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Wow. We elderly had measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox in our childhood before those vaccines, cannot catch them AGAIN, and have lifetime immunity. We won't be catching, or dying, from these diseases from unvaccinated children.
You claim to be in the medical profession, and you say the elderly will be catching these diseases from unvaccinated children?
WRT elderly (and I don't consider 68 particularly "elderly", it's a little too close to my age, LOL!)-as we age, our immune systems age as well. One of the Disney measles cases was ~70 years old. Either s/he was an "outlier" that never had measles, or his/her immunity had worn off enough to make him/her susceptible again. It's more some of the other VPDs, however, that can affect the elderly. Pertussis immunity wears off with both natural disease and vaccination. That is a disease that is constantly in circulation. Influenza, even with vaccination, the elderly are more susceptible. So an unvaccinated child who is contagious but not yet symptomatic can pass it on. Basically, the elderly, especially the "super elderly" are simply more vulnerable to everything.
Is it always necessary to insult people, Jo?
[quote=Jo48;47777667]I am 68 and not in your medical system. Attitude like that is why I do not trust doctors, or your vaccinations, medications, treatments, tests, etc., etc. "My" only doctors have been "My" Pediatrician 58 years ago and "My" OB/GYN 32 years ago which was only for BC (not Pap tests) and Pregnancy (for my children's well being). I have never had a GP in my life, and do not want one.
Last edited by CaseyB; 04-08-2017 at 04:20 PM..
Reason: response to deletion
We know how many people got sick from each disease pre-vaccine.
All of the bold is irrelevant. First of all, stop saying "women will clear the virus". That makes it sound like it's possible for one to cause some action to do so. That is untrue. The virus clears, or it doesn't. There is no way to know whose body will clear it and whose won't.
Let's look at a comparison, polio. This is the one vaccine even many anti-vaccine parents get for their kids, because most people are terrified at the thought that their child may be paralyzed, or worse, die from polio. I'd be willing to be you felt that way. Yet. . . . about 72% of polio cases are totally asymptomatic-no symptoms at all. Another 24% of patients have vague non-specific symptoms, the patient feels generally unwell. They usually have a low-grade fever and a sore throat, and recover within a week with no residual problems. Total so far-96%. Nonparalytic aseptic meningitis (symptoms of stiffness of the neck, back, and/or legs), usually following several days after a prodrome similar to that of minor illness, occurs in 1%–5% of polio infections in children. Increased or abnormal sensations can also occur. Typically these symptoms will last from 2 to 10 days, followed by complete recovery. Fewer than 1% of all polio infections in children result in flaccid paralysis. All that fuss, when less than 1% become paralyzed? Even fewer die. Yet, in 1952, the year of the biggest polio epidemic in the US, there were 21,269 cases of paralytic polio! Now if you multiply that out and assume 1% of cases were paralytic, that meant 2,126,900 cases of polio, about 1/2 of a birth cohort. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/polio.html PHI: Incidence Rates of Poliomyelitis in US
Nearly everyone gets HPV at some time in their lives. That 5% do not clear leaves a lot of people vulnerable. Pap smear screening, and I'm glad to see you use the term "screening" because contrary to the opinion of many on here paps are not prevention, has cut down cervical cancer deaths and also cases of invasive cervical cancer. I believe you are old enough to be in the cohort of women who were advised to get a pap every year, faithfully. However, paps aren't foolproof, and I have no idea what you're referring to re: better screening. There are no new developments in pap testing that I'm familiar with. Some sources I've read do refer to family history as a risk factor, but go on to say the risk may be a FH of immune deficiency in general, not a particular risk to cervical cancer. The current vaccine actually protects against the strains that cause 90% of cervical cancers. "For all you know" you're wrong about this dysplasia thing, too. "Mother Nature" is cruel and mean. The common denominator in virtually every cervical cancer case is. . . .HPV. If you can avoid HPV infection, particularly infection with the strains that cause most of the cancers, you will cut down your cancer risk significantly. There is no "other hand".
Re: herd immunity, as HPV is communicable person to person, the more who get vaccinated, the fewer will get infected. And herd immunity or not, your personal protection is important.
I never said we know who will or will not clear the virus. However, for most women it will clear on its own with no issues. Therefore the vaccine does nothing for most women and for the ones it does, it only works on some of the virus' believed to cause cancer.
Sorry, there is no herd immunity advantage here. There are dozens of strains of HPV (and virus' mutate) that are not even covered in the vaccines. The current vaccine covers 70% of the strains thought to cause cervical cancer and MOST women who get theses will not get cancer. This is much ado about nothing.
IF the vaccine is 100% effective (no vaccines are), we MIGHT be looking at a reduction in deaths due to cervical cancer from 4200/year to 1260/year in 30-40 years. MIGHT as we don't know that the other HPVs won't just fill the niche if we did eradicate the forms that are covered by the vaccine. Given that we have already reduced cervical cancer deaths by over 50% through screening and we can improve even more with better screening, what is the point of spending the kind of money we're talking about here?
What advances will we make in early detection and treatment of cancers in the next 30/40 years? Given the advancements we've made in the last 30/40 years I'll bet there will be many a break through. I find myself asking why the push for THIS vaccine? Something doesn't add up here.
Polio is an immediate threat. It affects children. If this vaccine prevented .4% of children from dying of cervical cancer you'd see a different response. We're talking about potentially preventing 70% of cervical cancers that may occur in 30 or so years when early detection is already saving lives here. There is no comparison to polio. Polio is not something you can detect and watch and treat if caught early. Cervical cancer is. Polio isn't a big maybe off in the future. It's a now and it's devastating if you're the one who ends up paralyzed. I chose to get my children the meningitis vaccine for this reason. Again no good recovery rates with early detection and it impacts young people.
Why so hot on THIS vaccine? At BEST it's effective against 70% of the HPV thought to cause cervical cancer. This isn't a cure for cervical cancer. It's not get the shot and you won't get cancer. At best you reduce your risk but so do yearly pap smears...
I never said we know who will or will not clear the virus. However, for most women it will clear on its own with no issues. Therefore the vaccine does nothing for most women and for the ones it does, it only works on some of the virus' believed to cause cancer.
Sorry, there is no herd immunity advantage here. There are dozens of strains of HPV (and virus' mutate) that are not even covered in the vaccines. The current vaccine covers 70% of the strains thought to cause cervical cancer and MOST women who get theses will not get cancer. This is much ado about nothing.
IF the vaccine is 100% effective (no vaccines are), we MIGHT be looking at a reduction in deaths due to cervical cancer from 4200/year to 1260/year in 30-40 years. MIGHT as we don't know that the other HPVs won't just fill the niche if we did eradicate the forms that are covered by the vaccine. Given that we have already reduced cervical cancer deaths by over 50% through screening and we can improve even more with better screening, what is the point of spending the kind of money we're talking about here?
What advances will we make in early detection and treatment of cancers in the next 30/40 years? Given the advancements we've made in the last 30/40 years I'll bet there will be many a break through. I find myself asking why the push for THIS vaccine? Something doesn't add up here.
Polio is an immediate threat. It affects children. If this vaccine prevented .4% of children from dying of cervical cancer you'd see a different response. We're talking about potentially preventing 70% of cervical cancers that may occur in 30 or so years when early detection is already saving lives here. There is no comparison to polio. Polio is not something you can detect and watch and treat if caught early. Cervical cancer is. Polio isn't a big maybe off in the future. It's a now and it's devastating if you're the one who ends up paralyzed. I chose to get my children the meningitis vaccine for this reason. Again no good recovery rates with early detection and it impacts young people.
Why so hot on THIS vaccine? At BEST it's effective against 70% of the HPV thought to cause cervical cancer. This isn't a cure for cervical cancer. It's not get the shot and you won't get cancer. At best you reduce your risk but so do yearly pap smears...
Well said ivorytickler.
Regarding paps, we don't necessarily need better screening tools. In order to reduce the death rate from cervical cancer further, we need to get more women on board in terms of getting theirs regularly. Currently only 60-70% of women get regular paps. Imagine what would happen to the rate of cervical cancer deaths if all women got regular paps? We would see a major decline in that number.
I never said we know who will or will not clear the virus. However, for most women it will clear on its own with no issues. Therefore the vaccine does nothing for most women and for the ones it does, it only works on some of the virus' believed to cause cancer.
Sorry, there is no herd immunity advantage here. There are dozens of strains of HPV (and virus' mutate) that are not even covered in the vaccines. The current vaccine covers 70% of the strains thought to cause cervical cancer and MOST women who get theses will not get cancer. This is much ado about nothing.
IF the vaccine is 100% effective (no vaccines are), we MIGHT be looking at a reduction in deaths due to cervical cancer from 4200/year to 1260/year in 30-40 years. MIGHT as we don't know that the other HPVs won't just fill the niche if we did eradicate the forms that are covered by the vaccine. Given that we have already reduced cervical cancer deaths by over 50% through screening and we can improve even more with better screening, what is the point of spending the kind of money we're talking about here?
What advances will we make in early detection and treatment of cancers in the next 30/40 years? Given the advancements we've made in the last 30/40 years I'll bet there will be many a break through. I find myself asking why the push for THIS vaccine? Something doesn't add up here.
Polio is an immediate threat. It affects children. If this vaccine prevented .4% of children from dying of cervical cancer you'd see a different response. We're talking about potentially preventing 70% of cervical cancers that may occur in 30 or so years when early detection is already saving lives here. There is no comparison to polio. Polio is not something you can detect and watch and treat if caught early. Cervical cancer is. Polio isn't a big maybe off in the future. It's a now and it's devastating if you're the one who ends up paralyzed. I chose to get my children the meningitis vaccine for this reason. Again no good recovery rates with early detection and it impacts young people.
Why so hot on THIS vaccine? At BEST it's effective against 70% of the HPV thought to cause cervical cancer. This isn't a cure for cervical cancer. It's not get the shot and you won't get cancer. At best you reduce your risk but so do yearly pap smears...
I just wanted to clarify that. Too many people say, 95% of women will clear the virus, as if there's something one can do to clear it.
Mostly untrue. There are many strains of HPV, and this vaccine protects against 9. Even if you have a small chance (more on that later) of getting infected with one particular strain, you can get other strains. The vaccine protects against the strains that cause 90% of cervical cancers. You're talking the "Nirvana fallacy", that is, if it's not 100%, it's worthless.
HPV is a communicable disease. Therefore, herd immunity comes into play. Think about it. The more vaccinated people there are, the less possibility of transmitting it to someone else. It doesn't really matter how it's transmitted, it's transmittable person to person.
Where do you get those numbers? Why 30-40 years? It has been explained over and over and OVER again that cervical cancer takes 10-30 years to develop from an HPV infection. So I don't know where you're getting 30-40 from. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/...-fact-sheet#q7
We don't know that but there is no evidence that I know of that non-oncogenic strains will "mutate" and become oncogenic. That's typical FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) from anti-vax literature.
Who knows? Who cares for right now? There is no conspiracy going on.
WRONG! The new vaccine added more strains, it now is preventive against the strains that cause 90% of cervical cancers.
Ivory, you need to learn some epidemiology. Your comparisons with polio and meningitis just show how little you understand this. All this "Oh, that's different" stuff. An incidence rate the magnitude of HPV infection is HUGE! Even the incidence rate of persistent HPV infection, about 5% is HUGE because the incidence of HPV infection is HUGE. Heck, even the incidence of cervical cancer, about 0.5% or so, is huge when almost everybody has the infection.
The CDC estimates that 90% of men and 80% of women will be infected with HPV in their lifetimes. (op cit) That means the INCIDENCE of HPV is very high. Way higher than polio or meningitis. (Please note I support both polio and meningitis vaccination by the way.) As with polio, most who get it won't get the awful, awful, in the case of polio, paralysis/death; in the case of HPV, cancer/death.
Here are some epi terms. Study them. Glossary of Epidemiology Terms
"incidence rate: A measure of the frequency with which an event, such as a new case of illness, occurs in a population over a period of time. The denominator is the population at risk; the numerator is the number of new cases occurring during a given time period."
Plus much more.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 04-08-2017 at 02:23 PM..
Regarding paps, we don't necessarily need better screening tools. In order to reduce the death rate from cervical cancer further, we need to get more women on board in terms of getting theirs regularly. Currently only 60-70% of women get regular paps. Imagine what would happen to the rate of cervical cancer deaths if all women got regular paps? We would see a major decline in that number.
No, very poorly said. See my response.
Yes, if more women got paps that would be a good thing.
WRT elderly (and I don't consider 68 particularly "elderly", it's a little too close to my age, LOL!)-as we age, our immune systems age as well. One of the Disney measles cases was ~70 years old. Either s/he was an "outlier" that never had measles, or his/her immunity had worn off enough to make him/her susceptible again. It's more some of the other VPDs, however, that can affect the elderly. Pertussis immunity wears off with both natural disease and vaccination. That is a disease that is constantly in circulation. Influenza, even with vaccination, the elderly are more susceptible. So an unvaccinated child who is contagious but not yet symptomatic can pass it on. Basically, the elderly, especially the "super elderly" are simply more vulnerable to everything.
Is it always necessary to insult people, Jo?
That was uncalled for.
Excuse me, but that was addressed to another poster, not you, but if the shoe fits, wear it. I was referring specifically in that post to being in a medical system, which another addressed. I am not, and do not wish to be in a medical system. All adults have the right not to be tracked without their permission, for vaccinations, or any other medical issue. Invasion of privacy, if nothing else. No Informed Consent.
So you have ONE Elderly person who caught Measles? You are going to make broad generalization with just one case out of millions? Take that one up with your own CDC over MMR vax with born before 1957. So maybe we should get that vax just because ONE ELDERLY MAN got the Measles? I am sure Big Pharms would love that one. More Profits. If you wish my personal view, I think all you Medical Professionals are just tools of the Big Pharms for all their drugs, and not just vaccinations.
You aim to put FEAR in the hearts of all to not only promote vaccinations, but all medications, and especially preventive testing/treatments. If you cannot take the heat from your own generation, let alone the younger anti-vaxxer generation, it is time for you to get out of kitchen. I cannot be bothered to fight with some medical professional at my age. Wouldn't you agree that it would be a waste of both of our times?
How can big pharma make more money from treatments if there were no sick people in the first place?
and BTW, did you even read the journals (at least the abstracts) in my first post? You guys are a riot.
If there were no vaccines there would be millions of sick folks, just like there were before vaccines, with hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths, even with modern medical treatment. So, yes, pharma would make more money.
I note you still have not told us where you got the list of articles in your first post, and since some of them do not show what you apparently thought they did, it's pretty obvious you did not read them. I did.
Excuse me, but that was addressed to another poster, not you, but if the shoe fits, wear it. I was referring specifically in that post to being in a medical system, which another addressed. I am not, and do not wish to be in a medical system. All adults have the right not to be tracked without their permission, for vaccinations, or any other medical issue. Invasion of privacy, if nothing else. No Informed Consent.
So you have ONE Elderly person who caught Measles? You are going to make broad generalization with just one case out of millions? Take that one up with your own CDC over MMR vax with born before 1957. So maybe we should get that vax just because ONE ELDERLY MAN got the Measles? I am sure Big Pharms would love that one. More Profits. If you wish my personal view, I think all you Medical Professionals are just tools of the Big Pharms for all their drugs, and not just vaccinations.
You aim to put FEAR in the hearts of all to not only promote vaccinations, but all medications, and especially preventive testing/treatments. If you cannot take the heat from your own generation, let alone the younger anti-vaxxer generation, it is time for you to get out of kitchen. I cannot be bothered to fight with some medical professional at my age. Wouldn't you agree that it would be a waste of both of our times?
This is not a private message board. No one is questioning your "rights".
I gave an example of one person.
I know what you think of "all you Medical Professionals". May you never need our help.
Wow. We elderly had measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox in our childhood before those vaccines, cannot catch them AGAIN, and have lifetime immunity. We won't be catching, or dying, from these diseases from unvaccinated children.
You claim to be in the medical profession, and you say the elderly will be catching these diseases from unvaccinated children?
Yes, if you had a vaccine preventable diseases (except whooping cough) you are probably immune to it. However, you had to get sick to become immune. You were not permanently disabled and did not die from those diseases but many people did. With a vaccine you skip the getting-sick-maybe-being-disabled-possibly-dying-part and go directly to the being-immune-not-getting-sick-not-being-disabled-not-possibly-dying part.
Katarina has already addressed the issue with seniors. Yes, adults can get vaccine preventable diseases. That is why boosters for some, like whooping cough, are recommended. Many adults these days take immunosuppressant drugs, and the older we get the less efficient our immune systems are.
So how about just cutting the snark and realize that the amazing immune systems you and your family seem to have are not typical of the rest of the world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
You have to look at the risk to benefit ratio for any vaccine.
Take measles. Without a vaccine most children would get measles and many would die. Plus herd immunity protects those who cannot be vaccinated.
When it comes to HPV MOST women will clear the virus on their own with no issues. Less than 1% (0.6% as of 2013) of women will get cervical cancer in their lifetime. The 5 year survival rate is around 67% and climbing because women are getting pap smears (cervical cancer deaths have been cut in half due to increased screening and can be cut even more with better screening.). The vaccine is designed to work on the strains of HPV that result in 70% of cervical cancers. There is no herd immunity advantage.
When I look at all the information I scratch my head and ask why vaccinate everyone with this vaccine? Measles i get. The risk to benefit ratio is definitely on the side of vaccination but not for HPV. If your risk factors are high maybe you come to a different conclusion but mine aren't. There are zero cases of cervical cancer on either side of my dd's families in spite of the fact that several women have had dysplasia when young and healthy. For all I know clearing the dysplasia when young might be why we don't get cervical cancers. Mother nature seems to already be taking care of my family here. If my mother had had cervical cancer instead of a pre cancerous condition (like I did and my dd has right now) I might be singing a different tune.
For me and mine the answer is no. Neither of my girls chose to get the vaccine when they turned 18. Your analysis may have lead you to a different conclusion. Good for you. However, I do wonder why THIS vaccine is being pushed as hard as it is given the low incidence of cervical cancer and the fact it doesn't even address all of the strains of HPV that are thought to cause cervical cancer. It may turn out that the 30% it doesn't treat just fill the niche left by the 70% it does or that the virus' it treats mutate to become virus' it doesn't treat. IMO the jury is still out on this one. We're all gambling no matter which side we're on.
It will be 40 years before we know if vaccination against HPV has any impact on deaths due to cervical cancer. 30 before we know if it had a significant impact on the development of cervical cancers. Even then we won't know if a decrease in deaths is due to better screening or the vaccine because better screening has already cut rates of cervical cancer deaths in half.
Katarina has quite well responded to this but I would like to elaborate a bit.
First, it would be helpful if you would explain what risks you think the HPV vaccine carries. Since it uses relatively new vaccine technology, it was extensively evaluated pre-licensure and is being continuously monitored. If your concerns are based on stories from stories you read on the internet from parents alleging that HPV vaccine "damaged" their children in some way, your concern is based on bad data. That "damage" is not being confirmed in properly conducted studies.
HPV is a DNA virus with a relatively low mutation rate, and there is no evidence that there will be substitution of other strains that would negate the reduction in cancers by the vaccine. Of cancers we see in the future, those that occur in people who take the vaccine will probably be due to strains not covered by the vaccine, which is why we will keep screening for cervical cancer.
I already explained to you that we know HPV vaccines will reduce HPV associated cervical cancer deaths because it can be shown they prevent dysplasia. All cervical cancer starts as dysplasia. It does not skip that step. Pap screening is done to find dysplasia. If cancer skipped the dysplasia step, Pap smears would only find cancer, not pre-cancer. The decrease in dysplasia rates in vaccinated women was evident in the earliest followup studies of the vaccine. We do not need to wait forty years to know HPV vaccines prevent cancer. Prevention of HPV prevents dysplasia. That means that prevention of HPV prevents cancer. It might be helpful for you to find a pathology textbook and read about the pathogenesis of cervical cancer.
Treatment for dysplasia may not eradicate the virus. The dysplasia may be cured, greatly reducing the risk of invasive cancer, but the woman may still carry the virus, or she may catch a different strain and have recurrence of the dysplasia.
It's hard to know what genetic factors allow some people to clear HPV and others not, but cervical cancer is not hereditary, like some breast cancers. It's caused by HPV. The different people in your family who have had dysplasia have had HPV as the common factor. It is indeed because the dysplasia was found and treated that none of you developed invasive cancer. However, if you had never had HPV, you would have never had the dysplasia.
Kat corrected your statement that HPV vaccine prevents 70% of cervical cancer. The new version of Gardasil containing nine HPV strains protects against 90%, not 70%. This is the second time you have used the 70% figure in this thread. Please do not continue to do so. It's wrong. Also, there is some cross-protection for a few strains not included in the vaccine. It is possible that more strains will be added to the vaccine in the future. The limiting factor will probably the point at which there is not sufficient additional benefit to justify additional cost.
Studies concerning herd immunity are evolving but evidence is emerging that it does exist. First we have to get to the vaccine uptake level needed to exceed the herd immunity threshold. Discouraging use of the vaccine makes that hard to do.
You also seem to be ignoring the other cancers that HPV causes. What do you propose to do about those? How is having a Pap smear going to prevent a woman from giving HPV to a partner who then gets throat cancer from it?
The risk of HPV vaccine is vanishingly small, and the benefits unquestionable.
Regarding paps, we don't necessarily need better screening tools. In order to reduce the death rate from cervical cancer further, we need to get more women on board in terms of getting theirs regularly. Currently only 60-70% of women get regular paps. Imagine what would happen to the rate of cervical cancer deaths if all women got regular paps? We would see a major decline in that number.
If we vaccinate against HPV, fewer women will even have abnormal Pap smears. Those women who are not getting Paps, often due to lack of access (another issue, off topic here, so let's not go there), will still be protected if they are vaccinated.
The concept that doing Pap smears and treating dysplasia is better than preventing dysplasia in the first place is so illogical that I really cannot fathom why you advocate doing that.
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