

The Dystonia Flu-Shot Case - MikeCapone
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1152

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kakooljay
"It is highly unlikely that whatever Jennings is suffering from now had
anything to do with the flu vaccine she received in August. Unfortunately,
this is not stopping irresponsible news coverage or exploitation by anti-
vaccinationists... Jennings has now inserted herself in to the anti-vaccine
movement, and is using her own case to 'warn about the dangers of vaccines.'"

We need a vaccine to cure ignorance...

~~~
thwarted
... but those who need it wouldn't take it.

~~~
thaumaturgy
... which is why it is best delivered from a rooftop, with darts, from a high-
powered rifle.

(I have often threatened to do exactly this if such a thing were possible.)

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noonespecial
Most of the anti-vax crowd I meet are so wrapped up in trying to convince
everyone of the autism link that they don't stop to think if it matters. What
if the worst is true and they are right? A small percentage of children
vaccinated become autistic. Is that worse than 21,269 (American, many more
globally) children per year left with mild to disabling paralysis from polio?
Measles, mumps, rubella, Tetanus, Diphtheria?

As hard as it might sound, even if the current vaccines actually _are_ harmful
to some very small number of children, _we should still do it_. The
alternative is much worse.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I agree with you, but I think I can also predict the responses of the anti-vax
crowd. To them, they have a strong bias between "naturally-caused" and "human-
caused" effects; they would see 21,000 cases of polio as, "Oh dear, well,
that's nature (or God), and it's too bad we can't do anything about it."

But, transform those 21,000 cases of polio into 2,000 cases of autism, and you
get: " _Someone did this!_ Someone inflicted this, this is someone's fault,
see, _we're not supposed to be messing with nature_."

From the outside looking in, it's a strange bias, but it's the peculiar result
of a sort of comfort in helplessness combined with poor education and a
preference for emotional responses over logical thinking.

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Tichy
How is debunking an anecdotal evidence better than anecdotal evidence?

Unfortunately that article did not provide the numbers required to make a
judgment: what is the probability for complications with the vaccine, and what
is the probability for complications with the Flu? It mentions 36000 deaths,
but it is not clear if that is a high number (possibly a lot of the deaths are
people who are already sick and could have a higher risk with the vaccine,
too). Some people will probably die from the vaccine, too, if only because
they have some stupid allergy or whatever.

------
fnid
In the nearest large town to me, they had 2800 doses for a metro area of
almost a million.

Even if it _is_ effective and even if it _doesn't_ do anything bad, the
vaccine is probably going to do little good on the grand scale.

~~~
cperciva
With a 0.28% coverage rate, you're not going to do much to stop the spread of
the virus; but you can still do a lot to reduce the impact of the virus.
Members of high risk groups (mainly pregnant women, people with weakened
immune systems, and people with existing respiratory conditions) can be
hundreds of times more likely to be hospitalized due to H1N1 -- so vaccinating
those specific groups can significantly reduce the impact of H1N1, even if it
doesn't reduce the total number of cases significantly.

~~~
thaumaturgy
This has been an interesting turnabout in H1N1 news. I first started following
it closely in the first days of its outbreak, because my girlfriend happened
to be visiting family just outside Mexico City at the time.

Initial reports said that one of the main concerns of H1N1, over "normal"
influenza strains, was that it seemed to have a greater effect on those with
healthy immune systems. At the time, there were some guesses that it might be
triggering cytokine "storms".

Since then, this has been subtly altered to the usual "most dangerous to the
less healthy" property of normal influenza.

I don't really have a point, it's just an observation that's made me go,
"huh."

~~~
cperciva
Influenza causes death through two primary routes: 1. Cytokine storm causing
respiratory failure; 2. Increasing the vulnerability of the respiratory tract
to secondary infections.

Route #1 is generally how healthy individuals (including the high-risk group
of late-term pregnant women) die, while route #2 is generally how unhealthy
individuals (people with weakened immune systems; people with existing
respiratory conditions; the elderly) die.

My understanding is that H1N1 is not causing significantly more deaths through
route #1 than seasonal influenza, and that the early indications to that
effect were due to (a) Mexican health authorities only identifying the most
severe H1N1 cases (this is also why Mexico had a much higher reported death
rate than the rest of the world), and (b) the elderly being resistant to H1N1
due to its similarity to the 1957 pandemic influenza.

In short: Pandemics are complicated, and sometimes circumstances conspire to
mislead researchers.

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chrischen
Part of the fear stems from thimerosal, mercury, and autism.

~~~
MikeCapone
Yes, three things that have been debunked.

~~~
chrischen
Even if it has been debunked, the fact that thimerosal is banned in
california, and being phased out just legitimizes the fear. Then California
temporarily unbans it for the H1N1 vaccine. How does that make arguments
towards its safety sound? It merely makes it seem as if the dangers of H1N1
for this case outweighs the suggested risk of thimerosal.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Well, that's exactly right.

The (real) dangers of the flu are greater than the imaginary dangers of
thimerosal.

Since the anti-vax folks seem to love anecdotes: my entire father's side of my
family has used thimerosal topically to treat cuts and wounds -- under its
trade name Merthiolate -- for a very very long time, at least since my father
was very young. There have been no ill side effects.

Other than insanity. (I kid, I kid. Maybe.)

------
VMG
I knew Steve would write something about this

