We are starting to look at preschools for our son, and I immediately strike from the list any that does not require immunization. It's disheartening how many don't have the requirement.
It’s very strange to see this downvoted. It’s completely factual and on topic. The CIA got thousands of innocent people crippled or killed just to track down one man. Quite possibly millions, depending on how long it goes on and how widespread it becomes again.
It’s very strange to see this downvoted. It’s completely factual and on topic.
I often see this pattern if I talk about anything controversial: 2 or 3 initial downvotes, followed by more upvotes. It can also just stay at -3 and never go up. Then sometimes, I get 50 or 90 upvotes.
The CIA got thousands of innocent people crippled or killed just to track down one man. Quite possibly millions, depending on how long it goes on and how widespread it becomes again.
The thought process seems to assume that they can be "invisible" and their activities have no externalities or long term repercussions. It's analogous to injection with needles. The assumption holds true for small n. It falls apart with large n.
> I often see this pattern if I talk about anything controversial: 2 or 3 initial downvotes, followed by more upvotes. It can also just stay at -3 and never go up. Then sometimes, I get 50 or 90 upvotes.
I suspect (based on things some of the mods have said) is that while the number of upvote points is capped, the number of negative points isn't, with the intention of keeping a bad comment from crashing someone's karma. As such, for controversial posts (that a chunk of people feel strongly enough to vote about), the post can quickly hit a negative but then eventually be overwhelmed by positive votes (as long as it isn't flagged for one reason or another).
Thanks for that, absolutely a valid component and it is unfair to see you being downvoted. Tie this in with my other comment: When you influence a population's emotions towards a company, country, or thing.... it will be harder to overcome this than through just stating facts.
With respect to Taliban killing off humanitarians, it doesn’t help that the CIA organized a fake vaccine drive to get Osama Bin Laden’s family DNA [0]. The fake vaccine in question was for hepatitis B, but if your threat model requires you to be suspicious of humanitarian workers, then you’ll act appropriately.
I’m not sure why the sibling poster and I received downvotes: we both provided the same fact that a branch of the US government conducted their operations in such a way that harmed the perception of vaccines amongst groups of people in another countries. In both the anti-vaxx movement in some places in the West and this particular incident in Pakistan and Afghanistan, you have a similar kind of attribution error involving the concept of vaccination that led to action against actual vaccinations as a whole.
The CDC page he linked to defines "eliminated", as does his comment: "absence of continuous disease transmission for greater than 12 months". You can have outbreaks of a disease that have been eliminated from a population: the disease can be reintroduced from some other population. But what you don't have is person-to-person transmission within the population.
If you're vaccinated any real threat of getting the disease in the U.S. is still eradicated. There've been 555 measles cases in the U.S. so far this year. It's unclear how many in the current outbreak were vaccinated (though in the one sub-outbreak that does have data, NY/Rockland, 3% of cases had 2 doses of MMR), but historically, only about 2-3% of cases in an outbreak are vaccinated:
That'd imply that maybe 10 vaccinated people have come down with measles in this 2019 outbreak, out of > 300M total vaccinated people. By contrast, about 51 people die every year in the U.S. from being struck by lightning.
I agree with your first sentence. I will make a minor correction to your second one.
Routine vaccinations stopped. Samples of the virus continue to be found (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_debat... ) and it appears that it would not be difficult to recreate. There is therefore a potential for a future outbreak, perhaps even done deliberately.
> "Smallpox vaccination is currently required for uniformed personnel deploying or assigned to the Korean Peninsula for 15 or more consecutive days. It is also mandatory for certain designated emergency-essential personnel and contractors, uniformed personnel assigned to special units, and comparable U.S. government civilian employees. However, requirements may change based on threat.
Thank God it's only measles, it causes encephalitis in just 0.5 % of the cases, and the mortality is only 0.25 %. Imagine it was mumps! A frequent complication in men is orchitis, and there are really gruesome photos with the scrotum the size of an orange!
0.01-0.1% chance of Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis which can develop up to ten years after initial Measles infection. SSPE will very slowly kills you in the worst way imaginable (slowly lose your mind, control of your body, then as your brain continues to get damaged your major organs will shut down one by one). There's no cure. Babies have a significantly higher risk.
We had a case of measels in my London office 2 weeks ago was quite funny coming to the office and seeing an HR email with a PDF of a scanned government letter which contained a mandatory disclosure and advising people to contact health services.
The scary thing about anti-vaxxers, at least to me, is how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering.
So when I worked at Google I (and many others) got into an argument with a software engineer who had strong anti-vax opinions and honestly, it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education.
I'm glad California has started clamping down on personal belief exemptions. That still leaves medical exemptions and unfortunately it seems like some doctors are complicit in giving baseless medical exemptions.
In New York we've had cases of immunization records being falsified. I'm not sure if it's by doctors or parents (maybe both).
Honestly any medical professional who falsifies immunization records or provides bogus medical exemptions needs to be jailed.
So I'm honestly not surprised measles is showing up in SV tech companies.
From the anti-vaxers I've talked to, it's not so much the fear mongering, it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives.
Smart people especially know that it's relatively easy to lie with statistics and to generate studies with subtle selection bias.
If your premise is that most/all modern scientific studies are funded by drug companies and therefore cannot be trusted, then being anti-vax is still a stretch but you can at least see how it could be rationalized. Especially given the rich history of money suppressing/biasing scientific studies in the past: smoking, asbestos, j&j baby powder, round-up, etc.
> it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives.
The fallacy, of course, being the idea that only scientific studies are susceptible to perverse economic incentives, and that people pushing anti-vax narratives can't possibly be trying to sell you anything. I have a hard time ascribing this mentality to mere healthy skepticism when it smells more like anti-intellectualism disguised as anti-establishment rhetoric.
I used to spend time in an online antivax community because it was a good source of alternative health info. Some members had Phds and we're published authors.
Most people there had very negative personal experiences with vaccines. Either themselves or one of their children had a serious reaction.
It's known that some people have serious reactions. This isn't something made up by anti-vaxxers. But the current climate gets people with real problems treated as nutters who simply don't have a real medical issue.
When I was growing up, we counted success in terms of how many people got vaccinations, but there was no expectation it would ever be 100 percent. Now, we act like we "failed" to get 100 percent when we quote stats rather than counting the high percentage of vaccinated as a big success.
I think the root cause of the antivax movement is probably that we are leaving no room for those edge cases who have a genuine problem with vaccines, medically speaking. Those edge cases -- those people for whom this is a real problem -- seem to have concluded that the only way to protect their own right to choose is to make antivax the default norm instead of pro vax.
It's probably doomed because vaccines have proven to be beneficial to society as a whole. But if it is clear in your own mind that vaccines are a threat to your life, it readily becomes a hill you are willing to die on, so to speak.
I'm neither antivax nor pro vax. I think vaccines have their uses, but we need room for those edge cases to have the right to choose.
I get vilified by both camps because neither can tolerate a moderate position, which suggests to me they are both basically equally crazy. A reasonable person is aware that exceptions exist and that you have to have a system that makes allowances for that reality.
Actually my mom almost died from vaccination, her arm got swollen up and she must have been close to some kind of allergic shock. (Must have been in the 60s - one can only speculate for the reasons, obviously hygiene wasn't that far back then/perhaps it was a 'living' vaccine.) So luckily I did get all basic vaccinations as a young child but when my parents divorced, visits to the doctors happened only in case of emergency if you will. There was a deep distrust towards doctors because of this traumatic experience.
And yes, I agree, the discussions have become useless. In fact I would go so far to say that in middle-class society people avoid discussions and at best just agree which is actually meaning a slow death for democracy. Those who still continue to do discussions end up doing these in closed circles apart from public discourse, that's tragic and easy loot for alt-rights/anti-vaxxers who can then claim that discourse isn't working because we didn't practise it properly. From a philosophical standpoint I think foundations of all knowledge must be observed and talked about.
Those that have serious real issues with vaccines are the ones that rely on herd immunity so it is quite counter-productive for them to work towards making anti-vax the norm.
This assertion contradicts the comment by you that I replied to, which asserts reasonable doubt can exist in people who aren't fundamentally nutters concerning the value of vaccines. I agree with your previous comment.
> This assertion contradicts the comment by you that I replied to, which asserts reasonable doubt can exist in people who aren't fundamentally nutters concerning the value of vaccines.
No, that comment asserts that it only takes one small unreasonable conclusion to send you down the path toward an anti-vax conclusion. That's not what reasonable doubt is.
> ... but there was no expectation it would ever be 100 percent
Not sure where this straw man argument came from but I'll bite.
The point isn't to get a certain number of people vaccinated and never was. The point is to eliminate preventable diseases that can be deadly or cause permanent harm (eg paralysis, infertility). To do that you need herd immunity, which is typically quoted at 95%+ immunity.
The US achieved this and "eliminated" measles in 2000 but thanks to promulgating baseless falsehoods and people losing the memory of the effects of diseases, immunization rates began to fall and diseases that were effectively eliminated returned.
While you seem to want to paint anti-vaxxers as those simply having a bad reaction, I beg to differ. Even if true, the tactics border on the truly abhorrent [1].
Some people genuinely can't get vaccines. This is also why vaccination never will be at 100% and why it's important that anyone who medically can get a vaccine should as that herd immunity protects the vulnerable.
While you seem to want to paint anti-vaxxers as those simply having a bad reaction
No, and I'm not sure how to more clearly state that isn't my point.
Certainly at this point, it's a movement and there are latecomers who believe in it without having been personally burned. But I spent some years on a forum where active members were people trying to resolve serious health issues and being dismissed by mainstream medicine as nutters in a way they found very personally threatening because of their history.
Some of those people were very well educated and articulate. If you radicalize a small group of persuasive people, it shouldn't be shocking when the result is some kind of movement born of their efforts at self defense for survival reasons.
I'm sorry but taking a 'both sides' stance here is remarkably disingenuous and ignores the current reason why anti-vaxxers exist.
We, as a society, already make exceptions for people who cannot have vaccines. I would know, as I went through an incredibly bad allergic reaction to vaccines as a child. You can ask anyone advocating for vaccinations and they will tell you that yes, vaccines can have side effects and people can have adverse reactions.
The root cause of the anti-vaxx movement isn't those people. It's people who take a purely ideological stance against vaccines, ignoring the scientific fact that vaccines in general are safe in favor of believing that vaccines cause autism or any number of bullshit things created by quacks. People are abusing exceptions to vaccinations and in turn are directly threatening people like myself who may not have an actual choice in the matter. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't use people like me as a smokescreen for those that threaten my well-being.
When you choose to not vaccinate, you're no longer talking about just your life. You're talking about the lives of those around you.
You cannot frame the argument solely in terms of 'your own life' unless we're talking about vaccinations for diseases that don't spread across the population. The flu may be milder than most diseases, but the flu can and does kill people. Including those that are young and healthy.
People give you absolute hell for it because it's a selfish line of thought if you don't actually have a good excuse for not vaccinating. And the anti-vaxx movement more often than not does not have a good excuse.
So it's okay for you to not vaccinate because you have a good excuse. It's not okay for me to skip a historically non mandatory vaccine, nor to advocate for my own right to protect my own life and health.
This is exactly the line of reasoning I'm criticizing. This is the type of ugly argument that radicalizes people with serious health issues who find it beneficial to not vaccinate, but don't have "the right excuse" to make that okay for them.
You were all up in arms at the idea that I was talking about you. You are still being attacking when it's my life on the line here.
Okay then, let's establish a baseline: What, exactly then, is your reason for skipping vaccination? What is your exact reason? I've given mine for why I have had to avoid some vaccines in the past.
Because as I've established above, people who cannot get vaccines for legitimate health reasons (such as allergic reactions or compromised immune systems) are already protected by the system that exists. Otherwise if you're denying vaccines for ideological reasons: You are threatening the lives of other people for no good reason.
I've already stated my reason above: people who were helping to save my life recommended against them and skipping them has proven beneficial.
I'm supposed to be dead. Much of the world has a very big problem with my rude failure to die on schedule from a condition so bad it's classified as a dread disease.
Your further insistence that I owe you some kind of explanation for my personal medical choice flies in the face of HIPAA, something
I had annual training in when I had a job with a Fortune 500 company.
> You can ask anyone advocating for vaccinations and they will tell you that yes, vaccines can have side effects and people can have adverse reactions.
This isn’t my experience. Most people I know refer to people who do not vaccinate their kids as “antivax wackos” because they (my friends) believe that vaccines are almost 100% effective and 100% harmless. If they thought there were side effects or adverse reactions they couldn’t paint all people who don’t vaccinate with the “wacko” brush.
I’m glad to hear that you have encountered people who are more enlightened, but I wanted to point out that this is not everyone’s experience.
Note: I have vaccinated my kids and I regularly get the flu shot. I live in Silicon Valley, for context of where I’m encountering the folks I described.
EDIT: can you explain why you’re downvoting this? Do you doubt that this is my experience, find it irrelevant, or something else?
I'm just going to note here that all replies to me have been pretty ugly, even -- to my surprise -- the reply from the person I replied to who was actively taking an apologist position on behalf of anti-vaxxers, yet still has some big issue with me tossing out my two cents as to the likely origins of the movement.
My point is only that being between two arbitrarily chosen extremes does not make a position any more or less likely to be correct. It's not a sound form of reasoning and not a good foundation from which to argue correctness.
To pick an extreme example: the morally correct position between "genocide" and "no genocide" is not "some genocide".
You implicitly assume that I chose some random midpoint based on mathematically dividing the two.
You are still guilty of assuming that it isn't possible to have some more nuanced position than "either for them or against them!" rooted in actually reading and thinking through things.
Implying I'm utterly crazy with your first example doesn't exactly help here.
> You implicitly assume that I chose some random midpoint based on mathematically dividing the two.
Please accept my apologies for being less than maximally clear.
I am not assuming your position is a randomly selected midpoint. I am not assuming your position is based on mathematically dividing between two extremes. I am asserting that you have a position between two extremes.
Which, assuming that I interpret what you have written correctly, is what you have claimed to be true.
> You are still guilty of assuming that it isn't possible to have some more nuanced position than "either for them or against them!" rooted in actually reading and thinking through things.
Again, please accept my deep and heartfelt apologies for being unclear. It's definitely, absolutely, completely possible to have a nuanced, thought-out, and supportable position between any two extremes. To draw on a previous example, not everyone agrees that broccoli is delicious, and this is both a reasonable and defensible position to hold.
It may be worth considering that the reasonableness of a position could be independent of its distance from extremes. Or even independent of who does or does not agree with you.
My point is merely this: being a moderate between any two extremes is not magical. It does not a position correct. It does not make a position incorrect. It is completely irrelevant to the question of correctness.
Again, please accept my apologies if I was in any way unclear. I intended no insult whatsoever, in any way, shape, form, or manner. I do hope I have helped clarify matters somewhat, but please let me know if I have not risen to the task I have set myself.
My point is merely this: being a moderate between any two extremes is not magical. It does not a position correct.
I never asserted that it did. Only that both camps are equally unwilling to consider the possibility that a reasonable position exists other than their own. Pro vaxxers and anti vaxxers are equally guilty of framing this as "you must be in one camp or the other, period." Such framing inevitably sucks the oxygen out of the discussion and makes it impossible to have civil intellectual discourse.
To extend, being attacked by multiple camps of people who all disagree with a moderated position is silent on the correctness - or sanity - of all involved.
No. The pattern of behavior in both this discussion and the world generally is not rational.
My original comment was simply about my opinion about where this movement began. You and other people have largely ignored that to engage in various forms of dismissiveness of me personally.
If pro vaxxers were as rational as they like to claim, commenting on the origin of the antivax movement shouldn't result in this kind of pattern of behavior.
I can kinda sorta see that for new vaccines. But old vaccines like measles and polio? Those scourges are demonstrably defeated by the vaccines.
That’s what really drives me nuts about this. People lined up to receive these miracle cures. Devastating common diseases became near myths. All of this happened within living memory. And we’re to believe that it’s all a conspiracy by big pharma?
So how do they explain away the USSR (which I presume is understood not to have operated under similar economic incentives)? They also believed in vaccination and did vaccinate their population. Were they complicit in a world-wide cross economic-system conspiracy to get everyone vaccinated?
I think these people are constructing a made up excuse to excuse themselves.
"it's not so much the fear mongering, it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives."
It's fear that fuels that distrust and places the burden of proof on the pro-vaccine side. A rational person, unmoved by emotion, would see that there's far more reason to trust vaccines than to not. It's not irrational to say there's some reason to scrutinize medical industry studies, but in the case of vaccines there's also overwhelming evidence that they work. Fear turns that small case against the studies into a foregone conclusion which must be disproved, instead of simply the side with less supporting evidence. And it's much harder to disprove something than to provide greater evidence to the contrary.
Ask any pro in their profession what do they think about newspaper articles from their own area of expertise. Now where do most people get information about areas they aren't working in? If it's that bad in paid journalism, how much worse is it when you expand your source of information to Reddit, YouTube autoplay etc.?
I hear this a lot but this website right here is full of professionals reading news articles about their area of expertise and besides the occasional accusation of sensationalism most articles are treated as accurate.
Mainstream press gets details wrong all the time; when I read newspaper and magazine articles about a subject I'm very familiar with, I can usually identify some misunderstanding or oversimplification or other mistake. But I can't recall any instance of encountering mainstream media getting something so egregiously wrong as to be comparable to mixing up "vaccinate" vs "don't vaccinate". Nor have any of the health care professionals I know ever disputed the pro-vaccination consensus as reported by the press.
Because we have been conditioned to accept that journalists use the wrong facts or incorrect values when reporting about something and we automatically correct the context and semantics.
Say what? The global vaccine market was over 30 Billion dollars in 2018. This is the most lucrative pharma market because you are medicating the whole population including healthy people, no other medication can top that.
Not only that, but in the US the pharmaceuticals are shielded from liability for vaccines in stark contrast to any other medication type. How's that not a profit center?
The whole reason the liability shield program exists is concerns that if pharma companies were exposed to lawsuits from the inevitable vaccination reactions that happen or are purported to happen, they'd just drop out of a low-profit market.
Don't you see certain hypocrisy in this? Aren't we told that vaccines are safe?
The whole reason that the liability shield exists was a reaction to the DTP vaccine debacle. Which was eventually taken off the market in many countries including the US.
Nothing is perfectly safe. To be clear, I'm not in favor of anyone being held down at gunpoint and administered a vaccine. I'm fine with at least some organizations, including schools, requiring participants to have been vaccinated or have medical exemptions.That preserves the ability to opt out if you are so concerned about the risks but implies certain trade-offs.
You are confusing revenue and profit. Vaccine companies historically don’t make much profit, especially when compared to pharmaceutical companies who make and sell drug compounds.
Uh....you just responded to someone saying "most of the profits aren't from vaccinations" with the profit for an entire company that provides everything from cancer treatments to diabetes medications to also everything else.
They did call out Gardasil as a major cause of the increase in profits from the previous year, but it wasn't 6.2B by any stretch of the imagination.
> From the anti-vaxers I've talked to, it's not so much the fear mongering, it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives.
I would call that the equivalent of fear mongering because pharma companies don't make much or any on vaccines, and the US government had to even pass a special liability law in order to keep vaccines being made.
I think it’s this (skepticism that big-pharma funded studies can be legit) plus a reaction to the intensity of the aggressive push to vaccinate. (My friend put it to me this way- The government wants me to vaccinate my kids, but doesn’t want me to have public health insurance, paternity leave, etc. If they really cared about health, why are they not pushing vitamins or organic vegetables?)
Vaccinations are really low-hanging fruit. Even severely underdeveloped economies get their pops vaccinated. It staves off mass pandemics. And it costs so little to prevent so much. I really can't understand these kinds of absurd arguments.
> My friend put it to me this way- The government wants me to vaccinate my kids, but doesn’t want me to have public health insurance, paternity leave, etc. If they really cared about health, why are they not pushing vitamins or organic vegetables?
vaccines are a (roughly) one-time cost. you can be vaccinated faster than you can eat an organic carrot, and with wildly less infrastructural overhead than paying for everyone's health care.
the benefit : cost ratio for vaccines is astronomical compared to the benefit : cost ratio of any of those other things, even if they had the benefits ascribed to them.
Can we please stop it with this "Organic vegetables are better than normal vegetables" nonsense? Seriously, I can't even tell you how many times I've heard that BS as an excuse for why these mother forkers out there say they can't afford to eat healthy, and I'm saying this as a poor very fit person myself.
You don't need to eat organic vegetables to eat healthy. You just need to eat vegetables, period, full stop, hold the phone, stop the presses, etc.
There's many that believe that educated people are above having baseless beliefs. There's plenty of evidence showing that that belief itself is baseless too. Funny that.
You can see this mistaken belief whenever people decry that there are "smart" people that believe dumb things outside their profession. Well, "dumb" people believe dumb things outside their profession too.
When it comes to believing this stuff, people tend to just be people. The "smart" get special attention because some of us incorrectly assume they should be immune to it. But they're obviously not.
Honestly, for most people, an effective model is to think of it like a sport. It's something people obsess over, can impact their emotions and otherwise is pretty harmless
> No one who doesn't believe it would phrase things that way.
And why do you say that? Do you have any reason to think I'm not being earnest other than your "hunch"? Is that really the quality of discussion you want to have with complete strangers who are otherwise saying nothing offensive whatsoever- to question their sincerity? Seems pretty whack to me.
I believe you're being earnest. I'm taking what you're saying as what you mean.
When someone says "I don't believe X" it means they don't believe it.
When someone says "I don't necessarily believe X" it means they kinda do believe it.
Not one person who believes the world is spherical would ever say (or agree that it correctly captures their view) the statement "I don't necessarily believe the world is flat".
[EDIT: I thought this example might help make things clearer.
version 1:
- wife to husband: you're spending a lot of time with that new co-worker. Do you find her attractive?
- husband: no, I don't find her attractive.
&
version 2:
- wife to husband: you're spending a lot of time with that new co-worker. Do you find her attractive?
- husband: no, I don't necessarily find her attractive.
A husband that genuinely did not find the co-worker attractive would never express things in the second way. It's clear in that second way that he does find her attractive to some extent but doesn't want to say it]
Sometimes "I don't necessarily believe..." is used when the person feels awkward admitting that they have some belief, or when they haven't consciously realised that they do. It can be when they haven't fully admitted it to themselves.
Actually I'm with you. I had to google the definition of "necessarily" and it does imply that I could believe it. Maybe I'm culturally programmed to use the word even if I don't understand it's full meaning when I'm using it?
Anyway, I would reword the entire post to remove the word necessarily but I'll leave it in case anyone else reads it and might make the same
Mistake.
I don't think you're completely wrong to be offended, but it's also worthwhile to know that people may interpret your phrasing differently than you intended.
New York in general is a very superstitious place. There are a lot of people here who came from the Old World a century ago and those superstitions came with them. Psychic readings, crystal balls, crystals, Tarot cards, all that.
But this kind of thing tends to also serve as a psychological aid. People with anxiety being told things they want to hear. For some psychics serve as de facto therapists.
This isn't to say there aren't charlatans and scammers who take advantage of the vulnerable and impressionable.
But on the whole, Astrology and the like are "harmless", at which point I personally don't care. People are entitled to their personal foolishness.
So here's one thing to consider about Astrology -- it is essentially a natural calendar. And there is the phrase that history repeats itself, or at least it rhymes. So putting those two together, I can see how people can look to the stars for answers. Well, that and confirmation bias whenever a coincidence happens.
For the kind of statistical significance (read: confirmation bias) that astrology relies upon, anything will work. Horoscopes could be written based not on astrological sign, but on the first letter of street name of a person's first address and apply. Search hard enough, and some sort of correlation can almost always be found.
Astrology has some value, in the same way alchemy has value: it helped start serious scientific inquiry into astronomy. Sadly, while there are now vanishingly small amounts of people who take alchemy seriously, astrology is a relatively common belief to hold, even among people who are scientifically-minded. It puts me in mind of the first 9/11 truther I knew, who was a close friend who should have known better. However, at the time she was willing to buy into it, simply because it played into her anti-GWBush sentiments. This is after I explained how the statements were false, and backed it up w/ evidence (having queried my father, who was a mining engineer and had done building implosions in his career as a blasting contractor).
Unfortunately, "smart people" can just as easily fall prey to these types of delusions, it seems to be a common human trait (like all the logical fallacies). Thinking that one is immune paradoxically makes one more susceptible to these types of errors, rather the best defense is to recognize that no, nobody is immune. Much in the same way as ignoring advertising's effect on decision-making.
> Those early formative years influence attitudes and expectations about success, academically and socially, and that can possibly stay with an individual.
Maybe there’s no measurable difference by adulthood, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was.
I don't understand this comparison. The calendar we use is already natural and the most logical one. Days and years are very real physical phenomena. One tracks the highly relevant daytime/nighttime light cycle and the other tracks the highly relevant annual seasons cycle. And then behind these two there's also the Lunar calendar, which can be relevant if you're near the ocean because it's connected to tides, and also the amount of available light at night when the Moon is shining.
Compared to days, years, and Lunar months, what does astrology give us, orbits of other planets? Distant constellations? Who cares?! This doesn't affect our daily life in the slightest. Astrology doesn't add anything. The normal calendars we already use are the best and most relevant.
Celestial bodies give multiple calendars covering different periods, and taken in various combinations they give patterns that are at various rhythmic intervals. I wonder if that affects people's beliefs in astrology somewhat, that gives more opportunities for a coincidence to occur?
what about the fact that the constellations have move significantly since the dawn of astrology thousands of years ago? shouldn’t something be updated, or why is/isn’t the “calendar” way off?
>>it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education.
There's an old adage that science advances one funeral at a time - The scientific community is far from immune to this problem. People who are trained and employed full time to apply critical thinking and empirical testing still fall for superstition. It's an unsolvable problem until we reach a point where we can replace human brains with cold, unfeeling robots.
Fear warps cognition. It doesn't matter how smart or educated you are, fear will reshape the way you think, and in a way that's really hard to be aware of even if you're a generally self-aware person. The only way to break out of it is to distrust fear itself and postpone decisions about fearful topics until you've released the emotion itself. I almost think mindfulness should be a part of standardized education.
Plenty of really smart people believe in religion, too. It's a lot more complicated than just saying "Someone believes in X irrational belief, thus they can't be smart", especially since they easily could be really smart in other areas. Your views on vaccines, religion, and any number of other things really have very little bearing on how good of a software engineer you are.
Trouble is, people tend to forget they are domain experts. I trust my doctor for medical advice, but I don't consider them any more competent to dispense legal advice than a random acquaintance. However, it is common for highly-competent people in a domain to feel they are more qualified than average in other domains (which is a trait I actively work to control myself). Software devs seem very susceptible to this, since a large part of the field involves being able to quickly learn enough about a subdomain of knowledge to implement a required solution. I'm no expert statistician, but I have implemented multiple projects that required knowledge of statistics. However, I'm just at the point of "knowing what I don't know", while I haven't studied enough classical mechanics to truly grasp how much I don't know. So while I feel I have a good working knowledge of statics, asking me to design a bridge would be foolish. Sure, I may think I 'could' design a bridge, but that is just folly.
Yeah, 100% this. What's more, this is also quite common among actual scientists too. Quite a few creationists/intelligent design advocates are academics whose credentials are in fields completely unrelated to biology/evolutionary biology, but quite a few cranks/pseudoscience believers/theorists are in a similar situation.
> how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering
If I were to wager a guess, I'd say this is because people who feel like they're very good at logic/rational thought underestimate the effect emotions can have on motivating a belief?
I wonder if technology could be used to push back against this problem.
For example-- what if there were a hub for videos that would analyze an anti-vaxxer's viewing habits and recommend level-headed, reliable scientific content in the sidebar?
I'm glad California has started clamping down on personal belief exemptions
... but CA has a high propensity of foreign travelers and entrants. The big North Bay school infection stemmed from travelers returning from Vietnam, where all the kids in the family were infected.
> The scary thing about anti-vaxxers, at least to me, is how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering.
Argh, it sucks... it sucks so friggin much. I've been trying to articulate my feelings on this for the past few weeks. There is a breakdown of thinking throughout our society. It's not just that critical thinking is impaired, but rather the ability to endure any sort of criticism of one's belief structure is gone.
So we know you can't throw facts down at a person when they state an immediate falsehood. You must combat it, but the tactic to combating such a falsehood requires an emotional component.
Seeing videos of iron lungs terrified me as a kid, I had remembered seeing a few elders with shriveled arms from polio. These emotional experiences burn upon you far more than the impersonal fact: that diseases maim and kill. But we just want to develop fantasies and live inside our filter bubbles because of course it's easier to believe the distrust that vaccines are just a delivery mechanism for the government's nanomachines.
> is how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering
The same argument is being used against the pro-vax community. The article by the ahem "esteemed" journalism that is Buzzfeed is an example that seems to be pandering to a certain audience. The kind of audience that is quick to insult anti-vaxxers as being some sort of stupid degenerate or other over the top propaganda. Propaganda being another reason not to trust the message.
> it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education
Same accusation going the other way. I'm don't want to get into the particulars (this will be a long thread), however, there are a number of pro-vax advocates who don't make a good impression with their obvious sophism. I can provide links to videos of debates involving highly reputable pro-vaccine advocates to back this up, but I want to keep this first post more at a meta level.
I understand that you are preaching to a certain choir & I will suffer the wrath because I dare question the orthodoxy, but that's the rub; our own presuppositions affect how we perceive the matter.
> giving baseless medical exemptions
Many people see forced medication as being a baseless intrusion by the state onto a population. For example, have you read "A Brave New World"? Injections were used to create the caste system. Forced inoculation & diet has been used to create an underclass in many societies. Many people also oppose Fluoride & Lithium being added to the water supply. For how long was Glysophate deemed "proven safe", yet we find out later it's highly toxic. Note that there were people who were opposed to the usage of Glysophate for a long time & many of those same people oppose vaccines.
There's also a lack of studies of the individual compounds & even less research into the combination of said compounds. Yet vaccine proponents are uncomfortably eager to deem vaccines as safe despite a lack of research. So safe, as safe or safer than saline solution it seems...It makes the pro-vaccine crowd sound delusional & religious at worst, or rash in judgement due to fear of the global pandemic apocalypse at best. Not saying there aren't good arguments, but much of the rhetoric being thrown around is hostile bullying, tbh.
I recommend that proponents of vaccines strongly discourage bullying from their side, because it completely discredits their argument of forced vaccination & makes them look like proponents of totalitarianism.
> In New York we've had cases of immunization records being falsified
Does this imply the validity of some studies are in doubt? New York, for being such a large population, seems to have a lack of outbreaks since the Spanish Flu.
I did some quick research, and I fail to find proof that glyphosate is "highly toxic". Sounds like the consensus is that it is either mildly bad for you, or not bad for you.
This is why we have an independent media, since corporate media tends to favor their customers (the advertisers & major shareholders); that is until it become blatantly obvious there's a problem. Then other tactics are used to gain control of the narrative. This is also why some monopolists are angry & want to censor & co-opt the independent media; too much competition in the marketplace of ideas...
Also, vaccine manufacturers are legally immune from lawsuits & there's a fund to pay off victims of vaccine damage.
So the argument in question was about a technical matter which is not appropriate to share externally. The software engineer with "strong anti-vax opinions" believed that vaccines are net beneficial, but not that they should be absolutely forced by pulling a child out of parent's arms. In return, you and "many others" threatened to report their kids to authorities.
Or maybe it was another debate, can't tell from limited context. In any case, either it was work-related, in which case engineer in question had full right to express an opinion. Or, it was pure idle chit chat, in which case it seems unprofessional to pile on, let alone share externally years later. Are you also in the habit of posting office gossip from Facebook on this site?
As for personal belief exemptions, Trump declared a national emergency on Southern border. If civilians are somehow deputized to build the wall, do you want to be forced into it or to be able to declare a personal belief exemption?
Your argument would be more effective if you don't state it in such absolutist terms. Do you really believe that vaccines are so safe that anyone who has any doubts about their safety is anti-science? The science of immunology itself does not give you that level of certainty.
Here is a book on Vaccines and Auto-Immunity written by highly credentialed immunologists.
This seems like a minor story that is being embellished and extrapolated out to be something way crazier than both the headline and the content suggests...
One case of the measles prompts a company wide email... And now Google must contend with the scale of such an outbreak.
Yeah do it. Even if you had the shot immunity wears off. Where I'm from they gave out only 1 when I was young whereas the recommendation is now 2. There's is absolutely no danger in having an extra shot if you can't find out how many you had.
PSA for anyone living in the UK: the measles (+ mumps & rubella) vaccine is 100% free under the NHS, no questions asked. Call your GP and get an appointment, easy as pie!
What are the standards for UK vaccinations? I've read that there are different vaccines used for MMR and some countries have a single dose or 2 spread apart. I have no idea what's preferred or why. Just curious.
I would expect some of this has roots in anti-vaxx, but is it possible more of this vests in the increase in social mobility (between states, between economies) and therefore the rise in out-of-herd contact risks?
the ICT sector in particular pulls in people worldwide and has a high flight ratio compared to the normal population, domestic and international. so inside the tech bubble in California, I expect more people interact with people outside their core community, than other places. Compared to Omaha or Austin. Compared to Chicago? maybe not.
but I did mean in-the-wide too; i think since we started down the vaccines as herd immunity game in the 50s and 60s we now have more routine travel and the rate of change here has accellerated. When I was a kid in the 60s few flew, my first flight was at 16 and then no more until 24. Now, I fly 10+ times a year worldwide. Thats only 40 years gap.
On this site people in H1B and other non-immigrant statuses are routinely called "immigrants" so it's better to clarify that only immigrants who obtain an immigrant visa or adjust into immigrant status are required to have vaccines and other medical procedures.
Any link to support your edit? Because when I've got an H1B visa nobody asked me about any vaccination. There is also no mention of any such requirements on various immigration sites listing documents needed for stamping an H1B.
The rate of unvaccinated children in CA is highly correlated with income and non-Hispanic white populations (LA Times published stats a few years ago). Not sure that jibes with your hypothesis.
Considering just how many people from outside of the US Google employes it's quite possible that they simply came from a country that historically didn't have a good vaccine coverage for example India.
In 1980 even Germany had 25% vaccination coverage but I'm guessing it could include East Germany too so a developer in their mid 30's simply might not been vaccinated at a young age and if they didn't travel to high risk countries, joined the military or worked with at risk groups it was never caught.
I happen to know with 100% confidence that some Google employees were recently abroad in an area struggling with a measles outbreak. Of course this doesn't mean it came from some place external to the US, but it certainly means it's not impossible.
Starting in 2009, you could’ve been born in Germany in the 80s which had poor coverage at the time immigrated to the US in the late 90’s and you would not be vaccinated.
Sure. But the Bay Area has long had a large population of Indian immigrants without ever having a measles problem. This is almost certainly caused by anti-vax issues rather than immigration from poorly vaccinated countries.
The outbreak on the east coast was from a large orthodox Jewish community, who as I understand it, rejects vaccinations on religious grounds. Was the person in this case from there or in contact with people from there?
there were NO religious grounds(confirmed by a number of religious leaders). This was mostly due to anti-vaxx propaganda and closedness of the community
So centered in specific religious community that has their own neighborhoods, ambulances and police force and susceptible to outsider propaganda somehow? But not in any way on religious grounds? What's the reasoning? Just because religious leaders outside the community have different opinions doesn't automatically mean 'no religious grounds'. It just means they see things differently.
There’s nothing in Jewish teachings[0] to justify an anti-vaccination stance. However, as an insular community it is particularly susceptible to anti-vaccine misinformation[1].
0. In numerous states parents wishing not to vaccinate their children are permitted to sign a document stating that their religious convictions do not allow them to; based on this signature the child will then be permitted to attend school under the law. It is reported that small numbers of parents in Jewish schools have signed such documents. For a parent of a yeshiva student to sign such a statement in the name of Judaism is not just inappropriate, it is false. Whether a posek will rule that childhood immunizations are obligatory in halakhah or are discretionary (but highly advisable), there is no position in halakhah that says there is any prohibition or compelling reason to refrain from such vaccinations.
> In 2015, Wired reported that one daycare at Google had a 68% measles vaccination rate, although Google contested the accuracy of the article at the time.
FWIW here was Google’s response in the linked article.
“The reported numbers for the current year are lower simply because many parents have not yet provided updated immunization records. We've asked them all to do this, so we can update the figures.”
That sounds like corporate speak for "We don't know exactly how many children in our daycare aren't immunized, but we're going to assume that every child who hasn't provided us records is immunized since it gives us plausible deniability."
In the article or in the DPH records? Wired did a follow-up the next year and found much higher vaccination rates[1]. Regardless, just based on the variance/number of adjustments, I'm not sure the DPH records are really a very accurate picture of the true vaccination rates.
I'd actually believe the "it's old data" explanation. Here's a searchable map of vaccination rates for day care, linked from the Santa Clara County public health department website:
Put in 94041 for zip code and you'll get most of the day cares that Googlers send their kids to, including a couple Google proprietary ones. Most are in the green, and the only one in the red (Little Prodigy, near Castro Street) isn't actually near Castro Street anymore - they moved several years ago, indicating that the data is several years out of date. The Google proprietary day care I know of is The Orchard on Bernardo street in Sunnyvale; it's listed as having >95% vaccination rates, and it's also closed now (has been for almost 2 years), again indicating the data's a little old.
Sebastian Funk, Associate Professor at the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: "to achieve [termination of measles transmission,] the population immune needs to be 93-95%, the herd immunity threshold." (https://www.who.int/immunization/sage/meetings/2017/october/...)
The article that I linked shows why even 100% vaccinated population will not achieve herd immunity. This is the meat of the article really, read it.
There is a substitution of terms in the first statement that you quoted. To stop transmission you need 90-95% of the population being _immune_ to the disease, not vaccinated against it. Do you see the difference?
The second quote by Funk got it right. But again please read the article why this is unattainable even with the 100% vaccination rate.
She is a trained immunologist, but besides, her article is well reasoned and provides references for every fact she cites. Compare that to the PBS article in the root comment.
Attaching a moniker "quack" at will is no way to have a discussion.
That article is not at all well-reasoned. There's a core of truth, which is that even with 100% vaccination a population may not always have effective herd immunity from measles, because the vaccine is not 100% effective over all timespans, and the threshold of immunity required for effective herd immunity against something as insanely infectious as measles is quite high.
But the author goes far beyond that conclusion and rails against the very idea of herd immunity, and claims that since herd immunity may not be possible in practice when dealing with measles, there should be no stigma against opting out of vaccination. These conclusions are very weakly argued, and the obvious counter-arguments are not addressed.
I don't think that it implies that many Googlers are antivaxxers.
MMR vaccine is given at 1 year, pre-school starts at 3 years. Making a rough assumption of uniform age-distribution at daycares, it's expected that about 1/3 of babies won't be vaccinated against measles.
Edit: Linked article disproves this theory: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/tech-companies-and-vaccines/ . "According to the California DPH data, ..., At a nearby Google daycare, ... Just 68 percent are up to date with their MMRs". ... "The California DPH numbers only cover children between 2 and 5 years old"
With regards to the question of "many Googlers being antivaxers", I wonder how common it is for a family to not think of themselves as anti-vax, but through bad luck in or poor research in selecting a pediatrician they end up getting fewer vaccines for their kids. Personally, I think I might know one such family where that seemed to be the case, someone who didn't seem to realize something kooky their pediatrician had said. I would imagine that would come up by the time they go to school though.
I wonder if it counts 'not up to date' as older millennials that have only 2 MMR vaccinations. The latest guideline from CDC recommends a booster for adults in this case: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6701a7.htm
EDIT: Nevermind, you're strictly talking daycare. Probably looks worse with this factored in.
In 2015, Wired reported that one daycare at Google had a 68% measles vaccination rate, although Google contested the accuracy of the article at the time.
What a morass of foggy and unverified information, this online hive mind.
Is there any scientific literature on potential dangers of these standard vaccines? Maybe newer findings?
I’m asking because this is such a polarizing topic that science-trusting people could totally have developed a blind spot by now. I mean some anti-vaxers are so crazy that you might become more pro vaccination than you’d otherwise be and miss some of the truth.
> Is there any scientific literature on potential dangers of these standard vaccines? Maybe newer findings?
> I’m asking because this is such a polarizing topic that science-trusting people could totally have developed a blind spot by now.
There are massive publicly-accessible databases of reported possible adverse reactions to vaccines. You can easily download a spreadsheet listing every reported instance of someone developing a runny nose or rash after receiving a vaccine last year in the US. It is very reasonable to assume that the reporting rate for more serious reactions is plenty high enough for any real patterns to be quite noticeable from analyzing that data, at least for the vaccines that are given to large portions of the public. There is no blind spot when it comes to safety of the vaccines that have been recommended for the general public; this is well monitored and the safety of something like the MMR vaccine is supported by a mountain of data. Anyone questioning the long-established safety of common vaccines needs to provide up-front an analysis of VAERS data and a very good explanation for why they think that data is inaccurate.
So, what's the big deal here? The only people affected should be those who were too stupid to take the vaccine. The rest of us can rest easy and let Darwin do his work.
Cancer patients, AIDS patients, organ recipients all have compromised immune systems. They'd all be at risk because of irrational choices their colleagues made.
Nothing in medicine is as straightforward as that. Most cancer treatments end up wiping out or suppressing many different kinds of cells, and a temporary suppression of white blood cells is considered an acceptable side effect. AIDS will have to be cured. A strong immune system often attacks donor organ cells, so the immune system is intentionally weakened. We may eventually develop solutions for all three issues, but I don't expect it to happen in our lifetimes. Heck, I predict we'll be cloning body parts in labs to obviate the need for anti-rejection meds long before we learn to fine-tune our immune response.
> Nothing in medicine is as straightforward as that
Which begs the question, why do we make an exception with vaccines? It seems like vaccines are being presented as completely safe & completely effective by some proponents.
You see nuance in this issue, but then, why are critics of vaccines silenced & ridiculed? I thought "nothing in medicine is straightforward"...
I don't understand what you're asking. Vaccines are recommended because that's usually the best course of action. That doesn't mean that vaccines will work 100% of the time... if that's what you were asking. Safety...? We're not talking about experimental vaccines whose safety is not well understood. If you have specific allergies or specific medical conditions, I'm sure your doctor would either recommend an alternative that does not have that allergen or suggest some other course of action.
> That begs the question, shouldn't we be more focused on promoting strong immune systems?
No. There's no general solution to the problem of compromised immune systems, because there are many different causes. Some of those causes are infectious diseases that can be controlled through vaccination, so translating your feel-good goal of "promoting strong immune systems" into specific courses of action will include using tools like mass vaccinations. There are no better or more cost-effective ways to prevent diseases like measles, and almost every unvaccinated person exposed to measles develops the disease even if they have a healthy immune system.
There are a collection of people who are unable to take vaccines for medical or age reasons. They rely on herd immunity. If herd immunity is compromised, then their risk increases. For someone considering to avoid vaccination for personal reasons, this is an example of moral hazard.
> The only people affected should be those who were too stupid to take the vaccine.
One dose (normally scheduled at 12-15 months) is 93% effective, two doses (the second usually scheduled at 4-6 years) are 97% effective, and there are people too young or with other non-stupidity reasons for not having (yet, in the case of age alone) even the first dose, so, no, it's not just stupid people at risk.
I understand that people feel quite strongly about this subject, but rather than mass flagging people who support/sympathize with anti-vaxxers, it would be much more beneficial to reason with them. As this is a comments section and not a news article, discussing these things is perfectly fine and does not "platform" anti-vaxxers. To change peoples minds we must win hearts and minds, not alienate them.
With regards to making links between intelligence and anti-vaxxers (as some here have), unless you have hard numbers then you too are just as susceptible to drawing conclusions without strong facts to back it up. Some of the most intelligent people can still act illogically, just look at the unfortunate later years of Nikola Tesla [1].
> As Google fights criticism that it has let anti-vaccine disinformation
> flourish on its platform, [..]
Lastly, I don't like the phrasing of this article. There is zero evidence that Google has in some way purposely allowed disinformation to spread. There's a disgusting "serves them right" feel and I think that's really unfair. I am sure Google has put in many resources to prevent disinformation and what people see is what gets through the net.
> Mass shaming, at least to me, signals the shamers have the weaker argument. Whereas articulate and even handed communication signals great strength.
You only see mass shaming because there are large populations that are publicly rejecting the articulate and even-handed communication that they've been receiving for their entire lives from their doctors and the CDC. To a large extent, anti-vaxxers are only willing to engage with the issue in an emotional, irrational way and they are almost by definition unreceptive to the kind of rational discourse you pretend isn't being attempted.
> Maybe you are correct, but I don't think it's reason to stop trying.
Last time I checked, all the experts are still providing the same expert advice to get vaccinated. The shaming has not displaced any of that, and most of the shaming seems to take the form of telling people that they're doing a bad thing by rejecting the advice of their doctor or encouraging others to do so.
> Certainly there must be some room for reasonable disagreement even if the experts are unanimous, given the patchy history of experts.
The patchy history of expert advice from the days before science was routinely used in medicine is not particularly relevant here. Today's expert advice about vaccination has a far stronger foundation of evidence than any of the superstitions you named. If we were talking about dietary recommendations or even psychology then it would be a lot less ridiculous to bring up leeches or phrenology, but in the context of vaccination you're being dishonest by implying any sort of equivalency.
> ^ This! What is wrong with having reasonable discourse
> these days?
Given the negative internet points on my comment, apparently everything, although no strong argument in the comments. Take from that what you will.
> I most often see mass shaming instead of reasonable
> discourse. I guess the former is easier.
I argue with friends and family on social media because I care about them, in the same way some religious person may try to convert you because they are concerned for your soul. We seem to be suffering a lack of empathy, at least in these comments.
> Mass shaming, at least to me, signals the shamers have the
> weaker argument. Whereas articulate and even handed
> communication signals great strength.
Not only this, but negative reward without reason and "de-platforming" in my opinion are more likely to lead towards doubling down. If we kick all the anti-vaxxers off Facebook, they will likely all go to a forum where they receive only counter arguments in the form of trolls and use the fact they were removed as "evidence" of conspiracy.
I figure the following: at a certain point the negative utility of getting a disease is greater than the negative utility of an allergic or worse reaction.
This has already happened to smallpox, as we assume the only two remaining places that have them won't release theirs.
At some point the same was likely the case for measles in the US, and is the case for polio and malaria in the US.
I'll tell you what. You provide a decent science-based argument for antivaccine beliefs that's not trivially falsifiable with 5 minutes of research, and I'll change my mind.
I don't want my child to risk getting measles, mumps, bruises, seizures or a severe allergic reaction [1]. I believe the number of these cases to be under-reported (not everybody goes to the doctor after getting ill) and the risk of side effects from the MMR vaccine (treats measles) to be greater than the benefits.
> The problem here is that you assume they're reasonable.
And you assume they are unreasonable? Almost everybody has the ability to reason, the problem is that their reasoning system is grounded differently from yours. To begin common reasoning, we must first find common ground, even if we have to go all the way back to "I think therefore I am".
> No one is antivaccine from a position of logic or science,
> because the position is completely impossible to support
> with either.
There are plenty of ways to argue a point from an anti-vaxxer perspective (which I don't support FYI):
1. There is not enough data to draw conclusions about negative long-term effects. This argument is also used for radio signals (cellular/wifi/bluetooth/etc), smoking (at the time where it was unclear whether there was harm) and many others.
2. Some organization has an incentive to hide known issues. Whilst you might say "conspiracy", just look at the poor ladies who were painting with radium and how their companies hid the effects. Or asbestos. There is a long history of covering up issues to aid profits.
3. The default logical or scientific position is to be skeptical of all claims. If a mass of people say "this is good", it is important for at least a small number of people to challenge this. If people didn't go against the grain, perhaps we would still believe that the earth is at the center of the Universe and if we sail too far, one will simply fall off.
As I'm sure you are aware, for many (including myself), it's not possible to read every paper on a subject, hence some of our biases are based on things we haven't confirmed ourselves directly. I didn't personally take a picture of a black hole, but people I trust say that they have and it fits my model of reality. It's unlikely that more than a handful of people with strong positions on vaccines have read years of dense academic articles on vaccine research. They probably get their information from sources they trust, probably different sources from you and I.
> Antivaccine beliefs are functionally very similar to
> religion.
I'm not sure that's true, the reason to be an anti-vaxxer or religious could be completely different. Perhaps anti-vaxxers can be considered as fighting an authoritative figure and religious persons as wanting to follow some authoritative figure? I'm sure the reasons are many and varied. I imagine the reasons for being religious are more socially based though.
I do wonder if we'll eventually get to the point where companies start either firing or requiring mandatory vaccines in order to work there.
This would naturally be a fairly massive invasion of privacy, but does your right to privacy and right to not vaccinate trump the right of the company to protect their workers? Eventually it's going to come to a head and either companies will force vaccinations or the government will.
I think the work case is the weakest possible. You're not owed a job, and you're certainly not owed a specific job. The reality is that vaccinations don't just affect you. They affect people who aren't physically capable of being vaccinated (compromised immunity, allergy to vaccine, etc.). If you bring the ratio down below the herd immunity threshold, you can spread serious diseases to those not physically capable of being vaccinated and putting my existing employees at risk.
If I, as an employer, am forced to decide between hiring you, an antivaxxer, which risks killing even one of my existing employees, you're not getting the job, period. I owe them a duty of care before you. And their families too. And babies too young to immunize -- is it okay if they die?
This stems from a similar misunderstanding of liberty as the "freedom of speech applies to Twitter" argument. The first amendment protects you from legislation infringing on your free speech. It doesn't require private companies to broadcast your speech at your sole discretion. The same would be true of a hypothetical vaccination rule. Even if the government weren't able to legislate in this regard, nothing precludes any private party from refusing you food, a home or a job on the basis of your vaccination status. Being an antivaxxer isn't a protected class to the best of my knowledge.
Note that “anti-vaxxer” is probably a small subset of cant produce complete vaccination records. I’m not sure how acceptable a mandatory doctors exam and potentially booster shots would be to a lot of SV developers applying for a job. I don’t personally have a problem and early in my career got rejected from some jobs because of a small back problem. But can’t see it with the typical FANG applicant.
No problem, if they don't have a record, they can take another shot. IMO FAANGs are best suited, many have their own on-site clinics. If not, you can in states like California, head down to Walgreens and get one on the house without an appointment.
I got an MMR booster shot at work last week at the clinic in the Google NYC office. They also do annual flu shots using contracted out nurses (the clinic is too small for that big of a rush in a single week).
I don’t personally care. I don’t want to work for those companies but if I did and if I were missing a record I’d say fine—another booster won’t hurt. But I imagine it would be a non-trivial issue for them.
None of those diseases come at all close to being as easy to transmit as measles. The diseases you list pose little to no risk of transmission in an ordinary office setting.
Plenty of institutions require vaccinations. The military typically does. Often one needs certain vaccines to obtain permission to travel to certain places. When I went to university (UK) I had to produce vaccination records (and I think I had to redo one because the records couldn’t be found), although I don’t recall reading what would happen if I hadn’t had the usual course of vaccinations. I think working in a hospital requires this (although I’ve heard stories of evidence being faked in some US hospitals) and yearly flu vaccinations are very strongly encouraged if not required (this is to stop staff from infecting patients more than the other way round), and a large proportion of the population works in healthcare.
"Privacy" can go stick itself where the sun don't shine, when the alternative is having the whole place crawling with two-legged bioweapons created by ignorance or stupidity.
> I do wonder if we'll eventually get to the point where companies start either firing or requiring mandatory vaccines in order to work there.
If a college can request vaccination records I would expect an employer to also be able to. I know in the case of working at a veterinary office (or any sort of animal rehab) rabies vaccine is a workplace requirement.
I think a better question is if this is deemed enough of a public health emergency (which I think it could eventually be), that the information gets shared with federal gov and the wackos get thrown on the no-fly list.
As an ardent anti-anti-vaxxer (and supporter of the California laws for schools), I'm pretty sure we want to be very careful about how far we want to go down the path of provide a complete set of vaccination records (or a validated medical exemption) or you get a big A tattooed on your forehead (or digital equivalent) and aren't allowed to be employed or to travel.
>I'm pretty sure we want to be very careful about how far we want to go down the path of provide a complete set of vaccination records
Ok, let's move the path upstream then. If you want a passport and/or a driver's license renewal, you need to provide a vaccination record or a valid medical exemption. These are travel documents and I personally wouldn't want to sit next to a measles infested traveler on a plane.
The problem will resolve itself in some years as credentials expire.
You (proverbial you) invade my health by walking about with measles. I think it's well within any group, even government, to mandate vaccinations that have been PROVEN to be effective. Privacy takes a back seat to health.
EDIT: And I love how this gets downvoted. Likely by people who vastly misunderstand mechanism of disease. Also likely the same people who show no courtesy to others when they are sick, and continue to frequent stores and social establishments, coughing and hacking with zero thought about it.
I feel like if you think the fear of airborne peanut allergy is the same as universally contagious disease vectors then you are the textbook definition of an idiot.
I fully agree with you, particularly because not vaccinating means you're threatening the people who don't have a choice in the matter due to immune system or allergic reasons.
Unfortunately that's the framing of the argument though. It's people who value privacy and self-determination over everything else, even the health and well-being of those around them.
There's tons of things that you "do to yourself" that are controlled via legislation -- smoking is the best example. You're free to do it at home, but not in places where you can adversely impact the health of others. Your freedoms end where my rights begin, so to speak. If you don't want to get vaccinated ... don't leave home. If you want to enter a public area, you better have your shots.
Because Google is a large employer so the possibility of contagion is large?
Imagine if someone working at Apple’s UFO caught The Plague. That would certainly be of some concern. Same with Amazon in Seattle, or even an Amazon warehouse. People come and go from all of those places constantly and one person could have an outsized impact on people who are otherwise completely unrelated to the origin of the disease.
How does one know if they're vaccinated or not? Who has a complete medical transcript going back to their childhood? How do they even get the vaccination rate data? I call BS.
In general, if your primary care doctor doesn't have it, try your high school. If they don't, try your pediatrician. (Or your parents, potentially.)
We're really bad about centralized health data in the US, but schools keep track of immunization data. How long they retain your records will no doubt vary.
In my state (NC) there's a statewide database that physicians report immunizations to. Prior to its creation in 2005, county health departments were a good source for immunization records (they typically handle immunizations done in schools, IIRC).
If you have a surviving birth certificate, there's no reason it's not also very feasible to have a surviving immunization record. In my case, when I moved out of the house after high school my mom sent me with a photocopy of the original (handwritten) booklet. I still have the photocopy, along with additional records for vaccines I've gotten since then. This does remind me that I should digitize them.
Somehow amazing to me that I've lived across three continents and proven vaccination status numerous times and someone can't even do it within their own country.
Ask your doctor. If it isn’t in your records, an antibody titer blood test is definitive. For public health purposes, these data have been collected for a long time.
The tests are more time consuming and expensive than just getting a new MMR vaccine. If you were vaccinated, then there will be no effect because your immune system will kill the live virus in the vaccine. If you weren't, then you are going to need the vaccine when your tests come back anyway.
Plus in some places (like California) you can get a free MMR vaccine at pharmacies like CVS, without making a doctor appointment.
I am confused... Everyone I know has a complete vaccination transcript going back to birth. I have passed through 3 different national systems (one of them being the US, where the records are not kept at a national level), and all these places have records up to the time I left them. I did not do anything special for that - it was almost automatic, except for once when I had to pay for a cheap language translation.
Not only that, but a lot of doctors only keep records for so long. We recently had a measles outbreak in my area and I was trying to figure out if I had been vaccinated or not. My childhood doctor had destroyed the records after ten years and my parents had zero paperwork. I ended up just getting a round of the vaccine to be safe.
I know I’m up to date and more with all sorts of vaccinations like Yellow Fever and boosters in adulthood. But I’m not sure how much I could prove with documents in hand (basically whatever is in my WHO booklet ). But that’s very incomplete, primary care may have some others, but childhood records are long gone with a doubtless long dead pediatrician. This is in the US.
ADDED: So, no, as someone born 1960ish I would probably have to get a test to prove I was vaccinated against all the standard diseases.
