Discussions

Whatalady said "Like apples and oranges   Choose what you want!   You want to vaccinate as much as others   May not want to!   Protect yourself if you choose.   But mandatory....? Not at all a loaded gun! "

Treat the drinking water some days, do what you want?...  
 
Pretty terrifying misconception of how people get sick, and what the consequences are.  
 
A candidate for "plague island"?

I think that the only difference between the two is maybe the speed at which the results are reached, hard to argue that consumption of sugar is not bad for you, juvenile diabetes is on the rise and it won't kill you as fast as maybe a virus or bacteria will but it can cause medical problems and it also is related to increasing heart disease and obesity, all which may not take you as an infant or child, but in my mind, dead or sick is dead or sick regardless of age.  
 
In this discussion we have basically made the point that vaccines work, we have also conceded that there are reactions, and Garry Tait even went into an explanation of why we develop a fever, these are things that some people question, but how often do people come out and say the risks that happen can be managed.  
Enfrye mentioned about anphalitc reactions, which I would consider the worst reaction, but it is manageable, and these are the things that need to be discussed in open debate. I believe that part of the increase in people not vaccinating there children is the complete lack of people talking about it, and when I'm talking of people, I'm not talking of people from the drug companies, but ordinary people with no ties to anything except maybe their family.  
There are things like meningitis, where we here of the odd death, but nobody says that the meningococcal bacteria is around us at all times but does not always lead to meningitis, but the potential of it is always there. These we things that many people do not know, and instead of all of us talking about it we leave it to others.  
 
If a person were to ask me about vaccination I have personal stories, now some of the may involve cattle but some of the bugs are the same. I'll give an example. In cattle we have a disease that is called ITEME, not really a disease but an acronym that basically is meningitis in cattle, the M is for meningococcal. When the disease affects cattle they start with a fever and maybe a slight limp, but once the disease makes it's way to the brain treatment is usually a waste of time because you likely can kill the bacteria but you are left with an animal is a vegetive state, so with out vaccinations you could be left with a child in a similar state.  
Just my opinion, and I could be wrong, but I don't believe the anti vax people would be as great if ordinary people talked about diseases and vaccinations.  
 
Ok time for bed, goodnight all

Really?  
 
I don't see the comparison. Sugar doesn't multiply, and spread to unwilling and innocent hosts.  
 
No amount of sugar consumption on my part will endanger another.  
 
No simple shot in the arm will eradicate eating disorders from an entire country, or the world.  
 
Apart from the treatment of drinking water, immunization has been the greatest breakthrough in public health in the history of mankind.  
 
I don't understand the efforts to obfuscate on this issue, the "choice" notion appears to be just a means to debase vaccination rates below even where they are now, which would be approaching the world before vaccination.  
 
Let's hear the argument for 'choice" of speed limits on public highways. Obviously that would result in significant loss of life and other negatives, but apparently "choice" trumps all.

Whatalady said "Still a right to choose.   If you are vaccinated and you are protected then you should have not a worry of others choice.   Thank you I still have a choice. Canadian "

It is your choice... but if you choose not to vaccinate your children because you aren't educated enough to understand the dangers involved, then how is it their choice? If one of them contracts whooping cough or measles and dies, who will you blame?  
 
You have no substantiated arguments to back your stance so you rely on the "it's my choice" argument.  
 
By your "logic" if your child had an extreme peanut allergy that could kill him if exposed, then I should be able to exercise my choice to consume peanut based foods around him.  
 
 
 
Edited by Cee Jay 55, 2016-04-01 22:30:59

Are there different treat levels from different diseases, I think if we look at something like smallpox there was a concerted effort by the whole world because of the fact that it had a very high mortality rate. Will we see such a effort against other diseases, for some reason I don't think we will, every country assesses the risk and is encouraged by the WHO to vaccinate, but if we are still seeing the numbers of deaths around the world to measles that are being reported, somebody isn't in the loop,  
 
Something we should maybe give some thought to, because it has been discussed by organizations like the WHO, is with an ever increasing world population there will be a day that science falls one step behind, and a strain of some disease will mutate and the diseases we are concerned about today will look like a hiccup, and we'll lose 80% of the world population

don brown said "Are there different treat levels from different diseases, I think if we look at something like smallpox there was a concerted effort by the whole world because of the fact that it had a very high mortality rate. Will we see such a effort against other diseases, for some reason I don't think we will, every country assesses the risk and is encouraged by the WHO to vaccinate, but if we are still seeing the numbers of deaths around the world to measles that are being reported, somebody isn't in the loop,     Something we should maybe give some thought to, because it has been discussed by organizations like the WHO, is with an ever increasing world population there will be a day that science falls one step behind, and a strain of some disease will mutate and the diseases we are concerned about today will look like a hiccup, and we'll lose 80% of the world population "

I ran across a few stats regarding measles... if I remember correctly there were 180,000 deaths from measles last year, mostly in third world countries. That was down from nearly 600,000 a few years prior. I think the stat for immunization was about 72-78% worldwide for the newer stat.  
 
Remember, this is deaths and not number of cases reported which was probably in the millions.  
 
There is probably accurate numbers on the WHO website.  
 
 
 
Edited by Cee Jay 55, 2016-04-01 22:44:48

Reports this for measles in Canada:  
 
"Measles  
 
Complications such as bronchopneumonia and otitis media occur in about 10%. Encephalitis occurs in 1/1,000 cases (fatal in 15% and neurologic sequelae in 25%). Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis is a rare but fatal complication. Case fatality <: 0.05%. With 2-dose schedule, indigenous measles has been eliminated in Canada.  
Measles vaccine is given in combination with mumps and rubella (MMR). MMR vaccine: Malaise and fever, with or without a non-infectious rash in about 5%: up to 1% of recipients may develop parotitis, about 5% have swollen glands, stiff neck or joint pains. Transient arthralgias or arthritis may occur and are more common in postpubertal females.  
 
About 1/30,000 develop transient thrombocytopenia, 1/1 million develop encephalitis.  
 
5-year period: 1950-1954  
Avg. annual rate: 369.1  
Peak annual no: 61,370 cases  
 
5-year period: 2000-2004  
Avg. annual rate: 0.2  
Peak annual no: 199 cases  
 
I remember reading somewhere else there were 0 deaths from the MMR vaccine reported in either Canada or the United States, perhaps both.  
 
 
 
Edited by Cee Jay 55, 2016-04-01 22:49:40

If sugar causes heart disease then I just saw an interesting commercial, went something along the line of heart attacks don't come with a warning, I'll just leave it at that.

 
I think it should be generally agreed that polio is nothing to trifle with, or wish on anyone, and that's part of our basic immunization, which too many people are failing to protect their own children from, and by extension everyone else.  
 
The WHO has been working on a campaign to eradicate polio from the planet, but has encountered tremendous obstacles to reaching that goal from spin off effects of the antivaxxer movement, and severe political instability in some target countries where vaccination has become a matter of suspicion and politics.  
 
It's very unlikely that any infectious disease will ever be contained, or eradicated if people are left to see these matters as personal choice, or given the option of riding on the coat tails of competent previous management of public health.  
 
Using that standard, SARS or ebola would never have been contained. True, measles doesn't kill as many as other diseases, but we don't tolerate random deaths amongst our children, and in these matters everyone is responsible, and along on the same ride.  
 
The level of effort for measles isn't necessarily that it kills an intolerable yet relatively small number of children, never mind the economic harm, it's that for a 10 cent jab in the arm we could wipe it off the planet.  

That's the point that some seem to have missed, vaccines are such powerful tools, that if properly deployed, there's no need for ongoing immunization, we can very easily and cheaply make many of the greatest killers of humanity extinct. That would certainly end the controversy over adverse effects, and be our gift to humanity forever.  
 
I remember getting the smallpox vaccination, now no one does, or ever will again.  
 
If we follow the lacklustre "freedom of choice" approach, we will certainly never be rid of these killers, and, for added entertainment, we will have them back in advanced countries, randomly taking our children once again.

I would fully support antivaxxers in their choice if it only affected their own families. Let them risk their children dying of a preventable disease and deal with the consequences of their poor decision-making abilities and pseudoscience. Unfortunately, the uneducated remain dangerous to the rest of society - mainly the immunocompromised and those too young to yet be vaccinated.  
Unfortunately intelligence isn't a requirement to reproduce.

Some of the pathogens that have been talked about on here are the ones like measles , mumps and polio and others are basically air born agents, and with a high enough or concerted effort we could erradicate them, but there are others such as tetanus and anthrax, which does at times show up, that are not air born and live in the soil, there may be others but these are the two that I'm familiar with. Being a pathogen that lives in the soil means it will always be present so some vaccinations will alway be needed.

don brown said "Some of the pathogens that have been talked about on here are the ones like measles , mumps and polio and others are basically air born agents, and with a high enough or concerted effort we could erradicate them, but there are others such as tetanus and anthrax, which does at times show up, that are not air born and live in the soil, there may be others but these are the two that I'm familiar with. Being a pathogen that lives in the soil means it will always be present so some vaccinations will alway be needed. "

 
Anthrax is very rare, and has never been a part of a regular immunization program, apart from certain military and other key personnel, and only then because various developed countries have dabbled with weaponizing it. The mode of transmission between victims doesn't seem effective. For that reason it will likely never be a part of a regular public health blanket immunization program. That it doesn't spread out of control is why many countries have looked at it as a weapon.  
 
Tetanus will be with us forever, so we will be stuck with that one. Given how frequently people get boosters for it, the safety record of that shot seems impeccable. Nobody dies of "blood poisoning" any more, which up until the 1960's used to happen. My own father was saved from likely death by an 11th hour injection, otherwise he would never have seen 30.  
 
The majority of the other illnesses we have vaccines for can, and should be made extinct, and with full public efforts, their tens of thousands of years of killing would be over.  
 
As Don has pointed out, there are new risks emerging, and our old friends are trying to outstep the vaccines that have nearly finished them, helped by the antivaxxers, as has been pointed out. Aids, and Zika virus look like great candidates for vaccines, if that's possible or practical. The HPV vaccine could potentially halve cervical cancer forever if we could eradicate that virus.  
 
I agree, the total elimination of vaccination is unlikely, but it is obvious that we can permanently eliminate most of the high volume killers, then concern ourselves with the relatively minor emerging threats. A better world?