Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

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Like with everything else than maybe virus outbreak, most changes takes time to affect entire community, economy or a country. Rome wasn't built in a day, so the Rome Empire didn't collapse in a day neither.

Take me as an example. I am 8 years in US, married to US citizen. Green Card holder now and couple years ago our plan was for me to become a US Citizen and us to raise our kids on US soil. Not anymore.

With all the outcoming gov scandals, with government forcing you to vaccine your kids, with you or your children going to jail for drawing a gun, for swat team breaking into your house because you are selling raw milk, for all this growing nonsense and my personal disgust with president that calls death of 4 us officials in Bengazi a "phony scandal", I am genuinely sick and disgusted of this to my deeper core. And here comes important part: so you say to me in response: if you don't like it, move out! And you are damn right!

We made this decision recently and right now my wife is learning my native language while I am shifting more towards doing more remote programming gigs. Surprisingly after I moved here from the country of communism, now it seems safer and more sane back in Europe than here! Europe has its problems of course, but honestly I believe Europe will deteriorate much slower than US. Here everything is on fast forward and yes examples like Manning or Snowden revelations and lack of echo makes it hard to believe anything will change for better in the future.

I believe I am not the only one who draw this conclusion lately. I also think that many smart people coming to this country to live "american dream" are also smart enough to realize the economical situation become so unstable that its better to "wait and see" back home.

With all the outcoming gov scandals, with government forcing you to vaccine your kids...

All other points aside for a moment: the government should force each and every parent to vaccinate their children. Herd immunity is a key factor in protecting most of the population from many awful diseases, and herd immunity is only effective if the vast majority are vaccinated. There's no credible evidence that vaccination causes autism or any other malady.

Yes vaccination is NOT a billion dollar business, vaccines do not kill people, and its perfectly logic you need to get shots against other peoples diseases BUT at the same time those who don't become a danger to you, yes.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/199...

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/03/1...

http://vaccinedangers.com/

http://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/neurological_damage....

http://vactruth.com/2013/02/23/17-examples-of-vaccine-failur...

I could go on and on here like the vaccines business is create problem & offer solution infinite loop, but I hope you can do a research on your own.

If you don't feel like putting in a serious effort into presenting your argument, then I see no reason why anyone should take it seriously.

I know you are probably far too far down that rabbit hole to hear me, but herd immunity is vital for those who do not have the option of getting vaccinated.

> I could go on and on here like the vaccines business is create problem & offer solution infinite loop

Except that we know the backstory to this particular chicken/egg problem, and we know that in this case vaccines came last, after the problem they were meant to solve (and, substantially speaking, have solved).

America's longest-serving President was crippled no less than 100 years ago by a disease which vaccination can now prevent, and you're blaming Big Pharma for that???

1st off, the last link you have there is a brilliant example of a failure to use Bayesian reasoning.

> its perfectly logic you need to get shots against other peoples diseases BUT at the same time those who don't become a danger to you

You don't understand herd immunity. It amplifies a weak individual immune boost (say, a 40% effictive vaccine) into a dramatic effect on the actual number of people who get sick.

Here's how it works: consider the average number of new people an infected person will infect (call this number k). If k>1 (1.01 even), the disease very likely explodes across the face of the earth and turns into an epidemic or pandemic. If k<1 (.99 even), it fizzles and only a few get sick (do a stochastic simulation if you must). Point is, we care a lot about making k<1 by any means possible.

Vaccines are hard to make and not very effective in the sense that there is only maybe a 40% chance they will stop you from getting sick if others around you are sick. But that 40% success rate dramatically effects k so long as everyone gets vaccinated: if k<1.6 pre-vaccination, our hypothetical vaccine turns a pandemic into a fizzle.

If you're one of the assholes who spoil the whole thing by not getting vaccinated, your peers have every right to get angry with you. I wish you could be collectively sued for your effect on an outbreak, but I'll settle for a bit of government incentive.

> vaccines do not kill people

The FDA and EMA are dramatically overcautious when it comes to this kind of thing (they minimize the number of lives lost to drugs and vaccines even at the expense of not minimizing total lives lost). If you think otherwise, safety and efficacy studies are public. Start with primary sources, avoid hokey nonsense like what you posted. The FDA site is a mess but google can usually find specific studies with filetype:pdf.

> the vaccines business is create problem & offer solution

Pretty sure it's evolution (of bacteria and viruses) creating the problem, not drug companies. Or do you not believe in evolution either?

Thanks for response, I upvoted you.

I wasn't clear in my first post. I am not against major vaccines, the problem is that today by age 8 you have many more shoot than those you had only 20 years ago. I fail to believe life on Earth change soo much that we all need so many more shots to survive.

Like with any other business, pharma sees opportunity to oversell and creates tons of unnecessarily shots that your local CSV loves to advertise. I also personally know an example of an older man who got a shot and 2 weeks later got sick exactly on something he was getting shot against. It doesnt make sense.

I'm not a doctor, but having had small kids in the US and in New Zealand I noticed a marked difference in the number of jabs that are recommended. I don't know the reasons for this but the idea that it may be correlated with a larger impact of business incentives in insurance-company US versus single payer NZ doesn't seem wildly implausible to me.

> I am not against major vaccines

Oh, good :)

> today by age 8 you have many more shoot than those you had only 20 years ago

There are two factors at play. One is evolution: there's a new flu every year (bacteria and virii can meaningfully evolve in less than a year, even). The other is that we are finding ways to vaccinate against more and more diseases. The diseases always existed, but your odds of catching them were higher then than they are now even if you don't vaccinate yourself because of herd immunity. There are still plenty of diseases we don't know how to vaccinate against, so expect the trend to continue.

> pharma sees opportunity to oversell

Yeah, and the US system is particularly vulnerable to those pressures. There are still protections: you couldn't get a placebo approved, even a well designed one. But single-payer systems are much better at focusing on efficacy. The other side to that is the US gets drugs first and sometimes exclusively. Just because a vaccine falls below the threshold of what the EU is willing to pay doesn't mean it won't save hundreds or thousands of lives in the US. We pay twice as much for health care and this is one of the (very) few extra privileges we enjoy as a result. Best take advantage of it :)

> older man who got a shot and 2 weeks later got sick exactly on something he was getting shot against

I still don't think you grok herd immunity. Vaccines do very little to protect the individual. If you would have gotten sick before the vaccine, you would probably still get sick after the vaccine. But if everyone gets vaccinated, the disease dies away.

It's like a nuclear bomb. Below critical mass, it's just moderately radioactive. Above critical mass, you get a huge explosion. Vaccines keep a disease from getting to critical mass. They don't stop individuals from getting sick very well (they don't stop the radioactivity) but they reduce it just enough to prevent pandemics (nulear explosions).

Even if we are 100% clear that there is no evidence that vaccination causes any malady, government mandates requiring that the government chooses what things should be injected into every single citizen crosses a very important line of freedom of action for me. Just like the argument that you may not agree with someone but will defend their rights to say it. I may not agree with an anti-vaccination person but I would defend to the end every persons right to liberty (that is choice) in regards to government mandates as to invasive procedures, pills, or injections. We have to think of the future implications of precedents like that.

The problem is it is not about your freedom and safety. It's about the freedom and safety of others. Herd-Immunity is essential for protecting those who can't be vacinated because of allergies or age. By refusing vaccinating you aren't just giving up your ability to be protected from these life-threatening diseases, you're also endangering others. The government has these laws for the same reason we have laws against drunk driving. You have the right to endanger yourself however you want; however, you have zero right to endanger another human.

Your position would be more clearly stated if you said that the problem is weighing freedom against safety. There I agree with you. It is not my freedom from government mandated medical injections or procedures the needs to be weighed against safety for the herd but rather the importance of freedom of choice generally weighed against safety for all. Also, the government does not have these laws. This is a line leglislaters have not crossed, and good thing too, given the importance of setting good precedents around medical ethics in a fast advancing field.

Thanks for your perspective. I wonder which hot-button you pushed that caused the downvotes? My suspicion would be vaccination, but I'm not ruling out the gun-illustration (the word "drawing" is ambiguous in this case) or Bengazi...

Indeed, the downvotes seem bizarre to me. This response just looks like somebody sharing their experience in the matter in a coherent way. It could also be someone who doesn't want attention drawn away from their post.

Anyhow, I'm in Canada right now, and am in the next few years probably looking to change careers. I have good contacts with several top-tier tech companies in the US, and also with the auto industry and big oil. I've never really had much of a desire to live in the US, but now more than ever I'm finding myself looking to other potentially less lucrative positions just because of my distaste, much like the post above.

It really doesn't feel like a good time to be living in the US as a foreigner with an engineering degree, a very foreign sounding name and very liberal views. :-/

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