- Getting your children vaccinated is an exceptionally good idea. Our children have had their vaccinations precisely on schedule, because it's an exceptionally good idea.
- Not all ideas, even exceptionally good ones, should be subject to government force.
- As some of you might know, we were in California about a month ago and our travels took us to Disneyland, which was the site of a measles outbreak. Like the vast majority of visitors to Disneyland during this time, every member of our party either has been vaccinated, or may have had measles in their youth. We are all healthy.
- One reason measles is coming back is that people are mobile and come to the United States from places where measles is present and vaccinations are not routine. That appears to be the case with the Disneyland outbreak.
- Do the anti-vaccination people have a point? Almost certainly not, especially concerning autism, but research is ongoing and should continue. On balance, vaccination is still by far the better choice.
- In some respects, the debate over vaccinations is a proxy battle over the larger questions concerning public health and its nexus with government force.
- The government expects compliance on a great many health issues, including wearing a seat belt. I always wear one. Should I be compelled to do so? Different question.
Tuesday, February 03, 2015
On Vaccines
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8 comments:
My take on the whole deal is that if the government actually provided relevant data instead of saying "do this", the debate would quickly become irrelevant.
Kinda like seat belts. OK, you reduce peak force on average by x%, and thus increase accident survivability so much....but I guess the new math prevents a lot of people from grasping numbers, so we're using basically the same tactics used by the North Koreans or Cubans instead.
Land of the free, baby!
[T]he debate over vaccinations is a proxy battle over the larger questions concerning public health and its nexus with government force.
Yes. But I'd go further. It's not limited to health care. The same thing is at work in education. And it's not just the institution of government; it's also institutions like the media, the NFL, and the Church. We do not trust like we used to trust.
Concerning the topic at hand: lacking widespread trust, should the government use force? That might increase vaccination a bit, but it weakens trust even further. It's like taking a stone out of the foundation to patch a hole in the wall.
On another note, once trust begins to dwindle, discussing the issues becomes very difficult. The CDC says so? That's great if a person trusts the CDC. Some people don't. People used to trust Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News. Not so much these days. They assumed the people's trust was some kind of birthright and they went all Esau on it. And the government/science/media nexus hasn't exactly been innocent on this score.
myself, and all of my generation, were vaccinated against all kinds of things. we are still here, free of such rampant diseases.
thats all the trust i need proven.
On another note, once trust begins to dwindle, discussing the issues becomes very difficult. The CDC says so? That's great if a person trusts the CDC. Some people don't. People used to trust Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News. Not so much these days. They assumed the people's trust was some kind of birthright and they went all Esau on it. And the government/science/media nexus hasn't exactly been innocent on this score.
Exactly. And now because they find themselves in this predicament, many of the grandees don't know what to do.
"One reason measles is coming back is that people are mobile and come to the United States from places where measles is present and vaccinations are not routine"
WHO/UNICEF stats* on global immunization rates say otherwise. For measles-containing vaccine, the 2013 numbers for the US and Mexico are 91% and 89%, respectively. I think the lowest number in Central America is 88%. Some countries do better than the US.
They are comparable throughout most of SE Asia, higher in China. To get to really lower rates, you have to go to India (~74% off the top of my head) or Iraq (somewhere in the 60s), but the really appalling numbers are in places like the Central African Republic (the 20s, I think). That's a tiny drop in the bucket of our unregulated migration.
In some respects, the debate over vaccinations is a proxy battle over the larger questions concerning public health and its nexus with government force.
Bollocks. It's about empiricism versus firmly held (and otherwise groundless) belief.
*If you don't trust the only organization in the world actually committed to studying this stuff rigorously and globally, that's your right, I suppose. But don't expect me for a minute to regard your arguments as rooted in fact, because they aren't.
Brian, two points:
We don't know who brought the measles to Disneyland; we may never know. It's possible that a child with anti-vax parents was responsible as well. We don't know. Having been to Disneyland during the period where the measles virus was present in the park, I can tell you that the folks who run the park don't check for passports. I heard many languages spoken at Disneyland when we were there. Visitors (not necessarily immigrants, by the way) to the country do bring in diseases; it's ultimately something we have to live with and I harbor no illusions about that. The problem is pretty simple; if you put one person with measles in a community where anti-vax sentiment is strong, and California is one of those places, you have a recipe for trouble. One can stipulate that the WHO/UNICEF data sets are correct, and I have no reason to believe they aren't correct, and it doesn't affect my point one bit.
In re: "bollocks," let's be clear about something. Empiricism has its limits when hearts and minds are involved. You and I both know that the Jenny McCarthys of the world are pernicious. You don't have to convince me; you have to convince people who aren't swayed by empirical arguments. See also argumentum ab auctoritate and Picklesworth's comment.
Perhaps the government doesn't need to force one to vaccinate their children, but any parent who makes the decision to not vaccinate causing their child to contract a given disease and then ultimately spread it to others should be rendered penniless through civil liability because this would meet the true definition of negligence.
Perhaps the government doesn't need to force one to vaccinate their children, but any parent who makes the decision to not vaccinate causing their child to contract a given disease and then ultimately spread it to others should be rendered penniless through civil liability because this would meet the true definition of negligence.
Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. If you assume that parents would be the only individuals on the hook for civil liability for a measles outbreak, you haven't seen the modern legal system in action.
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