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Shall we also mandate things like breastfeeding? That would save lives and billions of dollars as well.
Since there is no financial incentive for any industry in more women breastfeeding, I doubt that will ever happen. Formula makers would lobby hard against it. In the case of vaccines, industry supports intervention with their products and has the money to lobby for new mandates. It's a very biased system when it comes to making healthcare decisions for all. Very biased. Lives and money only seem to be important in terms of saving when there is money to be gained.
If money were the motive, doctors would stand to earn more by discouraging breast feeding. More sick babies to take care of, right? Formula makers can lobby away; I see no mandates for formula feeding, so their lobbying must not be very effective.
Mark presented the figures in a recent post on how much money vaccines save in direct and indirect health care costs. Encouraging parents to vaccinate is not in a pediatrician's best interest financially. He could make more money treating sick kids with vaccine preventable diseases. Pediatricians are lucky to break even on what they charge for vaccines, for which the insurance companies reimburse as little as they can.
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Imagine if we banned cigarettes, alcohol and sugar? How many lives and how much money would be saved?
Comparing lifestyle diseases and infectious diseases is comparing apples and grapefruit. It is irrelevant to the current discussion. Not every public health issue requires mandates.
I would love to see cigarettes banned; with the advent of e-cigarettes that might even eventually come to pass since novice nicotine addicts may choose them instead of traditional cigarettes. That is off topic, though.
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Originally Posted by MissTerri
So you are saying that when our vaccination rate goes up, our cases of measles will follow? That is what is happening in Sudan. Vaccinations rate has been steadily rising in Sudan and currently stands at 85%. Measles cases are rising too it seems.
You really do not understand herd immunity, do you? Hint, it's not vaccinated people who are getting measles. For measles, an 85% vaccination rate is far too low to provide herd immunity; it needs to be 95% or higher because measles is so infectious. Measles is not going up in Sudan because the vaccination rate is going up. That is a classic example that correlation is not causation. Measles is going up in Sudan because the vaccination rate is not yet high enough to prevent the measles virus from circulating.
The activities of the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre and the National Centre for Register-Based Research are funded by a grant from the Danish National Research Foundation. This study was supported by the Stanley Medical Research Institute. No funding sources were involved in the study design.
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there’s so much other evidence that is consistent with the Danish studies and similarly shows that neither the MMR nor thimerosal in vaccines is associated with autism.
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What AoA, Safeminds, and other denialists refuse to understand is that science is rarely, if ever, a matter of a scientific consensus being based on one study, two studies, or a handful of studies. A scientific consensus is based on examining all the evidence from all relevant studies, deciding which studies are most methodologically powerful, and then synthesizing it all into a conclusion. Contrast this to how the anti-vaccine movement treats its “brave maverick doctors” like Andrew Wakefield, Mark Geier, Rashid Buttar, et al, and the difference between real science and anti-vaccine pseudoscience couldn’t be clearer.
If money were the motive, doctors would stand to earn more by discouraging breast feeding. More sick babies to take care of, right? Formula makers can lobby away; I see no mandates for formula feeding, so their lobbying must not be very effective.
Breastfeeding is not exactly something that is well supported in our culture. Most mothers formula feed. I'm not talking about formula feeding mandates. You either missed my point or are just trying to change the subject. The point being, there are a lot of health behaviors that we could promote or "mandate" in order to save billions of dollars in health costs and save lives. Yet the focus seems to be only on forcing vaccinations on people. Why is the focus on vaccines? Why the mandates in this area while other areas such as breastfeeding, banning unhealthy foods and vices are not?
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You really do not understand herd immunity, do you? Hint, it's not vaccinated people who are getting measles. For measles, an 85% vaccination rate is far too low to provide herd immunity; it needs to be 95% or higher because measles is so infectious. Measles is not going up in Sudan because the vaccination rate is going up. That is a classic example that correlation is not causation. Measles is going up in Sudan because the vaccination rate is not yet high enough to prevent the measles virus from circulating.
You really do not understand sarcasm, do you? The article showed measles cases rising in Sudan, a country that is also seeing rising rates of vaccination. Re-read the conversation in context and maybe you will get it.
But it also dawned on me how negligent Tomljenovic was in her science. It’s a damning condemnation on the University of British Columbia when their researchers are this misinformed. She showed a series of graphs to indicated how vaccines weren’t effective at saving lives. What she did was show the death rates of diseases: polio, measles etc, and then when the vaccine was licensed and when it was released. What she didn’t do, most likely on purpose since I can’t imagine any scientist being so utterly incompetent, was combine various vaccines like MMR, which came out well after the original measles vaccine. We of course made this known and what a surprise, when taken into account the drop in cases of polio started to exponentially decline right when the original vaccine was released and not the updated combination version came out.
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Anti-vaxers typically see conspiracies everywhere. During her talk, Tomljenovic listed a bunch of reasons why anti-vax studies don’t get published. What she neglected to say is that every one of those reasons is a legitimate objection to a study (in any science) the vast majority of studies don’t get published for these reasons, which is why the peer-review method is effective at weeding out the bad science from the good science.
Lots of the claims cited are from Mercola's website and he is discredited by the FDA for illegal claims about the stuff he sells on the website.
Studies of twins with autism, along with an increasing number of implicated genes show that autism has a very strong though complicated genetic basis. Given autism’s heterogeneity, it is unlikely that a single cause will be found that explains all cases of autism, and it is possible that other factors beyond genetics may play some role. Regardless of what is eventually found, some potential causes have been ruled out, including vaccines.
Breastfeeding is not exactly something that is well supported in our culture. Most mothers formula feed. I'm not talking about formula feeding mandates. You either missed my point or are just trying to change the subject. The point being, there are a lot of health behaviors that we could promote or "mandate" in order to save billions of dollars in health costs and save lives. Yet the focus seems to be only on forcing vaccinations on people. Why is the focus on vaccines? Why the mandates in this area while other areas such as breastfeeding, banning unhealthy foods and vices are not?
Because none of those other things are behaviors that can harm other people. Mandates are not needed. Increased breastfeeding rates is a worthy goal, but there is no way to mandate breast feeding. We will never attempt to ban alcohol again, but we do mandate that people not drink and drive - because that can injure other people. We do not ban cigarettes, but we do mandate where you cannot smoke them. Bad diets impact only the person with the bad diet. Getting people to eat better and exercise is another worthy goal, but there is no way to mandate diet and exercise.
We jolly well can and should mandate vaccines for public school attendance.
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You really do not understand sarcasm, do you? The article showed measles cases rising in Sudan, a country that is also seeing rising rates of vaccination. Re-read the conversation in context and maybe you will get it.
I get it. You are just tap dancing around what you said:
"So you are saying that when our vaccination rate goes up, our cases of measles will follow? That is what is happening in Sudan. Vaccinations rate has been steadily rising in Sudan and currently stands at 85%. Measles cases are rising too it seems."
Rodentraiser pointed out that there are areas in this country with even lower vaccination rates than Sudan, showing that the US could be in the same predicament as Sudan if measles is introduced into those low vaccine coverage areas. She never implied that increasing vaccination rates were the cause of the increased number of cases of measles. You definitely implied that is what you think, though: measles vaccine does not work.
It appears you still do not understand that Sudan is struggling to achieve herd immunity.
Everything is a crank except your beloved CDC...yes, they have no mission. The US government has never poisoned it's own people or performed illegal drug tests or ever tried to cover anything up...including subverting the real whistle blowers credibility and even killing them...never happened...keep on believing that.
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