Comment by generalpass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by generalpass | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I can't say as conflating antivaxxers with a pediatrician that recommends a delayed/modified vaccine schedule is exactly productive. Delayed/modified schedule isn't to blame for measles. Pretty disingenuous, IMO.

> For those who don't know, there is a camp of people who believe that we're getting vaccinations at way too fast a schedule. Yes, this includes doctors, like the aforementioned pediatrician.

It is not only "anti-liberal" to shout people down, but it is anti-science to ignore claims on findings and this is how I find the "anti-vaxxer" term to be used.

I can't find the article right now, but I strongly encourage people to be more cautious about throwing the stupid terms around as some people are rather more nuanced.

I am not defending the following claim, but among other claims is one that states a popularly cited measles outbreak occurred with 95% of the people catching having been immunized. The claim is that the immunizations are no longer effective. Again, I am not trying to support the claim, but simply labeling "anti-vaxxer" is not the way to address such claims and will attract an audience who will have no way to counter such claims because all opposition is engaged in schoolyard name-calling activities.

EDIT:

It is astounding to me that the commenters of, at least this article, are unable to distinguish my claim from claims of people discussed in the article.

> but among other claims is one that states a popularly cited measles outbreak occurred with 95% of the people catching having been immunized

Source? Regardless, the large majority of aggregate cases of measles in the United States are among people who aren't vaccinated, which is a massive, massive over-representation and suggests that the measles vaccine is effective, regardless of specific anomalous cases.

I find this take of "being fair" to "nuanced" views quite common, but when I patiently let the whole anti-vax view be laid out, it is generally not particularly coherent nor well-sourced. I think stigma can be an effective way to change beliefs, because people can pretend they never held the belief in the first place. When you have someone lay out their whole argument, they often become more entrenched.

My source: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html

For what it's worth, I'm 34 and had to get the MMR vaccine again last year because blood titers showed that I was no longer producing meaningful antibodies for rubella. Given that the average person has been vaccinated against over a dozen diseases, odds are good that at least one of them has worn off and needs to be re-upped by now.

So that's another reason the herd immunity is so important: If enough people opt out of just getting a simple shot, then now everyone else has to go through the much larger burden of periodic retesting and re-vaccining for them to be safe.

Yep, plus the fact that certain vaccines aren't effective in every single person but it is hard to know apriori who those people are.

That is just absolutely not true. Hence it is an unsupportable claim. At least for the US, the CDC tracks every known case, and it is the unvaccinated that get the measles: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html

> That is just absolutely not true. Hence it is an unsupportable claim. At least for the US, the CDC tracks every known case, and it is the unvaccinated that get the measles: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html

That's nice. Now go present it to someone that is having a discussion about that. My discussion above is regarding calling people names instead of presenting evidence.

A better use of your time time might be to take a remedial reading comprehension course.

> I am not defending the following claim, but among other claims is one that states a popularly cited measles outbreak occurred with 95% of the people catching having been immunized. The claim is that the immunizations are no longer effective

One of the key aspects of science is presenting data and methodology to support a claim - this enables reproducibility.

If we don't have these pieces of information, we're essentially back in the realm of religion: believing statements without evidence.

> One of the key aspects of science is presenting data and methodology to support a claim - this enables reproducibility.

> If we don't have these pieces of information, we're essentially back in the realm of religion: believing statements without evidence.

You have, for whatever reason, grabbed a single sentence and addressed it as if it has no relation to other paragraphs.

Why?

Because your whole argument is an example of an "argument to moderation" fallacy[1] that is only valid as long as there is some evidence that points to the fact that the majority medical opinion on vaccines is wrong (and of course, the majority opinion is not "everyone should get every vaccine there is all the time").

I mean, I get the point that name-calling doesn't help, but we can't just accept statements that contradict established scientific opinion without any strong evidence, otherwise there is no means to progressing as a society.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

> Because your whole argument is an example of an "argument to moderation" fallacy[1] that is only valid as long as there is some evidence that points to the fact that the majority medical opinion on vaccines is wrong (and of course, the majority opinion is not "everyone should get every vaccine there is all the time").

> I mean, I get the point that name-calling doesn't help, but we can't just accept statements that contradict established scientific opinion without any strong evidence, otherwise there is no means to progressing as a society.

There was nowhere in my arguments that I stated to accept anything from their arguments. I stated to disprove their arguments with science and to not engage in name-calling.

I did state that the people labeled as "anti-vaxxers" support their claims with scientific studies. I am not addressing their claims, so I am not providing the evidence they use to support their claims. I am stating how they make their claims.

Your claim that I am in line with the linked fallacy demonstrates that you do not understand what that fallacy is or where to apply it.

With all due respect, if you defend a position you don't even agree with (or where you can't/won't even point to a single piece of evidence) makes for a very unfruitful kind of debate.

I mean, for every fringe position you can find some crank that "supports" it with some badly designed study, but strong claims (e.g. contradicting majority scientific opinion) require strong evidence not just "there are studies" (without pointing to any such study; how should one even refute this?).

> With all due respect, if you defend a position you don't even agree with (or where you can't/won't even point to a single piece of evidence) makes for a very unfruitful kind of debate.

> I mean, for every fringe position you can find some crank that "supports" it with some badly designed study, but strong claims (e.g. contradicting majority scientific opinion) require strong evidence not just "there are studies" (without pointing to any such study; how should one even refute this?).

With all due respect, you are demonstrating a reading comprehension level of a 10 year-old. You have not even one time responded to my claims.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com