07:57 – Barbara’s dad is still in the hospital, but I suspect they’ll soon be transferring him to a rehab facility. Given the way the hospital has behaved, I suggested to Barbara last night that she tell the hospital that getting him to the rehab facility is up to the hospital. If Barbara and Frances picked him up at the hospital to transport him to the rehab facility, I’m afraid they’d be stuck with him, with the rehab facility refusing to accept him. So I told her to refuse to take custody of their dad until he’s well enough to be on his own at his apartment.
Nor is just Barbara’s dad. When Barbara was walking Colin yesterday, she talked to our neighbor Kim. Kim’s mother, Mary, is in her 80’s. A week or ten days ago, she fell and fractured her pelvis. She was in the hospital for a few days, and was then transferred to a rehab facility. The rehab facility is discharging Mary this Thursday to go home. The problem is, Kim is totally disabled with a back injury and Jasmine is away at college. Mary is not supposed to put any weight on her pelvis, which means she can’t even stand, let alone walk. And yet they’re expecting Kim to take care of Mary by herself. Barbara said Kim’s teenage niece was at Kim’s house while she was talking to Kim, helping get the house cleaned up and ready for Mary’s return. I’d already told Kim when her mom was in the hospital to call me if she needed help lifting or moving anything, because Kim simply can’t lift anything and I’m only three houses away. I’ll tell her again today, because she’s going to need help when Mary gets home.
I keep thinking that with millions of unemployed people drawing government benefits, there shouldn’t be any shortage of unskilled labor to provide assistance like this to elderly people. We, the taxpayers, are paying people to sit at home watching TV and pretending to look for jobs that aren’t there, when they could and should be doing something useful with their time like assisting the elderly or cleaning up public areas.
08:44 – I got Barbara’s new desktop system installed and configured yesterday. That was harder than it should have been. All she really uses the system for is OpenOffice, email, and web browsing, with Kontact/Kmail/Korganizer for email and Chrome for the browsing. After pulling three full backups of her system, two to DVD and one to a flash drive, I disconnected her system and slid it out of the way. I slid the new system, an Intel Atom, into place, connected it up, and got rolling. The first problem was that the current version of Kmail uses a completely different format for storing email and contact information than the version Barbara had been running. I’d copied her email/contact data to /home/barbara/.kde, and expected the new version simply to see it and use it. No dice. When I started Kontact on the new system, it informed me that it was using a new data format. It offered to import the old data, so I told it to proceed. About two seconds later, it said it had encountered a fatal error, and terminated. So I tried running it again, and it said it had already been run. So I deleted all the appropriate directories, recopied over her data, and tried again. No dice. The new version simply wouldn’t touch the maildir email files, and apparently had no clue what to do with the contact information.
So I fired up Thunderbird, which was installed by default, and tried to get it to import Barbara’s mail/contact data. I screwed around with that for a while, including installing a maildir->mbox converter, but no joy. So I disconnected the new system, reconnected the old system, fired up Kontact, exported her contacts as a .VCF file, and forwarded all her email to myself. I then disconnected the old system, reconnected the new system, blew away Kontact and all the old data, and reconfigured Thunderbird, including installing the Calendar plugin. I then forwarded all of Barbara’s email from my own system back to her and pulled it into Thunderbird. Geez.
But at least I was finished except for getting the Chrome data off the old system and into Firefox on her new system. (I’ve found I don’t much like Chrome; compared to Firefox it’s feature-poor and unstable.) Surprise. The conversion didn’t work. So I installed Chromium on her new system, expecting it to just use the data from the old Chrome installation. Surprise. It wouldn’t import Barbara’s old data. So we just said the hell with it and re-entered her bookmarks and so on manually. Geez.
Barbara’s old system is now sitting on the floor of her office. She says her new system is working fine, but I think I’ll leave the old system there for a while, just in case we missed migrating something. Once I’m pretty sure everything on the new system is present and working properly, I’ll pull the hard drive and put it on the shelf. I’ll then clean up her old system (a hex-core i7), install a 3 TB hard drive, and turn it into my new system.
Given what I just went through migrating her simple configuration to a new box, the idea of migrating my configuration to a new box scares the hell out of me. I don’t have just OpenOffice, email, and browsing. I have literally dozens of other apps installed, from science number crunching to DVD ripping to video/photo/ sound editors and converters to scanning apps to astronomy apps to who knows what else. Even just figuring out what I have installed will be time-consuming, let alone getting everything moved over.
when they could and should be doing something useful with their time like assisting the elderly or cleaning up public areas.
I most certainly would not want any of those people in my home helping with anything. Most of them would be helping themselves to things in the home that are not theirs. Cleaning public areas would be OK, but not for private residences.
My grandparents had a lady that came to their house everyday to clean, do laundry and fix a couple of meals. After my grandparents died and that home was cleaned we found out then that the lady had been stealing items.
The most significant were the hand crocheted table clothes, end table clothes and a king size bed spread that went to floor all the way around. This were tight knit, very detailed, intricate items. One table cloth the my wife and I have was appraised at $400.00 with some damage. There were probably more than 100 of these items, all of them gone.
We found several other items that were missing such as weather instruments, binoculars and other not so valuable items that had more sentimental value then money value. But this lady had apparently found a market to sell the items.
Would I want these lazy Oprah watchers in my house? Not for a second.
We have a new healthcare system that is being planned by a person that has half a dozen medical staff available 24 hours a day and who pays no premiums or has any out of pocket expenses for anything medical. Obama finds no problem with the current system as it is working for him, why not anyone else.
The current system is run by the number crunchers propeller heads at the health insurance companies rather than by the medical profession. People making significant healthcare decisions for others that have no idea what the difference is between an IV and suppository.
Well, I have nothing really to add to either Bob’s or Ray’s descriptions, prescriptions, etc. of this badly flawed health care and insurance system we have as a millstone around our necks. Mrs. OFD has worked in “public health” for 35 years now and can certainly attest to what Bob and Ray have said here in spades. So now she works in sort of a triage capacity, like she did when she started out long ago as an admitting nurse at Bellevue. She teaches people to be instructors for mental health first aid, so they can go out and teach first responders, emergency services personnel, social workers, cops and soldiers, etc., how to deal with severe PTSD arising from a host of possible circumstances. The most glaring example of this was when she arrived at Fort Hood at the tail end of the shootings there and dealt with that mess. She is one of ten people in this country of 330 million doing this work. And need I add that since the CT shooting and the bombings at the Boston Marathon, business is booming. Pun intended.
On the home IT front, I sympathize with Bob; doing that sort of project is way more hassle than it ought to be, whether with Windows or Linux and I’ve done similar work recently with wife’s falling-apart Vista laptop and a new one, and my own systems. I am about to permanently jettison Chrome in favor of Firefox, which we can trick out with various decent security add-ons and plug-ins, and am moving my gmail to Thunderbird. Also have Comodo firewall, Spybot, and Avast running, and the full boat of the CryptoHippie server bouncing, so that, for example, when I punch up the Google search engine I get it in German. Will also probably be using the Tor version of Firefox.
I gotta set up a regular backup routine ASAP, though; I figure just the data files. I can , I hope, simply reinstall the apps if Something Bad happens. The most important being Orifice 2010, LibreOffice, GnuCash, XMBC, and the security stuff. I am fah less worried about the RHEL box, which has stayed up throughout power surges and other mishaps.
We learned that lesson many years ago when they brought my mother-in-law back out from the ER and told us she was OK to go home. Fortunately, my wife is an RN; I don’t know how the average family could have coped. After several nightmarish days here, they relented and allowed a readmission.
What I would do in future: After dropping off at ER, take car back home and return on bicycles, pedal type. Then let them figure it out.
After dropping off at ER, take car back home and return on bicycles, pedal type.
Would a Segway be a possible alternative?
Yeah, Segway will do.
“……there shouldn’t be any shortage of unskilled labor to provide assistance like this to elderly people. ”
We have that here…about $5 billion item on our state budget. 350,000 at home health care workers to help 450,000 elderly and infirmed at minimum wage + salaries. Unionized, of course, a large percentage are middle aged, unskilled whose careers are now taxpayer funded to take care of their own parents at home. Another fraud perpetrated by the socialists. Initially sold to remove 5,000 indigents from nursing homes to save taxpayer money as home care would be cheaper. Of course, emptying out 20,000 nursing homes didn’t plunge them into backruptcy.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-22/epidemic-illustrates-dangers-of-not-vaccinating/4644938
Yep. If it were just their own kids that these anti-vax loons were endangering, it’d be bad enough. But they’re also endangering everyone else by damaging herd immunity. Sometimes I really do wish there were a hell, so these morons could rot there.
I’ll cut a little slack for the people who honestly believe vaccinations are harmful — not the christian scientists, but people who have seen claims of autism and whatever else and honestly believe it. And the fact that CDC or whoever claims that there is no causation between vaccination and autism or whatever else isn’t at all reassuring because of the steady stream of nonsense, misdirection, and outright bullshit coming from every government department.
Now, as for the shoddy scientists who find “correlations”, the sloppy reporters, and the activists who don’t care about the facts, bring on the fire and brimstone, baby.
I don’t cut them any slack at all. Their actions have killed many children, and not just their own. No real scientist or physician ever accepted the supposed link. Real scientists and physicians investigated and debunked it immediately after it was proposed. Every science and medical organization announced loudly that it was a crock. Every physician has been telling parents for the more than a decade since this crime against humanity occurred that the risks of vaccinating are absolutely minuscule compared to the risks of not vaccinating. Thanks to these evil people, we in the first world now have epidemics that should never have occurred. No, I don’t cut them any slack at all.
I don’t care what they believe. They’re too ignorant to be entitled to an opinion, particularly when they act on that opinion and put not just their own children but everyone else’s children and, for that matter, everyone else at risk. They are on the same level as people who are infected with HIV and have unprotected sex with other people without even warning them. They are murderers, plain and simple.
I see your point but am worried about slippery slopes. The ignorant and easily fooled aren’t qualified to have an opinion on vaccinations, true. Are they qualified to decide what kind of education their children should get? How to prepare for retirement? If they aren’t qualified, who decides?
It’s a knotty problem. Vaccinations (and antibiotics) are matters of public health, not mere personal well-being. The problem is finding the honest and competent people to make the decisions. Diogenes may be able to help with that.
“The problem is finding the honest and competent people to make the decisions. ”
Like the hordes of them infesting the warrens and rats’ nests of Leviathan bureaucracy. Like similar hordes just following orders in Germany during the 20s, 30s and 40s. And the other hordes of them in the Soviet Union, Red Chiner, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, the Eastern Bloc, etc.
It seems a pretty bad choice; between these people and the ordinary ignorant and gullible schmuck citizens who can barely tie their shoes or remember where the U.S. is on the map.
As you know, I’m about as strong a proponent of individualism as exists anywhere. But there are situations in which the collective good has to outweigh individual rights. Two of those situations I’ve written at length about over the years. The first is the vaccination issue. The second is antibiotics.
In both cases, incorrect behavior by one individual may have catastrophic consequences for a huge number of people. That’s why I favor legalizing all other drugs while putting much, much tighter controls on the use of antibiotics. The fact that we have MRSA and other multidrug-resistant bacteria is a crime, and it’s a crime that has killed many, many people.
My position on this is purely libertarian. The libertarian philosophy of not initiating force is often summed up as “your right to swing your fist ends at the other guy’s nose” and that’s exactly what we have here. Your right not to have your children vaccinated does not exist, because it inherently forces everyone else to assume risks that would be unnecessary were it not for your action. Same deal on abusing antibiotics.
Now, I would have no problem with offering parents an alternative: if you choose not to have your children vaccinated, you must all go live on this remote island. We’ll call it Hotel California, because you can check in but you can never leave. If they don’t have a problem with that, fine. Of course, the population there will soon be exterminated by epidemics, which perhaps would be just as well.
Agreed on all points, Bob. No argument from me there. And still remains libertarian.
Problem: “… because you can check in but you can never leave.”
No. You can “check out but you can never leave.”
I still wonder WTF that song is about.
If they aren’t qualified, who decides?
This, indeed this.
While vaccinations are clear-cut, it takes little effort to find cases that are less so. When a person is forced to an action, someone is doing the forcing. Who does one entrust with this power? Who decides when it will be used?
We can all agree that the current governments have gone much to far. Just yesterday I was having a discussion with my wife about the Swiss government’s insistence on licensing even the most trivial of professions: specifically professional dog sitters.
How does one draw the line: when can this power of coercion can be used and when not?
Well, my answer would be when there is a clear and present danger of widespread serious injury or loss of life.
I favor Firefox, not the least because it is easy to recover data. When we had the catastrophic failure of the main audio playout computer at the radio project, we got the spare computer from the other studio in place in a matter of hours. Part of that work, was getting Firefox browsing history and bookmarks moved over to the newer computer. In Firefox, it could not be simpler: info is stored in sqlite databases, and you just transfer those sqlite files from old computer to new (when Firefox is not running) and you have your bookmarks and history transferred. Much easier than the export/import method that is touted as the standard procedure.
In an accidental revelation today, I just learned what 90% of my problems with the main laptop have been. I know the fan has been running higher recently, but what I did not find out until today, is that the memory has been overheating and shutting down. I took the vacuum cleaner to the air channel and the fan is not even audible now that things are running so much cooler. The spot over the CPU is also considerably cooler to the touch (formerly, there were times when I could not even touch it, it was so hot), and page file usage has been cut to a fraction of what it has been recently. No more leaning on the hard drive swap file now, either. Firefox still eats up considerable memory, but it no longer drives memory quickly into the swap file.
I had a physical last week. My physician recommended a pertussis vaccination. I told him I thought that those were only for children. He said that there was an epidemic because of the morons who won’t vaccinate their children. (He didn’t call them morons, but he should have). While the disease is rarely serious in adults, it can be fatal for small children. I got the shot.
I’m doing pretty well for a middle aged fart born during the Truman administration. Blood pressure’s good. Cholesterol is very good. Weight isn’t too bad. I’m not on any medications. Just a few aches and pains and allergies.
Rick in Portland
I think people need to change their attitude on vaccinations. It’s not just about preventing them from getting sick. It’s also about the people that you get sick. A 2 month old baby (too young to vaccinate) shouldn’t die because he/she caught a disease from 12 year old whose parents thought not vaccinating would somehow prevent autism. Parents like that should be charged with manslaughter.
I am considering getting the Shingles vaccination. I had chicken pox so bad back in 1966? that my mother had to cover the windows with blankets because any light caused the pox in my eyes to burn. And itch like a …
A 59 year old friend just got Shingles on his face. His wife told me he did not come to church because he was crying too much. Yesterday he said that she was exaggerating a little but not a lot.
Problem: “… because you can check in but you can never leave.”
No. You can “check out but you can never leave.”
I still wonder WTF that song is about.
Here you go: “Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001) ” by Don Felder:
http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Hell-Life-Eagles-1974-2001/dp/0470450428/
Don Felder was the principal author of “Hotel California”. I like the part where he details the fist fight between him and Glenn Frey after performing one night. They were throwing beer bottles at each other during the performance and went after each other when the curtain closed the first time. There was no encore that night.
Don Felder starts the book talking about how he liked to start “Hotel California” leadin on a twelve string with a shot of cocaine up each nostril and a beer chaser.
So I fired up Thunderbird, which was installed by default, and tried to get it to import Barbara’s mail/contact data. I screwed around with that for a while, including installing a maildir->mbox converter, but no joy. So I disconnected the new system, reconnected the old system, fired up Kontact, exported her contacts as a .VCF file, and forwarded all her email to myself. I then disconnected the old system, reconnected the new system, blew away Kontact and all the old data, and reconfigured Thunderbird, including installing the Calendar plugin. I then forwarded all of Barbara’s email from my own system back to her and pulled it into Thunderbird. Geez.
I am big fan of FireFox and Thunderbird because they just work. They may be lowest common denominator but they just work (sm). I’ve got 15 GB of email in my office Thunderbird and it just works. I think one thing that makes them so strong is that they are ported to so many different platforms that their core code is very highly stressed.
Thunderbird is not going to be developed anymore after the mbox -> maildir conversion project. I am even wondering if that is going to be completed:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58308
I like Chrome because you can log in and sync. You could have logged in on the old machine (in Chrome using a Gmail account) – synced your contacts, bookmarks etc. to the cloud and the logged in to the new machine (same account) and et viola – everything is there. You can do that on tablets as well. I use two different accounts – one for personal contacts and bookmarks and one for work contacts and emails – whichever you choose when you log in (using the log in feature in the upper right of Chrome), is what you see in your browser. Your saved passwords and history are all there too.
I’ll then clean up her old system (a hex-core i7), install a 3 TB hard drive, and turn it into my new system.
Have you tried an SSD drive yet? It is simply night and day for a desktop system versus old rotating hard drives.
BTW, I am still waiting for my 100 PB holographic drive with no mechanical parts. IBM, you taunted us with holographic drives and never delivered.
http://www.cringely.com/2013/04/22/the-decline-fall-of-ibm/
Thunderbird is not going to be developed anymore after the mbox -> maildir conversion project.
Earlier today, I posted the following over on the replacement for RBT’s hardware forum. Seeing the comment above, I thought I’d seek input from here as well…
In late 2006, I had a hard drive failure on my main system. I started using my internet provider’s webmail access and never went back. At the time, I’d been using Outlook Express so I could have my ‘real address’ and my Hotmail accounts in the same place. I never got around to using the Live program for Hotmail after OE access was blocked and I have no idea what options might exist now that Outlook.com is the new normal.
My e-mail provider has sent a couple of messages recently regarding cleaning out my mail box. I’m wondering what is my best option for archiving the existing mail. I was thinking Thunderbird might be the safest bet (as it relates to open standards) even though I’ve never used it.
My initial plan was to download all mail, then sort it into folders by year, and then archive each year to CD/DVD, thumb drive, both, etc.
Any thoughts on a better way to do it, Thunderbird’s suitability, another e-mail client/application, etc.?
Diphteria is an ugly disease. Imagine listening to child try to breathe through an Alien membrane obscuring both his trachea and pharynx.
Perhaps someone could demonstrate the effect of NO vaccination by showing this on YouTube.
Tetanus is also Ugly, esp. in children: Muscle contractions thoughout the body, except, unlike strychine poisoning, they stay there and don’t relent. The body is kept in a total state of contracted spasm. Opisthotonus.
Someone ought to go to India and make note of these diseases, make YouTube videos in evidence of what happens when you don’t vaccinate your child, or the neighbor next door. Then show that YouTube to the fancy-pants parents in America who who think vaccination is a conspiracy theory.
Not me, but someone ought to do it.
jim`
My e-mail provider has sent a couple of messages recently regarding cleaning out my mail box. I’m wondering what is my best option for archiving the existing mail. I was thinking Thunderbird might be the safest bet (as it relates to open standards) even though I’ve never used it.
My initial plan was to download all mail, then sort it into folders by year, and then archive each year to CD/DVD, thumb drive, both, etc.
Any thoughts on a better way to do it, Thunderbird’s suitability, another e-mail client/application, etc.?
On a PC, Thunderbird. You will need a SSD drive and at least 4 GB (16 GB preferred. And time, lots of time.
On the web, gmail. There is a procedure to transfer all your email to a gmail account.
So, you argue that doctors are infallible on the issue of vaccines and if you don’t get vaccinated when they tell you to you’re either stupid or evil. Then you turn around and accuse those same paragons of wisdom of irresponsibly dispensing antibiotics, thus promoting antibiotic resistance.
So which is it, are doctors fallible or infallible. And if they’re fallible, how do we know when to do what they say? And do you really want to execute or exile people with a different answer to that question than yours?
Ah, presumably an anti-vaxer.
I never said physicians were infallible. Infallibility is not a concept in science or medicine. We leave spurious claims like that to religion.
What I said was that there is an overwhelming mass of evidence, all of which says that vaccination is a very good thing. There is absolutely zero evidence to support the anti-vaxer position. None. Anti-vaxers are essentially selfish pigs, attempting to minimize the risks to their own children while simultaneously increasing the risks of those other children and depending on the acquired immunity of those other children to protect their own children.
Nor did I accuse physicians of dispensing antibiotics irresponsibly. Perhaps you’re unaware that antibiotics are, for example, dispensed by the kiloton in animal feed, and that that’s almost certainly a major factor in antibiotic resistance.
I, OFD, am infallible.
You may consult me for answers to any and all questions.
(particularly if I can google them bad boyz up real fast)
42
Hey OFD, why do dogs eat USED kitty litter?
Oh all-knowing oracular OFD: Why?
“Hey OFD, why do dogs eat USED kitty litter?”
Because it tastes great! (And dogz are muy stupido.)
“Oh all-knowing oracular OFD: Why?”
Why not?
I’m not an anti-vaxer, per se, but I’m not a hyper-vaxer either. I respect people’s right to make their own decisions about their families healthcare, even if those decisions increase the chance of harm to some other person to some very small degree.
Everybody’s day-to-day choices about how to live their lives create risks (and benefits) for other people. Do you drink? Do you drive? Do you use electricity? If you do, then you are to some very small degree complicit in the deaths of those people who die prematurely from the occasional ill effects of those behaviors. You are a bit of a murderer. Those innocent people wouldn’t have died if you hadn’t selfishly decided that despite the statistical certainty of their death, it was a price worth paying for the counterbalancing benefit to you of those behaviors.
It’s a safe bet that if you donated money to a charity that works to help provide clean drinking water and mosquito nets to poor people in Africa, you would save a few lives. But it doesn’t follow that if you don’t donate money, then you are a selfish murderer.
If you drive a car, you are putting your immediate community at risk, because you might make a mistake one day and hit someone. The chance of that happening might be very small, but so is the chance that my not vaccinating my child will lead to another child getting a harmful case of some disease. If I went around accusing people who drive cars of being selfish pigs who are the same as murderers, people would say I was a kook.
You say there is a lot of evidence that vaccinations are a good thing. I think what you mean to say is that there is lots of evidence that vaccines will prevent disease without causing immediate harm. Prior to 2002 there was lots of evidence that hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women was a good thing too. But then researchers discovered that women taking the therapy had higher risks for breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes, and it was decided that in many cases the risks of the therapy outweighed the benefits.
As far as I have been able to determine, there is virtually no research on the long-term risks of vaccination. And there probably never will be any such research because, so the argument goes, it would be unethical to run a control arm of such a study with patients who do not receive a vaccine to see how they compare to patients who do. This kind of unscientific thinking is very common in medicine. Doctors come up with plausible reasons why some therapy is the best there is and then it becomes unethical, not to mention legally risky, to do anything else.
One of the more recent examples of a therapy that all the top doctors knew was the best on offer is bone marrow transplants (with chemotherapy) for certain kinds of breast cancer. Judges in the 1990s forced insurance companies to pay for the very expensive bone marrow transplants that were supposed to cure certain kinds of breast cancers. The top doctors of the day swore that this therapy was the best that was available and that as such it would be unethical to deny a woman the therapy, and the judges took their word for it. Sadly, it turned out that the top doctors of the day were mistaken and that in fact the risks of the therapy outweighed the benefits. Here’s a book that talks about the situation:
http://www.amazon.com/False-Hope-Marrow-Transplantation-Breast/dp/0195187768
For a general overview of the medical profession’s batting average, here’s an excerpt from page 27 of “Overtreated” by Shannon Brownlee:
“stunningly little of what physicians do has ever been examined scientifically, and when many treatments and procedures have been put to the test, they have turned out to cause more harm than good. In the latter part of the twentieth century, dozens of common treatments, including tonsillectomy, the hysterectomy, the frontal lobotomy, the radical mastectomy, arthroscopic knee surgery for arthritis, X-ray screening for lung cancer, proton pump inhibitors for ulcers, hormone replacement therapy for menopause, and high-dose chemotherapy for breast cancer, to name just a few, have ultimately been shown to be unnecessary, ineffective, more dangerous than imagined, or sometimes more deadly than the diseases they were meant to treat. By the 1990s, progressive doctors were talking about a new movement called “evidence-based medicine,” but well into the twenty-first century, much of what doctors do remains evidence-free.”
My personal take on the situation is this: The chance that a particular vaccination will harm me in any way is very small, say 1 in a 100,000. The chance that a particular vaccination will prevent me from acquiring a damaging case of some disease is equally small. And the chance that my not getting a vaccination will lead to a damaging case of some disease in some third party due to reduced herd immunity is even lower than either of the previous two chances. My conclusion is that I might as well flip a coin to decide whether to get a vaccine because the risks and benefits are both so small. I don’t actually have a strong opinion one way or the other about vaccines. But anybody who tries to bully me into getting a vaccine for the good of the herd is going to meet stern opposition, just on the general principle that I don’t like self-righteous, hypocritical bullies.
But anybody who tries to bully me into getting a vaccine for the good of the herd is going to meet stern opposition, just on the general principle that I don’t like self-righteous, hypocritical bullies.
If we have an epidemic of something in the future and we have a vaccination developed for it, you will be forced to take it for the good of the herd. And yourself. And pray that we get a vaccine before you get the disease.
I can remember taking the smallpox, polio and measles vaccines in the 1960s. They lined us all up all up at elementary school. No one was allowed not take the vaccines. But then again we still had quite a few people with polio in wheelchairs at that point. The last person that I knew with Polio died about a decade ago.
Also, if you are military in any form or fashion, you are forced to take / retake all existing vaccinations plus the experimental vaccinations. My son got 40+ shots before each of his trips to Iraq in the Marine Corps. One benefit of all those vaccinations was that his allergies went away for several years and are just now coming back. Plus they got the good flu vaccines with 20 different strains instead of the three strains that the USA populace gets.
Yes, you are an anti-vaxer and, like all anti-vaxers, you do not understand science. There is zero debate in the scientific community that the benefits of vaccination so hugely outweigh the incidental risks that it’s not even worth talking about. You’re talking about a tiny percentage of children who experience side-effects, almost always minor, versus plagues.
The immediate risk of vaccination is tiny, and there is zero evidence that there is any long-term risk whatsoever. The risk of not vaccinating is huge, both to the children who are not vaccinated and to the rest of the population who are.
You also apparently have no understanding of logic or of the concepts of avoidable and unavoidable risks or of risk/benefit analysis. And if you don’t have your own children vaccinated, you’re also a complete idiot.
One of the more recent examples of a therapy that all the top doctors knew was the best on offer is bone marrow transplants (with chemotherapy) for certain kinds of breast cancer. Judges in the 1990s forced insurance companies to pay for the very expensive bone marrow transplants that were supposed to cure certain kinds of breast cancers. The top doctors of the day swore that this therapy was the best that was available and that as such it would be unethical to deny a woman the therapy, and the judges took their word for it. Sadly, it turned out that the top doctors of the day were mistaken and that in fact the risks of the therapy outweighed the benefits.
Here you are talking about treatment for an ongoing illness. Do you even know anyone who had bone marrow treatments for breast cancer in the 1990s? I do not and I know several women who had breast cancer in the 1990s. And in the 2000s, my wife is one of those. Her treatment was a mastectomy, just like her aunts, with further lymph node removal due to a secondary tumor and tram flap reconstruction.
My father is now fighting bladder cancer due to radiation treatments in the 1980s for Lymphoma. Should he have blocked the radiation treatments in 1981 and 1982, now knowing that he would get bladder cancer 30 years later? No way. You do what you have to do to get yourself down the road.
You are confusing preventative care and active medical care. One is cheap and the other is incredibly expensive. One has no long term symptoms (other than the fact that the disease incidence is incredibly low compared to the unvaccinated) and the other is a total throw of the dice.
As far as I have been able to determine, there is virtually no research on the long-term risks of vaccination.
Here you go:
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html
And from http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/data.html :
“Since the first Vaccine Injury Compensation claims were made in 1989, 3,206 compensation payments have been made, $2,503,673,201.19 disbursed to petitioners and $97,337,594.87 paid to cover attorney’s fees and other legal costs.”
“To date, 9,454 claims have been dismissed. Of those, 4,130 claimants were paid $54,138,255.12 to cover attorney’s fees and other legal costs.”
With only $2.5 billion in payments over the last 25 years, I would say the long term effects of vaccinations are being actively studied in the USA. I guarantee that with a trust fund like this, lawyers are trying to attack it daily.