Evil Marin County, CA, home of the American Taliban, hotbed of the vaccine wary.

Is that what you support?

I'm really not sure what your point is, besides that.

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/PertussisReport2011-01-07.pdf

8.383 cases in CA in 2010

349 cases (4.1%) of 8,383 cases in Marin County, not 15% as Offit bullshitted.

Of these 8,383 cases in CA in 2010, 361 (4.3%) resulted in confirmed hospitalizations.

Of the 361 confirmed hospitalizations, 198 (55%) were among infants aged 3 months or less (infants are supposed to get their first DTaP vaccine at 2 months).

Of the 361 confirmed hospitalizations, 253 (75%) were among infants aged 6 months or less.

Of the 253 hospitalized infants aged 6 months or less, 190 (75%) were Hispanic.

Of the 10 total who have died statewide, 9 were infants under 2 months (too young to have been vaccinated) and the other was an ex-28 week preemie that was 2 months of age and had received the first dose of DTaP only 15 days prior to disease onset. So every one of these dead infants was on the recommended vaccination schedule as far as anyone can tell.

Of the 10 total who have died statewide, 9 were Hispanic and 8 were Hispanic infants less than 8 weeks old (too young to have ever been vaccinated). The case-fatality rate among infants <3 months of age was 1.4%.

Whooping cough is cyclical and tends to peak every two to five years. Five years ago, during the last big outbreak, pertussis killed eight California infants.

Not one of the 10 state-wide whooping cough infant deaths took place in Marin County. But just as with the American Taliban, those stupid, elite, Democratic, vaccine questioning hippie hot tubbers in Marin make for great middle American villains. No evidence has ever been presented that suggests that Marin County's over-representation among whooping couch cases is the result of pertussis being spread among unvaccinated hippie kids.

When it comes to the relationship between overall complete vaccination schedule adherence rates and the frequency of pertussis cases, Offit obviously believes that correlation must equal causation. And Offit bases this remarkable conclusion on the long outdated results of about half a year's worth of cases of one disease in a single county! Strange how it is so inconceivable to Offit that anyone could apply this same line of reasoning to a steep rise in the number of vaccinations coinciding with a steep rise in diagnosed childhood neurological disorders nationwide.

9 were infants under 2 months (too young to have been vaccinated)"

That's why those of us who can get vaccinations. To protect those who can't.

You live in a "society" where sometimes you put the good of the group ahead of your own.

That seems to escape you. As it does the opposition party we bitch so much about around here.

Why can't one-day-olds get vaccinated for everything all at once since vaccines are obviously perfectly safe and could have clearly saved these 10 lives?

Newborns don't have the capacity to build immunity. Vaccines wouldn't work.

That's why we try to make it so they don't come in contact with sick people.

We can keep people from getting many life threatening diseases by giving them vaccinations--and in turn that protects infants, who won't be exposed because those around them won't carry the disease.

Please tell us who it was who killed these infants so tragically? Was it their Hispanic mothers, fathers, brothers or sisters who couldn't afford decent health care?

Or was it some overeducated, over-privileged, Marin liberal vaccine questioners who coughed on their maids' babies before firing them and banishing them and their entire families to southern California?

What I'm reading here is that....


Hispanic mothers/fathers/brothers/sisters who can't afford decent health care would benefit from vaccines because they live in squalid conditions...

but the overprivileged liberal questioners couldn't possibly get THEIR children sick.

Is THAT how you see things?



I don't know how else to explain this post.

Babies died because they were exposed to flu. Those around them were not vaccinated. Everybody should be able to afford decent healthcare and get vaccinated. It doesn't matter what their background is.

People worried about vaccine safety are constantly being blamed for tragic deaths that occur hundreds of miles away from anywhere they have ever been and that they have nothing whatsoever to do with.

The whooping cough is cyclic. The 10 deaths last year were tragic events caused by infants being exposed to bordetella pertussis bacteria, 9 before they had any chance to be immunized. These 10 deaths had nothing to do with some parents questioning vaccine safety in Marin County, but that doesn't stop the Paul Offit-led spin cycle from implying as much.

It's because "vaccine safety" is a red herring and a way for anti-vax people to get a foot in the door to stopping all vaccines.

http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/InfectiousDiseases/InfectionsAZ/WhoopingCough/EpidemiologicalData/whoo45VacCover1940to2008/+

Nice graph, BTW, showing the effect of vaccination.

LOL

Maybe the guy on the corner will listen to you after he gets done screaming about the end of the world.

LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL!

Shared risk, shared reward. It's lost on the anti-vax crowd.

socialized risk, privatized reward on the vaccine manufacturers' side

"Fortunately, the anti-vaccine crowd’s ability to create public-health problems was limited by the federal government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. It compensates those injured by certain vaccines while discouraging large class-action lawsuits. This, in turn, frees drug companies to concentrate on new vaccines for illnesses such as cervical cancer."

Wow! Isn't that great! Socializing the risk of all vaccines allowed Merck to price Gardasil at $360 and pay hundreds of millions to lobby for Gardasil mandates and saturate television with Gardasil advertisements!

"Within a few months the Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government’s no-fault vaccine-compensation program can preempt all vaccine-defect claims. If the court says the program doesn’t have that power, drug companies may become less interested in developing new vaccines."

Now if we could just get rid of all those pesky vaccine-defect claims, we just might be able to entice vaccine manufacturer's to roll out some more slickly marketed $360 vaccines that may or may not help us 50 years from now to reduce the incidence of other health problems we have already largely eliminated.

Win the lottery yet? Your odds of winning increase as time goes on.

If you roll a standard die 6 times, what is the probability that you will roll more than one 6? Have you managed to figure this one out yet?

The 67% chance of having rolled a specific number in six rolls of a die is a different issue than the chances of having an adverse reaction after 50 years of vaccination.

Give my regards to Dunning and Kruger.

1 - (999,999/1,000,000)^50 = .00005 = 1 in 20,000

If the probability of contracting Guillain-Barre syndrome from one vaccination are 1 in 1,000,000 and the events are assumed to be independent (granted this is probably a flawed assumption, but we are simply doing an estimate here), then the probability of contracting Guillain-Barre syndrome at least once in 50 vaccinations is 1 in 20,000.

1 - (999,999/1,000,000)^50 = .00005 = 1 in 20,000

1:20,000 is the probability of having someone who got GBS from the flu jab given a random sample of 50 vaccinated individuals, not the odds of getting GBS after 50 years of jabs.

There is probably a genetic component to them, making the probability conditional. Would you be opposed to doing more research on this issue so that we can get a better estimate?

Hundreds of millions of doses are given globally each year, and numerous studies have been done to investigate a link between GBS and the flu jab. Of those, only one study showed a 1:1,000,000 risk for certain individuals.

So, after numerous studies showing no link between GBS and the flu jab, and one study suggesting a 1:1,000,000 risk.

Influenza is a known cause of GBS, and the risk of developing it is roughly 1:100,000. The influenza vaccine is 70-90% effective in healthy individuals--that's 70-90% effective at eliminating a known cause of GBS.

Wouldn't you say that, as far as Guillian-Barré and the influenza vaccine, the benefits far outweigh the risks?

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Keep trying.

Those odds are for each and every person.

The first person has 1 in 1,000,000
the second person has 1 in 1,000,000
the third person has 1 in 1,000,000
The fourth person , etc
the fifth, etc

It's not Russian roulette.

About a woman who had oral cancer from HPV?

No, that might shake your worldview of vaccines as the root of all evil.

Was this tag line coined by Merck lawyers or marketers?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x332910

Very funny, right?

Was her cancer even associated with HPV 16 or 18? How many people in the United States die from orally contracted HPV 16 & 18-related cancer each year?

Here are my problems with Gardasil:

1) It costs about $450, putting it out of the reach of the commmunities it could help most and only in the reach of those it helps least.

2) We won't know if it actually reduces rates of any kind of cancer for at least 20 years, and we probably won't know for about 40 years.

3) We are already very good at detecting all HPV-related pre-cancers (not just the HPV 16 & 18 related pre-cancers that Gardasil confers protection against) in a timely manner and treating these lesions before they develop into cancer. These treatments and interventions have been proven and we should be spending our money trying to expand them to our poorer communities.



4) Merck has preliminary information as to how conferring resistance to HPV 6, 11, 16 & 18 affects the chances of contracting other dangerous HPV strains that it has not released. Merck owns this data and only releases the data that makes Gardasil look good. If active HPV 6 & 11 (that are related to genital warts, not cervical cancer) infections interfere with the contraction other more dangerous HPV strains, the entire Gardasil experiment could blow up in our faces.

Yes, it Gardasil may result in one less tragedy like the one described in the link above. But we don't know that right now and will not know that for decades. And even if Gardasil does confer net positive protection against all HPV-related cancer, that does not necessarily make it the most prudent or fiscally sound medical policy choice for the US population. Policy makers are simply hoping that it will help with a problem that has already been largely solved decades down the line, at the expense of the small number of otherwise healthy women who experience serious adverse side effects to Gardasil's three doses of aluminum adjuvants and 4 HPV strains right now. Gardasil is quite simply faith-based medicine for vaccine worshipers.

a) It's new, all new things are expensive. The price will go down.

b) It took more then 20 years to wipe out smallpox.

c) Treat the disease, don't cure it? (Don't you always complain about modern medicine doing that, and NOW thats what you want. Vaccines are so evil?) What about those people who don't get checked, like everyone under 40?

4) Merck has preliminary information as to how conferring resistance to HPV 6, 11, 16 & 18 affects the chances of contracting other dangerous HPV strains that it has not released. Merck owns this data and only releases the data that makes Gardasil look good. If active HPV 6 & 11 (that are related to genital warts, not cervical cancer) infections interfere with the contraction other more dangerous HPV strains, the entire Gardasil experiment could blow up in our faces.

I really don't think you have enough understanding, based on past events, to have written or understand that sentence.

Whether you did or not, I think the issue is bull.

1) Gardasil's cost vs. benefit profile as a potential cancer casualty reducer does not matter because it's new.

2) Gardasil's effectiveness as a potential cancer casualty reducer does not matter because it's new.

3) Gardasil cost vs. benefit profile and effectiveness as a potential cancer casualty reducer do not matter because it has the potential to cure rather than simply treat.

4) I'm dumb and you are smart, so you don't feel any need to comment on this objection other than to baldly assert that it is bs.

1) wrong

2) wrong

3) wrong

4) comment on subject line because of 1,2,3

Vaccine makers make almost nothing on most. That's why they would leave the business if sued, and the government gave them immunity. To protect them from the shit-for-brains antivax crowd, who don't know a good reason from a bad. "Oh! broke a tooth. Time to sue the vaccine makers!"

That's why it's always the government putting commercials out saying "get vaccinated" and not your "eBil vaccine" makers.

If they stopped making vaccines, every disease we've defeated would come back again. I leave it to your imagination what would happen to the anti-vax crowd if that happened.

As I said before, you have no understanding of "public good" and your post proves it.

And all consumer product defect lawyers should be criminalized!

Fuck all anti-corporate liberals!

why do you post opinion pieces from right-wing politicians?

Shocking!

You can get the same stance from neutral or apolitical sources, which would not be spreading toxic views more generally.

be the first.

The constant kill the messenger tactics really get old. Do you check all of your surgeons' party affiliations before surgery? If I link up a medical journal article published by medical journal headed by a Repuke, is that a problem?

How someone votes in the ballot-box in privacy is irrelevant. However, if someone is a Republican or Tory politician, or right-wing journalist, rather than a doctor or medical researcher, then they are not messengers of medical fact who *happen* to be right wing. They are professional spreaders of right-wing evil, whose anti-vaccine views are generally part of a right-libertarian ideology, often combined with a general distrust of government involvement in healthcare. If someone is a professional supporter of a policy (opposition to government involvement in healthcare) that is estimated to kill 45000 Americans each year, then their opinions on health matters are instantly suspect.

There *are* professional right-wingers who have written articles in *support* of vaccinations; e.g. the Daily Telegraph journalist Cristina Odone. I would never knowingly quote someone like that! Indeed, on the whole I don't quote journalists' opinion pieces on topics like vaccines, but try to go directly to medical sources. But certainly I would not link to an individual or site that is dedicated to supporting right-wing policy.

'The constant kill the messenger tactics really get old.'

It's not a 'tactic' in my case - it is that it is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT TO ME whether someone is spreading a right-wing message than what is their precise view on vaccines. I didn't join DU because I support vaccines; I joined DU because it is an organization opposed to the right wing. I hate right wing ideas and policies and consider them to be the cause of many of the bad things in the world!

'Do you check all of your surgeons' party affiliations before surgery? If I link up a medical journal article published by medical journal headed by a Repuke, is that a problem?'

No; but if I am quoting a journalist's or politician's OPINION PIECE, then I wish to know whether it is embedded in a right wing context. They are not expressing these views as medical scientists or news reporters, but as political commentators; so it is highly relevant to know what their political views are.

You often seem terribly concerned about whether people's views might be shared by or give some support to 'Big Pharma'; and you don't regard this as 'killing the messenger'. Yet you seem to think it is 'killing the messenger' to object to messages that are embedded in right-libertarianism or objection to public health care!

I'm all ears.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=222&topic_id=100048#100135

As far as I am concerned, anyone, who promotes the view that social safety nets and universal health care are morally corrupting and creating a 'nanny state' that turns people into wimps, is not a human being; it is a poisonous snake. Especially if it lives in a society that at present DOES have such a safety net, and wishes to abolish it -as in the case of this writer, who lives in Canada. (Some leeway could perhaps be given to people who have never experienced such a society and can't imagine it working; but those who wish to tear down a safety net that already exists are simply monsters.)

If people are known to hold such views, then their views about government recommendations of vaccines are embedded in a context of distrust of government provision of healthcare, and are therefore instantly suspect.

So far as I know, the source in the present thread is not right-wing; but there *are* threads, like that which I've quoted, where you have quoted monsters in support of your viewpoint. If the viewpoint is valid, then you should be able to find human beings to support it, and not need to resort to quoting poisonous vermin. If you can't find a decent source, it would be much better just to give the opinion as your own, and not to cite monsters as your allies.

If and when I do, I will apologize profusely.

I agree with the viewpoints expressed in the articles I linked. That doesn't mean I have vetted the authors on every political stance they have.

The one columnist you informed me about seems like a true dick, so I will refrain from linking him in the future.

There was nothing wrong with anything the state rep I linked said other than the R after her name. I know nothing about her politics on other issues, but I fully endorse what was written in her article.

I do appreciate that.

FTR:

Firstly, I feel that there's a bit of a double standard, in that it's acceptable for vaccine critics of using guilt-by-association by accusing pro-vaccine people of being pro-Pharma; yet if pro-vaccine people comment on the right-wing nature of a source, that is regarded as 'killing the messenger'.

Secondly: the aspect of sources that I consider relevant to this issue is: *what is their position on government involvement in healthcare provision?* It may not matter so much from this point of view whether someone is a Republican or a Democrat, or whether they're left or right on a variety of issues ranging from Iraq to gay marriage. *But* if they are right-libertarians on healthcare, and consider government involvement to be wasteful at best and tyrannical at worst, then their position on vaccines is likely to be embedded in this perspective. They are generally demanding freedom from government 'interference' in vaccination choices because they oppose government 'interference' in healthcare at all; they are asking people to be questioning and suspicious of government guidance on vaccines, because they are ideologically against 'trusting the government' to make decisions on anything. So I think that it's not too much to ask that people and organizations that are explicitly anti-'socialized medicine' should not be treated as valid commentators on this issue. That Canadian journalist was clearly so. And, while I can't find an explicit statement by the Assemblywoman on the subject, almost all Republicans nowadays are; New Jersey has, I believe, *occasionally* elected liberal Republicans, so that it's *just* possible that the Assemblywoman is in this category - but I'd bet quite a lot of money against it. (After all, not a single Senate Republican, even the moderate Senators from Maine, voted for Obama's quite modest healthcare proposals.)

What bothers me is that some people who are critical of vaccines are prepared to link to *any* site, however explicitly dedicated to promoting right-wing causes, as 'telling the truth' about vaccines. Mostly, I think, you are not the one who has linked to the worst sites; so this is not about you in particular, but is why I am so concerned and frustrated about this issue. Such sites have included the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (an organization specifically dedicated to opposing all government healthcare provision in America, ever since the 1940s); Judicial Watch; and, until it was explicitly banned by the mods, whale.to. Not to mention vile British sites such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express, and on one occasion Daniel 'The NHS is a 60-year mistake' Hannan. Some of these links may be honest mistakes by people who don't know what the general views being promoted are; but some do seem to suggest that some vaccine critics are prepared to form alliances with right-libertarians who oppose public healthcare. I think that all such alliances should be condemned in the strongest terms!

You'll ally yourself with Republicans if they say what you want to hear?

with any traditional US right vs. left continuum.

I'm willing to learn if you want to fill me in, but perhaps you should start another thread?

That you love to quote right-wing sources and sites. You've found allies on the far right - good for you. But you've got to realize, not many people around here trust right-wing politicians or organizations. You might find it hard to be taken seriously.

for questioning vaccine safety, that's A-OK? Right?

They're targeting people who are misinformed about vaccines and making bad decisions which will endanger others, who MAY or MAY NOT be liberal. (Unless you believe EVERYONE affected is liberal?) You are making your classic wild assumptions in order to distort the issues, and quoting from right-wing sources who say what you want to hear.

...calling you on your anti-vax garbage.

than teabagger-types and their puppet-masters.

Not always of course; but a lot of the vaccine critics combine their views about vaccines with 'ZOMG! Socialized medicine! It's evil! It's against freedom! They're creating a nanny state that will turn us all into wimps - if they don't kill us all first with their death panels!'

It is not of course the case that *all* vaccine critics are right-libertarians or influenced by such- but I'd say that there's more of an association there, than between pro-vaccine types and Pharma supporters.

'Vaccine defenders/ promoters/ supporters' or 'pro-vaccine people' is appropriate. (In fact I am anything but a 'worshipper' of the seasonal flu vaccine for example; I think it needs a great deal of development and improvement.)

Secondly, I did not say that ALL who object to vaccines are right-wing. I said that it was commoner on the right than on the left, as indicated by the many anti-vaccine campaigners on the right, from the Daily Mail, to Judicial Watch, to various religious and 'teabagger' groups.

But here's a deal: you stop accusing vaccine defenders of being linked to Big Pharma unless they say so, and I'll stop pointing out the right-wing links to vaccine criticism, except when such a site is explicitly quoted.

ETA: I actually agree that the expressions at the beginning of the article were inappropriate and unhelpful: 'Yet there’s one smug subgroup whose sense of entitlement endangers the rest. No, not poor Medicaid moms or Social Security grannies. The treacherous group is those parents, predominately those of some financial means, who refuse to vaccinate their children.' The author could have made the point about the dangers of anti-vaccine ideologies without using such terms as 'smug' and 'treacherous'.

Democrats and Greens rather than Democrats and Republicans?

but I would not expect them to be very right-wing areas from what I know about them.

Moreover, I did find the opening to that article snide to the point that I would not have chosen to link to it. I THINK what the writer is implying is that people who are well-off and have ready access to medical information have less of an excuse for refusing vaccinations than those who are poorer or less educated, rather than that the better-off or more educated are more anti-vaccination. But such expressions as 'sense of entitlement' tend to rub me the wrong way. I don't care for expressions associated with RW ideology, even when included in an article that otherwise says things that I agree with.

I scarcely think that San Francisco and Marin County are the only places where anti-vaccine sentiment is a problem. Rather than stereotyping the individuals who make particular choices, I would prefer to attack the anti-vaccine propaganda sources that can to some extent influence people of all backgrounds.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-13/arrogance-surplus-leads-to-government-excesses-amity-shlaes.html

Another of those vile right-wingers who opposes public spending, supports the 'free market' (she even wrote a fulsome tribute to Milton Friedman on his death), and is against Obama's healthcare proposals.

So not a person who should be cited as justification of ANYTHING connected with health. Although I agree that anti-vaccine sentiments and propaganda endanger public health, I would not quote her, as in her case they are embedded in the wrong context: i.e. stereotyping individuals who live in a liberal area as having a 'sense of entitlement', rather than going after those who oppose government provision of vaccines.

As I said before, there are some right-wing politicians and journalists on the pro-vaccine side as well as on the anti-vaccine side; *all* such right-wingers are scum; and I would not knowingly cite such people, even if I agree with them on some specific issue concerning vaccines.