Ohdang
Ohdang
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2010
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This has nothing to do with the logical statement I made earlier.
Nothing.
You're obviously throwing out a strawman.
I'm struggling a bit here to understand what you're talking about. You said:
If some are vaccinated and others choose not to be, only those who made the choice not to vaccinate are at risk; they are not endangering anyone who isn't obviously already aware and has consciously made the decision to forgo vaccination.
I directly addressed your statement with pointing out how important herd immunity is. Herd immunity is the reason your statement is false. But, you pasted the definition of herd immunity, which says right in it: "the vaccination of a significant portion of a population provides a measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity," so you already know this by reading the definition you pasted. NOT having a significant portion of the population vaccinated puts anyone who is not immunized at risk, whether its by choice or by medical necessity. Which is direct conflict with your statement that I quoted. They are endangering others besides themselves - the people who cannot be vaccinated/do not benefit from vaccination.
[If 5 people are in a room, 3 are vaccinated against chickenpox, 2 are not, 1 is infected. How many people are endangered by the infected?
If the answer is greater than 1, then I must be missing something here. If it isn't, you don't really have a point.
The answer is 2. The person already infected is past the point of qualifying for being at risk, and the 2 vaccinated people are not at risk because they have acquired immunity, but the 2 non vaccinated people are going to get it because chickenpox is highly contagious and they're in the same room with the live virus.
Herd immunity doesn't really apply in this scenario. How herd immunity would apply would be if all 4 of the people in the room were vaccinated (representing a significant portion of the population of the room) and 1 is infected, nobody is going to have chickenpox in that room except the guy who already has it because he wasn't vaccinated. Herd immunity is protecting people that the 4 vaccinated people come in contact with after they leave that room. In your scenario, the infected person infects 2 others because they weren't vaccinated, then what happens when they leave the room? They almost definitely infect more people if they aren't vaccinated; if the percentage of people with acquired immunity is high in the population they come in contact with the threat is contained, and if the percentage of people with acquired immunity in the population they come in contact with is low there is potential for an outbreak.
Does this make sense? This is why the anti-vaxxer movement is really dangerous. This is why it deserves national attention. If it weren't for this fact and it was just the un-vaccinated by choice crowd who was at risk from their decision to forego vaccination, I'd be fine with just giving them to the people who wanted them. That's not reality though.
I do agree with your decision to not immunize your children until they started school, for what its worth, assuming you were diligent enough to keep your kids away from sick people when they weren't vaccinated. There's no sense in vaccinating someone against things they aren't at risk of acquiring, and if you keep them away from crowds of people or people who you know are sick then the risk is pretty low. The problem with not vaccinating children for the common contagious diseases they could encounter when they're young though is parents are parading their toddlers around the mall with who knows how many people carrying who knows what and putting their un-vaccinated kids at risk, which is indirectly putting others at risk (what I talked about above).
I never said I was in favor for everyone getting every vaccine ever invented as early as possible, and I don't recall anyone else saying that either. But that seems to be what the anti vaccine crowd thinks we want. I just want smart application of vaccines to prevent as many unnecessary illnesses as possible. Which to me means anyone who regularly goes out in public should be vaccinated against diseases that are either highly prevalent, highly contagious, or deadly; AND have demonstrated a low incidence of mild to moderate side effects, WHILE yielding a high success rate of prevention against the disease it is intended to prevent. To those if us in the scientific community this is common sense and is implied, but maybe we need to start communicating this more often.
I do not believe fining or arresting people for not having them is a good idea, but my honest opinion is if we get to the point where we have an outbreak so bad it makes the bubonic plague and cholera look like amateur hour, I'm gonna be helping round anti-vaxxers up for quarantine and I'm not gonna care how bad I'm trampling their rights. The more foothold this movement takes, the closer we get to one of these outbreaks becoming more than just the plot of a sci-fi movie.
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