“But a government that tries to people from themselves is too intrusive for me, which is why I oppose seat belt laws for adults. I always wear my seat belt, and I’d be an idiot not to, but that’s none of the government’s concern.”

Um… ok… So, a government of the people, by the people and for the people is all good and well, unless you disagree with those people, in which case… what?

If you don’t like what the government does today, what have you done about it lately?

Greg in Austin Says:
December 27th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Kevin said,

“Of course, I’m being overly dramatic, but why must people be forced to do something they don’t want to do? “

Quite simply, sometimes laws are made to save lives. You are absolutely right, we shouldn’t have to force people to do something they don’t want to, and yet we have seatbelt laws, speed limits, drug enforcement, drinking ages, stop signs, etc. Its sad that we have to work so hard to convince people to save their own lives, the lives of their children, and help protect the lives of people around them.

Its not forcing an opinion; its ensuring the health and safety of human beings.

Which is part of the problem. The government should intervene to protect people from other people – that’s why we have laws against drunk driving and why most states require children in public schools to be vaccinated. But a government that tries to people from themselves is too intrusive for me, which is why I oppose seat belt laws for adults. I always wear my seat belt, and I’d be an idiot not to, but that’s none of the government’s concern.

“The 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine went to three people this year, Luc Montagnier and his (ahem, female) partner Françoise Barre-Sinoussi for discovering HIV, and Harald zur Hausen for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV) and its link to cervical cancer.
Wouldn’t you know it, AstraZeneca just happens to have a big fat stake in two lucrative HPV vaccines.”

Many organisation do things because it’s part of their mission statement or the leader feels honor bound to do so. While there are examples of businesses behaving irresponsibly many of the people involved are good people asking decision based on how much good they can do. And you’ve failed to demonstrate why ‘Big Pharma’ is bad. Hell. You haven’t said anything in your two comments.

You should know that Big Pharma does make money on vaccines, otherwise why would they do it?

First of all, you are only talking about flu vaccines and 2nd, all you proved is that it’s a monopoly. That’s even worse.

You should know that there is no money in vaccines business. That’s why it is very difficult to get Big Pharma to develop, manufacture and distribute vaccines. That’s why we are dependent on few small companies/facilities to manufacture our vaccine stock. The reason we had a flu vaccine shortage a few years back was that a SINGLE facility in UK was shutdown due to contamination threat. Get it? Single facility in UK (and not Big Pharma) supplies (at least) a major portion of our flu vaccine requirement.
Know your facts before you shout yourself hoarse about community-fleecing vaccination cartels.

Our republic is NOT the most free society on Earth. Anyone who has enjoyed the hospitality of a hash bar in Amsterdam can attest to that,,,

What we do appear to be trending toward is the most TRANSPARENT society on Earth, one in which it is possible to shine a bright light into every corner of our land, to know when someone is trying to take unfair advantage and to announce that to the world. Some Libertarians(I’ve known) would like to establish an elite society, basically a meritocracy. Unfortunately, no human has ever shown the ability to be consistently wise, which is why a transparent society, in which everyone can know who’s doing what, with which and to whom, has the potential to allow us to error check the best(and worst) among us.
I would like to assert that, while our republic is somewhat free, it also accomplishes this by having the most laws in place of any prior society. Property law alone allows us to ensure businesses can reliably engage in commerce w/o being over run by self interested parties(Read:dictators).

I have a guest.. I must go.

Gary

As has been pointed out time after time, it is useless to argue with the fanatics because they are not interested in establishing the truth through logic. But I think the above approach would be effective with more ordinary people who might be otherwise be swayed by the fanatics.

Relative to the issue of rights, the answer to Mr. Kevins’ comments is very simple. His rights end where my nose begins.

(I preface this by saying I am not a believer in teleological historical progress) As history has progressed (for lack of a better word) societies have tended to become more free.

Huh!!! But, isn’t that what you are doing???

GK4: Yes, it is very possible for your immunity to wane after immunization, if your immune system is depressed by age, illness or cancer treatment. It’s important to have enough people immunized that these diseases can’t take hold and become endemic = always present in the community.

I’d say that unvaccinated children ARE more dangerous to the community. For one thing, many adults are like me and had measles as children (because there wasn’t a vaccine back then). Although unvaccinated, we are now immune because we had the actual disease. I’ve had rubella and rubeola and chicken pox, all before vaccines became available.

I would keep my child away from unvaccinated children until they are old enough to be vaccinated.

I now work for a skilled nursing/rehab facility and we aim for 100% flu vaccination for all staff as well as patients each year. But we have a lot of staff in the rehab unit who won’t be vaccinated because they know a patient who got Guillain-Barré syndrome from the swine flu vaccine back in ’76. They don’t look to our own flu outbreak of a just 5 years ago when 2 of our own patients died from the flu and at least 25% of the staff took ill. That was a year when the vaccine “missed” the flu phenotype that was actually circulating. I’d rather take my chances with the vaccine than get the flu and end up killing patients.

I know people who have been affected by vaccine-preventable diseases: a microbiologist with polio, a deaf writer who is deaf due to her mother getting rubella from someone who was unvaccinated, a laboratory technologist who had a silent case of Hepatitis B contracted in the lab and gave it to her husband who died from it. That last one convinced me to get the Hep B vaccine as soon as it was available.

It’s sad that you have to have dead and disabled kids to finally shock the selfish anti-vax crowd to get selfish about PROTECTING their kids from preventable diseases.

Look, any respectable libertarian (not anarcho-capitalists, they’re a different breed) thinks that some government is necessary. Of course a society needs to have laws. This isn’t controversial. Arguing that libertarians think otherwise is a strawman argument.

JoeSmithCA makes a decent point. Most libertarians do not identify with the Libertarian Party. Many voted for McCain, and many voted for Obama. My impression was that in this election, more voted for Obama than for McCain. Personally, I voted for Obama, because he’s definitely not a socialist, and the Supreme Court does not need another conservative.

1.) Is it correct to say that even the vaccinated benefit from herd immunity? Am I correct that a small percentage of vaccinations do not “take” in a handful of individuals? So that even if someone has gotten their shots, they can be only 99% sure that it worked?

2.) A question about herd immunity: What size population does it apply to?

If my kid has had her shots, and attends a small school that has a low vaccination rate (below the herd-immunity rate *within the school*), is she at any greater risk even if the overall population of our city or state has the necessary herd immunity? (I’m assuming that I am correct about the first question.)

3.) Until my daughter is old enough to be vaccinated, what can I do to protect her if my community’s vaccination rate is too low? Are unvaccinated children any more dangerous to us than unvaccinated adults?

Thanks in advance to informed people who can point me to the right answers.

“Of course, I’m being overly dramatic, but why must people be forced to do something they don’t want to do? “

Quite simply, sometimes laws are made to save lives. You are absolutely right, we shouldn’t have to force people to do something they don’t want to, and yet we have seatbelt laws, speed limits, drug enforcement, drinking ages, stop signs, etc. Its sad that we have to work so hard to convince people to save their own lives, the lives of their children, and help protect the lives of people around them.

Its not forcing an opinion; its ensuring the health and safety of human beings.

I’ve got no problem letting people live however they want to live, but their ability to live their lives free of my interference ends when it means that my children,

I’ll go one better.

Their ability to live their lives free of my intereference ends when it DIRECTLY THREATENS ME. I’m contraindicated for MMR vaccine due to allergies. Every time some wanker doesn’t vaccinate their child, not only do they risk their child but the risk to my life increases ever so slightly.

Mercifully, if you could call it that, I’ve had measles, mumps, and rubella. Yeah, I had to deal with it the hard way. Hopefully that immunity gained as a child has lasted…

We have all these laws because we have all these people.Trying to maximize individual personal liberty while minimizing the harm they can do to others is the challenge of any social system,,,which is why we started this republic in the first darned place.

If one wishes to be a total libertarian or anarchist, you are pretty much condemed to live alone and the only place I know of where it might be possible for nearly anyone to do that is in SPACE,,,which, I might note, has LOTS OF ROOM. Room even for anti-vaxers,,, as long as they live alone,,,

GAry 7

That said, it seems that all these “movements” have at their core a remarkable ability to deny simple reality.

I disagree. What lies at the core of the problem is a remarkable inability to reason with simple statistical reality. They look at a highly unlikely, but possible, outcome. They think about how horrible that outcome would be. What they don’t take into account is the relative likelihood of the two different outcomes.

It’s the same reason people lose so much money by spending a little bit at a time on lottery tickets. They look at what my father calls the “stand to win/stand to lose” ratio, but ignore the relative likelihood of the two events.

I’ve heard of peers, people proclaim themselves Libertarians but when I’ve attempted to pin them to a political party of the same name I generally get a more well known party declaration (I’m a Republican etc). I’ve come to the conclusion its more of a personally defined philosophy for those I know than any real attempt at being affiliated with the political party. As far as I can recall, there have been no elected Libertarians in US History. I could be wrong though. Like I mentioned, it seems more of personal philosophy tagged onto ones own official political affiliation.

You’ll laugh at this, I hope, then return to being sad… There are some ultra orthodox Jews in Israel, that for extremely weird religious reasons, believe that the state of Israel should not exist. For this reason, they intentionally avoid *anything* at all related to the country, even though they live in it. Vaccinations are funded and done by government in Israel (apparently. I did not know this), so these guys intentionally avoid them. I later saw a report about a government organization, which does its best to remove any ties from government, by symbols on forms or anything like that, created for the sole benefit of convincing these Jews to vaccinate their children, and offering the vaccinations.

Quite a different kind of insane, isn’t it?