Bill Maher is woo woo.

While I agree that most people fear vaccinations for the wrong reasons, it's not 100% guaranteed that a flu vaccine will grant immunity to the correct virus that eventually makes the rounds. They make their best, most educated guess, and it can be (and has been in the past) wrong.

This isn't to say vaccinations in general, or even influenza vaccinations are ineffective. It's just the flu vaccination you get is not guaranteed to be effective against EVERY strain of influenza that might reach you. Ask your doctor (they'll usually explain this when they give you the shot). You can still catch a different strain of influenza.

Last year I got my flu shots through the company I worked for, I sufferd mild flu symptoms after the shot, and I got very sick with the REAL flu (the one they didn't expect) a few weeks later, because they 'missed' last year.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm
Vaccine Effectiveness

The ability of flu vaccine to protect a person depends on the age and health status of the person getting the vaccine, and the similarity or "match" between the virus strains in the vaccine and those in circulation. Testing has shown that both the flu shot and the nasal-spray vaccine are effective at preventing the flu.
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In general, since I'm healthy, and getting the shot is almost guaranteed to make me sick (repeateded direct personal experience) and not free this time around, I'll stick to hygiene for prevention, and just tough it out it if/when I catch it. I'm current with all my other shots.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/preventing.htm

What would be sad would be new epidemics of preventable illness among kids whose parents buy into this 'vaccine is bad' nonsense.
 
Maher never came across (to me, at least) as a terribly scientific minded person. I can't recall specifics (I rarely see his shows), but it seems he was always about as prone as the average person to believe in wacky stuff.
 
A strong immune reaction is provoked, and for me that means symptoms. Body ache (especially sore in the arm that got shot), fatigue and minor nausea. Your mileage may vary. It's not debilitating to me, but (usually) neither is influenza its self.

When I got truly *sick*, it was weeks after the shot, which was ineffective against the other strain of flu.

People react differently to different things. For instance, pollen that doesn't bother me could make another person absolutely miserable. Pollen doesn't cause disease, but certain pollens provoke a strong immune reaction in certain people. They're not sick, their bodies are 'allergic', and act as if they are sick.

The whole point of an innoculation is to provoke an immune reaction so your body is ready to fight the 'real thing', should it arrive.
 
Ah, you got all the symptoms of your body fighting off the perceived risk the vaccine posed. Gotcha.

Some people are lucky I hear, and don't even go through that.

How long did that last?
 
A few days. A day to reach its maximum, and a day or two to peter out. A few days of mostly just the arm being sore, like people had taken turns punching me there.
 
Re: Re: Bill Maher is woo woo.

1inChrist said:
He is. He's skeptical of the drug industry and their claims.
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I don't know how it is where you are, but over here the drug industry has to back up its claims with evidence before it can get its drugs licensed.
 
Re: Re: Re: Bill Maher is woo woo.

Mojo said:
I don't know how it is where you are, but over here the drug industry has to back up its claims with evidence before it can get its drugs licensed.
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You make it sound like the law givers are not apart of the whole drug industry empire.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Bill Maher is woo woo.

1inChrist said:
You make it sound like the law givers are not apart of the whole drug industry empire.
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Did you mean to say "a part of" or "apart from"?

Actually, they're not part of the industry, they're the "evil gubmint."

You should get together with Rouser, who thinks that private industry should take care of this kind of thing.
 
I agree that most in the "anti-vaccine" crowd are woo-woo.

However, there is a point about over-use of anti-biotics that I think it gets missed in the woo-woo noise. That is, when people who are given anti-biotics do not finish their entire course of treatment, they are in fact creating a niche for that part of the strain which is most resistant. And while I'm not an expert, I believe that partially explains why TB has been able to make such a comeback.
 
shuize said:
I agree that most in the "anti-vaccine" crowd are woo-woo.

However, there is a point about over-use of anti-biotics that I think it gets missed in the woo-woo noise. That is, when people who are given anti-biotics do not finish their entire course of treatment, they are in fact creating a niche for that part of the strain which is most resistant. And while I'm not an expert, I believe that partially explains why TB has been able to make such a comeback.
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True. That has nothing to do with vaccines though. And over-use of antibiotics has nothing to do with any rise in viruses.
 
Regarding antibiotics....I think it's well known that, just as they can help fight infection, they can also create conditions in the body that can lead to serious illness.
My little sister died at the age of 25 because doctors precscribed an antibiotic that killed off certain types of bacteria and allowed others to flourish dangerously. The infection she had originally was not serious, but the new one was serious enough to kill her.
They admitted this and said it was one of the risks of antibiotics.
 
Bill Maher has, I think rightfully, attacked a number of sectors of the U.S. Industrial Medicine Complex. The focus on inventing drugs that will be used over and over and the marketing push for consumers to use it, without necessarily understanding the purpose and risks associated. The shift away from research on cures and vaccines (the recent flu vaccine shortage is a perfect example having - more to do with a low profit margin than production problems). The increasing tendency to prescribe problems away: kids acting up - give them Ritalin, feeling blue - take some Prosac, need help getting it up - pop a little blue pill, etc. This is problematic because there are many behavorial, emotional, and medical problems for which there is no "quick fix" but the message pushed on consumers (and doctors) by the drug makers is that the miracle of the modern pharmacopia can cure almost anything.

Maher also isn't the only one to rail against the "evils" of Corn Syrup. Since corn recieves enormous gov't subsidies corn syrup is an abundant and very, very cheap sweetening agent. Corn syrup is in almost every sweet thing you eat as it is much cheaper and easier to use than refined cane sugar. In turn, this results in massive supplies of very cheap highly sugary foods; as we all can attest to from a walk down the supermarket aisle. There have been some good arguments made that corn syrup may be a contributing factor in the super-sizing of America. There is actually a fairly strong correlation between gov't corn subsidies and the average american waistline (though as we all know correlation and causation are distinct creatures). Important to note that I have read no articles or interviews in which proponents of this theory believe it is the only contributing factor. (Though I have often found it interesting that all of these kids I see are so busy being shuttled to different sports and activities, but the average kid is still getting bigger. If they are more active why are they also getting bigger... maybe what we eat is having a bigger impact than we think?)

I touched on his "treating the symptoms and not the problem" philosophy earlier. Especially in the mental health field, there seems to be a growing reliance on medications instead of the hard work of therapy so "solve" long term emotional and behavorial problems. A pill won't cure many of those problems, therapy might not either, but simply asking for a pill without exploring all the best options will almost certainly do you little good over the long-term. In other cases a quick-fix pill might dissuade doctors from more carefully examining a series of symptoms that may be indicative of more serious ailments (but because they are so busy "treating the symptoms" they miss the actual disease).

I don't know where his whole flu vaccine rail came from. That was new to me. I think he often picks up these bits and pieces from thoughout the media, latches on to them, and runs with them without always having the supporting information (like with the corn syrup thing). He's usually in the right neighborhood though. The flu thing seemed like a knee-jerk reaction consistent with a pattern of philosophy that says conventional medicine is going away from treating the patient and towards shilling for the pharmaceutical industries. On this one I think he is right on the general concept and wrong on the specifics of this particular example.
 
Great, I applaud him for it, now if only he could apply that kind of thinking to other areas too, such as, ghosts and astrology, both of which he's a believer in.
 
Number Six said:
Great, I applaud him for it, now if only he could apply that kind of thinking to other areas too, such as, ghosts and astrology, both of which he's a believer in.
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Interesting. There's a thread here that asks why skeptics would vote for Bush. How about a thread about why woo-woos would vote for Kerry? I suspect that Hollywood is probably 75% woo-woos (go ahead - tell me Cher isn't a woo-woo). Why do they find Kerry so attractive?
 
Woo-woos generally don't like to go to war for any reason, let alone the reasons Bush has given.
 
What exactly is a woo woo? I suspect someone like Mel Gibson is probably woo woo in a way quite unlike Cher.
 
I tend to blame poor education for this problem.

Vaccines are played up to the ignorant, by the ignorant as a 'miracle', and since nothing real actually can live up to that sort of 'miracle' standard, it's easy to attack. Science its self provides details of the negative attributes of vaccines, while religion sugar-coats everything.

People get polio shots who don't even know what polio is, or what it does. Unfortunately, when the very first time someone 'looks into' a piece of news, and the news is "the vaccine will kill you", there are always plenty of references about adverse effects to be found, especially given people's tendency to stop looking at the single reference they're given, or even to blindly take the word of an authority figure about whether something is 'good' or 'bad'.
 
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