Anti-vax

[c0nc0rdance]

I've been vaccinated against everything I could lay my hands on, but then, I did field work in Java and Puerto Rico, and regularly worked in BL3 tropical disease labs. Vaccines are our best and most effective tools against viral diseases.

What vaccines really are is an education for your immune system. We've taken the best antigens from the worst pathogens, cut them up into immunological Cliff's Notes, and fed them to your best immunoscholars (forgive the horribly extended metaphor). You now have an Einstein level education about that pathogen. It may not last, or the information may change over time, but at that moment, you are better prepared to throw off a challenge than in any other condition.

Your body will make antibodies against any damn thing that it comes across, and it will react to the coat proteins, or the surface glycos, which is precisely the strategy used by the pathogens to evade capture. It will make antibodies that are ineffective, or that actually accelerate infection. That's why scientists still don't have good vaccines against dengue, Ebola, Lassa, TB, etc.

Not getting vaccinated doesn't mean that you aren't developing antibodies and memory B cells, it just means that you are making antibodies against other things... non-pathogens, and those aren't going to be helping you. There is even a great deal of cross-protection. Being vaccinated against viral influenza can help protect you from yellow fever, for example. Not 100%, but better than not being flu-vaccinated.

Good nutrition is always important, so is mosquito and vector control, so is public policy and access to supportive care. But vaccination is such an effective and low-cost part of public health policy, that it is and will remain a cornerstone of infectious disease management.

The technical term used in immunology for someone who is unvaccinated is naive, and that's appropriate.

 

[Aught3]

IMO the less vaxes the better, if we can sustain a healthy society without them surely that would be the main goal.

Remember when people used to die from smallpox? No? Me either, and I'm glad that vaccination was able to rid us of that disease. Measles could be wiped out as well, as long as everyone who can gets vaccinated.

 

[ladiesman391]

People I never said I was against vaccination or denied it worked, I said I agree with sides of the argument and that a clean, healthy, sanitary society is one better equipped to deal with disease. It's like getting attacked by wolves here.

Cervical Cancer vaccination report :

http://www.visainfo.org.au/pages/04_Vaccines_and_Disease/Patricia%20Bohackyj/HPVcancervaccine2007.pdf

 

[Aught3]

It's like getting attacked by wolves here.

Oh, maybe you should clarify a bit then 'cause when you say things like:

Vaccinations aim to target what? 98% of the population, imagine if you had 98% of the population eating healthy and being completely sanitary, that would produce herd immunity also....

It sounds like you think vaccines could be replaced if everyone was a bit more sanitary. So what are you saying?

 

[ladiesman391]

It sounds like you think vaccines could be replaced if everyone was a bit more sanitary. So what are you saying?

You missed the "also" at the end of my statement. If you want to twist my words around, misinterpret my statements and imply things that I didn't mean, go for your life, i'm not going to comment on here anymore because I don't know enough about vaccination to add anything useful, only my personal opinion which doesn't count for much.

 

[Aught3]

...and also healthy eating.

No misrepresentation or twisting - that really is what I think you are saying. Your saying that it's not what you mean (I expect you would know) and I was sincerely asking for clarification.

 

[ladiesman391]

...and also healthy eating.

No misrepresentation or twisting - that really is what I think you are saying. Your saying that it's not what you mean (I expect you would know) and I was sincerely asking for clarification.

Well I thought you were smarter than that Aught. I'll re-word what I said for you:

Vaccinations aim to target what? 98% of the population, imagine if you had 98% of the population eating healthy and being completely sanitary that would produce herd immunity, as would a 98% vaccination rate.

Note: Bare in mind sanitation does not only cover washing your hands and taking a shower, it covers a wide range of issues: Sanitation

 

[Giliell]

Well I thought you were smarter than that Aught. I'll re-word what I said for you:

Vaccinations aim to target what? 98% of the population, imagine if you had 98% of the population eating healthy and being completely sanitary that would produce herd immunity, as would a 98% vaccination rate.

[/quote]

Which is totally untrue.
Good nutrition and sanitation don't produce ANY imunity at all. Imunity means that your body already know how fight a certain virus. Good nutrition only means that your imune system is fit and running strong, but that still means that it must first find out what it's fighting against and develope the appropriate antibodies from scratch. Good sanitation means that people are less likely to spread a disease or contract it but it also provides NO IMUNITY whatsoever.
And it totally leaves out children and elderly people and people with a medical condition whose imune system is not as fit as yours anyway, no matter what you feed them and how sanitary they are.

 

[Aught3]

Vaccinations aim to target what? 98% of the population, imagine if you had 98% of the population eating healthy and being completely sanitary that would produce herd immunity, as would a 98% vaccination rate.

Well, it still sounds about the same to me. Health eating helps promote a stronger immune system but does not produce a super immune system capable of defending off attack. Similarly, and increase in sanitation lowers the rate of contact with bacteria/viruses but does not eliminate the risk of picking up a disease. Improved sanitation and eating habits have certainly played a role in the reduction of disease, but for illnesses that a passed person to person these two measures aren't sufficient.

Bare in mind...

Hey, is that an insult? :lol:

 

[ladiesman391]

Hey, is that an insult?

You must be a sensitive person if you consider that an insult Aught :lol: or just a moron.

Which is totally untrue.

For some diseases it might not work but for others it could. Vaccination is not a guarantee you will keep disease out either so it's kinda pointless arguing it, as I've said all along i'm all for vaccination, but also think if people improved their sanitation it would also greatly help.

 

[Aught3]

You must be a sensitive person if you consider that an insult Aught :lol: or just a moron.

Lol, unlikely. The correct phrasing is of course "bear in mind" as in grasping or holding onto an idea. You said "bare in mind" which indicates an empty head or possibly nudity. A simple typo to be sure, but funny nonetheless :lol:

 

[Giliell]

Which is totally untrue.

For some diseases it might not work but for others it could. Vaccination is not a guarantee you will keep disease out either so it's kinda pointless arguing it, as I've said all along i'm all for vaccination, but also think if people improved their sanitation it would also greatly help.

No, a vaccination is no guarantee. There are non-responders and there are mutations. But it's still the best protection we have so far. Indicating that good nutrition an sanitation could be AS EFFECTIVE AS vaccination is dangerously wrong. Nobody argues against sanitation, only that too much of a good thing gives us stuff like MRSA, so, please, stick to soap.
You also did not offer any solution for those whose imune system is naturally running low, no matter how good they eat ot how good their sanitation is.

 

[c0nc0rdance]

Any of you familiar with JC or BK viruses? Polyomaviruses? Chances are that you are infected with both. At certain times in your life, you have infected others with your strain. Babies get infected by their mothers very early in life.

Can good sanitation prevent infection? Hell no.

There is a mentality that is common among alt-healthers. If 1 mg of Vitamin A is good, 2 mg of Vitamin A is better. This is not the case. Even if it doesn't lead to toxicity, your body does not have the ability to super-charge. There are no magic potions that enhance your functioning. Don't let video games mislead you. If your body needs 1.2 pg of selenium to make more enzymes, giving it 2.4 pg of selenium is not going to supercharge your enzymes. It will just mean that your body has to clear 1.2 pg of selenium through the kidneys and excrete it.

Good sanitation is very similar. There is a level of sanitation that helps to prevent the transmission of certain diseases, but beyond a certain point, it's no longer helping. In fact, it can have negative consequences like autoimmunity and low specificity antibodies producing kidney damage.

The bigger picture is that many people believe in a zero threshold linear model of nutrition and disease. Every increment along the line has the same effect on health.

In fact, the picture is much more complex. Many health risks operate on hormetic principles [google hormesis]. There is a threshold below which the relationship between health and behavior or nutrition are no longer linear, and may reverse trends.

Good sanitation, nutrition, or behavior are by no means an effective substitute to vaccination.

 

[benoitms]

I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!

So many stupids in just one place :lol: actually one stand alone...

Vaccination DOES work greatly ask Pasteur about that... And about healthy living and viruses, ask the South American natives... When European got there with unknown to them germs and viruses they dropped like flies... Same in Africa. But they had a healthy life... What was the difference? Well a little friend came alone with the Spanish guys and you got a nice pandemic. So NO life style is not the ultimate solution not to get sick. Never heard of Nesocomial germs? They live and kill in ultra clean and sterile places: hospitals.

The against argues are as childish as this guy (a so call "healer") who told me that ALL cancers comes from too much medicine abuse... WE HAVE FOUND TRACES OF BONE CANCER IN DINOSAURS!!!
So yes people are stupid and ready to believe that eating bananas will protect you from heath problems, that you can treat more efficiently cancer with homeopathy than chemotherapy...

About unhealthy products in vaccines: Well EVERYTHING can be dangerous, even water, just depend HOW MUCH YOU TAKE. Very small amount of mercury can't kill you but a hat maker using everyday mercury in his job will finish dead or insane. Or maybe you should get rid of your grandma thermometer just checking temperature everyday on a tub full of mercury will kill you . Sure natural products are healthy: death cup, common foxglove, and so many others... So please get a salad!

 

[xman]

 

[c0nc0rdance]

Forgive me a self-promoting post, but it was spawned by this discussion, and represents my final word on the matter



Thanks to all of you for the productive discussion.

 

[Giliell]

I already commented there: Thanx for making them.
I'm not only a laywoman, I'm also bad at making videos and always grateful for you guys.

 

[Fullmetalgeneticist]

I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!

So many stupids in just one place :lol: actually one stand alone...

Vaccination DOES work greatly ask Pasteur about that... And about healthy living and viruses, ask the South American natives... When European got there with unknown to them germs and viruses they dropped like flies... Same in Africa. But they had a healthy life... What was the difference? Well a little friend came alone with the Spanish guys and you got a nice pandemic. So NO life style is not the ultimate solution not to get sick. Never heard of Nesocomial germs? They live and kill in ultra clean and sterile places: hospitals.

I suggest reading Guns, Germs and Steel which points out a decent mechanism as to disease interaction in our history (So the americas was relatively one sided due to lack of super deadly diseases while Africa put up a bigger fight and Asia literally was 50:50 for most of the fight between cultures due to the sheer lethality of the diseases that the europeans and asians acquired (Think Cholera vs. TB, and more famously smallpox vs. the plague...) It answers the question "why do you have so much cargo".

Nesocomical germs rely on monsterous resistances to things that we use to kill them at the cost of normal competitiveness since resistances to our weaponry against bacteria are alterations to molecular machinery which affects efficiency. Those diseases wouldn't be able to dent our immune systems if they weren't compromised (Hence the doctors and nurses don't fall sick to them while patients do). That being said... Clostridium Difficile lives upto its name.

The against argues are as childish as this guy (a so call "healer") who told me that ALL cancers comes from too much medicine abuse... WE HAVE FOUND TRACES OF BONE CANCER IN DINOSAURS!!!
So yes people are stupid and ready to believe that eating bananas will protect you from heath problems, that you can treat more efficiently cancer with homeopathy than chemotherapy...

Homeopathy works because it makes people feel good. No side effects = no worries. Unlike normal medicine which can kill you. I had someone who said you can will cancer away. I had to point out that we do not live in an anime world where friendship speeches work...

About unhealthy products in vaccines: Well EVERYTHING can be dangerous, even water, just depend HOW MUCH YOU TAKE. Very small amount of mercury can't kill you but a hat maker using everyday mercury in his job will finish dead or insane. Or maybe you should get rid of your grandma thermometer just checking temperature everyday on a tub full of mercury will kill you . Sure natural products are healthy: death cup, common foxglove, and so many others... So please get a salad!

Batrachatoxin is a wonderful example as is Curare. Natural doesn't mean safe which is what annoys me about natural medicine testing.... Also Mercury is natural since its in nature.

The thing is anti-vax campaigners don't remember what the diseases we truly fear are like. I want them to come to India where 50% of infant mortality is due to Measles... A disease that can be stopped by a simple vaccine. Our issue is we cannot afford that many vaccines while the US's is that people opt out because they don't remember people dying to diseases and then they listen to people who have no idea what they are on about....

 

[c0nc0rdance]

Curious measles facts from Wikipedia:

• -- Measles is still a leading preventable cause of death in children < 15 years old in most areas of the world (US excluded).
  -- It has killed approximately 200 million people in the last 150 years.
  -- Globally, measles deaths are down 60 percent, from an estimated 873,000 deaths in 1999 to 345,000 in 2005
  -- During the 1850s, measles killed a fifth of Hawaii's people. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population.

 

[Giliell]

Curious measles facts from Wikipedia:

• -- Measles is still a leading preventable cause of death in children < 15 years old in most areas of the world (US excluded).
  -- It has killed approximately 200 million people in the last 150 years.
  -- Globally, measles deaths are down 60 percent, from an estimated 873,000 deaths in 1999 to 345,000 in 2005
  -- During the 1850s, measles killed a fifth of Hawaii's people. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population.

The day my daughter could finally get her MMRV-shot was one of the happiest in my life. I'll live through 11 more months of anxiety about stupid people letting their kids run wild with measles soon.