jenny mccarthy wants your kid to get measles: autism, vaccines, and stupid idiots

I was mad when I wrote that. Really I believe that if someone's behavior seems nonsensical it's just because you don't understand their motivations. This is not really about whether or not the vaccine is secretly harmful, it's about something else (or elses). Most obviously in this case parents' understandable reluctance to deal with the idea of their child as a sexual person at age 12.

serious question - what's the demographic for the anti-vaxx community? if there is a definitive one.

Hippies and wannabe "attachment parents". Try the forums @ Mothering.com, they eat you alive if you even mention vaccinations.

yeah i always tell myself that the left's antiscience idiocy (vaccines, gmos) isn't nearly as harmful as the right's but the gap isn't as large as i'd like. i guess the left's antiscience is rooted in something far more anodyne and vaguely right (corporations are always evil and should not be trusted, govt is controlled by coroporations) than the right's antiscience is (corporations are always good, government is anti-business, b-b-but the bible, general misogyny and racism).

The Left's antiscience idiocy is as harmful cos the right isn't going to care about the poor at any rate and if the left abandons them for essential oils and spa days then the poor are really sh*t out of luck.

the return of diseases that were targets for eradication and were nearly regionally eradicated a few years ago and the labeling or even banning of gmos don't compare to anti-enviromental regulation, anti-alternative energy research funding, anti-science research funding in general, or inaction on global warming imo

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1455032_288122684677356_1539879744_n.jpg

sorry, that's just the first time anything like this has even come across my facebook feed and I wanted to share it.

"so your saying vaccination will halve my child's risk of dying of pertussis? sorry, not good enough"

Yeah, but if it only kills a few kids a year, what's the big deal?

Finally realized that the person who shared it is NOT an anti-vaxxer, but had misinterpreted the image to be PRO-vaccination.

That's some pernicious bullshit.

Pertussis was ubiquitous pre-vaccination: http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/surv-reporting/cases-by-year.html

Worldwide, pertussis deaths in infants are far from rare, maybe 1% of cases. That includes a lot of babies with poor nutrition etc, wouldn't be that high in North America, but still.

The "without vaccination" numbers there assume herd immunity, and are probably sadly already out of date.

I seriously just got in an argument with someone who calls himself a 'health care professional', who says flu vaccines aren't safe because one in one or two million cases might get GBS (in which, the causal link hasn't even been proven).

This is about the same odds as dying in a plane crash. If .0000001% chance of something 'bad' happening = unsafe, then I wonder what drugs ARE safe.

sorry .0001%

I will say that nothing makes me feel grosser than being stuck on an airplane breathing who knows what from people with who knows what. They should ban airplanes.

really they should just have the oxygen masks down at all times

there was one period last year where I got sick after three consecutive flights, one time with bronchitis :/

I get a cold almost every time I travel, although I think it's partially due to not sleeping enough and being a little stressed by travel.

I seriously just got in an argument with someone who calls himself a 'health care professional', who says flu vaccines aren't safe because one in one or two million cases might get GBS (in which, the causal link hasn't even been proven).

This is about the same odds as dying in a plane crash. If .0000001% chance of something 'bad' happening = unsafe, then I wonder what drugs ARE safe.

― Neanderthal, Monday, March 31, 2014 1:49 PM (1 hour ago)

whether infuenza vaccination causes ("causes") GBS is very controversial -- as you say, if the association does exist, it is somewhere on the magnitude of an extra case per million vaccinated. i'm still not fully convinced that the association, even from 1976, is causal. influenza itself can precede (and possibly predispose one to) GBS, and when some of the H1N1 data are looked at from a more distant perspective (that is, did vaccinated people get GBS more than unvaccinated people as a whole, not just in the few weeks following vaccination), the risk might even be higher among unvaccinated individuals. imo the data are very heterogenous; taken together they suggest maybe a tiny, tiny excess risk of GBS, the public health implications of which are imo absolutely negligible. we have a couple of neurologists who post here who may have something to add

there was actually a recent paper on this: http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/8/1149.full#F1

cool, thanks dude.

that's the thing, the CDC never actually confirms that GBS is caused by the vaccine, and points out the case number per week has little to do with vaccination.

they've also made very clear that the risk of GBS is much smaller than the risk of complications from the flu. that said, I haven't gotten a flu shot in years, as I always forget...got the flu in 2010 as a reward :/

I think we had the vaccines-are-net-protective-for-GBS discussion here awhile back.

The original GBS from vaccination scare was the swine flu in 1976. There were a few hundred cases, a clear uptick in the baseline incidence but still very unlikely over the population as a whole. Subsequent flu vaccines (and vaxx in general) haven't been found to have that degree of immunopathogenicity, but the association has survived among doctors (who expect every case of GBS to have an antecedent infection or vaccination) and the public (swine flu being ground zero in the we-remember-the-70s generation's anti-govt paranoia a la Glenn Beck).

So now every year when the flu vaccine is released, the clever sorts pop up again to make their clever point about GBS. Show them no mercy imo.

Elite Marin County anti-vaxx, and doctors/neighbors trying to cope---here's hoping for rolling updates in the resultshttp://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/06/299910441/how-public-health-advocates-are-trying-to-reach-non-vaccinators

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2606066/Miso-soup-prevent-measles-Why-Alicia-Silverstone-feeding-two-year-old-son-plant-based-diet-instead-getting-vaccinated.html

#clueless

"The Clueless star points out that . . ."

I see what they did there.

Aw no, Alicia. :(

arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

homegirl can shut right the fuck up

it's a good thing alicia silverstone doesn't have the massive cultural relevance of a jenny mccarthy or this might catch on

The Clueless star points out that 'vaccines are a very completed issue' and advises other parents to 'get educated and make a decision that feels best for you.'

because it's all about how the decision "feels" to the parent, not whether, you know, it actually protects her kid and his playmates from dying of smallpox or whatever.

The classic "get educated" response...aftee which you point out 'everything i read sez u rong' and they reply "u just readin the wrong stuff"

"Another thing she recommends is to soak a child's socks in vinegar or cold water and wrap them around the feet to 'bring down the fever."

The Left's antiscience idiocy is as harmful cos the right isn't going to care about the poor at any rate and if the left abandons them for essential oils and spa days then the poor are really sh*t out of luck.

In Portland, OR they've now extended this idiocy to flouride. In a few years, anyone out here will be lucky to receive any medical treatment beyond trepanation.

Diet soda will be banned due to "aspartame poisoning" fears*

*not a real thing btw

Are you sure????

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

Yes, of course it's not a real thing. But I was referring to the irrational fears.

oops, yeah I put the asterix on the wrong word. the fear is def a thing. tons of my friends used to slather my wall with scary-texted "BEWAAAAAAAAAAREEE THE SIGNS OF ASPARTAME POISONING" GIFs which would then list symptoms ranging from runny nose to death. people claiming they were bedridden because of drinking sugar-free Kool-Aid.

it's kinda sad, really. Kool-Aid Man ain't the fukkin Harvester of Sorrow.

He's done a lot of property damage

nutrasweet just fuckin' sucks, that is why you should avoid it

oh man, never search "aspartame vs stevia"

that fuckin' stevia shit (you put in your tea)

I have no illusions that artificial sweetener is good for me but the aspartame poison folks actually claim it can cause *immediate death*

There is a very large portion of folks who are hella about "purity" and not so cognizant of "dosage"

The dose makes the poison.

Breatharianism is where its at all food and drink is poison IMO

Alicia Silverstone wrote a macrobiotics cookbook and it was kind of a bummer.

btw fuck anyone who doesn't vaccinate their kids
that's still my staynce

yeah me too. I felt bad cos I lashed out at someone I didn't even know that was a friend of a friend who was bragging about being Vax-Free on Facebook but it's like...it's so irresponsible that I don't feel bad doing it anymore.

i know a couple that divorced in part b/c of this stuff

yeah me too. I felt bad cos I lashed out at someone I didn't even know that was a friend of a friend who was bragging about being Vax-Free on Facebook but it's like...it's so irresponsible that I don't feel bad doing it anymore.
--getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal)

you absolutely should not feel bad about this. these people are making irresponsible and ignorant decisions that not only affect their own children but also all the people that they come into contact with. there's no reason in the world they should be permitted to endanger the lives of others without repercussions or, at the very least, criticism