site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1661 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

When vaccinating your kid (a US citizen) what vaccination schedule should you go with?

  1. The standard US one

  2. The standard of a different country which you think is better run (I picked Denmark)

  3. Something else

I had a discussion with Grok 3 about this, and it seemed like it wanted to defend the US schedule (35 shots) until I pressed it about the Danish schedule (11 shots). Then it claimed that US schedule is necessary in the US because of different socioeconomic conditions. It seems like the US recommendations are based on helping the underclasses. For example, Hep B. My wife doesn't have Hep B. My kid won't get Hep B as a child. But a kid whose mom is a prostitute very much needs to be vaccinated for Hep B at birth.

In any case, after the censorship and disinformation promulgated by the US health agencies during the pandemic, I don't trust them. And clearly there is a corrupting profit motive here too. In this corrupted epistemic environment we simply don't know what the effects of giving kids 35 vaccine shots (plus annual flu and Covid shots) will be. I make no strong claims about vaccine injuries, and I think most vaccines are net positive. But I think, for my child, the Danish schedule + chicken pox is sufficient. At a minimum, I am deadset against any Covid vaccines. Can't say I look forward to arguing with nurses about this.

I’m also going to ask you to reconsider.

I realize I may have little credibility with you. Maybe this comes across like those cave diver signs. But I seriously think there’s nothing on this hill worth dying for. You’re accepting a mild risk for literally zero benefit.

The main differences between our and Denmark’s schedules appear to be COVID, Hep A and B, rotavirus, and varicella. I could make cases for most of those. Rotavirus is vaccinated in most countries; I don’t know why Denmark declined. Varicella has lower uptake, either because of cost or because it’s risky when only children are covered. On the other hand, I had it as a small child. It sucked, I still have a couple minor scars, and I get to be at risk for shingles in the future.

We’ve given ~84% of children immunity to Hep B worldwide. Between that and Universal Precautions, your child will probably be fine without such immunity. Though it’ll still be wise if he or she goes into medicine, works with the less fortunate, or wants to visit Africa or Southeast Asia. And it’s generally better to be prepared.

These vaccines aren’t novel. Everything except the COVID shots has been on our schedule since 2001. We have had decades to learn about potential side effects. We’ve also had significant political shifts. Assuming that it’s all fake and gay because of the Current Thing is a mistake. Assuming such because of a chatbot’s medical opinions is worse.

Skip the COVID shots if you want, especially if you don’t have any old or obese relatives watching the kids. But please stick with the rest of the standard schedule.

Assuming that it’s all fake and gay because of the Current Thing is a mistake. Assuming such because of a chatbot’s medical opinions is worse.

Once again, I ask people to actually read my post instead of assuming vaccine hostility. Grok 3 was incredibly PRO vaccine. In fact, it made better pro-vaccine arguments than this forum. But that's why I'm posting here, because I don't trust chatbots.

We’ve also had significant political shifts. Assuming that it’s all fake and gay because of the Current Thing is a mistake.

I don't assume that at all. But I do believe, with low confidence, that vaccine risk is higher than the official numbers. Still, I'm not going to self own just because the CDC was wrong about Covid.

You’re accepting a mild risk for literally zero benefit.

This is probably where we differ. I don't think vaccine risk is zero. Especially the cumulative effect of taking 35 shots (containing many more dosages).

Whoops. The original version of that sentence was

because a chatbot mentioned “socioeconomic conditions”

I understand that you’re suspicious that Grok fell back on PR-speak. I’d suggest that AI is unusually likely to give PR-speak even when there are compelling underlying reasons.

I don’t think vaccine risk is zero

Right, but if you’re scaling based off the COVID vaccine risk, I think you’re going to get an overestimate. At the same time, you’re definitely rounding the benefits down because you don’t see how your kid might be exposed. So I guess I’m arguing both ends. 40+ years of clinical data across a lot of the planet means the Hep B shots are safer than most medicine. But it’s not eradicated, and having the immunity gives your child more options regarding the medical profession and even foreign travel. I think a similar logic holds for the other differences from Denmark’s schedule.

For what it’s worth, my personal opinion is more about the categorical imperative. If everyone refused on free-rider grounds, the world would be a much worse place. Even if it was only your particular social stratum, you could do serious damage to our herd immunity. Vaccine risks are linear with number of people. Epidemics, though, are exponential.

I must point out that for Hep B, if you're advocating for shots on the grounds it's a good idea for a medical provider to have, then you need to keep in mind it can be given at pretty much any point in life.

You don't need it to be a med student. I don't think it's mandatory for doctors in most places, legally or otherwise. I remember when I came to the UK, I put "unknown" as my Hep B vaccination status, because I genuinely couldn't recall, and if I had it, it must have been well after my paediatric vaccinations. This wasn't flagged or followed up on, though I think it's a good idea for a medical professional to get the shot.

I assume the argument for infant Hep B vaccination is that infection during childbirth is a major transmission method; I think around 5-10% of the population in many Asian countries are carriers, most infected this way by their mothers. IIRC the liver damage cuts life expectancy by a couple years in women and by a decade or so in men, and it's incurable.

But it's also a sexually-transmitted disease (though not much of one in places where we're all vaccinated) for whatever stigma that holds, and it's a disease that can be asymptomatic, so I guess the thinking is that it's better to have 100% of babies vaccinated immediately (the vaccine response can "outrun" the disease!) than to rely on 100% of mothers to know and admit if they're carriers.

Current Thing

If vaccination science ends up in the dustbin of history, just because of its complicity in the house arrests, it would hardly be the first field to be discredited to a great extent due to a single policy miss. Eugenics enjoyed widespread among high-information voters, before it got tied up with the nazis. Race science had its own experts, now they exist only on the margins.

Personally I am not a vaccine skeptic like OP, but he lives in a world where reasoning I explained is considered mainstream. I can hardly blame him for applying it to his own pet issue.

I don’t think eugenics had a single policy miss. With the technology of the day, basically every eugenic intervention was draconian. There was no PGS, no embryo selection. Governments settled for banning miscegenation and sterilizing undesirables.

The big exception would be immigration restrictions. I’d say those are still widely accepted with some caveats.

Vaccines aren't my pet issue. I just have to make a decision soon on Hep B.

And, yes, I think it's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Vegetarianism is fine even though Hitler advocated it, etc... I find myself having to take an unpopular stance here mostly for rhetorical reasons. And it seems to have gotten one person in particular very fired up. But, unquestionably vaccines are good on net, even the Covid vaccine (for people at highest risk). But every vaccine is not for everybody.

Hep B can be given at any point, so you don't need to make a decision 'soon'. You can refuse at birth and get it later.

Excellent comment. One thing I'd like to add is that opting out of vaccination is, to an extent, mooching off the commons.

Herd immunity doesn't work, if parents look at the existing vaccination rates, reasons that their kids will be fine without vaccination as "everyone else" does it, and thus defects.

opting out of vaccination is, to an extent, mooching off the commons.

More than the commons mooches off of us? Citizens don't owe the commons one damn thing by default, and the balance seems tipped pretty far in the other direction lately what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".

If you think that citizens have no positive obligations towards improving the commons, I don't see why you'd want to make them worse off.

I don't know what you're pointing at when you say something like:

what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".

Hence I can't really engage with it.

At the very least, KMC's stated reason for opting out of vaccinating their kids, namely because other people are doing so too, and because of a minor drug reaction are terrible on merit alone. The COVID vaccine? I'm well past caring about it, or asking people to, but most others are recommended for very good reason, even for a person who doesn't care about the well-being of others.

I don't know what you're pointing at when you say something like:

what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".

I'm talking here about vaccines that are on the schedule with no clear benefit to the recipient -- COVID for kids, HPV for boys. 'Society' wants these administered for herd immunity reasons (I guess); 'society' also taxes us to the bone and provides pretty marginal access to services that we do want. (ADD drugs, for instance)

What has society done for me lately, that I should bend to its will?

HPV for boys

Hold up. Below covered it but HPV related cancers are absolutely skyrocketing in men.

I won't defend covid shots for kids. Marginal risks for marginal benefits.

HPV for boys? Infection with high risk strains can increase risk of anal, oropharyngeal and penile cancers. I have no idea if the risks are particularly high in absolute terms, at least not without doing more work than I want to this late. But unlike covid vaccines in kids, it strikes me as plausibly a good idea, even if I suspect that a lot of the net benefit is spreading herd immunity and protecting girls, where HPV actually is a big deal to my knowledge.

HPV for boys? Infection with high risk strains can increase risk of anal, oropharyngeal and penile cancers.

I have no idea if the risks are particularly high in absolute terms

Total incidence rate of those I'm getting something like 1/100k/a (https://www.mcgill.ca/hitchcohort/hpvfacts) -- no idea what percentage of those would be HPV related, but that is already well, well within the OOM that I'd find plausible for unnoticed/rare serious adverse vaccine side effects.

You and @Throwaway05 may have some new news on these rates -- but then the question is raised as to why anyone would believe doctors about this sort of thing after having seen how fast & loose the relationship with facts has been, once public health gets on some hobbyhorse.

HPV

I don't know what McGill is smoking.

https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/cases.html

The rate changes are a bit odd as sexual habits change (go men on finally eating women out!) and at the same time its getting a bit more controlled as more people are vaccinated. However some of the other causes (like smoking) are going down.

General

You believe doctors because it's retarded to throw out the entire field of medicine because of one misstep.

I could respect it if it was "okay fine I will never listen to a doctor again, clearly everything they say is wong" but the situation is very clearly picking and choosing what things to be mad about purely depending on how someone feels about it.

General vaccinations are already different enough from what happened with COVID, but now you are saying "lets just not listen to any public health recommendations in general," "why anyone would believe doctors about this sort of thing?" <- your own quote.

Great now go light up using somebody with Ebola's vomit as bong water.

No? That doesn't seem reasonable? Well it's also a public health recommendation!

At best people are using uninformed opinions and intuitions as laymen without doing any research at all to decide when to listen to expert advice, and ignoring it otherwise, and as we see elsewhere in this thread those opinions and intuitions are absolutely trash and often can be invalidated with the slightest, minimum possible research. See in other subthreads here the comically ill-informed takes on hepatitis, chickenpox.

Agree. And I'm willing to vaccinate myself for purely pro-social reasons with no benefit to myself, provided they are safe and effective.

That said... don't you think this reasoning makes it more likely that people are lying about vaccines risks? For example, let's say you had data that suggested vaccines are 1) good for society but 2) bad for individuals, you might lie for the greater good.

This isn't something I've given much thought before, but even on reflection, I don't think it makes much difference.

The most controversial vaccine is that for Covid. Even then, my impression (memory fades) is that the vaccines were lauded as being more effective than they turned out to be. I don't recall seeing evidence back then, that people were lying out of their teeth, they interpreted unclear, insufficient or ambiguous evidence as proof that vaccines would cut the pandemic short. They didn't, they reduced mortality, but not the spread of Covid.

I can't think of any other vaccine that was remotely as controversial, and my presumption is that the FDA and medical associations, normally do a decent cost-benefit analysis before advocating them. I know NICE does, in the UK.

my impression (memory fades) is that the vaccines were lauded as being more effective than they turned out to be

The vaccines were lauded as being more effective than they had already turned out to be. Pfizer's efficacy was something like 93% in the initial study, and e.g. Biden oversimplified that as badly as "You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations."

They also turned out to be less effective than thought, with that 93% dropping to like 68% after only 6 months, which was enough to take us from "well some vaccinated people still get it but as long as we can push R<1 we can..." to "screw it, it's endemic now", even before Omicron changed the math further.

I'm not sure if this is "people were lying out of their teeth" rather than "voters aren't smart enough to avoid black-and-white thinking so they don't insist their president be smart enough either", but I think the takeaway is that you can probably trust independently repeated and reviewed studies of vaccine effects and you probably can't trust most popular interpretations of those studies.

Thank you.

I'm not sure if this is "people were lying out of their teeth" rather than "voters aren't smart enough to avoid black-and-white thinking so they don't insist their president be smart enough either", but I think the takeaway is that you can probably trust independently repeated and reviewed studies of vaccine effects and you probably can't trust most popular interpretations of those studies.

That seems like an eminently sensible take, though I can only reiterate that COVID was uniquely politicized, and by the time the typical vaccine reaches market (let alone when it becomes part of a national schedule), the evidence is very strong.

by the time the typical vaccine reaches market (let alone when it becomes part of a national schedule), the evidence is very strong.

Flu vaccines? Even people wanting you to take them usually stick to a pitch like "it doesn't work every year, but... can't hurt, can it?" IME. (possibly moving on to "you wouldn't want to kill grandma, would you?")

Flu vaccine? Well, if you want to single it out, then I'd be obliged to say that unless you're sickly, old, or work in healthcare, the benefits are largely a wash when compared to the minimal risk the typical annual flu strain otherwise presents. That would be the case even if the vaccine was perfectly safe. I'm on record saying the same thing, if someone wants to dig years deep into my profile.

If someone doesn't want to get it, no biggie. Hell, even I've missed shots that were offered to me for free because I didn't think it mattered enough.

More comments

Yes, it is absolutely being a freeloader, and that's one reason why I have opted out for my own children. I don't think enough other people have bought in to the common good, and so I don't see any reason to subject my children to autoimmune disease for some supposed public good that I see constantly denigrated by others. Another casualty of lowering the trust of society. I don't think it's worth it, but that trade has already been made without anyone asking me.

My kid had very bad eczema due to the oral rotavirus vaccine, and after that I simply said no thank you.

RV is one of the ones that they don't do in Denmark. Grok 3, in the awkward position of defending both the US and Danish recommendations, tried to say it was because Denmark has better healthcare and Danes take better care of their children so there was less risk of untreated RV.

Fair enough. But, using that logic, my kid won't need the RV vaccine.

This comment is a travesty. If it wasn't clear, it is the majority of parents opting-in for scheduled vaccinations that's what creates the commons for you to free-ride off.

Even in a purely disinterested cost-benefit analysis, the odds of your child getting an autoimmune disease from vaccines is so low that the general benefit of them getting sick less often outweighs it. The number of people avoiding vaccination isn't at the point where you're benefiting from opting out, or pointing to others doing so as an excuse. The majority of vaccines are net positive in expectation, regardless of what others do.

Meta-rationality is a hard art to practice. You point to a minority of people hitting defect to defect just as hard.

It was very clear, and I know about the free rider problem from undergraduate economics. I am actively choosing to be a free rider, and relying on others to do what I am choosing not to. That's what free rider means. Other people are paying, I'm choosing not to.

I'm doing that because I am an individual, not a herd animal, and the things I do must actually benefit me in order for me to do them. I have no shepherd who owns me and is responsible for the herd to which I belong. There exists the possibility of a world where I do things for others altruistically, but that world is not this one, and the conditions for such a world are far from being met.

Defect is the rational response to defection, and tit for tat wins iterated prisoner's dilemmas.

the odds of your child getting an autoimmune disease from vaccines is so low that the general benefit of them getting sick less often outweighs it.

I don't trust your calculations, mostly because I don't fear the diseases or believe in their prevalence. I see the risks as miniscule, but deliberately overblown in order to create a far response and enforce compliance. There is no guarantee I even encounter measles or hepatitis or haemophilic influenza b, but if I take the vaccine there is a 100% exposure rate to the contents of the shot.

Furthermore, my children can simply get the shots later in life, when they are grown and have a much larger body mass with which to accommodate, after development has been mostly completed.

The eczema finally went away, and there's no way to know the counterfactual, but I think if we were on schedule I'd still be seeing rashes all over the back and legs and ankles.

I don't trust your calculations

You can't trust what I haven't presented. I could do so, and I strongly expect to be correct, but I already do enough trawling of medical literature when I'm being paid for it.

It's your child, and I have some respect for your right to make decisions on their behalf, even if I think they're bad decisions.

Furthermore, my children can simply get the shots later in life, when they are grown and have a much larger body mass with which to accommodate, after development has been mostly completed.

My man, you're going from wrong to confused. There's good reason why you don't see doctors or nurses pull out dose calculators to account for body weight when giving every vaccine I can think of it. It's because it doesn't matter. If little Tommy is 4'6 and 35 kilos or 4'9 and 45 makes next to no difference, and this holds true once you're past the size of a premature infant on death's door, going to a land whale who needs a mobility scooter. Vaccines aren't like paracetamol, the dose-response curves are VERY different when it's the immune system we're talking about. Someone with a peanut allergy isn't twice as likely to die if you give them two peanuts versus one.

The eczema finally went away, and there's no way to know the counterfactual, but I think if we were on schedule I'd still be seeing rashes all over the back and legs and ankles

You're not doing a good job at probabilistic reasoning, but an eczematous rash is a minor vaccine reaction, and of very little consequence. If it was life threatening, I presume you'd have pointed that out, and even then, you'd be better off consulting your pediatrician about whether they could narrow it down to a particular constituent of the two common rotavirus vaccines in the States (fetal bovine serum or porcine circovirus, if I had to guess from looking at composition), and take precautions when administering future vaccines with similar compositions. Believe it or not, most doctors would be happy to answer those questions and offer reassurance if warranted, especially if you're paying them.

Ok, most of the vaccines on the schedule have some sort of justification for them that isn’t ‘we assume your wife and/or child are prostitutes/drug users’. It’s not necessarily a good reason, but it is there. Like the HPV vaccine for middle schoolers- turns out it’s possible to get it by sharing locker rooms/towels with an infected person, even if it’s not the usual way. It’s not because the CDC thinks your eleven year old is having sex. Like yes, you’ll probably be fine skipping it. But safetyism and probably lobbying from the manufacturer is the reason it’s recommended.

I don’t know what vaccines are pretty safe to skip, other than polio(which doesn’t exist in the USA) but it’s obviously some of them.

Man, even in the UK, I would get my kids vaccinated for everything on the recommended schedule, and a few extras, such as gardasil even if they're male. Do I need to mention what I'd do in India?

Kids fall sick a ton, and they bring it back home with them.

That being said, I don't see the point of giving the average kid a COVID vaccine, especially if you're paying.

To my mind, the idea of worrying about vaccine risks seems akin to worrying about the risk of your child falling and breaking their neck from being allowed to play outside on a playground. It's certainly nonzero, but by their nature those activities are less risky than being explosed to those same diseases in an uncontrolled environment or playing unsupervised in the woods, which was the condition of the vast majority of children who have ever lived. Not that I have any issues with skipping the COVID vaccine, but as others have mentioned downthread interfering with the standard schedule may also result in a variety of byzantine bureaucratic difficulties for your child down the line, assuming RFK Jr. doesn't scrap the whole thing before then.

To my mind, the idea of worrying about vaccine risks seems akin to worrying about the risk of your child falling and breaking their neck from being allowed to play outside on a playground.

Wouldn't the analogy be reversed?

But yeah, I get it. We're balancing a low chance of disease vs. a (presumably) low chance of vaccine injury. The stakes are low.

variety of byzantine bureaucratic difficulties for your child down the line,

Then we can cross that bridge when we come to it. I don't like state coercion and I'll willing to fight it to some point. I don't think they are checking for Hep-A/Hep-B. I mean I'm not vaccinated for Hep-B and I only got Hep-A from the travel doc. Most people on this board aren't vaccinated for a lot of the stuff in the US schedule these days.

Not that I have any issues with skipping the COVID vaccine,

I'd go further. Giving your kid an annual Covid vaccine is madness. They are almost certainly at greater risk from the vaccine than they are from Covid. And it's poor at stopping the spread.

Most people on this board aren't vaccinated for a lot of the stuff in the US schedule these days.

Do you have specific examples? The US schedule is mostly met with the standard childhood vaccines. I got all the recommended ones when I was a child, and it looks at a quick glance that HPV and chickenpox are the only new additions there. Beyond childhood, I think tetanus and the flu are the only ones recommended regularly. I've had to get some fun bonus ones for international travel, too. I'm pretty sure I'm up to date on most everything (except the COVID boosters), although I didn't ever really set out to get a bunch of shots for fun. If I were much older (or made certain, um, "lifestyle choices") I'd be missing a few.

I'm a little older than you maybe. At a minimum, I never got these as a kid.

Hep A / Hep B / RV / Meningitis / HPV / Hib / PCV / Chicken pox

Here's a full list. I'm not exactly sure when everything was added but chances are you don't have a lot of this stuff. PCV, for example, was introduced in 2000.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/child-adolescent-age.html

I had to look it up a while back, but my (urban) school district required Hep A/B (and it was at least generally recommended at the time) and I recall many universities required meningitis vaccination when I was applying. Both of those may have been fairly recent at the time. I think you're right about PCV.

Please please please follow the vaccination schedule.

Pediatricians take a 6 figure pay cut because of how much they care about protecting kids, everything on there is for a reason - COVID nonsense aside.

If you have something specific other than COVID you have concerns about you should dig into that separately.

Keep in mind we've already started to have things like Measles outbreaks because of people become vaccine hesitant. Many of these disease are very deadly.

You also may introduce logistical problems down the line as your kid can't go to certain schools or get certain jobs (like healthcare) without jumping through extra hoops.

Also considering almost every kids gets this stuff we'd know about problems for the older stuff at this point.

COVID nonsense aside

You can't burn your credibility and then rely on that same credibility. You cannot simply put the COVID nonsense aside.

People are becoming vaccine hesitant because the medical system flushed its credibility down the toilet over a cold from China. I remember when you had to be a hardcore conspiracy nut not to get vaccinated, or the kind of crunchy rich housewife who bought stuff from goop. Back in the day was, Mississippi had the highest vaccination rate in the country.

People are becoming vaccine hesitant because the medical system flushed its credibility down the toilet over a cold from China.

Yes and it's idiotic.

  1. COVID was actually very bad and I'm not going to be able to convince you because you were locked inside along with everyone else when it was bad. No, no, I'm not going to be able to convince anyone still complaining about COVID at this point so let's move on.

  2. Medicine is obviously politically compromised when it comes to culture war topics.

  3. The correct response to 2 is to have a high degree of suspicion when you see recommendations about trans people or whatever not ignore general and uncontroversial medical advice.

A reasonable middle ground is to do things like actual independent high quality research (like a lit review on pubmed) or ask someone who is not politically compromised (me! me!).

Just because someone was wrong one time or on one category of things doesn't mean you stop listening to them for everything. That's woke thinking and I expect better of us.

COVID was actually very bad

In which regard? I strongly suspect I agree with you here; this statement is too ambiguous without clarification to be able to truly tell.

  1. Medicine is obviously politically compromised when it comes to culture war topics.

Agreed.

The correct response to 2 is to [...] not ignore general and uncontroversial medical advice.

Agreed. Now define uncontroversial.

A reasonable middle ground is to do things like actual independent high quality research

If only it was legal to do so.

ask someone who is not politically compromised (me! me!).

P(politically compromised | states is not politically compromised) > P(politically compromised | does not state is not politically compromised)

Just because someone was wrong one time or on one category of things doesn't mean you stop listening to them for everything.

It does mean I trust everything they say less, yes.

The solution to "our experts can't be trusted when the topic is political" is not to always ignore experts, that's going to result in more incorrect decision than listening to experts even when they are wrong.

  1. I was not locked inside during Covid, I did not obey the lockdown orders, the majority of my neighbors did not obey the lockdown orders, I did not wear a mask and this behavior was common in my immediate surrounds. I still don’t believe Covid was that bad.

  2. Correct, medicine is politically compromised. Too bad the branch covidians turned vaccines into culture war fodder.

  3. Let’s be real, the normies can’t tell vaccines aren’t the same thing as gender affirming care or ‘abortion bans are literally killing people’. Because, you know, it’s not just one topic. It’s multiple topics, and evidence of public health lies in the past is everywhere- sodium intakes, for example. Not all of them are controversial issues. Hell, COVID’s not controversial anymore and doctors and public health establishment types are still repeating their lies from during the pandemic.

1

So you probably didn't see all the people who died, maybe because they weren't in your social group, maybe you lived away from inner city squalor for instance. It was bad, it really was.

2

COVID vaccine into culture war. I don't know a single republican, anti-woke, fuck the establishment doctor who has anything negative to say about non-COVID vaccines at all. These people do exist and one of the biggest eventually recanted but nobody takes them seriously.

It's like trying to get Toyota's banned because a BMW ran over your dog. Nothing about them is similar.

3

Medical research certainly has its problems but their is an immense world of difference in consideration between things like "get your fucking MMR shot" "here's a complicated discussion about the value of the Rotavirus vaccine" and "here's a retrospective study of complication rates using an N of 600,000.

As a sidebar their weren't a lot of lies during the pandemic, their was a lot of bad messaging. Things like "the fatality rate will go down overtime as the virus burns through the available tinder and mutates to be less deadly" were stated loudly and often but people didn't listen.

Stuff like the initial mask messaging was a lie and I was annoyed by it but it was well meaning.

Unforced errors sure but most of it wasn't lies and a lot of things are still true (yes it is dangerous), were found to be true (no Ivermectin didn't actually work the research that said it did had big flaws), or involve ongoing complicated debates (lab leak).

Fauci, along with the US Surgeon General, lied about the efficacy of masks to manage supply. Fauci also deliberately moved the goalposts on population percentage targets for herd immunity. Those weren't "bad messaging", they were deliberate falsehoods pushed out onto the public.

The initial don't wear masks this was absolutely a lie and with very good reason - lots of healthcare providers ended up dying due to lack of PPE.

But it was a lie.

The masks work bit is not a lie it's just complicated and still has a ton of debate today. That's picking and choosing which evidence base to use in public policy messaging.

Moving the goalposts on herd immunity is a political and not medical question and not really a lie no matter how well or ill advised it was.

No shit politicians lie (and Fauci is a doctor), but don't mix that up with the medical side of things.

The masks were sold out everywhere around me by early February, not sure what supply he was trying to save.

If you need to save it for healthcare providers say you need to save it for healthcare providers.

TBH, I think the more likely scenario, is he, like most of the contemporary research, believed that masks were not that effective against COVID and COVID like illnesses.

There is no such thing as a safe vaccine, which is why the manufacturers are shielded from liability.

That same shield from liability means that they do not have the incentives to produce useful vaccines, but rather are incentivized to lobby for increasing numbers of vaccines for any and everything. These incentives explain the expanded schedule quite nicely.

Just because someone was wrong one time or on one category of things doesn't mean you stop listening to them for everything. That's woke thinking and I expect better of us.

It's not woke, it's common sense.

Just because someone was wrong one time

There's being wrong, and then there's being wrong with intent.

Just being wrong isn't generally cause for concern. Being wrong with intent, on the other hand, will naturally prompt back-checking of work and a "deny by default" posture until they re-earn that trust... if that's even possible. They did a lot of damage.

On the other hand, though, "number go down because a bunch of insane outgroupers had their way" is the only lever I have to pull for them to be forced to face any consequences whatsoever, so it's in my political interest that skepticism be maximized even though it would strictly speaking be better (and a local maximum of health outcome) for most people (who are themselves much dumber than the medical establishment) to blindly trust said medical establishment.

I'm not asking people to blindly trust the medical establishment I'm asking people to actually research the thing they want to do.

You can find papers with actuarial analysis, side effect rates and presentations, justification for the schedule and so on.

So do it.

With respect to COVID the whole thing was stupidly complicated and while I don't support the rights restrictions except in very narrow cases a great deal of it was correct and just poorly implemented/messaged.

Their is also a huge problem with outright conspiracy theories that got a lot of mileage because trust was so low but that doesn't make those things not effectively insane conspiracy theories, it just hampers people getting them cleared up.

You can find papers with actuarial analysis

Agreed. Pop quiz: substance X causes you to drop dead in 20 years with no side effects before then. It has been 10 years since substance X has been introduced. What does actuarial analysis show on the effect of substance X?

Sure, that is a potential limitation for the COVID vaccinate at this time, other vaccines have mostly been around long enough to feel good about this, it is worth noting that while what you are suggesting is a hypothetical risk their isn't a good explanation for how that would biologically happen however.

Sometimes we do miss on things where there is initially no good biological explanation but it is extremely rare.

I'm trying to not get deep into the weeds of defending the COVID response though because it's far from the matter at hand however.

You also may introduce logistical problems down the line as your kid can't go to certain schools or get certain jobs (like healthcare) without jumping through extra hoops.

I didn't get several of the shots I should have as a child. It's been decades now so I don't remember the exact ones that were missing. I got most of the ones you are supposed to get as a very young child, but stopped somewhere around 4 years old I think. I do remember MMR being one of them as this alarmed the doctor enough that they commented on it a few times.

This came up later when I was graduating HS and preparing for college; they wanted proof of all kinds of shots I'd never gotten. So, over the spring and summer before college I had to get all/most of them. The clinic at the local health dept. was able to schedule them all in over three sessions with a month of so in between. It was not a pleasant experience.

edit - Downthread I was reminded there is a chicken pox vaccine now. I was deliberately exposed to chicken pox around 5 years old to 'get it out of the way' at a convenient time. A small group of mothers, including mine, all did it together by scratching our forearms and having us rub it against the infected kid. Good times.

At least they didn't get the infected kid to spit into your mouths.

Did you read my post? Of course I am giving my kids the MMR vaccine. They’ll get all the vaccines I got plus probably chicken pox as well. But why the US schedule and not the Danish one?

Yeah sorry lemme rephrase as "please please please follow the *U.S. vaccination schedule."

Not accusing you of not going for MMR but just using it as an example of downstream effects.

Something to keep in mind is that the U.S. schedule is optimized for "we are the wealthiest country in the in world" others may have more resource limitation focused choices.

COVID you can skip.

Using your other post as a reference point (and please forgive me Peds is not my area so I my professional level knowledge of this is distant).

Also several of these can impact getting jobs or housing at university (ex: the Heps, Meningitis), and skipping them will put you in the naughty bucket in your pediatrician's mind which isn't necessarily appropriate but is the reality.

Hep A - prob rare in Denmark? Hep B - prob rare in Denmark? Chicken Pox - no idea why they aren't doing this. Per PLOS Glob Public Health. 2023 Apr 5;3(4):e0001743. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0001743 eople are advocating it? Rotavirus - this one is super complex and can't really be summarized here. Covid - skip if you want. Flu - don't skip please. Tetanus (from age 12) again probably low yield. Meningitis (from age 12) - don't skip please, looks like they have it but don't give to kids? Maybe it's pre college matriculation? IDK seems strange.

Keep in mind that incidence of disease varies country to country and the sheer variety and amount of immigrants in the U.S. (as well as poor health) put people at higher risks of somethings. This impacts the schedule.

Flu - don't skip please.

I'm just wanting to point out- if you're trying to convince a vaccine skeptic who's mistrustful of vaccines to vaccinate their kid, this is an absolutely terrible argument to make even if you believe it.

I haven't gotten a flu shot in probably 20 years, and nobody I know has unless they're an RN or over 60. Don't make already falsified arguments like 'the flu shot is very important'(this is a different thing from 'the flu shot is good' or 'it would be a better world if everyone got their flu shot') if you want to convince someone already skeptical.

That was written before I realized how adversarial this was going to be.

The argument for the flu shot is:

-Risks are nearly zero. RNs are often actually very resistant to getting the flu shot. MDs roll our eyes at them because the reasoning is always "I'm a bitch" type complaints. Typically saying that they don't like shots for instance, or that the injection site hurts. I don't think I've ever met any physician who has treated a patient who has had an actual adverse reaction. Some people do get an immune response (aka feel a little sick). If you feel a little sick from the flu shot that's good evidence that you would feel even worse with the actual flu. The response to feeling a little sick should not be whining, I admit this is some boomer energy on my part.

-The flu shot can potentially help save you. If you have significant risk factors it can save your life. Not every person with significant risk factors knows they have significant risk factors. Diabetes for instance can go a long time without getting diagnosed if their primary care follow-up is poor.

-The flu shot can potentially help you out a lot. Evidence is a bit more squishy on this but that's because "I felt like ass for a three days" vs. "I felt mildly bad for one day" is extremely expensive to research and not worth it from a public health perspective, but I know personally not needing to call out work and be miserable for a few days is worth the mild inconvenience of other people.

-You can potentially help other people. If you getting less virulent in some way prevents you from transmitting it to someone else than that is a good thing. Especially in general plague sources like children.

-Research shows that the flu shot still has some utility even when we get the mix wrong for that year, it just isn't as much.

-Even when we get the mix wrong the right mix for the vaccine you still have is still going around in the population getting people ill.

TLDR: You should get the flu shot, the risks to you are near zero and if you are healthy and well the expected benefits are also low but your health is the most important thing most people own so you should take appropriate gambles.

However it is a known problem that people are willing to be lazy about their personal health in a way that they aren't with say their personal finances. Shrug

It's absolutely insane to inject a newborn with anything on the nonexistent risk of Hepatitis.

That's the very first one that you're begging me to trust, and I simply won't do it. It's existence on the schedule is a glaring red mark that serves to undermine trust in the rest. You cannot convince me that my children are at risk for hepatitis, and therefore trying to get me to positively intervene on the basis of what I consider to be a nonexistent risk is going to run into a brick wall.

Flu - don't skip please

The flu vaccine doesn't work. It doesn't reduce deaths. It doesn't even always target the dominant strain, because it's educated guesswork. The flu going around right now is doing so in spite of vaccinations.

amount of immigrants in the U.S. (as well as poor health) put people at higher risks of somethings

Don't remind me, I won't reach the conclusion you want me to.

Flu: -PMID: 37247308 for a citation that disagrees with your conclucion. Outside those at high risk it does reduce symptomatic burden, as someone who has gotten real flu and vaccinated flu.....that's a big difference.

Hepatitis: Use Chesterton's fence. Why is it there? Is it because of risk of vertical transmission? Is it because it's safe to be given at that time and that's simply the best time to get it done because of logistics. Also, were you aware that the various hepatitis viruses are transmitted in different ways?

Understand why before getting made about it.

From other comments you made:

Safe Vaccines: -What's the rate of actual problems beyond mild stuff like headache? All medications have side effects. Nothing is truly safe. You can randomly die from anything. How many actual serious problems have happened. It looks like the rate of true allergy is somewhere around one in a million (1 in 900k per UK vaccine website I found which was the first google hit). The odds of getting any of these conditions are much much much higher than that.

General Dissatisfaction with Medicine Comments: -So like, are you just not going to seek medical care now because they bungled some parts of COVID? That's stupid. For anything related to COVID? Or politics? More reasonable. The "normal" vaccines are settled science. It's apples and oranges.

I don't think "I'm going to do my own research" is unreasonable but I don't think many people are actually doing that, they are just reading biased online commentary and throwing things into chat GPT.

People with a lot more knowledge than either of us very very carefully and very very publicly consider the risks and benefits of putting something on the vaccine schedule and have removed things before that were "worth it" because of disgruntled public optics.

General anti-vaxxer is a conspiracy theory level take and has been for a long time - see the whole vaccines and autism thing.

Flu: -PMID: 37247308 for a citation that disagrees with your conclucion.

Plenty of citations available saying similar stuff about COVID vaccines -- and the motivation for that (encourage people who don't really need some vaccine to take them in protection of the elderly, opposite sex, etc) is just as present for the flu shot.

That's the thing about burning your credibility -- after you've done it on one thing, people are apt not to trust you anymore in areas where they previously did.

and the motivation for that (encourage people who don't really need some vaccine to take them in protection of the elderly, opposite sex, etc)

Do you have evidence for this?

What about alternative explanations like "this shit is complicated to study and testing was done on initial more virulent strains with more vulnerable populations?"

Do you have evidence for this?

Evidence that the COVID vax recommendations were not primarily motivated by benefit to the individual recipients?

<gestures wildly at 'everything'>

Recommending them for children at all (or anyone under ~40 really) is a good starting point -- the age stratification of severity was never remotely uncertain.

More comments

Hep A and B are rare in the US among high SES whites, which I am.

Somewhat related anecdote:

We got a bill for like $1200 for our pre-natal blood screening, which included a Syphilis test. Then, when we came back for a later appointment they wanted to give my wife a second Syphilis test in case she banged some dudes and got Syphilis in the last 3 months. We said no to that one.

I get why they give infants Hep B vaccines. Because some small percent of moms will have it and pass it to their babies where it has a high chance of causing chronic disease. But my wife doesn't have any risk factors for Hep B and also tested negative to Hep B.

A lot of this medical advice is just targeting people who have risk factors which we don't.

And I don't believe vaccine risks are as low as they say they are. They tell parents to give their children annual Covid vaccines. Insanity.

Ultimately you don't know what you don't know - see the chickenpox party bit.

Also, the COVID vaccine is uniquely politically compromised but is a. not insanity, b. has an incentive we understand for the handwringing on both sides - political bullshit.

Vaccines in general have little incentive (as many are mature at this point it's not a money thing) to over push them or hide flaws. If you do the research on say the polio vaccine you can see exactly what went wrong in the past and why and the rationale behind the U.S. (and Danish) schedules. This stuff is out in the open and risks and benefits are known and the people who decide them are extremely competent and knowledgeable.

And the risks of the vaccines are minuscule (again with little incentive to lie or minimize them) and the benefits are immense, if rarely applicable for some things like Hepatitis A in the U.S..

Not following the schedule is essentially gambling with your child's life with the justification being "eh, the risk of this bad outcome is low but I won't take very easy steps to avoid it anyway because I'm mad about COVID."

You are welcome to be obstinate about the public health response to COVID but if you are putting other people at risk, especially your own children you should really look inside yourself and think about what you are doing.

That's putting aside the whole sentencing your child to a bunch of extremely avoidable paperwork and administrative headache in the future and the risk of things like ending up with a lower quality pediatrician because you refused to follow the vaccine schedule.

Importantly, if you are going to decide not to listen to medical advice and potentially put your child's life at risk you need to actually research what you are doing. Do not just jam it into an AI which you already admitted misled you or go "well shit this can't be right because COVID." Raising a child is one of the most important things someone should do and if you decide you will not listen to the medical consensus then you must actually put in time or effort or a reasonable person may judge you a poor parent.

Generally I don't get too heated with the questionable medical content that appears here because people aren't doing anything more than promulgating misinformation (which I'm committed to allow as a free speech person) and harming themselves - and people here do come up with novel things sometimes.

Putting a kid at risk and under baking your thought process is not that however.

Oh spare me. You're putting your kid at more risk every time you put them in a car then I would be by not vaccinating for Hep B.

Importantly, if you are going to decide not to listen to medical advice and potentially put your child's life at risk you need to actually research what you are doing. Do not just jam it into an AI which you already admitted misled you or go "well shit this can't be right because COVID." Raising a child is one of the most important things someone should do and if you decide you will not listen to the medical consensus then you must actually put in time or effort or a reasonable person may judge you a poor parent.

If I was a conflict theorist, this sounds like what a anti-vaxxer would say to reverse-psychology someone into holding their viewpoint. This type of emotionally charged and accusatory language only works to make people do the opposite of what you say.

Don't worry, it's not going to change how I feel. But something to consider.

Yes and I'm aware of that risk and I think about it and I take steps to mitigate it when appropriate.

You are choosing risk for no reason. That's the issue.

Furthermore you need to be responsible. Engage with the rest of the comment. The ask is to actually do your homework instead of being mad about COVID.

That should be easy.

Engage with the rest of the comment.

It's clear you didn't even read my initial posts or replies and just want to argue with an anti-vaxxer of which I am mostly certainly not. Then you said I'm a bad parent and put my children at risk. I believe this is when a southerner would say "bless your heart".

More comments

Where are you getting 11 shots for Denmark? I count 30 shots recommended to all kids up to age 12.

Do you count a shout of DTaP-IPVHib as five shots or one shot? I counted 11 shots, 10 without flu:

  • 3x DTaP-IPVHib
  • 3x PCV13
  • 2x MMR
  • 1x IIV4
  • 1x DTaP-IPV
  • 1x HPV9

The last time I got into it about the vaccine schedule on this forum people insisted on counting each individual vaccine rather than the number of shots. I'm not sure how OP was counting it, but he might have been counting just the number of shots as you say.

It looks like the AI summary is to blame here. It's accurate, but misleading. In Denmark they do get 11 shots and the US they get 35 (+flu and Covid) but part of difference is more shots being combined in Denmark.

So that leaves us with the following diseases which American children are vaccinated for which Danes aren't:

Hep A / Hep B / Chicken Pox / Rotavirus / Covid / Flu / Tetanus (from age 12) / Meningitis (from age 12)

It also looks like Americans also get a few mores boosters and doses for some diseases. So there is still a pretty significant difference.

I recognize I'm unlikely to get any good answers on this forum or anywhere else. It's balancing the small risk of some diseases against the less understood (but probably small) risk of vaccine injury. Unless I get any good reasons not to, I'll just stick to the Danish schedule and call it good. I'll probably also do chicken pox because I personally know 3 people who got shingles before the age of 50. Is this good epistemology? Probably not the best, but neither is relying on the American health system.

Tetanus is probably on the American schedule but not the danish one due to differences in environment- American cities are dirtier, and tetanus is an infection caused by cutting yourself on dirty stuff.

Danish kids are also vaccinated against the flu.

Looks like you're right. Ages 2-5 only.

I'll probably also do chicken pox because I personally know 3 people who got shingles before the age of 50. Is this good epistemology? Probably not the best, but neither is relying on the American health system.

Chicken pox is "just" utterly miserable to suffer as a kid, but it can be quite dangerous to contract in adulthood. I think that, in a community where most children are vaccinated against chicken pox, it's probably important to get the vaccine because you're that much less likely to catch it as a child.

That makes sense. Put Chicken Pox vaccine into the "definitely yes" category for Americans then. Either that or have a chicken pox party like they did when I was a kid.

I was surprised that Denmark still just lets it rip. I wonder why.

chicken pox party like they

Please don't. Shingles.

Edit: In case you weren't aware Chicken Pox is a type of herpes and therefore once you get it, it never leaves.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats