Australian parenting - No Jab, no play and no rebate

Energize · 17 Mar 2017 at 02:26

I'm afraid not because I've just updated my ignore list, the function works much better on this new forum I have to say.

asim18 · 17 Mar 2017 at 04:17

Energize said:
I'm afraid not because I've just updated my ignore list, the function works much better on this new forum I have to say.

Wow. Cognitive bias AND cognitive dissonance in full play here. Amazing to see this really.

"An individual's construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behaviour in the social world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality."

In order to be rational you need to be able to recognise and accept facts even if they go against your emotional beliefs.

What has happened here is remarkable. His sheer inability to accept a very simple statement that accidentally infecting 200,000 children with a virus is neglectful, has literally caused him to run for the hills.

So that's one poster I know is irrational to the point of running away when put under a simple objectivity test.

It's a very good thing he's put me on ignore. Will be very interesting to observe his future posts/discussions on these forums. I agree that the ignore system is good here.

Edit: Heck I've just realised more irrationality. His reason for not answering Yes or No is because he put me on ignore AFTER he saw my question?

What on earth hahahahaha

amazing. This is unprecedented. So much irrationality.

Tuppy_Glossop · 17 Mar 2017 at 06:45

Angilion said:
And by not doing in this case so we introduce a significant proven risk that definitely exists rather than a hypothetical risk that might exist but probably doesn't since there's no theoretical basis for it and ~200 years of evidence has shown no sign of it.

I think your argument doesn't apply to vaccination, although it would apply to some things. Genetic engineering of humans to create disease resistance that way, for example.

Thanks for trying to discuss it reasonably, ie. without all the hysteria that is evident elsewhere in this thread. Yes, the probability is so small that it is, for all practical purposes, not there. Nevertheless, when weighing up whether I think the government should be forcing people to vaccinate it is a point that I find myself forced to consider. I always try and consider the best and worse case scenarios in these types of discussions. I'm not even really sure if all possible future outcomes of the vaccinations comprise a closed set... but that's probably too philosophical for this emotive issue

If anybody is interested in the theory behind this type of thinking it is based in extreme value theory. There are probability distributions that seek to describe values that are unusually far from the median value of a set of iids. There, Maths/Philosophy over.

I do take your point about genetic engineering of human resistance (I had already wondered about mentioning GM crops as another angle from which to approach the idea)... people obviously imagine higher risks of catastrophic outcomes for endeavours that haven't yet been tried, rightly or wrongly. Which got me thinking about mitigating against the risk I see of putting all eggs in one basket. With GM crops they have a seed bank of most plant species before any GM was started. Which took me on to frozen embryos and sperm in case all the vaccinated people die. Plus there may be vaccinated individuals who naturally survive this catatstrophe of my imagination.

Angilion · 17 Mar 2017 at 07:08

asim18 said:
If you're going to answer please only answer "Yes" or "No". It's very important that you only answer Yes or No.

Do you realise that immediately invalidates almost any question? You're not asking a question at all when you order a person to answer to give an answer you want.

asim18 · 17 Mar 2017 at 07:13

Angilion said:
Do you realise that immediately invalidates almost any question? You're not asking a question at all when you order a person to answer to give an answer you want.

Im sure youve heard of closed ended questions?

"Closed-ended questions are those which can be answered by a simple "yes" or "no," while open-ended questions are those which require more thought and more than a simple one-word answer."

Preferring a yes OR no for a legitimate closed question doesnt invalidate anything because its a perfectly valid closed question. And not hard to answer at all (if you are of a rational mind of course)

The person answering always has the choice of keeping it closed or politicising it like politicians usually do in question time etc.

Funny thing is this dude just ran for the hills lol. I mean imagine david dimbleby asking some dodgy lying politician on the panel a simple question to test their objectivity and then they just rip off their microphone and storm off stage. Lol

platypus · 17 Mar 2017 at 11:02

Vonhelmet said:
Of course they have their best interests at heart. It's just that no one knew that the chirality of the molecule in thalidomide would have such a catastrophic impact.

Governments have demonstrably acted without childrens best interests at heart in the past. Why take it as a given that they suddenly are doing now?

shorttricky · 17 Mar 2017 at 11:06

asim18 said:
So 200,000 children were injected with actual live polio virus by a doctor or nurse.

It caused 40,000 people with symptoms of polio.

But remember how 70% of cases show no symptoms whatsoever?

160,000 people which is MORE than the extrapolation, showed NO symptoms whatsoever after being infected with polio DIRECTLY.

200,000 guaranteed polio infections, ONLY TEN died!!!

So 80% of people had natural super genetics which rendered them COMPLETELY and NATURALLY IMPERVIOUS TO POLIO.

While 20% were "strong enough" that they didn't die.

And only 0.005% died. That's a 99.995% survival rate for polio! And who don't we thank for that? Millions of years worth of natural evolution. We just completely ****ing ignore that and that makes me very sad.

That's a good survival rate. Of course, you've clearly forgotten that the 20% includes people who would have had the following conditions

muscle weakness
shrinking of the muscles (atrophy)
tight joints (contractures)
deformities, such as twisted feet or legs
There's also a chance that someone who has had polio in the past will develop similar symptoms again, or worsening of their existing symptoms, many decades later. This is known as post-polio syndrome.

Polio is not a nice disease. I'm old enough to have had elderly relatives that were crippled by it as children. Funnily enough the generations after all had the polio vaccine.

I'd like to highlight some things from your link, just in case you didn't actually read it (you certainly cherry picked)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/

He (Paul Offit) reminds us that, within a decade of Karl Landsteiner's identification of the polio virus in 1908, an epidemic in New York killed 2400 people (mostly children) and left thousands more with a life-long disability. In the 1950s, summer outbreaks in the USA caused tens of thousands of cases, leaving hundreds paralysed or dead.

The Cutter incident had an ambivalent legacy. On the one hand, it led to the effective federal regulation of vaccines, which today enjoy a record of safety `unmatched by any other medical product'.

The contemporary climate of risk aversion and predatory litigation deters the introduction of new vaccines and discourages innovation in a field which boasts some of the most impressive achievements of modern medicine.

And...

asim18 said:
Yeah just like they have no idea what happens after multiple generations. 50 years my arse lmao, not long enough.

Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned

Side effects of vaccines are pretty quick. Immediate in the case of anaphylaxis

And forgive me for being picky, but 50 years is multiple generations, surely? It's certainly 3 in my family. Hell in my town, 4.

All your doing is focussing on side effects, while ignoring the known effects of a disease

Avenged7Fold · 17 Mar 2017 at 11:06

platypus said:
Governments have demonstrably acted without childrens best interests at heart in the past. Why take it as a given that they suddenly are doing now?

This argument is ridiculous. We are not weighing up who wants best for the children but rather the medical opinions of professionals vs the medical opinion of parents.

shorttricky · 17 Mar 2017 at 11:19

platypus said:
Governments have demonstrably acted without childrens best interests at heart in the past. Why take it as a given that they suddenly are doing now?

Citations please where "governments have demonstrably acted without childrens best interests at heart"

Let's say after WW2, industrialised nations. That seems fair for the topic at hand.

Vonhelmet · 17 Mar 2017 at 11:31

platypus said:
Governments have demonstrably acted without childrens best interests at heart in the past. Why take it as a given that they suddenly are doing now?

Within the realms of vaccinations specifically? I'll concede they're not great elsewhere.

platypus · 17 Mar 2017 at 11:57

shorttricky said:
Citations please where "governments have demonstrably acted without childrens best interests at heart"

Let's say after WW2, industrialised nations. That seems fair for the topic at hand.

The most publicised of recent is the forced deportation of children to Australia, which was a government program running from the 40s to the late 60s. And why are we stopping at World War 2? Should we automatically trust people/institutions after a certain date/time?

Vonhelmet said:
Within the realms of vaccinations specifically? I'll concede they're not great elsewhere.

Look up the Cutter incident. America's polio vaccination which ended up killing a small few and paralysing more. The DPT lawsuits (again, in America - perhaps the problem is more the American profit led healthcare system but thats a different subject). Or the fact that the US government went as far as to set up a tax on vaccines to fund a compensation liability program. And the UK government has legislated a tax-free payout for people with complications arising specifically from vaccinations.That the government paid out £3.5m in 8 years suggests there are enough issues to at least pause for thought.

Again: I am not anti-vaccination, but to blindly suggest that governments have peoples best interests at heart is dangerous at best.

Sankari · 17 Mar 2017 at 12:03

platypus said:
Look up the Cutter incident. America's polio vaccination which ended up killing a small few and paralysing more.

A failed vaccination program is not evidence that the US does not have her citizens' best interests at heart. On the contrary, it shows that something went wrong with an attempt to take care of her citizens' best interests.

Or the fact that the US government went as far as to set up a tax on vaccines to fund a compensation liability program.

This also suggests the US government has its citizens' best interests at heart.

And the UK government has legislated a tax-free payout for people with complications arising specifically from vaccinations.

Looks like the UK government has her citizens' best interests at heart too. Is there a point I am missing here?

Again: I am not anti-vaccination, but to blindly suggest that governments have peoples best interests at heart is dangerous at best.

Blindly? No. But where evidence exists, as it does in this case? Certainly.

Sankari · 17 Mar 2017 at 12:06

platypus said:
Why take it as a given that they suddenly are doing now?

They not suddenly doing so now. Government vaccination programmes have been in place for at least 100 years. When a government offers free vaccinations to prevent deadly diseases, it's entirely reasonable to conclude that its citizens' best interests are being served.

platypus · 17 Mar 2017 at 12:53

Thats fine, we'll conclude differently.

shorttricky · 17 Mar 2017 at 12:53

platypus said:
The most publicised of recent is the forced deportation of children to Australia, which was a government program running from the 40s to the late 60s.

While that seems monstrous now, I can see how governments at the time would have argued it was to provide cheaper care for poor children with a knock on benefit to the rest of society. I'm in no way saying that was the right thing to do, just that I can see how people would have justified it.

platypus said:
And why are we stopping at World War 2? Should we automatically trust people/institutions after a certain date/time?

Because it fits in the timeline of the topic at hand, and I expected a string of "what about the workhouses" type comments which don't seem relevant to the context - WW2 seems a good enough benchmark for a modern industrialised society and fits in before the advent of most vaccinations. It gives you a good 70+ years to work with.

platypus said:
Look up the Cutter incident. America's polio vaccination which ended up killing a small few and paralysing more. The DPT lawsuits (again, in America - perhaps the problem is more the American profit led healthcare system but thats a different subject). Or the fact that the US government went as far as to set up a tax on vaccines to fund a compensation liability program. And the UK government has legislated a tax-free payout for people with complications arising specifically from vaccinations.That the government paid out £3.5m in 8 years suggests there are enough issues to at least pause for thought.

From an earlier post, quoted from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/

He (Paul Offit) reminds us that, within a decade of Karl Landsteiner's identification of the polio virus in 1908, an epidemic in New York killed 2400 people (mostly children) and left thousands more with a life-long disability. In the 1950s, summer outbreaks in the USA caused tens of thousands of cases, leaving hundreds paralysed or dead.

The government at the time absolutely had the population's best interest at heart but a mistake was made. You're implying a malicious intent which is just not there

platypus said:
Again: I am not anti-vaccination, but to blindly suggest that governments have peoples best interests at heart is dangerous at best.

And again you throw that out - what benefit does a bad vaccination protocol provide to the government? They have taken responsibility for payouts since the 50s and pay for the vaccines/treatment, so it's not financial. Killing kids doesn't win elections. It's not in the pharmaceutical's interests because of bad publicity. I can understand your point in a dictatorship, but how does it work in an elected government?

I'd love an example where a industrial nation knowingly used a bad medical treatment on the population

platypus · 17 Mar 2017 at 12:54

shorttricky said:
You're implying a malicious intent which is just not there

You might be inferring that from my post, you would be wrong though.

shorttricky · 17 Mar 2017 at 13:29

platypus said:
You might be inferring that from my post, you would be wrong though.

I may be inferring it, but I'm hard pushed to see how I'm wrong

Vonhelmet said:
Within the realms of vaccinations specifically? I'll concede they're not great elsewhere.

platypus said:
Look up the Cutter incident. America's polio vaccination which ended up killing a small few and paralysing more. The DPT lawsuits (again, in America - perhaps the problem is more the American profit led healthcare system but thats a different subject). Or the fact that the US government went as far as to set up a tax on vaccines to fund a compensation liability program. And the UK government has legislated a tax-free payout for people with complications arising specifically from vaccinations.That the government paid out £3.5m in 8 years suggests there are enough issues to at least pause for thought.

Again: I am not anti-vaccination, but to blindly suggest that governments have peoples best interests at heart is dangerous at best.

Avenged7Fold · 17 Mar 2017 at 13:33

platypus · 17 Mar 2017 at 13:36

It is possible for governments to act, unilaterally or otherwise, without peoples best interests at heart, whilst not doing so maliciously. Is that hard to grasp?

Sankari · 17 Mar 2017 at 13:37

platypus said:
Thats fine, we'll conclude differently.

What are you concluding differently on?