The author makes several mistakes in his reasoning; Vaccines don't cause superbugs. A vaccine's effectiveness and whether it works is only down to the person's immune system, it's not directly...
The author makes several mistakes in his reasoning;
Vaccines don't cause superbugs. A vaccine's effectiveness and whether it works is only down to the person's immune system, it's not directly targeting the bacteria like an antibiotic is. It's possible for them to mutate out of the range of a specific vaccine, but your own antibodies and immune response mutate too, and you can easily recreate a vaccine for most diseases.
Superbugs are not any scarier then the original disease was, we simply lose the ability to treat it. If Chlora scares him now, he should've seen what it was like back when it was common. Diseases are horrifying in general.
According to Canada's official site on the budworm issue, the primary problem with controlling it is that it can start out in pockets with no natural predators to keep it in check, and then migrate in large numbers to areas where before there was no counter. Removing chemicals seems like it would significantly worsen the problem, and judging by what they've mentioned in the data, it seems like we're in a time of increasing infestations anyway. That's to say, at least as I understand it from their website, that they're due for a large outbreak anyway.
The evolutionary fitness theory is bullshit. Humans have existed for several dozen million years now, in far sicker conditions; if constantly being sick made us stronger, we wouldn't get sick anymore by this point. The reality is that diseases will always change and mutate, and sentencing millions of people to die to it is not going to make the species as a whole any healthier. A much more effective method to preventing superbugs is, in the short term, focus on clamping down unnecessary or wasteful prescriptions of general purpose antibiotics, and in the long term, work on developing methods like CRISPR or bacteriophages that a bacterium can't ever permanently protect itself from.
Under this assumption, the black plague wouldn't exist in the modern world since a large percentage was already killed by it we would assume no one would be affected any longer. The reality is...
The evolutionary fitness theory is bullshit
Under this assumption, the black plague wouldn't exist in the modern world since a large percentage was already killed by it we would assume no one would be affected any longer. The reality is that it sill affect people in the US with tens of cases a year, and a number of deaths that go with it. Other countries have even bigger problems with the plague.
You aren't wrong, but I think what's being said here is more that the feedback loop between generations of organisms and vaccines is bound to greatly lower the effectiveness of individual vaccines...
Vaccines don't cause superbugs.
You aren't wrong, but I think what's being said here is more that the feedback loop between generations of organisms and vaccines is bound to greatly lower the effectiveness of individual vaccines over time as so many variants are created in response.
Superbugs are not any scarier then the original disease was, we simply lose the ability to treat it.
That's precisely why they're scarier
Frankly I'm not well versed enough in the matter to address your other points. I thought the original article brought up an interesting topic, novel idea, and suspected it might have some erroneous assumptions and therefore thought it was ripe for discussion here. :)
Kurzgesagt's recent video on bactereiophages as a new kind of "antibiotic" was fascinating and probably relevant to the discussion here
But that's the thing; there is no direct feedback loop. A vaccine doesn't directly target a disease, instead it teaches the immune system how to fight it. Diseases can and do mutate over time and...
I think you misunderstand, what's being said here is that the feedback loop between generations of organisms and vaccines is bound to greatly lower the effectiveness of individual vaccines over time as so many variants are created.
But that's the thing; there is no direct feedback loop. A vaccine doesn't directly target a disease, instead it teaches the immune system how to fight it. Diseases can and do mutate over time and eventually will be too different for the vaccine to help, but that's a matter of time, not due to vaccine use. It doesn't matter whether you give 100 people the vaccine or 10000000, and as smallpox clearly demonstrates, it's not always the case a disease will mutate in time before it's starved off.
That's precisely why they're scarier
But it's not any scarier then not using the vaccine at all. The author's case is that we should have never used vaccines in the first place because now diseases are more dangerous then they were before. They aren't. The worst possibility that can happen is that vacciness no longer work; we are still in the same position as we were at the start, but we managed to spare millions of people from getting sick. Superbugs are not more infectious or dangerous then the past versions were, they're just not treatable anymore, just like they used to be. And as we've discussed above, that's not how vaccines work in the first place, they don't create superbugs.
Kurzgesagt's recent video on bactereiophages as a new kind of "antibiotic" was fascinating and probably relevant to the discussion here
Yes, it's very relevant. But it's a replacement for an antibiotic, which is not a vaccine. Antibiotics and vaccines work in very different ways, and you can't interchange them.
Disclaimer: My comment here is not a comment on the post or OP at all. This is a comment on the topic of vaccination itself and addressing tildes’ role in providing a voice in support of the...
Disclaimer: My comment here is not a comment on the post or OP at all. This is a comment on the topic of vaccination itself and addressing tildes’ role in providing a voice in support of the antivaxxers’ cause.
For discussion’s sake, and considering tildes is in its relative infancy, would providing a platform for the views of antivaxxers be something to embrace, to shun, or ignore if the views don’t match our own?
I personally hope the subject of antivax itself goes the way of polio, and I feel the only way to do that is to not provide a platform/petri-dish for it to continue to spread.
I see ~ as a platform for discussion. As long as people are being respectful, charitable, honest, evidence based, etc. and the community is functioning in a healthy manner I can't see viewpoints...
I see ~ as a platform for discussion. As long as people are being respectful, charitable, honest, evidence based, etc. and the community is functioning in a healthy manner I can't see viewpoints as asinine as antivaxxers gaining any kind of meaningful foothold.
It will certainly take folks who are stronger than I am to respond with restraint if, by some chance, we get a dose of antivaxxers. I’m far better at not responding than I am at responding...
It will certainly take folks who are stronger than I am to respond with restraint if, by some chance, we get a dose of antivaxxers. I’m far better at not responding than I am at responding politely on this subject in particular - I’ll likely just need to avoid it.
I can't justify reading this article with this mea culpa right at the top:
I can't justify reading this article with this mea culpa right at the top:
[PreProda: Yeah, after some really enlightening discussion in the Comments section, I’m walking back about 90% of this post. But I’m leaving it posted both because the comments are so interesting, and as a kind of historical artefact to remind me of what happens when I don’t take the time to think things through.]
The author makes several mistakes in his reasoning;
Vaccines don't cause superbugs. A vaccine's effectiveness and whether it works is only down to the person's immune system, it's not directly targeting the bacteria like an antibiotic is. It's possible for them to mutate out of the range of a specific vaccine, but your own antibodies and immune response mutate too, and you can easily recreate a vaccine for most diseases.
Superbugs are not any scarier then the original disease was, we simply lose the ability to treat it. If Chlora scares him now, he should've seen what it was like back when it was common. Diseases are horrifying in general.
According to Canada's official site on the budworm issue, the primary problem with controlling it is that it can start out in pockets with no natural predators to keep it in check, and then migrate in large numbers to areas where before there was no counter. Removing chemicals seems like it would significantly worsen the problem, and judging by what they've mentioned in the data, it seems like we're in a time of increasing infestations anyway. That's to say, at least as I understand it from their website, that they're due for a large outbreak anyway.
The evolutionary fitness theory is bullshit. Humans have existed for several dozen million years now, in far sicker conditions; if constantly being sick made us stronger, we wouldn't get sick anymore by this point. The reality is that diseases will always change and mutate, and sentencing millions of people to die to it is not going to make the species as a whole any healthier. A much more effective method to preventing superbugs is, in the short term, focus on clamping down unnecessary or wasteful prescriptions of general purpose antibiotics, and in the long term, work on developing methods like CRISPR or bacteriophages that a bacterium can't ever permanently protect itself from.
Under this assumption, the black plague wouldn't exist in the modern world since a large percentage was already killed by it we would assume no one would be affected any longer. The reality is that it sill affect people in the US with tens of cases a year, and a number of deaths that go with it. Other countries have even bigger problems with the plague.
You aren't wrong, but I think what's being said here is more that the feedback loop between generations of organisms and vaccines is bound to greatly lower the effectiveness of individual vaccines over time as so many variants are created in response.
That's precisely why they're scarier
Frankly I'm not well versed enough in the matter to address your other points. I thought the original article brought up an interesting topic, novel idea, and suspected it might have some erroneous assumptions and therefore thought it was ripe for discussion here. :)
Kurzgesagt's recent video on bactereiophages as a new kind of "antibiotic" was fascinating and probably relevant to the discussion here
But that's the thing; there is no direct feedback loop. A vaccine doesn't directly target a disease, instead it teaches the immune system how to fight it. Diseases can and do mutate over time and eventually will be too different for the vaccine to help, but that's a matter of time, not due to vaccine use. It doesn't matter whether you give 100 people the vaccine or 10000000, and as smallpox clearly demonstrates, it's not always the case a disease will mutate in time before it's starved off.
But it's not any scarier then not using the vaccine at all. The author's case is that we should have never used vaccines in the first place because now diseases are more dangerous then they were before. They aren't. The worst possibility that can happen is that vacciness no longer work; we are still in the same position as we were at the start, but we managed to spare millions of people from getting sick. Superbugs are not more infectious or dangerous then the past versions were, they're just not treatable anymore, just like they used to be. And as we've discussed above, that's not how vaccines work in the first place, they don't create superbugs.
Yes, it's very relevant. But it's a replacement for an antibiotic, which is not a vaccine. Antibiotics and vaccines work in very different ways, and you can't interchange them.
Disclaimer: My comment here is not a comment on the post or OP at all. This is a comment on the topic of vaccination itself and addressing tildes’ role in providing a voice in support of the antivaxxers’ cause.
For discussion’s sake, and considering tildes is in its relative infancy, would providing a platform for the views of antivaxxers be something to embrace, to shun, or ignore if the views don’t match our own?
I personally hope the subject of antivax itself goes the way of polio, and I feel the only way to do that is to not provide a platform/petri-dish for it to continue to spread.
How do folks feel?
I see ~ as a platform for discussion. As long as people are being respectful, charitable, honest, evidence based, etc. and the community is functioning in a healthy manner I can't see viewpoints as asinine as antivaxxers gaining any kind of meaningful foothold.
It will certainly take folks who are stronger than I am to respond with restraint if, by some chance, we get a dose of antivaxxers. I’m far better at not responding than I am at responding politely on this subject in particular - I’ll likely just need to avoid it.
I also don't know how to/can't politely respond to antivaxxers without saying something that would get me banned
I can't justify reading this article with this mea culpa right at the top: