Tuesday 17 February 2009

Agenda over public health

One of the saddest things about JABS is the way they are prepared to extend their fears over existing vaccines into totally imaginary health scares.

Rosemary (who seems to have calmed down recently - she either posts the text of lunatic monkey virus sites (which most of JABS seem to have the good sense to ignore) or she simply reposts general medical stories from assorted news outlets) has posted a story from the Independent about Scarlet Fever.

As I see it, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to post on a health terror site.

However… As JABS is full of fucking nutters, they can't all let it lie, can they? Oh No.

Seonaid tries (rather half heartedly, if you ask me) to link this to vaccines:

Just as well they didn't vaccinate for this - or they would be blaming fall in vaccine uptake for it's return!

Now, from what I see, the original story was a simple news piece. "This has happened". No agenda, nothing. Certainly no mention of vaccines.

However, as we know (JABSLoonies passim.), Seonaid is a fucking cretin, so we'll perhaps pass this off as another conspiracy theory.

OH NOES!!! Minority View - the "reasonable face of JABS" - decides to have a go too:

How much you want to be[t] that a vaccine is coming? Generally, if there is a news story about an infectious disease, it doesn't really mean the cases are rising. What it means is that a vaccine is on the way and doctors have been nudged to start diagnosing whatever it is.

See the series of events on whooping cough in adults in the U.S.

First there is publicity, directed at doctors, telling them that this illness is either undiagnosed or increasing in teens and adults.

Second the doctors start spotting it, since they have been told to pay attention

Third the vaccine gets released to general acclaim and good sales


They're never fucking happy are they, unless people are getting ill, or actually dying? A simple story about the resurgence of a disease, and they start spreading F.U.D. I reckon MV or John Stone could spin a vaccine story out of the fact that Aston Villa are in the top four of the Premier League.

15 comments:

Unknown said...

Angladrion/Hillary Butler is descending into the kind of lunacy we usually see from Guss or Truthseeker

There was a vaccine for Scarlet Fever used in UK for a few decades in the early 20th century. It was supposedly wonderful. But as the side effects became worse than the disease itself, it was silently removed from the schedule, because parents refused to tolerate them. at least in those days, side effects were occasionally seen for what they are.

I'm sure, these days, if another vaccine came along, and there were "alleged" side effects, they would all be deemed "coincidental", and all the snarky flat-earther-type remarks here, directed at vaccine critics, would multiply in their gazillions.

T losers would be the provaccine people, whose children had the side effects, just as the current losers are the provaccine people, whose children have serious side effects, which are denied, and they are left to their own devices.

It's interesting to watch how the snide vaccine defenders, continue their descent into the sort of medieval, falt-earth animalism/snarl of Copernicus's Day.

John H said...

I have probably done as much research on this as that fruitcake. The vaccine was removed following the development of penicillin which rather pulled the rug out from under it's feet.

Maybe he/she needs reminding that their guru Wakefield the Charlatan was looking to develop his own vaccine.

I cannot think of anyone more flat-earthist than the jabbophobes.

And she has the gall to say that responsible parents who vaccinate their children are losers.

The real losers are the jabbophobes who for whatever crackpot reason (religion, mmr scare) allow their children to die or suffer serious illness and permanent damage.

It would be a joke if it wasn't for sick kids.

Unknown said...

Well a lot of them don't believe in antibiotics either.

I notice now they have a thread on smallpox! Smallpox for pity's sake. I am afraid to read it, they're probably trying to figure out how to get it back.

John H said...

I imagine a lot of them would change their views on antibiotics if they got something virulently nasty.

A bit like that fruitcake gobbymouth Jeni Barnett on her blog. One minute she is all jabbophobic, pro-homeodoodah and natural healing bollox and in the previous post she is blathering on about having antibiotics and dental surgery. Now they could be herbal antibiotics and psychic dental surgery but I somehow doubt it.

I think they would love smallpox to return to the world. Just imagine how many dead kids they could find then and stick on their websites.

Probably the gold standard of vaccination/immunisation. A bastard disease endemic globally (is that an oxymoron or a tautology ?) which has been totally eradicated by vaccination

One outbreak in a Birmingham reasearch lab in donkeys years affecting two people. Other than that it has vanished. Gone. It is no more. Nada. Zip.

Not from magic sugar pills, acu-needling, herbal weedism or holistic crystal energy healing BUT BY VACCINATION.

Total lives saved probably in the high scores to the low hundreds of millions.

And not a single complaint about unwarranted side effects.

And they say we are flat earthers ? Bit of an accusation to make about a geophysicist.

I know I am preaching to the converted here but even more so than the AIDS denialists and the generic barmpot woosters the jabbophobes drive me effing crazy.

Unknown said...

You're a geophysicist? I'm a geophysicist.

Did you read their smallpox thread? I can't make myself do it, I'm afraid I will go through the roof.

John H said...

Millipede

Interesting. Does your choice of name reflect your occupation ?

I ask because I used to do seismic research in Saudi Arabia and the place was full of scorpions. They were horrible nasty bastards that could give you an unpleasant nip (and no, they don't kill you).

We used to stomp the buggers or put them in an arena of death with dung beetles and let them fight it out (the beetles usually won as the scorpions could't penetrate their exoskeleton and they crushed the scorpions to death. Made betting on the result a bit of a waste of time).

However, there was an article in Scientific American (this is circa 1975) which detailed how they used the very fine hairs on their legs to detect motion underground (burrowing bugs etc).

As this was almost exactly what we did with geophones (although not specifically for bugs) we sort of of adopted them as our emblem/mascot instead of stomping them to death.

In any case, once you have seen five "Bug Death Arena" contests you have seen all of them.

I would assume that millipedes have a similar capability with all their little legs acting as seismic detectors.

Just a thought.

John

Unknown said...

The name has no signifigance.I'm not sure how I came up with it but I registered an e-mail with millipede in the title, so I end up using it.

I met another geophysicist whose hobby was animals that use physics. He liked to present posters on them at SEG meetings.

He told me about some kind of bug -(a spider?) that lived in the desert and could sense the shifting sand grains dislodged by prey, and used that to ambush them.

Another animal that uses physics is an electric eel. He bought an electric eel and set up an aquarium, with the goal of winning the best poster at the SEG with his actual demonstration of what an electric eel does. On the day before the meeting he moved all his equipment over to the exhibition area and got everything all set up and working. Unfortunately he didn't know that they turned off the power to the exhibition area at night and the next morning his eel was dead, because the pumps and filters and aeration devices in the aquarium had shut down. So he didn't win the poster prize.

John H said...

It must have been a crap electric eel if it couldn't be arsed to power the equipment.

I was always interested in things like how do animals migrate by air and sea, do dolphins and whales have some sort of magnetic directional device in their brains. Clearly they do and with amazing accuracy - so how do they do it.

These sorts of things have been the basis of many a lively conversation.

As an example I had a conversation with a friend who said there were no special tricks or magnetic brains involved in bird migrations. The just followed landmarks or did what they did last year. I can accept that but there are a few flaws in it:
• What happened the first time when they had no recollection of the landmarks
• How do first timers manage it (OK they could just follow the flock)
• How do eels and salmon migrate across the Atlantic every year – they cannot possibly do this via landmarks as there are none in the sea. They still manage it very successfully.

Maybe they don’t have magnetic brains and it is a combination of temperatures, length of day and angle of sun/moon which sets them off and guides them. (Maybe that is why whales beach themselves – distracted by man made light which lacks the almost infinite focal length of the sun and moon).

Interesting questions but certainly nothing supernatural in any way (as some woosters of my acquaintance would have it).

I guess you could divide a lot of animals into two groups. Those using passive techniques (hearing etc) and those using active techniques (bats are all I can think of).

It's probably a lot more fun than reading the jabbophobes bollox.

John H said...

Sorry Becky - getting off the beaten track a bit here.

John H said...

Back to the jabbophobes and "Wakefield The Scuzz-Woo".

You really have to see this muppet character rip the piss out of Wakefield and summarise the whole shameful farrago of that fraudsters deceit, lies and greed.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/andrew_wakefield_scuzz-wo.php#commentsArea

The muppet refers to him as a "scuzz-woo" "scuzzbucket" and "scum".

Not sure what the first one is exactly but I am with the muppet on this one.

If you can be totally eviscerated by a muppet then the game has to be over, surely.

John H said...

Even backward places like Yemen can get it right:

"""Measles

But Yemen’s battle against measles is a more successful story. From 2007 to 2006, reported cases of measles nationwide plummeted from 30,000 cases, 5,000 of which were fatal, to 13 cases only.

“In 2008, there were three reported cases of measles, and no fatalities,” said Mohammad."""

http://www.yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1230&p=health&a=1

5000 dead kids versus no dead kids. Which would any sane rational person prefer.

And that is 5000 live kids every year, year on year.

The jabbophobe ghouls presumably would prefer dead kids. Just as long as they don't get the munkee gonads in them.

And Mrs JH wonders why I get so incensed by these effing halfwits.

Anonymous said...

John H, I put your Yemen link on the JABS site.

Hopefully any extreme reactions will frighten genuinely concerned parents to somewhere more rational.

You never know...

Unknown said...

Of course they are spinning that measles in yemen story as fast as they can.

To the jabberwocks its just more proof that vaccinations are worthless.

John H said...

Tell 10,000 parents in Yemen every year how worthless the measles vaccine is.

Of course, being the proud possessors of extremely strange and eccentric views maybe the jabbophobes don't actully want an extra 5,000 slightly dark skinned extra kids each year.

And as for all those black kids in Africa, well . . . . . . .

John H said...

Good one Vince

However, I fear your jabbophobe alias is not long for this world.

The insane bitch that is Jackie and her child abusing brethren will kill your alias like a bug.

Ho Ho Ho - my captcha for this posting is actually "mingrat". And I used to believe there was no dog.