You’re leaning a bit too ad hominem for my tastes. I’ll bow out.
All the best to you, and to the OP in his/her decision.
To be fair, vaccine trials are very expensive, and I doubt anyone really does test tons of schedules to see which is best. I suspect that when a new vaccine is introduced, whoever is selling it guesses at a schedule that seems like it might be good to them, and tests THAT ONE SCHEDULE and if it works out okay (kids develop immunity, not too many bad reactions) then that’s the recommended schedule. And unless something changes (data shows kids having bad side effects, outbreaks among kids too young to be vaccinated with the standard schedule) that’s pretty much it.
It’s a lot more rigorous process than what you suggest.
The pediatric immunization schedule, for instance, is not “guessed” at by “whoever is selling it”. It’s developed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in coordination with the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians and other professional organizations. They consider the type of vaccine, age of significant vulnerability to disease, role of maternal antibodies and other factors in formulating a schedule, which is then reviewed by experts at the CDC and submitted to its director for approval; the CDC, AAP and AAFP have jointly agreed on promulgating a single pediatric schedule.
Answers to commonly asked questions about the vaccine schedule:
https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/Documents/VaccineSchedule.pdf
Greater detail available here:
Adult vaccine recommendations also follow a similarly rigorous process of study and approval.
DavidNRockies:
“You’re leaning a bit too ad hominem for my tastes.”
In no instance have I insulted you personally. If having your views challenged is that objectionable, I can understand the flounce.
I got my flu and pneumonia shots today (65 years old).
This was gratuitous and ad hominem, whether you addressed me by name or not.
Back to the general audience …
I wonder aloud whether the current risk of any of us (the audience for this thread and the vaccines under consideration) has gone down considerably in 2020.
If any of you are like my wife and me, we’re socializing much less, even more fastidious about hygiene, social distancing, and very conscientious about wearing masks.
The risk of some of these things may be relatively very low for many right now.
Which might tend to blunt the argument about increased spacing of vaccines appreciably increasing the risk of contracting the thing the vaccine aims to prevent.
So, it’s guessed at by a committee charged with coordinating a lot of vaccines. When i said the schedule “looked good” i meant they were taking into account stuff like maternal antibodies and vulnerability, i didn’t mean to imply they just shot darts.
But how many schedules have they actually tested?
So why continue to pejoratively mischaracterize it as guesswork?
The people who promote “spacing out” of vaccines as part of “alternate” schedules generally do so as part of the “too many too soon” mantra, which actually does guess that children’s immune systems are currently overwhelmed by the antigenic stimulus contained in routine pediatric vaccinations. They do not know, or don’t care to learn about the vast reserve the human immune system contains with regard to responding to antigens, and how much stuff our bodies must process on a daily basis - pathogens, harmless organisms, allergens, and other sorts of environmental stimuli, which are enormously greater than the immune stimulus posed by vaccines.* They also are unaware or ignore the fact that the childhood vaccine schedule presents considerably less antigenic stimulus today than it did (for example) in the 1960s, despite protecting kids against many more dangerous diseases.
So when people (typically a small coterie of pediatricians known for promoting antivaccine views) come up with delayed vaccine schedules, it’s not based on sound science in the first place - so why waste time and funds studying them, especially when their advocates aren’t bothering to publish any study data drawing from their practices? More crucially, when there’s no good science behind these alternate schedules, it’s unethical to subject a large number of children to substandard medical care, as would be the case if you did a large prospective study with two groups of kids, one getting the recommended schedule and the other the “alternate” one.
I don’t know of much antivax sentiment that proclaims adults are being overwhelmed by, say, an influenza shot at the same time as shingles vaccination; rather than calling for greater “spacing” antivaxers typically fearmonger about nonexistent hazards of the individual shots.
In response to DavidNRockies, even before the Covid-19 pandemic people at risk for influenza were urged to minimize risk through proper hygiene, avoiding crowds during peak flu season etc., as well as getting flu shots. These other precautionary methods are complementary to, and not substitutes for vaccination. Just because one sanitizes surfaces, washes one’s hands frequently and considers wearing a mask in crowded public spaces, doesn’t legitimize the idea of “spacing out” flu shots to, say, every couple of years or so.
*One of the best known papers examining routine daily antigenic challenges vs. vaccine stimulus and immune system reserve was authored by pediatrician and vaccinologist Paul Offit M.D., who presented evidence that an infant’s immune system was capable of handling the antigens present in 10,000 vaccines. This well-founded conclusion was seized on by antivaxers who falsely claimed that Offit was calling for giving infants 10,000 vaccines.
I quickly lost count of the straw man arguments in there.
If we’re taking extraordinary precautions to protect our health right now, then we may well be minimizing the incremental risk associated with getting three vaccines over a couple of weeks rather than on a single day.
I suppose it’s my style of speech. I’m an actuary, and I describe my work as making up numbers. Now, obviously, they pay me because I consider a lot of stuff and the numbers I make up are pretty good guesses. I don’t just pull them out of my ass. But at the end of the day, my job is mostly about making up numbers and explaining why the numbers I made up are useful.
Thanks for that paper, by the way. I’ve heard people talk about it, but never read it before.
I think a stronger argument than “there were more different antigens in that old dirty vaccine than in our slick new ones” is to point out the massive number of “wild” antigens (and disease organisms) the typical infant is exposed to. That completely dwarfs the number of vaccines a kid gets.
Again, I don’t think this is very persuasive. “We don’t believe you. We ignore your concerns.” You realize that fears about vaccines aren’t just based on the antigens they include, but also the adjudivants, preservatives, etc.
When vaccines have been combined (for instance, when the MMR vaccine replaced separate jabs, or when the hep AB vaccine was introduced) they have been studied to demonstrate they are as safe and effective as the multiple vaccines they replaced. I think that’s worth pointing out. But if anyone actually compared giving a kid two shots today as compared to to shots a month apart, I’ve never seen it.
My guess is that the strongest argument for combining them is that the fewer times parents have to show up with the kids, the more likely it is that the kid will get all their vaccines. And I do believe that all the vaccines given to kids these days are well worth getting. But I doubt the exact timing is critical. And I’d be shocked to learn that anyone has actually studied minor differences in the timing of vaccine administration due to the high cost of such studies.
Did you miss that this was exactly the question raised by the OP? This thread wasn’t about whether any particular vaccine might be unsafe, but rather about whether it’s wise to get a couple vaccines at the same time.
That it’s routinely done for infants without issue is a pretty good response.
So you have no problem with the dubious ethics of leaving one large study group suboptimally protected from dangerous infectious diseases in order to study an unscientific “alternate” vaccine schedule? It’s not nearly as bad an idea as antivaxers’ cherished large scale “vaxed vs. unvaxed” study*, but still quite problematic from an ethical standpoint.
Again, what has stopped antivax pediatricians from publishing their own data? They’ve been touting their “spaced out” schedules for years. Reasons, apart from laziness, may include knowledge that their schedules are in reality no safer than the evidence-based one, or worse - that they’ve been complicit in disease outbreaks.**
puzzlegal: “Did you miss that this was exactly the question raised by the OP?”
Not at all. I refer you to my specific posts on the matter, including a cite regarding safety of concomitant administration of influenza and shingles vaccines.
*while antivaxers claim there’s never been a study comparing the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children, this is false - there have been several such studies, all demonstrating equivalent health between the groups with the glaring exception of far greater susceptibility to vaccine-preventable diseases in the unvaccinated group. None of these have been large-scale prospective studies leaving a large group of unvaccinated kids unprotected for years, which is what antivaxers want. That would be grossly unethical.
**example: the index case in a San Diego measles outbreak was an unvaccinated patient of pediatrician Bob Sears (proponent of delayed and non-vaccination), who infected four other patients in his waiting room, three of them infants. One had to be admitted to a hospital to be treated for dehydration.
If the current standard says “get these two shots at 18 months”, and you tested schedule where some kids got one shot at 18 months, and another at 19 months, (or one at 17 months and the other at 18 months) I think it’s hard to argue that either is “suboptimal”. Do you have data to support that either is better than the other?
If the OP is asking whether to get two shots at once, or to get them a couple weeks apart, do you really think the odds of him getting sick between the two are so much higher than the odds of his getting sick while waiting for that appointment (and I routinely wait weeks on end to get an adult appointment) that you are creating an “unethical” situation?
I expect that a study WOULD show that the kids getting both jabs at once fare the same. And the study would be expensive. But unethical? That seems like quite the stretch.
You’re apparently unfamiliar with the commonly touted alternate vaccine schedules. They don’t involve a couple weeks or even a month’s delay, but rather several months to years delay (as well as avoiding some vaccines entirely).
For instance, the schedule of one well-known “integrative” pediatrician, Paul Thomas, does not call for giving the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella at the recommended 12-15 months of age. Instead, he says that MMR can be “considered” at age 3. Evidently it’d be just fine with Thomas if parents decided against the MMR entirely. Since we’ve seen multiple measles outbreaks in recent years (and measles is far from a benign illness), it would be grossly unethical to do a large-scale study of Thomas’ vaccine schedule*, thus putting many kids at risk.
Yet again, what’s stopping Thomas from publishing the results from his own practice, which he claims shows healthier children? The odds of rigorous research emanating from that source and being accepted by a respected journal are minute, but he should at least make the attempt.
It’s a basic principle in science - you make the claim, you prove it with quality evidence. It’s not up to others to do your homework for you and disprove your theory.
The alternate schedules of “Dr. Paul” Thomas and “Dr. Bob” Sears (a believer in vaccine “toxins” who also has advocated delaying measles vaccination to age 3) aren’t even the worst ones out there. For instance, Dr. Donald Miller advocated not giving any vaccines before the age of 2, because their undeveloped brains just can’t handle them (later, Miller decided vaccines should be avoided at any age).
Are experts also obliged to disprove’s Miller’s nonsense?
It should be a red flag that the same people who promote these bogus schedules also spread many debunked antivax memes and conspiracy theories.**
We’ve already seen study after study refute the notion that vaccines cause autism, yet all that research is routinely ignored or dismissed by antivaxers convinced otherwise. Should we waste precious research funding and time and jeopardize children’s health repeatedly showing that unscientific non-evidence based “delayed” vaccine schedules have no value?
*Thomas thinks you should never give your kids vaccines against pathogens including hepatitis B, hepatitis A, rotavirus, and polio. Y’know, it’s them toxins.
**Miller, an emeritus professor of surgery at U. of Washington, also says that the C.I.A. conspired to kill J.F.K., that people are being poisoned by water fluoridation, and that the Covid-19 pandemic is leading to left-wing terrorists creating a Neo-Marxist revolution. Oh, and masks don’t work.
***Miller’s case furnishes further evidence for the existence of Emeritus Disease, wherein professorial sorts who’ve been put out to pasture use their extra time to promote wildly goofy theories outside their fields of expertise, thus embarrassing the hell out of their former colleagues.
I feel like I’ve got enough info. Out of a superabundance of caution, I’m not going to get all my shots on the same day, right or wrong. Tired of watching this mostly dead equine get flogged. I’m outta here. Thanks to all who participated.
All the best of luck. I wish you unfailingly good health !
Hey, @Jackmannii …
If you’re to the right of me, politically, I won’t constantly invoke David Duke.
If you’re to the left of me, politically, I won’t constantly invoke Marxists, Socialists, or Communists.
People are thoughtfully discussing vaccinations and raising legitimate questions about the status quo. That’s it. Nothing more.
Would you be willing to stop invoking “anti-vaxxers” and painting everybody else who doesn’t wholly agree with you … with the same tainted brush ?
It’s at least three logical fallacies … off the top of my head.
In order to invoke logical fallacies, it’s useful to know what they are, not merely fling the terms around willy-nilly. For example, ad hominems are attacks on a person rather than critiques of the positions they hold.
I find your positions illogical, poorly stated and without merit, and have taken pains to refute them with evidence.
black/white (or all/nothing)
ad hominem
reductio ad absurdum
straw man
Translation: you don’t like them and you don’t agree with them.
But my read on the title of this sub-forum is “In My Humble Opinion (IMHO).”
If that’s also “illogical, poorly stated and without merit,” I’d be grateful if you’d enlighten me there, too.
DavidNRockies and Jackmannii, normally I’d tell you to dial it back a bit and keep in mind that this is IMHO and not Great Debates.
However, in this case, the OP has been satisfied and has bowed out of the conversation. With that in mind, let’s move this to GD and the two of you can continue your debate. Keep in mind the rule here is attack the post, not the poster. Feel free to debate each other’s opinions, but don’t attack each other.
Moved from IMHO to GD.
Whatever your doctor tells you to do, do it. And pay no attention whatsoever to anything else.
I wasn’t interested in the commonly touted alternate vaccine schedules. I was interested in exploring the OP’s question as to whether to get all her shots at once, or spread it out by a couple of weeks.
And since she’s made her decision, I think I will be bowing out.