Anti vaccine magazine (or how stupid people can get)

[mfb]

We do here in the states. Just google: homicide conviction prayer

I heard about that case. I meant monetary charges.

 

[Evo]

Yes, which is why willful ignorance isn't as easy a claim to make as some would like to believe. Bad calculations of probabilities is pretty much the norm for humans.

The chances of not getting a disease would be x^n, with x being the probability of each person you come into contact with currently not being capable of transmitting that disease and n being the number of interactions a person have (not the number of people a person interacts with - each interaction with the same person still counts as a separate interacton since that person obviously doesn't have a disease such as rubella 100% of his life). "x" is very close to, but less than 100%. "n" is very large.

And in spite of n being very large, there were still a significant minority of people (close to 10%?) who managed to escape catching rubella while they were children. And given that complications could be more severe as an adult (especially an adult pregnant female), being in that 10% wasn't necessarily considered as being lucky.

If a vaccination program is successful, then x, the probability of a person being able to not transmit a disease, gets so close to 100% that the risk of complications from the vaccine exceed the chance of complications from a disease that becomes almost impossible to get.

Provided the probability of a person being able to transmit the disease stays constant!

Unfortunately, your vaccine program turns into a dynamic and circular game of prisoners' dilemma. Once the risk of the vaccine exceeds the risk of the disease, then the best choice for 100% of the "prisoners" is to turn down the vaccine, which raises the probability of being exposed to the disease, which makes the best choice for 100% of the "prisoners" being to get the vaccine, which lowers the probability of being exposed, etc.

And, speaking of rubella, (rubella statistics and http://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/globalsummary/timeseries/tsincidencerubella.html), the average number of cases in the US has declined to less than 5 per year, with about 75% being adults that were not innoculated. Obviously, when you look at the WHO statistics, the need for rubella vaccination is still there in the US, even with the chances of exposure in the US being so low. But it's perfectly understandable how a "selfish" person (a person that's only evaluating the risk of their own child at this particular time) in the US could look at the US statistics and feel the risk of the rubella vaccination probably outweighs the risk of actually catching the disease.

That doesn't mean the optimal solution for all time is to always get the vaccine. How many people get small pox vaccinations today?

Rubella isn't the measles. Just for those that don't know. It is a much milder illness.

Sometimes measles can lead to serious problems. There is no treatment for measles, but the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine can prevent it.

"German measles", also known as rubella, is a completely different illness.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/measles.html