The Glade 4.0

The first thing to do is stop acting like the anti-vaxxers have equally valid opinions.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

As shown above, you're clearly more interested in misinterpreting my statements so that you can be... no idea. Anyway, I know when I'm wasting my time.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that their opinions are particularly valid. The only question is, do we force people to do what we want, or do we try to persuade them?

RD cited a study earlier in the thread indicating that education efforts are not effective. You have been insisting that we should do something "different" to persuade them, but you don't have any idea what that might be because "it's the PR people's problem", so how do we know that it can be done?

Evidently the anti-vaxxers are not the only ones immune to evidence.

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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."

No one is misinterpreting your statements. You are simply completely full of ****.

1) RD already provided evidence that education efforts do not work. Your insistence on "we need to educate them!" flies in the face of this and you have provided no evidence of your own nor any actual reason why more education would be effective.

2) The risks of vaccines range from trivial to nonexistent. Third world countries have, in some cases, better vaccination rates than we do, and do not have these absurd anti-vax movements despite having other far more absurd healthcare superstitions

What's more, the concerns about what's in the vaccines are complete bullshit



Yes, that's right - you can already find out all the ingredients in childhood vaccines!

Even better:



Yes, that's right, they removed a completely harmless chemical from vaccines simply over fears that it might cause problems. Evidently not only has education not worked, actually altering the vaccines themselves to remove a feared chemical that was already harmless anyhow has not assuaged the fears of this absurd movement.

3) You stated earlier in the thread:



Then, despite this statement, you claimed that I was making a strawman when I discussed "opposing any government intervention in healthcare at all."

You admitted you were making a slippery slope argument, then turned around and claimed that same argument was a starwman just because it was phrased differently. "This is a slippery slope" and " "Why stop there?" pretty much incontrovertibly demonstrate opposition to any government intervention at all based on the fear that it will lead to unlimited government intervention. You said in your own words it's a slippery slope and that's the definition of a slippery slope.. but somehow it's a strawman to go with that.

The reason you are wasting your time is that you don't want to think your own positions all the way through, then act as if people are being belligerent for taking issue with your positions. If you don't want that, then try thinking your position through for a change. You're wasting your time because you are continuing to take issue over concerns that are complete and utter bullshit. The evidence indicates that not only is education worthless, so is actually changing the components of vaccines themselves as people will simply come up with new reasons to fear it!

The worst part of this is that there are all sorts of practicality and cost issues with mandating vaccines that would be much better reasons to oppose it rather than the total hogwash you have been posting.

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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."

Arathain, I certainly want to force these people to get their kids vaccinated, regardless of the method. This is exactly because not vaccinating affects the rest of us.

So the issue with not vaccinating is these perceived "substances manufactured in a lab". Not withstanding everything I have previously stated can be manufactured in a lab, including Oxygen (which is how they get them into that little compressed bottle thingy). If the Anti-vexxers are more comfortable with having their child vaccinated the old fashioned way, I would also be happy to have someone who is currently infected and contagious to hug their children/cough in their general direction. Alternatively their child could chose to be bitten by an insect/rat instead.

They should be so lucky to have "substances manufactured in a lab" because the alternative is much, much more dangerous. I will agree to their right to chose how they immunise themselves, but not their right not to immunise.

There is a belief in the US (or certainly by a group of people) that it is a person's "right to be stupid". Most people affected by this belief chose to hide their "right to be stupid" behind other things such as, freedom of expression. Your president have erected policies to support this "right to be stupid" mentality (e.g. no child left behind), believing education may help, it doesn't.

As any customer service, IT support, technician, troubleshooting guide will tell you. There is no cure for stupidity.

There is no arguing or educating those who believe in their "right to be stupid", they will drag you down to their level in an argument, and then proceed to beat you with experience. Persuading these people is giving them the perception that some or all of their opinion may be correct. You should not negotiate with stupidity.

Australia recently denied entry to a prominent Anti-Vexxer who was suppose to give a talk here. Just as we don't allow terrorism under the guise of "freedom of speech", I'm fully supportive of my government not giving into stupidity under the guise of "freedom of speech".

How do you know that it can't?

Ok. I disagree.

Well, we do have a stupendous amount of empirical evidence suggesting that it can't (not just re vaccinations, but in any number of activities where an assumed informed populace will behave better). That's not proof, certainly, but there comes a point where something isn't worth the cost. I understand you claim to have some facility with cost/benefit analyses.

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I don't know that it isn't, I believe that it isn't based on the study RD provided and the further evidence I linked lead me to believe that education and even changes to the drugs themselves to address concerns are not effective.

So, where's your evidence?

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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."

I don't know that it can be, I believe that it can be based on the study RD provided and the fact they haven't finished looking into possible implications.

You seem to want to skip that process entirely and skip straight to "waah, it's too hard, let's just force people to do what I want"

So you believe this based on a study that indicates precisely the opposite? RD cited a study that indicated, specifically that additional education reduced the presence of misinformation but still reduced the likelihood of vaccination amongst those least likely to vaccinate - you know, the people we're talking about here. Did you bother to read the post, or were you just in too big a hurry to talk about "lazy policy" to exercise any reading comprehension? You are not in a position to talk about "lazy policy"; your entire argument is lazy - you want to have an opinion but you don't want to exercise any cursory effort to understand the issues that might give you some actual business having an opinion.

and when precisely will they be "finished" looking into possible implications?



More prejudicial language. You want to jump straight to "whaa, rights might get violated and it's lazy, let's keep doing the same thing despite all the evidence!"

See how that works?

The difference is that I've cited actual evidence and used evidence cited by others - RD specifically - to form my opinion, while yours is based on nothing more than personal feelings.

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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."

This conversation is useless. There's a study that says current outreach efforts aren't working, and folks are taking a look to see if something will work better. When precisely will this be done? WTF kind of stupid question is that?

You're again suggesting we should just give up because it's too hard. A study shows current activities aren't working, therefore it's a waste of time to try to come up with a better approach. That's complete nonsense.

Why is that a stupid question? Let me rephrase it for you - what level of proof would you need to accept the idea that further education efforts are unlikely to produce meaningful improvement?

And who are these folks that are "taking a look to see if something will work better"? Who is? What are they looking into? Where did you learn about this? Did I miss it in one of RD's links? If so it ought to be very easy for you to point out instead of just making vague allusions to.



Yes, I am. The evidence indicates that from a cost/benefit standpoint it is indeed too hard to convince people who are obstinately opposed to vaccinations that they are a good idea. So what?

This is not a sports competition or SEAL qualifications; do you think you're going to shame people into agreeing with you with this bullshit? Complaining that other people are saying something is "too hard" is meaningless. From a public policy standpoint, when something is too hard - that is, the benefit does not outweigh the cost, it is impractical, it is counter productive - you **** quit doing it.



For someone whining about strawman attacks, you certainly created an impressive one. No one is saying that it's a waste of time to come up with a better approach; we're suggesting that the "better approach" is not likely to involve doing the same thing only "better", and that other avenues might be more productive. Mandates are one possible other avenue.

So yes, this conversation is useless because you're continuing to argue the point despite having nothing to offer beyond some vague sense of personal affront you're taking at "lazy policy". What's even more entertaining is that you're focusing on me and apparently ignoring what shuyung had to say - and on top of that you're (typically) responding to cherry-picks of what I've said so far anyhow.

You specifically have not addressed the fact that we have vaccination rates in some respects lower than some third world countries despite generally better education and readily, publicly available explanations of what's in vaccines and free and appropriate public education that explains to children how they work.

You're just talking about how unspecified PR people are going to do this more and better and we should do that first. You have not offered one iota of support for why we should think this is likely to be any more successful.

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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."

Did you bother to read what he linked? Because the researcher's conclusions support what I am saying directly.



You're cherry picking what you want from their study. No good.

Complete the recommendations listed in the study you are referencing. This should never end - there should always be people looking into better ways of doing things. If further research falls flat, and vaccination rates continue to drop, eventually I would support a more authoritarian approach. Doing it now is not warranted.



Bob. Oh yeah, and Jim.



No, it doesn't. It says current efforts don't appear to be working. Further study is needed.



That hasn't been shown.



"Not likely" is in dispute. On everything else we agree.



Shuyung didn't ask me a question, and I'm not refuting anything he said, specifically. I'm simply echoing the conclusions of the study cited - more research is needed. Shuyung, is there something you need a response to?



Considering I'm not arguing anything relating to this, and RD already covered this, why do I need to address this?



So what?

This is somewhat more reasonable, but it is astounding how much it takes to drag even this clarification out of you. How much further research are we talking about, and what if the vaccination rate and the measles rate worsen significantly in the meantime?



Yes, somehow it's unreasonable of me to challenge vague assertions of unspecified people allegedly doing something or other. Make sure you get that emoticon out there, somehow or other it makes your silly response more convincing.



And in the meantime we are now having outbreaks of a formerly-eradicated disease. Further study takes time and money; if we're going to invest that time and money we ought to at least make some effort to explore the feasibility of other methods besides additional education as well - no study has been done on that yet.



It needs to be shown that ineffective or counterproductive aspects of public policy should be discontinued or changed? What do you want done with your tax dollars?



If "not likely" is in dispute, on what basis do you think more or better education is likely to work? "Likely" would be the position that disputes "not likely" would it not? Yes, more study is needed, but all the study so far gives us no reason to dispute that.



You weren't echoing the study until the beginning of your latest post. Up to that point you were simply insisting that more and better PR was needed and that doing otherwise was lazy, whining about "rights" and that people needed to just "make it work". You've been slowly sliding the goalposts over to this position for 2 pages now.



Because you earlier indicated that:





These are your words, and this general sentiment, that anti-vaxxers are simply uninformed and need to be informed better appear to form the underpinning of your position.

Yet this has been shown to be false. Sure, we can do "more study", but we cannot base that study on the premise that people are simply uninformed - the evidence indicates that they are uninformed because they want to be, not becuase of a lack of information, so if you are calling for more study you are doing so on the wrong basis, and if actually implemented that would probably lead to the wrong studies being done.



So why should we think it is? Ok, more study is needed, but the study already done doesn't give us any reason for optimism. The empirical evidence from non-study sources gives us even less cause.

We shouldn't just go out and start forcibly injecting people but it is not out of line to start considering what such a mandate might look like and addressing the practical problems it undoubtedly would have. Then it could be compared on a cost-benefit basis to the merits of additional education or mixing the two approaches, or possibly other options that have not yet been discussed.

You know, like rational people, rather than just rejecting ideas out of hand as "lazy".

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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."

Awesome. We finally agree. This is what I have been saying all along.

Whatever makes you feel like you don't have to admit you were being perfectly absurd. I don't think we've seen this level of self-delusion in years.

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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."

Yes, I'm sure the magic emoticon changes the fact that you started out thinking people were talking about permanently taking away people's kids and then just went downhill from there.

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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."

That was resolved long ago. As for downhill - OMG yes, but as I said previously, I'll keep trying with you as long as it's productive. So now we're on the same page, and you are... still going. To what end?

You know, my wife likes to watch The Apprentice, so I watch it with her pretty frequently. A week or two ago one of the competitors insisted in The Boardroom that the project manager should not have used the jingle they used for the advertising campaign and should have used the one he used. Then, when asked to demonstrate the jingle he sang one that was basically "la cucharacha" with words appropriate to the commercial. Donald Trump points this out, and then he completely changes what he says, with a totally straight face now insisting that the "la cucharacha" jungle was just "a framework", not what he intended to use, and that he had never said it was better.

Not only were my wife and I very confused like this, evidently Donald Trump and his 2 assistant judges were too, and Donald Trump even asked one of the other ones something to the effect of "am I going crazy here?"

In this case though, I can read back through the thread and see that you were pretty clearly saying something totally different in the beginning than what you're claiming now you were saying all along.

So, you can chalk it up to idle curiosity to see just how long you will go on about it, especially after claiming 2 or 3 times that you were wasting your time with this. It's not like there's anything else going on around here and I need something to do in between awaiting results back from what I'm working on.

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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."

No, from the beginning I've been saying going straight to a mandate is lazy policy, and that further efforts to establish better PR campaigns is more appropriate. That a mandate should only be employed if efforts are tried, and fail, to produce results.

This is consistent with the recommendations from the study RD and you are citing (thought they don't get into mandates), and is now basically what you are saying above. So again, it appears we are finally reasonably close to on the same page.

I'm not going to argue with you for the sake of argument, but I'd be happy to discuss the topic further if you have something else to say.