"The Republicans’ war on science and reason"

[Newtons Bit]

If you or your child happens to be one of the victims of an "adverse event," does the small percentage of such an event occuring give you or your child any comfort?
Your post confirms that a whole lot of people do indeed have "adverse events" following vaccinations including death.

If your child dies of completely preventable cervical cancer, does it give you any comfort knowing that she could have been immunized from the disease with no serious side effects?

No, I imagine it wouldn't.

 

[leftysergeant]

If you or your child happens to be one of the victims of an "adverse event," does the small percentage of such an event occuring give you or your child any comfort?
Your post confirms that a whole lot of people do indeed have "adverse events" following vaccinations including death.

Given that, if not vaccinated, their chances of contracting a fatal illness are far greater than the chance that they will have a fatal reaction to the vaccine, vaccination makes sense. You have not.

 

[Robert Prey]

Since Robert doesn't, apparently, accept the theory of evolution by mutation and natural selection, and, as well, doesn't accept global climate change, I wonder what he thinks of ....

Originally, I thought you were a serious poster, but now... I've never said that I accepted or denied the theory of evolution, nor have I ever denied global climate change, but in fact have challenged those who make the claim of man made climate change to cite a period of time when climate was not changing. Get your facts and your attributions straight.

 

[Robert Prey]

Given that, if not vaccinated, their chances of contracting a fatal illness are far greater than the chance that they will have a fatal reaction to the vaccine, vaccination makes sense. You have not.

How do you know that?

 

[Robert Prey]

If your child dies of completely preventable cervical cancer, does it give you any comfort knowing that she could have been immunized from the disease with no serious side effects?

No, I imagine it wouldn't.

You have to assume that my child is of The World, and engages in promiscuous, pre-marital sex. How can you assume that? Like AIDS, it's a disease that is completely preventable with moral behavior. No risky vaccine necessary.

 

[BenBurch]

How do you know that?

It is called "Science".

I know you might have missed the last 4000 years of the development of Western thought, but right around the Enlightenment, rules started to be formulated that in the 19th century became what we know of as science. And in support of that school of thought, many numerical techniques were developed. You might not have heard of it, but one of these "statistics" allows you to take data from a subset of a population, and project the state of the entire population with great accuracy. It is this latter technique that can be applied to records of patient outcomes to yield the result that says you are full of beans.

 

[leftysergeant]

How do you know that?

More people in Africa die of polio than people die in America of vaccine-related issues. You know what the determining factor is, right?

 

[Walter Ego]

Read it again:

The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally _

Interesting, but not surprising, that you only included part of the sentence you quoted.

The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally _ the preferred method in developing countries because it is cheaper and doesn't require medical training to dispense.

Do you have any examples of disease outbreaks being caused by vaccines in first-world developed nations?

 

[Newtons Bit]

You have to assume that my child is of The World, and engages in promiscuous, pre-marital sex. How can you assume that? Like AIDS, it's a disease that is completely preventable with moral behavior. No risky vaccine necessary.

The Victorians had that same line of thinking. It didn't really work out all that well for them. Mainly because the men that women married were rarely moral before marriage, and/or remained moral during marriage.

 

[BenBurch]

The Victorians had that same line of thinking. It didn't really work out all that well for them. Mainly because the men that women married were rarely moral before marriage, and remained moral during marriage.

And even chaste young women can be raped.

ETA: And you can get it from just kissing, too...

 

[leftysergeant]

You have to assume that my child is of The World, and engages in promiscuous, pre-marital sex. How can you assume that? Like AIDS, it's a disease that is completely preventable with moral behavior. No risky vaccine necessary.

Probabilty. Children who go through abstinance-only sex ed have a higher rate of VD because they don't beleive condoms work.

Parents who are really obnoxious about their religions tend to raise kids who rebel against the values they were taught.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Actually, even that's not true. Social Security is sustainable even under the status quo. Social Security does not run out of money or go “broke” even when its trust funds are exhausted in 2036, as projected in the most recent Social Security trustees report. SS will continue to pay as long as payroll taxes are collected. At current levels, tax income would be sufficient to pay about 75% of scheduled benefits through at least 2085.

But of course current law (the status quo) doesn't authorize making that 25% cut to benefits, so the status quo really isn't indefinitely sustainable. But I appreciate the point that it wouldn't take much.

And to the comment someone made about Gen Xers one day being in the same position as Baby Boomers: I doubt it. By the time all of us boomers are gone, the demographics will have shifted, and--assuming we have addressed the problem we face by around 2036--SS will be running surpluses.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The Victorians had that same line of thinking. It didn't really work out all that well for them. Mainly because the men that women married were rarely moral before marriage, and/or remained moral during marriage.

Exactly.

The problem with Robert Prey's argument is that he's conflating abstinence only sex ed with successful abstinence. That's simply begging the question. It's comparable to running a drug efficacy trial and throwing out all cases except the ones that showed a change in the dependent variable measure (in the direction the hypothesis predicts), then arguing the drug is therefore highly effective. Or flipping a coin some number of times and saying that if we only count the heads, all the tosses were heads, and therefore the coin has a statistically significant bias regardless of how many tails there were.

 

[Shalamar]

You have to assume that my child is of The World, and engages in promiscuous, pre-marital sex. How can you assume that? Like AIDS, it's a disease that is completely preventable with moral behavior. No risky vaccine necessary.

How do you plan to ensure that your child will go by your moral behavior when you are not around? How can you be certain that your childs partner will have gone by your moral standards as well?

All it would take is one time, with an unknowing carrier to contract cancer. A cancer that is easily preventable with a vaccine.

 

[Bri]

But of course current law (the status quo) doesn't authorize making that 25% cut to benefits, so the status quo really isn't indefinitely sustainable. But I appreciate the point that it wouldn't take much.

It's true that the status quo isn't indefinitely sustainable under current law. But that's not what you said. What you said is that under the status quo (the current law) the Social Security system is not indefinitely sustainable, which isn't true. I agree that it wouldn't take much to fix SS so that it could pay 100% of scheduled payments, at least to those who need it most.

And to the comment someone made about Gen Xers one day being in the same position as Baby Boomers: I doubt it. By the time all of us boomers are gone, the demographics will have shifted, and--assuming we have addressed the problem we face by around 2036--SS will be running surpluses.

Demographics is only part of the picture, so it's unclear what the situation will be when the baby boomers are gone. Increased lifespan will likely not change, and may actually increase. Decreases in the number of children per family (and therefore a decrease in payroll taxes from fewer workers) may or may not change.

-Bri

 

[Robert Prey]

Probabilty. Children who go through abstinance-only sex ed have a higher rate of VD because they don't beleive condoms work.

Parents who are really obnoxious about their religions tend to raise kids who rebel against the values they were taught.

Whether immoral or amoral, people who do promiscuous sex get high rates of STDs.

 

[Robert Prey]

Interesting, but not surprising, that you only included part of the sentence you quoted.


Do you have any examples of disease outbreaks being caused by vaccines in first-world developed nations?

Is that supposed to be an intelligent question???The Salk vaccine for one. The Swine Flu vaccine for another.

 

[Robert Prey]

It is called "Science".

I know you might have missed the last 4000 years of the development of Western thought, but right around the Enlightenment, rules started to be formulated that in the 19th century became what we know of as science. And in support of that school of thought, many numerical techniques were developed. You might not have heard of it, but one of these "statistics" allows you to take data from a subset of a population, and project the state of the entire population with great accuracy. It is this latter technique that can be applied to records of patient outcomes to yield the result that says you are full of beans.

It's also called a statistical fallacy.

 

[Walter Ego]

Is that supposed to be an intelligent question???The Salk vaccine for one. The Swine Flu vaccine for another.

My question was do you have any examples of disease outbreaks being caused by vaccines in first-world developed nations?

The Salk vaccine caused outbreaks of Polio in the U.S or western Europe? Can you give some examples of this?

(Btw, the topic of this thread is The Republicans’ war on science and reason, not Robert Prey's war on science and reason.)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Read it again:

The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally _

That stuff won't fly here. We actually know how to read the science. There have been a handful of vaccine virus polio cases and never once was an outbreak or epidemic caused by a vaccine strain.

Wild polio virus OTOH, which is prevented by polio vaccine has caused death and disability around the world by the millions of cases.