Hacker News Reader

our family doctor fully supports this as a smart choice

I expect he knows less about it than you do. To you, he says this is a smart choice. To the people who just get them all at once, he says that's the smart choice. As a general rule of thumb, doctors don't actually know the current status of vaccination knowledge; especially "family doctors". So long as you're just taking them, he'll tell you whatever you need to hear.

Anyway, lets look at this: "so, an intelligent person would try to space out, don't you agree?"

Let's imagine a situation where there is, in any given week, a 90% chance of catching each of five lethal diseases. There is a vaccine available for each; taking them all at once presents a 1% chance of death. So in this case, spacing out the vaccines is a stupid thing to do. Where this is going is that without more context and information and actually looking at the numbers, the statement "so, an intelligent person would try to space out" is at best meaningless feelgood nonsense and at worst dangerous.

If we gather the actual numbers, we find that the risk from these toxins of which you speak is vanishingly small (considerably less than, for example, driving somewhere) and thus spacing out the vaccines is not something an intelligent person would do. You probably put the child at higher risk of death from the extra trips to the doctor; do you drive there, or cross roads to get there?

Additionally, unspecified "toxins" are not necessarily cumulative. It's quite possible that they have no effect on each other, and no effect on the ability of the host to deal with them. Is that the case here? Do you know? Are you practising evidence-based decision making? This is your child's life, so you owe it to them to do it properly.

> To lower insurance costs, we inject infants, and toddlers with many vaccines at a time, often without much space between shots either.

No, we don't do it to "lower insurance costs". We do it because the things covered by the vaccines are things we want people to be protected against, and if we delay some of them to spread them out (which has no demonstrated benefit, of any kind, to justify it), then necessarily that means delaying some of the vaccines, and delaying the protection that they provide.

> There are toxins in vaccines

Specifics, please. IME, any time someone mentions generic "toxins" without specifics in discussion of supposed health practices, they are shoveling woo.

The only reason you know that Tamiflu is useless is "cynical monsters" like me who bite the hand that feeds them.

As far as spacing doses, just like anything else it's subject to revision.

Nonavalent HPV vaccines produce antibodies against nearly every HPV variant known, reduce the likelihood of HPV integration, and for someone who has verified that at least a quarter of head & neck squamous, almost half of anal, and far better than half of cervical carcinomas show HPV integrations, typically right into the middle of tumor suppressors or onto oncogene promoters, this is a big deal. These cases are preventable. Not preventing them, when it's relatively cheap and available, is (to me) APPALLING.

The antivaxxer pricks are cynical for relying on the rest of us, who are responsible enough to assume a TINY risk to our kids in order to protect them and others, to take the risks so they can enjoy the benefits of herd immunity.

If that isn't the definition of cynical, I don't know what is. It's on a level with the Soviets celebrating the "eradication" of smallpox while internally working to weaponize it.

Provided a child develops appropriate immunity by the time they're regularly interacting with others, I could care less about the spacing. But that's not really what this is about, is it?

If you have kids and you don't get them vaccinated on an appropriate schedule, you are being a cynical prick. If you fight HPV vaccination because it might "make girls promiscuous", you are a cynical prick. You are presuming to judge risks for others, risks which we as a society have determined are unacceptable. And that makes you a cynical prick, if indeed you do it. (Maybe you're playing devils advocate, I don't know. But I really hate this line of reasoning, and on balance, it doesn't hold water.)

Sorry, but Tamiflu is an anti-viral drug, not a vaccine, and it is effective.

Everybody's entitled to their opinion, and instead of low-class name calling, which is what cynical pricks do for a living, use solid arguments, and clever policies. So far, there's being only arrogance from the pro-vaxxer community.

I see. Where's your rebuttal regarding nonavalent Gardasil, the actual topic of conversation here? When you can provide some evidence (any evidence, really) that the immediate risks outweigh the benefits, I'll be impressed.

Meanwhile, enjoying the benefits of herd immunity while other people and their kids take the risks is the definition of cynicism.