I swear to g-d…anti-vaxers are the fucking WORST.
Uneducated, and relying on so much bullshit non-evidence.
It’s like the new crossfit for middle class moms.
“Healthier children equals friendlier waiters at Chili’s down the line.”
[quote]UtahLama wrote:
I swear to g-d…anti-vaxers are the fucking WORST.
Uneducated, and relying on so much bullshit non-evidence.
It’s like the new crossfit for middle class moms.[/quote]
Evidence-based medicine is for suckers.
[quote]jjackkrash wrote:
Good to see John Stewart rip on the liberals for showing the exact same issues they see with climate change deniers.
I shouldn’t even bother, but I’ll play. Just a little.
[quote]F.I.S.T. wrote:
In 1992, the Immunization Awareness Society (IAS) conducted a survey to examine the health of New Zealand’s children.
Unsurprisingly, the results of their study indicated that unvaccinated children were far healthier than vaccinated children. Questionnaires were given out to IAS members, their friends and their associates asking various health questions. A total of 245 families returned their questionnaires, giving the researchers a total of 495 children surveyed. Of these children, 226 were vaccinated and 269 were unvaccinated.
[/quote]
Gee, I wonder if this is an unbiased source. Considering that questionnaires were given to members of an organzation called the Immunization Awareness Society, I’m guessing not.
[quote]F.I.S.T. wrote:
During the study, another interesting fact emerged. Researchers discovered that 92 percent of the children requiring a tonsillectomy operation had received the measles vaccination, indicating that the vaccination for measles may have made some of the children more susceptible to tonsillitis.
[/quote]
There are lots of problems with EVERYTHING presented, but I’ll just give one example. Saying that “92 percent of the children requiring a tonsillectomy had received the measles vaccination” does not, in any way, prove that the measles vaccination CAUSES tonsillectony. Using this logic, 100 percent of children requiring a tonsillectomy have eaten food; therefore FOOD causes tonsillectomy!
To even SUGGEST that something “causes” something else, there has to be a comparison statistic. Like, showing that X percent of vaccinated children had required a tonsillectomy vs. Y percent of unvaccinated children requiring a tonsillectomy. This nonsense “92 percent of children requiring a tonsillectomy had received the measles vaccination” is a deliberately misleading statistic presented just because it sounds scary. What they’d really need to to is show that, say, 25 percent of vaccinated children needed a tonsillectomy vs. only 5 percent of the unvaccinated children.
Even if that WERE the case, there are still selection-bias issues. For example, the anti-vaxxers are typically affluent families living in well-to-do communities, probably eating better food, etc. They’re a healthier baseline population that’s going to have a lower risk of pretty much everything. AND, if their parents are already whack-job enough to not vaccinate their kids, they probably just go to doctors less altogether, which means that they’re less likely to be DIAGNOSED with all of these conditions.
[quote]F.I.S.T. wrote:
As with the New Zealand study, researchers collected their data by conducting a survey using questionnaires. [2]
…
Dr. Andreas Bachair, a German classical homeopathic practitioner, responsible for collecting the results of the survey from the website vaccineinjury.info stated that:
…
(As this study is a longitudinal study, the number of children being studied has since risen to 13,222. To join the study, you can fill in the questionnaire provided by clicking on the link listed as the third reference at the end of this article.)
[/quote]
The data are collected from an Internet survey that people choose to fill out themselves at a website called vaccineinjury.info. Gee, I wonder if most people who happen upon this page are parents of kids with problems who are desperately seeking something to blame.
Seriously, parents of healthy vaccinated children aren’t going to websites called “vaccineinjury.info” in the first place, so they aren’t going to be included in the study; basically, everyone that ends up in this “study” (which is a generous term to apply here) is either i) parent of diseased child filling out the study, convinced that vaccines “caused” their child’s disease or ii) parent of healthy (for now) unvaccinated child that desperately wants to “prove” to people that not vaccinating is healthy.
Not exactly a representative population sample here.
Fuck. That’s enough. I don’t have the energy to take the whole thing apart. Just wanted to hit a couple of the MOST egregious errors.
Practitioners of that witchcraft called epidemiology are not welcome here, so take that shit and your peer-reviewed double-blind studies somewhere else Activities Guy.
Just out of curiosity, what are ya’lls views on the necessity of the flu shot or a vaccine for something relatively harmless like chicken pox?
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what are ya’lls views on the necessity of the flu shot or a vaccine for something relatively harmless like chicken pox?[/quote]
Have you ever had shingles?? One of the most painful infections there is.
I am gonna go with the chicken pox shot immunization, thanks.
The flu shot is a guess. There are typically 4-5 strains identified at the beginning of the year and they gamble on which one it’s gonna be. The science is imperfect.
[quote]ActivitiesGuy wrote:
The data are…
[/quote]
YES!
The data are indeed!
Nothing makes my blood boil more than when people treat the data as if they are singular.
[quote]jjackkrash wrote:
Practitioners of that witchcraft called epidemiology are not welcome here, so take that shit and your peer-reviewed double-blind studies somewhere else Activities Guy. [/quote]
Ha!
What I say is true BECAUSE SCIENCE!!!
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
[quote]ActivitiesGuy wrote:
The data are…
[/quote]
YES!
The data are indeed!
Nothing makes my blood boil more than when people treat the data as if they are singular.
[/quote]
Likewise, a pet peeve of mine. I stand with you, my brother!
[quote]ActivitiesGuy wrote:
[quote]jjackkrash wrote:
Practitioners of that witchcraft called epidemiology are not welcome here, so take that shit and your peer-reviewed double-blind studies somewhere else Activities Guy. [/quote]
Ha!
What I say is true BECAUSE SCIENCE!!![/quote]
Tell us, ActivitiesGuy, exactly how many kettlebells did you buy with your hush money from Big Pharma?
How did I miss this fucking gem? I take a day off from the forums to mess with contractors and I come back to find this? Whoa.
[quote]F.I.S.T. wrote:
Studies outside the U.S. show unvaccinated children healthier than vaccinated children
[/quote]
Ya, way healthier…
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Anecdote: I haven’t had the flu in over a decade since I STOPPED receiving a flu shot.
[/quote]
This shows a complete misunderstanding of what “the flu” and “the flu shot” are. And, to be fair, this is not very well understood in the population at large, nor is it very well explained by the medical community.
The “flu shot” is designed to guard against strains of the influenza virus which are expected to be common in a given year. There are many different strains of the influenza virus, and they’re always mutating into new, slightly different ones. Some are mild and you’ll barely even notice them. Some can kill you. Some won’t kill YOU, but they might kill your 85-year-old neighbor with a weakening immune system, or the 6-month-old infant next door who hasn’t got much of an immune system built up yet.
Now, the second part: what’s commonly referred to as “the flu” isn’t really “the influenza virus” although people talk about them as though they’re one and the same. Flu-like symptoms are pretty nonspecific, and tons of people say they “had the flu” when they probably had a common cold, or a mild viral/bacterial infection. We just have started describing every instance of “I had a fever and headache, so I didn’t come to work for a few days” with “I had the flu” - so now people think “the flu” is pretty much any illness less than cancer. Great.
But, even putting all of THAT aside, the whole “anecdotal” evidence that “I haven’t had the flu since I stopped receiving a flu shot” is a fallacious argument. It’s like saying that I haven’t died from a car crash since I stopped wearing a seat belt. That may not matter if I never get into a car crash, but if I ever DO get into a car crash, I’ll be a helluva lot better off if I’m wearing a seat belt. You may not ever get the influenza virus, but if you DO get it, you’ll be a helluva lot better off if you got a flu shot.
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what are ya’lls views on the necessity of the flu shot [/quote]
Unnecessary, imo, for most people.
WAIT…Wait…wait…
So you guys are telling me that drinking garlic juice while rubbing crystals on my third eye is NOT the same as getting a vaccine shot?
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what are ya’lls views on the necessity of the flu shot [/quote]
Unnecessary, imo, for most people. [/quote]
This is a hazy area. I have gone back and forth. A graduate-school classmate of mine (who is an infectious disease epidemiologist) and good friend has explained it as such:
It is unnecessary for most people in the sense that “young and healthy people ages 18-55 are unlikely to die if infected with influenza and treated in a first-world hospital.” People like you and me probably are going to go home, tough it out for a few days, guzzle some NyQuil and water and hot tea, and come through on the other side. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!
But, and this is why the flu shot matters: not everyone is so hardy. I sat on the bus today next to a whole slew of characters. I washed my hands and touched the same soap dispenser that someone else touched; maybe they’re going to go home to their 6-month-old niece. THOSE are the people who are really at risk. The elderly, the very young, and the immunocompromised. If you have any friends-of-friends that have an immune disorder, or an illness like cancer or leukemia, THEY are who might one day be hurt. I get the flu, tough it out because I’m a MAN, and I survive; but I pass it to the 70-year-old man on the bus next to me, he might end up in the hospital with pneumonia.
That, in a nutshell, is why the flu shot can seem “unnecessary for most people” but still is probably a good idea.