
By the Numbers: Vaccines Are Safe - artsandsci
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/health/you-should-get-vaccinated.html
======
charliesharding
Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some
light digging for anyone who's curious.

"Skepticism with vaccines crosses party and demographic lines, according to
the Pew Research Center study released Monday, with about 5% of Republicans
and 9% of Democrats saying vaccines are unsafe, and 11% of men and 8% of women
saying the same.

Younger people, however, were significantly more likely to believe vaccines
are unsafe, with 15% of Americans aged 18-29 saying vaccines aren’t safe,
compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65."

[https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-
vaxxers/](https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-vaxxers/)

~~~
lliamander
> compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65

I.e. people who remember life without vaccines.

~~~
jpollock
My great grandmother lived through the last smallpox outbreak in Canada, where
their boarder caught it and she had to be quarantined.

My grandmother told us about how she come back to school after summer vacation
and found out about friends that died from measles.

I had a vice principal who had polio as a child.

None of those are around now, although measles is making a run for it.

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yehosef
The misinformation/lies surrounding vaccine safety is nauseating.

>Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and killed
more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are likely
to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die

Anyone here gots math.. 400/3,000,000 is ~1/10,000. And note that this is the
rate given 1950's medical care - I can't fathom the numbers would be like this
today.

And the entire concept of proving vaccine safety by showing filing rates for
the VICP are low is wrong. Many people are not aware of the VICP or they are
told that the reactions are not related to the vaccines - why would they file?

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't vaccinate - but there needs to be more
scientific and intellectual integrity in the process. The risks are
whitewashed "Vaccines are safe".

Anyone interested in doing a little more research can look and play with the
VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) dataset at
[https://github.com/yehosef/vaers](https://github.com/yehosef/vaers) or the
grafana dashboard I built at [https://vizvax.com/](https://vizvax.com/)

You can do a simple adhoc search for DIED=Y to see some interesting results.
Remember that the only 1-10% of the events are reported (CDC numbers) so you
can estimate the numbers to be 10-100 times greater.

feedback/suggestions appreciated.

~~~
arthur_pryor
two things:

>> Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and
killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are
likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die

> Anyone here gots math.. 400/3,000,000 is ~1/10,000. And note that this is
> the rate given 1950's medical care - I can't fathom the numbers would be
> like this today.

why'd you divide 400 by 3M? the article says, per your quote, that there were
400 american deaths per year. but 3M infected americans _total_. there is no
per year qualifier on that part.

also you forgot to address the part about:

> One in four people who get measles are likely to be hospitalized

i don't know about you, but i'll take a vaccination over a hospitalization in
most realistic situations i can imagine.

also, while i can see how adverse events might be grossly underreported, i
imagine the ones that _do_ get reported skew the data set towards the worst of
the events. it seems to me that a really bad adverse event is much more likely
to be reported than one that's mild.

~~~
yehosef
>why'd you divide 400 by 3M? the article says, per your quote, that there were
400 american deaths per year. but 3M infected americans _total_. there is no
per year qualifier on that part.

Because it's a hack article. From
[https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html](https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html)
the numbers are annual. I remember seeing the 1/1000 number were of the
reported case (ie, hospitals) - almost everyone use to get the measles before
they were 15 and most cases were not reported.

> also you forgot to address the part about: >> One in four people who get
> measles are likely to be hospitalized

Sorry - you're right. That's such a complete, outright lie - I guess my brain
didn't even register it. As I mentioned - almost 100% of the people use to get
measles (see CDC link). Clearly not 1/4 of them were hospitalized.

>i don't know about you, but i'll take a vaccination over a hospitalization in
most realistic situations i can imagine.

Then you should learn about some of the stories of people that have been
damaged. You can either read some of the reports from VAERS or watch some of
the personal story videos from the VAXXED youtube channel.

Note - I'm not saying VAXXED is science.. I'm not saying their conclusions are
right.. Yes - the stories are anecdotal - but these are real people with
stories about how they had a healthy child and then after one or several
vaccines, they didn't. You can listen to some and say.. "well.. that's a
stretch to say the vaccines caused this". But you should listen to some of
them.

It's a much messier story than the media, CDC or the pharmaceutical companies
would have you to believe. My point is not that we should not vaccinate, but
that should be informed and take the risks and benefits into consideration
(Data-Driven/Led). The current approach overplays the benefits (by
exaggerating the danger) and underplaying the risks.

~~~
arthur_pryor
a few things:

* you're trying to focus on being data-driven, but then you posit that i should watch a bunch of anecdotes collected in a non-scientific way to get perspective? would it be valid for me to ask you to talk to everyone who got a flu shot and then didn't catch the flu? because those two things seem about equally scientific to me, and i doubt you'd go for the latter from everything i've seen in this thread.

* if you're making a case for hard data analysis, i think you'll get people to listen more if you address everything systematically instead of falling back on "That's such a complete, outright lie - I guess my brain didn't even register it" for a point you didn't cover.

* under the benefits, have you considered the benefits of herd immunity? because there are some people who really can't vaccinate. and as many people as can should, to protect the ones who can't.

~~~
yehosef
> _if you 're making a case for hard data analysis, i think you'll get people
> to listen more if you address everything systematically instead of falling
> back on "That's such a complete, outright lie - I guess my brain didn't even
> register it" for a point you didn't cover._

This is 100% correct - my bad. Thanks for the honesty check.

------
nbabitskiy
>> "Before the vaccine, measles infected more than 3 million Americans and
killed more than 400 of them each year. One in four people who get measles are
likely to be hospitalized and one or two in 1,000 are likely to die, the
C.D.C. reports."

So, after vaccines started, measles mortality grew an order of magnitude
worse? (According to presumably conservative government's estimate). Am I the
only one who thinks, that anti-vaxing has nothing to do with perceived safety
of vaccines, and mostly reflects perceived safety of vaccine facilitators?

edit: after boeing 737 max troubles, we learnt, that boeing employees serve
part time in capacity of government regulators, approving their own creation.
Isn't it possible, that the same goes in the HRSA injury program?

~~~
pulisse
> So, after vaccines started, measles mortality grew an order of magnitude
> worse? (According to presumably conservative government's estimate). Am I
> the only one who thinks, that anti-vaxing has nothing to do with perceived
> safety of vaccines, and mostly reflects perceived safety of vaccine
> facilitators?

You imply that vaccines _cause_ that increase, but wouldn't a more plausible
explanation be that people who contract measles despite being vaccinated are
more likely to be people with subpar immune systems?

~~~
nbabitskiy
No, I don't imply that vaccines caused the increase, however, the NYT writers
make it seem that vaccination caused it. Also the article doesn't say what
part of added mortality is amid the vaccinated people. If your reading was
correct, and doctors killed 7-15 times as many as nature, because they vaxed
kids unfit for vaccination, it would make the argument much worse; but the
authors didn't say that.

------
aszantu
so every dog gets vaccinated for certain diseases. If vaccines did cause
anything, wouldn't people talk more about it in "that dog they knew" or
"someone who knew someone with an authistic dog" ?

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Rational arguments don't work. This is just a bug in the OS we're carrying in
our heads, and it hits a lot of people unfortunately.

