That blockhead.
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I guess the question here that goes begging, is what should happen here. I know it feels SO GOOD to have the answer, to know you are correct and your opposition is wrong. That unlike the problems of middle east terrorism, global warming, gun culture in America, antibiotic resistance, police abuse of power⌠this is one issue with no nuance to it, no alternative view.
Perhaps if you stick your thumbs in your ears, wiggle your fingers, sing, âNyah-nuh-nyah,nyah nyah yah!â, maybe that will overcome their unreasonable fears, and theyâll be shamed into compliance.
If this country had comprehensive single payer health care, vaccine compliance would go up. But thatâs just a suggestion that we might change something. There might be other ideas that would also change things. But the status quo is, You are right, and people who disagree with you are wrong, so letâs just end the conversation right there, shall we?
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I donât know how much that would affect it. Most vaccines, being generally required for schools, are available at free clinics. My daughter got all hers on time even when we had no health insurance, and I didnât pay a cent. I did pay half of the HPV cost, because that one is optional and my insurance at the time didnât cover all of it.
Furthermore, a lot of the opt-out people seem to be well-off living in expensive neighborhoods. Theyâre deliberately making that choice, not having it happen because they donât have the money or time to get the vaccines done.
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I just read it can be used to treat mono flare-ups, as well. Not dreading the next one so much!
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Also we got pockets of anti-vaxers and diseases coming back in countries with âfreeâ healthcare: UK & Canada, weâve got frakking measles and mumps. So its not a cost thing⌠its a âbeliefâ thing.
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That I didnât know! Cool! Just make sure to catch it early or they wonât give it to you 
Maybe. Maybe not. We have antivaxxers up here, despite comprehensive single-payer healthcare. The impetus for refusing vaccines seems to be an irrational weighing of the risks, which, unfortunately, is a very human thing - humans are notoriously bad at assessing risk (or the War on Terror wouldnât be a thing).
If you can figure a way around that particular irrationality, Iâm all ears.
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Vaccines are used in countries with universal healthcare, and barely drive any revenue for pharma companies. While marginally profitable, theyâre nowhere near as profitable as anything else pharma. companies do. Most mid-range drugs owned by one corp will bring in 10x the profits individually than all vaccines bring in combined.
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I really think Penn and Teller did it best on Bullshit.
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When I got it, it was just at the start of a school vacation, and then I got over it just in time to go back to school. I suppose I should be glad I didnât have to make up for missed schoolwork, butâŚ
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This show taught me so much. Iâm not sure I completely buy into everything theyâve said, but their vaccine episode is definitely great, and most of their stuff is definitely really good for getting you to think about things.
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People who are against any form of gun control make the same argument: whatever measure being suggested is unlikely to be effective. Thereâs a hidden assumdption there that the current situation is not bad enough for the public good to be served by trying something that may not work.
My point wasnât so much that single payer health care is a magic bullet that will turn everyone into a rational player of the game, rather, suggesting something be done to actually help people, seems more controversial than simply demonizing them and excluding them.
Itâs the kind of thing people like Ted Cruz miss, when he talks about policing muslim communities to prevent them from becomimg radicalized.
In this case, the root cause of the problem (measles and whooping cough) is made out to be parents acting in ignorance and fear. thatâs a plausible premise, I can get behind that premise. But to come out of the gate by calling such people anti-vaxxer, is unlikely to make anyone want to change their minds. Itâs kind of like beginning a conversation about Muslim terrorists by calling them sand niggers. You arenât really serious about making the problem go away when you demonize the people you blame for that problem.
Itâs not the monetary barrier to vaccination that I think a single payer health care system would erase. Itâs actually addressing the problems if ignorance and fear that cause parents to gamble so poorly. If it were cheap and easy to get preventative check-ups, more parents would bring their kids to a doctor instead of just keeping them home. Every contact with a genuine medical professional, means one less opportunity for a cut rate crystal healer quack to bend that parents ear with a seemingly safer, ânaturalâ remedy. When taking your kid to a doctor becomes an expensive luxury that only the already well educated can afford, Parents, and sick people who one day will become parents, are going to look somewhere else for help.
I enjoy listening to Tim Minchin rant about people like Storm, but I have no illusions that people like storm are going to be any less foolish after listening to that kind of self righteous gloating. And this post suffers from the same kind of problem. Itâs complaining about a real social ill, while simultaneously making it harder for anyone to actually do anything constructive towards improving things.
If youâre going to put the blame for measles and whooping cough squarely on the shoulders of certain ill informed parents (and outliers like Mayim Bialik) then youâre letting the health insurance racket off the hook. And I think they bear some responsibility as well.
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Oh now THAT makes perfect sense! Sorry, I misunderstood how you were looking at the problem.
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Itâs easy to misunderstand anybody when the problem is so poorly defined.
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Its immoral to pose a risk to society at large to feed oneâs selfish need for control. Libertarian arguments of this stripe are generally sociopathic bullshit. It gives people the impression that they have a right to harm others as a matter of course.
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Where is the profit in a drug which prevents repeat customers?
The âbig pharma conspiracyâ argument against vaccinations was never well thought out.
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Per-dose, vaccines have a very low profit margin. But mass produced, and mass-injected, that profit margin gets multiplied enormously. Itâs those scaredy-cat parents who want to pace out the injections and reduce the shelf life of the product, that mess up the system, and make it much less cost effective and profitable. Vaccines donât have to be a cash cow like viagra, in order to skew big pharmaâs thinking.
All vaccines produced by all Pharma corporations produce less profit than a single mid range drug (not a major moneymaker like Viagra) produced by a Pharma corporation. A few years ago Pfeizerâs CEO (pretty sure it was Pfeizer) said he wished he could drop vaccines since theyâre so low profit compared to other products, but didnât think the blowback was worth it. In general Pharma corps see them as a social responsibility much more than a profit center. As mangochin just mentioned, as vaccines are preventative medicine, from a Pharma perspective they would benefit far more financially from not preventing the diseases but treating them.
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Maybe they didnât have that drug when I was twenty, because that was some incredible pain
Iâm just getting over a bout of shingles, and it is fucking awful. Like having a blistered sunburn over a pulled muscle over arthritis - every layer of your body hurts like a bitch where you have the rash. I still have the post-herpetic neuropathy, which means several times a day, out of nowhere, I get to enjoy the sensation of having a sharpened knitting needle pierce my torso. FUN! I understand that the current shingles vax isnât terribly effective as vaccines go, and Iâm too young to get it anyway (they donât give it to anyone under 50, generally). But I can fully confirm that reducing your chances of getting this by any amount at all is WORTH IT if you can get it.
And on the topic of herd immunity and vaccinating, two issues related to my shingles. First, my 6-year-old, who has been vaccinated, did come down with a very mild rash that may well be an attenuated form of chicken pox that he got from my shingles. Because the vaccine doesnât prevent the disease in 100% of exposure; his case was very mild due to having been vaccinated, but he still could potentially have transmitted it. Second, before I knew my rash was shingles, I was in contact with a friendâs baby who is too young for the vaccine. It appears that I wasnât contagious at that point and he hasnât gotten sick. However - these incidents illustrate the two reasons we need herd immunity: people in whom the vaccine is not fully effective, and those who canât get the vaccine for various reasons.
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