I conceded there may be a point where vaccination has diminishing returns. I didn’t say that the risk of harming anyone “near zero.” I guess you don’t know what diminishing returns means, so please read the definition. And I did not compare the risk of vaccination after herd immunity. You hadn’t thrown that out there at that point. There are risks involved in driving and risks of vaccination and there are also benefits, but a serious comparison of those risks and the benefits would involve a complex statistical analysis, and (spoiler alert) I know you didn’t do that. That means you’re supporting your point by making up statistics.
Funny, I get nervous when I think of NOT having government between people and their doctors. But then, I’m in a country with UHC and mandatory vaccines, whose people have serious problems believing that the US doesn’t.
Barring dental work, I haven’t had a single injection since leaving school.
Never fond of them, I discovered at an early age the hard way that an anti-tetanus jab would have a strong chance of killing me, which cemented my disfavour — oddly enough this meant a series of yearly injections, but that kind of petered out.
Few favour compulsory vaccination in Britain perhaps because we have a stronger tradition of individual freedom: even the BMA is against compulsion. People were imprisoned following the 1853 act, but the riots eventually persuaded governments to allow conscientious objection. In Britain a patient’s right to refuse treatment is seen as a fundamental human right.
All I said is that the statistics need to be considered in determining if a person should be allowed to not get vaccinated. I didn’t say I did the analysis. But we have a known example that proves my point, Smallpox
Smallpox was eradicated without 100% of the population vaccinated:
And there are other examples at that link of parts of the population not being vaccinated.
I put this forth this as proof that 100% of the population being vaccinated is not required to eradicate the disease (after which point risk of the un-vax’ed is zero).
What the percentage is IDK, but we do know it is at less then 100%, which leaves room for some opting out, which is my point.
Are you saying that those who choose not to vaccinate should be separated from society and quarantined?
When smallpox used to break out, though, there WAS a requirement for 100% vaccination in the affected area and a ring around it, to contain the outbreak. There were requirements to vaccinate against it if you crossed international borders - don’t want to be vaccinated? Fine, then stay home.
The thing is, since we don’t insist on vaccinating people with genuine medical contra-indications we’ll never have 100% vaccination rates. Because a certain number of vaccines don’t actually “take” coverage isn’t 100% even among the vaccinated. Because we know there will always be these “holes” in the herd immunity it’s vital to actually get everyone else on board. A 50% rate is NOT “herd immunity”. Effective herd immunity requires rates of over 90%. Basically, even if you can’t get to 100% you want to get as close as possible to it.
Also consider that, as a disease is close to being eradicated, large areas are free of it. As long as you stay within that area, and entry is closely monitored, you don’t need to vaccinate within that particular area. That’s why polio vaccine was discontinued in the US a few years back - it’s extinct in North America. But if you go to an area of the world where polio still exists yes, it’s a very good idea to get vaccinated or a booster or whatever you need. If you do happen to bring it back with you there may need to be a re-vaccination program around you and your contacts to prevent an outbreak.
Large areas free of a particular disease only occur by a prior effort to vaccinate nearly as completely as possible.
Which statistics are you talking about?
This is a bad example and it’s obvious you didn’t read the rest of the entry or understand what you quoted.
This means smallpox was always rare in Australia and New Zealand. That’s one reason they didn’t have to vaccinate everybody. The other reason is that most of Australia is a big desert with very few inhabitants, so it’s hard for diseases to spread. That’s not going to work in most places. And if you read the rest of the entry, you’ll see that extreme methods were used in stamping out the disease prior to vaccination. Vaccination is a lot freer than quarantines, so how do you support quarantines?
That should be reserved for people who could get sick or die from vaccinations, not everybody who falls for some bullshit conspiracy theory.
It does make sense for someone who travels as a requirement of that travel to ensure the safety of the people you came in contact with both abroad and at home. I do think it is reasonable to mandate vaccinations for such travel.
Accepted Point
Not Accepted Point
And I think this is where we are having trouble communicating. To me you have made a illogical jump. ‘Because we have excluded these people we have no more room to exclude any more’, that has not been proven.
No one has shown the anti-vax crowd, if given their way to opt out, to bring the percent vaccinated below herd immunity levels. I don’t know where you got 50% from, are you saying that if the anti-vaxers could opt out there would be 50% vaccinated, that AFAIK has not been proven.
He hasn’t made a leap. He’s come to a conclusion based on statistics, which is a good way to do it. To get herd immunity, you a large majority of the population needs to get vaccinated. And when you take out the number of people who can’t be vaccinated and people whose won’t become immune for the vaccine, you may not have a whole lot of room for people who just don’t feel like getting a shot. You can’t calculate a precise number of opt-outs and saying “10,000 people can opt out, but not more” is not going to be very popular.
Do you understand the concept of an example?
The 50% is what is called “an example” or a WAG. I want to emphasize that NOWHERE did I claim allowing anti-vaxxers to opt out would drop rates below 50%
I am not at this point *exactly *certain of the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated in order to have effective herd immunity but I do recall it being higher than I though it would be last time I had to do any serious work on the topic (back when I worked for a health insurance company and my department used to confer with the CDC back in the day).
On this I will defer to experts at places like the CDC rather than some stranger on a message board. I suggest you do likewise.
The required vaccination rate may also vary depending on the disease, route of transmission, and so forth. An airborne infectious agent will require a higher percentage of vaccination for herd immunity than, say, one spread by exchange of body fluids.
As an example, diseases like measles and whooping cough are usually said to need 94% of the total population vaccinated before herd occurs. That includes those too young to vaccinate and those for whom vaccines pose unacceptable risks. Diphtheria, on the other hand, might only require 85% vaccination for herd immunity. A quick google search will bring up the numbers for any disease you care to name from a variety of sources.
Keep in mind - that’s the rate required for herd immunity, which is not the same as the rate required to drive a disease to extinction. Herd immunity merely limits outbreaks and spreads, extinction requires NO new infections.
Not proven
Not proven, or so have I, you can have it either way
Agreed, but again a leap, or I have done this too.
Yes accepted
Or you may have room, that is not proven one way or another.
Not sure what you are getting at here, either mathematics won’t allow a precise number or the number determined by mathematics will not be popular if more wish to opt out then mathematics allow. the latter would only come into play if the antivax crowd is numerous enough to cause that effect which again has not been proven.
Me dumping my gallon jug of coal ash into the river isn’t very likely to hurt anyone, therefore people should be allowed to opt out of regulations against dumping coal ash.
Actually, yes it has for some of the previously more common diseases. There are people who devote their entire careers to studying such problems. Seriously, go look it up, vaccination rates to provide herd immunity for a number of diseases are well established.
Also - the fact that as vaccination rates fall the rates of infection go up for things like measles is additional proof that public health scientists aren’t pulling cotton candy out of their backsides, this stuff is actually based on real science.
Um me go look it up, in GD, I think not.
CITE PLEASE!!!
(your responsibility to prove your statement)
I think you’re using “not proven” to mean “I personally don’t know the facts,” and I don’t know what you’re trying to say here. He’s saying these opt-outs are a bad idea because herd immunity will be lost. You can use Google and read estimates for herd immunity for different diseases yourself.
How do you expect to know ahead of time?
We already know the antivax crowd is numerous and that it’s led to resurgences in diseases that were almost wiped out. We’ve already discussed that in this thread. We can make educated estimates but we can’t determine a precise number of people who need to be vaccinated, so you can’t allow a precise number of people to opt out. You either mandate the vaccine or you don’t.
See link and stats in post #109.
So not only was that cite already posted, it was posted directly in reply to kanicbird. Of course it was. Great.
Yes I took that specific post in mind throughout this debate, that shows that in certain cases up to 15% or more of the population can remain vaccinated while still maintaining herd immunity.
So what is the issue here, that leaves 15% of the population able to remain un-vax (Large enough I assume to include both the health compromised and the anti-vax crowd).
And how do you know that?
See Czarcasms post # 109
I do not know that, I assume they are a very vocal minority.
Must have missed that, please provide me where this has happened
See the above link in to Czarcasm’s posting, seems like a hard number to me, at least in terms of percent. Do you wish to challenge Czarcasm’s cite? If not how can you say there are not hard numbers that can be determined?