Vaccinations and Crazy People (rant alert)

[JulietEcho]

Yes, I said "crazy people" in the title and I meant it. Anyone who refuses to get their children basic vaccines, or refuses to get other vaccines when in serious need of them is crazy. There is no plausible argument left for claims that vaccines are linked to autism or somehow toxic and harmful. Yet there are loads and loads of people who believe this and stubbornly refuse to look at the evidence.

For most of them, in my experience, it's not that they don't understand the evidence or that they somehow take issue with the evidence - they won't even look at it, because their minds are made up, and that's all there is to it.

Children have already died from cases of measles in the UK - and these children aren't all from families who are crazy and refused to get them vaccinated. Infants who are too young for some vaccinations and those with rare immune disorders depend upon herd immunity - which is currently becoming more and more diluted by the non-vaccinated children of crazy people.

I'm only writing about this now because I suddenly found myself surrounded by anti-vaxxers. People I've known for quite awhile - a family of conservative home-schooling Christians, my current boss (who's an atheist, BTW), and one of my best girlfriends (who's an agnostic, BTW) are ALL, it turns out, highly suspicious of vaccines because, "They cause autism! Look at all the autistic kids now! There aren't nearly as many autistic adults!" and "They contain all sorts of chemicals and mercury!"

These people won't even have the conversation. They are irrevocably convinced, apparently, and they don't care what doctors or scientists say. Doctors and scientists are just too worried that they'll be sued for all the vaccines they've already pawned off on the unsuspecting, or in it for the big bucks, according to these people.

It's shocking and disheartening to find out that someone you thought was a skeptic (my agnostic friend, in this case), someone who's about to graduate undergrad with a degree in one of the sciences (geology), is an anti-vax nutter. She believes this stuff because it's what her mom says, and she refuses to believe otherwise.

Some days, I fear for the survival of our species. Even when we have the means to prevent serious illnesses that can result in death, we find reasons to refuse them.

*sigh*

[Chal]

Well, vaccines are a risk, just less of one than not getting vaccinated for many people (but not all people). Plus there's the problem where people are more likely to hear about things that go wrong than things that go right, which gets accentuated by confirmation bias.

Plus, people aren't aways entirely rational. Imagine a coin flip where if you won, you'd get $10 million, but if you lost, you'd lose everything you own. There's a positive expected value on taking this risk (assuming you have less than $10 million worth of stuff...). How many people would actually take the risk, though?

Plus, at least from my understanding of people, there's this implicit assumption of cause and effect in everything. So if you're not doing something, nothing bad should happen to you. Going out and getting vaccinated is actively putting yourself at risk in a far more visible way than simply walking around unvaccinated.

That is to say, their fears are understandable on some level, however unfounded.

[Pseudonym]

Plus, people aren't aways entirely rational. Imagine a coin flip where if you won, you'd get $10 million, but if you lost, you'd lose everything you own. There's a positive expected value on taking this risk (assuming you have less than $10 million worth of stuff...).

Not taking the risk is perfectly rational if "value", to you, does not exactly correspond with "monetary cost of replacement". Losing everything that you've ever created, your old photographs and your family heirlooms may not be worth it, to you.

Myself, I've made what I think is a calculated risk. I'm going to delay getting the new H1N1 vaccine, because H1N1 doesn't seem that bad at the moment. I'm relatively healthy, so I'd be willing to spend a week in bed with the flu if it means that everyone at risk (e.g. those with weakened immune systems, health care workers, teachers etc) get immunised first. I consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.

[JulietEcho]

The reasons the people I'm ranting about have for not taking the "risk" of getting their children vaccinated are akin to the reasons someone standing beneath a falling anvil might give for not taking the "risk" of stepping to the side.

As an aside, this is a tiny bit personal for me, because I have a younger brother with Type 1 Diabetes who wasn't able to procure a vaccination for H1N1 until yesterday. It was stressful, worrying about his increased risk and knowing that there are tons of people out there who would try to convince him not to get the vaccine because, "They put mercury in them!" or "They didn't do enough testing!" when those 'reasons' are all either patently untrue or moot.

The vanishingly small actual chances that most people will somehow be harmed by a vaccine isn't something most people would think twice about - any more than they think twice about the much greater risks involved in using prescription drugs, driving cars, cooking or taking a shower.

I know why people are like this, from a sociological/psychological/philosophical standpoint, but that doesn't make it any easier to stomach when I see my friends fall prey to it. I just expect more out of humans, you know? We've learned to test, understand and recognize weaknesses in our mental faculties, but even if I showed my friend the research about *why* she's holding onto her anti-vax beliefs so stubbornly, I doubt it would make a lick of difference.

[Kaylya]

The most recent Wired magazine has an article about anti-vaxxers.

How to Win an Argument About Vaccines (And the main article is here)

That's something you can send around.

Vaccines do have risks, and some more than others. So there's good reasons not to vaccinate completely unnecessarily - that swine flu vaccine from the 70's or whatever being a good example, the disease never spread widely and the vaccine harmed more people than the disease. Likewise that Wired article briefly mentions why a widespread smallpox vaccination campaign would NOT be a good idea just in case terrorists get a hold of it, as one in 1 million recipients of that vaccine dies from the vaccine (not that all vaccines are associated with deaths).

But the mandated childhood vaccines? Many of those diseases were the leading cause of death in children 100 years ago, and they are still around. And it's not like not getting vaccinated only puts your child at risk, as a large benefit of vaccines is herd immunity (i.e. enough people being vaccinated that it's difficult for the vaccine to spread), since the vaccines aren't 100% effective in those who are vaccinated (for instance, I got measles as a kid, although they now give 2 doses instead of the 1 I got), and there are people out there who aren't able to be vaccinated (infants, people with certain immune problems, etc). What makes the biggest difference is having nearly everyone immune so it's difficult for the disease to spread. When vaccine rates fall to 70%, that just doesn't happen.

[JulietEcho]

Thanks for the links, Kaylya. I don't know if I'll send any of it to my friend (we've never had a debate before, and I don't know even know if she's the type who'd react well or not), but it's good to have handy. I especially liked this quote, as it expresses what's been frustrating me so much:

Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense. Much like infectious diseases themselves — beaten back by decades of effort to vaccinate the populace — the irrational lingers just below the surface, waiting for us to let down our guard.

[JulietEcho]

Of course, then I had to go and read the comments on the article, and now I want to bang my head against the wall until it bleeds.

[jasonorlandohawk]

I will admit that I have not acquired the H1N1 vaccine... but I have an extremely powerful phobia of needles. Not vaccines. Those are cool. Needles. My brain becomes a mess when I'm around them, and every ounce of coherent thought is replaced with "Needles bad!" It is a mental response that I am largely unable to control. It takes me almost an hour & a half to donate blood. The donation is quick... the recovery, not so much.

Where I live, the immediately available vaccines are needle form. There are two locations where I could acquire an inhalation form of the vaccine, but one is a college campus & the other is in a largely elderly community. I'm a healthy 26 year old adult who lives by himself. I have very little exposure to H1N1, so it seems rather selfish to steal vaccines from people who are at a MUCH higher risk than I am.

I just modified my diet & purchased some more expensive vitamins. That should decrease my risk sufficiently, & if not, it's off to the doctor.

[Jasen777]

There's such a shortage here that they aren't available to everyone, you have to be in certain risk groups to be able to get one.

[Kaylya]

For H1N1, I think today is the first day they've been vaccinating people outside of the priority groups here, and I don't see a reason that I need to be first in line to get it. To reduce the overall spread of the disease you want to get people who are exposed to a lot of people the vaccine first, and, well, right now I'm pretty much the opposite of that (I'm just finishing up my grad degree and working from home, some days the only other person I see is my fiance..). I'll probably try and get it in another week or two, so I've got it well before I travel at Christmas.

[JulietEcho]

It's true (and good) that H1N1 vaccinations have mostly only been available for high risk groups up to this point. I haven't gotten one, although I plan on it. I'm not at high risk to get H1N1 (besides being in my early 20s, which isn't as dangerous as being even younger or being pregnant), but I know from experience that if I get quite sick, it can trigger a relapse into restricted eating. Once I've spent some time being nauseous, throwing up, and losing some weight, it's difficult to go back to eating normally and give myself permission to regain the weight lost while I was sick.

Anyway, the only people I feel have an ethical *duty* to get an H1N1 vaccine are parents (getting their kids vaccinated) and anyone who works around kids. The fact that it hits young, healthy immune systems so much harder, and the fact that the vaccine isn't 100% effective (something like 98-99%) means that anyone who's around kids on a regular basis is putting them at considerable risk by not getting a vaccine.

And my real anger is reserved for people who don't get their kids vaccinated with the standard vaccines (measles/mumps/rubella is a big one, for instance) and put them and others at risk of a preventable death. It must be especially frightening/maddening to be a parent of an infant or child who can't get vaccinations for medical reasons (or have medical conditions that make vaccines less effective on them) and to know that more and more people are being convinced every day by quacks like Jim Carey and Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher to not have their own children vaccinated, thus making the world a deadlier, riskier place for the at-risk children.

And if any crazypants student at my little brother's conservative Christian college had talked him out of getting his H1N1 vaccine, when he's in the high risk group, I would have been absolutely livid.