A Measles Case Hits Google's Silicon Valley Headquarters
buzzfeednews.com
buzzfeednews.com
Measles History from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html
https://vaxopedia.org/2019/02/14/vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-...
That'd imply that maybe 10 vaccinated people have come down with measles in this 2019 outbreak, out of > 300M total vaccinated people. By contrast, about 51 people die every year in the U.S. from being struck by lightning.
Routine vaccinations stopped. Samples of the virus continue to be found (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_debat... ) and it appears that it would not be difficult to recreate. There is therefore a potential for a future outbreak, perhaps even done deliberately.
Some people still get smallpox vaccinations. In addition to lab workers working on smallpox or similar organisms ( https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/vaccine-basics/who-gets-vaccina... ), https://health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/Health-Readiness/I... points out under "Who in DoD is going to get the smallpox vaccine?" that:
> "Smallpox vaccination is currently required for uniformed personnel deploying or assigned to the Korean Peninsula for 15 or more consecutive days. It is also mandatory for certain designated emergency-essential personnel and contractors, uniformed personnel assigned to special units, and comparable U.S. government civilian employees. However, requirements may change based on threat.
We'd probably have eradicated polio already but the Taliban keeps killing off humanitarians in Pakistan.
My dad's cousin spent his life trying to eradicate guinea worm with the CDC but now we have a bunch of civil wars breaking out in the endemic regions.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
Update:
I’m not sure why the sibling poster and I received downvotes: we both provided the same fact that a branch of the US government conducted their operations in such a way that harmed the perception of vaccines amongst groups of people in another countries. In both the anti-vaxx movement in some places in the West and this particular incident in Pakistan and Afghanistan, you have a similar kind of attribution error involving the concept of vaccination that led to action against actual vaccinations as a whole.
In this case, you are correct, but normally the crimes don't compare.
It’s important to remember that this was the direct result of the CIA’s use of a vaccination program as a cover:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28764582/
Whether or not you agree with that call, it seems likely to be an enduring side-effect.
I often see this pattern if I talk about anything controversial: 2 or 3 initial downvotes, followed by more upvotes. It can also just stay at -3 and never go up. Then sometimes, I get 50 or 90 upvotes.
The CIA got thousands of innocent people crippled or killed just to track down one man. Quite possibly millions, depending on how long it goes on and how widespread it becomes again.
The thought process seems to assume that they can be "invisible" and their activities have no externalities or long term repercussions. It's analogous to injection with needles. The assumption holds true for small n. It falls apart with large n.
I suspect (based on things some of the mods have said) is that while the number of upvote points is capped, the number of negative points isn't, with the intention of keeping a bad comment from crashing someone's karma. As such, for controversial posts (that a chunk of people feel strongly enough to vote about), the post can quickly hit a negative but then eventually be overwhelmed by positive votes (as long as it isn't flagged for one reason or another).
Serious question: is impersonating aid workers a violation of the Geneva convention or other international law?
Measles hasn't been eradicated the way that Smallpox was declared eradicated globally in 1980.
Measles is active in many parts of the world that don't vaccinate for it.
0.01-0.1% chance of Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis which can develop up to ten years after initial Measles infection. SSPE will very slowly kills you in the worst way imaginable (slowly lose your mind, control of your body, then as your brain continues to get damaged your major organs will shut down one by one). There's no cure. Babies have a significantly higher risk.
So when I worked at Google I (and many others) got into an argument with a software engineer who had strong anti-vax opinions and honestly, it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education.
I'm glad California has started clamping down on personal belief exemptions. That still leaves medical exemptions and unfortunately it seems like some doctors are complicit in giving baseless medical exemptions.
In New York we've had cases of immunization records being falsified. I'm not sure if it's by doctors or parents (maybe both).
Honestly any medical professional who falsifies immunization records or provides bogus medical exemptions needs to be jailed.
So I'm honestly not surprised measles is showing up in SV tech companies.
Astrology outbreaks are not a concern of mine Even when the moon is in retrograde
I think programmers should be professionally leery of astrologers. And if asked for a reason they should reference this - http://www.thedailyparker.com/post/2011/10/06/c5f28bae-4b9c-...
Astrology has some value, in the same way alchemy has value: it helped start serious scientific inquiry into astronomy. Sadly, while there are now vanishingly small amounts of people who take alchemy seriously, astrology is a relatively common belief to hold, even among people who are scientifically-minded. It puts me in mind of the first 9/11 truther I knew, who was a close friend who should have known better. However, at the time she was willing to buy into it, simply because it played into her anti-GWBush sentiments. This is after I explained how the statements were false, and backed it up w/ evidence (having queried my father, who was a mining engineer and had done building implosions in his career as a blasting contractor).
Unfortunately, "smart people" can just as easily fall prey to these types of delusions, it seems to be a common human trait (like all the logical fallacies). Thinking that one is immune paradoxically makes one more susceptible to these types of errors, rather the best defense is to recognize that no, nobody is immune. Much in the same way as ignoring advertising's effect on decision-making.
Edit:typo
It links to an ifs report
> Those early formative years influence attitudes and expectations about success, academically and socially, and that can possibly stay with an individual.
Maybe there’s no measurable difference by adulthood, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was.
Compared to days, years, and Lunar months, what does astrology give us, orbits of other planets? Distant constellations? Who cares?! This doesn't affect our daily life in the slightest. Astrology doesn't add anything. The normal calendars we already use are the best and most relevant.
To be honest, when someone puts it that way, it sounds like they do actually believe it, to some extent at least.
No one who doesn't believe it would phrase things that way.
And why do you say that? Do you have any reason to think I'm not being earnest other than your "hunch"? Is that really the quality of discussion you want to have with complete strangers who are otherwise saying nothing offensive whatsoever- to question their sincerity? Seems pretty whack to me.
When someone says "I don't believe X" it means they don't believe it.
When someone says "I don't necessarily believe X" it means they kinda do believe it.
Not one person who believes the world is spherical would ever say (or agree that it correctly captures their view) the statement "I don't necessarily believe the world is flat".
[EDIT: I thought this example might help make things clearer.
version 1:
- wife to husband: you're spending a lot of time with that new co-worker. Do you find her attractive?
- husband: no, I don't find her attractive.
&
version 2:
- wife to husband: you're spending a lot of time with that new co-worker. Do you find her attractive?
- husband: no, I don't necessarily find her attractive.
A husband that genuinely did not find the co-worker attractive would never express things in the second way. It's clear in that second way that he does find her attractive to some extent but doesn't want to say it]
Sometimes "I don't necessarily believe..." is used when the person feels awkward admitting that they have some belief, or when they haven't consciously realised that they do. It can be when they haven't fully admitted it to themselves.
Anyway, I would reword the entire post to remove the word necessarily but I'll leave it in case anyone else reads it and might make the same Mistake.
(It's a very rough-surfaced, approximate, oblate spheroid)
But this kind of thing tends to also serve as a psychological aid. People with anxiety being told things they want to hear. For some psychics serve as de facto therapists.
This isn't to say there aren't charlatans and scammers who take advantage of the vulnerable and impressionable.
But on the whole, Astrology and the like are "harmless", at which point I personally don't care. People are entitled to their personal foolishness.
There's an old adage that science advances one funeral at a time - The scientific community is far from immune to this problem. People who are trained and employed full time to apply critical thinking and empirical testing still fall for superstition. It's an unsolvable problem until we reach a point where we can replace human brains with cold, unfeeling robots.
That would be a gigantic step back. You under-estimate just how powerful that organ between your ears is.
"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."
This further reminds me of all the people who got degrees with me who weren't all that bright either.
Here is a book on Vaccines and Auto-Immunity written by highly credentialed immunologists.
https://www.amazon.com/Vaccines-Autoimmunity-Yehuda-Shoenfel...
Would you call them anti-science?
If I were to wager a guess, I'd say this is because people who feel like they're very good at logic/rational thought underestimate the effect emotions can have on motivating a belief?
You can see this mistaken belief whenever people decry that there are "smart" people that believe dumb things outside their profession. Well, "dumb" people believe dumb things outside their profession too.
When it comes to believing this stuff, people tend to just be people. The "smart" get special attention because some of us incorrectly assume they should be immune to it. But they're obviously not.
Argh, it sucks... it sucks so friggin much. I've been trying to articulate my feelings on this for the past few weeks. There is a breakdown of thinking throughout our society. It's not just that critical thinking is impaired, but rather the ability to endure any sort of criticism of one's belief structure is gone.
So we know you can't throw facts down at a person when they state an immediate falsehood. You must combat it, but the tactic to combating such a falsehood requires an emotional component.
Seeing videos of iron lungs terrified me as a kid, I had remembered seeing a few elders with shriveled arms from polio. These emotional experiences burn upon you far more than the impersonal fact: that diseases maim and kill. But we just want to develop fantasies and live inside our filter bubbles because of course it's easier to believe the distrust that vaccines are just a delivery mechanism for the government's nanomachines.
Smart people especially know that it's relatively easy to lie with statistics and to generate studies with subtle selection bias.
If your premise is that most/all modern scientific studies are funded by drug companies and therefore cannot be trusted, then being anti-vax is still a stretch but you can at least see how it could be rationalized. Especially given the rich history of money suppressing/biasing scientific studies in the past: smoking, asbestos, j&j baby powder, round-up, etc.
Not only that, but in the US the pharmaceuticals are shielded from liability for vaccines in stark contrast to any other medication type. How's that not a profit center?
$6.2B income in 2018.
They did call out Gardasil as a major cause of the increase in profits from the previous year, but it wasn't 6.2B by any stretch of the imagination.
The whole reason that the liability shield exists was a reaction to the DTP vaccine debacle. Which was eventually taken off the market in many countries including the US.
I think these people are constructing a made up excuse to excuse themselves.
This is enumeration fallacy, and those are the exceptions, not the norm. Economic incentives work for the public good far more often than not.
That’s what really drives me nuts about this. People lined up to receive these miracle cures. Devastating common diseases became near myths. All of this happened within living memory. And we’re to believe that it’s all a conspiracy by big pharma?
... Because there's no evidence that consumption of multivitamins or organic vegetables has any communal or individual health benefits?
You don't need to eat organic vegetables to eat healthy. You just need to eat vegetables, period, full stop, hold the phone, stop the presses, etc.
vaccines are a (roughly) one-time cost. you can be vaccinated faster than you can eat an organic carrot, and with wildly less infrastructural overhead than paying for everyone's health care.
the benefit : cost ratio for vaccines is astronomical compared to the benefit : cost ratio of any of those other things, even if they had the benefits ascribed to them.
Most people there had very negative personal experiences with vaccines. Either themselves or one of their children had a serious reaction.
It's known that some people have serious reactions. This isn't something made up by anti-vaxxers. But the current climate gets people with real problems treated as nutters who simply don't have a real medical issue.
When I was growing up, we counted success in terms of how many people got vaccinations, but there was no expectation it would ever be 100 percent. Now, we act like we "failed" to get 100 percent when we quote stats rather than counting the high percentage of vaccinated as a big success.
I think the root cause of the antivax movement is probably that we are leaving no room for those edge cases who have a genuine problem with vaccines, medically speaking. Those edge cases -- those people for whom this is a real problem -- seem to have concluded that the only way to protect their own right to choose is to make antivax the default norm instead of pro vax.
It's probably doomed because vaccines have proven to be beneficial to society as a whole. But if it is clear in your own mind that vaccines are a threat to your life, it readily becomes a hill you are willing to die on, so to speak.
I'm neither antivax nor pro vax. I think vaccines have their uses, but we need room for those edge cases to have the right to choose.
I get vilified by both camps because neither can tolerate a moderate position, which suggests to me they are both basically equally crazy. A reasonable person is aware that exceptions exist and that you have to have a system that makes allowances for that reality.
No, that comment asserts that it only takes one small unreasonable conclusion to send you down the path toward an anti-vax conclusion. That's not what reasonable doubt is.
We, as a society, already make exceptions for people who cannot have vaccines. I would know, as I went through an incredibly bad allergic reaction to vaccines as a child. You can ask anyone advocating for vaccinations and they will tell you that yes, vaccines can have side effects and people can have adverse reactions.
The root cause of the anti-vaxx movement isn't those people. It's people who take a purely ideological stance against vaccines, ignoring the scientific fact that vaccines in general are safe in favor of believing that vaccines cause autism or any number of bullshit things created by quacks. People are abusing exceptions to vaccinations and in turn are directly threatening people like myself who may not have an actual choice in the matter. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't use people like me as a smokescreen for those that threaten my well-being.
I stopped getting an annual flu shot because people who were strongly antivax were helping me get well after doctors wrote me off for dead, basically.
I'm not using people like you as a smokescreen. I'm talking about my own life.
I've been given absolute hell for my medical choices, including my decision to stop getting a flu shot.
(Never mind that my choices have gotten good results. That ends up being some new excuse to attack and dismiss me.)
You cannot frame the argument solely in terms of 'your own life' unless we're talking about vaccinations for diseases that don't spread across the population. The flu may be milder than most diseases, but the flu can and does kill people. Including those that are young and healthy.
People give you absolute hell for it because it's a selfish line of thought if you don't actually have a good excuse for not vaccinating. And the anti-vaxx movement more often than not does not have a good excuse.
This is exactly the line of reasoning I'm criticizing. This is the type of ugly argument that radicalizes people with serious health issues who find it beneficial to not vaccinate, but don't have "the right excuse" to make that okay for them.
You were all up in arms at the idea that I was talking about you. You are still being attacking when it's my life on the line here.
There's no actual logical consistency here.
Because as I've established above, people who cannot get vaccines for legitimate health reasons (such as allergic reactions or compromised immune systems) are already protected by the system that exists. Otherwise if you're denying vaccines for ideological reasons: You are threatening the lives of other people for no good reason.
I'm supposed to be dead. Much of the world has a very big problem with my rude failure to die on schedule from a condition so bad it's classified as a dread disease.
Your further insistence that I owe you some kind of explanation for my personal medical choice flies in the face of HIPAA, something I had annual training in when I had a job with a Fortune 500 company.
This isn’t my experience. Most people I know refer to people who do not vaccinate their kids as “antivax wackos” because they (my friends) believe that vaccines are almost 100% effective and 100% harmless. If they thought there were side effects or adverse reactions they couldn’t paint all people who don’t vaccinate with the “wacko” brush.
I’m glad to hear that you have encountered people who are more enlightened, but I wanted to point out that this is not everyone’s experience.
Note: I have vaccinated my kids and I regularly get the flu shot. I live in Silicon Valley, for context of where I’m encountering the folks I described.
EDIT: can you explain why you’re downvoting this? Do you doubt that this is my experience, find it irrelevant, or something else?
Not sure where this straw man argument came from but I'll bite.
The point isn't to get a certain number of people vaccinated and never was. The point is to eliminate preventable diseases that can be deadly or cause permanent harm (eg paralysis, infertility). To do that you need herd immunity, which is typically quoted at 95%+ immunity.
The US achieved this and "eliminated" measles in 2000 but thanks to promulgating baseless falsehoods and people losing the memory of the effects of diseases, immunization rates began to fall and diseases that were effectively eliminated returned.
While you seem to want to paint anti-vaxxers as those simply having a bad reaction, I beg to differ. Even if true, the tactics border on the truly abhorrent [1].
Some people genuinely can't get vaccines. This is also why vaccination never will be at 100% and why it's important that anyone who medically can get a vaccine should as that herd immunity protects the vulnerable.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/19/health/anti-vax-harassment-ep...
No, and I'm not sure how to more clearly state that isn't my point.
Certainly at this point, it's a movement and there are latecomers who believe in it without having been personally burned. But I spent some years on a forum where active members were people trying to resolve serious health issues and being dismissed by mainstream medicine as nutters in a way they found very personally threatening because of their history.
Some of those people were very well educated and articulate. If you radicalize a small group of persuasive people, it shouldn't be shocking when the result is some kind of movement born of their efforts at self defense for survival reasons.
diseases that were effectively eliminated returned
And yes, I agree, the discussions have become useless. In fact I would go so far to say that in middle-class society people avoid discussions and at best just agree which is actually meaning a slow death for democracy. Those who still continue to do discussions end up doing these in closed circles apart from public discourse, that's tragic and easy loot for alt-rights/anti-vaxxers who can then claim that discourse isn't working because we didn't practise it properly. From a philosophical standpoint I think foundations of all knowledge must be observed and talked about.
The fallacy, of course, being the idea that only scientific studies are susceptible to perverse economic incentives, and that people pushing anti-vax narratives can't possibly be trying to sell you anything. I have a hard time ascribing this mentality to mere healthy skepticism when it smells more like anti-intellectualism disguised as anti-establishment rhetoric.
I would call that the equivalent of fear mongering because pharma companies don't make much or any on vaccines, and the US government had to even pass a special liability law in order to keep vaccines being made.
pharma companies don't make much or any on vaccines
It's fear that fuels that distrust and places the burden of proof on the pro-vaccine side. A rational person, unmoved by emotion, would see that there's far more reason to trust vaccines than to not. It's not irrational to say there's some reason to scrutinize medical industry studies, but in the case of vaccines there's also overwhelming evidence that they work. Fear turns that small case against the studies into a foregone conclusion which must be disproved, instead of simply the side with less supporting evidence. And it's much harder to disprove something than to provide greater evidence to the contrary.
For example-- what if there were a hub for videos that would analyze an anti-vaxxer's viewing habits and recommend level-headed, reliable scientific content in the sidebar?
The same argument is being used against the pro-vax community. The article by the ahem "esteemed" journalism that is Buzzfeed is an example that seems to be pandering to a certain audience. The kind of audience that is quick to insult anti-vaxxers as being some sort of stupid degenerate or other over the top propaganda. Propaganda being another reason not to trust the message.
> it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education
Same accusation going the other way. I'm don't want to get into the particulars (this will be a long thread), however, there are a number of pro-vax advocates who don't make a good impression with their obvious sophism. I can provide links to videos of debates involving highly reputable pro-vaccine advocates to back this up, but I want to keep this first post more at a meta level.
I understand that you are preaching to a certain choir & I will suffer the wrath because I dare question the orthodoxy, but that's the rub; our own presuppositions affect how we perceive the matter.
> giving baseless medical exemptions
Many people see forced medication as being a baseless intrusion by the state onto a population. For example, have you read "A Brave New World"? Injections were used to create the caste system. Forced inoculation & diet has been used to create an underclass in many societies. Many people also oppose Fluoride & Lithium being added to the water supply. For how long was Glysophate deemed "proven safe", yet we find out later it's highly toxic. Note that there were people who were opposed to the usage of Glysophate for a long time & many of those same people oppose vaccines.
There's also a lack of studies of the individual compounds & even less research into the combination of said compounds. Yet vaccine proponents are uncomfortably eager to deem vaccines as safe despite a lack of research. So safe, as safe or safer than saline solution it seems...It makes the pro-vaccine crowd sound delusional & religious at worst, or rash in judgement due to fear of the global pandemic apocalypse at best. Not saying there aren't good arguments, but much of the rhetoric being thrown around is hostile bullying, tbh.
I recommend that proponents of vaccines strongly discourage bullying from their side, because it completely discredits their argument of forced vaccination & makes them look like proponents of totalitarianism.
> In New York we've had cases of immunization records being falsified
Does this imply the validity of some studies are in doubt? New York, for being such a large population, seems to have a lack of outbreaks since the Spanish Flu.
Tell that to Dewayne Johnson & the more than 800 plaintiffs suing Monsanto:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/10/health/monsanto-johnson-trial...
This is why we have an independent media, since corporate media tends to favor their customers (the advertisers & major shareholders); that is until it become blatantly obvious there's a problem. Then other tactics are used to gain control of the narrative. This is also why some monopolists are angry & want to censor & co-opt the independent media; too much competition in the marketplace of ideas...
Also, vaccine manufacturers are legally immune from lawsuits & there's a fund to pay off victims of vaccine damage.
Or maybe it was another debate, can't tell from limited context. In any case, either it was work-related, in which case engineer in question had full right to express an opinion. Or, it was pure idle chit chat, in which case it seems unprofessional to pile on, let alone share externally years later. Are you also in the habit of posting office gossip from Facebook on this site?
As for personal belief exemptions, Trump declared a national emergency on Southern border. If civilians are somehow deputized to build the wall, do you want to be forced into it or to be able to declare a personal belief exemption?
I'm glad California has started clamping down on personal belief exemptions
One case of the measles prompts a company wide email... And now Google must contend with the scale of such an outbreak.
In California, any qualified pharmacy can administer the vaccine and be reimbursed for it by Medi-Cal.
But it finds a solid ground much more effectively when herd immunity is compromised, as it is today in many places, thanks to the anti-vax delusion.
Heck according to this data https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sh.imm.meas
In 1980 even Germany had 25% vaccination coverage but I'm guessing it could include East Germany too so a developer in their mid 30's simply might not been vaccinated at a young age and if they didn't travel to high risk countries, joined the military or worked with at risk groups it was never caught.
Edit: This is inclusive of foreign workers with H1B and other working visas.
Regardless, unless you are an immigration lawyer and extreme pendant, H1b holders are immigrants.
The US classification of immigration intent is not relevant to whether they are immigrants in the common sense of the word.
But it is relevant in the context of the statement the parent was replying to:
> US immigrants are required to have the MMR vaccine, among others.
but I did mean in-the-wide too; i think since we started down the vaccines as herd immunity game in the 50s and 60s we now have more routine travel and the rate of change here has accellerated. When I was a kid in the 60s few flew, my first flight was at 16 and then no more until 24. Now, I fly 10+ times a year worldwide. Thats only 40 years gap.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/04/16/how-patient...
0. In numerous states parents wishing not to vaccinate their children are permitted to sign a document stating that their religious convictions do not allow them to; based on this signature the child will then be permitted to attend school under the law. It is reported that small numbers of parents in Jewish schools have signed such documents. For a parent of a yeshiva student to sign such a statement in the name of Judaism is not just inappropriate, it is false. Whether a posek will rule that childhood immunizations are obligatory in halakhah or are discretionary (but highly advisable), there is no position in halakhah that says there is any prohibition or compelling reason to refrain from such vaccinations.
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol13Bush.pdf
1. “How Orthodox Jewish Nurses Are Fighting 'Anti-Vaccination Propaganda' Targeting Their Community”
http://gothamist.com/2019/03/26/orthodox_jewish_nurses_vacci...
There is no basis in Jewish law to object to vaccination.
Attaching a moniker "quack" at will is no way to have a discussion.
But the author goes far beyond that conclusion and rails against the very idea of herd immunity, and claims that since herd immunity may not be possible in practice when dealing with measles, there should be no stigma against opting out of vaccination. These conclusions are very weakly argued, and the obvious counter-arguments are not addressed.
Sebastian Funk, Associate Professor at the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: "to achieve [termination of measles transmission,] the population immune needs to be 93-95%, the herd immunity threshold." (https://www.who.int/immunization/sage/meetings/2017/october/...)
There is a substitution of terms in the first statement that you quoted. To stop transmission you need 90-95% of the population being _immune_ to the disease, not vaccinated against it. Do you see the difference?
The second quote by Funk got it right. But again please read the article why this is unattainable even with the 100% vaccination rate.
MMR vaccine is given at 1 year, pre-school starts at 3 years. Making a rough assumption of uniform age-distribution at daycares, it's expected that about 1/3 of babies won't be vaccinated against measles.
Edit: Linked article disproves this theory: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/tech-companies-and-vaccines/ . "According to the California DPH data, ..., At a nearby Google daycare, ... Just 68 percent are up to date with their MMRs". ... "The California DPH numbers only cover children between 2 and 5 years old"
EDIT: Nevermind, you're strictly talking daycare. Probably looks worse with this factored in.
“The reported numbers for the current year are lower simply because many parents have not yet provided updated immunization records. We've asked them all to do this, so we can update the figures.”
Edit: I stand corrected, even if some parts of google are still quite low
[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/03/silicon-valley-daycares-still-...
https://www.shotsforschool.org/child-care/how-doing/
Put in 94041 for zip code and you'll get most of the day cares that Googlers send their kids to, including a couple Google proprietary ones. Most are in the green, and the only one in the red (Little Prodigy, near Castro Street) isn't actually near Castro Street anymore - they moved several years ago, indicating that the data is several years out of date. The Google proprietary day care I know of is The Orchard on Bernardo street in Sunnyvale; it's listed as having >95% vaccination rates, and it's also closed now (has been for almost 2 years), again indicating the data's a little old.
What a morass of foggy and unverified information, this online hive mind.
I’m asking because this is such a polarizing topic that science-trusting people could totally have developed a blind spot by now. I mean some anti-vaxers are so crazy that you might become more pro vaccination than you’d otherwise be and miss some of the truth.
> I’m asking because this is such a polarizing topic that science-trusting people could totally have developed a blind spot by now.
There are massive publicly-accessible databases of reported possible adverse reactions to vaccines. You can easily download a spreadsheet listing every reported instance of someone developing a runny nose or rash after receiving a vaccine last year in the US. It is very reasonable to assume that the reporting rate for more serious reactions is plenty high enough for any real patterns to be quite noticeable from analyzing that data, at least for the vaccines that are given to large portions of the public. There is no blind spot when it comes to safety of the vaccines that have been recommended for the general public; this is well monitored and the safety of something like the MMR vaccine is supported by a mountain of data. Anyone questioning the long-established safety of common vaccines needs to provide up-front an analysis of VAERS data and a very good explanation for why they think that data is inaccurate.
One dose (normally scheduled at 12-15 months) is 93% effective, two doses (the second usually scheduled at 4-6 years) are 97% effective, and there are people too young or with other non-stupidity reasons for not having (yet, in the case of age alone) even the first dose, so, no, it's not just stupid people at risk.
Hopefully not too many babies have cancer, aids, and organ transplants.
"wiping out a previous immunity" doesn't sound like an immunity to me.
Which begs the question, why do we make an exception with vaccines? It seems like vaccines are being presented as completely safe & completely effective by some proponents.
You see nuance in this issue, but then, why are critics of vaccines silenced & ridiculed? I thought "nothing in medicine is straightforward"...
No doctor says "everyone should take all vaccines NOW". More info here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/should-not-vacc.html
No. There's no general solution to the problem of compromised immune systems, because there are many different causes. Some of those causes are infectious diseases that can be controlled through vaccination, so translating your feel-good goal of "promoting strong immune systems" into specific courses of action will include using tools like mass vaccinations. There are no better or more cost-effective ways to prevent diseases like measles, and almost every unvaccinated person exposed to measles develops the disease even if they have a healthy immune system.
When you thought you were getting information about a measles outbreak, but really you're being told that Google doesn't censor people enough.
This is a really slimy way to operate, and if BuzzFeed News didn't have enough to be ashamed of themselves about lately, add this to the list.
With regards to making links between intelligence and anti-vaxxers (as some here have), unless you have hard numbers then you too are just as susceptible to drawing conclusions without strong facts to back it up. Some of the most intelligent people can still act illogically, just look at the unfortunate later years of Nikola Tesla [1].
> As Google fights criticism that it has let anti-vaccine disinformation
> flourish on its platform, [..]
Lastly, I don't like the phrasing of this article. There is zero evidence that Google has in some way purposely allowed disinformation to spread. There's a disgusting "serves them right" feel and I think that's really unfair. I am sure Google has put in many resources to prevent disinformation and what people see is what gets through the net.
No one is antivaccine from a position of logic or science, because the position is completely impossible to support with either.
Antivaccine beliefs are functionally very similar to religion.
I don't want my child to risk getting measles, mumps, bruises, seizures or a severe allergic reaction [1]. I believe the number of these cases to be under-reported (not everybody goes to the doctor after getting ill) and the risk of side effects from the MMR vaccine (treats measles) to be greater than the benefits.
[1] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/mmr-side-effects/
And you assume they are unreasonable? Almost everybody has the ability to reason, the problem is that their reasoning system is grounded differently from yours. To begin common reasoning, we must first find common ground, even if we have to go all the way back to "I think therefore I am".
> No one is antivaccine from a position of logic or science,
> because the position is completely impossible to support
> with either.
There are plenty of ways to argue a point from an anti-vaxxer perspective (which I don't support FYI):
1. There is not enough data to draw conclusions about negative long-term effects. This argument is also used for radio signals (cellular/wifi/bluetooth/etc), smoking (at the time where it was unclear whether there was harm) and many others.
2. Some organization has an incentive to hide known issues. Whilst you might say "conspiracy", just look at the poor ladies who were painting with radium and how their companies hid the effects. Or asbestos. There is a long history of covering up issues to aid profits.
3. The default logical or scientific position is to be skeptical of all claims. If a mass of people say "this is good", it is important for at least a small number of people to challenge this. If people didn't go against the grain, perhaps we would still believe that the earth is at the center of the Universe and if we sail too far, one will simply fall off.
As I'm sure you are aware, for many (including myself), it's not possible to read every paper on a subject, hence some of our biases are based on things we haven't confirmed ourselves directly. I didn't personally take a picture of a black hole, but people I trust say that they have and it fits my model of reality. It's unlikely that more than a handful of people with strong positions on vaccines have read years of dense academic articles on vaccine research. They probably get their information from sources they trust, probably different sources from you and I.
> Antivaccine beliefs are functionally very similar to
> religion.
I'm not sure that's true, the reason to be an anti-vaxxer or religious could be completely different. Perhaps anti-vaxxers can be considered as fighting an authoritative figure and religious persons as wanting to follow some authoritative figure? I'm sure the reasons are many and varied. I imagine the reasons for being religious are more socially based though.
I figure the following: at a certain point the negative utility of getting a disease is greater than the negative utility of an allergic or worse reaction.
This has already happened to smallpox, as we assume the only two remaining places that have them won't release theirs.
At some point the same was likely the case for measles in the US, and is the case for polio and malaria in the US.
I most often see mass shaming instead of reasonable discourse. I guess the former is easier.
Mass shaming, at least to me, signals the shamers have the weaker argument. Whereas articulate and even handed communication signals great strength.
You only see mass shaming because there are large populations that are publicly rejecting the articulate and even-handed communication that they've been receiving for their entire lives from their doctors and the CDC. To a large extent, anti-vaxxers are only willing to engage with the issue in an emotional, irrational way and they are almost by definition unreceptive to the kind of rational discourse you pretend isn't being attempted.
> with the issue in an emotional, irrational way and they are
> almost by definition unreceptive to the kind of rational
> discourse you pretend isn't being attempted.
Maybe you are correct, but I don't think it's reason to stop trying. Something is very wrong when we decide to give up on our fellow humans.
Last time I checked, all the experts are still providing the same expert advice to get vaccinated. The shaming has not displaced any of that, and most of the shaming seems to take the form of telling people that they're doing a bad thing by rejecting the advice of their doctor or encouraging others to do so.
Certainly there must be some room for reasonable disagreement even if the experts are unanimous, given the patchy history of experts.
The patchy history of expert advice from the days before science was routinely used in medicine is not particularly relevant here. Today's expert advice about vaccination has a far stronger foundation of evidence than any of the superstitions you named. If we were talking about dietary recommendations or even psychology then it would be a lot less ridiculous to bring up leeches or phrenology, but in the context of vaccination you're being dishonest by implying any sort of equivalency.
> these days?
Given the negative internet points on my comment, apparently everything, although no strong argument in the comments. Take from that what you will.
> I most often see mass shaming instead of reasonable
> discourse. I guess the former is easier.
I argue with friends and family on social media because I care about them, in the same way some religious person may try to convert you because they are concerned for your soul. We seem to be suffering a lack of empathy, at least in these comments.
> Mass shaming, at least to me, signals the shamers have the
> weaker argument. Whereas articulate and even handed
> communication signals great strength.
Not only this, but negative reward without reason and "de-platforming" in my opinion are more likely to lead towards doubling down. If we kick all the anti-vaxxers off Facebook, they will likely all go to a forum where they receive only counter arguments in the form of trolls and use the fact they were removed as "evidence" of conspiracy.
This would naturally be a fairly massive invasion of privacy, but does your right to privacy and right to not vaccinate trump the right of the company to protect their workers? Eventually it's going to come to a head and either companies will force vaccinations or the government will.
You (proverbial you) invade my health by walking about with measles. I think it's well within any group, even government, to mandate vaccinations that have been PROVEN to be effective. Privacy takes a back seat to health.
EDIT: And I love how this gets downvoted. Likely by people who vastly misunderstand mechanism of disease. Also likely the same people who show no courtesy to others when they are sick, and continue to frequent stores and social establishments, coughing and hacking with zero thought about it.
Unfortunately that's the framing of the argument though. It's people who value privacy and self-determination over everything else, even the health and well-being of those around them.
> Hey, you should be forced to take injections in order to get a job, welfare, housing etc.
So eager to throw our privacy out you don't even see that you pretty much chucked the rest out the window too.
What privacy is lost by having a doctor attest to the fact that you've either received a vaccine or have a medically-valid reason not to?
A) Thinking peanut allergies are some kind of health fad or fashionable illness
B) Thinking consumption of peanuts at school is some kind of inalienable human right
C) Having evidence that a peanut ban at schools doesn't reduce cases of children choking to death in front of their peers
If I, as an employer, am forced to decide between hiring you, an antivaxxer, which risks killing even one of my existing employees, you're not getting the job, period. I owe them a duty of care before you. And their families too. And babies too young to immunize -- is it okay if they die?
This stems from a similar misunderstanding of liberty as the "freedom of speech applies to Twitter" argument. The first amendment protects you from legislation infringing on your free speech. It doesn't require private companies to broadcast your speech at your sole discretion. The same would be true of a hypothetical vaccination rule. Even if the government weren't able to legislate in this regard, nothing precludes any private party from refusing you food, a home or a job on the basis of your vaccination status. Being an antivaxxer isn't a protected class to the best of my knowledge.
None of this is mandatory though.
If a college can request vaccination records I would expect an employer to also be able to. I know in the case of working at a veterinary office (or any sort of animal rehab) rabies vaccine is a workplace requirement.
I think a better question is if this is deemed enough of a public health emergency (which I think it could eventually be), that the information gets shared with federal gov and the wackos get thrown on the no-fly list.
Ok, let's move the path upstream then. If you want a passport and/or a driver's license renewal, you need to provide a vaccination record or a valid medical exemption. These are travel documents and I personally wouldn't want to sit next to a measles infested traveler on a plane.
The problem will resolve itself in some years as credentials expire.
Imagine if someone working at Apple’s UFO caught The Plague. That would certainly be of some concern. Same with Amazon in Seattle, or even an Amazon warehouse. People come and go from all of those places constantly and one person could have an outsized impact on people who are otherwise completely unrelated to the origin of the disease.
Ask your doctor. If it isn’t in your records, an antibody titer blood test is definitive. For public health purposes, these data have been collected for a long time.
Plus in some places (like California) you can get a free MMR vaccine at pharmacies like CVS, without making a doctor appointment.
ADDED: So, no, as someone born 1960ish I would probably have to get a test to prove I was vaccinated against all the standard diseases.
We're really bad about centralized health data in the US, but schools keep track of immunization data. How long they retain your records will no doubt vary.
Is that ironic? Is this journalism now?
1. The vaccine failed to create immunization
2. They were not vaccinated at some young age, but always assumed they were
The article seems to suggest that this person was an anti-vaxxer as opposed to a casualty of anti-vaxxer ideology.