I’m just going to say right out, I know little of the science of vaccines. It’s not something I ever cared or thought all that much about; unti recently I just accepted vaccines as normal and healthy. As with most kids, I got jabbed with the needle whenever the nurse came to school. It was usually a horrible experience because inevitably someone, a classmate or my brother, would always punch my newly poked arm and it would hurt like the dickens for the rest of the day, but I never questioned it.
I like vaccines; I like kids not getting polio or malaria. Up until about a year ago, I thought anti-vaxxers were nuts, I still think some of them are.
But this last year I have began to have my doubts, and it has nothing to do with any arguments anti-vaxxers have made. The only anti-vaxxer (although, he seemed more skeptical than outright opposed) I’ve read is Vox and none of what I’ve read of his has been a definitive argument for why not to vaccinate, he seemed argue more that parents should have a choice.
I’ve really been beginning to have doubts about vaccines because of those in favour of them. However nuts some of the anti-vaxxers are, the insanity of the pro-vaxxers dwarfs them as the sun does the moon. Over the last month, I have bombarded with pro-vaccine propoganda from what little MSM I read, from websites, from FB, and without fail it sounds like a deranged religious crusade:
“Those ignorant, fearful anti-vaxxer heathens need to see the light of the vaccine and accept the salvation of the injection. If in their superstitious ignorance they fail reject the teachings of the divine Department of Health, then we, the noble, holy, chosen of SCIENCE! shall force the truth into them for their own good. To herd immunity be the glory, the honour, and the power, forever and ever. Amen!”
I exaggerate, but barely.
Anything being pushed with this much unhinged fervor automatically triggers my skepticism reflexes. When and why the hell did the pro-vaccine crowd become such raving fanatics?
The tyrannical nature of the pro-vaxxers is the first thing to get to me. If vaccines work then why the need to force others to get them? Just get your own kids vaccinated and they’ll be fine. Let other parents worry about their own kids. The only reason to try to force them on others seems to be that a doubt that vaccines work, but if you doubt vaccines work, why force them on others?
Now, herd immunity comes up whenever I see that bit of common sense mentioned. Sure, there may be a few kids with cancer who may not be able to get vaccinated, but these are 0.02% of the population. Statistically they hardly exist. For such rare cases, I’m sure a reasonable solution can be found that doesn’t require mandatory, non-consensual, government-forced injections. Maybe have a school wing or a few classrooms where the unvaccinated are not allowed, or a private tutor for the child with cancer, or whatever. However its done, I’m sure the one in 5,000 case can be accommodated on an individual basis.
As well, what happens to those cancer kids, if/when the government decides that having cancer is no excuse for not vaccinating? The precedent of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few will already have been set.
Second, what is with the simple labels of pro- or anti-vaccinations? You’re in either in favour of every vaccine under the sun or some anti-vaxxer nutjob. I don’t know much about the science of vaccines, but even I know there is no single vaccination, as the plural ‘s’ implies. There are many vaccines and each vaccination would carry a different cost-benefit analysis.
In my barely-considered opinion, the polio vaccine seems like an unarguable good. I can’t see me not giving it to my child. On the other hand the case for the HPV vaccine is much more suspect. The vaccine prevents a virus that is easy to avoid (ie. don’t be promiscuous) and very rarely (about 0.009% of the time by my quick calculation) causes cancer. So, I’d question if the HPV vaccine is worth the potential risks.
Yet when I’ve seen people question the costs and benefits of the HPV vaccine, or even just say parents should be allowed to choose whether to inject their teenage daughters with this, they are automatically lumped in as an insane anti-vaxxers who want to flood the streets with malaria-infected, polio-crippled children. This is even more insane when you realize that herd immunity is even more meaningless with respect to an STD.
Third, I keep seeing the argument that there is no risk to vaccines and they are entirely safe. That can simply not be true. There is no such thing as completely safe when injecting foreign chemicals into your body. Even good-ol-fashioned Tylenol can have some severe side effects, and a vaccination is literally injecting a benign form of a disease into yourself. The constant denial of risks makes me suspicious. To be fair, organizations like the CDC seem to be reasonable in this respect (“low-risk”, “negligible risk”, etc.) but almost every pro-vaxxer propagandist completely discounts any risk at all.
Finally, the types of people I see going all insanely pro-vax are also the types of people I see who are very pro-immigrant and pro-illegals. If vaccinations are so important to public health and herd immunity, why do these same pro-vax people support importing hordes of unvaccinated third-world children? There seems a strong disconnect there, which makes me question their reasoning and motives.
The manichean worldview of the pro-vaxxers combined with their messianic tones, lack of nuance, and logical contradictions makes me strongly wonder about the efficacy of vaccinations. Why the need for such insanity if the position is so supposedly self-evidently true?
None of this is to say anti-vaxxers are all paragons of reason. The science does not seem to support vaccines causing autism (although…). We probably have more autistic kids because parents are having children later in life. But even people like Jenny McCarthy seem calm and reasonable when compared to the ravings of the pro-vaxxers.
I can’t say I’m anti-vaccines, I’m still on the pro-reasonable vaccine side, but it would be accurate to say I’m anti-anti-anti-vaxxers.
If the pro-vaxxers sounded sane, I would never have even thought to question vaccines; if/when I had kids, I would have just done whatever the doctor said was best without a second thought. But given the unhinged rantings of the pro-vaxxers, I now have my doubts; if the truth is so obvious, why the need to hysterics? If/when it comes time, I’m going to be doing my research and may even decline some of those vaccines of lesser import.
Surely, I’m not the only one who’s been forced into questioning vaccines due to the unreasonableness of the pro-vaxxers. Why do people act in ways that are so destructive to their stated intention?
The way global warmists go apeshit over global warming skeptics similarly gives one pause…
Ditto the evolutionists who wish to force all students to be indoctrinated in evolutionist dogma, and utterly reject creationism and intelligent design theory; what are they afraid of?
I can understand why some think everything we know is wrong…
(I refer, of course, to complete dogmatists like Richard Dawkins, who has declared that anyone who leaves high school without having learned evolutionary theory should not be allowed to graduate, and get their diploma. What is he so afraid of?)
I’m not quite sure how to respond to this. The line of reasoning you have used to achieve this conclusion is incorrect even if it’s hedged like the way you’ve done.
I’m not quite sure what to say.
@Will . Right.
Free Northerner, it was that same skepticism reflex, triggered by ranting and raving, that led me to question the Trinity doctrine, and then the idea of the Saturday sabbath. It is a healthy reflex, glad to find another person paying attention to it.
And Will: I second what you say about the skeptics reflex viz Evolution and Global Warming.
The funny thing is that if MDs start researching the real science, statistics and history of vaccines, then the whole card-house comes crashing down in a big pile of smoke. There is a reason why most MDs are told very little about vaccines.
Especially if you become aware of excellent alternatives for all vaccine-treatable diseases like orthomolecular medicine, then the madness is more apparent.
Currently they are revving up the propaganda and since they cannot forcibly vaccinate everyone yet, they want to ignite the sheeple to do the bullying for them. Measles before the vaccines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDb0ZS3vB9g
Completely non-vaccinated children beat vaccinated children on all parameters of immunity – less hospitalizations, less sick-days, less autism, stronger immune system, even way less cancer over lifetime. There is a reason why such definitive comparative studies are not done by the CDC despite the fact that there are millions of non-vaccinated in countries like Germany, Switzerland or the USA. Switzerland by the way has in some regions vaccination rates of under 75% and child mortality is lower than in the US.
Also you have to realize that the Government wants ALL CITIZENS TO BE VACCINATED constantly forcibly. Maybe we will have vaccine riots like in the 19th and early 20th century in the UK and South America. Oh – forgotten about that from the history books, haven’t we?
Here’s a little theory.
Vaccines don’t create autism, etc.
Instead the mental health field has simply extended the definition of autism and etc. to include ANY kid that exhibits the slightest bit of eccentricism in order to line their pockets.
Gullible parents (in particular the mothers) buy into the claims that their kids are autistic on the authority of these self serving fuckheads.
The parents feel guilty like maybe they did something to cause all this.
And then they remember the vaccines they recently got their child.
And viola!
A scapegoat for a non existent problem.
A myth (that vaccines cause autism) is created by parents so that parents won’t have to feel guilty about ANOTHER myth! (i.e. that their kids are autistic just cuz they often ignore their “I teach school cuz I’m a cunt that just wants to be the center of universe all the time on the pretense of helping society” teachers).
Even a cursory amount of reading will reveal the number of deaths and lifelong disabilities once caused by serious childhood diseases that were all but eradicated by vaccination. Vox Day is trying to zero in on falling measles rates (a less serious illness) pre-vaccination to encourage our brains to make the mental leap across the gap that vaccinations aren’t necessary to control and eradicate these serious illnesses. (He doesn’t directly say this, he just says things that encourage people to draw that conclusion for themselves). Look at the stats in places like California and you’ll in fact see that child deaths – actual, real deaths, not statistical deaths like the ones in secondhand smoking and such – from diseases like whooping cough are going up. These are concentrated in areas with low vaccination rates.
Vaccinations have a classic free rider problem, however. If I choose not to vaccinate my child, I avoid a tiny risk from an adverse allergic reaction or some such, and rely on other people exposing their children to that risk to keep my kids safe from disease. What’s more, because you can’t tell if a child has been vaccinated or not, parents who might otherwise hold you accountable for your decision by keeping their own kids away from yours to avoid the risk of exposure to disease can’t easily do it.
I’d point out that the people who’ve led the anti-vax movement today are not John Birchers. They are mostly left-wingers in places like Hollywood and Marin County – exactly the sorts of people who endorse SJW ideas and everything else people complain about around here. That says a lot about them right there.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you on ones like HPV. Not all vaccinations are equal in their importance.
The main thing that makes me question the whole thing is this: if vaccines work, and your kid has been vaccinated, then why worry about other kids whose parents have made the choice to not vaccinate? I mean, that’s their problem, since your kid is protected by the vaccine. Make no mistake, this is more about the gubmint forcing you to do something by law than it is anything else. Otherwise, we would all be able to choose, wouldn’t we? And the whole “herd immunity” thing is a bunch of bs, as evidenced by the resurgence of diseases once thought to be almost completely eradicated. And what they don’t tell you is this: many of the people who end up getting measles or the flu, etc, WERE VACCINATED!! That’s the dirty little secret that you will be hard-pressed to find any statistics on.
Herd immunity is also a factor because even if you vaccinate your kid there is still a chance that they can be infected, but it’s true that enthusiasm for vaccination is mostly based on a desire to OBEY and FIT IN. From the government’s perspective the benefits of a vaccine across the population will almost always outweigh any negative individual effects, so propaganda released through the MSM exploits this psychological tendency
Vox turns into a complete idiot when it comes to certain subjects (e.g. vaccinations, evolution) and I’m saddened to see you, one of my favorite bloggers, going down that same path merely out of spite.
If you truly like kids not getting polio or malaria, then “the parents’ right to choose” should not be a concern. As conservatives/reactionaries we surely understand (or are supposed to understand) that society needs some compulsory restraints for its own good. The other day you wrote about how society should forgo prisons in favor or death penalty, whippings, etc. Did you mean that as laws compulsorily enforced on everyone, or merely as suggestions, that the prisoners should have the right to choose between one of those and not being punished at all?
The comparison with the HPV vaccine is not apt because the HPV vaccine is not mandatory. If they do decide to make it mandatory, then it’s a matter of discussing whether the HPV should be mandatory, not vaccines in principle. Same thing with the cancer patients. Because if all vaccinations are merely voluntary, then kids WILL get polio and malaria, period. And not just the kids that did not vaccinate. It’s as simple as that. You even seem to recognize that, but then decide you’re ok with that because parents should be able to decide whether other people’s kids should get sick as well?
This concern for “freedom” over responsibility is a liberal’s errand, it’s at the heart of almost everything we decry about modernity, and it sounds extremely out of character coming from you. At least you admit that it does not come from a rational place.
the #1 problem to be addressed is the corruption of the system that is producing and testing these vaccines. Vaccination makes decent sense to me and herd immunity is reasonable; what isn’t reasonable is forcing people to ignore concerns of safety. Autism is *probably* not actually linked, but there seems to have been a lot of dubious shit surrounding all that*. Besides, imagine your doc prescribes you some new drug or treatment and you ask if there are any possible side-effects and he says “WELL IT SURE DOESN’T CAUSE AUTISM IF THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE THINKING!!” Doesn’t really answer the question, not terribly reassuring.
Here’s a pretty striking article about drug company and health science corruption: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/
*for example, I read that another dude who worked for the CDC came forward to say that they had been suppressing results from certain communities or something, and then there’s the fact that the guy who spearheaded the campaign to discredit the original autism link ended up being convicted of multiple counts of financial fraud…no smoking gun, but a good diagnostic of the character of a man who a conspiracy nut might accuse of being a hired gun for the pharmaceutical companies. You’ll have to Google for sources.
Herd immunity is a myth, it used to be ~50% when it began and now, as their own goalposts don’t work, estimates say 97%+ is required.
Live attenuated vaccines can make the subject contagious (and since they get them at hospitals, they can walk among cancer patients). Autoimmune conditions are the biggest risk from toxic ingredients.
“Vaccine failure” is the simplest answer to your question. They can’t admit that [Narrative]. Mass Immigration is bringing these diseases back from the Third World (just like Plague). Hence California, high immigrant pop., and in Europe, London is now the TB capital. It doesn’t pop out of nowhere and decide to go for the rich areas. If anything, over-vaccination is increasing mutation rates (see flu). Nature always wins.
I work in biomedical regulatory. Judgybitch was right to look at the package labelling for vaccines. In both the drug study and post-marketing experience, the FDA requires all drug companies to report adverse events to the FDA or else suffer extreme legal and criminal action. The fact that drug companies were forced to disclose a risk of autism in their structured product labelling immediately nukes the objections by pro-vaccine crowd that the objections are all hysteria. And as if autism wasn’t bad enough, SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) has also been tied to vaccines along with other medical complications. Infant inoculation is a dicey game and no matter what, some loving mothers and fathers will never bring their babies home, or will bring them home forever changed. It’s unnecessary. Judgybitch’s decision to delay and space out vaccinations is the moderate compromise between maintaining immunity to disease and guarding against potential risks from vaccines.
Additionally, Gardasil (one of the major HPV vaccines) is currently under heavy assault in the legal world from suits brought due to adverse events. It was a risky money-making gamble to tack on yet another mandatory vaccine for insurers and parents to pay for. Except this one violated the “do no harm” principle in that it exposes a subject to risk without genuine reason. I’m waiting for a full post-marketing report on Cervarix (competitor HPV drug) to hit before I make conclusions, but it also does not sound promising.
The correct response to vaccinations is to read about all of the risks, weigh them for yourself, and make the right decision for your family. Immediately drop any doctor who refuses to comply with your wishes in the inoculation of your children, such as this one. If I was in the same room as this smug little man, I’d have a tough time restraining myself from knocking some of his teeth out. What he’s advocating is forced unnecessary medical procedures. I’d point out to Mr. Ginsberg (his name) the eerie similarities between this and supposed goings-ons at concentration camps, but sadly the tribe has a me-but-not-for-thee attitude for the goys.
The single most impactful thing you, I, or anybody else can do in this country to prevent the spread of epidemics is to close our borders to the third/developing world. Sadly, that’s the only option not on the table. I hear all of this pro-vax rhetoric stressing the number growth of measles, etc. cases in the past few years, however, no demographic data is available. We do know a lot of these cases are in California. Is California an illegal-immigrant destination (he wondered to himself).
@Esmero
Scare tactics, nonsense, badly formulated arguments. Pro-vaxxers have implicitly adopted the position that any and all stipulations with regards to vaccination are invalid. As the doctor I linked said, no delays nor increased space between inoculations is to be tolerated. They drew an extreme and absolute line in the sand and called everybody on the other side radicals. This is a traditional progressive tactic. I don’t know many (if any) anti-vaxxers who are completely opposed to inoculation. They just want to mitigate risks they are more likely to deal with statistically (deaths, complications from vaccines) while still providing some measure of protection against what vaccines were made for.
It’s not just cancer kids; infants are generally vulnerable. The Measles, Mumps, Rubella shot is administered at 1 year of age, so your baby is vulnerable up until then, which isn’t a big deal if everyone else is vaccinated, but is if measles is circulating among the population. Parents freak out about risks to their infants.
This is a really good post making really good points. I am anti-vaccine and I came to it from almost exactly the vector you are on. Indeed, since I have been a professional propagandist for the government (14 years in “information operations”/PSYOP), I recognize it when I see it and boy, did I see it. I recommend Susan Humphries’ work to really get a highly documented and exactingly detailed historical and scientific survey of the issue. Notice, the MSM NEVER has someone like her on to represent the anti-V side, but always some nutjob sounding mouth breather.
Esmero, absolutely understand where you are coming from. It is indeed the Reactionary position not to prioritize things like vague ‘freedom’ over societal health.
BUT
I cannot in good conscience see this as the state’s legitimate responsibility. Your child is your business as long as you are not contradicting your own moral responsibilities laid out in Doctrine (eg raising your son to be a sodomite or something). Whether or not a child gets vaccinated is down to the father. This is a VITAL authority that the father has, similar to the child’s education in a craft.
I realize this may come at a price. Yes, there is the potential for diseases that are very destructive to children (although there would likely be less contagion in a society where children weren’t herded into state-run ‘schools’ for hours at a time). But the idea that the state can come into my home and actually inject my child with something by force is pretty Orwellian.
The Reactionary embraces authoritarianism for sure, but that authority is limited by a Traditional concept of duty, and the sovereign’s duty at the head of the state would not seem to include making sure his people are healthy (outside of perhaps the military where he has a legitimate concern). That’s how you end up with the Michelle Obama school lunch plan.
Granted, I do not know much about the vaccine controversy. Some say they are dangerous. Some say they’re fine. Some say we just use them too much. What I do know is, drug companies make a LOT of money on this stuff and I am suspicious of anything that is making someone a lot of money and can then be mandated, especially something as personal as a vaccine. I think we also live in such an age of lies that it is hard to trust ANYTHING coming out of either the media or the academic ivory towers of the profane sciences. These are the same class of people who said we’d all be dead by now because of global warming.
In extreme circumstances, a life threatening plague, I’m with you, and I think fathers in a traditional society would be of such character that they would acquiesce to the sovereign’s demand without issue. However in general the maintaining of health is really something that the state shouldn’t even have time for.
I always bear the following in mind. Had you approached a king anywhere in Europe in the 1100s and recommended setting up an NIH, EPA, NOAA, DOE, HUD, etc, they would have thought it mad.
The Modern King’s check and balance is whatever constitution and need for consensus constrains him (note: it doesn’t work)
The Traditional King’s check and balance is that his very nature balks at mindless, endless bureaucracies.
The government capable of the most effective authority is the one that interferes the least when it need not interfere.
The anti-vaccination group are simply people who do not trust the government enough to take the advice to inject things into them.
Similarly, but less apparent at the surface, autism (related to complaints against vaccines) does not actually exist but is the result of torturing mostly male children in a degenerate anti-Christian environment while they see the fruits of Christian technology around them. It’s excruciating for them. The parents who believe in vaccinating are more likely those who take the established religion of The Cathedral to heart in many ways, not saying vaccinating isn’t the right thing to do.
A.J.P.
I personally reacted quite badly to vaccination as a child. I have no reason to give such things to my children any more than someone with any other given allergy or bad reaction should shove said allergen in their children veins.
Vaccines are not a homogeneous entity, different companies use different formulas and quite importantly different mediums for their vaccines. I won’t touch anything by Merrick, they extensively use an ‘immortal cell line (cancer induced human foetus originally, what monstrosity it is now I cannot say)’ as their medium and that crosses many bars for me. Other companies generally use cow tissue or chicken egg, neither of which bother me but the later can and does cause severe allergic reactions on its own if you don’t know your child’s allergies. Those alone are enough to make some people anti-vax, and mercury very commonly makes people anti-vax, I don’t like mercury but I’m not sure if that alone would be a dealbreaker.
I looked for studies, the drug companies themselves provide what there is. When I looked their durations and sample sizes are terrible and never double-blind. They only ever looked for immediate reactions never anything so much as two weeks much less any kind of real long term study.
Anyway, it comes to the point where I don’t mind some by some companies but a lot of the newer ones are bad in one way or more and certain companies are terrible. The flu vaccine doesn’t even work in theory and it’s shoved down peoples throats. ‘Pandemic’ vaccines come out with little to no testing (even for results) and are generally administered well after the actual number of cases is on a steep decline.
Really though, reading the damn label is enough to make me think people who think vaccines are magic super-medicine that should be taken without thinking are kind of dumb. Get the info from the drug companies themselves, it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be even when they’re pushing it. There’s a place for an old tetnis or rabies shot but there’s no reason to overload on them and there’s no damn way I’ll touch most of the newer line vaccines on grounds of not being well enough tested and having truly horrific stuff in them and for some of them not even working in theory (fast mutating virus’s can’t be vaccinated for unless you’re a magic prophet that can tell what form it will actually take 6 months from now when the vaccine actually gets out, and yet we get those shoved down our throats every year)
See, I am the one being called worse than a literal plague – excuse me if I don’t care about YOUR feelings after that.
And also, the diseases would make WAY more profit for Pharma companies than vaccines. It costs about $33,000 per case for measles to control an outbreak. The MMR vaccine? It costs about $100.
This is not complicated: The anti-vaccine movement directly enriches Big Hospital and Big Pharma.