It’s possible to have a strongly-held belief that one has reached through rational research and thought.
I mean, you can be pro-gay and think people who are anti-gay rights are ignorant assholes, and it doesn’t make you a blind zealot. It just makes you someone who thinks that kind of bigotry is contemptible. Likewise, one can believe that pro-lifers who believe that women’s bodies are made to subservient to their fetuses are disgusting, misogynistic pricks. It is entirely unnecessary to have reached these conclusions through knee-jerk reactions; it is possible to reach them through careful thought.
Deciding that anti-vaxxers are pathetic cowards that put us all at risk through their ridiculous fears is also a conclusion one can reach without “blind zealotry.” Being passionate and angry about something that hurts people is not always a terrible thing. Much social progress has resulted from it.
The leaders? Sure. Rant away at Fred Phelps or Jenny McCarthy. They spread some pretty ugly stuff, and they know exactly what they are doing.
But for the everyday folks who are the wrong side of things? I hate the ignorance, not the ignorant. I don’t blame a home-schooled True Love Waits girl for believing, as she’s been told her whole life, that abortion is wrong. I don’t blame the old fart who can’t wrap his head around gay people getting married. I don’t think most people end up on the wrong side because they are fundamentally bad people who made a rational choice of evil. People are easily led and prone to making really bad errors in judgement. With any luck, that ignorance can be fought using truth.
The whole “this is the Pit, I can say what I want” should go both ways, right? The Pit isn’t some great big circle jerk where everyone pats themselves on the back about what awesome Truth Warriors they are, and even mildly dissenting opinions call for a relentless no holds barred pile-on. If you want a special club where everyone has your exact opinion, isn’t it more efficient to write yourself an email or something?
And LavenderBlue, if you keep flashing your creds, one day someone will give you the gold star you so much deserve! Even if you invented vaccines personally, it doesn’t change that some people may have a slightly different opinion of the best way to promote vaccination than you do.
Still missing the point, I see. Keep clinging to that mistake so that you can continue to feel high-and-mighty, looking down your nose at the rest of the unwashed heathens who dare to express anything other than mild irritation in the Pit. I suppose feeling superior to people who use strong language in a forum designed for that is an ego boost, of a kind.
I don’t see why we can’t hold people responsible for their idiot opinions. It actually seems pretty condescending to claim that the plebes don’t know any better than to think stupid things and that we should be understanding of their shortcomings. Should we cut them slack for beating on gay kids? Murdering doctors who perform abortions? Putting babies, old people, and the sick at risk? Exactly how many people are they allowed to hurt before we hold them morally culpable for their bullshit?
To do otherwise seems like you actually do think they’re lesser people.
Getting irked at gay marriage doesn’t threaten anyone’s life. Refusing to vaccinate does. Comparing the two is ridiculous.
Even Sven,
Go prove to us the efficacy of your approach. Go find a fence sitter and convince them. If you think it’s so easy show us how. Or just continue to come here and pat yourself on the back and whine that others haven’t joined you.
Are you counting suicides that appear to be directly related to anti-gay bullying? It does, however, affect far fewer people than vaccinations, which affect everyone.
The only reason vaccination is even a debate is that it’s so prevalent that the anti-vaxxers have no idea what it would look like if almost everyone weren’t already vaccinated.
Oh I would never deny the evils of the anti-gay movement. Certainly not with several close gay relatives. I think anti-gay bullying is unfortunately one of the few acceptable forms of bigotry in children. I hear high school kids yelp faggot more times than I care to think about including recently in the local library parking lot.
But there’s a huge difference to me between some idiot arguing that gays shouldn’t get married and someone attempting to scare others away from vaccination. Mothering is filled with accounts of lunatics actively courting serious and potentially deadly diseases. I know someone who reasoned someone else out of giving vaccines. Thanks to her the woman’s kids caught whooping cough! WHOOPING COUGH! Ugh. The only good part is that convinced the fence sitter that vaccines were a good thing. I suppose that’s the only possible conclusion after hearing your poor kids practically cough up a lung.
I greatly resent **Even Sven’s **posturing that we’re not allowed to be furious with both of those people in the pit. Or that we’d post with only blind rage in GD when I have already pointed out we did not even when confronted with a real anti-vax nut pretending to be a fence sitter.
That’s true; I was just using it as an example of an opinion I didn’t feel it was necessary to treat respectfully.
I find it kind of sad that the reason vaccines are being debated is probably because they work so well. I mean, if we instead treated these diseases after the fact, I don’t think anyone would be attacking the treatments the same way. It’s because vaccines work so well people don’t even see the disease that they think it’s unnecessary.
That’s very sweet, but your straw man is not getting any mileage here for good reason.
Many times both here and on other boards I’ve seen people with questions and reasonable concerns about vaccines treated with respect and provided good information by the kind of engaged and knowledgeable folks you enjoy referring to as “blind zealots”. Civility is commonplace, though it becomes strained when conspiracy theories and other antivax tropes are persistently trotted out to avoid reasoned discussion. Nor do concern trolls get a lot of respect, as their tendency to single out pro-immunization advocates while ignoring vicious name-calling on the part of antivaxers (and using protests about “civility” to dodge inconvenient questions) is rather transparent. A good example of the pathetic concern troll is Jenny McCarthy’s pediatrician, antivaccine activist Jay Gordon, whose forum commenting style includes insinuating that his opponents are tools of Big Pharma, stupid etc. and then lamenting the lowered tone of debate.
The civility dodge is basically window dressing to disguise the fact that antivaxers don’t have facts and reason on their side.
It’s not about you; it’s what you post. I was among the Dopers impressed by the way you’d apparently matured following your Peace Corps sojourn and thought you’d begun contributing a lot more thoughtful content. More recently however you seem to have reverted to the provocatively stupid postings of old. Ignore this if you want, but the decline has been painful to see.
I was also impressed with your apparent growth from aimless young woman to mature adult, Even Sven. Too bad that sort of maturity is not on display in this thread.
This is 100% truth. Vaccines are a victim of their own success. Parents in developed countries do not have to worry which of their children will die or be permanently damaged from infectious diseases.
I truly believe that the only way the anti-vaxxers will finally be told to STFU by society as a whole is when enough white rich children start to die from childhood diseases that until now have been kept under control via vaccines. Only when we’ve truly lost herd immunity and the anti-vax selfishness is on full display will people finally wake up and realize that doctors actually have known what they’re talking about all along.
It’s just too bad that the “right” children will have to die in order for that to occur. Children are already dying of measles and whooping cough, but apparently we need an epidemic to learn our lesson.
Slight hijack: what’s so terrible about spacing vaccines out? Our daughter got hers on the standard schedule, but I could probably be convinced that giving them one by one is at least as good as giving them in batches. I always figured the reason they were given in clumps wasn’t because it was actually better, but simply because the guys who come up with the schedules don’t trust you to remember to bring your kid in every two weeks or whatever. Is there an actual medical reason why it’s better to have seven immunisations at once?
Even sven, I have nothing against you in general - from what I’ve seen you seem like a nice person - but there’s a certain irony in your posts in this thread. You came in here to lecture people (pretty patronisingly, IMO) about how their tone isn’t productive in changing people’s attitudes. By this point, you have to have noticed that your tone hasn’t been particularly productive in changing people’s attitudes.
The current vaccine schedule has been determined through scientific research to be the most effective at protecting both the child vaccinated and the other members of the household and the community. There are both minimum and maximum lengths of time between vaccine administration that affect efficacy. People who veer from the CDC recommended schedule run the risk of some of the vaccines not being as effective, and the spaced-out schedule does not decrease the possibility of vaccine reactions. So from a medical standpoint, it is better.
It’s also better from a scheduling standpoint. Wouldn’t parents prefer to have fewer well-baby visits than more? If so, then the current schedule is better than a spaced-out schedule.
Dr. Robert Sears, one of the major anti-vaccine proponents, is the developer of the alternative vaccine schedule. Here’s a good run-down of the issues with it.
If you are concerned about any pain when your baby gets her shots you should try to get her to nurse or give her a bottle of pumped milk. I’ve found this to be very helpful.
Study showing efficacy for this method is here:
Dump a boob in her mouth and she won’t notice anything else.
Kolga, that link explains why there’s nothing wrong with the standard schedule, but it doesn’t explain what’s wrong with spacing out vaccines - except that it might lead people to have less absolute faith in doctors, which seems like a very dodgy argument.
LavenderBlue, that one explains more (longer periods of vulnerability), but I’m not sure they’re talking about the same thing I’m talking about. They seem to be talking about spacing out the shots over a long period of time. Example of what I’m talking about: the MMR is due between 12 and 15 months. If my kid gets the measles shot at 12 months, the mumps shot at 13 months and the rubella shot at 14 months, it’s actually got a shorter period of vulnerability than a kid who gets the MMR at 14 months (still well within the recommended age).
I wouldn’t do it because I wouldn’t want to give my kid the extra shots unless there was some concrete reason for it, which there isn’t. But what baffled me was the level of outrage at parents who do. I don’t think that giving your kid a couple of extra shots is in anywhere near the same category of WTF as not getting it vaccinated at all.
Shots can be traumatic for kids. Repeating the experience 3x times when it’s not necessary, for no documented benefit can be unkind. 3x the sore arm, 3x the achy side effects.
Spreading out the vaccine gives more opportunity to miss a dose- 3x chance the child is sick, for example, so must wait, remaining unvaccinated for that illness.
It requires 3x the vaccines to be stored on the premises, 3x the biohazard waste generated and disposed of (which is expensive), 3x the manpower.
There is no documented tangible benefit, that I’ve seen, to spacing and many humanitarian and logistical downsides. I’ve never seen outrage, though, at parents to choose to spread it out. Bafflement, yes, histrionics, no. That’s odd.
I’m outraged at the proposers of “alternative” vaccine schedules because they rely on misinformation and lies. Paul Offitt has written a good articleabout that issue. Most proponents of alternative vaccine schedules are actually anti-vaxxers in disguise, and use the alternative schedule as a foot in the door to convince others that vaccines are unnecessary.
There’s no medical reason to spread out the vaccines, and plenty of medical and social reasons for following the recommendations created by experts. Spreading vaccines out increases the time that a child is non-immunized for some illnesses. Spreading them out increases the likelihood that parents will fail to obtain all of the necessary vaccines - the more doctor trips that parents have to fit into their schedules, the more like it is that they will simply stop following any vaccine schedule at all. Spreading them out increases the potential number of real vaccine reactions. Spreading them out subjects children to more doctor visits and thereby exposes them to more infectious diseases. Spreading them out subjects children to more fear, which is something difficult for parents to witness and again increases parental reluctance to follow through with the next set of recommendations.
There is no scientifically valid research that supports the necessity of the administration of the MMR vaccine in three separate vaccines. Andrew Wakefield was one of the initial proposers of that idea, after his now-discredited and fraudulent study supposedly linking vaccines and autism was published.
