Posted on 02/12/2015 5:28:54 PM PST by Secret Agent Man
There is no need to vaccinate for smallpox, since worldwide vaccination efforts led to its eradication in the 1970s.
We can wipe out polio and measles, too. Those are human diseases, so that it is possible to eradicate them with widespread vaccinations.
Thanks for the correction. I was vaccinated for it when I was young so I assumed that people were still being vaccinated for it.
You are addressing exactly the point I was making in favor of the polio vaccine, which is that polio is a stealth disease. It is highly asymptomatic in a majority of all infected (75+ percent) So unlike ebola and other diseases, people could be carriers of polio and you would not see them until the bad cases popped up. Your links on infoplease provided nothing significant, read what you are sourcing before posting the link.
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/07-100107/en/
Q: Why was it easier to eradicate smallpox than polio?
A: Smallpox eradication was a much easier programme because every infection was clinically expressed in the same manner, so you could tell easily when someone had the disease. Also, once you found that a person had smallpox you could isolate them and vaccinate a ring of people around that person. With polio, for every clinically expressed paralysis there are at least 200 children infected asymptomatically, which means you can’t find every polio infection.
Do you think the pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to introduce aborted fetal cells into mandatory vaccines?
See how easy it is to construct one-sided questions?
Once again, you need to progress beyond the straw man level in your argument.
It’s amazing. You anti-vaccine people will never answer the question I posed straightforwardly. There is always some issue that prevents you from saying whether you favor or don’t favor children being required to be vaccinated for diseases like polio or measles or whooping cough or rubella.
Are you denying the epidemics listed at infoplease occurred?
They didn’t show anything beyond what I already was saying.
It’s amazing. You anti-vaccine people will never answer the question I posed straightforwardly. There is always some issue that prevents you from saying whether you favor or don’t favor children being required to be vaccinated for diseases like polio or measles or whooping cough or rubella.
I linked you on the post addressed to Axenolith because you had asked Axenolith about her numbers on polio because they seemed too low. I was refuting her ridiculous statement that “polio at it’s height affected an average 350 people a year, with between 17-35 dying.”
I wish we could make the flu deaths zero as opposed to 30 to 35 thousand annually. But then again, the vaccines are so limited in their effectiveness. Hopefully there is a way, perhaps simple, perhaps complex. But yes, Mortman is messing with you.
Now you are putting words in my mouth. I have expressed no opinion on the need for or efficacy of such vaccines. I have simply pointed out your rhetorical shortcomings.
The question you ask is malformed. You omit two critical elements, the first being that the content of the vaccine matters - both medically and ethically. The second element is whether the vaccination is voluntary or compulsory.
Again, it is a straw man question and deserves no answer because of its logical deficiencies. Care to try again, or will you be content with your Miss Cleo impression?
I’m not so much playing around as trying to elevate the debate. But I will admit to having fun with it.
But, you are SUCH a lame douchebag utterly dependent on hand wringing obfuscation as discourse, that it flew over your head.
35,000 a year DID NOT EVER DIE FROM IT.
ONLY A FEW DOZEN, and ONLY A FEW HUNDRED WERE PARALYZED.
I'll lead you through the CDC paragraphs by the hand...
How common was polio in the United States?Polio was one of the most dreaded childhood diseases of the 20th century in the United States. Periodic epidemics occurred since the late 19th century and they increase in size and frequency in the late 1940s and early 1950s. An average of over 35,000 cases were reported during this time period. With the introduction of Salk inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) in 1955, the number of cases rapidly declined to under 2,500 cases in 1957. By 1965, only 61 cases of paralytic polio were reported.
While whatever government moron is writing these up has atrocious technical writing skills, the gist there is that at it's height there were about 35,000 cases PER year. Note, if we interpret the crappy writing to indicate "over that time period" it further reduces your hand wringing appeal, so I'm betting you'll stick with my interpretation there.
Next: from the prior paragraph (again highlighting bureaucratic crap-write by oddly ordering the page)
What are the symptoms of polio?Up to about 72% of susceptible persons infected with polio have no symptoms. However, infected persons without symptoms can still spread the virus and cause others to develop polio. About 24% of infected susceptible persons have minor symptoms such as fever, sore throat, upset stomach, or flu-like symptoms and have no paralysis or other serious symptoms. About 1-5% develop aseptic meningitis with stiffness of the back, back, or legs, and in some persons increased or abnormal sensations a few days after the minor illness resolves. These symptoms typically last from two to ten days, followed by complete recovery. Less than 1% of polio cases result in paralysis of the limbs (usually the legs). Of those cases resulting in paralysis, 5-10% of the patients die when the respiratory muscles are paralyzed. The risk of paralysis increases with age.
72% of polio victims SHOW NO SYMPTOMS.
72% of 35,000 = 25200 <---No Symptom number.
24% of polio victims have MILD SYMPTOMS (i.e. sniffles/mild fever)
24% OF THE 35,000 = 8400 <--- Really mild symptom number.
1% of 35,000 = 350. That's the number that suffered paralytic effects.
5-10% of 350 = 17.5 to 35. THATS THE NUMBER THAT DIED FROM PARALYTIC EFFECTS!
It's ON THE CDC SITE! Can you comprehend? Can you "do math"?
BTW:
I'm NOT anti vaccine
and
I'm NOT a "her"
The reason why people made a deal about polio, though, is because people are scared of gambling. There’s no knowing if your kid will be the one who has the paralytic reaction, hence the “fear”. That was the biggest issue polio had going for it, not the raw numbers, but the fact that you had people spreading it without being obviously sick, and the fact that you had a “lottery draw” as to who would end up in the iron lung machine. You would likely see thousands in the paralytic category because the hundreds for each year added up the total numbers paralyzed too. I will agree though, the numbers were overhyped by the other guy. But on the other hand, what you don’t foresee or know, is scary.
EXACTLY RIGHT!
We are sorely hamstrung by the average citizens inability to judge/calculate risk, and we have that weakness used upon us in the aggregate to loot our liberty at will.
Firearms and “children” are another aspect (and children are in quotes because politicians try to define them upwards to as much as 26 year olds).
I’m not “anti vaccine”, but I’m for damn sure not going to go along with forcing someone else to do something just because someone else can’t do math.
The only problem is this: those who are scared are not few. About guns, even the liberal freakonomics pointed out that a swimming pool is far more dangerous to children than a gun is.
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