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Comment by bootload | Hacker News Reader

"who cares? But what if multiple vaccinations (i.e. significant stress for the body to fight a disease) for for young kids actually turned out to be problematic in some circumstances?"

This is a trivial argument. The benefits of vaccination is both individual and that a large population of immunised individuals The idea of herd-immunity is a large percentage of the population is immunised the chances of disease spreading is minimised. [0]

Vaccinations are effective because individuals taking vaccinations develop immunity and if they come into contact with antigens again, anti-bodies are produced to fight. This is important for infants, who if exposed to an antigen, the time taken and effectiveness of response is weak. [1]

References

[0] http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vaccinations/Pages/How-vaccines...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/howvpd.htm

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Spot on.

Hope you didn't miss my point though. Say you discover data that leads you to suggest a different vaccination procedure. That is difficult to communicate in an ideologically entrenched environment, don't you think?

Look how the parent post expressed discomfort already in the face of harmless new information relating to neurons.

"Say you discover data that leads you to suggest a different vaccination procedure."

There are plenty of examples of how accepted treatment is hard to shake. Take for example ^stomach ulcers^. Barry Marshall conducted self experiments to prove the H. pylori theory. The initial work started in '82. Marshall/Warren won the Nobel prize in 2005 [0] for this work. It changed the way stomach ulcers were understood and the treatment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

Not trivial if it turns out vaccines are linked to autism.. don't assume everyone is a hard utilitarian

"if it turns out vaccines are linked to autism"

I don't believe you, please show me some peer reviewed science instead of waiving around some ^hokey-pokey^ rubbery belief.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/if

It seems you were making the argument that even if autism was linked to vaccines, the benefit would outweigh the cost. Now you are attacking me on a different point (that I didn't make)

"It is unclear whether decisions people made about vaccination were influenced by their exposure to certain tweets and media, or whether they simply chose to inhabit an online community that reinforced their beliefs, a tension known as contagion versus homophile." [0]

Interesting article on role of social media. Obviously you are a hard core, a non-fence sitter, so I'll ignore you.

[0] http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/how-twitter-more-accur...

We appreciate your many contributions to HN. But you've crossed into incivility in this thread. Would you please not do that, regardless of the other comments?

Vaccines are also a classic flamewar topic that, unless there's something genuinely new to be said, are off-topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

"The bottom line is that when you add up all of the genetic risks, it looks like genetics can account for 50 percent of the risk for autism, which is very high,” -- David Amaral, an Autism specialist UC Davis MIND Institute. ~ https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/5/11/15508006/wh...

Yes you're write Dang. Incivility vs factual evidence. Maybe I should be more tactful.

"if it turns out vaccines are linked to autism.."

Facts not superstition, reducibility through empiricism. Rational thought instead emotion. Ideas like this were fought and won during ^the Enlightenment^ some 200 to 250 years ago. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

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