^^^^^^ belongs in JOTD thread as always, people just get what they deserve. I have no problem if you you guys vaccinate your kids. After all it's just survival of the wisest. The issue is when you want to force me to vaccinate my kids, for the sake of herd immunity (that phrase says it all, really). Not on.
100% this plus a few nuances with the same outcome - i.e. all the measures he talks about leads to less new babies and population despite increased life expectancy not more deliberate deaths through some evil conspiracy. Anyone who doesn't understand how such a projection is possible (not guaranteed of course) hasn't looked into demographics (or understood it).
Dunno when that quote was taken but there were about 350,000-400,000 estimate cases of polio thirty years ago and there are were less than 300 cases of it recorded last year. Did you just lift that quote from an anti-vaxer website or can you provide some context in which it was given? I can certainly see someone who just developed a successful vaccination explaining their work in the context of earlier failures. Smallpox did not die out. It went on to kill around 300,000,000 people in the twentieth century. It was successfully eradicated in the late 1970s after an extensive global vaccination program.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTE26ENzQr8[/youtube] Some interesting information about measles. He also reads the ingredients and side effects that is clearly stated on the insert that comes with the vaccine packaging. (Eye opening stuff)
Penn & Teller's take on the vaccination debate [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo[/youtube]
Vaccinations do not guarantee you will not get the disease but hey greatly reduce the odds and the effect. I think it is pretty obvious vaccinations have saved millions of lives,. I have had more shots than I can remember, do some vaccines make you sick? I would say yes, I had bubonic plague vaccine and I was as sick as a dog for 2 weeks and I attribute it to the vaccine. That said the benifits far outweigh the risks in my opinion, not long ago there was whooping cough around and a lot of babies were getting it, seeing a sick child and not being able to help them is one of the worst things I can imagine.
I am still in two minds. While I am not convinced that every new vaccine that is touted as a cure for this or that is genuine, I know from first hand experience that the old school vaccines made a vast difference in the world. I had teachers who were sufferers of polio, family stories of family members that died from measles, rubella etc, and now in this day and age second hand reports of babies dying from whooping cough as a result of non immunized (or so the story goes) friends or family. I know for a fact that this years injection for the flu will not protect against any new strain unseen on the horizon and that I myself got sick as a dog after taking a whooping cough immunization to protect our new borne from the whooping cough virus, but where does the buck stop and the altruistic (if it exists) extent of the current PHARMA business model end ? It is after all a profit driven business model that relies upon a problem to be solved right ?
Dodgy stats there. Vaccines aren't 100% effective in preventing the disease in everybody who gets them, so stating the number of people who were vaccinated and got the disease anyway is meaningless unless it's done in comparison to the total number of people who were vaccinated. The five Disneyland cases of people who got measles despite being fully vaccinated represent a 95% prevention rate in a sample of 100 vaccinated people or 99% prevention rate in a sample of 500 people. If the vaccine is "95% effective", you'd expect 5 in 100 people to still be susceptible. The mathematical model for calculating herd immunity against measles is that you need 85%-95% of a population not being able to contract the disease. Even with a 100% vaccination rate that's only 95% effective, you're still scraping the upper limit. In a population of 10,000 people with a 90% vaccination rate (which is higher than some places in the U.S.) you'd have 1,450 people who are able to get the disease: 1000 who didn't get the vaccine and 450 who had their shots and and are still vulnerable anyway. That brings the herd immunity threshold down to 85.5% which is pretty much the lowest rate possible before you can expect outbreaks. That's exactly what's happening in certain parts of the U.S. right now. People for whom the vaccine isn't effective (a) don't get to find out who they are until the get the disease, and (b) rely on as many other people being vaccinated as possible so (hopefully) they never end up finding out. The "bovine serum" thing is certainly very emotive, but I had steak for dinner last night so I can't really get all "Ewww, disgusting" about consuming cow stuff, however the herd immunity effect is pure maths and the numbers being quoted in that vid are just wrong.
Good post and I am with you on what you said, I personally think flu shots are a waste of time and money but things like polio, whooping cough, MMR ect are in my opinion magic..
