Topic: POTD: 2014-01-13 (issues)

[KnuckleBuckett]

Nice!

[Jake]

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/one-map-sums-damage-caused-anti-vaccination-movement

[JaWiB]

Strange that Europe appears to be much worse off in most areas, but the U.S. is practically the only place in the world with whooping cough (according to that map)

[ober]

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/one-map-sums-damage-caused-anti-vaccination-movement

I sent this to my wife and and she went off on me because apparently that graphic and the article is not accurate.  I mean... look at the site that it comes from.

[Mike]

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/one-map-sums-damage-caused-anti-vaccination-movement

I sent this to my wife and and she went off on me because apparently that graphic and the article is not accurate.  I mean... look at the site that it comes from.

Is the Council on Foreign Relations not trustworthy?

[charlie]

[ober]

Well the link provided by Jake is potentially questionable.  I suppose the CFR may have a little more credibility, but my wife was saying that graphic does not use accurate data.  I'm not sure where my wife is getting her data but she went off for about 20 min on the topic in general.

[KnuckleBuckett]

Well the link provided by Jake is potentially questionable.  I suppose the CFR may have a little more credibility, but my wife was saying that graphic does not use accurate data.  I'm not sure where my wife is getting her data but she went off for about 20 min on the topic in general.

What was the summary of her take?

[Mike]

Is your wife anti-vaccine?

[Betazep]

Well the link provided by Jake is potentially questionable.  I suppose the CFR may have a little more credibility, but my wife was saying that graphic does not use accurate data.  I'm not sure where my wife is getting her data but she went off for about 20 min on the topic in general.

I suppose it could be wrong... or they could be lying.  But I am pretty positive that all you need to do is count the number of incidents of these illnesses where vaccines are proven effective and add those to a database.  Maybe make it available online in a link like this...

http://www.cfr.org/interactives/GH_Vaccine_Map/#map

I think I trust that more than your wife's mental storage of the quantity of wooping cough instances in Washington in 2013.  Especially since it links to the CDC source.

Edit: At the same time, I think that there are actually "more" cases than are captured in the CFR website, so she might be right if she is saying the data isn't complete.  I just looked at Finland and they showed only 5 cases of measles on the map BUT for 2011.  And no other cases were shown through the years.  The article linked stated the following.

"A total of 25 individuals have caught measles in Finland so far this year.
      This may not sound like a lot, but the number is five times higher than the documented cases who contracted the illness in the whole of 2010, when the number of infections was only five."

This means that 5 contracted it in 2010.  And 25 some time after (it is not specific the year the article is written in).  Yet the map all the way through 2014 only shows 5 instances for 2011.  That is close... but not perfect.  I like my data as perfect as possible.

[ober]

I'm going to mis-quote her, but she indicated that she's seen that map posted all over the place and apparently she's seen several other respectable sources refuting the numbers, saying it is inaccurate.  She said she saw it enough times to actually look into it.  I don't think it's wildly inaccurate, just that it's not 100% true.

Neither one of us is anti-vaccine in the slightest and that wasn't her reason for going off about it.  Her reason for going off is the over-sharing and misinformation that she sees on the web and especially on Facebook.  Just like the whole thing with Jenny McCarthy... she never said stop vaccinating your children.  She said slow it the fuck down and do your own research.  Don't just blindly follow your doctor's orders without looking into things.  My wife and I agree on that.  I don't know the full details on McCarthy's situation so I won't comment on her whole deal, but I don't think she's a complete idiot.  I think a lot of what she said got blown out of proportion.  The pace at which they try to stick the kids is kind of insane and there's no reason to not spread it out a little bit more. 

For example, take the new HPV vaccine that Texas demanded students to get.  That vaccine has killed young girls and they're now recommending that you NOT get that vaccine because the side effects are fucking dangerous.  The point is, we shouldn't rush into new things without more proper clinical testing and validation.  There are risks to this shit and people's lives are at stake.  It's not safe to blindly follow your doctor all the time because they often get fed some of the same bullshit so they'll just write scripts for shit.  Know what you're doing with your body and what you're putting into it.  You CAN say no to your doctor.

That's why she went off.

[charlie]

I'm not sure I believe that about the HPV vaccine. I did a very quick search to find information on it and found this:

http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/gardasil.asp

Please don't look at VAERS data and draw causal inferences from it. I'd look at other links if you have them, but I'm guessing that claim is based on the VAERS data.

I'm also willing to bet that the many sites that say that the CFR map data is wrong are all fringe sites promoting an anti-vaccine agenda (like this one). You can see why some of us see this issue as more cut and dry than most.

[ober]

I don't know what her sources were and I don't have time to research it myself right now.  *le sigh*... which is the opposite of what I said people should do.  Fuck, I'm not going to post anything else unless I've looked into it myself.

[Govtcheez]

Obviously she needs an account here

[kermi3]

Strange that Europe appears to be much worse off in most areas, but the U.S. is practically the only place in the world with whooping cough (according to that map)

Probably because the whole anti-vaccine craze started in England.