Anti-vaxxers

Varta

megaten wrote: »

What are you referring to?

There can be all kinds of negative reactions to vaccinations. Yes, they are a tiny percentage, but I can tell you from first hand experience that they are dismissed out of hand. Most if not all are known reactions yet it's just about impossible to have them acknowledged. In my own case, had a doctor said to us, "I'm very sorry but your child has had a rare reaction to the vaccine, but don't worry it's not life threatening and he will get over it.", I would have understood and moved on. But, unfortunately, that's not the way they do things.

megaten

Varta wrote: »

There can be all kinds of negative reactions to vaccinations. Yes, they are a tiny percentage, but I can tell you from first hand experience that they are dismissed out of hand. Most if not all are known reactions yet it's just about impossible to have them acknowledged. In my own case, had a doctor said to us, "I'm very sorry but your child has had a rare reaction to the vaccine, but don't worry it's not life threatening and he will get over it.", I would have understood and moved on. But, unfortunately, that's not the way they do things.

I mean thats why as many people getting vaccines is important. Its not possible for everyone to get vaccinated so its important for others to do so that the vunerable are protected through herd immunity.

tony1980

Varta wrote: »

There can be all kinds of negative reactions to vaccinations. Yes, they are a tiny percentage, but I can tell you from first hand experience that they are dismissed out of hand. Most if not all are known reactions yet it's just about impossible to have them acknowledged. In my own case, had a doctor said to us, "I'm very sorry but your child has had a rare reaction to the vaccine, but don't worry it's not life threatening and he will get over it.", I would have understood and moved on. But, unfortunately, that's not the way they do things.

We had something with my son too. He got Purpura after the MMR Vaccine.

Varta

megaten wrote: »

I mean thats why as many people getting vaccines is important. Its not possible for everyone to get vaccinated so its important for others to do so that the vunerable are protected through herd immunity.

I completely agree with you. We are all extremely lucky to live in a part of the world where vaccinations are available. The thing is, medics are, at best, reluctant to admit to negative reactions. And even after my son's bad reaction was confirmed by an immunologist/MD, no one advised us to be careful regarding future vaccinations.

ToBeFrank123

Anti-Vaxxers don't have to be right or have empirical evidence to support them.

To succeed, all they need to do is sow enough doubt and confusion in enough people.

With doubt and confusion comes panic.

ToBeFrank123

tony1980 wrote: »

Is there a 100% proof they have no contribution towards causing or triggering Autism? The last time I checked, they have no idea so I prefer to question things and I shall pass nobody any apology for that!

See, this is the problem with anti-vaxxers. Most have no idea if a vaccination causes a problem or not, yet it doesn't stop them shouting from the rooftops that vaccinations causes problems.

Medical decisions should be left to medical professionals. Parents are simply not qualified to decide if a vaccine is safe or not.

Varta

ToBeFrank123 wrote: »

See, this is the problem with anti-vaxxers. Most have no idea if a vaccination causes a problem or not, yet it doesn't stop them shouting from the rooftops that vaccinations causes problems.

Medical decisions should be left to medical professionals. Parents are simply not qualified to decide if a vaccine is safe or not.

Neither are medics. It is research scientists who make those decisions. And that's as it should be.

ToBeFrank123

Like them or not, vaccines are a feature of modern society. Vaccines have been by and large tested and proved effective. Even the slightest research would show the benefits of them. The debate has long been settled in their favour.

The odd thing is that most anti-vaxxers benefitted from vaccinations when they themselves were children. They either wouldn't be here today or else have possibly suffered a serious illness if they weren't. Their parents had the foresight and cop-on to get them vaccinated.
So they should be thankful for the existence of vaccines and indeed the so called evil pharmaceutical companies who created them!

Vaccines are here to stay thankfully and they are just one of the reasons why people are living longer than ever.

fash

tony1980 wrote: »

Is there a 100% proof they have no contribution towards causing or triggering Autism? The last time I checked, they have no idea so I prefer to question things and I shall pass nobody any apology for that!

I hear that there is not 100% - I mean 100% cast iron guaranteed - that vaccines - or drinking water or eating food or breathing - won't cause you to travel back in time to when the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Nobody is willing to give those guarantees.

I was thinking of starting an organisation to convince people to stop all of these and I think you would be a great vice president - would you be willing to take on that role?

ToBeFrank123

Varta wrote: »

Neither are medics. It is research scientists who make those decisions. And that's as it should be.

Research scientists and medical professionals work closely together. They are the best in the field with years of training. As opposed to the average anti vaxxer who seems to get their knowledge from the modern equivalent of the back of a cornflaxes box.

ToBeFrank123

fash wrote: »

I hear that there is not 100% - I mean 100% cast iron guaranteed - that vaccines - or drinking water or eating food or breathing - won't cause you to travel back in time to when the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Nobody is willing to give those guarantees.

I was thinking of starting an organisation to convince people to stop all of these and I think you would be a great vice president - would you be willing to take on that role?

Anti Vaxxers always look to the one in a million reaction from a vaccine to declare that particular vaccine unsafe, thus raising fears, doubts and panic in people. Its a well worn but dangerous tactic.

I look forward to the day when anti-vaxxers can be sued for spreading false information if many people are not vaccinated who should have been.

tony1980

fash wrote: »

I hear that there is not 100% - I mean 100% cast iron guaranteed - that vaccines - or drinking water or eating food or breathing - won't cause you to travel back in time to when the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Nobody is willing to give those guarantees.

I was thinking of starting an organisation to convince people to stop all of these and I think you would be a great vice president - would you be willing to take on that role?

More examples of a highly mature adult right here. It’s a pity this thread is in After Hours!

Dohnjoe

Varta wrote: »

Questioning things is the very basis of science.

Indeed, but as with anything - asking reasonable questions

Not questioning every tiny detail to a ridiculous degree in order to muddy debate and sow doubt. We all know that's a key tactic of denialists and cranks

fash

tony1980 wrote: »

More examples of a highly mature adult right here. It’s a pity this thread is in After Hours!

I now see you are one of them and aren't able to give a 100% cast iron guarantee that breathing, drinking, eating out taking vaccines won't cause time travel back to the time of the dinosaurs - you are just part of the conspiracy to deny this - the offer of vice President has now been revoked - but you can still sign up as a member if you are willing to pay the annual fee.

Amantine

Igotadose wrote: »

There's no link between vaccines and autism discovered to date. How much data do you need? The danish government study, with 5 million person-hours of followup over 6000 subjects, found none.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30831578

The authors claim that their work, "strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination."

This is an extremely broad claim that unfortunately is not supported by the evidence they present. There are eight fundamental flaws in the research study that lead to questions about the accuracy of the conclusions.

1. Children were notably missing from the study sample:

First and foremost is the under ascertainment of autism cases within their data sample. The study authors used Denmark population registries of children born in Denmark of Danish-born mothers which should reflect the current reported autism incidence in Denmark at 1.65% (Schendel et al. 2018, JAMA). However, the autism incidence within the sample of the Hviid et al. paper is 0.98%, meaning that approximately 4,400 autistic children are missing from this study. The authors do not discuss the discrepancy in the number of cases.

2. Many of the children in the sample were too young for an autism diagnosis:

The most probable reason for the discrepancy in cases is that the sample in the Hviid et al. paper is too young to completely ascertain autism diagnoses. The average age of sample is 8.64 years with a standard deviation of 3.48 years. Age of autism diagnosis on average is reported as 7.22 years with a standard deviation of 2.86 years. Assuming that the age of diagnosis follows a standard bell curve, this would mean that 31.5% of the sample was too young to get an autism diagnosis. This could account for as many as 3,400 additional cases not included in the analysis, which would bias the outcomes to favor not finding a relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.

3. Failure to eliminate those with autism related to genetic conditions from the sample:

In addition, individuals who were diagnosed with genetic comorbidities (known to lead to autism) after age 1 were "censored," meaning that they were followed until the time of diagnosis, but not removed from the study. Thus, they were counted among the sample with many of them most likely autistic due to a genetic condition. These should have appropriately been eliminated from the sample.

4. Use of two (2) different MMR vaccines:

Also, two different MMR vaccines were used in this study. The GlaxoSmithKline Prolix® formulation was used from 2000 to 2007 and Merck's MMR®II formulation was used from 2008 to 2013. Prolix® contains the Schwarz measles strain and MMR®II contains the Ender's Edmonston measles strain. Thus, children using the Merck formulation were much too young to receive an autism diagnosis as the oldest they would be at the time of study is 6 years of age or younger. This is important for comparison to the experience in other countries, especially the U.S. where the Merck formulation was used exclusively for the entire study period.

5. Failure to control for the "dosage effect":

In addition, the age at which Danish children in the sample received their second dose of MMR vaccine was dropped from 12 years to 4 years in 2008. This means that children born after 2004 would get two MMR vaccines prior to the average age of an autism diagnosis, whereas children born prior to 2004 would have received only one MMR vaccine. If indeed there is a "dosage effect" of the MMR (i.e., where both doses were causally related to autism), this could not be elucidated in the sample and again, this would bias the results erroneously to not find a relationship.

6. Statistical method failed to capture those children with a delayed diagnosis of autism:

The authors also used a non-transparent statistical method where "person-years" were considered following the MMR vaccine to an autism diagnosis where children who received a diagnosis soon after receiving their first MMR vaccine would be weighted more heavily than children with a delay in diagnosis. This makes no sense given that the age of autism diagnoses varies widely among populations based on access to services and severity of the autism case, among other factors. This type of method is "borrowed" from infectious disease epidemiology where an exposure directly leads to a disease state rather quickly, for example, chicken pox. However, the method has no place in evaluating chronic sequelae to vaccination which may take a period of years to receive an accurate diagnosis.

7. Vaccinated male siblings of children with autism show more autism diagnoses:

It is interesting to note the increased incidence of autism in boys with autistic siblings in the vaccinated group shown in Figure 2 of the article's supplement. The increase towards the end of the "survival curve" shows that more boys vaccinated with MMR (with autistic siblings) are diagnosed with autism than unvaccinated boys. The difference is not statistically significant but this may be an artifact of the very small subset of boys considered in this analysis.

The study authors also cite the CDC's Destefano et al. 2004 study which actually shows a statistically significant relationship between MMR timing and autism incidence. This is discussed further in a reanalysis of CDC's data in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Hooker, 2018).

8. Conflict of interest of the study authors

It should be noted that three of the study authors are currently employed at the Statens Serum Institut which is a for-profit vaccine manufacturer in Denmark. In addition, this work was funded by a grant from the Novo Nordisk foundation. Novo Nordisk is a Danish multinational pharmaceutical manufacturer. These are two serious conflicts of interest.

The lead author, Anders Hviid was the second author on the New England Journal of Medicine MMR autism paper from 2002 (Madsen et al. 2002). This research was completed despite the fact that the study authors had never received proper ethics approval to complete the study. A detailed analysis of this is featured by Children's Health Defense.

With these issues, this paper cannot be relied upon as evidence that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism.

ancapailldorcha

Another text dump. We're back to this crap again.

ToBeFrank123

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Another text dump. We're back to this crap again.

If it was up to me, I'd ban threads like this. But alas its not up to me.

I'd also force Facebook to shut down anti vaxxer groups.

The actions of some of these people are dangerous at best, and criminal at worst. They are undermining public health and safety over largely irrational fear mongering.

Varta

The HSE launched a campaign to fight back against the disinformation on social media in relation to the HPV vaccine, which led to an increase in the uptake rate.

The quote is from The Journal. It backs up what I've been saying, that they way to tackle anti-vax misinformation is through good PR and not aggressive tactics.

Amantine

Varta wrote: »

TBF there has been a great deal of independent research on this issue and no evidence whatsoever has been found to link vaccines with autism. Perhaps what's required is more research into autism.

Actually Varta, there are plenty of studies linking certain vaccines to autism or at least stating that the link is no disproven. Of course if I link any on here I will be accused of "Dumping" Really this thread need to be reported the help desk as there are a number of people on here including moderators who consistently attack anyone who doesn't agree with them in the most immature fashion and don't allow for civil conversation.

batgoat

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Another text dump. We're back to this crap again.

The part that pisses me off about posts like that is that initially you'd think that the poster wrote it themselves. But nope, they're just intentionally not linking to a site called "The Vaccine Reaction"...

Amantine

batgoat wrote: »

The part that pisses me off about posts like that is that initially you'd think that the poster wrote it themselves. But nope, they're just intentionally not linking to a site called "The Vaccine Reaction"...

I am happy to link, but then I'm accused of dumping.

batgoat

Amantine wrote: »

I am happy to link, but then I'm accused of dumping.

If you lack credible sources then you're unlikely to be taken very seriously... Vaccines causing autism is long debunked, this is the reality. You have absolutely no proof of vaccines causing autism and going off on rants claiming they do is pretty nasty tbh. Question, would you prefer for a child to have autism or encephalitis?

Varta

Amantine wrote: »

Actually Varta, there are plenty of studies linking certain vaccines to autism or at least stating that the link is no disproven. Of course if I link any on here I will be accused of "Dumping" Really this thread need to be reported the help desk as there are a number of people on here including moderators who consistently attack anyone who doesn't agree with them in the most immature fashion and don't allow for civil conversation.

That's like stating that god has to exist because no one has proven that he doesn't. There is no scientific evidence to link Autism with vaccines despite extensive research into the claim.

batgoat

In positive news, mandatory vaccines for attending school are being run through the attorney general to see if it's constitutional.

https://twitter.com/emmajhade/status/1121733852786044928?s=19

eviltwin

batgoat wrote: »

In positive news, mandatory vaccines for attending school are being run through the attorney general to see if it's constitutional.

https://twitter.com/emmajhade/status/1121733852786044928?s=19

This is great, should have happened years ago but at least they are working on it now. Hopefully it will happen.

Varta

batgoat wrote: »

In positive news, mandatory vaccines for attending school are being run through the attorney general to see if it's constitutional.

https://twitter.com/emmajhade/status/1121733852786044928?s=19

An angry mob with pitchforks. It won't fly. As I posted above, good PR is the way to go. It has already been used successfully. Harris is a fool who overreacts to everything. The current issue with under vaccination is an issue that a good minister for health would deal with quietly and efficiently through good PR.

CosmicFool

Varta wrote: »

An angry mob with pitchforks. It won't fly. As I posted above, good PR is the way to go. It has already been used successfully. Harris is a fool who overreacts to everything. The current issue with under vaccination is an issue that a good minister for health would deal with quietly and efficiently through good PR.

I agree that good PR would be the only option but the Governments PR especially the minister for health has been utterly woeful the past 20 years and would probably take another decade before we would see the outcome of it which we all know is too far down to road for politicians.

If

ancapailldorcha

Amantine wrote: »

Actually Varta, there are plenty of studies linking certain vaccines to autism or at least stating that the link is no disproven. Of course if I link any on here I will be accused of "Dumping" Really this thread need to be reported the help desk as there are a number of people on here including moderators who consistently attack anyone who doesn't agree with them in the most immature fashion and don't allow for civil conversation.

People are disagreeing with you on a message board. If you think this is an attack then I think you need to mature a bit.

Dohnjoe

Amantine wrote: »

Actually Varta, there are plenty of studies linking certain vaccines to autism or at least stating that the link is no disproven. Of course if I link any on here I will be accused of "Dumping" Really this thread need to be reported the help desk as there are a number of people on here including moderators who consistently attack anyone who doesn't agree with them in the most immature fashion and don't allow for civil conversation.

Here is the source of your info (which you didn't include)

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/scientists-rebuttal-danish-cohort-study

It's an anti-vaxx site which supports pseudo-science
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/GreenMedInfo

GMI presents many natural products as equal to or superior to all "modern" medicines/chemicals.[19] GMI also promotes numerous conspiracy theories about Big Pharma and GMO-producing companies, such as Monsanto.[20]

Most people who have been in this debate awhile can spot this stuff instantly, it gets paste-dumped all the time. Will give the benefit of the doubt, but be skeptical of all info you read on the internet.

astrofool

I see the latest tactic is a "they hide or don't tell me information about vaccines". All the information is readily available, all side-effects and risks are called out, I've never met a doctor who won't go through them as necessary (having got many vaccines due to travelling to different parts of the world), I mean, do people want it played on TV 24/7 in loud voices and big flashing writing before they're happy? If a doctor won't tell you, find another doctor, if you're going down the realm of asking nonsensical questions to try and reaffirm wrongly held beliefs, then the doctors (of above average intelligence) will see through this and likely give short shrift.