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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link