Mate, i got to tell you that you are doing good, your opinion on the subject is more important to some that the opinion of experts on TV (both loonies and serious scientists arguing against them).

For three reasons; your background in science, your wide audience, and the impossibility of you having a vested interest.

Your background in science is a self explanatory reason.

Your wide audience is likely to hear you, because you are perceived as “one of us”

And the impossibility of you having a vested interest, that one could argue that both loonies and scientists on tv could have (loonies selling books, scientists getting paid by big pharma), many know that this argument is bogus, BUT not everyone does, and they could be swayed by it.

I live in a smallish country, and we were some of the first countries in the world to get this disease, I got it before it made the news (a friend came straight from the airport to my house telling me about this bizarre bio containment he was subjected to).

I got it around 48 hours later, i did not die, but oh boy! i wished i had at the time, I’ve never felt worse (and i’ve been in car crashes, snowboarding accidents, a fractured skull, etc…). The people that saw me, and had ANY doubts about getting vaccinated, got the shot right away.

Luckily our government acted swiftly, most people got vaccinated, and NOTHING HAPPENED. It is sad to hear of people dying on developed countries because of this “debate”

And dude it pisses me off, because everytime some loonie starts a fire on the developed countries, some of it spreads here sooner or later. We got lower autism, and developmental diseases rates than developed countries AND EVERYONE GETS VACCINATED. And we got lower rates because we have healthier diets, we do more exercise, not because we shed common sense.

So thanks Chatty! and lets hope the “debate” ends and people realize that no one is out there actively trying to hurt them

Now if Micheal was upset by the subject itself, then it’s another ballgame and I can only say that I won’t mind him not being a reader anymore.

Anyway, chances are he’ll never come back.

@Chatty:
You really should have gone snarky on that butthead. The whole, “I’m taking my (free) ball and going home!” mentality is laughable. You should not even want any of your readership to be composed of people like that. Obviously Michael must have bought into Jenny McCarthy’s “brilliant” discourse on vaccination and simply has hurt feelings now that someone with legitimate experience shows evidence to the contrary.

To be honest, I don’t think that personal postings like this should take RPG readers by surprise. For me, the Hobby is interesting exactly because we can put our personal experiences and preferences behind the worlds we create. I find it great from time to time to know about the person behind the Headsucking Zombies or that slime giant monster from your 3D adventures – it puts your RPG posts much more into perspective knowing what you do for a living.

For example, my RPG group during college was made completely out of computer science and engineering students, and that showed transparently by our obsession with traps which could be skipped by fooling their sensors, with programmable undead, and with realistic details for whatever machinery or physics/metaphysics rules that we made (any system with a “create element” spell had to be nerfed before the players started using anti-matter bombs). In my current group, there is an architect who keeps bugging me about non-sensical/boring designs of buildings, and helped me improve in this field by tenfold.

So, yeah, good job

Pertussis is back? Really? I know it cropped up in places like India, but here? What is this, the 1400′s?

I just hope that everyone will stop freaking up, on both sides, after the next flu season. We should be good for another 20 years

I have no wish to see vaccinations required, by either law or peer pressure.

And for H1N1 the concept of “herd immunity” probably does not apply. The vaccine failure rate is most likely higher than the percentage of immune people in the population required for herd immunity.

I merely meant to say that the decision of whether to vaccinate has real effects outside our own families (for example, pertussis is needlessly making a comeback because herd immunity has been broken), and that the crowd who reads science journals fears H1N1 not for what it is but for what it might become.

I have no idea why both these facts are underreported in the news. But I’ve seen that many people are understandably confused because of these omissions.

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/updates/us/#iligraph

compare week 43 this year (200943) to previous years (chart goes back to only 2006 though).
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..Portrait of a Villain: Mnemesyx, the Twice Fallen =-.

The chances that it becomes a plague are limited… but enough of a risk to warrant mass vaccination.

As for Herd immunity (immunizing 75% of a population to protect the remaining the 25% because the virus can’t penetrate) that’s all good, but unless we start vaccinating at gunpoint, that will likely not happen. We will reach that if the death toll rises, but so far the last numbers I saw was 5500 deaths, most of which are in North America. And such numbers are normal flu numbers (although I’d be curious to see the demographics of those death, how many healthy kids).

So yes to your arguments, no to pressing the “Panic Now” button.

You leave off two important bits.

The first is the huge danger that H1N1 (which is incredibly contagious but not very dangerous) will combine with any of the less contagious but more deadly flu versions (such as the avian flu currently mostly in Asia).

The second is the concept of “herd immunity”.

More here about both of these:
http://davidvs.blogspot.com/2009/10/herd-immunity.html

The bottom line is that we’re currently seeing nearly everyone have mild flu symptoms for a few days: no big deal. But we need to prevent a deadly plague, and anti-vaccine paranoia is the opposite of prevention and endangers everyone.

In one Sentence: Frakenvirus and Codenamebirdflu666.

Huh excuse me mr, Conspiracy theory, if I was an evil overlord, I’d codename my Humanity killing virus ‘Chicago’ or ‘LNx-24′

Isin’t that what Microsoft did for Windows?

http://labvirus.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/video-doctors-speak-about-unsafe-vaccines/

Wow! after doing a little googling… i found that all the people interviewed in that video are chiropractors, holistic medicine providers, religious revivalists, and mothers (hey.. it’s listed as one of their credentials)… Clearly all of them are vaccine experts.. pfffftttt… (oh.. and wikipedia “NVIC”.. they are one of the main supporters of the conspiracies around the H1N1 alien mutant vaccine…)
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..[4E] Magic Halloween Candy =-.

How’s that vaccine against stupidity coming up by the way? I’m sure Obama ordered a few cases

Yeah… drives me crazy too. You said “blow a gasket”… that about hits the nail on the head.
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..Portrait of a Villain: Mnemesyx, the Twice Fallen =-.

I think your comparison of H1N1 to the Y2K computer bug is apt. I have several friends who are programmers, and who worked on fixing Y2K issues for months.

The Y2K fear-mongering beforehand were indeed overblown, and some people did take advantage of that fear to profiteer, but at the same time, there was a real problem, and many people worked very hard to insure that it was so minor most people didn’t notice it after the fact.

I think the same is going on with H1N1. It has the potential to be quite deadly, and there is a lot of fear-mongering going on, but at the same time, if it doesn’t turn out to be a horrible tragedy, it will be largely in part to all the people who are getting vaccinated, and practicing better health and hygiene, and staying home when they’re sick, and so on.

With any luck, it will look like Y2K after the fact, but hopefully people won’t forget that it was proactive efforts that helped keep both safe for most of us.

Here’s the Youtube channel for the CDC:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CDCStreamingHealth

Pro’s:
- Lack of sensationalism
- Seems to be real info by educated people rather than rampant speculation by the ill-informed

Con’s:
- A bit more dry, long and technical than the average person would wish
- Info is from an arm of the US federal government so hardcore conspiracy theorists will want to include similar feeds from other reputable sources around the world

And I respect all those who stay on their position. I don’t advocate that we force vaccination, as Cruguer says in the comment, I want people to get a fair exposition to the issues.

I really, really apologize if I caught so many readers off guard with such an off topic post. Given that we currently have only 1-5% of Musing readers commenting that feeling must have been felt by possibly hundreds of readers.

@Scott: I’ll maker the next post a Zombie Special!

@Wicked: I too agree that some established medical and scientific practices (not theories) are not subjects of ‘debate’. Vaccination is a no-brainer. Mass vaccination, a bit iffier and subject to beer debates. I’m glad you’re able to get the shots and get protected. Thanks for the kudos!

Thanks everyone. Once again, you proove what and incredible community you are.

The problem, of course, is the issue of herd immunity – if enough people in a population are immune, the disease never takes hold enough to spread widely. And if the disease does start to spread because of a mass of non-immunized people, the chances of even immunized people getting the disease spikes.

The area that I live in has a lot of “alternative” lifestyles, and one of the faddish alternatives is to not get your children immunized. We have 5-month old daughter, and my wife works in the childcare field. I’m also a volunteer firefighter, so my chances of exposure are much higher because I work with the public, and assist on medical calls.

So people not getting immunized puts me and my family at direct risk, risk that I can only partially mitigate by getting myself and my family vaccinated. We’re getting our H1N1 shots on Tuesday, since we’re a high-risk category, and we’ve been conscientious about getting Iris (our daughter) vaccinated, but I’m still quietly furious that this “debate” has been allowed to go on in our country.

I guess widespread stupidity is a risk you take with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but calling something a “debate” does not make it an actual debate, anymore than “intelligent design”, “alien abduction” or “D&D causes Satanism and suicide”. Thanks for posting an educated piece about something which is a very important public health issue.
.-= wickedmurph´s last blog ..4e Sandboxing =-.

I know your very busy at the moment, but a write up on possible scientific vaccines that could create the zombipocalyse could be an interesting read?

GeneTherapy, Vaccines, Mutated Cancers, Pharma Youth Elixir gone wrong.

Several Possibilities! Anyway just an idea i wanted to share.

Thanks,

Scott