The cost of the no vaxer's

[Esteleth]

Jericho, getting (some) funding from a source does not automatically mean that you are biased in their favor. It is a complicating factor, which is why scientists are very careful to document their funding sources and guard themselves and each other, through this nifty little process called "peer review."

You have not established why pharmaceutical companies have any interest, financial or otherwise, in making and selling vaccines. At best, they break even on them.

Oh, and the Institute of Medicine? The branch of the National Science Foundation? Gets government funding? YOU DON'T SAY.

[Witsec7]

I can't wait until the lizard people take over. You know they will be pro-vaccine and give everyone plety of time off work to get manicures.

Just one look at their claws and ya know they will respect a persons right to manicure. Its all about choice.

[nolongerIFBx]

:lol: Spreading chicken pox at a chicken factory. :lol:

My doc gave me a box of free samples. I was very appreciative!! I live in a small town.

My shingles broke out on my back. It felt like someone had beat me with a mallet. I also had burning on one arm but it did not break out. My doctor also gave me a prescription for neurotin but I didn't fill it as ibuprofen was really sufficient. Either I have a really high pain tolerance or I was very fortunate to have such a mild case. I do not look forward to having them again. I hope I'll get lucky and only have the one case.

[TXDuck]

I was wrong. I was thinking of the Institute of Medicine, a source the AMA cites a lot.

That's rather different as the scope of the IOM is completely different. IOM does a lot of independent research. So it would naturally get a lot of its funding from the government as the federal government is a major research funding source.

I think you are beginning to play fast and loose with the facts. There is nothing sinister about IOM receiving a lot of its funding from the government and furthermore, I think you know that.

[jericho]

I am not totally against all vaccinations. I even give my daughter some vaccines on a selective "alternative" schedule. I am just trying to present why there COULD be concern. I saw so many people posting on this thread that they were all in to vaccines and they had no concern. No concern? I think everyone should have some concern and be open to the possibility that there could be some problems with them. Don't just take mainstream AMA and FDA funded research without question. When looking online for answers I found some good questions that came up about vaccines. I presented some of those to you here, but I'm far from a conspiracy theorist. I just like to look at things from all sides.

[TXDuck]

I presented some of those to you here, but I'm far from a conspiracy theorist. I just like to look at things from all sides.

And apparently with your own facts....

[jericho]

That's rather different as the scope of the IOM is completely different. IOM does a lot of independent research. So it would naturally get a lot of its funding from the government as the federal government is a major research funding source.

I think you are beginning to play fast and loose with the facts. There is nothing sinister about IOM receiving a lot of its funding from the government and furthermore, I think you know that.

You are correct. There is nothing inherently wrong with government funding. My point was that you are not really independent when more than 3/4 of your funding comes from the government.

[Terrie]

The agendas are that many of these journals get paid by Pharmaceutic companies. Conflict of interest.

Science in general does not equal a reference. I am not saying there is a government conspiracy. Just that there might be money involved in some research and reporting.

You mean like Andrew Wakefield whose research was funded by lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers and who, himself, was trying to patent a measles-only vaccine?

As for "trying to look at things from all sides" do you quote David Irving and David Duke when discussing the Holocaust?

[emmiedahl]

And apparently with your own facts....

Those issues were illogical and based on a poor understanding of science. My teenager could tell you what is wrong with the articles you posted, but you can't?

Jericho, independent research requires government funding. Someone has to pay for it, and your choices are government or private interests. Which would you prefer?

[TXDuck]

You are correct. There is nothing inherently wrong with government funding. My point was that you are not really independent when more than 3/4 of your funding comes from the government.

From where would you prefer their funding to come? You've already stated your distaste of pharmaceutical companies. Universities and other labs get their funding from government grants too. So, where else would the money come from? Also, it bares pointing out that federal grants usually have as their scope "provide additional data on the effectiveness of X". (In a nutshell, actual statements of funding go on for pages.) Unless you have proof that the government agency funding said research is getting kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies and ignoring any research it doesn't like, I'm afraid you have absolutely no point here. IOM may be dependent on federal grant money. But that does not mean they are not an independent researcher.

[Esteleth]

I must admit, I'm rather loving the idea that I am in thrall to something-or-another because the funding for my research comes from the NIH. Muahahaha! I am (apparently) the slave of Francis Collins!

[Witsec7]

I must admit, I'm rather loving the idea that I am in thrall to something-or-another because the funding for my research comes from the NIH. Muahahaha! I am (apparently) the slave of Francis Collins!

I did grants and contracts compliance for biomedical researchers at my local U for a few years. I'm so happy that my tax dollars go to medical research funding. :D

[Esteleth]

And yes, I had to look up who the director of the NIH was.

But maybe I'm not Collins' slave, maybe I'm the slave of Kathleen Sibelius, as the NIH is part of the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

But maybe it goes all the way up! Fellow FJ'ers, I belong to Barack Obama! *menaces*

[Esteleth]

Wait! We're back to lizard people! Because (as we ALL KNOW), Obama is totally a lizard-person.

I'm pretty sure "lizard person" would fit right in with all the other shit fundies say about him.

Edited to gloat about how I'm no longer a tater tot. I am blanket trained! :D

[Witsec7]

...Edited to gloat about how I'm no longer a tater tot. I am blanket trained! :D

You are well on your way to becoming a lizard person in your own right :lol:

[NurseNell]

You are well on your way to becoming a lizard person in your own right :lol:

What does one have to do to become a lizard person? My real name is Elizabeth and I hated it in school when peers called me Lizard.

[kb2]

Herd immunity is a theory which has very shaky reasoning.

http://gaia-health.com/gaia-blog/2012-03-12/the-science-behind-herd-immunity-and-an-extension-to-gmos/

Ahem.

So, epidemiologists like to study the spread of disease. They noticed that some diseases spread more easily than others. (Forgive me for channeling Contagion.) By looking at how fast diseases spread in a population, you can estimate how many people the average sick individual infects--this number is called R0 (the 0 should be subscript, but I don't know how to do that on here). That means that, on average, a sick person is capable of infecting R0 people during their illness. R0 is different for every microbe, based on the microbe's properties. The more and easier ways a microbe can be spread, the higher the R0. For instance, if an illness can only be spread by a child sneezing directly into your mouth (I had this happen to me recently, blech), it will probably have a lower R0 than one that will spread to anyone touching a doornob after the infected person for the next 12 hours.

Just to be clear, R0s for different diseases weren't made up by scientists by waving their hands around, speaking jibberish, and then calling out a number. They can be calculated a number of ways. For instance, in the June 2009 (volume 324, no 5934) issue of Science (pages 1557-1561), the article "Pandemic Potential of a Strain of Influenza A (H1N1): Early Findings" by Frasier, et al. (too many names to list) (sorry if it's behind a paywall), they calculate the R0 for the new strain of influenza three ways.

First, by assuming exponential growth, the growth rate of the epidemic ® can be inferred from estimates of the current cumulative number of infections (Yf) and estimated start date and size for the outbreak (t0 and Y0, respectively). The basic reproduction number (R0) can be estimated from the exponential growth rate if one also assumes that the generation time distribution for the new H1N1 strain is similar to that of other strains of seasonal and pandemic viruses (9, 10) [Table 1 and (8)]. Using the date of 15 February as the first case of the La Gloria outbreak (8) gives reproduction number estimates of between 1.31 and 1.42, depending on which variant of the geographical backcalculation model is used. Extending a more sophisticated Bayesian estimation method (11) that allows for stochastic variability intrinsic to epidemic dynamics and parameter uncertainty gave similar but slightly higher estimates for R0 with wider ranges: posterior median = 1.40; 95% CrI: 1.15 to 1.90 (Fig. 1C).

Gaia Health admin says, "However, no amount of math or statistical manipulation can add up to a valid figure when all that underlies the calculations is assumptions." And there were a lot of assumptions made to make that calculation. But assumptions aren't necessarily wrong. I assume that Oreos will be delicious every time I buy a bag. This is due to previous experience, as well as observations I can make the moment I buy a bag or Oreos, such as the presence of the "Sealed" label indicating to me that they were packaged properly and are therefore likely to contain the same level of freshness I am accustomed to in my trans-fatty desserts. The Gaia Health admin seems to think that assumptions are created out of thin air, but these authors made an assessment based on the pattern of spread of past flu strains as well as the data they already had on the one they were working on.

For the sake of holy-s**t this is already really long and I'm not sure how much I can copy/paste from a paper, I won't go into the other ways R0 was calculated. My point is, R0 is not something that is assumed, it is something that is calculated from hard data--in this case, the where and when people came down with H1N1 in Mexico. Assumptions that are made in a paper are not simply made-up facts, but educated guesses based on available knowledge. Have assumptions been wrong in the past? Sometimes, but not always. If you want to bash a paper for assuming things, you have to explain why those assumptions are wrong--what evidence do you have to the contrary? Most importantly, you don't have to take this paper's assumptions on faith--you can look at the other research that has been done on H1N1. The H1N1 flu certainly spread in an exponential pattern, and the authors were right to assume such. Later research showed that it also had a generation time distribution similar to previous strains of the flu, so this assumption was also correct. These assumptions helped the authors get their paper done in 2009, but scientific research didn't stop there, and other people looked into what they couldn't prove.

I promise this all ties into herd immunity. People hypothesized that if a proportion of the population were immune to a disease, transmission and then incidence would decrease. If R0 is the number of people on average infected by an individual, it makes sense that if (R0-1)/R0 of the population were immune, the effective transmission rate would decrease to one person or less per sick person, and incidence of the disease would decrease as a result. So if you on average infected four people with a cold, then if at least (4-1)/4 or 3/4 or 75% of the population were immune, you would transmit your cold to one person (or less!) on average.

The article pish-poshes this reasoning, but doesn't really say why. Really, the article doesn't even explain the reasoning behind herd immunity, defining it as, "If X percent of the population is immune to a disorder, then the rest of the population is protected from that disease." And I guess that's true in the vernacular, but then the article goes on to critique the mathematical models that support herd immunity, which say something slightly different--that if X percent of the population is immune, the incidence will decrease, eventually to 0. (Which seems very similar, but is slightly different. The non-immune are not fully protected while the incidence is high--the incidence has to decrease to zero by infecting fewer and fewer non-immune people over time. Maybe I'm being picky.)

But not only is Gaia's explanation of the mathematical models faulty, research into herd immunity didn't stop with mathematical models--real-world situations have been studied to test if the mathematical models are true. There are plenty of papers that look at real populations, their immunity rates, and the incidence of a disease. There's a clear association between the start of widespread vaccination and decrease in the incidence of many diseases--which is what you expect from the models. What could have decreased the incidence of chickenpox starting in 1995 other than the vaccine? What could have decreased Hib in the early 90s other than its vaccine? When schoolchildren in Japan were vaccinated for the flu, morbidity and mortality of the elderly decreased (N Engl J Med 2001; 344:889-96). Pneumococcus pneumonia decreased by 1/3 in the unvaccinated population after vaccination began. (Heymann, D., Aylward, B., Mass vaccination in public health. Control of communicable diseases manual 19th ed. 2008)

Then the article goes on to challenge two "assumptions" made in the theory behind herd immunity. (Spoiler--none of the objections were against the use of Bayesian estimation to calculate R0.) I was going to make a big deal about how most of what is assumed in scientific research is stuff that was proven by previous research (you assume R0 is accurate when calculating (R0-1)/R0 because you evaluated that calculation earlier, you assume the variables going into R0 are accurate because you evaluated that calculation earlier, you assume those variables are accurate when calculating those variables because you evaluated those calculations earlier...and really, did the author of the article really go through all the scientific research and mathematical theory on herd immunity before deciding the initial assumptions were wrong? Because I doubt they greatly disagree on the average flu's generational time distribution.)

It claims the concept relies on vaccines being 100% effective. It is true that in the 1970s there were a few papers that created mathematical models assuming that vaccines were 100% effective. It is now 2012. In the past 40 years, people have written other papers. You can find them by searching on the interne...oh never mind.

You need (R0-1)/R0 of the population immune. So if a vaccine immunizes E proportion of people, then the amount of people who need to be vaccinated is ((R0-1)/R0)/E. So, the concept of herd immunity does actually recognize that vaccines have a failure rate. And that is included in the mathematical models. Right there. In ((R0-1)/R0)/E. I have a pulsing vein on my forehead now.

The article also claims that because immunity from vaccines may wane, herd immunity is fake. Or something. What they say is "Clearly, these dual facts—vaccines’ ineffectiveness in a significant number of cases and loss of effectiveness in a short time span—mean that the basis of the herd immunity concept comes from a mistaken notion that vaccines are consistently effective," which is basically, because vaccines wane herd immunity is based on the concept that vaccines wane. Which is not even an argument.

But assuming that what they mean is that because immunity can wear off over time, the requirements for herd immunity are not met in our population with the current vaccine schedule...so? That's a pretty good argument for booster shots? The article says it's an "excuse" for booster shots...and that's bad? WTF kind of argument is this--herd immunity doesn't work because we don't have it so we should continue to not have it? That doesn't make any sense. Also, they're treating all diseases the same--but different vaccines confer immunity for different amounts of time. There's no discussion of which vaccines need boosters or how often or any sources that list exactly how long immunity from vaccines lasts...just "Bah, random statement with no proof!"

Then they say, "Pests have rapidly developed immunity to Bt corn. That, of course, ultimately makes the pest problem much worse—not only for GM growers, but also for innocent organic farmers." So having more disease around you makes you more susceptible to disease, but having more immune people around you doesn't make you less susceptible? WTF.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this wall of text. I just spent a lot of time writing it, and then I realized the article I was railing against doesn't even explain its own opinion very well, and I really wish I had that hour of my life back, and I can't bring myself to delete all this. Again, sorry.

[StarrieEyedKat]

Ahem.

snip

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this wall of text. I just spent a lot of time writing it, and then I realized the article I was railing against doesn't even explain its own opinion very well, and I really wish I had that hour of my life back, and I can't bring myself to delete all this. Again, sorry.

I like you.

[NurseNell]

So, epidemiologists like to study the spread of disease. They noticed that some diseases spread more easily than others. (Forgive me for channeling Contagion.) .

I haven't seen Contagion yet. My son is in the movie, a very but part but he got paid $500, and he can be seen in the movie.

So, how many people were exposed to MckMama's kids' strep? And the guests they had flew home so they had the opportunity to spread it far and wide.

[TXDuck]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this wall of text. I just spent a lot of time writing it, and then I realized the article I was railing against doesn't even explain its own opinion very well, and I really wish I had that hour of my life back, and I can't bring myself to delete all this. Again, sorry.

Don't be. I learned quite a bit. Thank you.

[emmiedahl]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this wall of text. I just spent a lot of time writing it, and then I realized the article I was railing against doesn't even explain its own opinion very well, and I really wish I had that hour of my life back, and I can't bring myself to delete all this. Again, sorry.

Anyone who can combine statistics with wtf is my friend. :clap:

You are throwing pearls before swine when it comes to jericho, but that is an amazing post and the best explanation of the issue that I have read.

[deelaem]

I am not totally against all vaccinations. I even give my daughter some vaccines on a selective "alternative" schedule. I am just trying to present why there COULD be concern. I saw so many people posting on this thread that they were all in to vaccines and they had no concern. No concern? I think everyone should have some concern and be open to the possibility that there could be some problems with them. Don't just take mainstream AMA and FDA funded research without question. When looking online for answers I found some good questions that came up about vaccines. I presented some of those to you here, but I'm far from a conspiracy theorist. I just like to look at things from all sides.

[treemom]

I am getting yellow fever vax and typhoid booster on Friday.

I support vaccines.

[Witsec1]

That was a great post, kb! I learned a lot.

"Then they say, "Pests have rapidly developed immunity to Bt corn. That, of course, ultimately makes the pest problem much worse—not only for GM growers, but also for innocent organic farmers."

I think this reflects a deep lack of understanding of how the immune system works. Vaccines are not drugs. Vaccines stimulate the power of your own immune system. Vaccines don't stimulate resistance in viruses and bacteria any more than a population "naturally" fighting off a disease. Have I got that right?

[treemom]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this wall of text. I just spent a lot of time writing it, and then I realized the article I was railing against doesn't even explain its own opinion very well, and I really wish I had that hour of my life back, and I can't bring myself to delete all this. Again, sorry.

KB2,

I snipped to not have a wall of quote, but I love you. Can we get our headships together about a counrtship.