ouroborous's Comments (694)

“Always good to see the apologists saying "sure, he is doing the exact opposite of what we'd prefer, and in many ways the opposite of what he promised on the campaign trail, but he's still one of us, dammit! So get behind him! Rah rah rah!"

2012 is going to be one *interesting* election. I wonder how Obama will suddenly "reinvent" himself as a progressive again, or is he and the DLC crew just going to finally get honest and tell us progressives to go f*ck ourselves (not that they haven't been saying that for 15 years now, but never out LOUD)...”

“Indeed. Most of the college kiddies I knew who were all afire for Obama ultimately treated the presidential campaign like the biggest party EVER. There were even phrases coined for "campaign hookups." Why would that be, do you think?

This, like all rules, is rife with exceptions. But it's reasonable to be skeptical of the political motives of a large number of young people until you actually assure them that no, there will not be any alcohol present, and no, you won't get laid.

Sad, but true. I can't say I entirely blame them, because politics is just deadly boring and -- when you strip away all the pretty speeches -- horribly depressing.”

“Yeah, if only his *actions* carried a measure of grace, dignity, and respect. Sadly, only his SPEECHES evince these admirable qualities, and then he turns around and actually DOES the opposite of what he SAYS.

I'm guessing that, when boiled down, what these polls really mean are: "young people are more gullible than older people." But that is hardly news...”

“Yeah, I've long since given up on Obama. It's sadly amusing to watch the mainstream folks on HuffPo going from "hooray, Obama! The chosen one!" to "well, at least he's a progressive!" to "well, at least he's a Democrat" to "well, he's not any worse than Bush..."

Now THAT is a rousing endorsemen­t... I wish I could re-do my primary vote :-/”

“I voted for Obama, and Cenk is spot on with this column (as usual). But, let's be fair, Obama is doing a remarkably good job of sabotaging himself, by betraying virtually all of his campaign promises within a year of his election.

There are simply no good guys in this story, sadly.”

“Hooray for George Bush's 3rd term!

Bailouts for Big Business, but nothing for Main Street. Constant obstructionism against single payer, a robust public option tied to medicare, and any other meaningful health care reform (he wants a health care reform bill to pass so he can sign it and call himself the president who "fixed" health care, but he doesn't want anything in there that will upset his lobbyist friends). Relentless stonewalling to prevent real accountability for war crimes committed under Bush. And now, ramping UP Afghanistan after pretty much being elected on a platform of getting out of Iraq (here's a hint, Mr. President, we didn't just want you to swap one war for another, we wanted an END to this eternal, bloody "war on terror").

So yay, I'm so glad I got to vote for Mr. Bush's clone to have a third term. I think I'll be voting for someone else, come 2012.”

“My "vitriol," as you put it, is due to the fact that by NOT vaccinating, you are not just putting yourself at risk, but dozens of other people, too. Do you understand what it means to be a "silent carrier?" Do you know why epidemiologists track down "patient zero" so avidly?

The point is that this person is drawing a broad conclusion from one untested anecdote (if they are not simply someone with an agenda lying, which I've learned, happens sadly often in this debate). And the result of that bad conclusion may well be other people DYING due to someone reading this article deciding that vaccines are Bad and Scary and to be avoided.

This is a *public* health issue, not just a matter of personal choice -- that's why I get so personally worked up about it. Folks who say "hey, it's my choice" whether or not to get vaccinated against a pandemic, killer pathogen are, in my opinion, like folks who say its "their choice" to drive drunk. Yeah, it's your choice to weed yourself out of the gene pool if you want. But when your choice can take a dozen others with you (when you account for network effects), your choice starts looking a great deal more selfish.”

“Yes, this is unremarkably true. Just like younger people are less likely to die of it than older people. It's true, but hardly news, and hardly a justification for avoiding the vaccine, especially if you're in one of the higher risk groups.”

“Counter-study. Note that this data is ten years more current than yours. Also note that while the evidence is scant and debatable that vitamin C megadosing is of any real prophylactic effect for URTI's, there's mounting evidence that substandard vitamin D levels (which should *NOT* be megadosed, people -- again, talk to your DOCTOR) can LEAD to URTI's.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 4, 2009 (Status in this issue: Unchanged)
Copyright © 2009 The Cochrane Collaboration. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/14­651858.CD0­00980.pub3
This version first published online: 18 July 2007 in Issue 3, 2007. Last assessed as up-to-date: 19 May 2007. (Help document - Dates and Statuses explained).

Intervention Review

[Snip long medicalese text... note that the cohort for this study was about 50 times larger than the one you quote. More data == better data.]

Authors' conclusions
The failure of vitamin C supplementation to reduce the incidence of colds in the normal population indicates that routine mega-dose prophylaxis is not rationally justified for community use. But evidence suggests that it could be justified in people exposed to brief periods of severe physical exercise or cold environments.”

“Numerous studies have shown Vitamin C to be remarkably ineffective at warding off infectious disease. Sorry, it's just an old wives' tale.

Vitamin D, I'm less certain about (esp. considering that there's something of an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency going on right now).”

“Perhaps your doctor missed your diagnosis. So, do you really think that this one mistake -- assuming that it was a mistake -- invalidates the study of medicine, or simply shows that doctors are human and fallible?

What about a much more common case, a middle-aged man with high blood pressure who takes blood pressure medication and has his blood pressure drop to normal again? Should the doctor have, instead, prescribed avoiding wheat -- the .1% probability cause -- before he went after the far more common causes of these conditions?

The fact that there are outlying data points does not disprove the average distribution curve. One data point (and, in the fields of medicine and epidemiology, your entire life is just one data point) does not plot a curve. It simply means that every distribution curve has outliers, and it sucks if you're the one who happens to be an outlier. Most people are NOT outliers, so for most people, medicine's first recommendations are spot-on.”

“You are likely attempting to paint my response as an appeal to authority. The skeptic's dictionary defines the argument to authority fallacy as "a fallacy of irrelevance when the authority being cited is not really an authority. E.g., to appeal to Einstein to support a point in religion would be to make an irrelevant appeal to authority.­"

However, later on: "Finally, it should be noted that it is not irrelevant to cite an authority to support a claim one is not competent to judge. However, in such cases the authority must be speaking in his or her own field of expertise and the claim should be one that other experts in the field do not generally consider to be controversial. In a field such as physics, it is reasonable to believe a claim about something in physics made by a physicist that most other physicists consider to be true."

In short, doctors are the accepted "authority" on medicine in our culture, due to years of training and examination. They are imperfect, yes -- we all are, doctors, laymen, and homeopathic healers, alike. But in the field of medicine, doctors represent the best pool of "experts" on medical knowledge around, and the overwhelming consensus among medical experts is that vaccination is usually safe and quite effective.

Again, folks: ask your doctor if you have medical questions. DON'T rely upon coworkers, random 'net yahoos, or comedians for medical advice.”

“Absolutely do your own thinking.

But also have the humility to recognize that, without training in medicine, you are simply NOT as qualified to make judgments about the practice of medicine as a doctor is. He may make mistakes and he may be human, but ultimately you should get medical advice from a doctor, not from a comedian.”

“Ah, AA. The only "treatment" for a non-disease with a 5% "cure" rate (yes, you read that correctly, only one in 20 xA members gets sober for life) that is regularly court-mandated as the gold standard "cure."

South Park nailed it in one; AA is -- and always has been -- a cult.”

“And of course, you know for a fact that the RA was caused by the vaccine. I mean, yesterday I was constipated, and today it's pouring rain -- so clearly, my plugged bowels cause the rain to fall!

The fact that there has never been a *single documented case* of severe chronic autoimmune disease caused by vaccination shouldn't deter you! Just persist in your magical thinking, and make sure other people roll the dice with their (and their children's) lives.

This is why the vaccine denier movement needs to be shut down, and forcefully; they deny basic science and reason, and encourage people to engage in behaviors that risk their lives and the lives of people around them. It vaguely reminds me of the anti-seatbelt folks from the 70's and 80's; they would make up all kinds of "what if you're trapped in a burning car!" stories to "prove" their point that seatbelts are bad, rather than admit that they just didn't like them. Similarly vaccine deniers will try to find one contrived (and often outright fabricated) case "prove" that vaccines are bad, rather than just admit that they're scared of modern medicine.”

“And, to add to your point (which I agree with), we can only boost our immune systems against pathogens we've *been exposed to* (which is, incidentally, the WHOLE POINT of vaccines). Let's leave out for the moment the fact that many of the most dangerous viruses mutate far faster than our immune system can keep up (which is why we have a *seasonal* flu vaccine). Let's just consider that there is ONE virus to get immunity to, not a whole panoply of ever-mutating bad guys.

So, logically, the best way to "boost our immune system" against HIV -- if you buy Bill's "do it the natural way" argument -- would be to trade blood with an infected person. Who's going to volunteer for that? Anyone?

Me, I prefer that they just keep working on a vaccine. I much prefer a 0.0001% chance of a serious vaccine-related complication to a 0.5-1.0% chance of dying from the flu. To anyone with the ability to do basic math, the odds are much better in favor of vaccines.”

“Second, I think you underestimate the current of anti-science and anti-reason that you've tapped into. People are increasingly frustrated and afraid of technology and science. Rather than taking the time to understand that it is the misuse of science and technology that causes so many ills, they'd rather lash out at science and technology in general (using tools created by science, like the Internet -- they'll never see the irony, I suppose) than accept that it's human nature, not technology, that's at fault. So folks would rather cling to old, familiar -- if useless -- tools like homeopathy and positive thinking -- than work with demostrate­d-effectiv­e tools of managing risk like vaccination. By making your comments, you *empower and embolden* those who are already too willing to throw off all of the technology that makes the average lifespan today approaching 80, rather than the 35-40 it was in the Dark Ages.

So Bill, while I love your comedy and respect your wit, you were dead wrong on this subject, and even this bland mea culpa doesn't change that. The best ANY non-doctor should say about vaccination is what I always try to say: talk to your doctor about it if you have concerns, not me.”

“I concur on this point; while vaccination is important, it's very important to make sure Big Pharma doesn't make the decisions for us as to what's medically wisest.

Problem is that people are not really making this point. Most of the "vaccine deniers" (you know, the ones claiming that vaccines cause autism, or autoimmune disease, or don't ever work, and similar easily-disproved rubbish) are not making a nuanced argument that the profit motive is skewing vaccination decisions. They are simply making wild -- and false -- claims that vaccines are the DEVIL and that anyone who vaccinates their child should be locked up for child abuse, etc., ad nauseum. In other words, these are not rational people; at best they are frightened parents (not the most rational and stable mindset), and at worst they are intentionally deceptive.

As a result, you have almost-eradicated diseases like polio making a comeback. If people are scared of H1N1, just wait until nobody will go in public swimming pools due to polio... again.

That's the problem I have with Bill's argument. He may be more nuanced about it than he's letting on. But by going on record saying that "anybody who gets a flu vaccine is an idiot," he's yelling fire in a crowded building. Actually, he's yelling fire in a crowded building full of nervous, panicky people who are already looking around and asking each other -- "do you smell smoke?"

Words have power, and Bill used his irresponsibly.”

“Bill, the problem here is twofold.

First, people should not be getting medical advice from non-medical experts -- period. I'm not a doctor. More importantly, YOU are not a doctor. You pose a skepticism argument -- the famous "ah, but what if" debate tactic (which is not a great line of debate to begin with, but let's overlook that). Let me propose a counter argument; what if you're wrong? What if you *think* the risks of vaccination are much higher than they really are? What if you, in your witty, urbane way, convince someone to not get vaccinated for a common yet deadly virus like influenza and that person catches it as a result, and dies? Worse, what if they catch it and spread it on to ten other people, who spread it to ten other people, and so on. "Celebrities" like you pooh-poohing basic science are what LED to debacles like "intelligent design" -- people are much more likely to believe their favorite celebrity, especially one as bright and well-spoken as you are, than some no-name scientist from the CDC, even if **that scientist is precisely right, and you are precisely wrong**. In other words, the words of a celebrity have power, and by encouraging people to skip vaccination (even with the generic "I am not a doctor" disclaimer), you may well be putting lives at risk.

[cut for space, I'll see if I can continue below]”

“Sadly, yes.

(NB: I voted and campaigned for him. Can I have my money and time back?)”

“Please, please, PLEASE, people. Don't take health advice from random yahoo's on the internet (including me!).

If you're unsure about a medical decision (like vaccination), ASK YOUR DOCTOR what is the best course of action. Don't read blogs or ask coworkers or take advice from homeopathic medicine vendors; simply ask your doctor.

And if you believe that all doctors are in a giant conspiracy to cover up the truth in order to ... what, I'm never sure... Well, if you believe that, you need psychiatric care, but to be honest, you're probably too far gone to save.

For the rest of the people, the ones not living in a parnoid delusion: PLEASE... get medical advice from your doctor, not random windbags on the internet.”

“Can you show me any controlled studies showing a large cohort of adverse effects?

And by "controlled," I mean RCT's (double-blind), or large epidemiological studies?

You see, in science and medicine "I did X and something bad happened soon afterward" really doesn't count for much (correlation -- the fact that two things happened roughly at the same time -- does not imply causation, or one thing causing the other thing).

I sympathize with your illness, but you simply have no proof that it was caused by the vaccine, I'll wager. And even if it were (and, I've done a fair amount of research, and AFAIK, there isn't a single well-documented case of what you describe), that would still be the odd, one-in-a-million example. Statistically, it would STILL be wiser for people to vaccinated against killers like H1N1, even if there were a one-in-a-million risk from the vaccine (since the risk of serious side effects of the flu is about a thousand times larger than that).

Sorry, but convincing people to avoid the flu vaccine is irresponsible to the same degree that shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is -- if you convince anyone, lives may be lost.

Get vaccinated, people; it's a no-brainer.”

“Let's see...

On the side of vaccination: the AMA, the JAMA, the NEJM, the BMA, and just about every doctor and scientist on the planet.

On your side, some youtube videos and a web site that makes money selling holistic medicine.

Hmm, wonder which side is more likely to have real science and reason going for it... every doctor and scientist on the planet, or the lunatic fringe and the homeopathy pushers.

Hmm...”

“Reading the comments to this post -- sadly predictable responses by those who deny both science and reason -- makes me despair for the fate of the human race.

The science and facts are out there. If you read almost any medical journal, you'll see that:

1) Vaccination is considered one of the biggest public health victories in human history, for good reason. Up until recently, we had nearly stamped out diseases like polio. Nowadays -- interestingly, coinciding with the rise of the vaccine denier movement -- these bugs are now on the rise again.
- and -

2) Vaccination DOES carry risks, but the risks are minuscule, especially compared to the diseases they prevent. Despite anecdotal claims of "I got sick right after I got vaccinated" (people need to understand the phrase "correlation is not causation"), numerous controlled studies have determined that public vaccination programs like the H1N1 program are extremely safe.

Many of the vaccine deniers show serious signs of mental illness; assuming vast conspiracies and cover-ups is a hallmark of paranoia. Is this who you want to cast your health care lot in with?

Don't take my word for it; ask your family doctor if it's safe. And if you don't/won't trust him or her for health advice, then you're probably too far gone into paranoia to be reached (and are unlikely to have read this far, anyway).”

“Well, honestly, if they would just separate out the legal and contractual obligations and rights of marriage from the religious aspects of it -- if government got out of the business of, in effect, tacitly endorsing what amounts to a *religious* ceremony -- we wouldn't be having this debate.

For instance, hospital visitation rights shouldn't be decided by law, but by the individual. Health care benefits should be offerable to anyone you choose at the spouse/domestic partner rates.

In other words, the government should just entirely get out of the business of "blessing" certain unions and frowning upon others. And then this whole gay marriage issue would go away; marriage would be what it should be: a strictly *religious* ceremony. Your choice to have one or not, but if you don't like they way that they're run, your beef is with the *church*, not with government.

But, for whatever reason, that simple, obvious solution will never be implemented.”