The internet has been simply abuzz about H1N1 and vaccines.
* It’s government pandering to the medical industrial complex. (Yes, I’ve repeated this myself.)
* It’s a de-population program.
* It’s a bio-weapon.
* Vaccines are essential.
* Vaccines are bullshit.
My favorite single reflection came from Ron Paul: The vaccine fiasco is a demonstration of how government doesn’t work. In New York, people who don’t want the vaccine are being forced by government to take it, while elsewhere people who want it can’t get it because there are shortages.
Here’s a collection of stories about the vaccine and H1N1 which I found interesting:
A brief conversation with a vaccine manufacturer:
Dr. Lorraine Day on government hype, the dangers of vaccines, and pharmaceutical companies.
See also criticism of Dr. Day.
Goldman Sachs Received H1N1 Vaccine Before Several Hospitals (GS) (Read more from businessinsider.com)
Isn’t that special!
Council on Foreign Relations discusses anti-vaccine movement & how to sell the vaccine to the public. They suggest faking a shortage of the vaccine to create panic.
Right or wrong, one thing I hate about these people is the way they assume my health together with everybody else’s is their business.
My favorite video, and, I think, the most damaging to vaccine proponents is this affiliate CBS video with exposes how H1N1 is being massively misdiagnosed, and the CDC is dragging its feet in admitting it.
arghhhhhhhhh. where to even begin?
video #1 – if i was sarah palin, i would call this “gotcha journalism”. this isnt really vaccine manufacturer responding to questions, this is some idiot in a call center trained to give canned answers trying to respond off script. now, admittedly, it would be much better if whatever company this is had better informed, better trained people manning the phone, but it really says nothing about the vaccine itself.
so, the operator fully acknowledges that there is conflicting evidence on the efficacy of the vaccine, that doesnt sound so horribly conspiratorial to me. she then acknowledges that some vaccines contain thimerosol, and attempts to explain why, but doesnt do a really great explanation of why some contain it and some dont. its much better to have vaccine with preservative so you dont get expired useless vaccine, but a small proportion of preservative free is produced for administration to possibly vulnerable populations – young kids and pregnant women. its impractical, expensive and pointless to produce all of it preservative free because if you exist in the modern world, you ingest and are exposed to so much more mercury anyway the possibly relative danger of thimerosol from vaccine is nil.
and then this ends on the exciting question of whether this random woman is getting the vaccine, which is utterly irrelevant in every way. she is obviously not that bright, so why should anyone care what she chooses to do. she also is not likely to be in the age range of people most likely to become deathly ill if they get h1n1 (under 25).
video #2 I couldnt get through. idiocy. im annoyed that you gave her the space of embedding a video, with just a little link below to criticism of her. not worth an appearance in your blog, really. according to her, and her ilk, basically we dont need to worry about any diseases ever, all we need to do is eat fruits veg and their special formula of magical quack powder.
i understand the temptation to call outbreaks that didnt become full blown epidemics “hoaxes” but its ridiculous. the problem is that some outbreaks might become epidemic, some might not, due to a variety of circumstances. if people didnt worry about them, and didnt do any planning, then if they do explode into epidemics, there are serious, possibly terrible consequences. low probability, high risk. its like saying that since not every spark turns into a fire, we shouldnt try to contain them and that all potential fires are hoaxes.
now, obviously, there are a lot of people who do stand to make a lot of money out of needlessly worrying people, and there are very good reasons to exercise skepticism and be as well informed as possible about the risk and potential benefits of vaccines. But just because there is reason to be skeptical about some “cures”, that doesnt mean you shouldnt also fear the potential of diseases. is it simply a coincidence that the advent and widespread uses of vaccines coincided with the decline of certain disease incidence? smallpox? polio? measles? now granted, all of those are much more serious diseases than h1n1, but at first h1n1 seemed to be FAR more virulent than it has turned out to be in the general public, and i think it should be fairly obvious that while some vaccines have more benefits and are more neccessary than others, vaccination as an overall concept is not useless or simply some evil money making scheme.
the last video, i am not interested in defending the cdcs #s, but there are practical reasons for overdiagnosis that have nothing to do with unneccessary fearmongering. flus are often pretty nonspecific, and lab testing for them takes time and is very expensive. if a doctor sees what appears to be h1n1, its actually much better to report it as a probably case, and then see if further testing confirms, because then that person’s status will be well-monitored in case the more deadly complications occur, and will take care to quarantine themselves and not spread around what might be h1n1. obviously, the numbers should be revised once testing disconfirms the dx, but overdx in the initial stage is actual the most practical, least expensive and least harmful way to deal with a potential infection.
i could obviously go on and on and on about this but ill stop :)
wait no, more to say…
i think that for any liberty-minded individual, rather than giving space and credit to people like that doctor who is herself promoting her own agenda, it is far more effective and useful to focus on two things –
1) there are risks and benefits of all treatments. the testing of these treatments and the analyses of disease data are probably best left to hopefully honest (and i think most are) non financially compromised scientists, but in the end, the choice of whether or how to act on that data must be left to the individual.
and more importantly,
2) if diseases are really to be feared, and treatments are really effective and necessary, individuals will willingly choose to get them. the more treatments are coerced, the less people trust that there is a good reason to get them. i may have previously mentioned this to you, but i think the best examples are from the smallpox era. to lazy to look up the specific details of this but i learned this in a class… in the late 1800s there was an outbreak of smallpox somewhere in Ohio. the city put in place mandatory vaccination with threat of fines and imprisonment if people refused. so people refused, and there was a huge outbreak and many deaths. in the early 1900s there was an outbreak in nyc where the dept of health put in place a massive, completely voluntary, vaccination program, and there were lines around city of people begging for the vaccine. something upwards of 95% were vaccinated, and a major epidemic and mortality was averted. voluntary vaccination works, coercion doesnt.
I mean, I agree that video #2 was pretty out there. I think I presented this as a survey of what’s out there. #3 is pretty damning though. Don’t you think?
actually i hadnt watched that one cause my comp wasnt loading it. just did, and no, i actually dont think its damning at all. that woman is quite obviously joking about the shortage. not that i dont think its possible that that c/would be done, but uninformed people respond really irrationally to these things, and she is making a joke about how to convince them without mandates.
from the perspective of scientists who work on a lot of this stuff, anti-vacciners ARE crazy (see: the videos you posted), and dangerous, as they continue to persuade people with their idiotic misinterpretations of the data and evidence.
The last video is the one that’s titled “CDC guestimates H1N1 . . .” That’s the one I consider damning to the vaccine pushers.
this is possibly one of the best articles ive seen on the topic
www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/brownlee-h1n1