More U.S. Children Vaccinated Than Ever

On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 20:36:44 GMT, "Roger Schlafly"
wrote:

So parents hear emotional arguments for and against vaccines.
They also hear emotional arguments about where to live, what
to eat, whom to vote for, etc. They still manage to make reasonable
decisions.

Reasonable in the opinion of one who is, apparently, less than fully
reasonable himself...

I would not call eating decisions that result in a 40% obesity rate
reasonable. I would not call voting decisions that elect
self-evidently corrupt and incompetent candidates reasonable.

-- Roy L

On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 19:22:13 -0400, jonah thomas
wrote:

If we admit that we don't really know about long-term consequences of
things like vaccines, then it would follow that for the society as a
whole it's wrong to force people to get vaccinated. Better to prevent a
random half of the people from getting vaccinated, until we get enough
data to actually see what's happening. If half-vaccinated is not enough
to prevent occasional outbreaks among the unvaccinated half then we'd
get more data about the nature of the disease also, which is definitely
a good thing. If, over a generation or two, the advantages of
vaccination when half the population is vaccinated are obvious, then we
could gradually increase the percentage who are allowed access to
vaccines up to say 95%.

The problem here is that the experiment is not really controlled. The
vaccines change from year to year as better ones are developed. And
some of the problems with vaccines have been blamed on a preservative
used to keep the vaccines stable so they can be stored for a longer
period of time, rather than the vaccination per se.

-- Roy L

"Roger Schlafly" wrote in message
t...
"Robert Vienneau" wrote
The math says exactly the opposite.

No, it doesn't. You've posted some quotes to the effect that
the real world deviates somewhat from the economic models.
Of course it does. Nevertheless, individual free choice nearly
always gives a better result than planned economies. Both theory
and practice prove it.

Right. How about showing us the papers that support this view? Can you
explain how highways, bridges, electrical systems and sewer systems would
get built without government intervention?

Vaccinations have an important dimension of non-excludability
and externalities. So, if one wanted to be guided by "the
mathematics", ...

The conclusion is still that individual free choice works best.

Again, support your conclusion.

Jeff

"Roger Schlafly" wrote in message
t...
"Jonah Thomas" wrote
those decisions. Likewise, we have a similar problem with the bias of
the experts who are making vaccine policy recommendations. In the
end, I trust the people who are most likely to have the best interests
of the child at heart more than I do experts in the field.
This is a serious problem. Expertise is not enough and good will is not
enough. Unless you can find one person that you are sure has both, your
results will be quite uncertain.

You may not find such a person. The best solution is to let the
parents decide, and let them use the best available info.

This is the present solution.

What info should parents use? Where is the best available info? And how much
info would you expect parents to try to digest before making a decision?
What about parents who are not smart or cannot read? What do you expect them
to do?

Jeff

"D. C. Sessions" wrote in message
...
In , Eric Bohlman wrote:

Even if they've got the best of intentions, the fact is that parents
tend
to deal with potential risks to their children emotionally rather than
rationally. Protecting one's children was an important function long
before the cerebral cortex evolved much, so it tends to be a midbrain
function. That's why, for example, one of the classic propaganda
techniques for stirring up hatred against a group is to claim that they
pose a threat to children; it gets parents to think emotionally rather
than rationally. In the absence of complete knowledge, parents will go
with whatever is the most emotionally compelling. And all too often
that
means going with whoever has the best salesmanship. Plus, we all have a
built-in bias that causes us to perceive the risk of doing something as
greater than it actually is, and the risk of not doing something as less
than it actually is.

Keep in mind that that emotional response also tends to heavily
color how we weigh facts, so that even those (very) few in
posession of "complete facts [1]" won't necessarily come to
objectively justifiable conclusions.

This is correct. People in general are notorious for not being able to weigh
risks. For example, people worry more about flying on planes, yet are more
likely to get killed in a crash going to or from an airport by car than in
the airplane.

Considering the amount of effort and expertise that goes into
making usable sense of those "complete facts," it's very
telling that anyone would seriously propose that each and
every parent take the time to master them before making
life-and-death decisions about their children.

True. Plus a lot of parents are teens; many are not able to read well; and
many don't speak or read English well.

How long do you expect doctors or nurses to explain every detail to these
parents? Who is going to pay them?

Jeff

[1] Rog has often complained that researchers haven't forwarded
him their complete datasets, including personal identifying
details. Free, of course.

--
| Microsoft: "A reputation for releasing inferior software will make |
| it more difficult for a software vendor to induce customers to pay |
| for new products or new versions of existing products." |
end

"Roger Schlafly" wrote in message
t...
"Eric Bohlman" wrote
than rationally. In the absence of complete knowledge, parents will go
with whatever is the most emotionally compelling. And all too often
that
means going with whoever has the best salesmanship. Plus, we all have a

So parents hear emotional arguments for and against vaccines.
They also hear emotional arguments about where to live, what
to eat, whom to vote for, etc. They still manage to make reasonable
decisions.

So it is a matter of who makes the decisions, not how good those decisions
are?

"Roger Schlafly" wrote in message
...
"jonah thomas" wrote
I guess it's impractical to do large-scale testing. Too bad.

We could simply give people free choice. If large numbers of
people are skeptical about vaccines and refuse them, then we
could compare the vaccinated kids to the unvaccinated kids.
Not as good as a random sample, but better than nothing. If
the experience results in a consensus, so much the better.

Are you sure this would be better than nothing? It could be worse.
Unvaccinated and vaccinated children might differ on their parent's economic
resources, educational level, language, intelligence as well as their own
nutrition, housing, ethnicity, schooling and access to medical care. These
differences could make such a comparison worse than no comparison. You
should take some classes on statistics and sampling and research methods.

Jeff

In , Jeff wrote:
"D. C. Sessions" wrote in message
...

Considering the amount of effort and expertise that goes into
making usable sense of those "complete facts," it's very
telling that anyone would seriously propose that each and
every parent take the time to master them before making
life-and-death decisions about their children.

True. Plus a lot of parents are teens; many are not able to read well; and
many don't speak or read English well.

How long do you expect doctors or nurses to explain every detail to these
parents? Who is going to pay them?

How about a simple compromise?

Home-schoolers can do as they please.

For parents too (let's be charitable) busy to do all that
research, the default of following the recommended schedule
is available.

For those who are (as Rog and JG tell us) thorougly familiar
with the principles and research on vaccines, a simple half-
hour quiz will disclose that fact (nothing on policy, just
a review of the literature. Should be easy.) Successful
completion of the quiz gets your kids into school w/o the
shots.

--
| Microsoft: "A reputation for releasing inferior software will make |
| it more difficult for a software vendor to induce customers to pay |
| for new products or new versions of existing products." |
end

"David Wright" wrote in message
...

* Assuming that reading The Eagle Forum counts as extensive research.

Now, now -- at least the Eagle Forum is against the horrid USA PATRIOT
act.

I agree with the Eagle Forum on something? How will I ever get to sleep
tonight?

--
CBI

"jonah thomas" wrote in message
...
CBI wrote:
"jonah thomas" wrote

If we admit that we don't really know about long-term consequences of
things like vaccines, then it would follow that for the society as a
whole it's wrong to force people to get vaccinated.

Huh? Most of the vaccines we are using have been around for decades.

Yes, but we don't really have adequate control groups.

How about the people before the vaccines? You could claim confounders for a
few of them but after one repeats the same success time after time one
should start to suspect that it is the intervention.


Yes, so if we did make it illegal for a random half of the population to
get vaccinated we *would* have outbreaks in the unvaccinated half.
Within 2 generations the risks on either side should become obvious to
everybody.

We already have outbreaks in less immunized groups and the risks are obvious
to (almost) everybody.


While it would be politically better to let people who
didn't want to be vaccinated but could, switch places with people who
did want to be vaccinated but couldn't, that would mess up the study
because they'd differ in nonrandom ways.

Boy, you got me close to violating Godwin's law.

--
CBI, MD