The Glade 4.0

We're talking about 145-150 cases of measles in 14 states. Since when did this become a major policy debate level of illness? More people got the clap from casual sex last week than have contracted measles since this outbreak began. There were 644 cases last year in the United States, as compared to a worldwide average of 20,000,000 cases. Stop panicking because someone got sick. The sky is not falling; people are not posing a significant health risk to the United States or its population. Assuming 1800 total cases of measles in the United States, we can expect 13 deaths. These are trivial numbers. This is not a pandemic. This is not an epidemic. And, I'm pretty certain the CDC will rule, yet again, that the outbreak happened because someone from a low vaccination country visited the United States.

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Measles is a lethal disease. Death rate is 10% in 3rd world countries with poor nutrition. Drops to about 0.3% when the person has access good nutrition and health care. Death rate in a previously unexposed population has been documented to be 66%.

I will show my age by remembering 2 kids in my elementary school who died from measles.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

Time to start regulating casual sex.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

There are arguments to be made that it should be a regulated business.

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As usual, I agree with you sir.

3 deaths in a thousand cases in the US, according to the WHO.



I think this is the issue. Removing a child from the parent's custody, injecting a foreign substance into them that is documented to (extremely rarely) cause serious harm is a big deal to me.



This is a dangerous line of thinking. Yes, I'm talking about a slippery slope. But, for example, if we went back to the 3-4 million cases of measles we got before the vaccine (never going to happen by the way), we'd be talking about 12,000 deaths (and yes, I know death is not the only concern). Flu kills as many as 49,000 people per year (widely variable).

So there are other things that we can force upon people under the guise of "for the public good". Why stop here?

Why not stop here? Just because it could be extended to other things doesn't mean it has to be - and does not necessarily mean it will be. The idea that any authority given will be extended to the nth degree has never been born out as an axiomatic truism. In some cases that happens, in others it does not, and in this case the government is already intruding into other areas of health more and more; mandating vaccines is not likely to be any worse and is certainly supported by much better reasons than, say, mandating certain foods in school lunches. Yes, it's a dangerous line of thinking. It's also a dangerous line of thinking to reject any sort of government intervention in the arena of public health just because we're worried about the dangers of government.

No, measles is not presently killing a lot of people and immunization rates are not presently down to a dangerous level - but they are dropping and this "don't immunize your kids for imaginary reasons!" movement is gaining an alarming amount of traction. I'm not sure why we should wait until it actually is a crisis to deal with it.

"Injecting a foreign substances into the body" is just a way of overgeneralizing what is happening in order to make it sound worse than it is. It's like the conflation of smoke-producing munitions that happen to use white phosphorous with white phosphorous incendiary munitions that went on here years back.

As for the clap, not only is it not fatal, it also doesn't spread to other people just from being in the same room with them, and it's a disease you get from consensual activity with other adults. It's not an appropriate comparison.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Don't make up statements to argue against. I don't think anyone here is suggesting that.



So counter the movement. As I said before, just forcing it on people that don't want it is just lazy policy. There is value in a PR approach - figure it out and make it work. A PR approach will never get you to 100%, but you don't need to be at 100%.



No, it's stating WHY it should be a matter for concern. Forcing people to undergo an exam is a violation of rights. Forcing people to undergo a blood test (removing substance) is a violation of rights. These however are fundamentally different that putting a substance into a person that is designed to change their biology. I'm not trying to make it sound worse than it is, but I think it should be viewed differently than the other scenarios I list.

RD, I'm sure you see the challenges of forcible vaccination from a perspective of jurisprudence, but hopefully you can take those glasses off and see why it shouldn't be pursued on the basis of individual rights.

We are too busy obsessing over the practical limitations of evidence to see why the negligent risk of disease exposure should be criminal. Without establishing the criminally negligent element of the risk of non-vaccination, non-vaccers cannot be held responsible for their risk, and that is the benefit.

With criminal element, practical measures that *do* work, such as forced quarantine and even denial of public services (schools, public transit) are not simply punitive for non-vaccers. These things are already done but in the absence of establishing culpability for the risk of forgoing vaccination, they become nearly as Orwellian as vaccinations themselves.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Explain how that's substantially different than what you're arguing.



I don't see that it's "lazy policy" at all or why countering the movement is inherently a superior approach. How is the movement to be countered? the science is already completely clear. the only thing "lazy" I see going on here is telling people "counter the movement without any explanation of a potentially feasible approach to doing so. The most obvious means of doing so are already being used and it's still gaining traction.

No one is arguing we need to be at 100% in any case; the problem is that the percentage is starting to drop and the movement is gaining traction.



Using loaded language like "change someone's biology" is definitely making it sound worse than it is. So far, the only thing I've really seen is abstract concern over "rights". That might be more justifiable if the consequences were more abstract, or if they were more limited to the people affected but the simple fact is that the concepts of "rights" we have were largely invented before we had much of the science we have today. Infectious disease was a scourge in the Revolutionary era and the prior years when such concepts were invented; I think it likely that the people that come up with these concepts would be appalled if they knew that we had such reliable means of preventing disease and yet people were using "freedom" and "rights" as a reason to avoid them to the detriment of both themselves and everyone around them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

We now know that genetics plays a major role in the development of a child into a functional adult. Children are the seed of their parents' stupidity. On the other hand, sexual reproduction allows for the child to be better than the sum of its genetic parts. Therefore, I am a proponent of the Three Strikes policy. As an anti-vaxxer, you are strike one. Your partner is strike two.

When your unvaccinated child contracts measles, it's out. The human population on Earth is at an estimated seven billion and rising. We are not going to miss the measles-carrying child of two morons who wouldn't vaccinate their offspring.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'm not getting sucked into this - the idea that opposing forced vaccines is equivalent to rejecting ANY SORT of government intervention in the arena of public health is a huge strawman.



I'm not a PR specialist. There have been recent studies that the current PR approach is failing, or at least not working well. The approach should be revisited. As for why public buy in for a solution to a problem, rather than forcing it down people's throats, the superiority to the former should be inherently obvious.



Sigh. Ok, DE, what language would you like me to use that demonstrates the difference between forcing an exam and injecting a child with something? You didn't like "injecting with a foreign substance" though that is perfectly accurate, you didn't like "changing biology" which is perfectly accurate. Please tell me what language meets your approval so we can move forward from the semantics.

I don't like making people do things, even if they're being dumb morons who should stop breeding. I'd consider preventing them from enrolling their children in public school though.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I'm OK with people not vaccinating their kids as long as they're OK wit being held financially responsible for the cost incurred by parents who have to quarantine their (too young for vaccines) kids for a month because their kids were exposed to the non vaccinated child...

And aren't allowed to put unvaccinated (without good reason) kids in public school/daycare/whatever

The people who are anti-vac probably want to home-school their kids anyway. Not that there's anything wrong with home-schooling per se, but there is a flavor of nutter that prefers that sort of thing.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I lean towards antinatalist, so I'd argue that everyone should stop breeding........but unfortunately, the biggest breeders are usually the most ignorant and poorest. If one were to draw this out to it's conclusion........

It would be, except that you haven't really explained why the line should be here and not somewhere else except to refer to "rights". "Rights" are an argument against the government telling almost anyone to do almost anything.




If the PR based approach is already failing, on what basis do you think it's even possible to revisit it more effectively? As for "not forcing it down people's throats" being superior, yes it does have certain advantages, but a growing number of people are demonstrating that no other approach is feasible with them, neutralizing those advantages. I do not see that "not forcing it down people's throats" is so inherently superior that it should be continued even when demonstrably futile.



Neither of those is "perfectly accurate." "Injecting with a foreign substance" is overly vague, as a foreign substance conjures up images of injecting people with almost anything. This is like when people refer to tear gas as a "chemical weapon" to associate it with things like nerve gas, or if you referred to a common housecat as a "predatory feline" to make it sound like some sort of hazard. "Changing their biology" makes it sound as if you are changing something about the person when all that is happening is that the person's NORMAL biology is producing antibodies in response to the vaccine. It's a distortion that sounds like you are changing the person's overall makeup.

What I'd like is for you to refer to it as "vaccination", which is, you know WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS. It's only one word, and it's the correct term and does not distort the issue one way or the other. You can append "forcible" to it if that makes you feel better.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Where the line is is not relevant. Nobody is making the argument you suggest. It's a strawman.



Of course it's possible to revisit the approach. Why wouldn't you be able to revisit the approach to see if there's a better strategy? You have new research, sit down, talk about it, see if you can come up with new ideas. What would be the obstacle here?

So you recognize that the current PR approach is failing, you recognize that successful PR that obtains community buy-in is advantageous, but then you suggest that for some people "no other approach is feasible"? That's a huge leap. Are you suggesting that every possible PR approach has been tried?



So it's vague. It is perfectly accurate. Since we're talking about vaccines in general (and I'm not an infectious disease specialist), I think the specifics are not appropriate for me to list. Which is also kind of the point. The average person does not know what's in the substance being injected into them or their kids, and what it does to them. Education and outreach is key. It is indeed a foreign substance, created in a lab, and injected into them. It does change their biology by triggering the immune response. These are perfectly accurate descriptions.

You and I know what a vaccination is, and what tear gas is. We are not going to be confused that injecting a vaccination into someone is going to cause them harm. So we can move away from the semantic nonsense and get to the point.



You're completely missing the point or not paying attention to my posts. There is a difference between forcing an exam or bloodwork, and putting something in someone's body. I'm explaining why "vaccination" is different from other medical procedures. It would not be very clarifying for me to say "Forced vaccinations are different from other forced medical procedures because they are vaccinations."

That's exactly the argument you are making:



You haven't actually explained what the fundamental difference is; all you've really said is "these 2 things are a violation of rights, but this other thing is even more so because reasons", the reasons being so far unarticulated.

Articulate your argument and it won't be misconstrued.



The fact that you are insisting that the PR based approach has to be continued because it can be done better. You haven't explained what possible improvements could be made, excusing yourself with "well, I'm not a PR guy." That's your problem, not mine. Your objection amounts to that just telling people "you have to get vaccinated" is "lazy policy" again, because reasons or something. You haven't explained why it's "lazy" at all; it seems to me that it would require substantial work. You COULD object to this based on costs, which I might be willing to listen to since it strikes me as the main drawback to mandates, but I guess you just can't be assed.



I didn't suggest that at all. I don't know if it has or not; I'm saying it is not necessarily true that one exists. You seem to think one does, but since that's your assertion, its for you to suggest one that's meaningfully new and different. If you aren't a PR guy and can't, then you shouldn't assume one exists.





The average person knows perfectly well what's in a vaccine, and what it does to them - some sort of inactive virus that triggers antibodies. You learn this in elementary school; it is not hard. Aside from the typical Glade elitism of thinking the average person far less informed than they actually are, the problem is not that people aren't being educated, it's that they simply refuse to believe that education. People are pretending that they don't know what's in the vaccines, that they cause autism, and vastly inflating the risk of allergic reaction, the last of which they are not in a position to know in the first place. It's not as if vaccine objectors actually have any reason to suspect their kid is any more likely than any other to have a reaction; they are just using that as an excuse. The issue is really about "you can't tell me what to do with my kid!" and exercising control for control's sake just because one can.

RD already pointed out that there may be vaccination rates higher than here in Central American countries and it seems that's true of some countries in Africa too. I find it pretty extraordinary that people with much poorer overall education are somehow better informed about what a vaccine is and what it does than the average American; we are talking about countries with some appalling health superstitions like "corrective rape" and some astoundingly ignorant approaches to dealing with AIDS for example.

Furthermore, your statements are not "perfectly accurate" because they constitute "prejudicial language". http://afterall.net/illogic/appeals-to-motive/prejudicial-language/



Yes, you and I know that but you are presenting your position using terminology to pretend that people that have these fears have stronger reasons than they actually do. If you don't want semantic nonsense, don't use semantics to score points. It's not any different than the reverse tactic of linguistic rules-lawyering.



Then your point is utterly tautological. You are explaining that vaccination is different because it's vaccination. Duh, obviously. So what? Why is that difference important? You're drawing a line between that procedure and others without explaining why it's important except to say "but it's an injection!" Right after pointing out that we both already know this. Yes, we both do, so why are you stating something you just said you know I already know without further explanation as to why that difference is important?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Are you trolling? You said:



This is a strawman. That's not at all the argument anyone here is making. Further, you quote me below listing areas where government intervention is warranted, thereby defeating your own strawman.



I have, repeatedly. But you've been too focused on complaining about the words used than getting to the point. Putting something into someone is fundamentally different than taking something out. Anti-vaxxers are concerned about the chemical makeup of what is being put into their children. The same concern cannot exist when you remove a replenishable substance like blood. fundamentally different (and obviously so). disregarding the difference between the scenarios blatantly ignores the entire point of why anti-vaxxers have a problem to begin with.



No, it's the PR people's problem. From what I hear, they are working on it. As for reasons, you conceded getting public buy in is better.



I haven't. I said revisit it. You somehow seem to have an objecting to even investigating if there's another approach.



Education as to why the misinformation being spread about vaccines needs to be better implemented. This is fairly obvious. The problem is that it's educated people who are doing research and finding this bogus information. The PR campaign is fairly effective at others because, like you say, the principles aren't hard. A better program needs to be put in place to counter the misinformation.



Because not recognizing the difference ignores any concern the anti-vaxxers have with vaccines, and is a waste of time.

So what? They have no good excuse for even having the concerns in the first place. Their concerns have been widely addressed, repeatedly.

As for a "waste of time" this is simply question begging.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Common things change the physiological components of a body, some of these have even been linked to serious diseases, including cancer.

Oxygen for example is linked to the oxidation of cells, which have been clinically proven to increase the incidence of lung cancer. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/287887.php

Eating is linked with a myriad of diseases, including Diabetes, Heart disease, etc.

Water for example goes beyond serious diseases, and have been known to actually lead to death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

I find it hypocritical for anti-vexxers to be okay with putting certain foreign substance into their child's body which alter the child's normal physiological response (e.g. gastric), then others (e.g. immune). If Anti-Vexxers are so against foreign substances interfering with the physiological process of their body, I would suggest they start by cutting out Oxygen...

Well, you're not wrong. Still, the problem is that anti-vaxxers can affect the rest of us. This has been shown through the whole herd immunity thing. I guess it just boils down to whether you want to solve the problem by forcing people to do what you want, or work with them to address their problems and bring them into the fold.

If you want to do the former, then your approach is solid, ridiculing any concerns will gain support for forcing these "idiots" to do what we want. If you want to do the latter, then comparing a substance manufactured in a lab, that is not necessary for survival, to oxygen will probably not help.

Yeah, when someone points out that a particular hypothesis A) has no evidence in favor of it B) has mountains against it and C) that this is common knowledge, and oh by the way so is the necessary ancillary information surrounding the issue (specifically, what a vaccine is and how it works) AND the fact that even third-world shitholes are aware of this...

Resort to emoticons. We can't have any of that science getting in the way of people's concerns. I mean, when people obstinately refuse to let their concerns be addressed, clearly the thing to do is keep trying to convince them otherwise. What's that definition of "insanity" people love to post so frequently?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."