Interesting article on vaccination rates, causes, and what some countries are doing about it:
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Indeed, thatâs not even reliable. A friend of mine is an anti-vaxxer whose kids all got measles a year or so ago - and the fact that none of them died just bolstered her anti-vax convictions. I guess she figures the experience of her kids being sick, while not great, was still better than whatever it is sheâs afraid vaccinations will do.
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When you ride an ambulance, this can happen:
Is that a good reason to refuse an ambulance ride when youâre having a heart attack?
Or, worse yet, if you discover you have active tuberculosis, will you take public transport to get to a doctor, in order to minimize that terrible risk?
Just do the math and compare the risks for your own kids and for others.
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Government is not synonymous with society.
Mini-lecture: Society is composed of two major elements; âCultureâ, which is everything we know to be true such as math, religion etc, and something else called âSocial Structureâ, which is how we organize ourselves, including social hierarchies and infrastructure. This bit includes the construct known as âgovernmentâ.
People did not exist before governments. We were animals then, with family but without tribe.
What rights do animals have? they have none. They do not have the right to graze, or be safe, or anything else; there is only what they can take from their environment.
These ârightsâ themselves are social constructs built to produce a specific methodology to human life. They are not magic, they do not come with sapience or flesh, they do not âpre-existâ in any measurable formâŚand in fact do not exist until people give them form of any kind.
Governments certainly do grant and rescind rights, via laws on behalf of society, but ultimately the gestalt entity we comprise is what decides what is important, and what isnât.
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Huh, the year my kid got her HPV vaccine, she got her first straight-A report card. I demand you include my anecdotal evidence as a vaccine effect as well.
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Culture and social structure are not actually separable in real societies, certainly not neatly. Go ahead, tell the medieval Catholics or modern-day ISIS or Iran that culture/religion is not part of government. Basically, I care about what things are and not what theyâre called. Anything that governs and regulates and punishes is government, even if locally we call some of it culture or taboo or religion or whatever else. And yes, in that sense governments and people have always co-existed; less formal governing structures existed in the ancestral environment/hunter-gatherer tribes. But capital-G âgovernmentâ came later, after people had been around for a long time. And different Governments have different justifications for why they should have the power they do. This is why a previous commenter asked what country you live in.
Iâm sure divine right monarchs and god-emperors before them did grant and rescind ârightsâ (under whatever terminology), according to the local philosophical justification for their social structures. Ditto, totalitarian dictatorships (communist or fascist or otherwise). âI will grant you this boon in exchange for your service to me, subjects.â
US Government isnât constituted this way. It starts from the observation that before people created Governments, they had near-absolute freedom because nothing more powerful than other individual humansâ behavior constrained it, and this was not a good way to live because nothing constrained anyone else, either. In creating Governments of any kind, we lose some of that individual freedom/autonomy in exchange for promises of collective security of various kinds. Weâre citizens, not subjects, and the Government exists and has authority because we created it and granted it that authority. (Thatâs a generalized âwe,â none of my ancestors were on this continent back then).
Note: this is also why the US Bill of Rights only discusses âfreedoms fromâ not âfreedoms to.â The founders simply assumed that anything not forbidden was left up to individual conscience or informal, cultural governance, and that the key is to prevent government from infringing on freedom people already had. It is also why there are no rights to specific outcomes in the federal Constitution (to food, water, shelter, healthcare, etc.) - these were assumed to be the responsibility of each individual/town/state to figure out.
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If you see a post you like, hit the like button. This system allows people to express approval of other peopleâs opinions without creating needless posts that serve no purpose beyond expressing approval. But Iâm sure youâre aware of this, because youâve read the guidelines.
Happy mutating!
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Thanks for concern driving trollies.
From Wikipedia, âMeaslesâ:
Complications occur in about 30% and may include diarrhea, blindness, inflammation of the brain, and pneumonia among others.
Donât pretend you have a moral high ground. Why donât you go promote the benefits of malnutrition you feckless misanthrope.
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Jesus H. Christ. Thatâs like saying just because getting shot didnât kill you, itâs ok to fire a gun into a crowd of people.
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On the topic of shingles, while iâm TOTALLY for vaccination, I believe the vaccine is often only given to older people (though my other understanding is that itâs literally the chicken pox vaccine, so if you are willing to pay for it out of pocket you can probably get it earlier).
SO on that note, itâs really important to mention that if you think you have shingles go to the doctor immediately. They do have a set of drugs that will greatly speed up recovery/severity if you can get in within (24 or 48 canât remember) hours of the rash appearing. Itâs an amazing drug, pretty much completely safe, and totally worth it. (Said drug basically stopped my mother from ever fully manifesting shingles. She ended up with some nerve pain even with it⌠donât want to think abuot how bad it would have been without the drugs.)
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I was born nearly 20 years too early for the chickenpox vaccine. When I had it as a kid, it fucking SUCKED. I was out for over two weeks. Now I need to start worrying about shingles as I get older. Youâre damn right I wish I could have been vaccinated against chickenpox.
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After reading through the all of that, I must say. While i donât believe forcing people to get vaccinated is the answer, i do totally agree with taking away their rights to other stuff if they refuse them. The movement right now where kids are being banned from schools if they donât vaccinate is exactly the way it should be as far as iâm concerned. Oh, you canât home school but you donât want to vaccinate your kid? Tough toenails, you donât get to endanger everyone else and schoolâs a must⌠so i guess youâre going to have to make a concession here.
There should be more ramifications. If you want to shun science, fine, canât force you, (and shouldnât be able to either imo), but then you shouldnât be expecting any kind of hand-outs. No more doctorâs visits, you should be completely unable to get any type of health insurance and have to pay out of pocket, etc. Hell, i wouldnât even disagree with private places (like say, disney world) being allowed to ask for vaccination validation before letting you in. Letâs turn not getting vaccinated in to a complete taboo that is heavily frowned upon. That seems like the right solution to me.
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Evidently our latest trolley feels that the right of antivaxxers to swing their fists trumps all other concerns.
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I spent my whole childhood thinking I was naturally immune to chicken pox. My parents, like most parents in the 70âs, expected me to get it when I spent the night at the neighbor kidâs house when he came down with it. I didnât. Then my brother got them at 15. I still didnât catch them. I taught preschool before the vaccine existed and taught through my entire class coming down with chickenpox - three times. No sweat.
And then, at 35 ⌠I got shingles. But Iâm anomalous in that I donât get a rash. So apparently at some point I did contract chickenpox, but without the rash just assumed it was the flu.
Also I got shingles in my eye. Did you know thatâs a thing? It REALLY FUCKING HURTS. I still have nerve pain in my scalp on that side and Iâm 43 now.
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I did know that was a thing 
Iâve heard getting shingles on you face is pretty much the the worst. In your eye would be the worst of the worst. Iâm sorry for you and your pain, that kind of shit is awful. Iâve also heard you can get shingles multiple times. Acyclovir is the shingles drug (funny enough, same drug they use to treat herpes lol)
As a kid, i got really lucky with chicken pox, got it really mildly. Never understood why they made a vaccine. As I got older⌠it all started to make more sense and Iâm really glad itâs a thing now. Hopefully anti vaxxers wonât fuck it up too bad and before too long shingles will be history.
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Yeah it was mostly a week (two?) laying about trying not to scratch and watching the awfulness that was 70s daytime tv or reading. It wasnât till I read a bit more about it when the kid got a vaccine for it that I figured out it isnât always a fun time.
Your question is exactly mine. I canât tell whether heâs arguing
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that oneâs right to swing their fists is more important than oneâs right not to be hit with fists, or
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that in this case, swinging oneâs fists is unlikely to lead to anyone being hit with fists.
Sorry for the repeat, by the way; I actually went as far as to search the thread for âfistâ to make sure I wasnât just piling on. I must have used the browser search box by accident.
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Herpes zoster (or varicella zoster) rather than herpes simplex, but from the same family of viruses.
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Ian Dury kept it going for a while, until he died in 2000
I was tempted to use a video of Spasticus Autisticus, but I was concerned that some people wouldnât understand what it was about and think it was ablist
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Yeah I knew this. Just thought it was kinda cool that the same drug helps for both things. I believe it does something to stop the virus from replicating, thereby stopping it from getting any worse.
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