won bipartisan consensus on school vaccine mandates that have been so successful for so many years protecting our children.
151 replies on “Quoth antivaxers: “We demand transparency, except when it might embarrass us””
I hope somebody with training was able to dismantle her ludicrous claims.
Children with vaccine exemptions ARE responsible for spreading diseases. This has been shown over and over.
In Colorado and other states as well anti vaccines activists opposed making school level data public.
Because, as you say, parental choice is only sacred when it’s theirs, and transparency refers to others. I’ve yet to see a good argument against the policy.
John Oliver is a TV comic and unless you are a Phd level microbiologist you should reserve having any premature opinion
on this subject because it goes a lot deeper than John Oliver or this article have any concept of.
I wonder if it’s just that they need to constantly have something to oppose, or if they sincerely think such laws are harmful to them, and if so why.
@Dorit: it’s because they know that the pro-vaccine parents would avoid them and their kids wouldn’t be allowed to play with the unvaccinated kids. It’s a popularity thing, and they don’t dare let things be known that would keep their kids from being popular.
Dorit,
The cynic in me thinks they don’t want to miss out on the heard immunity they are taking advantage of. If the immunized avoided those without, those without would be at greater risk.
I wasn’t clear. I meant – the pro-vaccine parents would avoid those schools (if at all possible) .
Great article, but I’m confused at the “ADFADAD” bit.
“To them, all three are “covering up” information showing that vaccines are dangerous. For instance:
ADFADAD”
I think something may have gotten left out or accidentally deleted here?
Quoth euthanasia advocates: “We demand euthanasia but are against the death penalty”.
@don #3:
How strange. Does Anne Dachel have a PhD? Does Jennifer Lewis, who said all sorts of foolish things about the vaccinated and the unvaccinated? Or do they get a pass because they’re antivaccine?
Orac is an oncologist with a PhD. He knows better than most the danger that the unvaccinated pose to those undergoing treatment for cancer.
By the way don, do you have a PhD in microbiology?
Don,
I only passed the qualifying exam, so I don’t have a PhD either, but please shine a light into those depths and elucidate them for us.
Transparency really translates to conspiracy for antivaccidiots. They yell for transparency because all science that proves vaccines are safe they declare are bought and paid for by big pharm, or big government, or whomever. But some are smart enough to know that absolute transparency means the average person will have the information needed to see through their lies.
““There is other information more relevant, such as the number of students with HIV, hepatitis and lyme and the number who receive live vaccines that can put the medically fragile at risk,” Lewis said.”
Lyme CANNOT be spread person-person (the “chronic lyme” crowd will sometimes claim that it can, but there is no evidence to support their claims, and even they say that the supposed person-person transmission of lyme is through sex or vertical transmission, as far as I know), and HIV cannot be spread through casual contact-so she obviously has absolutely zero idea what she is talking about.
Claiming that identifying students with lyme disease-which cannot be spread person-person, or students with HIV-which is spread through sex or through exposure to a patients blood (e.g., reuse of needles), will “protect the medically fragile” is ludicrous and shows just how clueless she is.
Well, as it happens, so I am, and so are a number of people working at the CDC and other health agencies around the world. And these people tend to support vaccination.
(and so is little amateur me)
Do you even lift, Don?
———————
In other news, a bunch of French physicians are currently advocating to make 11 vaccines mandatory in France.
Recent outbreaks of measles and meningitis in Europe is giving some weight to their concerns.
@don-You don’t have to have a PhD to see that vaccination is one of the safest and most effective medical interventions ever developed. Anyone who reads even a little about vaccines and the history of infectious diseases (except a delusional anti-vaxxer, of course) can see that, regardless of their level of education.
@Jonas: I had an insurance client who claimed she got Lyme from a mosquito in the Bahamas, sexually transmitted it to her spouse and parent-to-child transmitted it to her child. She never had had positive tests, nor did her spouse or child. But she wanted approval of 1 year’s worth of IV antibiotics for the 3 of them because her LLMD quack said they all needed to be treated or they would get it again. (LLMDQ was a “cash-only” provider, with no malpractice insurance).
@MI Dawn-Yes, that’s what I was saying-those who believe the “LLMD” quacks will claim that it can be spread person-person, but there is zero hard evidence of that.
And Lewis’ suggestion that HIV positive students be identified is appalling, considering the stigma that having HIV carries. I can’t believe she said that.
I wonder how much damage President Trump has done with his anti-vax comments? While Orac notes that anti-vaxxers have increasingly become aligned with libertarians, the fact that the President of the U.S. has repeatedly made false statements about vaccination is also concerning-especially since some of Trump’s supporters seem to believe whatever comes out of his mouth, even if it is obviously false.
The anti-vaxxers were really excited in January, when Trump met with RFK Jr. and suggested that he’d set up a “vaccine safety” commission-fortunately, the administration seems to have abandoned that idea-but still.
And of course that 3% probably wouldn’t seroconvert to the measles illness, either. A friend of mine’s eldest did receive his DTaPs and TDaPs but has still gotten pertussis 3 times in high school. Not any other vpd, but for some reason pertussis is different for him.
Demoducus: Not any other vpd, but for some reason pertussis is different for him.
Ugh, that’s awful. I am really really spooked about whooping cough- I rushed a little on updating my DTP because of a new baby in the family. I know whooping cough immunity wears off fast, but three times during a four-year span? That’s worrying.
MIDawn: It’s a popularity thing, and they don’t dare let things be known that would keep their kids from being popular.
Yeah, in general, anti-vaxxers seem like the prom queens who never let go of their ‘glory days.’ I wonder if they’d ever notice that their kids inherited their personalities and that’s what’s making them unpopular and unpleasant to be around.
@don I’ve read this blog for many years, but this is the first time I’ve felt compelled to comment. I do not have a PhD in anything, I’m just someone who has done my “research” online. I’ve come to the conclusion that vaccines are safe.
However, my husband does have a PhD in microbiology. He even did his dissertation on viruses. He agrees with my conclusions.
When you invent imaginary diseases, you can have them spread anyway you want. Anti-vaxxer disease seems to be spread by either ignorance or greed.
“John Oliver is a TV comic and unless you are a Phd level microbiologist you should reserve having any premature opinion on this subject”
Yes, Jim Carrey taught me all I need to know to make up for only having an M.S. in microbiology. 🙁
I don’t know how school districts are organized in Texas, but it doesn’t take a very large population base to have multiple schools in a district. The school district in which I live, population ~20k, has two elementary schools. I expect that school districts such as Houston, a city with more people than my entire state, would have multiple schools. I don’t know if the rates between School L and School M in my district are significantly different, but if I were a parent of a kid who needed a medical exemption to vaccine requirements, you can bet I would try to find out, and take appropriate action if the rates were different.
You will probably find significant differences in vaccination rates in Minneapolis. Presumably the Somali community, like other immigrant communities before them, are clustered in certain neighborhoods, and the schools that serve those neighborhoods are therefore likely to have significantly lower MMR uptake rates than other schools that serve neighborhoods without significant Somali populations.
IANAL, but I think a case could be made that the ADA requires reporting at the individual school level. The argument is that an immunocompromised child would have to be kept out of school during a measles outbreak if the school district could not guarantee herd protection levels of immunization at the child’s specific school. I’ll let the lawyers on this board confirm or argue against this position.
Oh, please. Opposition to vaccines, often massive opposition, has been around since the very first vaccine proved not to be the safe and effective miracle it was cracked up to be. Just don’t expect to see the experts in that camp on the evening news, unless they’re the target of a smear campaign. Nothing is more important to the mass vaccination pogrom than a perception of consensus.
There has never been a “social contract” or a “bipartisan consensus,” and there are no vaccine “mandates.” There are vaccine recommendations from government health agencies and their pharmaceutical comrades, which fortunately we still possess the liberty to reject–although in a few states, it now carries heavy consequences.
The vast majority of people have no idea what’s in those needles, and inject them out of blind trust. That’s starting to change, and the mass vaccination peddlers are running scared–as they should be.
don @3.
MD and boarded immunologist here.
Pretty sure I have “a concept of”. Care to go deep into it?
The CDC recommended vaccines are very safe and with the exception of the flu shot are very effective
Never been a social contract? Then NWO you’re as ignorant of history as you are of biology.
The idea of the social contract comes from John Locke. The Founders were heavily influenced by his ideas, and the Declaration of Independence is based firmly on Locke’s notion of the social contract. It’s where “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” comes from, though Locke said, “Life, Liberty and property.”
And there are indeed vaccine mandates that come from government: state governments. However, the penalties for noncompliance are not criminal, they’re civil. You can’t send your kid to a public school. Some vaccines on the schedule are excluded from the mandates, meaning they’re optional. Hepatitis A for example, is optional in most places. Same for HPV and Hep B.
The issue of vaccinations was never a partisan political issue until recently. In 1950, the reddest Republican you could find would tell you to vaccinate your children if you want to send them to public school.
don, I* have a Ph.D. (notice formatting). Pray do tell me about the depths of understanding I might have been missing out on. My reading of the scientific literature provides me with the opinion that vaccines are mostly safe and effective ways to deal with certain epidemic diseases.
*Admittedly, my Ph.D. is in biochemistry, but everyone knows biochemistry Ph.D.s are more knowledgeable and sexier than microbiology Ph.D.s (now if only it was possible to find an emoticon around here).
I too believe that I have some qualification to judge vaccine safety and effectiveness. I graduated from an accredited physician assistant program at a major university. I worked for twenty years in medicine and spent a good part of those years working in tertiary-level medical or radiation oncology in two hospitals and in clinical HIV research in two more; in one of the latter I worked for an onco-immunologist who was one of the first physicians to recognize, and the first to name the disease he called Acquired Cellular Immune Deficiency. So I actually know something about immunology and the consequences of immunodeficiency.
Further, your comment about “since the very first vaccine proved not to be the safe and effective miracle it was cracked up to be”. This is nothing but a straw man fallacy. Few if any have claimed that all vaccines are universally safe and effective. No one here would argue that point. But we don’t need one hundred percent effectiveness or safety to know that vaccination is extremely safe and effective and is a far better alternative to actually having one of more vaccine preventable diseases. You can take my word for it. I have had several of them. I may well be the youngest native born American you will ever encounter to have had poliomyelitis.
But that’s not really what I want to weigh in on. This is:
“Nothing is more important to the mass vaccination pogrom …”. I deeply resent your appropriation and trivialization of the word “pogrom”. Have you ever met and talked to a survivor of an actual pogrom? I have. One lost her brother, the commanding officer of the first free Czechoslovak (and Allied) troops to enter that country who was killed in a pogrom after the war; she was lucky to survive it. A pogrom is a real and definite event, unmistakable in its nature, and in its principal meaning is a targeting usually of Jews, but also by extension any defenseless minority population. Using it the way you did is a close second to appropriating the Holocaust. Vaccination is not remotely like burning people alive in their homes, or cutting people down in the street, or gang rape and mutilation, usually accompanied by the theft of the meager possessions of the victims. In my eyes you victimize the victims all over again. It is tasteless, ignorant, and insensitive.
If it didn’t add to a growing chorus of argument from ignorance that endangers lives, I wouldn’t give a rat’s about your unreality-based opinions.
FTFY.
OK don, while I don’t have a PhD in microbiology I do have some friends and acquaintances who are so equipped. Care to tell me what I should ask them? Or are you like that other one who claimed to have some whizzy biochemistry that no-one on this site, none of the scientists, medics, nurses and the like who make up most of the regulars, would understand?
I notice he hasn’t come back…
Nor the one with the, errrrrr, interesting claims about the GMC and Wakefield…
Are we detecting a bit of a pattern here?
Panacea @ 28
I suspect the only John Locke NWOR has heard of is the character from Lost, rather than 17th century empiricists from Somerset…
A bit off-topic but it’s about accupuncture research — it MAY not be effective treatment for infertility.
http://news.psu.edu/story/472960/2017/06/27/research/acupuncture-may-not-be-effective-treating-infertility
Allow me to join in the chorus of people who are ridiculing this claim.
We have a term for societies that don’t have a social contract. That term is “anarchy”. Every government has a social contract of some kind, even if it is only, “Our thugs with spears will protect you from those other thugs with spears.” If you know anything whatsoever about Chinese history you will have encountered the term “Mandate of Heaven”, which is another way of saying the same thing: when the government fails to uphold its side of the social contract, it is said to have lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Likewise “bipartisan consensus”. At least until 1994, there was general agreement among politicians of both major US political parties that certain things should be done by government. There were disagreements on how government should do those things, and whether certain things should be added to the list, but government was generally considered to have a purpose, and anyone who thought otherwise was properly considered to be on the lunatic fringe. Starting with Newt Gingrich and the Contract on America, this former lunatic fringe has effectively taken over the Republican Party. These same people are trying to void the social contract as we have known it and replace it with … I have never heard a coherent description of what the replacement might look like even in an ideal case. Some, particularly Ayn Rand disciples, think there shouldn’t be a social contract at all. In a sensible world, which this is not, these people would at best be ignored, if not examined for mental illness.
@Eric Lund:
A similar idea occurred to me this week. So many of the archaic and inscrutable quirks of the English Parliament come down to “we’ve always done it this way.” I admit to having long been fascinated and baffled that tradition could stick so thoroughly and (reasonably) well. But for some reason or other, the past few months on this side of the pond have made me jealous of that kind of stability.
It’s part of the problem we have with the current President – much of the restraint and décor of the office has been part of the tradition of the Presidency – not by law or regulation.
When you have someone who cares nothing for restraint or decorum, there is nothing stopping him from acting like a tyrant.
I just noticed something that Orac & Co will probably enjpy immensely…
On the new ( Dan-less) blurb at AoA, ( upper right)
Teresa Conrick is listed as the……….
Science Editor!!!!!!!
Panacea, you’re perverting the concept of the right to “life, liberty and property.” These are natural rights of each individual. There is absolutely nothing in that principle to suggest that healthy people have an ethical obligation to subject themselves to the risks of vaccination for the sake of others. In fact, it indicates just the opposite–that no one has a right to demand such a sacrifice.
If healthy people believe the possible benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, they can certainly choose to vaccinate. That’s why there is extensive propaganda designed to convince people that’s the case. You can bet the people designing it understand that the natural individual right to “life, liberty and property” means exactly what I said.
Eric Lund, your contention about the “social contract” depends on an assumption that widespread suppression of the symptoms of common illnesses (to the extent vaccines do that) improves all-cause morbidity and mortality in society. You have absolutely no proof of that, and it’s a theory that is widely disputed.
NWO Idiot:
Quit quoting “Life, Liberty, and Property”. It’s “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
Admittedly, early drafts of the Declaration had the direct Locke quote, but we dodged a huge bullet when Jefferson changed it in the final draft.
Note that the Confederate States Constitution was at pains to reverse this “mistake”–as they saw it.
You keep using that word, NWOR. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
The concept of a social contract dates to long before vaccines were widely available. It has only been in the last 60 years or so that it has even been possible for vaccines to be part of the social contract.
There are still people alive today who remember what the world was like before vaccines became available. They vastly prefer having the vaccines available. Then there are people like you who overhype small risks to justify a position with no basis in reality. Endangering yourself by using exaggerated fears of a small risk to not use a protective measure is one thing. Endangering others is another thing, and is rightly scorned by most people. Because whenever we see large enough pockets where immunization rates fall below the herd immunity threshold, we eventually see outbreaks. And while these diseases often can be treated, they are very painful to the people who contract the disease.
Eric Lund, your condescension is not persuasive. There is absolutely no evidence that vaccines have improved *ALL-CAUSE* morbidity or mortality. None. All you are doing is tugging on heartstrings to convince people they did.
@NWOR-You are forgetting about the 1905 SCOTUS ruling. Compulsory vaccination *is not* unconstitutional. I’m not saying that I support forcing adults to get vaccinated, but it is legal. That is settled law, and has been for more than a century.
No?
Measles:
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25294240.
Diphtheria:
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/dip.pdf
Pertussis:
And
Tuberculosis:
And
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4122754
Rotavirus:
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21183842
You are so blinded by your ideology, you don’t realise how utterly wrong you are.
Comment of mine in moderation. Put too many links in.
Oh, dear, uncontrollable laughter is bad form in the library even during summer quarter.
Hey, Ginny, are the “expanding Earth”/”alternative gravity” advocates that you’re fond of able to explain how a giant mass of irony can be thrown from a 13th floor window and fail to land anywhere?
The rest of the Social Contract starts showing up a little later, in the part the greedy ones don’t bother to quote:
The greedy NWOR types insist on getting all the benefits of a social contract, but deny that there’s any benefit due from them to the rest of the society. They further deny the “Safety and Happiness” goals, since it’s not their safety that’s in question.
Please go back to Espol if you are going to warp the meaning of our Declaration of Independence with selective emphases and false dogma.
The “selective emphases” are to draw attention to specific ideas. As I noted, the emphases were aded; I added them for your benefit, should you be willing to accept it.
Please give some support for your claim that the Declaration of Independence is or even contains “false dogma”, whatever that is. I’m guessing, based on your comments, that “false dogma” consists of any reality you find uncomfortable.
Emphases are used to draw attention to specific ideas? Wow–you’re really font of wisdom, Espol. Thanks for noting that.
The Declaration of Independence speaks for itself. It confirms that every individual possesses inalienable natural rights. It confirms the supreme power of the People to rule its government, and to destroy it if it fails to protect those rights.
You are welcome to your ideas. You are not welcome to impose them on others. I wish you all the best in your personal Vaccine Utopia.
Well, there is evidence that suggests that the MMR vaccine decreases morbidity and mortality due to causes other than infection with the target pathogen(s):
“Immunosuppression after measles is known to predispose people to opportunistic infections for a period of several weeks to months. Using population-level data, we show that measles has a more prolonged effect on host resistance, extending over 2 to 3 years. We find that nonmeasles infectious disease mortality in high-income countries is tightly coupled to measles incidence at this lag, in both the pre- and post-vaccine eras. We conclude that long-term immunologic sequelae of measles drive interannual fluctuations in nonmeasles deaths. This is consistent with recent experimental work that attributes the immunosuppressive effects of measles to depletion of B and T lymphocytes. Our data provide an explanation for the long-term benefits of measles vaccination in preventing all-cause infectious disease. By preventing measles-associated immune memory loss, vaccination protects polymicrobial herd immunity.”
[Mina MJ et al. Long-term measles-induced immunomodulation increases overall childhood infectious disease mortality. Science. 2015 May 8;348(6235):694-9.]
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6235/694
Well Stated NWO reporter. These people are all in the medical industry with the same training and there all liberals with misplaced faith in Pharmaceutical mysticism and Govt. Its amazing how supposedly smart people cannot seem to do the mental gymnastics to understand both sides of this debate. I have a 2.5 year old un-vaccinated. Bring on measles whooping cough flu etc. His immune system will kick the shit out those infections any day of the fucking week. You people have no faith in the human body and its power when nutritionally optimized. This is the new paradigm but try to posit this understanding to these folks is like trying to convince a Christian to be Hindu #DUMMIES Seriuosly your dumb
Seriuosly my dumb what, theo?
“Seriuosly your dumb”
Another self-inflicted wound.
@ Eric:
Actually, anarchism is all about the social contract, which is presumed to be strong enough that formal government enforcement should not be required. In some left anarchist philosophies the social contract is embodied in non-govermental communal bodies, e.g. labor unions in anarcho-syndicalism (ala the IWW).
For a term to represent the absence of a social contract, try “nihilism” or, if you prefer, “late capitalism”.
Theo and Ginny make quite a tagteam. Theo can handle grammatical and spelling errors while Ginny takes care of conceptual and logical errors.
I have a 2.5 year old un-vaccinated.
Hamster? Wolverine? Mongolian Death Worm? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Don’t sell Theo short, Opus. He’s got a handle on conceptual and logic errors as well.
Ginny, the Founders didn’t believe in no government. They also didn’t trust the people as deeply as you believe. There’s a reason why only property owners could vote in the earliest days of our Republic. They’d be horrified by the nonsense coming out of your mouth.
Jefferson’s prose was very well thought out, and every phrase in there is in there for a reason.
The Founders wanted a stable government. They just didn’t trust monarchy. They were also ardent supporters of vaccination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/health/01smallpox.html
http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/center-for-science-and-democracy/founding-fathers-vaccines.pdf
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2011/09/28/the-founding-fathers-and-vaccination/
Theo, @52
“These people are all in the medical industry with the same training…”
I’m not in the medical industry…not even close! But all that training means I’ll trust all these folks before I trust you and your ilk. They have proof, evidence, etc etc.
” with misplaced faith in Pharmaceutical mysticism and Govt.”
I’m pretty sure pharmaceutical and mysticism are mutually exclusive and by definition so. Also, yes, we have some faith in the government and the law and the societal contract. It’s the basis of civilization. NOT having “faith” (or better put, trust) would make laws unenforceable, money useless, and armies worthless. Dummy.
“Its amazing how supposedly smart people cannot seem to do the mental gymnastics to understand both sides of this debate. ”
Maybe, just MAYBE that’s because your “side” of this debate is so poorly thought, lacking in evidence, and pointlessly dangerous? (That’s an assumption, as your sentence does seem to make much sense so I had to interpret it).
“I have a 2.5 year old un-vaccinated. Bring on measles whooping cough flu etc. His immune system will kick the shit out those infections any day of the fucking week.”
And what, pray tell, is your basis for this claim? Your kid has your genes so he’s tough and badass? Your kid is a specials snowflake, who’s better than everyone else’s special snowflake?
“You people have no faith in the human body and its power when nutritionally optimized. ”
I don’t even know what this means? You chide liberals for having “faith” in medicine and the government, but we’re supposed to have faith in our bodies? To things that have proven to be dangerous to our bodies? Oh wait, sorry, I’m not nutritionally optimized. How do these even work?
‘”This is the new paradigm but try to posit this understanding to these folks is like trying to convince a Christian to be Hindu”
I…I don’t even know where to begin here. So I’ll let it go.
“Seriuosly your dumb”
As noted previously, this is a goal in one’s own net – not to mention hilarious when considering your entire comment as a whoel.
the mental gymnastics to understand both sides of this debate.
If one side requires mental gymnastics to understand it — to say nothing of the mental contortionism — perhaps it has a problem
Are you actively seeking out random infections for your child, Iliya?
Such as by using the AdvoCare shіt that you peddle for the delicious MLM scam dollars, “Mr.” Torbica? For this putridity you’re hoping to turn your child into some sort of advertorial?
No, I think people have exploited children for a very long time.
Please, Iliya, English.
It’s not my fault that you don’t have the stones to “posit this understanding” to, say, the Wisconsin DCF.
See “Leary, Tim.” Aside from basic literacy, you seem to share some core similarities.
Not even wrong, Mr. AdvoCare.
Oh, rats, moderation due to quoted text yet again.
What’s this about? Orac forget to fill in a placeholder?
To them, all three are “covering up” information showing that vaccines are dangerous. For instance:
ADFADAD
Please do not frivously invoke the Insider Acronym.
Americans Don’t Feed Aardvarks During an August Drought.
Spare me your vaccine promotional lectures on principles of government, Panacea. No wonder you hide behind your anonymity–I’d be embarrassed if I were you, too. You could at least turn it into a commercial so your manipulation agenda is clearer to casual readers. But I guess your priggish missives are unlikely to have much popular appeal.
And she’s back! Her latest trick is to demonstrate an updated version of an old legal axiom.
.
If the facts aren’t on your side argue the law. If the law isn’t on your side argue the facts. And if neither is on your side. . .
.
Find an online Thesaurus!
.
“priggish missives!?!?”
Congratulations, CJTX–you’ve just won the Most Sleep-Inducing Comment Ever Award! Too bad you can’t write them in real time, so people could start napping when they see the “CJTX is writing a comment…” placeholder.
Yes yes, you of ALL people saying that is funny is as hell. The person who repeats the same (unsupported) thing over and over again.
also, I take sleep-inducing as a compliment! More people need more sleep.
Weirdo.
Aaawww. I was angling for that award, especially by fisking the religious nonsense posted under your ‘nym. Mayhap I should try harder, but your nonsense makes it so easy.
BTW, it’s considered a surrender when one is reduced to posting only ad hom insults in reply to substantive comments you can’t address in a substantive fashion. I’m referring, of course, to your replies concerning the social contract, that start off as “nuh uh” and went downhill from there.
Sorry, Espol. I thought you were angling for the Sketchiest Comprehension With the Loudest Voice Award. I was going to announce that next.
“the Sketchiest Comprehension With the Loudest Voice Award”
You don’t really *do* self-awareness, do you?
You might try coupling the announcement with your response to a question I asked a few hours ago. You claimed that my quote from the Declaration of Independence constituted “false dogma”, and I asked how the DoI was to be considered “false dogma.” I have yet to see any response to that question, just a trumpian attack on everyone who sees through your case and therefore knows better than to agree with you.
CJTX, sounds like you’re angling for the Lamest Scathing Responses Award. 😀
Don’t misunderstand – I’m not arguing with you, I’m mocking you. Carry on.
That settles it, CJTX–you’ve got my vote! 😀
oh joy.
Listen, this “conversation” has been as fun as a mosquito bite, but I’d prefer to go find some wet paint and watch it dry rather than continue.
Crivens, NWOR has stepped up her demands for attention today. Is it a response to competition from THEO?
It’s quite hilarious seeing this NWO Reporter assclown thinking of himself as having won the debate.
Pigeon Chess seems to be quite de rigeur among followers of a conspiracy religion, like NWOR is. That’s why her game has degenerated to ad hom rants: it’s the “crapping on the board” phase of the game.
Pigeon Chess seems to be quite de rigeur among followers of a conspiracy religion
All this time I’ve been trying to wrestle with pigeons and play chess with pigs. No wonder the board is such a mess.
In other exciting news from the Land O’ Woo, I have just received complimentary (complementary?) tickets to an event to be be held at a local country club. A Functional Medicine Chiropractic Physician is sponsoring a free lunch*, at which it will be explained how his miraculous treatments will fix just about any sort of “neuropathy”, plus Trouble Walking and other well-characterized disorders.
*yes, I know, I’d pay dearly for this “free lunch”. Might be fun to go and ask embarrassing questions though.
***NWoo perfectly illustrates the Classic Woo Triad: misinformed, confused and hostile.
Wait, there’s fake neuropathy now? I’ve had real neuropathy, ulnar nerve damage in my left arm; I could hardly use my left hand for like a year. I did a bunch of physical therapy and it’s gotten mostly better.
So now I can type much faster, which comes in handy for the translation job and also for writing erotica inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft.*
*Just kidding, although someone should probably do this; I do have a lot of time on my hands.
“someone should probably do this”
You could try Equoid by Charles Stross. It’s a mainstream fantasy/sci-fi novelette with erotica as a subplot,. HPL is one of the characters. Both horror and humor.