Herd Immunity - let the weak and sick die

In a utilitarian sense, you are absolutely correct. Execution is the issue. It's hard to let dear old grandma die when she gets pneumonia.

In nature populations tend to not live in crowded festering rat-holes like we essentially do.

With many diseases the actual strength of the immune system is somewhat irrelevant.

What if it is your elderly grandparents or parents one day (or you eventually)? What if we're talking about your newborn infant prior to receiving their full immunity? Don't be a selfish dick. Vaccines have eradicated some pretty awful diseases. To be a part of a growing movement because of a widely discredited paper linking vaccines to autism is foolish.

Ted Underhill wrote:

What if it is your elderly grandparents or parents one day (or you eventually)? What if we're talking about your newborn infant prior to receiving their full immunity? Don't be a selfish dick. Vaccines have eradicated some pretty awful diseases. To be a part of a growing movement because of a widely discredited paper linking vaccines to autism is foolish.

We will have to agree to disagree.

anti-vaxxer wrote:

Ted Underhill wrote:

What if it is your elderly grandparents or parents one day (or you eventually)? What if we're talking about your newborn infant prior to receiving their full immunity? Don't be a selfish dick. Vaccines have eradicated some pretty awful diseases. To be a part of a growing movement because of a widely discredited paper linking vaccines to autism is foolish.

We will have to agree to disagree.

You are entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is allowing nearly eradicated diseases to gain a foothold again and affect those around you. The decision not to vaccinate your kids isn't about your kids at all. If it was, I would agree with your misguided opinion. Is what is included in vaccines worse than what companies are allowed to pump into our atmosphere or what food companies are allowed to include in your food? I doubt it.

What is foolish is people just thinking that the complaints of anti vaxers are only about autism.

Ted Underhill wrote:

What if it is your elderly grandparents or parents one day (or you eventually)? What if we're talking about your newborn infant prior to receiving their full immunity? Don't be a selfish dick. Vaccines have eradicated some pretty awful diseases. To be a part of a growing movement because of a widely discredited paper linking vaccines to autism is foolish.

Ted - the problems relating to modern medicine are well documented. Just watch any commercial for a prescription medicine. The US Government even has a website dedicated to vaccine injury compensation:

http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html

Medicine is improving but disease rates are unusually high. Diseases like Cancer, Alzheimers, and Autism are prevelant. It's clear vaccines are somewhat ineffective (otherwise, all you vaccinated parents wouldn't be so upset). It's also clear vaccines can cause harm.

Can both sides be a bit more open minded?

The studies conducted by the Pharma companies are incomplete. The fox is playing in the hen house.

Right???? wrote:

In nature, animals with weak immune systems die off. When the weak die, the collective and future generations benefit.

Are you insinuating that people aren't doing as well as animals?

Because I think that people are better off than squirrels and such.

But honestly I haven't checked their internet message boards.

get used to it.. wrote:

What is foolish is people just thinking that the complaints of anti vaxers are only about autism.

Ted Underhill wrote:

What if it is your elderly grandparents or parents one day (or you eventually)? What if we're talking about your newborn infant prior to receiving their full immunity? Don't be a selfish dick. Vaccines have eradicated some pretty awful diseases. To be a part of a growing movement because of a widely discredited paper linking vaccines to autism is foolish.

But the fact that they do complain about autism undermines any other complaint they have. You can't reason with someone who clings to debunked science and refuses to admit they were wrong.

People need people to survive. If you allow a large segment of the population to die off to a preventable disease, the surviving population will struggle to be able to meet their own needs. Crops may go unharvested, people with critical skills cannot be easily replaced, insufficient numbers of law enforcement, doctors and other critical jobs could lead to severe consequences for the surviving population. Large epidemics are always accompanied by economic disasters.

Then, there are a very, very long list of diseases that the human immune system just cannot beat. Small pox, TB, and polio will get you if you are exposed. The only way people have been able to beat these disease is by immunization and quarantine.

Also, most of the vaccines are critical for children, who risk death and permanent disability when contracting diseases like mumps, measles, rubella, and polio. If we let kids die off in favor of trying to breed the super race, people will waste resources trying to raise children who end up dying of preventable diseases. We would essentially be going back to the Victorian era where families would have 5-6 children, but only 3-4 would make it to adulthood. That creates a significant economic burden that far outweighs any chance of creating some super immune population.

Precious Roy wrote:

Also, most of the vaccines are critical for children, who risk death and permanent disability when contracting diseases like mumps, measles, rubella, and polio. If we let kids die off in favor of trying to breed the super race, people will waste resources trying to raise children who end up dying of preventable diseases. We would essentially be going back to the Victorian era where families would have 5-6 children, but only 3-4 would make it to adulthood. That creates a significant economic burden that far outweighs any chance of creating some super immune population.

Come on now, not requiring vaccination against the measles will not result in the deaths of thousands of children per year. Do a bit of research before resorting to unsubstantiated scare tactics on message boards. All vaccines are not critical and the government should not be forcing the mandatory vaccination for all illnesses on the population.

Measles already causes thousands of deaths each year so of course not vaccinating will increase that.

"It resulted in about 96,000 deaths in 2013 down from 545,000 deaths in 1990".

Precious Roy wrote:

People need people to survive. If you allow a large segment of the population to die off to a preventable disease, the surviving population will struggle ...

While I agree with your conclusions, your logic is flawed. With >7B people on earth, a reduction in population size would reduce competition for limited resources. People would struggle less, not more, if the global population was halved. How do we know? Because we've been there.

Of course, people can change their own carrying capacity, so density-dependent population growth is very different in humans and let's say squirrels. The data suggest that until about 1970 (when there were about half as many people on earth as there are now), technology improved faster than population size grew, so that the population was further and further below the earth's carry capacity for humans, despite growing exponentially.

Beginning about 1970 with a population around 3.7B, the data suggest that the earth's human population began growing FASTER than the rate of increase in carrying capacity. There are limits on technological solutions to supporting an infinite number of humans on a single planet.

We see the ramifications all around us, both in environmental terms, and in the switch from easy, steady growth of developed economies to former powerhouse economies struggling to maintain the prosperity that their parents obtained with relative ease.

Oh, and in anti-vaccination paranoia too.

Jkj wrote:

In a utilitarian sense, you are absolutely correct. Execution is the issue. It's hard to let dear old grandma die when she gets pneumonia.

Pretty sure that would depend on what you choose as your utility function.

You feel it is debunked science but others don't because they are not convinced that it has been studied enough by agencies and people without a dog in the fight, and many others feel this way too. It is more of a distrust in the people doing and publishing and pushing the research than anything else. It is an issue where people are likely to have an opinion and are extremely unlikely to change their mind. For example, I think politicians are crooks. I think government agencies are easily influenced by big money and industry, so because I dislike some industries, I am likely to then not trust related government agencies and politicians. Nothing is going to change that.

I am not vehemently for or against vaccination but I will remain vigilant in my opinion that it is an issue of human rights and freedom to choose what we do with our own health, regardless of what people feel is good for the "herd".

"While I agree with your conclusions, your logic is flawed. With >7B people on earth, a reduction in population size would reduce competition for limited resources."

Great point.

Thin the herd and we reduce pollution, disease, and restore the planet's balance.

Or we nurture the ill, deflate our immune systems, and promote weak genetics.

Right???? wrote:

In nature, animals with weak immune systems die off. When the weak die, the collective and future generations benefit.

Future generations benefit only in the sense that they are more likely to have resistance against a particular disease. Moreover, those future generations will have a "benefit" against a particular threat which is rendered irrelevant because of our medical technologies. That's a very narrow and somewhat silly definition of collective benefit.

Thinning the heard in first world countries will be necessary. We are the ones with weaker immune systems and the ones that are bringing down society. We also need more interracial breeding.

get used to it.. wrote:

I am not vehemently for or against vaccination but I will remain vigilant in my opinion that it is an issue of human rights and freedom to choose what we do with our own health, regardless of what people feel is good for the "herd".

The funny thing is that since the measles outbreak, previously un-vaccinated people are streaming in to get vaccinated or to get their children vaccinated. So, jumping on the anti-vaccine bandwagon is all fun and games until the diseases start coming back. So, they start out by not giving a shit about the "herd," but when the reality sets in that it might affect them or their family directly, it's a different game, and hop off the bandwagon. Righteous people, you are.

This is in response to an outbreak of one of the less lethal, but albeit more contagious, of the diseases we are vaccinated against. What happens when a few cases of more serious diseases start to pop up? The tin-foil hats are sure to come off.