The Vaccine Thing

[kalm]

Meanwhile…in Texas…at a megachurch…

Measles Outbreak Traces To Vaccine-Refusing Megachurch
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A measles outbreak in Texas traces to a congregation of a megachurch whose leader, Kenneth Copeland, reportedly has warned followers away from vaccines, advocating for faith healing and pushing the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism. One of Copeland’s churches, Eagle Mountain International Church in North Texas, is the epicenter of the outbreak, which now has hit at least 20 people [UPDATE, 8/27/13: now at 21 in north Texas and one new case confirmed in southeast Texas, link to church not established]. According to USA Today’s Liz Szabo,

Those sickened by measles include nine children and six adults, ranging in age from 4 months old to 44 years old. At least 12 of those infected were not fully immunized against measles, Roy says. The other patients lack documents to show whether they were vaccinated.

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[JohnStOnge]

Of course, you have the issue of practical significance. You could always calculate the type II error probability for the smallest meaningful effect size. My guess is it wouldn't be very large given how big a lot of meta-analyses on these things are. The cohort meta analysis had over a million people for example.

What you could also do is estimate a one sided confidence limit for the size of the effect and say that if there IS an effect, it is no larger than X.

[Brock Landers]

https://medium.com/the-nib/vaccines-wor ... e3d0f9ffd0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


I even read Wakefield's book (per an anti-vaxxer's request)

[JohnStOnge]

So if I have a strong moral or ethical belief to yell racial slurs, or yell "fire" in crowded theaters etc I guess that's OK too.

I wonder if people get sick in any way from unvaccinated kids, can't they in turn sue the parents of the unvaccinated kids?

People are dumb.

You should be free to yell racial slurs. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is an intentional attack upon others. The presumed motivation is to cause them to believe something is happening that is not happening so that they react in a certain way.

Choosing not to have your kid receive a particular vaccine because you judge that the risk/benefit picture with respect to YOUR kid dictates that is not an intentional attack upon others.

I suppose that in this country we can sue people for just about anything. But there are all sorts of situation sin which people put themselves at greater risk of disease. Say someone goes to work even though they have influenza symptoms. Then someone else at work contracts influenza. Then they transmit it to their relatively elderly mother and she dies from influenza. Should there be a lawsuit?

If you start saying that we have a responsibility to make sure we don't contract and transmit diseases you are going down a really bad road.

[Brock Landers]

If some anti-vaxxer's kid gave my infant whooping cough before he was done with his first set of shots, I'd f#$#ing lose it

So, yeah, I guess you do have the choice of being an idiot. And I have the choice of going off the deep end in response.

[Vidav]

There is no risk with vaccines. If you think there is you don't know what you are talking about. Science, bitches.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzxr9FeZf1g[/youtube]