The Gaming Den

It turns out that childhood reactions to penicillin are not indicative of adult reactions to it, so if you indeed had been that many years of adolescent growth without a reaction, and it was not otherwise contraindicated, his decision was not out of bounds. You being sick for a week is not normal for even a severe reaction - it's usually over with fairly quickly as your body processes it. That's why you need multiple doses of medicines like penicillin are needed.

My spouse has no allergies. Except now, penicillin. And she's known to carry many immunities unseen in most modern people - because most modern people don't grow up between cattle ranches anymore.

I, on the other hand, had adverse reactions to penicillin since childhood, including more recent reactions to relatives. There's a long list of toxic molds I really shouldn't be near lest my immune system goes haywire. I still tend to react when given immunizations, even though it's just a memory imprint... But that means the chance of something bad happening is higher than the relative gain for things like flu shots.

We need to pay attention to these patterns, but live with the fact that we cannot predict the future.

-Crissa

That's why we need evidence based medicine.

PS - I'm even one of the few who are immune to bee stings. No reaction at all, just physical pain from being poked. What you are and aren't reactive to is an extremely hard to predict matrix.

cthulhu wrote:

Doctors that guess end up in court. They should end up in jail for homicide.

Doctors don't have a crystal ball. They have a list of indicators that generally mean you'll have an adverse reaction, and apply that list of indicators with their own judgment.

What else do you want them to do? Be pre-cogitative? Somehow telepathically know that an otherwise very fit and healthy individual with a full vaccination record and no history of medical complications will have a severe reaction to a tetanus shot?

It's a pretty solid guess supported by an extensive body of evidence, but they don't get it right every time - it's impossible to do so.

You're taking Shadzar's quote out of context. In that particular post, he was specifically talking about a doctor who didn't know amoxicilan was a derivative of pennicilan. Given the context, I'd say he's exactly right that doctors who fuck up to that extent end up in court.

What? He specifically said in response to my remark about vaccine administration that doctors should just know what's going to happen next.

I'm responding to that with "Doctors have a policy and they generally adhere to it. That policy is supported by a body of clinical literature" See previous comment by Crissa that the doctor is just adhering to policy.

I only quoted that bit to make it clear who I was talking to.

Here's his post. It was before Maj's post.

shadzar wrote:

cthulhu wrote:Doctors already do their best guess about if you're going to have an adverse reaction, and if they think you are going to, they don't give you the shot.

In this day and age they shouldn't be guessing. My grocer can guess what adverse reactions I may have to something bad on his limited knowledge of me, but he cannot prescribe such things that would have them.

My whole life I have been allergic to penicillin, but doctors and nurse always get into arguments over whether I can take amoxicillin. The nurse thankfully always wins and something ELSE is prescribed that ISN'T based on or a derivative of penicillin.

They don't know what I am actually allergic to about penicillin, but some would risk my life on a guess.

FUCK THAT!

You went to 7 years worth of college, you better fucking get right! Be your own fucking lab rat.

Doctors that guess end up in court. They should end up in jail for homicide.

Emphasis is mine.

Although, I think the doctor is arguing that people with penicillin reactions have lower reactions to amoxicillin, but in this day and age there's no reason to take that risk unless the patient specifically asks to. An adult-onset case like my spouse might, for instance, but someone like shad or I who has serious reactions would not.

-Crissa

Maj wrote:You had one of those, too, shadzar? When I went to the ER a few years ago, the doc asked me what I was allergic to, and then gave me penicillin anyway. When I asked him why he did it, he informed me that since I hadn't had an adverse reaction in a while, I must have grown out of it (or maybe I avoided it so I wouldn't have an adverse reaction?). I was sick for a week.

I found out that is the exact shit they tell everyone. You grew out of it.

No dipshit, I didn't get sick from it because I didn't take it...like people with OTHER allergies that avoid the thing they are allergic too maybe?

Doctors are like mechanics now-a-days anyway. They just want to get you in an out and charge you by the minute. They don't care about doing their jobs.

You can sue a mechanic for doing something to your car that caused you injury, but charging a doctor is a lot more difficult.

It is fucking stupid.

I want to see documented proof that people grow out of penicillin allergies!

I mean an RN goes to community college for 2 years right? And they know more/better than the 7 year accredited school degree toting doctors?

WTF?

Zherog wrote:You're taking Shadzar's quote out of context.

Seems to be the fun thing to do these days.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Mean Liar wrote:I couldn't really find stats on other diseases, though I did want to. There aren't many studies of immunity duration.

You remember that old quote by Lincoln about how it was better to close your mouth and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt?

Check again, Frank. The data I was looking for wasn't vaccination-derived immunity resistance duration but the comparison to natural immunity. Your contempt is noted but you fling it around so often it has lost all meaning and impact.

Ganbare Gincun wrote:I went ahead and did a search using the supplied database for the various Diptheria vaccines (the DTaP, DT, Td, and Tdap preparations) for the year 2008 and only came up with only 352 serious results. 77 of the reactions were life-threatening, and 20 of those resulted in death. As tragic as it is, I would rather lose 20 people a year to the vaccine then 20,000 a year to the disease itself.

I misread the VAERS database - I didn't check your numbers but mine were aggregates rather than yearlies. That's an inexcusable fuckup and I apologize.

It still remains that diphtheria killed no one in America in a decade, and just last year 20 people died.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

Cielingcat wrote:

Considering the mortality of diphtheria in the US (0% over the last decade)

Why the fuck do you think that is?

I think the idea is that, if we just don't vaccinate the people who would have allergic reactions (or alternatively, only vaccinate the people who will get infected), we can have our cake and eat it too. The first one is good, to the extent that we can determine if someone will have a bad reaction before they get the vacination--but it isn't an argument against wide scale vaccination. The second is predicated on precogniscent doctors.

Mean, if I'm just propping up a couple of straw men then please correct me.

I think you're giving me too much credit, to be honest. I don't see how such a system could actually work.

Outbreaks don't generally occur in the sort of one-to-one relationship - they occur in clusters, because that's how people travel and live. Immunization limits the prevalence of outbreaks and their ability to spread quickly, leading to effective quarantines. What they generally don't do, because immunity isn't guaranteed for any subject, is prevent actual incidences of disease transferring from vulnerable populations to vaccinated ones. If someone gets on a plane with an airborne illness, even if everyone on that plane has received a shot, someone is getting it - the shot didn't take, or their booster schedule overestimated that particular person's immunization half-life, or whatever. Now, instead of transferring from that person to eighty due to virulence and vulnerability it maybe hits one or two, since the others are immune.

When you only see three cases of diphtheria in the US in a decade, that's not a case for immunization kicking ass, it's a case of immunization preventing ten to thirty other cases springing up from those initial cases before the local news media and hospitals set up an effective alert and quarantine system. You're still dealing with only a few sparks, just no large fires. In the case of diphtheria, even with its mortality rate being 5-10%, those three cases and resulting infections would have resulted in less death and serious harm than the vaccines delivered in the US for diphtheria over that same time.

The obvious response to this is that if you pursued a more aggressive vaccination schedule you could prevent even those incidences, since transmission is relying on statistical outliers... but then you're increasing the number of adverse serious (and fatal) reactions in a population that would otherwise not experience them.

My only real concern with vaccines is that I don't see a point in pursuing an aggressive vaccination schedule against shit like chickenpox. Even if I relent on diphtheria - and I don't in the case of the US - that still leaves plenty of non-fatal diseases that receive multiple vaccinations.

I don't know where to find such online, shad, but allergies can be treated now a days with careful low-dose therapy, giving your immune system the tools it needs to react normally.

Of course, this works better in people with low reactions already, but it's based on the fact that the immune system is adaptive, and the more tools it has - the more things you've been exposed to in breadth - can reduce future adverse reactions.

And this treatment is expensive. It requires many visits, many exposures, and lots of careful tests.

Basically, because you reacted as a child, does not mean you are going to react that way the rest of your life. There's specific points when your body changes, and time periods that Frank was alluding to. Your body as a child is trying to learn the threats it will interact with, and as a child, reacts and learns faster than as an adult.

This gives us weird things like actual chemical changes like your ability to taste and smell the world changing as you grow older. So there are reasons to accept that maybe things have changed, and intentional ways to teach your body not to react adversely to some things.

But if you continued to have reactions (like I have, and shad has said) you probably don't want to try intentionally again!

-Crissa

shadzar wrote:I mean an RN goes to community college for 2 years right? And they know more/better than the 7 year accredited school degree toting doctors?

I dunno, longer list of things to remember? This would be an interesting thing to study.

Crissa wrote:I don't know where to find such online, shad, but allergies can be treated now a days with careful low-dose therapy, giving your immune system the tools it needs to react normally.

Of course, this works better in people with low reactions already, but it's based on the fact that the immune system is adaptive, and the more tools it has - the more things you've been exposed to in breadth - can reduce future adverse reactions.

And this treatment is expensive. It requires many visits, many exposures, and lots of careful tests.

Basically, because you reacted as a child, does not mean you are going to react that way the rest of your life. There's specific points when your body changes, and time periods that Frank was alluding to. Your body as a child is trying to learn the threats it will interact with, and as a child, reacts and learns faster than as an adult.

This gives us weird things like actual chemical changes like your ability to taste and smell the world changing as you grow older. So there are reasons to accept that maybe things have changed, and intentional ways to teach your body not to react adversely to some things.

But if you continued to have reactions (like I have, and shad has said) you probably don't want to try intentionally again!

-Crissa

shadzar wrote:I mean an RN goes to community college for 2 years right? And they know more/better than the 7 year accredited school degree toting doctors?

I dunno, longer list of things to remember? This would be an interesting thing to study.

Wouldn't work for high risk allergies. death by bee sting, etc.

The doctor should use the computer right there in the room when doing this. Don't try to remember everything the fuck about me. LOOK IT UP. Then use what you learned in school to analyze that data for medical purposes, and figure out what to do.

Nurses don't try to memorize things. They look EVERYTHING up on the computer. So it is choice to try to remember and act like you have bedside manners I guess?

Nurse gets along better than doctor because they talk more openly and politely while looking stuff up on a computer*. Doctors are too busy being dry because they are trying to memorize everything as well thinking about the last 5 patients they looked at.

*Nurse NOT at the counter that is. Like one in triage rather than the reception desk.

Mean Liar. Just shut up. You are too retarded to live.

Those three cases are not the only three people who had active diptheria.

Diptheria is present all over America all the time. If you aren't immunized, you would have gotten diptheria. So would I. So would everyone.

Diseases don't only exist in people with active cases. That's what:

"Circulation appears to continue in some settings even in populations with >80% childhood immunization rates. An asymptomatic carrier state exists even among immune individuals."

Fucking means. If you stopped giving vaccines to everyone in the US, everyone who didn't get the vaccine would get fuckin diptheria.

If you used magic to alter time so that no one currently alive had the vaccine, but the actual diptheria bacteria was only present in the places it currently is present, every person in the united states would have diptheria within a year. Every fucking one. Every single fucking person in the fucking united states.

You personally would be responsible for 15 million deaths, to say nothing of all those non fatal consequences.

Kaelik wrote:If you stopped giving vaccines to everyone in the US, everyone who didn't get the vaccine would get fuckin diptheria.

If you used magic to alter time so that no one currently alive had the vaccine, but the actual diptheria bacteria was only present in the places it currently is present, every person in the united states would have diptheria within a year. Every fucking one. Every single fucking person in the fucking united states.

You personally would be responsible for 15 million deaths, to say nothing of all those non fatal consequences.

The real kicker about this is that the people that DO have adverse reactions to the vaccine are pretty much boned any way you look at it. If their bodies are shutting down when exposed to a vaccine, they are pretty much dead meat if the real thing comes along. *shrug*

Crissa wrote:It turns out that childhood reactions to penicillin are not indicative of adult reactions to it, so if you indeed had been that many years of adolescent growth without a reaction, and it was not otherwise contraindicated, his decision was not out of bounds.

Yeah, it was. I told him not to give it to me.

Regardless, the lack of reaction was due to avoidance, not my allergy going away. I'm allergic enough to penicillin that a piece of cheese with the mold cut off will give me a horrible rash and the hives for three or four days. An injection of the stuff is just... awful.

But then, this was the same idiot who said he gave me saline when he gave me glucose. I really can't expect much from a guy like that, degree or no.

Ganbare Gincun wrote:The real kicker about this is that the people that DO have adverse reactions to the vaccine are pretty much boned any way you look at it. If their bodies are shutting down when exposed to a vaccine, they are pretty much dead meat if the real thing comes along. *shrug*

I don't even give a fuck about those fuckers.

I am willing to accept 50,000 deaths a year just so it's easier for me to get from point A to point B. I'm damn well just fine with 20 people dieing from a vaccine that saves 15-30 million lives and an even larger number of fucked up weeks and permanent nerve damage.

The thing that pisses me off is that this mother fucking epically retarded fucked up asshole thinks that if we stop vaccinating people, only 60 or so people a year will get the disease. Which is fucking retarded, because I fucking guarantee you that right fucking now this exact second there are more than 60 people who currently have Corynebacterium diphtheriae in their upper respiratory track this fucking second, and are only not having a bad week because they had a fucking vaccination.

Mean Liar, even if no one n the US died due to to Diphtheria in the last decade, it would still not mean that it was safe to stop vaccinating. We need to test the disease reservoir to determine when it's safe to stop vaccinating. But it's not even a true statistic. I looked for 21st century news stories about Americans dying of Diphtheria and it took me like 20 seconds to find one.

It's not just that the statistics you're spewing are meaningless, they are also false.

-Username17

Kaelik wrote:

Ganbare Gincun wrote:The real kicker about this is that the people that DO have adverse reactions to the vaccine are pretty much boned any way you look at it. If their bodies are shutting down when exposed to a vaccine, they are pretty much dead meat if the real thing comes along. *shrug*

I don't even give a fuck about those fuckers.

While it's true that such deaths are entirely small and acceptable numbers compared to the alternative, GG has an important point.

People who have over excited immune reactions to a limited exposure vaccine are pretty much boned either way. After all, if they are running a fatal 43 degree fever or some shit off of a vaccine, what do you think their body is going to do in response to the real infection when you have all the same proteins on hand in quantities several orders of magnitude larger?

Even if we could identify those people ahead of time (which we may not ever be able to, because the T cells responsible likely haven't been made at the point the injection is given), there's still basically nothing we can do for them except keep them in a plastic bubble. Not vaccinating them wouldn't save them as long as a reservoir of the disease exists.

-Username17

Ganbare Gincun wrote:The real kicker about this is that the people that DO have adverse reactions to the vaccine are pretty much boned any way you look at it. If their bodies are shutting down when exposed to a vaccine, they are pretty much dead meat if the real thing comes along. *shrug*

Not really, a significant number of people who have adverse reactions are often as much reacting to the way the vaccine was created, not to the watered down virus itself. Vaccines and Food Allergy. My father had an egg allergy. He can now eat eggs but most doctors tell him that if he got a vaccine cultured in egg (which almost all are these days) it is almost 100% certain that he would die as a result from the injection of the egg proteens.

see also I have an egg allergy. Can I receive a flu shot, MMR, or other common vaccines?

FrankTrollman wrote:Mean Liar, even if no one n the US died due to to Diphtheria in the last decade, it would still not mean that it was safe to stop vaccinating. We need to test the disease reservoir to determine when it's safe to stop vaccinating. But it's not even a true statistic. I looked for 21st century news stories about Americans dying of Diphtheria and it took me like 20 seconds to find one.

It's not just that the statistics you're spewing are meaningless, they are also false.

-Username17

Oh, please. It's from 2003 and the guy picked it up by traveling to an infected area. Not only that, but it's a clear outlier. This isn't an outbreak, it's a single 63-year-old man.

Kaelik wrote:Mean Liar. Just shut up. You are too retarded to live...

"Circulation appears to continue in some settings even in populations with >80% childhood immunization rates. An asymptomatic carrier state exists even among immune individuals."

... If you stopped giving vaccines to everyone in the US, everyone who didn't get the vaccine would get fuckin diptheria.

Here's some more quotes from your source:

"Transmission may occur as long as virulent bacilli are present in discharges and lesions."

"After a primary series of three properly spaced diphtheria toxoid doses in adults or four doses in infants, a protective level of antitoxin (defined as greater than 0.1 IU of antitoxin/mL) is reached in more than 95%. Diphtheria toxoid has been estimated to have a clinical efficacy of 97%."

So, not only are 3-5% of the vaccinated population not immune, you also have people who aren't vaccinated at all on top of that.

And somehow, there's not 3-5% of the population dying right now because they magically had their immunization taken away - because they never really had it.

So for 15 million dropping dead... right now, 3% of the US is 9 million vulnerable, and 5% mortality means equates to 450k dead, using minimum statistical probability. By your methodology, we should be seeing 450k+ dead THIS YEAR. And for years prior. And in the future as well.

But we don't because your model sucks and has no basis in reality.

Now, if those carriers were carrying around oozing sores full of diphtheria and coughing everywhere, well, shit. They wouldn't be asymptomatic carriers then, would they?

FrankTrollman wrote:Even if we could identify those people ahead of time (which we may not ever be able to, because the T cells responsible likely haven't been made at the point the injection is given), there's still basically nothing we can do for them except keep them in a plastic bubble. Not vaccinating them wouldn't save them as long as a reservoir of the disease exists.

As tzor noted, adverse reactions can occur from multiple sources, not just the killed culture:

http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/table.htm

In fatal disease vaccinations, you can die from the disease itself. In cases where exposure was likely then they were going out anyway, but where exposure was not likely, then this is an avoidable outcome.

In non-fatal diseases, you have autoimmune disorders: anaphylaxis, encephalopathy, and rheumatoid arthritis being the most common.

mean_liar wrote:So, not only are 3-5% of the vaccinated population not immune, you also have people who aren't vaccinated at all on top of that.

And somehow, there's not 3-5% of the population dying right now because they magically had their immunization taken away - because they never really had it.

So for 15 million dropping dead... right now, 3% of the US is 9 million vulnerable, and 5% mortality means equates to 450k dead, using minimum statistical probability. By your methodology, we should be seeing 450k+ dead THIS YEAR. And for years prior. And in the future as well.

But we don't because your model sucks and has no basis in reality.

No dumbfuck. The fact that 3% of people in the US manage to avoid coming into contact with a disease that 97% are immune to doesn't mean that when 0% are immune, no one will get sick.

If there are only 100 people who are currently asymptomatic carriers. That's still a 100 people who without the vaccine would be symptomatic carriers. And symptomatic carriers do this thing called, give the disease to everyone else, who in turn, give the disease to everyone else.

See how this works? Asymptomatic carriers rarely spread the disease, and when they do, it usually doesn't become carried by the people it gets into, and when it does, they remain asymptomatic.

All of that is true only because of the vaccine. If no one had the vaccine, then the asymptomatic carrier would be symptomatic, would have fucking sores that gave it to everyone around them, who would in turn give it to everyone they know, ect.

Resulting in 300 million people getting Diptheria. Because the disease fucking spreads.

Seriously, you can't keep pointing to the positive effects of total vaccination, and then arbitrarily declaring that they will continue to exist when you stop vaccinating people.

That is the definition of retarded.

A notable percentage of people won't contract Diphtheria cases even if unvaccinated and exposed. Nonspecific immunity is pretty hard core.

Going by the experience of the former Soviet Republics that stopped vaccinating (like the Ukraine) vs. Eastern Bloc countries that did not (like Czech Republic), I would estimate that if we stopped vaccinating tomorrow in the US that we'd have 200,000 to 500,000 cases in the next decade and probably about 30,000 dead. From diphtheria. If we removed all the vaccines, the total death toll would of course be much higher.

If we kept that up, diphtheria cases would continue to rise until roughly one to five in a thousand people died from diphtheria. Like in the good old days.

-Username17

Kaelik wrote:If there are only 100 people who are currently asymptomatic carriers. That's still a 100 people who without the vaccine would be symptomatic carriers. And symptomatic carriers do this thing called, give the disease to everyone else, who in turn, give the disease to everyone else.

...Seriously, you can't keep pointing to the positive effects of total vaccination, and then arbitrarily declaring that they will continue to exist when you stop vaccinating people.

In reality-land, 100% of the population doesn't explode with disease the moment you decide to stop immunizing them. Not only that, but you seem to think that the moment these asymptomatic carriers exploded with pus, they wouldn't be quarantined and treated. No, they would blithely wander around and infect and no one would ever notice or react, rather they would all go to movie theaters and cough on all the popcorn.

There are only asymptomatic carriers because of immunity, and they're generally population-specific (mostly Native Americans, for whatever reason). The disease is treatable and diagnosable. What makes you think that cases wouldn't be treated? Why would these suddenly pus-ridden individuals do nothing but spread disease? The only real potential source of outbreak is an alcoholic Slav of a poor social status and again - those sort of outbreaks are noticeable and treatable.

You've got a point somewhere behind your cloud of bloviating strawmen but I can't see it. Keep calling me a fucker and a retard, it seems to help.

This might help:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseasei ... eria_t.htm

Pre-vaccination, there were 100-200 cases per 100,000 population. Cram that fact up my ass and call me Sally. Who knows, you might eventually convince me. I happen to change my mind on shit and I'm close here.

Currently in the US you've got 100 time bombs wandering around that won't explode until ten years after general immunization stops. Considering the characteristics of the current outbreaks, it'll be a contained event in a poor community, and the last shakeout. There are no more cases on US soil, no more time bombs. The rest has to be imported, and those outbreaks are easily-containable.

So what the fuck gives?

Mean Liar wrote:So what the fuck gives?

What the fuck gives is that exactly that experiment was done by largely discontinuing immunization in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. Thousands died in the following decade.

So you want to pull exactly the same stunt in a country with six times the population, why? Why do you think that we won't lose six times as many people doing exactly the same thing?

What is the magic that you expect will happen in the United States that makes it different from Ukraine? Keep in mind that 20 years after starting on this path, this year the Ukraine government is caving to their giant pile of fatalities and reinstating universal vaccination for DPT.

-Username17

Dammit, mean liar, you're missing a lot of fundamental stuff in your posts. Anyways, here's two things which should clear up a lot of it:

1. Herd immunity. It's why you don't see major outbreaks even though we don't have a 100% vaccination rate or 100% efficacy for vaccines.

2. Pretty much any possible adverse reaction from a vaccine (with the exception of things like allergies) would also occur if you got the virus "naturally."

So yes, immunocompromised people are screwed either way unless they can rely on the aformentioned herd immunity. So the plan you have of stopping vaccinations to save them? That'll kill them.

Once again, we have a case of promoters of obsolete or pseudoscience whining that they're being dismissed out-of-hand by 'Big Science' yet showing astounding ignorance of the subject after they're pressed on it.

Is anyone really surprised? This is kind of getting old.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Once again, we have a case of promoters of obsolete or pseudoscience whining that they're being dismissed out-of-hand by 'Big Science' yet showing astounding ignorance of the subject after they're pressed on it.

Is anyone really surprised? This is kind of getting old.

Yup, it has been around as long as religion.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Once again, we have a case of promoters of obsolete or pseudoscience whining that they're being dismissed out-of-hand by 'Big Science' yet showing astounding ignorance of the subject after they're pressed on it.

Is anyone really surprised? This is kind of getting old.

1. There is a profound public reason to continue diphtheria immunizations in the still-squalid areas of the world. I'll check the historical stats from Ukraine and the NIS tomorrow, but all the data on the outbreaks indicate that they occur in immunologically depressed people in tight living conditions without robust public health mitigation, and there's little reason to assume that the same conditions would be a factor in the US should the pendulum swing. Not only that, but its a single disease - vaccination schedules include multiple other injections for non-fatal diseases containing no where near the same level of risk.

Ultimately its a disease which has only made a meaningful resurgence among a population with demographics and public health system wholly unlike the United States', which is treatable, has a known and available antitoxin, and well-understood identifying test.

2. There still is a decent reason for not choosing immunization due to the fact that individuals without immunization can enjoy the protection of the larger immunized public. There's a critical mass at which this protection degrades but on an individual level it doesn't matter.

3. There is an entirely absent quantification of the risks associated with vaccination insofar as its relationship to longterm autoimmune diseases and/or other unexplained medical conditions whose incidence rates have been otherwise inexplicably rising. In combination with #2 there's a strong case for rare, individual dissension from conventional vaccination regimes. That's not railing against Big Science or pseudoscience, it's asking for Big Science to get off its ass to provide basic answers on a ubiquitous medical regime.

4. Epidemiological risks of various diseases are invariably tied to poor hygiene, poor public health systems, unsanitary living conditions and population densities which are not common in the first world. Relying on data tied to those conditions to draw conclusions about lack of vaccination is an unjustified extrapolation.

mean_liar wrote:There is a profound public reason to continue diphtheria immunizations in the still-squalid areas of the world. I'll check the historical stats from Ukraine and the NIS tomorrow, but all the data on the outbreaks indicate that they occur in immunologically depressed people in tight living conditions without robust public health mitigation, and there's little reason to assume that the same conditions would be a factor in the US should the pendulum swing...

...aside from the fact that circulation appears to continue in some settings even in populations with >80% childhood immunization rates because an asymptomatic carrier state exists even among immune individuals. And when they stopped doing this in the former Soviet Union (not exactly the Third World, folks), it spread like wildfire. In 1991, there were 2,000 cases of diphtheria in the U.S.S.R. By 1998, there were as many as 200,000 cases in the Commonwealth of Independent States, with 5,000 deaths. This was so great an increase that diphtheria was cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as "most resurgent disease".

mean_liar wrote:3. There is an entirely absent quantification of the risks associated with vaccination insofar as its relationship to longterm autoimmune diseases and/or other unexplained medical conditions whose incidence rates have been otherwise inexplicably rising.

You keep saying this. What's your proof? Where's your evidence?

mean_liar wrote:In combination with #2 there's a strong case for rare, individual dissension from conventional vaccination regimes. That's not railing against Big Science or pseudoscience, it's asking for Big Science to get off its ass to provide basic answers on a ubiquitous medical regime.

No offense, but I'm going to put my faith in Big Science instead of what a bunch of fucking conspiracy theory kooks from the internet have to say.