I don’t hate people who are ignorant. I don’t think they’re villains. I just think they’re ignorant. And bad at assessing risk. We need to address the ignorance.
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People that hire Jenny McCarthy are actually beneficial more to the spread of medical science information regarding vaccines than they are to the spread of Jenny McCarthyism.
Whenever she gets a gig people hear about it and generally raise hell, since giving her a platform sells her books, which are still rife with stupid McCarthyisms despite her pretend admissions of being stupid about vaccines.
She got a gig in Ottawa a few years ago, I was happy to join the twitter charge, which led to CBC radio which led to local TV which led to the cancer charity (i kid you not!) realizing just how stupid they were to hire her, with donated cash no less, which led to her being cancelled and replaced with a reputable fitness/health type. Jenny was angry, but it is possible she still got paid, and neither party would fess up whether she was compensated with donated cash, so she’ll likely remain a pariah in the eyes of many here.
edit- the twitter/radio/tv charge occurred over a 36 hour period shortly after the charity announced her as the secret surprise hostess? with very little time before the event. Social media stomped her, and fast.
But the uproar did well for bringing attention to vaccination information, attention to the pertussis outbreak in Ontario partially credited to anti-vaxxers like Jenny, and as always, helped identify dumb people so they could be sent brochures or something.
I don’t know if she gets the same treatment in the US, but she should.
Meh, it’s combatively rude,
but it’s only really unfair to her if she were a playboy bunny/actress/model who also held several degrees in applicable science and had many credible studies representing some portion of the accredited medical science establishment that could agree with her, and you only mention the former. That’d be unfair. But I think you’re okay.
Mayim Bialik is a more troubling “hollywood” influence, as she actually does have a PhD in a (more or less) applicable field.
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“Should tetanus vaccination be required for entrance to school, given that tetanus is not a communicable disease?” sounds like a policy and toxicology question.
no.
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I guess that it all depends on your policy towards toxicology.
And, at this point, on the nature of knowledge itself, and how to play semantics is what I suspect will be the next topic. Or picking cherries from aborted fetal DNA perhaps? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
How can you tell if someone doesn’t like Disney? Don’t worry they’ll tell you.
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I think it’s pretty plainly a question about policy and toxicology, so I guess we’re agreeing to disagree.
The general advice about the Shingles vaccine was that you should get it at around age 60, and last I checked that was what my insurance would pay for. So when I’m 60 I’ll get it (my grandma had it, it was awful, and I had chicken-pox as a kid before that vaccine was available.) (If my brother’s reading this, hey, it’s your fault! You gave it to me for my 10th birthday.)
I think the rationale is that the vaccine only lasts for so long, and that’s the optimum age given the typical onset age for shingles.
With tetanus, standard practice seems to be to administer the vaccine after you get a deep puncture wound, unless you’ve had one recently enough, so apparently there’s enough time in the process for it to help. (So what was supposed to be a trip to the vet for my cat turned into a trip to the emergency room for me instead, to get a tetanus shot for a bite wound…)
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If she had had a blog or an Oprah appearance, we would be heralding Mary as the voice of the little people against the evil guvmint anti-salmonella conspiracy.
Salmonella. You know, for kids!
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One time I shattered my left arm, so it got a cast. I got a tetanus shot on my right arm (holy crap I should have said do it on the left) and my right arm seized for four days.
My friends made fun of me, get your shots, and be mindful of where 
(Also don’t try bmx when you are a klutz)
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Absolutely, but there are also extenuating circumstances.
For instance, we don’t mammogram screen women below 50 regularly for breast cancer any more, because the benefit to the public at whole is minimal/negative for universal screening below 50 due to the expense of the procedure along with the rate of false positives which incur more expense as well.
It turns out 50 was a age for the population generally speaking.
But doctors still give mammograms to women much younger than 50 if their family history has a tendency toward breast cancer a lot younger than 50. Or if the patient has a known mutation for breast cancer. It makes sense to keep a closer watch on patients in higher risk groups.
This may actually be applicable to the adult Zoster vaccine. Or maybe not. That’s why I recommended looking into it and asking for second and third opinions about it.
It can hit people like that sometimes, but considering the alternative, it’s not so bad.
My Lyssavirus vaccination left me feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, but my colleague was just fine.
Do we need to keep immunizing against diseases, such as chickenpox, that are almost always mild?
The trouble is, you don’t get to pick which side of “almost” you are on.
There are perfectly healthy kids who get varicella encephalopathy. Odds are it won’t be you. Roll the dice.
Or just have a “mild” case but kill the kid next door who had previously unrecognized immunodeficiency. Kill him dead. Screw him.
Or if we’re just playing odds, how about the next door neighbor who will also only have a mild disease but whose parent can’t afford to take a week off work to take care of him while he’s out of daycare? Get a job!
Taking a tiny, tiny risk by being vaccinated is the price we pay to live in society. Just as we allow giant, metal, death machines to drive so close to our houses.
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oh, i know, just should have had it on the already messed up arm. i spent half a week walking around like an elbow squid because of it.
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That’s brilliant. Not the pain, that sucks. But the mental picture… fantastic.
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I don’t agree!
They should stand for their principles and go wherever they want…
That would be Darwinism at its best ;o)
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Your hope is misplaced. We could agree that you cherry picked tetanus out of a list of outrageous statements, including ‘aborted fetal DNA’. But you’re clearly point scoring here and enjoying the reactions, not advocating a position.
This is not the place to start a nuanced discussion that might lend any credibility to those claims. Want that convo? Go start it in another thread and be as “right” as you like in your incorrectness. Want to speak for me again? Please sit on your balls the next time you want to move goalposts in that way.
I have no desire to speak for you or especially to you as you’ve been thoroughly unpleasant from the get-go. You’re obviously intelligent, but there are lots of people just as smart who are actually nice to converse and disagree with. I love being corrected by smart people who are nice, so I’m quite finished with you. Best of luck in the future, with the human interactions and all of that stuff!
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