Forum menu
This just popped up on my FB feed, interesting read I thought. It's a tale about the last hurrahs of smallpox.
https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WsT4Ex8AAHruGfXd
Great article, sickening parallels.
This was a really interesting article, so, you may view a dangerous vaccination activity as too risky personally in the absence of an immediate infection risk.
I'm not suggesting that this (not getting vaccinated), is a sensible risk assessment, but I can see how people might come to a faulty conclusion like this. The perception (incorrect or otherwise), of an immediate risk due to the vaccine itself versus the future and by no means certain risk, posed by the disease.
It hinges on the invention or exaggeration of the risk posed by the vaccine. To do so feels a bit like murder, but, everyone is entitled to an opinion?
It hinges on the invention or exaggeration of the risk posed by the vaccine.
If you listen to anti-vaxxers then vaccines are quite literally poison designed to murder our children.
(No surprise that many flat earthers are also anti-vaxxers. It's the exact same anti-intellectual anti-science paranoid belief system)
I'm not anti-vaccination, I'm pro-disease.
If you listen to anti-vaxxers then vaccines are quite literally poison designed to murder our children.
I get the impression people enjoy the emotional response and will choose to believe anything that gives them that, like the monkey with the button and the wire connected to the pleasure centre in its brain.
Anti Vaxxers and flat earthers are all about feeing special because they’re ‘in the know’ and have the ‘secret’ and therefore feel they can give two fingers to the establishment.
Flat earthers are fairly harmless (and amusing) but anti vaxxers are causing the deaths and lifelong disablement of children, which I do have a problem with to put it mildly.
We are lied to constantly by those in authority. Some people react by treating everything that comes from those they see as being in authority as lies.
And people are also very driven by the desire to be the first to know and having knowledge that others don't. It's why you'll never be able to come up with a diet plan and nutritional advice that no one will believe, it doesn't matter how ridiculous you'll get people to believe you because they want to know things others don't.
The anti-vax movement is also driven by emotion. At the top you've got psuedo-scientific slackwits peddling bullshit, but at the bottom you've just got terrified mothers who want to do the best for their kids and are being bombarded with scary-sounding information. Emotional people <> rational people.
TBH though, aside from the striking parallel with today (including the propaganda), I mostly posted the article because until today I didn't realise how little I actually knew about smallpox. Not least of which was what it looked like, the photo of the poor girl in the story is just horrendous.
you may view a dangerous vaccination activity as too risky personally in the absence of an immediate infection risk.
Yup. I've seen this argument in the present day. "Why should my kids get the measles vaccine, hardly anyone gets measles any more!" It's transparently woolly thinking, but it's definitely still out there.
A variation on the theme arose in 2001 when PM Tony Blair refused to say whether his son, Leo, had had the MMR vaccine at a time when the MMR combined vaccine was massively controversial. I get that he felt that it was a privacy-intrusion too far but he, of all people, should have understood the power of example
Always minded to think of smallpox in any period drama. There’s a reason why people caked themselves in white foundation make up. It was partly to hide the scars of smallpox. All infections vary in severity and it is possible that the photo is of a particularly nasty case. That said Son 2 had chicken pox and looked almost as bad, having had maternal immunity.
I have no time for non vaccination arguments. But have an obvious conflict of interest.
Agree about the authority thing
Arguing with some yellow vest brexiters on twitter and it's fallen into a contrails & anti-vax conspiracy hole more than once.
@cougar thanks for posting that story.
If anyone is interested in further reading about vaccine hesitancy, it's causes and effects then this is a good resource. Vaccine Confidence Project
I've been reading up on it as my ex is vaccine hesitant so my 2 year old daughter has had none of her vaccinations yet (for clarity I don't share this belief at all) . Yes, it's about authority, "big pharma" vs nature, idealogies, emotion, lack of understanding about the science and the vaccines, misinformation on social media. Resurgence of diseases (like measles) results in authorities considering a degree of compulsion which feeds the antivax mistrust and paranoia and confirms the deeply held beliefs of the antivax community - who then challenge it in court (in the US) on grounds of violating their personal freedoms. But at some point it's no longer about your personal choice but about public health.
@Cougar. Thanks for that, very interesting, the other 5 articles in the series are well worth a read as well.
the other 5 articles in the series are well worth a read as well.
Ooh, I'd totally overlooked that there was a series. I'll go back and check, ta.
So where does the anti 5G mob fit in amongst anti-vaxxers and flat earters in the venn diagram of unsubstantiated nonsense believers?
The "good" thing about conspiracy nuts is that they tend to believe all the conspiracies.
This is a handy red flag for us normies because a well-rehearsed nut may sometimes manage to sound vaguely convincing on one particular point, but give them five more minutes and they'll be telling you about how planes actually run on compressed air and how odometer in your car is calibrated make the world seem much bigger than it really is. *
.
* (yes these are genuine conspiracies. I'll not post the links as they don't need more attention than they already get!)
The problem here is twofold.
1) We, the clever people who understand the science and maths, have utterly failed to maintain the flow of information in a usable and persuasive manner. Wheareas some, many, bad actors are excellent at pressing the right buttons in the vast majority of people who are susceptible to being duped. See also brexit.
2) In the UK at least, successive govts have destroyed education such that people are incapable of critically appraising the information they are fed.
On the 5G stuff, they love going down the public debate route, since it sounds reasonable, but all that ends up happening is you treat the crackpots as equivalent to an expert, since they insist on it being fair.
Didn't the BBC get into trouble for always trying to be fair, so getting a nutter in to "balance" a science segment
Vaccines are fake news.
I was vaccinated against Whooping Cough in 1972 but, only this morning, I coughed so much that my vison greyed out and I puked repeatedly.
According to my GP , I have Whooping Cough.
She's probably a lizard or something
I have Whooping Cough.
Wow, almost a flashback moment here - I've just remembered my sister having Whooping Cough. I'd totally forgotten about that. Must have been brainwashed..
@bigyinn there's a big overlap. My ex decided to spend 75 Euros on a special chip to stick on her phone to protect her and our daughter from all the e-smog being generated by it. She went for the expensive 5G ready version. She told me to get one so I read the "science" as a courtesy and then told her she was being duped. Fools and their money, eh? Her sister bought 4 of them for her family. 300 Euros down the pan - madness.
2) In the UK at least, successive govts have destroyed education such that people are incapable of critically appraising the information they are fed.
Has "critical thinking" ever been taught in schools?
Didn’t the BBC get into trouble for always trying to be fair, so getting a nutter in to “balance” a science segment
Probably time for a repost of this:
my ex is vaccine hesitant
Is this the new politically acceptable term for stupid? So we don't have to risk offending people by pointing out they're stupid?
Sort of like parachute hesitant, or space suit hesitant?
This only serves to legitimise someone's misinterpretation of fact and information.
Just for a bit of balance, my brother is a health professional (nursing) and he has a severely autistic child (non-verbal). He’s convinced a change happened immediately after child 1 was vaccinated (MMR I believe, around 1&1/2-2).
As a consequence child 2 wasn’t vaccinated.
I don’t judge him.
I’m firmly PRO-vax myself though.
PS he didn’t vote for Brexit though 🤣
Metalheart - that's exactly how the anti-vax movement gains traction, by publicising real examples of coincidences. Millions of kids get vaccinated every year, and thousands get diagnosed as autistic, but the two are not linked. Inevitably though, some of the diagnoses (or rather the symptoms being noticed) will happen immediately after a vaccination. It's a natural reaction to look for a cause when your kid is diagnosed with something, and if vaccination is the only thing out of the ordinary that happened, then it gets the blame.
Fun memory, that's how Andrew Wakefield came to his infamous conclusions, by looking at a dozen kids who developed symptoms within a day or two of getting the MMR. If you cherry-pick a tiny number of coincidences and then say it's representative of the wider population, you can 'prove' anything.
It's disappointing that a health professional would come to that conclusion, but when it's your own kid your emotions can get in the way of logic I guess.
Just for a bit of balance, my brother is a health professional (nursing) and he has a severely autistic child (non-verbal). He’s convinced a change happened immediately after child 1 was vaccinated (MMR I believe, around 1&1/2-2).
As a consequence child 2 wasn’t vaccinated.
I don’t judge him.
I do. He's a ****ing idiot.
Further reading after five seconds' Googling,
https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/qa/when-do-symptoms-of-autism-appear
Symptoms of autism typically appear during the first three years of life. Some children show signs from birth. Others seem to develop normally at first, only to suddenly show symptoms when they are 18 to 36 months old.
vaccinated... around 1&1/2-2
Correlation <> causation. https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
There is no link between MMR and autism beyond Wakefield's paper. None, zero, nada. Wakefield's "research" has been wholly discredited by the entire scientific community including people who originally worked on his study, and Wakefield himself was struck off. But he's selling a lot of books on the back of it, so here we still are. That see you next Tuesday has blood on his hands.
Sorry if I appear blunt but this shit makes me ****ing angry.
If I had children they would not be getting the combined vaccine but separate shots over a period of time. The combined vaccine is to some extent an unproven quantity with children
Like many of these things a tiny kernel of concern / doubt is lost in a large steaming pile of pseudoscientific shite
On Wakefield - there is now some new evidence studies on mice) that show some link between gut bacteria and autism ( a part of his findings). Early days tho to conclude anything
TJ, I’ll trade your study on mice for a retrospective study on 657,000 children
You know, weight of evidence and all that....
https://www.jwatch.org/na48657/2019/03/15/mmr-vaccination-and-autism-danish-children
Ps, I realise it’s a NEJM summary but NEJM is one of the top 5 journals in the world so their opinion is pretty credible
The combined vaccine is to some extent an unproven quantity with children
Sure, it's only been around for the best part of fifty years. Somewhere between half and one billion people have received the combined MMR vaccine. So yeah, pretty unproven.
Of all people TJ, you surprise me here. I thought you were one of the clever ones.
Different point. This new study shows a link between gut flora and autism - not measles or MMR and autism. It was one of Wakefeilds findings IIRC that gut abnormalities and autism are linked. He took that far further than he had any right to do so but as above - sometimes a kernel of truth is lost in pseudoscience.
Its also a mouse study not human. Far to early to draw any conclusion other than "thats an interesting line to take in research adn needs to be looked at further
I by no means meant it to be any vindication of wakefeild"
The separate shots thing is simply to reduce the load on the immune system.
The testing of the triple vaccine was not great IIRC. It was assumed that as the 3 individual ones where fine then a triple would be. Mu view is thats a big shock to the immune system and would be better spaced out. the reason for using the combined is to ensure people get all 3 at one time. edit ie its for convenience not for science.
88 for MMR in the UK
I knew I shouldn't have entered this with a nuanced view. too many folk see it as black and white.
I am not immunised to any of them - it was not done when I was a kid ( girls got rubella vaccine. NO mumps or measles vaccine offered)
I AM NOT AGREEING WITH WAKEFILD. i DO NOT BELIEVE MMR CAUSES AUTISM
The testing of the triple vaccine was not great IIRC. It was assumed that as the 3 individual ones where fine then a triple would be.
Be that as it may (I have no idea), it's still been administered to well over 500,000,000 people, if there was an issue with it we'd probably have noticed by now.
Half a billion people, "needs more testing."
Twelve cherry-picked kids, "hm, maybe he was onto something."
Mu view is
... an opinion. You may well be right - it feels right and I want to believe you - but have you got any science or evidence to back it up?
C'mon TJ, you're better than this. If it were the other way around you'd be mauling me and rightly so.
Ohh - i have seen some evidence that the single vaccines give less shock to the immunue system. Its perhaps over cautious and I don't have kids so highly theoretical
As above - the reason for the triple is all about convenience and making sure kids do not miss out - ie 2 shots not 6.
I'll have a look but I ain't gonna get embroiled in a row. I expect allI will do is get tangled up in antivaxxer stuff and finding anything good will be hard
I'm not looking for a row, I'm looking for you to judge yourself by the standards you rightly judge others.
I'm inclined to believe you, it's plausible, but what evidence have you seen?
A single doctors view but backed up with references. note his comments on testing and the efficiency of the triple vaccine compared to single ones ( which was not the point I made. My concern is shock load on the immune system)
other "rapid responses" on the BMJ go right into antivaxxer mumbo jumbo
God that stuff is a cessp[it.
Mu view is thats a big shock to the immune system and would be better spaced out.
Are you serious?
Edit: well he posted a link to a journal.
I’ll have a read in the morning.
If I quoted from a journal more than 5 years old as my main piece of source material for an essay let alone a study or proposal, my Prof would tear it in half.
I was just about to write the exact same thing as Cougar, but then I refreshed and saw my work was already done.
TJ, you've taken a 'gut feeling' without any scientific basis and used it to justify your mistrust in the advised treatment (in this case the triple MMR vaccine). It's exactly the same mentality that causes people to be anti-vax.
* BTW the MMR is often administered with a load of other vaccines at the same time http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/uk-schedule. There is also consensus that exposure to multiple allergens in one 'sitting' is a trivial 'shock to the immune system' compared to daily exposure to... life. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29509866
There are no scientific data suggesting a medical benefit from spacing out vaccines over a longer period than the official recommendations.
Scientific american!
Repeated in various government body sites.
I cannot wade around in that swamp any longer! too much antivaxxr nonsense. I might have a little look further on BMJ
MY view was merely one of caution. Taking what would seem to me to be the most cautious road. Get the shots but do it in what would seem to be the safest way
Of course safety for the individual and for populations are not the same thing. The main issue with single vaccines is it becomes much easier to not complete the course.
I mostly posted the article because until today I didn’t realise how little I actually knew about smallpox.
I was having a very slow work day when you posted but didn't read the article straight away, but gravitated to the wikipedia article first - and felt the same, never knew what it was even, and then just gratitude for the people who made the eradication of smallpox possible. I can't imagine having lived a totally different life where at school I was good at the sciences and went on to study medicine, it's totally alien to me. Instead I do pretty much worthless basic design/layout/marketting after escaping factory work and naive ambitions to be an artist and/or coder.
Anyway, found both articles pretty terrifying, and there's some interesting historical facts* and statistics in the wikipedia article such as usage in wars amongst other things.
*hopefuly facts is what they are.
TJ, you’ve taken a ‘gut feeling’ without any scientific basis and used it to justify your mistrust in the advised treatment (in this case the triple MMR vaccine). It’s exactly the same mentality that causes people to be anti-vax.
I really have not done what you say but I should have known better than to try to have a nuanced debate over this. The reasons for the MMR is to increase uptake not that it is better
Interestingly tho as much searching as I could do found nowt to support my view that could be seen as in any way rigorous. So maybe my caution was misplaced!
If I had children they would not be getting the combined vaccine but separate shots over a period of time. The combined vaccine is to some extent an unproven quantity with children
Trouble is people often fail to go get the multiple jabs (initial & booster) needed for that. So herd immunity is worsened.
And it’s costly for the provider, and costly in time off work for people and surgeries ‘ time.
Real costs that mean less spending elsewhere so overall public healthcare suffers.
Based on something with almost nothing to back it up. Except a fraudulent doc’s well publicised view.