This is why we can't have nice things

My thoughts on vaccines and the people who decry them are generally well known. But since I should put something on here that I haven't simply copied and pasted from my Facebook, here it goes.

In short: If you choose not to get vaccinated for any reason other than allergy or immune system compromise you deserve to get polio and are complicit in the deaths of those who cannot get vaccinated. Go get yourself a grim reaper robe, champ.

In long: There has always been a minority contingent of people opposed to vaccines. In the early days of the practice this was perfectly understandable and even necessary as vaccines were not nearly as safe or effective as they are now. People had to perform a cost-benefit-risk analysis when it came to deciding if they should be immunized. More than 100 years ago this involved some actual risk as the possibility of infection, allergic reaction, or just simply having the vaccine fail to protect you were decent possibilities in an age when food safety consisted of "less formaldehyde in the milk means we have to pay those filthy Irish farmers more!" some MD's still considered blood letting to be a viable option for the Spanish Flu and chiropractors thought they could cure asthma by twisting your neck in a way that would make Jason Bourne jealous and give Jean Claude van Damme a hard on (Wait... they still do this? Oops!).

    However, today the effectiveness and safety of vaccines is unparalleled. Until recently, diseases like Polio had all but been eradicated within the United States while cases of measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis (whooping cough), and a variety of other commonly vaccinated against illnesses had become so rare that getting them netted you a personalized spot in the CDC's MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report), which is kind of the Rolling Stone of disease control and prevention, only with less boobs and more awful infections and injuries.

   Vaccines are not just crucial to individual health, they are crucial to the health of large populations. Remember how I said that Polio had all but been eliminated? Well, thanks to people failing to get vaccinated it's coming back (http://tinyurl.com/l8z3jql   http://tinyurl.com/mov3zz). For an explanation as to why immunizations work to keep the greater good safe I suggest this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPcC4oGB_o8   It demonstrates herd immunity using gummi bears and takes a little over 2 minutes so even the most ADD of you can handle it. Plus it uses bright colors and relatively small words.

    Not only is Polio coming back, but everybody's other favorite old school disease, the mumps, is also making a solid comeback, and not all of it can be attributed to filthy hipsters trying to ironically contract an illness no one hears about anymore. http://tinyurl.com/m7b8b2v

   "But wait!" You mewl while flapping your arms about ineffectually, "We didn't get vaccinated a hundred years ago! My grandfather never got vaccinated and he lived to be 100 years old and never took a sick day!" 

   Your grandfather also lived in a time when going from New York to Paris in a metal tube powered by explosions was the sort of thing Jules Vern would have laughed at as being too outlandish. He lived at a time when men were men, hard work was valued and the average life expectancy was around 60 years so you better get crackin' or you'll be dead of old age before you know it! (http://tinyurl.com/cskr7sl). He lived at a time when widespread epidemics were confined to a few of the really nasty bugs, took months upon months to spread and and infant mortality percentages from illness and injury were anywhere from the mid-teens to high twenties (http://tinyurl.com/kjeqbnb). The fact that your grandfather made it out of childhood while you whine about getting a flu shot is a testament to the kind of man you'll never be.

   Citing the past as an excuse for your present failings is just about the worst thing you can do. The Americans of a century ago didn't spit in the face of progress, they embraced that shit. When Orville Wright decided he was sick and tired of those feathered fucks soaring through the wild blue yonder he didn't just shrug it off and say "Eh, it's too hard to understand how flight works," he built a machine and took the fight to those smug bastards. And did we stop there? Fuck no! In the same amount of time it takes to make a $2000 bottle of scotch we went from a kerosene powered bird harasser to stabbing the moon with our flag just so it knows who owns it! And because that's not enough we went back so many times we got bored and decided to play golf (http://tinyurl.com/k4xlog7) and go 4-wheeling (http://tinyurl.com/l9vckn8).

   Of course for every Louis Pasteur there is a John R. Brinkley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley) and that's why I have to address the vaccines and Autism "controversy." Why do I put the quotation marks around the word "controversy?" Because it isn't one. Because the one study that was used to start that scare has been discredited so hard that the author lost his license to practice medicine and was criminally charged (http://tinyurl.com/m29kq94). Because that's what should happen when you craft a fake study with the intent to defraud people and end up causing a world-wide health crises that continues to this day. So why do people still think vaccines cause Autism? For the same reason that people think aspartame causes cancer, GMO food is bad for you, and homeopathy is real. A basic misunderstanding of science and statistics coupled with a media that knows how to get customers inflamed in an attempt to drive ratings. And it's not helped when Americans are so poorly trained on what a "credible source" is that we take potentially life ending advice from a woman primarily known for showing her tits for money and some dude famous for a role in which he literally talked out of his ass (http://tinyurl.com/kbe8p, http://tinyurl.com/q7dj452, http://tinyurl.com/hxamy). Since that's a lot of shit to tackle I'll just go for the low-hanging fruit; correlation vs. causation.

Correlation is used to described two events that change together but do not cause the change to occur. Causation is used to describe two events that depend upon each other for change. Yes I know it's more complex than that, blah blah blah. Anyway, two correlating events would be ice cream sales and temperature. As the temperature increases, so too do ice cream sales. That makes sense, right? Now what if I told you that it was getting hotter because people were buying ice cream? You'd look at me like I had a dick growing out of my forehead. No rational human being could assume that simply because those two things increased and decreased together that they would be causing the change in the other... right? ...Guys?

I'll just leave this here... http://tinyurl.com/l9qy9oq

Causation is pretty much what it sounds like, one event causes the other. A good example of that would be ingesting alcohol and becoming intoxicated. There is a direct and provable link between the two. What if I suggested there wasn't? That those two things just happen at the same time but aren't causative? What's that? Why, yes, that is a dick on my forehead! A simple misunderstanding of words and their meanings is actively causing the deaths of thousands of human beings each year. Think of that the next time you hear someone dismiss an argument by saying, "It's just semantics!" In fact, if we had all just been thinking in the first place we wouldn't be here now.



[By the way, the Jason Bourne Chiropractor comparison is courtesy of an Irish comic by the name of Dara O'Briain and his routine is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Check it out!]