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

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The "without vaccination" numbers there assume herd immunity, and are probably sadly already out of date.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

stevia is such a ridiculous product, all marketed in 'natural' green and white and brown boxes

america: just beacuse it's got a white background and some earthtone text, don't think for a second that it isn't made in a damn lab

http://b.monetate.net/img/1/183/58845.png

follow up to previous post - these people deserve to be marginalized by society because they are active agents working against public health and the well-being of the most vulnerable. i'm not saying that they act maliciously or with any specific intent, but they're adults who've been educated (at least to some degree) and don't understand the difference between what is scientific fact and what is unsubstantiated opinion, and will not listen to reasonable arguments as to why their decisions are reckless.

I find that the anti-vax crew are largely bullies, too. They're kinda like Amway salesman in the way that they attempt to paint the pro-vax crowd as 'uneducated' on the topic, or largely fleeced by Big Pharma, and they largely appeal to the less confident folk who only need that one little seed of reasonable doubt for their child's safety to opt out of vaccines altogether. They often use condescending phrases like "When you read up on the topic and become educated, you'll see that..." or "It's not your fault you fell for the Big Pharma lie, they're a powerful industry". I haven't yet met an anti-vax person that has been legitimately interested in having a real debate. I'm sure they're out there, but it's all smoke and mirrors with these assholes. Sadly, I feel a lot of well-meaning people have been snookered in by them.

Hell, an old friend of mine last month, who isn't even anti-vax, responded to say that the current vaccination schedules are too aggressive and cited a book proposing alternative vaccine schedules. She is normally a reserved individual, but was surprisingly arrogant in this post, responding to critiques that hadn't even been made yet, pointing out the doctor that wrote it "didn't appeal to emotion like others, and just used cold hard facts". I don't remember the book, but I lol'ed a bit when I read reviews which basically illustrated the doctor is practically a pariah amongst his peers and the entire thing was largely rejected by the medical community.

sad thing is, I can easily see 23 year old me falling for this bullshit. Facts/arguments don't matter - once you are convinced that you are being 'lied to', any opposing thought or refuting arguments are clearly part of the 'big lie' and it becomes a big circle-jerk.

government and corporate dishonesty has played its own part in this kind of stupidity tbf

while true, I get tired of people treating everything as absolute. 'Government dishonesty' does not = 'nothing the government says can be trusted, ever'!

fortunately in this arena, there is no shortage of non-government/non-corporate literature that also corroborates the pro-vax stance.

whooping cough and measles making a big comeback here in western mass the land of the enlightened. *sigh*