"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:520801d4@news.povray.org...
>
> So, how many lives would you consider an acceptable loss in the name of
> respecting people's freedom of choice?

And how many lives would you consider an acceptable loss in the name of 
distain for people's freedom of choice?

 -Shay

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Am 11.08.2013 23:27, schrieb Warp:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>>> If you could go back in time, and had the power, would you have stopped
>>> those semi-forced vaccinations from taking place, risking smallpox not
>>> being completely eradicated, with the subsequent deaths up to this day?
>
>> Yes, I might have done that. I might have taken that risk; note that a
>> risk is something that may or may not happen.
>
> So, how many lives would you consider an acceptable loss in the name of
> respecting people's freedom of choice? How many deaths would be necessary
> before you would change your opinion and accept forced vaccinations?
> A hundred? A thousand? A million? How many would you sacrifice?
>
> Do you understand why I find this whole conversation so nauseating?

The same question could be asked about the inherent risks of a 
vaccination campaign: How much people are you willing to kill with 
faulty vaccines, allergic reactions, or other complications, in order to 
eradicate polio? How many lives are you hoping to save in addition to 
those that a voluntary vaccination campaign would save?

I know that this entire issue is morally problematic, whichever way you 
turn it. But you seem to be perfectly free of moral worries when it 
comes to trading people's lives for other people's lives based on 
numbers alone, and that is something that /I/ find nauseating. That is 
/exactly/ the soil that was prevalent throughout Europe in the first 
half the 20th century, on which the German idea of Rassenhygiene had 
grown so well.


>>> People here are comparing forced vaccination programs to totalitarianism
>>> and eugenics. However, a better comparison would be mandatory elementary
>>> education.
>
>> No. Education doesn't normally put your health at any risk.
>
> I don't even understand how you can completely reverse the notion of
> saving the lives of millions of people into the notion of putting lives
> at risk. That's completely backwards.

No, not really. You claim that both education and vaccination carry a 
potential benefit; I don't debate that. But I assert that in the case of 
vaccination it is partially offset by an inherent health /risk/ as well, 
while education is virtually free of health risks, so the two make for a 
poor analogy.


As another example of just how complex health issues can be, why don't 
we fight AIDS by forcing everybody in the whole wide world to be tested 
for HIV, and have all the HIV-positive people undergo treatment against 
the virus?

It turns out that if you did this, more healthy people would die from 
the complications of a treatment they would receive due to a 
false-positive test result, than you'd have ill people to save by the 
treatment in the first place.

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Am 11.08.2013 23:27, schrieb Warp:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>>> If you could go back in time, and had the power, would you have stopped
>>> those semi-forced vaccinations from taking place, risking smallpox not
>>> being completely eradicated, with the subsequent deaths up to this day?
>
>> Yes, I might have done that. I might have taken that risk; note that a
>> risk is something that may or may not happen.
>
> So, how many lives would you consider an acceptable loss in the name of
> respecting people's freedom of choice? How many deaths would be necessary
> before you would change your opinion and accept forced vaccinations?
> A hundred? A thousand? A million? How many would you sacrifice?

By the way, the answer to this question is: As long as I have no bloody 
f***ing idea how many lives it would save and how many it would cost, 
I'd bloody f***ing advocate not imposing it on any unwilling person, and 
rather go with what can be achieved by the voluntary variant.

Heck, maybe the voluntary campaign can provide statistics about the 
risks involved that will convince more people to volunarily undergo the 
vaccination, maybe up to the point where the number of vaccinated people 
is high enough anyway for the campaign to be successful - can you rule 
this out in advance? Is that a basis on which you are willing to 
sacrifice freedom of choice without giving so much as a second thought, 
or at least accepting that others prefer to think about it twice or thrice?

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On Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:31:44 +0200, clipka wrote:

> By the way, the answer to this question is: As long as I have no bloody
> f***ing idea how many lives it would save and how many it would cost,
> I'd bloody f***ing advocate not imposing it on any unwilling person, and
> rather go with what can be achieved by the voluntary variant.

That's a pretty good point.

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/
ApprovedProducts/UCM142576.pdf

This is about the smallpox vaccine, and there's a 1 in 175 chance of a 
bad reaction to it.  That's given that the vaccine is handled well and 
not contaminated, and there's competent medical care nearby.

Given that in the western world (US, Canada, parts of Europe at least) 
there's a shortage of competent licensed medical practitioners available, 
it seems irresponsible to me to risk 1 in 175 on a vaccine that's known 
to cause such symptoms as:

 chest pain or pressure 

 fast or irregular heartbeat 

 breathing problems

Especially when those symptoms are serious enough that the CDC recommends 
getting immediate emergency care if you have those symptoms.

This particular vaccine should also not be given to people who:

 have leukemia 

 have lymphoma 

 have had a bone marrow or organ transplant 

 have cancer that has spread 

 have HIV, AIDS 

 have cellular or humoral immune deficiency 

 are being treated with radiation 

 are being treated with steroids, prednisone, or cancer drugs 

So of course, in third world countries, we have a good record of 
diagnoses of these conditions, right, Warp?

Forcing everyone to get this smallpox vaccine *will* result in deaths.  
Surely you are not so heartless as to say "vaccinate everyone whether 
they want it or not and whether it will kill them or not due to an 
undiagnosed medical condition".

Surely this is more than a *numbers* issue for you, isn't it?

Jim

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Am 12.08.2013 01:10, schrieb Jim Henderson:
> On Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:31:44 +0200, clipka wrote:
>
>> By the way, the answer to this question is: As long as I have no bloody
>> f***ing idea how many lives it would save and how many it would cost,
>> I'd bloody f***ing advocate not imposing it on any unwilling person, and
>> rather go with what can be achieved by the voluntary variant.
>
> That's a pretty good point.
>
> http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/
> ApprovedProducts/UCM142576.pdf
>
> This is about the smallpox vaccine, and there's a 1 in 175 chance of a
> bad reaction to it.  That's given that the vaccine is handled well and
> not contaminated, and there's competent medical care nearby.

Speaking of numbers and facts:

- One type of polio virus (type II) has already been eliminated by 1999, 
suggesting that a voluntary vaccination is a sufficiently successful way.

- We're speaking of about 1000-2000 cases of poliomyelitis worldwide per 
year; presuming that number refers to paralytic poliomyelitis (i.e. 
infections affecting the central nervous system), and given a lethality 
of 2%-20% among those cases, the yearly death toll is in the hundreds 
worldwide. (To put this into some perspective, in Germany alone about 
for thousand people die in traffic accidents each year.)

- The oral vaccine the WHO uses in their campaign is actually a 
deliberate infection with live polio viruses, except that the strains 
used have genetic mutations that prevent them from causing paralysis; 
aside from this, it is a full-fledged polio infection. Back-mutations of 
those viruses occasionally occur, and are estimated to cause 250-500 
cases of paralytic poliomyelitis worldwide per year, i.e. 25% of all 
cases. Note that we haven't mentioned about other side effects of the 
vaccination yet (most of which are actually symptoms of a non-paralytic 
polio infection), such as diarrhea.

- As a matter of fact, by using oral vaccine the WHO is /not/ 
eliminating the polio virus at all; it is just deliberately(*) spreading 
the benign mutated strains (which still cause general symptoms such as 
headaches, vomiting and diarrhea) to push back the more potent wild 
strains. Now recall that the benign viruses can back-mutate, and you 
will notice that the more potent variant of the virus is bound to come 
back. Strains of back-mutated vaccination viruses have already been 
identified in the wild by now.

- (*)Yes, this is actually /desired/ part of the vaccination scheme, and 
one of the reasons why oral vaccination instead of injections are used: 
Vaccinating one person is expected to cause relatives and neighbors to 
get infected with the vaccine virus as well, effectively vaccinating 
those, too. You may note that this approach is pretty robust against 
individuals refusing to be vaccinated. As a matter of fact I'd consider 
it borderline in itself.

- One major factor why polio hasn't been eliminated already (probably 
more so than individuals refusing to be vaccinated) is poor hygienic 
conditions in underdeveloped regions leading to frequent cases of 
diarrhea in children, and the fact that the oral vaccine is ineffective 
in such cases, so the campaign will take time and patience anyway.

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On 8/11/2013 5:49 AM, Shay wrote:
>
>
> "Patrick Elliott" <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message
> news:52070dd3@news.povray.org...
>
> This is going in circles.
>
> You say, "Government is evil and a tool for the rich."
>
> I say, "Then we need less government."
>
> You say, "No, we need more government, with more authority, because
> government is evil and a tool for the rich."
No, no, no, no. I am not saying we need "more". I am saying that simply 
"less" doesn't bloody do anything except, usually, kill things you 
actually do need, in some deluded attempt to fix the problem. Its bloody 
insane, for example, to have 3-4 different departments, all working at 
cross purposes with each other, to solve the same problem, because, 
someplace back in time, there "might" have been difficulties in one 
agency handling all of them, so they just tacked on more agencies, until 
none of them could do their damn jobs, even if assholes where not 
appointing people to run them, with the intent to make sure they can't.

But, the alternative always seems, stupidly enough, to cut agencies to 
the bone, so that, even if they could have, handled the work of the 
other 3, they now can't because they have a) had their staff cut by 
stupid amounts, b) their hands tied with a lot of convenient 
legislation, which stops them from using what they do have efficiently 
(like certain rules in place for gun enforcement, where is you are lucky 
enough that a state has the data on file, you are gold, but the federal 
agencies are not **allowed** their own DB, and there is now specific law 
*requiring* that all sellers file paperwork in a sale. It doesn't matter 
how big/small, corrupt of otherwise, something is, if the only way it 
can work is by **becoming corrupt** and bending/breaking the law, to do 
the job in the first place, or.. at least for how ever long it takes for 
someone to give them a legal loophole, to do it anyway.), and c) whole 
swaths of the agency have to close down, limiting their enforcement.

Oh, and that is without mentioning, of course, BS like the law 
protecting "food supplements and natural products", which can rob 
agencies, already over worked, and understaffed, of the right to even 
enforce anything in the first place.

EFFECTIVE government, not just bloody smaller. What do people not get 
about that idea?

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On 8/11/2013 11:17 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Aug 2013 08:26:48 -0500, Shay wrote:
>
>> "Patrick Elliott" <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message
>> news:52071360$1@news.povray.org...
>>> Hmm. I am not going to defend Warp's spiral into poor defense of an
>>> argument, but, I will toss in my two cents. "Mandatory Public
>>> Education".
>>
>> Not the same thing. /My/ state requires I feed and educate my child, at
>> least, once he's born. The education requirements are actually quite
>> modest.
>> That the alternatives are not better accepted is society's problem, not
>> the state's. It's even conceivable that my national government could
>> require I vaccinate my child, though that would, if it were done legally
>> (your lot have pushed us nearly into mob rule), require a Constitutional
>> amendment.
>>
>> This is much different than going to another country and locking up
>> /their/ children between 5 and 18-years-old.
>
> Yep, this. :)
>
> Jim
>
... Right.. Because it was so clear this is what was being talked about. 
Seriously though.. At the bare minimum, I would say, if you plan to not 
put pressure on other nations to do something sane, then you need to 
make sure you a) never have anyone sneaking in, b) your own people *are* 
vaccinated, and c) that to even enter the country "requires" they meet 
the same basic medical requirements to even get in.

I mean, you do know there has been a rise in some things "thought to be" 
nearly eradicated precisely because of both the increase of people from 
certain areas, entering, combined with the insane anti-vax movement, right?

BTW, the super star of that BS, is now promoting e-cigs, presumably on 
the theory that the same "dangerous substance" that causes "autism", in 
her universe, is harmless if its used to smoke tobacco, but not if 
injected in trace amounts.. Because, of course, an disproven connection 
to autism is **much** worse than the nicotine which does have "proven" 
effects on lung development, birth weight, etc., in babies... Sigh...

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On 8/11/2013 7:32 AM, Shay wrote:
>
>
> "Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
> news:52079769@news.povray.org...
>>
>> I would like you to tell if you think the smallpox vaccination program
>> was
>> a good thing or a bad thing.
>
> I think the small pox vaccination was a beneficial thing, which is
> exactly as relevant as my thinking the holocaust was a horrific thing.
>
> You don't see this, because people like you and Patrick don't fear power
> anywhere near as much as you covet it. *That's* the dissonance. That's
> why you embrace totalitarianism.
>
> -Shay
>
>
You need to stop making assumptions, and putting words in other people's 
mouths.

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On 8/11/2013 11:04 AM, andrel wrote:

> Two years ago we had the bird flu disaster. I.e. there was no disaster.
> Still a couple of companies made good money from it. One side effect is
> that the WHO is in trouble now. Both financially and morally. Does not
> help either.

Which is, as unfortunate as it is idiotic. WHO determines its actions 
based on the statistical odds that something bad is likely to happen. 
The math told them, "There is a bloody high probability that this mix of 
genes could prove to be a serious problem, if it became wide spread." 
Turned out not to be accurate. But, the average person always seems to 
assume that the "experts" are omniscient.

Its actually kind of ironic. In this case, everyone got pissed because 
they said, "We think there is a big change of a huge problem here." In 
the case of, for example, Katrina, you had some "expert" claiming that 
the sea level rise was "within" acceptable statistical ranges, with 
respect to spilling over the levees, and they actually **lied**, 
claiming that the maximum level was a few feet under the max levee 
height, without including the "statistical" factor, that it might be 
something like 10 feet higher or lower than that. If the ass had turned 
out right, he would have been praised for it. Instead, he guessed wrong, 
and it was a disaster, and everyone blamed pretty much ***everyone 
else***, including the ones that knew he had lied.

When it comes to things can can kill people, being right as as bad as 
being dead wrong, depending "entirely" on whether you got it wrong and 
people died, or you got it wrong, and everyone starts whining that you 
cried wolf, and they will, more often than not, try to take everyone 
around you down with you, for the "mistake".

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On 8/11/2013 1:47 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Aug 2013 22:35:21 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
>> Except that we (taking the liberty to speak also for your other
>> 'opponents') don't think humanity is stupid.
>
> Yep.  I think most of humanity understands that issues are not as black
> and white/simple as some would make them out to be.  It's naïve to
> oversimplify things without regard for their inherent complexity - and
> when people are involved, life is rarely simple.
>
> That's one of the problems we have with extreme conservatives over here
> in the US, I think.  (And, truth be told, extreme liberals as well)
>
> Jim
>
To be honest, if you define "conservative" as, "Having a strict dogma, 
which must be followed.", then.. there is no "extreme liberals". The 
problem is inflexibility, from both extremes, with respect to accepting 
any fact, idea, or proposition, which doesn't fit their perception of 
how the universe works. That, and, much more to the point, both fear of 
the imagined consequences, and denial of the possibility they could be 
wrong about it.

We have, in effect, the problem that nothing ever broke the back of the 
evangelical/Pentecostal type movements in the US, the middle ground has 
become something that no one, outside maybe the middle east, or parts of 
Africa (where they might open the meeting with an argument about altie 
meds, and close it with a vote on what to do about the local population 
of "witches" they think are stealing their socks at the laundry), might 
call "centrist", and the left fringe has reacted to the rise of the 
right fringe by radicalizing at well. By comparison, most of the 
bullshit we see in the US would never happen in most of Europe, and if 
it did, the people involved would be laughed out of the room.

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