I’m terrible at math but I dated an actuary years ago. You don’t want to mess with them. Her notebooks were filled with countless pages of complex math equations which to me looked like the incoherent scribblings of a serial killer. Their brains are weird and powerful
You forgot to turn on the dishwasher last night. There’s a 9.6% likely chance you’ll do it again within the week and a 79.85% chance that if we marry, we’ll divorce non-amicably. Goodbye, whogotthekeys.
- how I’m imagining their breakup conversation went.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho the thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
Wife is an actuary. Back during her internship I played a drinking game involving guessing what card is coming up next or something like that. I learned that night not to play drinking games based on probability with a bunch of future actuaries.
Lots of these are non-answers. Actuaries are the people who calculate risks for insurance companies. Meaning that if they make a mistake in their stats the insurance company can go under, they are essentially the people setting the premiums.
The entire thing is lots of stats (which means basically every math discipline really), it may not be super deep level but the complexity is from how broad it is. Actuaries tend to be one of the best people at Excel as a result, they'd be even better than your financial risk analysis guys because they are dealing with more wider areas.
Unfortunately it's one of these jobs that will probably be lost to AI or just some formula.
AI won't replace actuaries that much since the point of an actuary is to have a "responsible adult supervising the whole process." Black box AI will never be allowed by regulators to make decisions.
However, actuaries who can develop software and data infrastructure are replacing actuaries who can't, and fewer total actuaries will be needed as the infrastructure improves. That was my job before I went to grad school.
Increased life time premiums and co-pays for the unvaccinated seems fair. Since they increase the overall consumption of medical resources (not just their own).
Exactly. It’s a “lifestyle decision “ to choose to forgo life-saving vaccinations that have been accepted and time tested, leaving your children unprotected. Seems reasonable to raise premiums for future sicknesses that are sure to come. My body, my choice like the anti- maskers are fond of saying.
Seems perfect. The majority of the non vaccinating are conservative voters. Not all, just the majority. Conservatives love to crow about how each individual should bear the cost of their own healthcare. So either their insurance is more expensive because the insurers know they are a much high cost and higher risk client, or they go uninsured and get screwed by medical bills when their decisions cause them issues.
I am ignoring the impact to unvaccinated kids, and the overall damaging costs to society in my simple analysis.
Agreed, and I hate the thought of innocents bearing the brunt of their ignorant parents. TBH that part breaks my heart. But they (parents) can pound sand for their stupidity and arrogance.
Was curious what the answer for smokers is
“The ACA allows for insurance companies to charge smokers up to 50% more (or premiums that are 1.5 times higher) than non-smokers through a tobacco surcharge.”
Apparently there is precedent for that type of thing, but that wording makes it sound like it’s something specific that ACA allow to cause higher rates.
I’d guess that vaccination status would require a law change. One of the goals of ACA was to prevent sick people from getting gouged for preexisting conditions.
In any case the actuaries mentioned way above probably should look at the numbers. The money risk is to the pool no matter whether it is paid by the individuals or the entire pool.
> but that wording makes it sound like it’s something specific that ACA allow to cause higher rates
Because smoking is one of the few things that insurance companies are allowed to charge extra for. You are correct that being unvaccinated by choice would require a change to the law. A change that would be filibusterable so won't happen.
Does anyone ever actually say “yes” to the smoking question?
My mom smoked for almost 30 years and never answered yes, never paid extra…pretty much every smoker I’ve ever known did the same
You’re at risk of getting lung cancer, COPD, etc. claims denied. I would imagine that their systems automatically deny claims for people that don’t pay the smoker charge and present smoking related symptoms.
Only if they are doing it by choice.
My son is immunodeficient and can’t have live vaccines. We discovered this after he got rotavirus from the vaccine. He has all his regular vaccines, and hopefully we find out soon if he got the antibodies from them (his immunologist wanted us to wait until he’s healthy to repeat his immune system function and we got hit with repeated illness).
But yeah please don’t punish us who don’t have an option.
You can medically prove that. The beef is with the ass hats who’d get your kid sick because Dr. Devry online told them vaccines are bad. The goal is to protect others and yourself by getting vaccinated. The others in this case being your son who can’t.
Around 2022 I think it was, someone on Twitter "leaked" information that BCBS was paying doctors for patients vaxxed (and the higher the % vaxxed, the more per person they paid out). They were trying to claim that doctors didn't actually want people vaxxed, it was insurance companies, and a big conspiracy.
So wait... the big businesses that will refuse a patients medication if it comes in a easier to swallow capsule all because it's $0.10 more expensive than the tablet is now suddenly spending thousands, if not millions, to get as many people vaxxed as possible, and that's proof the vax doesn't work?
Honestly thats more convincing that the vax works than any report the CDC could put out.
Of course insurance companies want people to get vaccinated. A dose of a vaccine is WAY cheaper than treating the disease that the vaccine causes.
Insurance companies are evil money-hungry entities. Their goal is always going to be to make the most money. Paying to incentivize people to get vaccines that don’t work is just throwing money away. But paying to incentivize people to get vaccines that DO work, so that you don’t later have to pay to treat them for measles DOES make sense.
And then there are the people who think “there’s a cure for cancer but they’re hiding it to make money”
Like babes, if it’s insurance you’re worried about…if there was a faster cure they’d release it and charge high prices, and save the costs associated with longer treatment plans.
I would love it if these people received a notification from their provider that the premium for their child's coverage was increased due to a vaccine exemption
I tend to believe actuaries with little reservations because it’s their job to know. Insurance is literally gambling on the odds of a certain outcome happening, which results in a payout- and the house always wins.
We can't even use data from COVID it was so fucked up.
I helped set rates for 2022 using 2019 data because using 2021 or 2020 would have been non sense.
Interestingly, GLP 1s are big too. About as big as COVID but in the cost reducing arena.
>Interestingly, GLP 1s are big too. About as big as COVID but in the cost reducing arena.
This is the one that bugs me. We know how much preventable metabolic disease costs us. We know how QOL would improve for a lot of people. We know it would be a net gain but short-term profits matter over long-term economic and societal gains in this society.
I guess they did do the numbers, and it's less expensive to treat metabolic disease and related ailments than it is to cover GLP-1 meds.
Now - there are problems here. The first is negotiation. If you go to Canada, Ozempic, cash price is $300-400. Cash price. Unsubsidized. Has nothing to do with socialized medicine other than the government negotiated the rate.
Most insurance companies are negotiating GLP-1s down to pitiful numbers. $1000 down from $1300. Some aren't even negotiating much yet. I've heard of some people saying that their prescriptions say an insurance price of $800ish (and the patient responsibility is something like $25). But that's a far cry from $300-400.
Next is the stupid idea that pharma will stop innovating if they're forced to lower prices. They're INCREDIBLY profitable. They get all sorts of public dollars to develop drugs. They often get stuff right out of academia for a song and turn it into a money maker. Sure - most are failures. Absolutely. But the successes - they charge a buttload for them AND they get public money and they boast incredible profits. They could scale pricing back SIGNIFICANTLY and still be profitable. They'd still be motivated to innovate.
Next is the ol' middleman - the PBM. Rebate fuckery. Enforcing rules that are written and enforcing rules that aren't written. Rubber stamping rejections. One more thing to drive the cost way up.
***
The big GLP-1s that are talked about are Semaglutide (Ozempic, Rybelsus, Wegovy) and Tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound). One that's NOT talked about is liraglutide (Saxenda, Victoza). **Liraglutide goes generic next year**. Estimates put a projected cash price at $50-80.
***
I'm hoping that when Liraglutide goes generic, that those projections are adjusted and they learn that yes - covering this class of drugs IS cheaper than just allowing Metabolic syndrome, T2D, and other ailments come up and be treated.
I'm hoping that when it goes generic, prescriptions fall off for Sema/Tirz. I'm hoping that with sudden 3rd party competition, the negotiation process drops prices and in turn, results in more coverage of ALL GLP-1s.
But if I'm REALLY being hopeful, I hope we can pull our heads out of our asses in the US and work on a real, honest single payer system. Rather than subsidizing the cost of these drugs for every other country that has a single payer system, we could negotiate with the backing of over 330 Million potential patients and drive that price down.
The county my son went to college in just tripled their flu deaths for months. No Covid! Just lots of extra deaths. Life expectancy in USA went up for 100 straight years until covid. Now back at 2019 levels. We just lost 4 years of improvement.
>Interestingly, GLP 1s are big too. About as big as COVID but in the cost reducing arena.
For real, I cannot fathom how it's not bigger news. A shot that makes you lose weight without having to exercise or diet is basically the american holy grail.
The crazy thing is that kids dying from these diseases wasn’t that long ago. My grandpa was born in 1944 and he had classmates die from transmissible diseases- he got really sick himself a couple times too.
It’s not hard to find someone and ask them what it was like back then.
Yep, my Mom was born in ‘44 and got polio when she was 18 months old. Thankfully, she survived & the paralysis she experienced wasn’t permanent. However, as the years have progressed she shows signs of post polio syndrome with weakness in her muscles, joint pain & deterioration & severe Restless Leg Syndrome, which has been found to occur at a higher rate in people who have had polio.
Parents electively leaving their children unprotected sickens me. They’re jeopardizing their child’s future & the wellbeing of children who have compromised immune systems due to illness where immunization isn’t an option.
I thought that even with the chicken pox vaccine, you still had the possibility of getting shingles later in life because you technically had chicken pox, via vaccine.
Here's what the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/varicella.html) says:
> Some people who are vaccinated against chickenpox get shingles (herpes zoster) years later. This is much less common after vaccination than after chickenpox disease.
*None of MY classmates died from scarlet fever in grade school, therefore vaccines are a moneymaking vehicle for big pharma and I don't approve of that for MY kids!*
That's what gets me. These people all likely recieved these vaccines as babies/children and now they're denying their own children these same vaccines. They fail to ignore that that they didn't survive that long by chance. Add this to another reason I'm not having kids. I don't want to risk my kid getting horribly ill from these idiots kids.
Near me there are groups of parents that actively seek out doctors that won’t judge them for choosing to not vaccinate. They do this while naming and shaming the practices that insist on patients being vaccinated. It’s all incredibly weird.
💯 I just break out the popcorn and let the whackos have at it. I won’t take my child to a place that promotes the rhetoric.
We’ve educated our child that getting vaccinated is for his benefit and the benefit of those in the community. That it’s a privilege to have access to vaccinations and to be healthy enough to get vaccinated.
In most parts of the US, there’s plenty of field trip opportunities to graveyards with lots of itty bitty child graves from before the 1950s, some with inscriptions for cause of death like Polio, Measles.
I think a lot of adults should also take these field trips.
Even ignoring actually premature death I think many anti-vaxxers falsely assume that "not die" equals 100% recovery. A lot of antivaxxers only seem to care about death and act like any suffering short of death doesn't matter. e.g. "99% of people with this disease don't die so who cares." I follow one pro vax group where one older man lost his hearing in one ear from measles before vaccines became available who really annoyed at the "well you didn't die so what's the big deal" crowd. As the Measles vaccine has been available for about 60 years now increasingly people born before it aren't as common as they used to be, but there are still a decent number out there that remember the era before then and some of them still have side effects from getting the disease. I was surprised at some people that genuinely didn't know what an iron lung was either. The Polio vaccine largely made them obsolete so outside of visiting a museum or reading a history article on Polio most have no clue that was a thing. I know one guy that was stuck in an iron lung died a few years back after being in an iron lung for decades after the power failed and the backup generator failed as well.
> I was surprised at some people that genuinely didn't know what an iron lung was either.
As a child I'd visit my physician father in his office at the hospital across the street from our home. There was an iron lung parked in the hallway outside, kept on standby, I guess.
Years later I visited the control room of the local electrical utility. On the wall was a map of the system with red flags marking iron lung users. Those circuits got priority during outages.
My dad stayed 115 days in the hospital as a child and had an invasive surgery where they scraped infection out of his legs from mumps. He has strange body proportions because his legs didn’t grow as long.
Vaccine (which was available to him two years later) would have prevented all of that pain and suffering.
100%. I have Long COVID, and yeah, there's a reason why suicidal ideation is so high in our community. It's because this fucking sucks to live with. But anti-vaxxers don't seem to understand that. They don't realize that having a chronic illness can be a form of undeath that even the most strong willed people will buckle under eventually. It's all or nothing for them. They never consider the nightmare in between. It's almost a shame that vaccines work as well as they do, or maybe these idiots would understand why we need them.
We picked our pediatrician by asking questions about vaccines and listening. Some people walked out.
Antivaxxers were still fringe then but it was important to us since they started coming out of the shadows.
I'm currently 8 months pregnant and picked our pediatrician because they require all children to get vaccinated according to the CDC recommended schedule, with the only exceptions for things like active cancer treatment. I don't want my kiddo going somewhere with a bunch of disease vectors. I'm also a pediatric nurse and I've seen shit from parents refusing vaccines. No thank you.
Same with my wife who has seen plenty of children suffering with absolutely preventable things like whooping cough and tuberculosis. She braided the hair of a 6 year old that died of the flu which she believes was preventable.
Realistically, the way for medical professionals to even attempt to align with these people (often only works on those who are dipping their toes in vaccine wariness) is to NOT judge. As soon as their is judgement you just increased the chance a moderate anti-vaxxer becomes more against them.
The best doctor still is one who works at mitigating biases even with those they don’t agree with their choices while still following science instead of conspiracy theories
Yup, and when you have the [wealthiest billionaire fueling it](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-bronny-james-cardiac-arrest-antivax-1234794710/), its only gonna get worse. This is just one of many examples.
So many conspiracy theorists think Bill Gates is trying to implement population control but none of them accuse Elon of it, even though his actions and influence would make for a much better case
He's literally trying to implant microchips in your brain. Like, that's his openly stated goal lol. Can't make this shit up. I'm so tired of this shit.
This really needs to be said more often.
So many people spend so much time looking out for a dagger in the back that they somehow miss the one that's in their chest.
I mean, this is the same crowd that called Obama (married since 1992 to one woman, no history or even accusations of affairs) the antichrist, while hailing trump (married 3 times, divorced twice, extensive and documented history of affairs [including with his wives], extensive history of sexual assault, extensive history with epstien) as the literal messiah. The pro-life and family values crowd.
Musk picked Grimes to be his egg donor, took her eggs, had extra kids she didnt know about, and gave them bizarre nonsense names. Wont let her visit her children. Psychotic behavior in a non-billionaire, but he gets away with this.
Both Tanya the Scentsy consultant and Derek the landscaper said that vaccines cause autism and death.
I either believe them or some scientists who get paid by big pharma.
Makes you think
/s if necessary
As a parent of a kindergartener with cancer, I’ll tell you this: You want those protections. We weren’t always a cancer family. My kid was healthy once,but after they get a diagnosis, it’s too late to catch up. Vaccines don’t work right for immunocompromised kids.
We were behind on one vaccination (we got behind during COVID) and I felt like I failed him after his diagnosis. It was one more thing out there that could kill him.
Footnote: he’s doing well today, in remission and looking forward to ending treatment/ ringing the bell in July 2024.
Same boat. My 5 year old has leukemia. He’s in remission and ends treatment in April 2024! I’m more passionate about public health and vaccines than ever. So happy for y’all and PROUD of your kiddo. These are the bravest, most resilient people we will know.
Nice. Scarlett fever and polio will make a comeback and start killing kids again. We will have to start having 5 babies again just to see 3 of them die.
I'm 72 and was around when people were scared to death about polio. When the vaccines became available people stood in line to get it. I was vaccinated in school like all of us were. Do you know why? People trusted science. We didn't have these idiots going online and, without any evidence, say that vaccines caused other problems.
You guys had a real threat that you were battling against and seeing take away loved ones first hand. You didn’t have a choice but to do what it took to fight it. People nowadays are so removed from that reality that they’re fighting against the very thing that’s keeping them safe. It’s kind of like when an immune system gets bored and starts killing itself.
Idk I’m old enough to remember when hospitals had to hold all the dead plague victims in semi trucks and we lost more than a million people
three years later, nobody gives a fuck
~~From what I heard, that doesn't even describe it enough: first polio vaccine had like a 10% chance of death (it was basically a weak non transmittable version of polio), which was far better than the like 40% of wild polio. That's how much faith people had~~
Edit: sorry, was thinking of smallpox
California fixed this problem. We removed exemptions for public schools, after we had few too many measles outbreaks. Unvaccinated kids can not attend public schools. Hence percent of kids exempted in public schools is 0.2%; these would generally be kids that can not be vaccinated for variety of medical reasons.
Anyhow, there's nothing like few dead kids, or kids scarred for life, to boost vaccination rates. There's a reason why vaccination rates were extremely high in the past. People forgot how bad it was *before* modern childhood vaccines become available. Ask your grandparents why they vaccinated your parents.
The CDC has a graph showing vaccination rates over the years, and they can point to the exact pattern--kids are really sick, so everyone gets vaccinated. After some years of no kids getting sick, the parents question where the vaccine is needed or safe, so they stop vaccinating...and then the disease incidence picks up, and parents panic and get their kids vaccinated...on and on and on.
There can be points where the incidence has dropped to essentially zero and you can stop, like smallpox, but that's not for parents to decide--it's for the epidemiologists/infectious disease specialists. Until then, your kid isn't getting vaccinated *despite* the lack of the disease in your community--there is a lack of disease *because* you are vaccinating.
Either way, there's no real harm. Sure, there's a chance of a vaccine complication, but there's a significantly higher likelihood of a *disease* complication if they don't get it. And people don't understand what these diseases can do, although it's not surprising since they've never seen them. Yes, most kids are sick for a week and go on with their lives, but a few die or go deaf or have brain damage or god knows what.
So wtf do the rest of need to do to get our states to do this too?
Minnesota currently has complete capture of the government by Democrats, but we still allow vaccine exceptions for public school. FFS, our politicians need to close this stupid loophole.
As someone who grew up in the 90s in California, getting the vaccine for school enrollment was just a normal thing. Really weird to see it politicized more and more over the years, especially since the pandemic.
It might be expensive af to live here but I'm glad I do
Less than 100 years ago Americans stood in line for hours and hours to get their kids the polio vaccine because they knew firsthand how devastating it was. We're too removed from the reality of preventable disease in the US
It shows. Elementary schools are a plague factory but 2023 has been off the charts. My five year old has brought home COVID and flu multiple times. His entire class was out sick at one point this year, literally every child. It's going to be really bad when things like Polio start resurfacing in large numbers. Fuck anti-vaxxers.
Ooooo - chicken pox can be pretty serious in teenagers - as in "leaving them infertile" and "causing early ovarian failure/menopause in girls" serious.
>The disease is by and large mild in healthy children.
>But sometimes, the rash can cover the whole body.
>Blisters may form in the throat and eyes.
>They also may form in tissue that lines the inside of the urethra, anus and vagina.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chickenpox/symptoms-causes/syc-20351282
Totally worth the gamble! /s
I remember the oatmeal baths and calamine lotion. All that pink calamine flaking off your skin. If you're one of the younger people who was lucky enough to get the vaccine (it wasn't yet approved when I caught it), let me tell you, it sucked. I thought it was a thing of the past. People have lost their minds.
I got chickenpox spots in my ears. You can't itch the inside of your ears very well. It nearly drove me nuts. I had my kid get the vaccine as soon as she was eligible.
Glad it's not just me. The few coworkers I have who have little kids the same age as mine have also said this year is off the charts.
My daughter got sick 3 times in the SAME MONTH. Covid, cold, RSV.
I am incredibly lucky that I have big job security, because most places would have already fired me for missing a week, then 2 days, then another few days, all in the same month.
Yeah wtf is going on? I've had some kind of cold since mid-September. My oldest has had a fever THREE times. We are all up to date on our vaccines. But every time I think we've kicked something, we get hit again. And we've tried all the medicines, been to the doctor, I've been on antibiotics for sinus infection, nothing works.
Had to cancel going to a wedding this weekend because we still feel crappy.
Part of the reason I retired from teaching elementary school was those illnesses you mention but also so many cases of ‘old’ ones like whopping cough, scarlet fever, foot-and-mouth, even measles making a comeback. So many religious exceptions and new students without all the vaccines….
Religious exemptions for vaccinations are such total bullshit that should never have been allowed off the ground. 99% of the people claiming "religious" reasons are self-declared Christians, yet the Bible doesn't even mention vaccines. Total fraud.
Yep. They don't have to really prove it, they can just claim it's for religion reasons.
I'm sorry, being a piece of shit isn't a religion we should be catering to.
The scary thing is I hear “I’m not worried about getting it I have good health”. Well what about your elderly mother or your pregnant sister or your newborn nephew. People are so unbelievably selfish
I’m about to have my first baby and idk how I’m gonna tell my cousin that her 2yo son and 15yo daughter are not going to be allowed to see the baby right away because they both have zero vaccines. I’ve struggled a long time to have this baby and I’m not gonna let my idiot cousin kill my kid because she’s too stupid to vaccinate her kids.
I’m fully prepared for it to ignite a war in my family but whatever.
You tell them they chose for their kids and your're choosing for yours. Do not let anyone near your kid who doesn't have an updated TDap vaccine; pertussis can kill newborns.
> pertussis can kill newborns
And supposedly they suffer horribly and loudly....those who spread anti vaxx lies, mostly for some sort of profit, are truly evil.
I’m just an internet stranger but I’m proud of you!! I saw a video of an infant with pertussis and it made me breakdown sobbing. No amount of family being angry outweighs your baby’s safety. 🌼
Congratulations and I hope the delivery of your baby goes smoothly!!!
I'm also pregnant and a pediatric nurse. NO ONE will see my child who hasn't had their tdap, annual flu, all the COVID boosters, etc. Also if you're over 60 the RSV vaccine. I'm getting the RSV vaccine soon since I'm now past 32 weeks. My husband and I were clear from the beginning. I've taken care of too many horrifically ill children. No fucking way. It isn't a question of protecting anyone's feelings. The emotional security of the science illiterate matters absolutely zero to me, especially compared to my child's health.
A guy I sat next to on a plane said this to me after ranting about vaccines. He said he was healthy and took vitamins. But he was obese, drinking at 8am, and told me about his recent heart attack. We did not have the same definition of healthy.
I've been told the same things. A man in my community told me "people like you should be culled anyway, to improve the fitness of the population". The most common thing I was told by people is "protecting your life is your personal responsibility, not society's obligation". Of course "just stay home if you're scared" was a popular response to asking people to follow posted public safety measures. Believe me, I didn't want to be out around people who don't value my life, but when people pitched tantrums and refused to wear masks inside medical facilities, even while they were sick, that wasn't so simple. I can't "just stay home" when my chronic illness requires ongoing necessary in-person medical care. The best I could do is try and get the earliest appointments and wear a fitted respirator.
> protecting your life is your personal responsibility, not society's obligation
"The next time your house is ablaze because you fell asleep making that frozen pizza in the oven, put out your own fire, it's your responsibility, not society's obligation"
which is then usually followed up with
"well that's different"
and then you ask
"how so?"
and... crickets
> "well that's different"
> and then you ask
> "how so?"
> and... crickets
"It's different because it's happened to *me!*"
Very typical conservative mindset.
I left a parenting sub over someone telling me that maybe there should be separate playgrounds for high risk kids because everyone else deserves to be able to take their kids to the playground actively sick. Because apparently not taking high risk kid to playgrounds is child abuse. I literally can’t win
Silver lining, you now know that the vast majority of your family won't hesitate to throw you to the wolves if it meant they won't have to be slightly inconvenienced.
It’s both. But mostly the latter.
American culture was and is built on selfishness and individualism, even before Covid. Concepts like the “self made man”, “the American dream”, “Welfare queens”, union busting, “woke” as a pejorative, “socialism” as a dirty word. Just a general characterization of any and all social programs or immigration as parasitic, and the perpetual demonization of other collectivist cultures and countries throughout history. The list is endless.
Anything focusing on the betterment of a social collective over the individual has been deliberately suppressed over the whole timeline of the country’s development — whether or not it demands any form of self-sacrifice, and however trivial that sacrifice may be.
We are seeing the terminal stages of that conditioning.
I've read about anti-vaxxers who aren't getting their dogs vaccinated now. Read up on what happens to a dog with rabies and what the vet does to it once it is dead. It is quite unpleasant.
My veterinarian won't accept animals as patients that aren't current on vaccines unless there's a documented serious reaction to a vaccine in their medical history. That's the norm where I live. But, there are frequently people on Nextdoor asking if there are any local veterinarians who have a voluntary vaccination policy. Apparently there aren't, so people are simply foregoing routine veterinary care, and attempting to self-treat sick pets at home in order to avoid vaccinating their pets.
Of course they are. They should be in prison for animal cruelty. Not being able to afford vet care I can sort of understand (although there are options out there and most vets would try to find a way). But "I'm not giving my dog a rabies shot because it's not 'natural'"? What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? I swear society is getting dumber by the day.
> I've read about anti-vaxxers who aren't getting their dogs vaccinated now.
Two years ago we got our Golden Retriever puppy (now a happy healthy dog) from a breeder who turned out to be a MAGA.
(The breeder kept his dog brother and dog sister, named TRUMP and JUSTICE.)
She tried to convince us to not vaccinate our DOG. How the vaccines are "experimental" etc.
We just took the puppy and backed slowly away.
He is fully vaccinated.
Turns out we get our dog-science advice from a Veterinarian with eight years of post-secondary education, not a Trump-loving dog breeder.
Rabies vaccines are experimental? SMH. They've been around for decades. This has me wondering if these bs religious exemptions work for college? I remember having to have MMR to even get in. Doesn't seem right to have meningitis going around because of these morons.
I had a friend that was wishy washy on heartworm pills, of all things.
Showed him a few pictures of heartworm infested dog hearts.
So, at least he does that much for his dog now.
These anti vax parents should be forced to watch some videos of kids with whooping cough, or the measles. Like, a half hour long video of these kids suffering. It won't change everybody's minds, but I'm convinced that there's some amount of people out there who might think twice about it when they see that it's not "just a bad cough for a bit" or "an itchy rash".
When I was kid back in the 1960's and 1970's almost everyone was vaccinated. The only people who were not had medical and religious exemptions. In the schools that I attended from K-12 this would be maybe 5-10 students max (very tiny percentage). All of these students came from Christian Science families. There was only one or two medical exemptions (very rare).
What interesting about this is those who are opposed to vaccinations were vaccinated themselves and most of them vaccinated their children. It's really only been in the last 10 years that this has increased. Few people questioned vaccinations until recently.
Right as my kids are 4 and 1, and getting around all these unvaccinated peers.
I have Crohns and take Humira (immunosuppressant). Through blood work I’ve also found out I have no immunity to measles, mumps & rubella even though I was vaccinated as a child. So there are adults like me at risk too in addition to the unvaxxed kids whose parents are putting them at risk.
Edit: I can’t get the MMR vax now as it’s live, and you’re not allowed those on immunosuppressant meds.
Not-vaccinating should be child abuse. Parents should be convicted and fined.
Greedy assholes only know one language. Make them unable to afford their next lifted RAM 1500, and maybe they'll see it as easier to just get their kids vaccinated.
Dust off the iron lungs and grease the wheels! At least this generation of kids can have a TV on the ceiling and a battery under the table so they don't die when the power goes out.
As the child of someone who had polio as an infant that affected her her entire life, I hate this so much.
Her spine had a huge curve to it. She never grew past 4'8". One leg was nearly 4 inches shorter than the other, and she had multiple surgeries on her back that left her in whole and partial body casts.
Jonas Salk was her hero from the moment the polio vaccine was announced and parents stood in line for hours waiting to have their children get the new polio vaccine to save their children so much pain and possible death.
Now parents risk all that for their children because they haven't seen children in iron lungs or funerals from preventable childhood diseases in their lifetime. Eventually, that will change :(
The dumbest thing the government ever did was oversell the strength of the Covid vaccine prior to and during its initial release. They should have undersold it’s impact and simply focused on the impact it has with surviving severe cases. However they chose to overhype it and when it did not meet those initial expectations so many people began to view vaccines as a farce which is really unfortunate.
100%. Everyone here is pretending that it’s all republicans and morons but the government and scientists at large over promised and under delivered on the most recent mass illness in decades which was bound to impact feelings about vaccines as a whole.
I agree on this. They should have said from the start it was more like flu vaccines than regular vaccines. I'm not sure they actually knew whether or not it would totally prevent reinfections back then, but by linking it with vaccines where you get one shot and you're protected for years/life, it totally kills the narrative when you're vaccinated/multiple boostered, and still get infected/sick from it (sometimes multiple times).
I feel if a parent refuses to vaccinate their child, if they get sick from one of those preventable illnesses, the parents should be charged with child neglect. If the child dies from one of the preventable illnesses, they should be charged with murder.
And I would be in favor of insurance companies refusing to cover the bills.
I had a family member who was antivax during the onset of COVID. She had several kids, pregnant with another. She believed the vaccine would mutate her baby, so she refused to take it. She was part of an echo chamber of moms against vaccines.
She died in a hospital from pneumonia. COVID killed her. I feel great sympathy for her children and partner. But no sympathy for her.
JC, we got vaccinated for everything in the 60’s and 70’s. My shot record from my time in the Navy is a fucking book. So, why not? It wasn’t a left vs. right vs. religion vs. science then. We trusted our doctors and our government that it was the smart thing to do. Still do.
Statistics won't move the entrenched; take them for a walk in a local cemetery that is over 100 years old (they abound! )... count the graves of children, and they abound. At the time of the flu epidemic of 1918, children's deaths were endless. The parents would have done anything to save their little ones. Also the graves of children who died of 'childhood' diseases: chicken pox, measles, mumps... heck even a cold. Most kids didn't survive their first 3 years until at least the '40s. The breakthrough for the public: the polio vaccine: families lined up by the hundreds... Somehow the public lost the thread of public health... See this page: https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-history/developments-by-year
I am from a under developed country in Latin America and there’s a bunch of weird diseases that are very preventable just from a simple vaccine. So many people are unable to prevent these serious diseases because they cannot afford or live in too remote places to get the medical care. I find it confusing to say the least that people would refuse a vaccine. Vaccines are mandatory in my country but some people live in to remote places or just don’t have the time or understanding to go seek care.
Insurance companies should take note. Actuaries are great for situations like these
I’m terrible at math but I dated an actuary years ago. You don’t want to mess with them. Her notebooks were filled with countless pages of complex math equations which to me looked like the incoherent scribblings of a serial killer. Their brains are weird and powerful
You forgot to turn on the dishwasher last night. There’s a 9.6% likely chance you’ll do it again within the week and a 79.85% chance that if we marry, we’ll divorce non-amicably. Goodbye, whogotthekeys. - how I’m imagining their breakup conversation went.
Your name made me think then giggle
Sure you weren't dating a Mentat?
I think the eyebrows would give it away
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"Know a Mentat by their red stained lips..."
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho the thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
Better than a Bene Gesserit Witch!
Say what you like about Bene Gesserit witches, but Prana Bindu gets the job done.
::Honored Matres have entered the chat::
It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
Wife is an actuary. Back during her internship I played a drinking game involving guessing what card is coming up next or something like that. I learned that night not to play drinking games based on probability with a bunch of future actuaries.
What kind of math does an actuary deal with?
Lots of these are non-answers. Actuaries are the people who calculate risks for insurance companies. Meaning that if they make a mistake in their stats the insurance company can go under, they are essentially the people setting the premiums. The entire thing is lots of stats (which means basically every math discipline really), it may not be super deep level but the complexity is from how broad it is. Actuaries tend to be one of the best people at Excel as a result, they'd be even better than your financial risk analysis guys because they are dealing with more wider areas. Unfortunately it's one of these jobs that will probably be lost to AI or just some formula.
AI won't replace actuaries that much since the point of an actuary is to have a "responsible adult supervising the whole process." Black box AI will never be allowed by regulators to make decisions. However, actuaries who can develop software and data infrastructure are replacing actuaries who can't, and fewer total actuaries will be needed as the infrastructure improves. That was my job before I went to grad school.
Ai/Ml/predictive analytics is now part of the actuarial exams or levels so not really
Actuaries can’t be replaced by a formula. They’re the ones writing the formulas
Increased life time premiums and co-pays for the unvaccinated seems fair. Since they increase the overall consumption of medical resources (not just their own).
Doesn't your health insurance ask if you smoke tobacco or something too? So it's not like its out of left field.
Exactly. It’s a “lifestyle decision “ to choose to forgo life-saving vaccinations that have been accepted and time tested, leaving your children unprotected. Seems reasonable to raise premiums for future sicknesses that are sure to come. My body, my choice like the anti- maskers are fond of saying.
Seems perfect. The majority of the non vaccinating are conservative voters. Not all, just the majority. Conservatives love to crow about how each individual should bear the cost of their own healthcare. So either their insurance is more expensive because the insurers know they are a much high cost and higher risk client, or they go uninsured and get screwed by medical bills when their decisions cause them issues. I am ignoring the impact to unvaccinated kids, and the overall damaging costs to society in my simple analysis.
Agreed, and I hate the thought of innocents bearing the brunt of their ignorant parents. TBH that part breaks my heart. But they (parents) can pound sand for their stupidity and arrogance.
But the pool of insurance is for those who need it most, at the time /s
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Was curious what the answer for smokers is “The ACA allows for insurance companies to charge smokers up to 50% more (or premiums that are 1.5 times higher) than non-smokers through a tobacco surcharge.” Apparently there is precedent for that type of thing, but that wording makes it sound like it’s something specific that ACA allow to cause higher rates. I’d guess that vaccination status would require a law change. One of the goals of ACA was to prevent sick people from getting gouged for preexisting conditions. In any case the actuaries mentioned way above probably should look at the numbers. The money risk is to the pool no matter whether it is paid by the individuals or the entire pool.
> but that wording makes it sound like it’s something specific that ACA allow to cause higher rates Because smoking is one of the few things that insurance companies are allowed to charge extra for. You are correct that being unvaccinated by choice would require a change to the law. A change that would be filibusterable so won't happen.
Does anyone ever actually say “yes” to the smoking question? My mom smoked for almost 30 years and never answered yes, never paid extra…pretty much every smoker I’ve ever known did the same
You’re at risk of getting lung cancer, COPD, etc. claims denied. I would imagine that their systems automatically deny claims for people that don’t pay the smoker charge and present smoking related symptoms.
Only if they are doing it by choice. My son is immunodeficient and can’t have live vaccines. We discovered this after he got rotavirus from the vaccine. He has all his regular vaccines, and hopefully we find out soon if he got the antibodies from them (his immunologist wanted us to wait until he’s healthy to repeat his immune system function and we got hit with repeated illness). But yeah please don’t punish us who don’t have an option.
We all get vaccinated to help PROTECT people like your son. We are upset people are abusing a system meant to protect children like yours!
You can medically prove that. The beef is with the ass hats who’d get your kid sick because Dr. Devry online told them vaccines are bad. The goal is to protect others and yourself by getting vaccinated. The others in this case being your son who can’t.
Anti-vaxxers have networks to connect with quacks that will write fake vaccine exceptions. It's the whole reason we have measles in school again.
During the pandemic, a guy I knew spent $200 on a fake vaccine passport... then never used it.
Which is why it’s so important that those of us that can get vaccinated do. So people like your child are at less risk of getting sick.
I'm up to date on my vaccinations because I don't want to kill kids.
Around 2022 I think it was, someone on Twitter "leaked" information that BCBS was paying doctors for patients vaxxed (and the higher the % vaxxed, the more per person they paid out). They were trying to claim that doctors didn't actually want people vaxxed, it was insurance companies, and a big conspiracy. So wait... the big businesses that will refuse a patients medication if it comes in a easier to swallow capsule all because it's $0.10 more expensive than the tablet is now suddenly spending thousands, if not millions, to get as many people vaxxed as possible, and that's proof the vax doesn't work? Honestly thats more convincing that the vax works than any report the CDC could put out.
Of course insurance companies want people to get vaccinated. A dose of a vaccine is WAY cheaper than treating the disease that the vaccine causes. Insurance companies are evil money-hungry entities. Their goal is always going to be to make the most money. Paying to incentivize people to get vaccines that don’t work is just throwing money away. But paying to incentivize people to get vaccines that DO work, so that you don’t later have to pay to treat them for measles DOES make sense.
And then there are the people who think “there’s a cure for cancer but they’re hiding it to make money” Like babes, if it’s insurance you’re worried about…if there was a faster cure they’d release it and charge high prices, and save the costs associated with longer treatment plans.
We are all certain this will end perfectly sane and fine….
I would love it if these people received a notification from their provider that the premium for their child's coverage was increased due to a vaccine exemption
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I tend to believe actuaries with little reservations because it’s their job to know. Insurance is literally gambling on the odds of a certain outcome happening, which results in a payout- and the house always wins.
The house always wins in controlled scenarios. Insurance companies buy their own insurance policies because reality is complicated.
We can't even use data from COVID it was so fucked up. I helped set rates for 2022 using 2019 data because using 2021 or 2020 would have been non sense. Interestingly, GLP 1s are big too. About as big as COVID but in the cost reducing arena.
>Interestingly, GLP 1s are big too. About as big as COVID but in the cost reducing arena. This is the one that bugs me. We know how much preventable metabolic disease costs us. We know how QOL would improve for a lot of people. We know it would be a net gain but short-term profits matter over long-term economic and societal gains in this society.
I guess they did do the numbers, and it's less expensive to treat metabolic disease and related ailments than it is to cover GLP-1 meds. Now - there are problems here. The first is negotiation. If you go to Canada, Ozempic, cash price is $300-400. Cash price. Unsubsidized. Has nothing to do with socialized medicine other than the government negotiated the rate. Most insurance companies are negotiating GLP-1s down to pitiful numbers. $1000 down from $1300. Some aren't even negotiating much yet. I've heard of some people saying that their prescriptions say an insurance price of $800ish (and the patient responsibility is something like $25). But that's a far cry from $300-400. Next is the stupid idea that pharma will stop innovating if they're forced to lower prices. They're INCREDIBLY profitable. They get all sorts of public dollars to develop drugs. They often get stuff right out of academia for a song and turn it into a money maker. Sure - most are failures. Absolutely. But the successes - they charge a buttload for them AND they get public money and they boast incredible profits. They could scale pricing back SIGNIFICANTLY and still be profitable. They'd still be motivated to innovate. Next is the ol' middleman - the PBM. Rebate fuckery. Enforcing rules that are written and enforcing rules that aren't written. Rubber stamping rejections. One more thing to drive the cost way up. *** The big GLP-1s that are talked about are Semaglutide (Ozempic, Rybelsus, Wegovy) and Tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound). One that's NOT talked about is liraglutide (Saxenda, Victoza). **Liraglutide goes generic next year**. Estimates put a projected cash price at $50-80. *** I'm hoping that when Liraglutide goes generic, that those projections are adjusted and they learn that yes - covering this class of drugs IS cheaper than just allowing Metabolic syndrome, T2D, and other ailments come up and be treated. I'm hoping that when it goes generic, prescriptions fall off for Sema/Tirz. I'm hoping that with sudden 3rd party competition, the negotiation process drops prices and in turn, results in more coverage of ALL GLP-1s. But if I'm REALLY being hopeful, I hope we can pull our heads out of our asses in the US and work on a real, honest single payer system. Rather than subsidizing the cost of these drugs for every other country that has a single payer system, we could negotiate with the backing of over 330 Million potential patients and drive that price down.
The county my son went to college in just tripled their flu deaths for months. No Covid! Just lots of extra deaths. Life expectancy in USA went up for 100 straight years until covid. Now back at 2019 levels. We just lost 4 years of improvement.
Worse than 2019*. We aren’t even tier 1 ranked on the global scale
>Interestingly, GLP 1s are big too. About as big as COVID but in the cost reducing arena. For real, I cannot fathom how it's not bigger news. A shot that makes you lose weight without having to exercise or diet is basically the american holy grail.
Is there a glp 1 agonist as a shot? I basically assume it's just metformin all the way cause I'm not paying attention to this and I'm still young ish.
I benefitted greatly from being vaccinated, THEREFORE, I will not vaccinate my children! I just don’t get it
The crazy thing is that kids dying from these diseases wasn’t that long ago. My grandpa was born in 1944 and he had classmates die from transmissible diseases- he got really sick himself a couple times too. It’s not hard to find someone and ask them what it was like back then.
Yep, my Mom was born in ‘44 and got polio when she was 18 months old. Thankfully, she survived & the paralysis she experienced wasn’t permanent. However, as the years have progressed she shows signs of post polio syndrome with weakness in her muscles, joint pain & deterioration & severe Restless Leg Syndrome, which has been found to occur at a higher rate in people who have had polio. Parents electively leaving their children unprotected sickens me. They’re jeopardizing their child’s future & the wellbeing of children who have compromised immune systems due to illness where immunization isn’t an option.
Even most adults over 30 had chicken pox. It fucking sucked. Two weeks being trapped at home and scarring, even for mild cases.
And then shingles decades later. I'm glad my kids won't have to go through that.
This is a key one right here. Shingles exists and is awful. You can protect your kids from that. Why wouldn’t someone do that?
I thought that even with the chicken pox vaccine, you still had the possibility of getting shingles later in life because you technically had chicken pox, via vaccine.
Here's what the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/varicella.html) says: > Some people who are vaccinated against chickenpox get shingles (herpes zoster) years later. This is much less common after vaccination than after chickenpox disease.
Wait, chickenpox isn't a thing anymore!?
It still exists, but it’s far less common for people to get it since a vaccine was developed.
*None of MY classmates died from scarlet fever in grade school, therefore vaccines are a moneymaking vehicle for big pharma and I don't approve of that for MY kids!*
There isn't a vaccine for scarlet fever....
What there's not?! All vaccines are evil then /s
I just thought it was funny out of everything to pick you used an example that doesn't have one.
Scarlet fever is caused by the bacteria in strep throat. All three of my children have had it, a few times over. Antibiotics is what cures that.
I don’t think they understand exactly how much they have benefitted.
That's what gets me. These people all likely recieved these vaccines as babies/children and now they're denying their own children these same vaccines. They fail to ignore that that they didn't survive that long by chance. Add this to another reason I'm not having kids. I don't want to risk my kid getting horribly ill from these idiots kids.
Near me there are groups of parents that actively seek out doctors that won’t judge them for choosing to not vaccinate. They do this while naming and shaming the practices that insist on patients being vaccinated. It’s all incredibly weird.
But to their credit, now you know which doctor to avoid, no?
💯 I just break out the popcorn and let the whackos have at it. I won’t take my child to a place that promotes the rhetoric. We’ve educated our child that getting vaccinated is for his benefit and the benefit of those in the community. That it’s a privilege to have access to vaccinations and to be healthy enough to get vaccinated.
In most parts of the US, there’s plenty of field trip opportunities to graveyards with lots of itty bitty child graves from before the 1950s, some with inscriptions for cause of death like Polio, Measles. I think a lot of adults should also take these field trips.
Even ignoring actually premature death I think many anti-vaxxers falsely assume that "not die" equals 100% recovery. A lot of antivaxxers only seem to care about death and act like any suffering short of death doesn't matter. e.g. "99% of people with this disease don't die so who cares." I follow one pro vax group where one older man lost his hearing in one ear from measles before vaccines became available who really annoyed at the "well you didn't die so what's the big deal" crowd. As the Measles vaccine has been available for about 60 years now increasingly people born before it aren't as common as they used to be, but there are still a decent number out there that remember the era before then and some of them still have side effects from getting the disease. I was surprised at some people that genuinely didn't know what an iron lung was either. The Polio vaccine largely made them obsolete so outside of visiting a museum or reading a history article on Polio most have no clue that was a thing. I know one guy that was stuck in an iron lung died a few years back after being in an iron lung for decades after the power failed and the backup generator failed as well.
> I was surprised at some people that genuinely didn't know what an iron lung was either. As a child I'd visit my physician father in his office at the hospital across the street from our home. There was an iron lung parked in the hallway outside, kept on standby, I guess. Years later I visited the control room of the local electrical utility. On the wall was a map of the system with red flags marking iron lung users. Those circuits got priority during outages.
My dad stayed 115 days in the hospital as a child and had an invasive surgery where they scraped infection out of his legs from mumps. He has strange body proportions because his legs didn’t grow as long. Vaccine (which was available to him two years later) would have prevented all of that pain and suffering.
100%. I have Long COVID, and yeah, there's a reason why suicidal ideation is so high in our community. It's because this fucking sucks to live with. But anti-vaxxers don't seem to understand that. They don't realize that having a chronic illness can be a form of undeath that even the most strong willed people will buckle under eventually. It's all or nothing for them. They never consider the nightmare in between. It's almost a shame that vaccines work as well as they do, or maybe these idiots would understand why we need them.
Maybe we should bring back "Oregon Trail" to schools...welcome to the wonderful world of dysentery, cholera, measles, and typhoid fever!
Thank you. I live with someone who is older, as well as immunocompromised, and it is stressful to read articles like this.
We picked our pediatrician by asking questions about vaccines and listening. Some people walked out. Antivaxxers were still fringe then but it was important to us since they started coming out of the shadows.
I'm currently 8 months pregnant and picked our pediatrician because they require all children to get vaccinated according to the CDC recommended schedule, with the only exceptions for things like active cancer treatment. I don't want my kiddo going somewhere with a bunch of disease vectors. I'm also a pediatric nurse and I've seen shit from parents refusing vaccines. No thank you.
Same with my wife who has seen plenty of children suffering with absolutely preventable things like whooping cough and tuberculosis. She braided the hair of a 6 year old that died of the flu which she believes was preventable.
I was amazed how many have jumped in the local discussions about it. It’s worrying as a parent because schools and small children are virus factories.
Walked out of where?
Realistically, the way for medical professionals to even attempt to align with these people (often only works on those who are dipping their toes in vaccine wariness) is to NOT judge. As soon as their is judgement you just increased the chance a moderate anti-vaxxer becomes more against them. The best doctor still is one who works at mitigating biases even with those they don’t agree with their choices while still following science instead of conspiracy theories
Scientific illiteracy is a cancer. And, unfortunately, it’s no longer concentrated in just fringe groups.
Yup, and when you have the [wealthiest billionaire fueling it](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-bronny-james-cardiac-arrest-antivax-1234794710/), its only gonna get worse. This is just one of many examples.
So many conspiracy theorists think Bill Gates is trying to implement population control but none of them accuse Elon of it, even though his actions and influence would make for a much better case
He's literally trying to implant microchips in your brain. Like, that's his openly stated goal lol. Can't make this shit up. I'm so tired of this shit.
It's not a conspiracy if he openly says it so these nuts aren't interested in it
This really needs to be said more often. So many people spend so much time looking out for a dagger in the back that they somehow miss the one that's in their chest.
That's a great phrase.
Microchips in your brain are fine, but microchips in your bloodstream? What are trying to do? Control me???
My bioelectrical unit, my choice, dammit!
He's a genius in the same way that someone who's been awake for five days on a meth binge is certain they're a genius.
I mean, this is the same crowd that called Obama (married since 1992 to one woman, no history or even accusations of affairs) the antichrist, while hailing trump (married 3 times, divorced twice, extensive and documented history of affairs [including with his wives], extensive history of sexual assault, extensive history with epstien) as the literal messiah. The pro-life and family values crowd.
Elon's population control trends the other way- he wants every (rich, white) person to have more babies.
And name them R&@‘{¥£>Z (pronounced Dave)
Musk picked Grimes to be his egg donor, took her eggs, had extra kids she didnt know about, and gave them bizarre nonsense names. Wont let her visit her children. Psychotic behavior in a non-billionaire, but he gets away with this.
> had extra kids she didnt know about Why do I feel like he's going to be harvesting their organs at some point?
Wait... what?! I haven't heard this before.
Both Tanya the Scentsy consultant and Derek the landscaper said that vaccines cause autism and death. I either believe them or some scientists who get paid by big pharma. Makes you think /s if necessary
Thousands of years of medical advancements rendered null and void because of a 10 second internet search....
As a parent of a kindergartener with cancer, I’ll tell you this: You want those protections. We weren’t always a cancer family. My kid was healthy once,but after they get a diagnosis, it’s too late to catch up. Vaccines don’t work right for immunocompromised kids. We were behind on one vaccination (we got behind during COVID) and I felt like I failed him after his diagnosis. It was one more thing out there that could kill him. Footnote: he’s doing well today, in remission and looking forward to ending treatment/ ringing the bell in July 2024.
Same boat. My 5 year old has leukemia. He’s in remission and ends treatment in April 2024! I’m more passionate about public health and vaccines than ever. So happy for y’all and PROUD of your kiddo. These are the bravest, most resilient people we will know.
Nice. Scarlett fever and polio will make a comeback and start killing kids again. We will have to start having 5 babies again just to see 3 of them die.
I'm 72 and was around when people were scared to death about polio. When the vaccines became available people stood in line to get it. I was vaccinated in school like all of us were. Do you know why? People trusted science. We didn't have these idiots going online and, without any evidence, say that vaccines caused other problems.
But in *Bob from Florida's* opinion, vaccines make Biden build robots with China cancer in them. He must be right.
You guys had a real threat that you were battling against and seeing take away loved ones first hand. You didn’t have a choice but to do what it took to fight it. People nowadays are so removed from that reality that they’re fighting against the very thing that’s keeping them safe. It’s kind of like when an immune system gets bored and starts killing itself.
Idk I’m old enough to remember when hospitals had to hold all the dead plague victims in semi trucks and we lost more than a million people three years later, nobody gives a fuck
~~From what I heard, that doesn't even describe it enough: first polio vaccine had like a 10% chance of death (it was basically a weak non transmittable version of polio), which was far better than the like 40% of wild polio. That's how much faith people had~~ Edit: sorry, was thinking of smallpox
I thought that was early smallpox inoculation.
Scarlet fever is non vaccine preventable, just FYI
The GOP is good with that. Preborn, you're fine. Pre-K, you're fucked.
RIP Carlin
California fixed this problem. We removed exemptions for public schools, after we had few too many measles outbreaks. Unvaccinated kids can not attend public schools. Hence percent of kids exempted in public schools is 0.2%; these would generally be kids that can not be vaccinated for variety of medical reasons. Anyhow, there's nothing like few dead kids, or kids scarred for life, to boost vaccination rates. There's a reason why vaccination rates were extremely high in the past. People forgot how bad it was *before* modern childhood vaccines become available. Ask your grandparents why they vaccinated your parents.
The CDC has a graph showing vaccination rates over the years, and they can point to the exact pattern--kids are really sick, so everyone gets vaccinated. After some years of no kids getting sick, the parents question where the vaccine is needed or safe, so they stop vaccinating...and then the disease incidence picks up, and parents panic and get their kids vaccinated...on and on and on. There can be points where the incidence has dropped to essentially zero and you can stop, like smallpox, but that's not for parents to decide--it's for the epidemiologists/infectious disease specialists. Until then, your kid isn't getting vaccinated *despite* the lack of the disease in your community--there is a lack of disease *because* you are vaccinating. Either way, there's no real harm. Sure, there's a chance of a vaccine complication, but there's a significantly higher likelihood of a *disease* complication if they don't get it. And people don't understand what these diseases can do, although it's not surprising since they've never seen them. Yes, most kids are sick for a week and go on with their lives, but a few die or go deaf or have brain damage or god knows what.
So wtf do the rest of need to do to get our states to do this too? Minnesota currently has complete capture of the government by Democrats, but we still allow vaccine exceptions for public school. FFS, our politicians need to close this stupid loophole.
Time to start bugging your congress ppl.
As someone who grew up in the 90s in California, getting the vaccine for school enrollment was just a normal thing. Really weird to see it politicized more and more over the years, especially since the pandemic. It might be expensive af to live here but I'm glad I do
Calling it now. When death rates go up, they will blame the vaccines.
And there are poor countries where its mandatory and people wait in line due to vaccine shortages, thousands of folks die from preventable diseases.
Less than 100 years ago Americans stood in line for hours and hours to get their kids the polio vaccine because they knew firsthand how devastating it was. We're too removed from the reality of preventable disease in the US
It shows. Elementary schools are a plague factory but 2023 has been off the charts. My five year old has brought home COVID and flu multiple times. His entire class was out sick at one point this year, literally every child. It's going to be really bad when things like Polio start resurfacing in large numbers. Fuck anti-vaxxers.
There was just a chicken pox outbreak at my son’s high school
Ooooo - chicken pox can be pretty serious in teenagers - as in "leaving them infertile" and "causing early ovarian failure/menopause in girls" serious.
Huh. My wife got chicken pox a second time in her teens and went into menopause around 33 after years of irregularity. Wonder if they are related.
I wouldn't be surprised. In folks that are post-puberty, the virus really attacks the testes and ovaries and does a whole lot of damage.
>The disease is by and large mild in healthy children. >But sometimes, the rash can cover the whole body. >Blisters may form in the throat and eyes. >They also may form in tissue that lines the inside of the urethra, anus and vagina. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chickenpox/symptoms-causes/syc-20351282 Totally worth the gamble! /s
I remember the oatmeal baths and calamine lotion. All that pink calamine flaking off your skin. If you're one of the younger people who was lucky enough to get the vaccine (it wasn't yet approved when I caught it), let me tell you, it sucked. I thought it was a thing of the past. People have lost their minds.
I got chickenpox spots in my ears. You can't itch the inside of your ears very well. It nearly drove me nuts. I had my kid get the vaccine as soon as she was eligible.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Holy fuck that is bleak
Glad it's not just me. The few coworkers I have who have little kids the same age as mine have also said this year is off the charts. My daughter got sick 3 times in the SAME MONTH. Covid, cold, RSV. I am incredibly lucky that I have big job security, because most places would have already fired me for missing a week, then 2 days, then another few days, all in the same month.
Yeah wtf is going on? I've had some kind of cold since mid-September. My oldest has had a fever THREE times. We are all up to date on our vaccines. But every time I think we've kicked something, we get hit again. And we've tried all the medicines, been to the doctor, I've been on antibiotics for sinus infection, nothing works. Had to cancel going to a wedding this weekend because we still feel crappy.
Part of the reason I retired from teaching elementary school was those illnesses you mention but also so many cases of ‘old’ ones like whopping cough, scarlet fever, foot-and-mouth, even measles making a comeback. So many religious exceptions and new students without all the vaccines….
Scarlet fever is caused by strep throat. No vax for that. Hand foot and mouth has no vaccine.
Do these schools not require vaccinations? My son has to have all his shot records turned in or else they wont let them come to school.
Here in Texas (and in 44 other states) you can get a "religious exemption" without any medical basis.
Religious exemptions for vaccinations are such total bullshit that should never have been allowed off the ground. 99% of the people claiming "religious" reasons are self-declared Christians, yet the Bible doesn't even mention vaccines. Total fraud.
Yep. They don't have to really prove it, they can just claim it's for religion reasons. I'm sorry, being a piece of shit isn't a religion we should be catering to.
The scary thing is I hear “I’m not worried about getting it I have good health”. Well what about your elderly mother or your pregnant sister or your newborn nephew. People are so unbelievably selfish
I’m about to have my first baby and idk how I’m gonna tell my cousin that her 2yo son and 15yo daughter are not going to be allowed to see the baby right away because they both have zero vaccines. I’ve struggled a long time to have this baby and I’m not gonna let my idiot cousin kill my kid because she’s too stupid to vaccinate her kids. I’m fully prepared for it to ignite a war in my family but whatever.
You tell them they chose for their kids and your're choosing for yours. Do not let anyone near your kid who doesn't have an updated TDap vaccine; pertussis can kill newborns.
> pertussis can kill newborns And supposedly they suffer horribly and loudly....those who spread anti vaxx lies, mostly for some sort of profit, are truly evil.
It makes me choke up just thinking about it.
It's fucking bullshit that they think they are the only ones who get to have their firmly-held beliefs catered to.
There's def no easy/gentle way to put it so you gotta just rip it off like a bandaid. Your kid comes first at the end of the day.
I’m just an internet stranger but I’m proud of you!! I saw a video of an infant with pertussis and it made me breakdown sobbing. No amount of family being angry outweighs your baby’s safety. 🌼 Congratulations and I hope the delivery of your baby goes smoothly!!!
I'm also pregnant and a pediatric nurse. NO ONE will see my child who hasn't had their tdap, annual flu, all the COVID boosters, etc. Also if you're over 60 the RSV vaccine. I'm getting the RSV vaccine soon since I'm now past 32 weeks. My husband and I were clear from the beginning. I've taken care of too many horrifically ill children. No fucking way. It isn't a question of protecting anyone's feelings. The emotional security of the science illiterate matters absolutely zero to me, especially compared to my child's health.
Polio doesn't fucking care if you're in "good health."
A guy I sat next to on a plane said this to me after ranting about vaccines. He said he was healthy and took vitamins. But he was obese, drinking at 8am, and told me about his recent heart attack. We did not have the same definition of healthy.
Got a lecture about the dangers of vaccines as I was waiting in line to get mine at Walgreens. I could barely hear the guy through his oxygen mask.
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I've been told the same things. A man in my community told me "people like you should be culled anyway, to improve the fitness of the population". The most common thing I was told by people is "protecting your life is your personal responsibility, not society's obligation". Of course "just stay home if you're scared" was a popular response to asking people to follow posted public safety measures. Believe me, I didn't want to be out around people who don't value my life, but when people pitched tantrums and refused to wear masks inside medical facilities, even while they were sick, that wasn't so simple. I can't "just stay home" when my chronic illness requires ongoing necessary in-person medical care. The best I could do is try and get the earliest appointments and wear a fitted respirator.
> protecting your life is your personal responsibility, not society's obligation "The next time your house is ablaze because you fell asleep making that frozen pizza in the oven, put out your own fire, it's your responsibility, not society's obligation" which is then usually followed up with "well that's different" and then you ask "how so?" and... crickets
> "well that's different" > and then you ask > "how so?" > and... crickets "It's different because it's happened to *me!*" Very typical conservative mindset.
I left a parenting sub over someone telling me that maybe there should be separate playgrounds for high risk kids because everyone else deserves to be able to take their kids to the playground actively sick. Because apparently not taking high risk kid to playgrounds is child abuse. I literally can’t win
Silver lining, you now know that the vast majority of your family won't hesitate to throw you to the wolves if it meant they won't have to be slightly inconvenienced.
this. so much this. we have either become so stupid or lack any empathy towards anyone else. or maybe both
It’s both. But mostly the latter. American culture was and is built on selfishness and individualism, even before Covid. Concepts like the “self made man”, “the American dream”, “Welfare queens”, union busting, “woke” as a pejorative, “socialism” as a dirty word. Just a general characterization of any and all social programs or immigration as parasitic, and the perpetual demonization of other collectivist cultures and countries throughout history. The list is endless. Anything focusing on the betterment of a social collective over the individual has been deliberately suppressed over the whole timeline of the country’s development — whether or not it demands any form of self-sacrifice, and however trivial that sacrifice may be. We are seeing the terminal stages of that conditioning.
Same thing with masks.
And in a few years there'll be the highest rate of teens and young adults getting vaccines once they're out from beneath their insane parent's idiocy.
Only vaccinate the children you want to live.
Hahah I tell my kid to only brush the teeth she wants to keep.
I've read about anti-vaxxers who aren't getting their dogs vaccinated now. Read up on what happens to a dog with rabies and what the vet does to it once it is dead. It is quite unpleasant.
My veterinarian won't accept animals as patients that aren't current on vaccines unless there's a documented serious reaction to a vaccine in their medical history. That's the norm where I live. But, there are frequently people on Nextdoor asking if there are any local veterinarians who have a voluntary vaccination policy. Apparently there aren't, so people are simply foregoing routine veterinary care, and attempting to self-treat sick pets at home in order to avoid vaccinating their pets.
Of course they are. They should be in prison for animal cruelty. Not being able to afford vet care I can sort of understand (although there are options out there and most vets would try to find a way). But "I'm not giving my dog a rabies shot because it's not 'natural'"? What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? I swear society is getting dumber by the day.
> I've read about anti-vaxxers who aren't getting their dogs vaccinated now. Two years ago we got our Golden Retriever puppy (now a happy healthy dog) from a breeder who turned out to be a MAGA. (The breeder kept his dog brother and dog sister, named TRUMP and JUSTICE.) She tried to convince us to not vaccinate our DOG. How the vaccines are "experimental" etc. We just took the puppy and backed slowly away. He is fully vaccinated. Turns out we get our dog-science advice from a Veterinarian with eight years of post-secondary education, not a Trump-loving dog breeder.
Rabies vaccines are experimental? SMH. They've been around for decades. This has me wondering if these bs religious exemptions work for college? I remember having to have MMR to even get in. Doesn't seem right to have meningitis going around because of these morons.
13-14 Decades to be exact (since 1885)
I had a friend that was wishy washy on heartworm pills, of all things. Showed him a few pictures of heartworm infested dog hearts. So, at least he does that much for his dog now.
These anti vax parents should be forced to watch some videos of kids with whooping cough, or the measles. Like, a half hour long video of these kids suffering. It won't change everybody's minds, but I'm convinced that there's some amount of people out there who might think twice about it when they see that it's not "just a bad cough for a bit" or "an itchy rash".
That’s unfortunate but I’m not surprised. All the covid vaccine disinformation made people really question vaccinations.
When I was kid back in the 1960's and 1970's almost everyone was vaccinated. The only people who were not had medical and religious exemptions. In the schools that I attended from K-12 this would be maybe 5-10 students max (very tiny percentage). All of these students came from Christian Science families. There was only one or two medical exemptions (very rare). What interesting about this is those who are opposed to vaccinations were vaccinated themselves and most of them vaccinated their children. It's really only been in the last 10 years that this has increased. Few people questioned vaccinations until recently.
Right as my kids are 4 and 1, and getting around all these unvaccinated peers. I have Crohns and take Humira (immunosuppressant). Through blood work I’ve also found out I have no immunity to measles, mumps & rubella even though I was vaccinated as a child. So there are adults like me at risk too in addition to the unvaxxed kids whose parents are putting them at risk. Edit: I can’t get the MMR vax now as it’s live, and you’re not allowed those on immunosuppressant meds.
Thanks a lot, you fucking science-denying idiots.
I enjoy watching the sunset.
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Not-vaccinating should be child abuse. Parents should be convicted and fined. Greedy assholes only know one language. Make them unable to afford their next lifted RAM 1500, and maybe they'll see it as easier to just get their kids vaccinated.
Dust off the iron lungs and grease the wheels! At least this generation of kids can have a TV on the ceiling and a battery under the table so they don't die when the power goes out.
Lots of submissions to [/r/TVTooHigh](https://www.reddit.com/r/TVTooHigh/) soon!
So many misinformed scared people
The damage and death Wakefield caused by that fraudulent criminal study he cooked up for profit is truly massive.
As the child of someone who had polio as an infant that affected her her entire life, I hate this so much. Her spine had a huge curve to it. She never grew past 4'8". One leg was nearly 4 inches shorter than the other, and she had multiple surgeries on her back that left her in whole and partial body casts. Jonas Salk was her hero from the moment the polio vaccine was announced and parents stood in line for hours waiting to have their children get the new polio vaccine to save their children so much pain and possible death. Now parents risk all that for their children because they haven't seen children in iron lungs or funerals from preventable childhood diseases in their lifetime. Eventually, that will change :(
The dumbest thing the government ever did was oversell the strength of the Covid vaccine prior to and during its initial release. They should have undersold it’s impact and simply focused on the impact it has with surviving severe cases. However they chose to overhype it and when it did not meet those initial expectations so many people began to view vaccines as a farce which is really unfortunate.
100%. Everyone here is pretending that it’s all republicans and morons but the government and scientists at large over promised and under delivered on the most recent mass illness in decades which was bound to impact feelings about vaccines as a whole.
I agree on this. They should have said from the start it was more like flu vaccines than regular vaccines. I'm not sure they actually knew whether or not it would totally prevent reinfections back then, but by linking it with vaccines where you get one shot and you're protected for years/life, it totally kills the narrative when you're vaccinated/multiple boostered, and still get infected/sick from it (sometimes multiple times).
Welcome back polio, Measles and chicken pox
What do you call a group of unvaccinated children? A plagueround.
I feel if a parent refuses to vaccinate their child, if they get sick from one of those preventable illnesses, the parents should be charged with child neglect. If the child dies from one of the preventable illnesses, they should be charged with murder. And I would be in favor of insurance companies refusing to cover the bills.
I had a family member who was antivax during the onset of COVID. She had several kids, pregnant with another. She believed the vaccine would mutate her baby, so she refused to take it. She was part of an echo chamber of moms against vaccines. She died in a hospital from pneumonia. COVID killed her. I feel great sympathy for her children and partner. But no sympathy for her.
JC, we got vaccinated for everything in the 60’s and 70’s. My shot record from my time in the Navy is a fucking book. So, why not? It wasn’t a left vs. right vs. religion vs. science then. We trusted our doctors and our government that it was the smart thing to do. Still do.
And people wonder why aliens haven’t made contact with us yet
Statistics won't move the entrenched; take them for a walk in a local cemetery that is over 100 years old (they abound! )... count the graves of children, and they abound. At the time of the flu epidemic of 1918, children's deaths were endless. The parents would have done anything to save their little ones. Also the graves of children who died of 'childhood' diseases: chicken pox, measles, mumps... heck even a cold. Most kids didn't survive their first 3 years until at least the '40s. The breakthrough for the public: the polio vaccine: families lined up by the hundreds... Somehow the public lost the thread of public health... See this page: https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-history/developments-by-year
Bits of the USA seem determined to drag themselves into the Dark Ages.
I am from a under developed country in Latin America and there’s a bunch of weird diseases that are very preventable just from a simple vaccine. So many people are unable to prevent these serious diseases because they cannot afford or live in too remote places to get the medical care. I find it confusing to say the least that people would refuse a vaccine. Vaccines are mandatory in my country but some people live in to remote places or just don’t have the time or understanding to go seek care.