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Ninety Percent of Food and Diseases

12 August 2024 • by Bob • Science

I stumbled across the following post from an antivaxxer on social media, which I thought warranted a response:

"90% of the 'food' in grocery stores today didn't exist 90 years ago. Guess what else? 90% of the diseases we face today didn't either. Think about that."

If this antivaxxer was only referring to food allergies, then I think - in a few situations - that they might have have a point. However, with regard to diseases, those numbers aren't just wrong, and they're not just dishonest, they're a complete fabrication.

Over the past century the combined scientific efforts from every corner of the globe have managed to completely eradicate or significantly reduce the impact of Smallpox, Measles, Polio, Rinderpest, Dracunculiasis, Tetanus, Yellow Fever, Helminthiasis, Schistosomiasis, Malaria, Hookworm, Rubella, Onchocerciasis, Typhoid Fever, Trypanosomiasis, Leprosy, Lymphatic Filariasis, Chagas Disease, Chicken Pox, Diphtheria, Haemophilus Influenza, Whooping Cough (Pertussis), Pneumococcal Disease (Streptococcus Pneumoniae), Yaws, etc.

Look, I get it - some people distrust science because they don't bother to learn about it. For most antivaxxers, "science" is what goes on behind closed doors and makes billionaires out of some truly awful people. But the majority of virologists, immunologists, and biologists are obsessed with making the world a better place, and as a result less babies are dying in infancy, more children are living to adulthood, and more people are living longer lives than at any point in human history. To infer otherwise does a tremendous injustice to the thousands of people in the scientific community who sacrificed their lives and talents to ensure that humanity is alive and well today so that antivaxxers can berate and belittle science from their ivory towers of unearned and undeserved health.

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UPDATE: This post is one of several that I had written that I later discovered had never been set to "public."

Anti-vaxxers are Paranoid, Illogical, and Unscientific

25 October 2022 • by Bob • Politics, Health

There is an old saying that goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Likewise, there is a variant of that saying that has evolved over the years as, "You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think." This is especially true within the realms of Social Media, where any number of ill-informed rabble now have a platform to publicly spew complete nonsense, while remaining incapable of being able to see anything beyond their warped points of view. Even when presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, these ideological miscreants cling to their fallacies with a religious fervor that would fill zealots with envy. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, few topics have generated such levels of misplaced devotion as the anti-vaxx crowds, which gained tens of thousands of new converts during the recent COVID19 pandemic as paranoia fueled by conspiracy theories devolved into a quagmire of unscientific, politically-charged drivel. It is usually best to ignore the ridiculous offerings proffered by those who are incapable of understanding simple logic, because nothing you can say will budge them from their comfortable, little echo chambers.

That being said, I occasionally see something so ludicrous that I cannot remain silent, and though I know that my actions will do no good, I cannot resist the temptation to speak up, which brings me to the subject of today's blog. Despite 2½ years of a global pandemic that has resulted in millions of deaths around the planet, there are thousands of paranoid, uneducated saps who deny its existence or distrust the government's motivations where the pandemic is concerned. The following conversation details just one example of this type of mentality at work.

As I said earlier, this discussion typifies the point that I was trying to make; despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this anti-vaxxer was incapable of seeing anything beyond his paranoid, unscientific, and illogical perspective.

What a sad indictment of the quality of scientific thought in the 21^st century.

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UPDATE: This post was edited to fix a small math error that was in the original.

Numbers Never Lie...

20 September 2020 • by Bob • Politics, Health

There is an old adage that says, "Numbers never lie, but liars always use numbers." Over the years I have seen this adage reinforced and demonstrated countless times, which brings me to the recently-released video titled Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained. I've seen that video a few times (because people keep sharing it on social media), and there are several glaring issues with it. But before I continue, let me be very clear about something: I think the pandemic lockdown was unnecessary, at least as far as the United States is concerned. Please keep that in mind as you read everything else I say below.

The First Major Issue with that Video

First of all - and this is most important - the numbers of infections and deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic should be lower than for other viral outbreaks because we closed businesses and made everyone maintain social distancing and wear masks!!! It should be readily apparent to anyone who is capable of reasonable thought that the extreme measures we took to combat this pandemic were directly responsible for this pandemic not being nearly as catastrophic as it could have been. THAT. WAS. THE. WHOLE. POINT. I personally think we collectively overreacted, and the long-term damages to our economy will be felt for years to come. But that being said, our overreaction had the exact effect for which it was instituted: less people got sick and/or died. So the very same people who keep saying, "Well, the pandemic wasn't that bad after all..." are affirming that the drastic measures we took were extremely effective. For this single reason alone, the entire argument in that video evaporates. The lockdown did what it was designed to do. End of story. (As a reminder, I think the lockdown wasn't necessary; but that doesn't mean it wasn't effective - because it was.)

The Second Major Issue with that Video

The presenter in that video makes no secret about ignoring comorbidities, which is when someone has an existing condition and dies after contracting COVID-19. However, ignoring comorbidities is a cheap way to manipulate the data to skew the numbers and make them seem to indicate what you want them to say, rather than what they actually say. Let me give you a hypothetical example: if I'm living with cancer, but I get shot by a gun - it is the gunshot that killed me, not my cancer. That's blatantly obvious to everyone with a brain. It's the same thing if I'm living with heart disease or lung disease and I am shot - it's the bullet that killed me, etc. Now substitute the coronavirus for the gunshot. If I'm living with cancer, but I contract the coronavirus and die - it is the coronavirus that killed me, not my cancer. It's the same if I'm living with heart disease or lung disease and contract the coronavirus and die. In each of those scenarios, I was managing my illness until I contracted the coronavirus, which is what actually killed me. What the presenter in that video is attempting to do is to discount all of the deaths where something else was present in the pathology, which artificially (and dishonestly) deflates the numbers of actual deaths. That is wrong from a scientific perspective, and it's wrong from a data perspective, and ultimately it's wrong from an ethical perspective - because for all intents and purposes he is lying. Period.

The Third Major Issue with that Video

Because of the presenter's immoral manipulation of the data, you're not getting a full picture of what's going on. In several areas of the planet - like India for example - the numbers of infections and deaths are both continuing to rise. The 'bump' that the presenter keeps showing over and over is only true for a few regions of the planet, but it's grossly inaccurate for much of the rest of the planet. Also, the presenter made the claim several times that the pandemic was largely over by the beginning of Summer 2020, and that is patently false for many areas of the globe. Once again, if you look at India alone, their outbreak started at the beginning of Summer 2020. Brazil's struggle with this pandemic started about a month before India. New cases in the United States peaked around mid-July and have slowly been decreasing since then, but still - the United States is just one country. From a global perspective, we're still in the thick of it.

The Fourth Major Issue with that Video

It is absolutely hilarious that this presenter keeps reinforcing almost all of his talking points based on an analysis of... Sweden. That's right - this dweeb is basing the majority of his arguments on observations for a tiny slice of the world that few people visit unless absolutely necessary, which is a country that has less than one tenth of one percent of the global population. The coronavirus was largely managed in Sweden BECAUSE IT'S @#$% SWEDEN!!! You CANNOT compare the United States, or Russia, or India, or pretty much any large, industrialized nation in the world with Sweden. North Carolina may have the same population as Sweden, but it's surrounded by other states; interstate commerce is constantly bringing a fresh influx of people through its borders, and at the end of the day - PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO VISIT NORTH CAROLINA. North Carolina has actual BEACHES that bring people from all over the country, not a bunch of unpronounceable fjords that are only popular with retirees on cruise ships.

Conclusion

Returning to my opening statement, there is an old adage that says, "Numbers never lie, but liars always use numbers," and that concept nicely summarizes the entire video.

In closing, let me reiterate - I think the lockdown was unnecessary. And if I felt so inclined, I could probably back that up with empirical evidence, and I'll bet that I could pull it off without having to manipulate the data and lying to the world about it, too.

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POSTSCRIPT:

If you're interested in learning more about the subject of manipulating data dishonestly, there's a book called Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception that I stumbled across recently. I have only read the synopsis, but after seeing so many people try to manipulate public opinion by manipulating the numbers that they use to reinforce their arguments, I've added it to my reading list.

Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man

01 June 2020 • by Bob • Rants, Health

I have mentioned in several previous blogs that I love conspiracy theories; and as I have said before, I do not believe any of them. But still - it is a never-ending source of amusement for me to see what others are gullible enough to believe.

However, I should explain how I typically respond to conspiracy-related information that I know is bogus when it is posted to public forums:

• If I see that someone has posted something inaccurate that is based on their mistaken beliefs and is clearly harmless to anyone, I usually have a quick laugh and move on.
• If I see that someone has posted something inaccurate that is an urban legend or a hoax, I often point them to a fact-checking website like www.factcheck.org in order to stop the spread of false information.
• If I see that someone is posting information that is deliberately misleading and harmful to society, I will also point them to a fact-checking website like www.factcheck.org, but I will also ask them to stop posting information that will harm others.

I freely admit that I am not the "Internet Police." It is not my job to point out every instance where someone has posted bogus information. And - to be honest - that job would take far too much time. However, people's reactions to correction vary widely; some people are thankful to discover that they were posting something that wasn't true, while others are deeply offended that anyone would question their judgment. This latter group of people has recently become very, very dangerous. The world is struggling with the mounting death toll of a global pandemic, and the last thing that we need is people posting bogus information about it.

I have made it abundantly clear in previous blogs how I feel about anti-vaxxers. Several of the anti-vaxxers that I know are well-meaning people, even though they mistakenly believe something that is fundamentally wrong. What many of these anti-vaxxers believe has been refuted time and again, but they ignore all of the evidence to the contrary, and they cling to their inaccuracies with a passion that resembles radical religious zealotry. I continuously see incorrect information strewn about by these anti-vaxxers, which stirs up a great deal of unnecessary fear of science. As a direct result of that fear, other people have been avoiding medical treatment that will save lives. (Even though people in developing nations are crying out to receive that same medical treatment.)

As I have pointed out in the past, our nation - the United States - has been blessed with amazing health care. Decades of successful vaccination programs have eradicated some diseases, and rendered others nearly moot - at least within our shores. This has resulted in domestic complacency with regard to immunology, while countries around the world are still grappling with infectious diseases and clamoring for treatments that we take for granted.

All of this discussion leads me to a conversation that I had earlier today with an anti-vaxxer who was claiming that the USA's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was a corrupt company that was only in the business of selling vaccinations for profit. If you'll refer to my second point above, you'll see how I initially reacted. I pointed out the errors that the ill-informed anti-vaxxer was posting, (for example the fact that the CDC is actually a government agency that is funded by tax dollars), and I referred this anti-vaxxer to the www.factcheck.org website to correct the other misleading information that was posted.

As you might imagine, this did not sit well with the anti-vaxxer. As I mentioned earlier, this person was deeply offended that anyone would question their judgment. And in reply to the facts that were presented to refute the inaccuracies that this anti-vaxxer had posted, I was told something to the effect that I was entitled to my own opinion.

The problem with that argument is that people are entitled to their 'opinions' when they are discussing something trivial, like whether the Pittsburgh Steelers are more important in the history of football than the Patriots. (Hint: they are.) But when it comes to actual science, opinions do not matter - facts matter. And facts do not care about your opinions.

When this anti-vaxxer continued to push the issue and post messages that were ultimately going to lead people astray, I shifted from the second point in my list of responses to conspiracy theorists to the third point. At our current stage in world history, the fear of life-saving immunology that anti-vaxxers continue to promote is intolerable; it is anti-science, anti-reason, and anti-facts.

As far as the CDC is concerned, a basic study of its duties and responsibilities show that its collection of scientists are fully-employed in trying to investigate and find treatments for thousands of diseases; such as HIV/AIDS, Cancer, Tuberculosis, Alzheimer's, Hepatitis, Diabetes, etc. They are also responsible for researching and preventing a host of occupational and public health issues. Their workforce of more than 15,000 employees has over 50% with advanced degrees; many of them doctors who are specialists in their respective fields of virology, pathology, microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, etc. These specialists will often have at least a decade of formal education in their fields, then another 10 to 30 years of experience within their chosen specialty.

With all of that in mind, it takes a special kind of hubris for an anti-vaxxer to assume that they know more than these thousands of well-educated and brilliant minds because he or she read a blog that agreed with their pre-existing opinion, even though their pre-existing opinion is baseless and easily-refutable nonsense.

The following video sums this up nicely.

In the end, of course, nothing that I said could convince this anti-vaxxer that he or she was wrong. This person continued to cling to the mistaken opinion that vaccines are the evil by-products of a world-wide plot involving the CDC, the WHO, and a host of other organizations and individuals. I realized that there was nothing that I could do, so I left this anti-vaxxer to his or her delusions, although I wished that neither this pandemic nor the next would claim the life of someone in his or her family.

But, you know, that's just like my opinion, man.

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UPDATE: I had originally meant to add the following video from PBS to this post. It's from a few years ago, yet it explains some of what is happening in today's world quite well.

It's all about Perspective - Part II

13 May 2020 • by Bob • Ponderings, Politics, Health

Several people that I know have been posting and reposting images like the following, which cite the fatality current numbers from www.worldometers.info. More often than not, people are posting these images in an effort to downplay the fatality rate of COVID-19 by comparing it to other causes of death.

First of all, I think it's foolish to compare diseases in this manner. I'm not sure why so many people are intentionally trying to deny that COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that has a pretty decent chance of killing people.

Let me be clear, I fully admit that many people have overestimated the spread of this pandemic, and it seems that both the academic and scientific worlds are making up the numbers for their projections based on some sort of randomization algorithm. In addition, the press seems to have nothing better to do than to drag the country through thousands of hours of reporting, wherein the common denominator seems to be, "We have no idea what we're saying, but please listen to us anyway - because we desperately need the ratings."

However, there is another problem that I often see throughout the Western Hemisphere, which bothers me more than these numbers: we see everything from the perspective of what impacts us, so we tend to ignore things that affect the rest of the world. If you were to step outside the safety bubble of the Western Hemisphere, you would see that diseases like Measles, Polio, and Tuberculosis still run rampant.

In North America, we don't care about any of those diseases, because we haven't had to deal with them for several decades. As I have pointed out in other blogs, this has led to the unscientific Antivaxxer movement, and a completely illogical public distrust of our medical establishment, which is the best health care available in the history of humanity.

With all of that in mind, I would say that the following list illustrates what a lot of the people in this country are thinking when they see lists like those in the preceding image:

More often than not, people in the Western Hemisphere or North America ignore the lists in those images for two reasons: complacency and denial.

• The cause of the complacency is: decades of successful vaccination programs and our excellent health care system, both of which are still the best medical services that the world has ever seen.
• The cause of the denial is: selfishness. People want what they want, and they don't want anyone telling them that they can't have what they want, whether that is harmful to themselves or others or the environment. (We live in a free society, and one of the downsides to freedom is: it teaches people to be irresponsible.)

In short, many people living in the Western Hemisphere believe that they have the right to selectively care only about what they feel might impact them adversely, and to ignore everything else; whether that means the suffering of others, or their poor lifestyle choices.

Antivaxxers versus Bill Gates

04 May 2020 • by Bob • Health, Rants

Several years ago, Bill Gates delivered a great TED talk that he called "The next outbreak? We're not ready." In his presentation, Gates described how the world would not be prepared for the next global pandemic, and you can watch the video of his full, 8-minute talk below.

Of course, our planet is currently gripped by a global pandemic, and we can now see how few people bothered to pay attention to what Gates was saying. As of today, more than 3 million people have been infected world wide, with around a quarter of a million deaths. (See https://www.bing.com/covid/ for details.)

Because of the relevance of Gates' TED talk to today's situation, there are many people who believe that Gates has the power to see the future. That is, of course, ludicrous; as Gates said in his presentation, a global pandemic was a statistical certainty. Then there are a lot of people who ignore Gates, because they believe that he is not an expert in the field; those people have no idea what they're talking about. Gates has spent the past couple decades spending billions of dollars of his personal wealth on a quest to rid the world of disease, and he has actually evolved into something of an expert the field. (Which I will discuss later.)

However, there have also been a great number of conspiracy theorists who believe that Gates is somehow behind all of this, and he is using this situation to either get richer, or to have everyone implanted with microchips. (e.g. People seem to think that Gates is the antichrist.) Even though such rumors have been debunked several times, there are people who still cling to the false belief that Bill Gates is evil and should be killed.

After another round of what seemed to be an endless stream of fools spewing hatred against Gates on various social media platforms, I grew tired of all the paranoia and stupidity, and I posted the following message:

Let me be blunt - if you hate Bill Gates because you think that Windows 8 was a clunker of an operating system, then so be it. If you hate Bill Gates because you hate rich people, then you're probably just jealous that your life never amounted to anything, and it's easier to blame others than to accept the fact that your current situation is the sum total of all your life's bad decisions. However, if you hate ANYONE who is giving away billions of dollars of their personal wealth to fight disease, promote education, and provide clean water for developing nations, etc., then I'm afraid that you're little more than a small-minded, superstitious Luddite.

Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

14 June 2018 • by Bob • Health, Rants

The following study of 1,256,407 children conclusively shows that there is no link between vaccinations and autism:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X14006367

There is no other way to put this mildly:

• ...if you choose to ignore the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that supports vaccines...
  - or -
• ...if you choose to listen to some ignorant celebrity's rant against vaccines...
  - or -
• ...if you choose to believe some dim-witted anti-vaxxer's blog...
  - or -
• ...if you think that you somehow have more information than the thousands of disparate scientists and researchers from around the globe who have repeatedly shown that there is no link between vaccinations and autism...

...then you are an idiot.

Anti-Vaxxers are Still Idiots

26 April 2018 • by Bob • Health, Rants

Earlier today, an addlebrained anti-vaxxer posted a link to this bogus article on a social media website: FDA Announced That Vaccines Are Causing Autism. That article was, of course, immediately debunked by other people through myriad fact-check articles, such as Debunking False Vaccine Claim, Is Autism Now Disclosed as a DTaP Vaccine Side Effect?, etc. But even if that claim had been true for that single vaccine, that would still not apply to the hundreds of other vaccines for which there is incontrovertible proof that they do not cause autism.

The link between vaccines and autism has long been debunked, and people need to stop repeating this very harmful lie. Here is the scoop straight from the FDA: "Scientific evidence does not support a link between vaccination and autism or other developmental disorders." (See the CDC article Vaccines for Children - A Guide for Parents and Caregivers for more information.)

That being said, another gullible village idiot felt that it was necessary to ignore both scientific research and reasonable discussion and repost the following alarmist image as an attempted response:

The numbers published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show that those affected by Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are less than 15 per 1,000, and any increase between current the numbers and the 1960s is attributed to heightened awareness of the disease, better diagnostic procedures, and the classifications of new ailments within ASD like Asperger Syndrome. (See the CDC pages like Prevalence and Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Research, etc.) What is more, research conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) has shown that autism begins in the womb, and is thereby unaffected by childhood vaccinations. (See Autism Spectrum Disorder: Progress Toward Earlier Diagnosis, Autism Risk Unrelated to Total Vaccine Exposure in Early Childhood, etc.)

That being said, the so-called link between autism and vaccines was based on a single research paper that was later unequivocally proved as a fraud, formally retracted from publication, and the doctor who published the paper lost his medical accreditation due to multiple conflicts of interest, unethical behavior, and manufacturing the data in his report. (Basically, this one doctor published a fraudulent study in order to make money. See MMR Doctor 'Planned to Make Millions,' Journal Claims, Antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield: Scientific fraud?, and hundreds of other articles published about this scandal.)

In the wake of this controversy, the FDA, the CDC and the NIH have spent millions of USA taxpayer dollars on research that has categorically proven that there is no link between vaccines and autism. (See Vaccine Safety: Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism, Vaccine Safety & Availability: Thimerosal and Vaccines, and dozens of other pages on both the FDA, CDC, and NIH websites.)

However, this hoax refuses to die because people who are unaware of the actual research keep reposting bogus images and articles like those shown above, and dangerous diseases which we had almost eradicated from the planet are making a comeback. In the USA, this is especially prevalent due to the lack of daily suffering that is seen in underdeveloped countries; this false sense of security was paradoxically caused by the success of our vaccination programs. (See Vaccine Safety Questions and Answers.) As a result, more children in the USA are growing up with a greater risk of contracting an unnecessary disease than they are of autism.

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NOTE: Another reliable and respected source of information is the Mayo Clinic, which states the following in its Autism Spectrum Disorder article:

No link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorder

One of the greatest controversies in autism spectrum disorder centers on whether a link exists between the disorder and childhood vaccines. Despite extensive research, no reliable study has shown a link between autism spectrum disorder and any vaccines. In fact, the original study that ignited the debate years ago has been retracted due to poor design and questionable research methods.

Avoiding childhood vaccinations can place your child and others in danger of catching and spreading serious diseases, including whooping cough (pertussis), measles or mumps.

In other words - if you are a parent, do not fall victim to the misguided anti-vaxxer paranoia that is infesting social media and other fake news outlets with disinformation; do the world a favor and vaccinate your children. Attempts to demonize our successful and scientifically-verified vaccination programs is ridiculously naïve, and future generations will look back on our present-day anti-vaxxer hysteria with the same level of contempt and disgust that we have for the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s.

More Thoughts About Vaccines

12 January 2017 • by bob • Rants

Two years ago I wrote a post which was titled Anti-Vaxxers are Idiots, in which I explained in great detail how important it is for people to be vaccinated and to vaccinate their children. So it came as something of a depressing surprise for me to witness another needless debate fueled by ceaseless drivel from uninformed conspiracy theorists who still cling to the long-disproved belief that vaccines cause autism and other maladies. I am simply amazed at the level of denial from most of these people; it's like they belong to the "Flat Earth Society." Nevertheless, these fools are most-likely alive and healthy and able to voice their misguided opinions only because previous generations were vaccinated sufficiently enough to halt the spread of diseases which would otherwise have killed the parents or grandparents of these naïve nitwits.

Despite any protestations to the contrary, vaccines stop diseases. Period. If you deny that fact, then there is no other way for me to put this - you're just an idiot. I wish that I could put that nicer way, but that's just the way things are.

However, because someone was positing the theory that vaccines are ineffective since occasionally some people still get sick, I thought that I should point out another point of truth: sometimes a vaccine doesn't just lessen the chances of contracting a disease, sometimes it lessens the severity of the disease.

Here is a true story: during my time in the Army, all of the soldiers were forced to have flu vaccinations every year. This decision was passed down from the Pentagon because diseases run rampant throughout the military, which is due to the deplorable conditions in which we had to live in order to do our jobs. (See the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic for an example.) In any event, there were several years when I was vaccinated and I still got the flu, although I was over it after a day or two. So when I left the military, I decided to stop having my annual flu shot.

However, two years later I contracted the flu during another domestic outbreak. The illness wreaked havoc on my system for several weeks, and my life was spared only because medicine has continued to evolve over the past few decades since the last devastating pandemic. But make no mistake - 20 or 30 years ago I probably would have died from that strain of the flu.

I have learned my lesson, and now I make sure that I get my flu shot every year. Sometimes I still get sick, but never as sick as that year when I skipped my flu shot.

Anti-Vaxxers are Idiots

23 January 2015 • by Bob • Rants

Warning: I will be a little more... um, blunt.. than usual in this blog. I make no apologies, because this is a very serious topic.

Someone I know posted the following article to Facebook with the caption, "When you don't vaccinate your kids, you contribute to this:"

Disneyland Measles Outbreak Hits 59 Cases And Counting

But what was the most-troubling about his post was an anti-vaxxer who responded to it; this anti-vaxxer was suggesting that: 1) measles isn't a deadly disease, 2) it can be treated by homeopathic herbs and essential oils, 3) contracting the disease will build natural immunities, and 4) we should be more concerned about the amount of sugar in our food than the measles. Unfortunately, this person was being serious. Adding insult to injury, when she was corrected with information from the World Health Organization (WHO) which pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people die each year from the measles, this anti-vaxxer changed her story and claimed that since only 145,700 people died from the measles in 2013, that's only 0.000024% of the world's 6 billion people, so measles isn't that big of a deal. This anti-vaxxer was completely blind to the fact that we were discussing 145,700 people who didn't need to die because the cause of their deaths was easily-preventable. In other words, what she really meant was - since the people who are dying from the measles aren't people that she knows personally, their lives obviously don't matter.

Before I continue, I need to state that I passionately agree with my friend's original statement: if you do not vaccinate your kids, you are contributing to potentially lethal outbreaks. Let me put this another way, and let me be very clear as to how I feel about vaccinations: if you are part of the current crowd of crazy people who oppose vaccinations for easily-preventable diseases - you are an idiot. Period. End-of-story. And if you are a parent who refuses to vaccinate your children, and your children contract an easily-preventable disease - you are a terrible, wicked, stupid, horrible, despicable person. Child Protective Services should take your children away from you because you are endangering your children, and you are obviously too inept to be a parent.

Let me dispel some of the anti-vaxxer's arguments with actual facts about the measles from the WHO at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/, (note that the added emphasis is mine):

Let me reiterate some of those facts: immunizations have reduced the number of deaths by 95% in just the past 35 years (from 2,600,000 fatalities to 145,700 fatalities). When we discuss childhood immunizations for diseases like the measles, we are not discussing whether your child will stay home from school for a couple of days with a temperature - we are talking about preventing your child's death. Your child could die because of your parental incompetence, and all it takes is a simple vaccine to remove the possibility.

This anti-vaxxer also suggested that natural medicine was sufficient for the measles, which is a ludicrous proposal; if natural medicine was sufficient, then we would not have had millions of people dying each year throughout the history of humanity. I have met several people in my life who have grown up under the mistaken premise that centuries of naturalistic alchemy was more effective than present-day medicine. I would love to point out that for the thousands of years that homo-sapiens have walked the face of the planet, the life-expectancy of the average human was ½ or ¼ of what it is now. During that time, thousands of pseudo-doctors prescribed any number of naturally-based remedies, yet the majority of people could still expect to die before the age of 30 or 40, and millions upon millions of children died before they left infancy due to disease. In contrast, modern medical science has introduced thousands of real cures based on real science which have produced real results in terms of preventing disease and improving the quality of life. Natural medicine may make your feel better about yourself in an isolated, narrow-minded, yuppie universe, but a host of readily-available facts tell a decidedly different story: science actually works, whereas visiting a modern-day witch doctor does not.

I grew up in a time where contracting a large number of easily-contractible diseases was still a frightening fact of life, when millions of lives were seriously impacted by global diseases like measles, polio, etc. In the decades that preceded my childhood, a plethora of deadly diseases ravaged our society; diseases like smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, typhoid, etc. Times are vastly different now; in today's United States we are blessed with a society where decades of successful vaccination programs have reduced these diseases to the point where apathy and complacency have set in, and as a result we are forced to endure the idiocy of anti-vaxxers who think that vaccines are no longer necessary.

However, vaccines are still just as necessary as they were in the past. An essential part of our country's life-blood is immigration; millions of new immigrants settle within our borders each year, and most of these people are coming from countries which have no regular vaccination program. If your unvaccinated children go to school with children who have inadvertently brought diseases to the United States - your child will likely become infected. And as our world becomes increasingly more global, your child's chances of travelling outside the United States increases, and immunizations are necessary to prevent overseas exposure to diseases that we no longer worry about domestically. For example, thanks to a successful vaccination program, the United States hasn't seen a case of polio since 1979; however, when I was in India a few years ago, I met someone whose brother was recently paralyzed by polio.

If there was no measles vaccine and people were still dying to the left and to the right, people like this anti-vaxxer and everyone like her would be clamoring for a measles vaccine. You might recall the recent Ebola panic; suddenly everyone was screaming for a vaccine. I am completely confident that science will eventually come up with a vaccine for Ebola, and I am just as certain that 100 years after its debut the world will have anti-vaxxers who think that they just need to apply a homeopathic salve until they build up their immunity to Ebola. (There should be a special category in the Darwin Awards for anti-vaxxers.) Just because we don't see a specific disease in our day-to-day lives, that doesn't mean that it isn't a threat to the rest of the world.

I understand that some parents were unnecessarily frightened by a popular myth that was floating around which suggested that the MMR (Measles/Mumps/Rubella) vaccine could cause autism. That theory has long-since been debunked, but a few ill-educated people are unwilling to let it go. However, even if the infinitesimally-small chance of autism was remotely true, the theoretical number of people actually affected by the risk of autism would still be staggeringly-less than the number of lives that are actually saved by vaccinations. Penn and Teller put together a presentation which beautifully illustrates this point (Warning: Foul Language):

I have wasted enough time and effort on this subject, so I will leave you with a final parting thought: vaccinations have a proven track record of saving lives. If you are an anti-vaxxer, I do not care which stupid theory you are adhering to - you are just wrong. If you believe that natural medicine is the cure for everything - you are just wrong. Or if you believe that vaccines were designed by evil pharmaceutical companies to get rich - you are just wrong. Or if you believe that the side-effects from vaccines are worse than the disease - you are just wrong.

The simple fact is - vaccines save millions of lives each year. If you are too foolish to be immunized, perhaps you are doing the world a favor if you die from an easily-preventable disease and your genes are removed from the global gene pool so humanity can evolve past your demonstrably-lower level of intelligence. However, if you are a parent and you refuse to immunize your children, I will state once more - for the record - that you are a terrible, wicked, stupid, horrible, despicable person.

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Updates:

Since the time that I published this blog, several relevant articles have been published on this topic, so I have decided to periodically update this blog with pointers to articles that I think will add to this discussion.

• LA Times: The history of measles: A scourge for centuries
• IFL Science: Dear parents, you are being lied to
• Slate: Endangering the Herd: The case for suing parents who don't vaccinate their kids - or criminally charging them
• Medium.com: Parents who regret not vaccinating
• LA Times: Plunge in kindergartners' vaccination rate worries health officials
• The Daily Dot: The Disney measles outbreak is a serious public health risk. Should parents sue anti-vaxxers?
• The Skeptical OB: What everyone gets wrong about anti-vaccine parents
• Bart Barrett: One Dead Child. Two Foolish Parents.
• Daily Kos: Roald Dahl's Heartbreaking Take on Vaccines
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Why is it so hard to eliminate infectious disease?
• CNN: Medical journal retracts study linking autism to vaccine

And even though this subject isn't funny, there are a few humorous posts on the subject:

• Jimmy Kimmel: A Message for the Anti-Vaccine Movement
• The Onion: Diphtheria Excited About Possibility Of New Outbreak
• Boing Boing: Having the brakes removed from your car is a personal decision
• The Meta Picture: Angry Scientist Finds Uneducated Internet Comment And Delivers Badass Response... 
• Medium.com: Measles! Come Get Your Measles!
• Medium.com: Vaccines Work. Here Are the Facts.

However, I noticed over the years that a few of the links might have changed or disappeared, so I have replaced several of the URLs with links to the Internet Archive to preserve the original citations.