To ask you to help me argue with an anti-vaxxer on fb

[GoesDownLikeACupOfColdSick]

I know, I know. But it's Saturday night, DP is out and I am just home whilst our (fully vaccinated!) DD is asleep.

What do I say to someone who is convinced that we should all do our own research, that vaccines are only about big pharma making big bucks, and that the govt hushes up vaccine damage??

I agree with those arguing that vaccines are given for a variety of reasons, often economic, and there is now a great fear of what used to be normal childhood diseases. As most did, I had Mumps and Rubella diseases as a child and wasn't really bothered by it, as the vast majority of children aren't. Rubella in particular was so mild I barely noticed it. We see the same hysteria starting to build around Chicken Pox, which is also a mild illness in the vast majority of people. Not everything is in the same category as polio or diphtheria, but there is this assumption by many that everything on the schedule must be really nasty or it wouldn't be there.

I also agree that vaccination is changing the dynamic between people and diseases. Maternal antibodies are a case in point - it used to be that the mother had the disease in childhood and developed long lasting immunity, then passed this on to her child during pregnancy in the form of antibodies which protected them from disease when they were very small and at their most vulnerable. Vaccine-mediated immunity unfortunately isn't as strong as disease-mediated immunity and does wane quicker. This is most obvious with the clusters of Mumps that are popping up in fully vaccinated young adults (when it is much more problematic - I think it's fair to say putting Mumps in the schedule was probably a mistake), but there are signs the same thing may be starting to happen with Measles. The impact of this on new bonds hasn't really been properly considered. I agree with the pp who said that the JCVI should include evolutionary biologists - I read their minutes routinely and there is a very narrow focus and a lack of appreciation of possible longer term issues.

And in real life I 'be never met anyone who understood there were risks who vaccinated their child for the good of society. Most people assume all the diseases must be deadly or the government wouldn't spend the money.

The reality is if you have a child with severe autism who is clearly brain damaged (& once wasn't) the medics don't have a clue what is going on. The senior medics will tell you they don't know as well. The baby junior doctors pretend they do.

Medication is given as a best guess with no idea of how it works. But it's so heavy duty it's then not easy to get off. When the response is the exact opposite to that expected from the literature they explain that that don't really know what the medication does for this condition. (I have since found a case study describing the same reaction seen in my son - which also concluded that the response was odd).

So you get more medication & you're stuck on that. And still no-one can tell you what is going on.

And then a 'new' condition appears (check out catatonia in severe autism) & you see younger children following your son's path and developing the same symptoms. And still no-one knows why.

And meanwhile functional MRI scans are taken of people who can comply who happen to have been diagnosed with something that is called the same as your son. But clearly isn't the same condition at all. But that's the only info they have on your son's 'condition'

If your child's condition is severe enough that they cannot have an EEG & can only have MRI's & blood tests by a GA (which always seems to trigger a seizure) - forget the idea that someone might know what is going on.

If your non-verbal but communicating well son goes from happy and accessing activities to needing 2:1 care & losing the ability to even ask for a drink by handing you a cup - don't expect any answers. There's no research done with people like him.

But it is still a choice. No one has to have the vaccinations for their children. And the herd immunity will probably protect them. It's people weighing up the risks to their child and not trusting current medical opinion on those risks. And sadly low quality 'scientists' like the Wakefield guy producing dodgy stats linking mmr to autism does not help the matter. I don't feel angry with people who make that decision, although I worry about their children's immunity. It's their decision and as I see it, as long as the majority get the vaccinations, the minority will be protected.

I think even a lot of people working in public health would now say mumps was a mistake. I don't think they'd say that about any of the others - but I do think they would about mumps. Mind you if you read the minutes from the time it was a fairly controversial addition.

Mega - so you don't believe in vaccine damage?

It's all very well to pontificate about how altruistic you are for supporting a vaccination programme when you don't know what it's like to live with a severely disabled teenager.

Most people don't not vaccinate because they don't care about others. Rather, they know that they will be the ones to pick up the pieces if their child has a bad reaction. Nobody knocks on your door and offers help then.

*Tell him unless he's performed an independent literature review, and is able to interpret all the studies and critically analyse them, then he's probably wasting his time.

This is it in a nutshell.*

Not really. There are very few studies to critically analyse, especially of modern vaccines (men b for example). The studies are ongoing as we speak and include every child that's been vaccinated so far. The thing is, unless there is a large population of unvaccinated kids, there's no control group to compare outcomes with.
If every female child in the country is given the hpv jab and 15 years later there's a wave of infertility or some gynae issue affecting large numbers of the population, or the next generation of babies, there'll be no way of knowing whether the jab was the cause or whether it was something environmental, as there wouldn't be a large enough unvaccinated population living alongside everyone else to compare the effects with. This is the problem with mass roll out of "new" vaccines.

Yeah, I didn't have my dc vaccinated for the good of society. I did it because I don't want them to catch those illnesses and be the one that gets the raging infection causing permanent damage.

But I do get someone not wanting to do this too. It's quite invasive when you really think about it and if you've read some 'facts' about it being a bigger risk than actually catching the disease then I can see why they would choose not to. I do think that the risk is much lower due to mass vaccination, but it's not selfish to rely on that. It just adds to the thinking that the risk of catching the disease is lower because it is. Like pp have said, pre vaccinations lots of people caught these diseases in childhood and sadly a percentage would have been permanently damaged or worse.

That's interesting Devils. Is it similar to the chickenpox thinking - that the vaccine doesn't really offer great protection to adults? Or was the risk of mump leading to serious complications just very low?

Devilish sorry

Mimi Interesting - and I'll stand corrected. It's just all these people who claim to have "done their own research" when they don't even understand basic statistics that floor me. What they mean is they've read some shite on the Internet about one child who was struck dumb by the sight of the needle.

Link to the Wakefield paper

Quite often people's idea of what was in the paper is very different to what was actually in the paper.

"We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue.
If there is a causal link between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and this syndrome, a rising incidence might be anticipated after the introduction of this vaccine in the UK in 1988. Published evidence is inadequate to show whether there is a change in incidence22 or a link with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine."

"We have identified a chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction. In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps, and rubella immunisation. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine."

so what he actually concluded was buried in the rush to condemn him and scapegoat him.

the problem wasnt what the paper said, it was what he told the press conference afterwards.

and if anyone is actually went on rather than what his supporters want you to believe, here are the gmc transcripts

Agree bumbley. I was surprised to finally read the redacted Lancet paper and discover it wasn't majorly different to other clinical papers, which often only consider small numbers of patients with specific diseases. If it wasn't for the media attention it wouldn't have stood out at all (although that may say more about the general standard of the literature!).

That's interesting devilish , I knew the Mumps addition was primarily economic, and that the original MMR was withdrawn because the mumps component caused too many adverse events, but I didn't realise there were disagreements about its introduction within the committee.

What did you have a problem with him saying at the press conference bruffin?

Why was it controversial? Because there was little medical argument for it. Mumps in children is nearly always mild (often asymptomatic) so the decision was an economic one (cost of vaccination vs cost of hospitalisation for those with complications). Some felt waning vaccine immunity could push the mean age of mump disease up.

There are also issues of assessing vaccine efficacy while a disease is still circulating vs when it no longer is.

I'm not sure it was handbags at dawn controversial - but if you read the minutes all the concerns I would have had were raised and many sounded a bit meh about it.

I forgot to answer this:

"Statistically the risks are much smaller than the harm the diseases can do."

Listen up. Here comes a brief lesson on Probability vs Risk (they are not the same thing):

Risk = Probability x Outcome

... which means the Probability of something happening might be very small (say, 0.01%) but the Outcome might be so bad (say, death could be valued at -10,000,000) that it would be a high-risk event: Risk = 0.1% x -10,000,000 = -1,000.

What you mean by the sentence above is that the Probability of vaccine damage is lower than that of catching, say, Mumps. But vaccine damage means permanent damage to the body and brain, severe blow to quality of life (say, Outcome = -1,000,000) whereas Mumps will probably just mean two weeks of discomfort, or if complications arise, limited to something far easier to live with than brain damage (say, Outcome = -1,000).

So (making up the numbers here to explain possibilities of calculation) the Risk of getting the disease, where Probability of getting it is 5%:
Risk = 0.05 x - 1,000 = -50

... and Risk of vaccine damage, where a much lower 0.01% Probability of getting vaccine damage:
Risk: 0.0001 x -1,000,000 = -100 , where Risk is larger although Probability is smaller.

You see, of course, that these numbers are subject to change according to personal assessment - for example, some people might think permanent brain damage is a fate worse than death, in which case their perceived Risk would be even higher.

I hope that explained the difference between Risk and Probability, and showed you why you are wrong to assume that low probability = low risk.

NataliaOsipova, I'm one of those people who claim to have done their own research. I've worked in statistical research for over 20 years but not relating directly to vaccinations. I have, however, done my own research, as a parent, into vaccinations, antibiotics and fluoride, and it constitutes more actual research than many medics you may know and love have done on these particular topics, but none of it involved me carrying out literature reviews or my own analyses of raw data. It just involves reading all the literature, facts and figures I could find, from the manufacturers of the drugs/vaccines, the HPA, Meningitis.org, JCVI etc....
I spoke to my daughter's pediatricians. They referrerd me to the HPA, who referrerd me to the vaccine manufacturers whose rep told me "No Mimi, we don't test our vaccines for allergic reactions because they are so innocuous it's like injecting water, and hey, nobody is allergic to water.."

I only wish I'd recorded the call.

And the probability of vaccine damage (or indeed damage from a disease) is not the same for every person. It's dependent on many factors. For most the probability is presumably very small, for some unfortunate few - not so small.

I'd welcome research into identifying the unfortunate few in advance. Or actually even afterwards as there isn't much effort made to understand why children regress etc. Unfortunately that's not politically popular.

YABU. I really can't get my knickers in a twist about anti-vaxxers. I, respectfully, disagree with many of the rapid "big pharma" nutjobs but understand why people have reservations about some vaccines. While I fully recognise that chicken pox can have very serious consequences, I wouldn't be rushing out to get my DC vaccinated against it. I feel very different about meningitis vaccines though.

So ironically a thread that started out of frustration at the 'anti vaxxers' and their poor understanding of science has drawn those very same people to it

Guavaf1sh , how's your understanding of science?

Well, OP wanted to argue vaccines