Someone went absolutely nuts on my sister’s Facebook about this. Among his interesting points was that all polio cases in the USA are now ones causes by the vaccine. Well, that’s actually mostly true… **because all the other cases have been wiped out, you dumb shit. **
Do not bother to argue with the antivaxxers. No logic, no evidence, no reason will sway them.
Incidentally, why isn’t Edward Jenner on our money? It would be hard to name a person who came up with an invention that saved more lives.
Well, you can tell them on the boards you know a flu shot guinea pig. My roomie and I test the flu vaccine every year for Omega in Rhode Island. This year I got the h1n1 and she got the seasonal one.
I overheard one of our nurses, who was talking on the phone to her adult daughter, forbidding her daughter to get either vaccine. She said she was only getting the one vaccine because it is required by our employer (we work with pregnant women and infants).
This particular nurse refused the free vaccine offered at work and then spent days complaining about how she had to drive all over town to four different places and actually had to pay for the vaccine out of her pocket! Boo hoo.
I didn’t say anything because she was speakiing to a family member, but it really doesn’t help when people ‘in the field’ don’t understand the hows and whys of vaccination.
I had a reaction the the ful vac two years ago and my neck swelled the same day and on the same side as the injection, but I continue to take them. I did not react to either vaccine this year.
I got the seasonal flu vaccine at work this year because it’s required by my workplace, a hospital. The next week, I had to stay home one day due to illness. When I got back, some people clucked at me about how, see, the vaccine ‘causes the flu.’ If you’re out one day and mostly OK the next, you do not have the flu. :smack: I had a bad sinus infection that came on after the vaccine, and I got it from my husband - he was sick before I even got the vaccination. Still waiting on the vaccination group to come around to my department with the H1N1 vaccine; we’re not high on the priority list.
Is this craziness related to the Men Who Stare At Goats?
Actually, it is.
Check out this site, wherein “Army Infantry Mom” delivers a breathtakingly stupid antivax rant compounded of extreme ignorance and paranoia. At the end she reveals that she got all her “data” from the Natural Solutions Foundation, which is co-run by Major General Albert Stubblebine (ret.). Stubblebine’s Army Intelligence (snerk) outfit was the one that sponsored the Men Who Stare At Goats (to be featured in an upcoming movie with George Clooney), plus Stubblebine himself was convinced he could walk through walls (a belief reportedly resulting in a certain amount of facial trauma).
The bit about squalene causing Gulf War Syndrome and god knows what else is the latest tactic by antivaxers. Every time one of their horror stories about vaccine ingredients gets debunked, they come up with a new one. The scaremongering about squalene (used in some countries as an adjuvant in vaccines to improve immune response) would be more impressive if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s a normal compound found in the human body (your liver uses it in synthesizing lipids), and it isn’t found in H1N1 or seasonal flu vaccines anyway - in fact they don’t use adjvants period.
I’m looking forward to reading that article on vaccination in Wired (linked to earlier in this thead). I hear the antivax nutbars are already harassing the article’s author.
I believe the H1N1 vaccine being distributed in Canada contains squalene, actually, so that’s not the most baseless rumour the anti-vaxxers are guilty of spreading.
It gets worse than that - the Canadian H1N1 vaccine adjuvant not only contains squalene, but also vitamin E (ever seen the chemical structure of vitamin E?) and…get ready for this…DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!!!
“Natural substances” my foot - this is obviously a foul conspiracy. No doubt the Americans with their non-adjuvanted vaccines are trying to wipe out Canadians so that the Americans can move in and take over your shale oil and stockpiles of Celine Dion and Bryan Adams records!
People, people, please stop being so negative and label them as anti-vax/vaxxers. Be more positive. From now on, please refer to them as pro-diseases or pro-H1N1.
i did that to one of them at the office last week and he shut up real quick
My husband is a chemical engineer by training. An anti-vax nut once confronted me with a list of vaccine ingredients that were supposedly dangerous. Not remembering anything of chemistry from high school I asked him what they were.
He read her list, laughed himself silly for a full minute and then proceeded to explain to me that no, water, salt and the dozen other things she listed were about as harmful as the breast milk I was feeding our daughter.
As part of my job a while ago, I spent a fair amount of time researching the most up to date evidence refuting the MMR-autism link. It was part of a review and update of the MMR materials that we distribute to all health care providers in our country, which are then used with parents to discuss the benefits of getting the vaccine.
In doing this, I saw some surveys that had been done amongst these very same health care providers, and these shocked me. These people, the people charged with convincing parents of the safety and efficacy of the MMR vaccine, had alarmingly high rates of non-vaccination when it came to their own families. Apparently, despite all the research, the message wasn’t getting through to all the nurses and health care staff.
I’m as sick of the antivaxxers as I am of the HHS and WHO running around saying ‘This Is The Worst Plague Evar And 80% Wll Die If Unvaccinated’.
I got vaccinated this year, I’m a first responder. I resisted vaccinations for years. If I was asked why, I explained my reasons, but I didn’t try to make any converts, either.
Do you seriously think that would shut up the dedicated anti-vaxxers? Ha. Not a chance, Vance.
Look, it’s not like vaccination’s a leap of faith now. Vaccinations exterminated smallpox. Smallpox killed - this is a low estimate - five hundred million people. this isn’t ancient history, either; smallpox existed, and was eradicated through a global immunization program, within living memory. And that still doesn’t convince the anti-vaxxers. So what would?
If the eradiction of arguably the most horrible communicative disease in the history of our species doesn’t sell people on smallpox (not to mention the near-elimination of polio in the developed world, and the fact that you don’t see as much measles, mumps and all that shit as you used to) then nothing will.
I’m extremely curious…how *does *one “prove” their immunity? Did you roll around in smallpox blankets, only to come out unscathed? Were you inoculated with a virulent strain of whooping cough and came out swingin’?
Also, how exactly were you thought to be dead for 45 minutes? Were you in a coma? On life support?
In all sincerity, you should get some therapy for your phobia.
I think that you can get a blood test to see if you have antibodies to a particular virus. MrWhatsit can’t remember if he had chicken pox as a kid (which blows my mind, because how can you not remember if you had chicken pox or not? His mom doesn’t remember, either!) and was told by his doctor that they could do a blood test to see if he had antibodies for it, but he might as well just get the vaccine, because it’s the same co-pay either way and one less visit to the doctor’s office if he turned out not to have the antibodies.
A severe allergic reaction can happen after vaccinations and is considered a contraindication for further vaccinations. There are people who cannot be vaccinated because of allergies or other medical conditions, which makes it all the more important for those of us who are able to be vaccinated to make sure we are up-to-date.
Seconding C3’s answer: titers. It’s not a loony fringe thing. I “prove my immunity” annually for several things, including MMR and Rabies. I’m not averse to being re-vaccinated if my titer count is low, but I certainly don’t need or want useless annual “boosters” if the initial series gave me several decades’ worth of immunity.
Thank you C3 and MsWhatsit, ignorance fought. I vaguely knew about the test, but didn’t know it by name.
I’ll stand corrected if Big T fits into this teeny tiny minority.
You obviously realize you’re not “anti-vax” as others who refer to Jenny McCartney as the gospel, so please refrain from attempting to make the conversation about you.