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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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I had a baby last year. Within hours of birth the medical team tries to get you to give a baby a Hep B vaccine. I’d love to hear someone explain to me why this is necessary. A vaccine for a virus that has no plausible mechanism for infecting the vast majority of newborns in general and my child specifically. A virus that is almost exclusively found in homosexuals, prostitutes, and IV drug users. My wife had multiple STD tests during pregnancy, as do all pregnant women in under medical care. There is zero immediate risk of being infected. Negligible short to medium term risk.

Even if one were to make the case that this Hep B vaccine safe, so just go along to get along, I think we all have enough experience to know that many people feel lousy after a vaccine. I’d love to hear why it’s necessary within 12 hours of a baby’s life outside the uterus to trigger their immune system. Why do they insist on doing this immediately?

It’s really ludicrous.

The stated reason for doing it in the first 24 hours is that sometimes the mother is not tested, or the test results are wrong, and administering the vaccine in the first 12 hours protects the baby. The second stated reason is that giving it immediately results in more people finishing the course.

ACIP recommends that all infants receive hepatitis B vaccine at birth, regardless of the infection status of the mother (11). Infants born to HBV-infected mothers require hepatitis B vaccine and hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) within 12 hours of birth to protect them from infection. However, because errors or delays in testing, reporting, and documenting maternal HBsAg status can and do occur, administering the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine soon after birth to all infants acts as a safety net, reducing the risk for perinatal transmission when maternal HBsAg status is either unknown or incorrectly documented at delivery. Also, initiating the hepatitis B vaccine series at birth has been shown to increase a child’s likelihood of completing the vaccine series on schedule

No other vaccines are given in the hospital, and many are far more important than hepatitis B for a newborn so the second reason is bunk. If there was a systemic problem in errors and reporting, then maybe they should fix that, rather than inject newborns. Obviously, the infants of women who have not been tested, or whose test results have not come back, or whose test results are lost, could be treated separately.

The real reason is that this vaccine is to protect a small group, not most people, and thus people have to be tricked or coerced into taking it for the benefit of the small group, as for most people, the vaccine is not a benefit. It remains primarily a sexually transmitted disease, so can wait until the usual vaccine schedule.

Older children can become infected through injection drug use or unprotected sex.

I suppose we could vaccinate the kids to prevent Hep B, or, adopt my preferred solution which is to minimize childhood IV drug use and all (not just the unprotected version) childhood sex before age 9 (The age we vaccinate for HPV, but insert whatever age you want here, but as a minimum, something that Julius would probably accept as reasonable).

A good parallel is the HPV vaccine. This does not benefit boys, but there are tenuous claims that it reduces anal cancer. This obviously is only an issue for the small subset of men who have sex with men (and women who have anal sex). However, the medical authorities claim spurious benefits for boys, rather than just being honest and saying that everyone taking it leads to herd immunity, so boys should get it to protect women. Medical ethics does not allow arguments like this, it seems, so instead they claim dubious things.

Furthermore, medical ethics is very much dominated by maximin thinking, protecting the most vulnerable, rather than utilitarian thinking. As a result, they suggest the HPV vaccine for 9 years olds, despite it lasting 5 years. 9-14 is not the window that will reduce the greatest number of infections, but middle (or earlier, as they are 9) schoolers are the most vulnerable, so the medical establishment favors them incorrectly, in my view. Different cultures and ethnicities have earlier and later onset of sexual activities, and age 9 is chosen to reduce cases in certain cultures, while later administration would work better for others.

Overall, the teenagers in the sample had a median age at first sex of 16.9 years. Black males had the lowest observed median (15.0), and Asian American males the highest (18.1); white and Hispanic males, and white and black females, reported similar ages (about 16.5 years).

The same applies to Hep B. It mainly affects MSM and IV drug users, in the US, but these are a vulnerable class, so it is the most important vaccine for the establishment to push - hence the only one that is mandated for newborns. They found a reason - the spurious claim that Hep B tests are sometimes wrong, and use this to push a vaccine that protects their favored group, the most vulnerable.

This kind of dishonesty is why people are dubious about vaccines. A system where boys were told to take HPV to protect their girlfriends, with the small benefit that it might make girls more like to engage in oral sex, will get just as many boys to take it, as lies about how it protects the boy. In fact, the "more oral sex from girls" promise is probably much more effective, save for the group of boys that actually needs it - those who engage in receptive anal sex. The medical establishment is uncomfortable with the idea of duty, and people doing something for the common good, as opposed to treatments that just help themselves.

My own country does it, but not till the infant is two months old:

Hepatitis B

Hepatitis B is caused by the hepatitis B virus. It is spread in the blood of an infected person.

It's a common infection worldwide. It is usually spread from infected pregnant women to their babies, or from child-to-child contact.

In rare cases, it can be spread through unprotected sex and injecting drugs.

Hepatitis B is uncommon in Ireland. Most cases are in people who got infected in another country.

Most adults infected with hepatitis B are able to fight off the virus. They usually recover from the infection within a couple of months.

But most people infected as children develop a long-term infection. This is chronic hepatitis B. It can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Antiviral medication can be used to treat it.

Vaccination against hepatitis B is recommended for people in high-risk groups, such as:

-healthcare workers

-people who inject drugs

-men who have sex with men

-children born to mothers with hepatitis B

-people travelling to parts of the world where the infection is more common

The hepatitis B vaccine is part of the routine immunisation programme for children.

I agree with other posters, probably this is the only time the medical staff can be sure of access to the baby if the mother doesn't follow up on routine check-ups later. Sure, you and your wife are clean and healthy, but can you be absolutely sure about that with regard to every other adult and child you may encounter?

There's a huge amount of vaccines and vaccinations in children since my day (they didn't even do the measles vaccination when I was a child) but I suppose that's because of increasing risk. Possibly also litigation - don't vaccinate the baby, baby gets sick, parents sue because hospital should have known and prevented it.

Can I point how gloriously contradictory the passage you quoted is? The rare cases of transmission are on the top of the vaccination priority list.

Right under healthcare workers?

I wouldn't read too much into it. Priority list isn't so important when we have enough to catch all infants, period.

Healthcare workers are legitimate in danger - they are always around blood. Which by default is suspicious. Children hep b should be quite rare when mothers are free from it.

Don't be crazy! It's just because that's the only time nearly 100% of babies are in the hospital. Being handled by... health care workers.

Why do they insist on doing this immediately?

That's the only time nearly 100% of babies are guaranteed to be in the hospital.

It's part of the worldwide strategy to literally eradicate the disease. This has been relatively successful. Before that, it was several times more common, and hit a wider swath of society.

About 9,000 of the 18,000 children [per year, before the vaccine] infected in the first 10 years of life caught the virus from their mother during birth. However, many young children didn't catch the disease from their mother. They caught it from either another family member or someone else who came in contact with the child. Because hepatitis B can be transmitted by relatively casual contact with items contaminated with the blood of an infected person, and because many people who are infected with hepatitis B virus don't know that they have it, it is virtually impossible to be "careful enough" to avoid this infection.

50% of kids weren't getting it from their mothers, and I doubt they were shooting up or having gay sex. They got a little bloody or handled someone's razor. I wouldn't want to go back to those days. Not for the sake of a couple days discomfort.

They got a little bloody or handled someone's razor.

Kids get scrapes and cuts all the time. Little Johnny and Billy are playing together, Billy falls and cuts his knee, passes on infection to Johnny.

I agree with this. Unlike MMR, which I have actively observed children suffering from, and are horrible for babies, some of the vaccines seem way too early.

You've seen children suffering from rabies?

R = rubella

I have seen an infant with rubella. And he was suffering severely.

The young child vaccine I am most in favor of is Pertussis. There is nothing I have ever experienced worse than a child with whooping cough. It is insanely horrific even if the kid lives.

Thanks for clarifying.

"Measles, Mumps, Rubella."

Oh, whoops, thanks.

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