[deadwolfbones]

There's a difference between saying "hey maybe the vaccine is being rushed" and the sort of hyper-paranoid drivel in the OP.

[Ratmagiclady]

Did you also hear on the radio how there's legislation that's either being pushed or has gone through that gives government the power to make those vaccines mandatory and arrest individuals who refuse its administration?

Well, Erikksen, it's not so simple as it's being portrayed: if someone wants to run around spreading something highly contagious during a pandemic emergency cause they believe conspiracy theories, then there's a problem, and you can bet people are going to be looking for some kind of protection. This sort of situation can be extremely dangerous in terms of trying to keep some kind of order and essential services running, food coming in, utilities on, and the like.

There's little different here than was introduced as anti-terror measures, civil libertieswise. If it's a state of health-emergency, everyone'll know it.

There are legitimate concerns about some of the ingredients the drug companies are putting in some of the vaccines out there (Also some not-so-legitimate ones. Trying to propose an elaborate conspiracy theory about it is pretty irrelevant when the profit motive is sufficient to explain *that.*

There's some reasonably-convincing correlations between the squaline in certain anthrax vaccines and the elusive Gulf War Syndrome. That's not about it being a *vaccine,* though, rather about an ingredient put in the stuff to basically extend the number of doses they can get out of a certain amount of the working stuff. And you can bet that's related to profits as well as just plain having enough supply of the stuff.

As for what squaline might *do,* if the correlation is because of causation, I'm guessing that considering what it's a precursor to, if you combine it with chronic stress, say, as in war, you get autoimmune problems. Not a terribly responsible thing to find out the hard way.

If it's in the H1N1 vaccine, that's problematic. What H1N1 means in terms of the science is that it's of a type few of us have any resistance to (Apparently, if you're a Spanish Flu survivor, you have the antibodies and safe from 'swine flu' Unfortunately, you're also getting really old anyway.) It has the potential to really rip through populations in a kind of way we haven't seen since then. A hard enough choice if you have the means for informed consent, never mind if you're reacting in fear. (I, certainly, may as well take my chances with the vaccine if things get that far: I don't see how the stuff could make that part of my endocrine system any more messed-up than it is: what's it gonna do, give me a chronic autoimmune problem? I like my chances there a little better. Throw in not-being-a-carrier-or-potentially-making sweetie sick or not being able to care for people in a crisis, and forget about it, I'll volunteer. ) Still like 'voluntary regulation of pharmaceutical companies?

People don't really understand what wide-scale pandemics could do among the kind of population density we have. This is why doing the science and making the plans *before* stuff goes pear-shaped is important.

People who look for elaborate conspiracies rather than understanding the obvious and basic science end up setting us all up for super-strains and the potential for really bad stuff down the road. Profit based health care combined with people being taught to doubt the basic evolutionary science of what happens when you don't take the full course of TB meds, but rather split it up to make everyone feel better for a little while... means that TB is once again a huge problem with a lot of drug-resistant strains out there that the medicine-makers can't keep up with. Plenty of Viagra, though.

Similarly, with H1N1. The first little wave was well-contained: that doesn't mean it's not a threat. The more of it that did end up out there, the more likely we could find ourselves dealing with a suddenly-more-virulent strain that could ..really ruin your day, let's use the old euphemism.

Now. If things do go bad, we can have it one of two ways. One way is having a plan to do what we can with what we've got, the other is basically chaos like you may not really understand.

It's easier to cite grand conspiracy theories and pretend that gives you some kind of control or knowledge what 'nefarious elements' to blame for the grand system having serious flaws. If only you could find the conspirators, goes the reasoning, you wouldn't have to change anything or prepare or admit there's real danger and vulnerability to *any* pathogen-we-have-no-resistance to getting loose in our overpopulated corrals.

We've basically been the right combination of good and lucky with things like this so far. I don't advise trusting to just 'luck' about the fact that the diseases are real, the vulnerabilities are profound, and we're kind of counting on people whose only real responsibility is to make money, to provide solutions.

The key here, whatever happens, is to *not panic.*

Don't panic and flip out about conspiracies.
Don't panic and ignore the problem.

This kind of thing is one among many reasons I'm all for us controlling our population. Don't want to see it controlled *for* us, dig?

Stop. Look. Think.

You got a better plan, speak it. Don't freak out cause someone's making a plan.

Hmm sounds like more of that long winded drivel. /\/\/\/\/\/\

[er1kksen]

So provide an option of mandatory vaccine OR voluntary self-quarantine. Legally requiring citizens to have something they know nothing about injected into their bodies is a recipe for trouble. Mandatory vaccines like we have for schools are one thing; they've been used on millions for decades. A rushed, unproven vaccine is a whole different matter.

I have no doubt that the threat is real. I also believe that there's a certain line where individual liberties can't be crossed. The larger and more complex a country gets, the less realistic my beliefs become, and I know that. That's why I believe in smaller countries with capitalist economies based on informed consumers (actual education is the fix for a lot of our evils...), because smaller groups of informed people can control themselves rather than needing to be controlled. That's also why I have so much distrust for the people in power today. If I were them, and my chief and only concern was either A) to make money/accumulate power, or B) to ensure the health of the human species, well, drastic population reduction is, objectively, a very appealing solution. Why should we assume that the people in power have the same inhibitions we'd like them to have?

I'm not saying there's a "them" that's trying to kill us all. I'm just saying it's important to be vigilant and not throw out viable possibilities just because a bunch of people say "that's crazy talk."

[Ratmagiclady]

Exactly Peter! Vaccines for polio and small pox weren't rushed out like this. Plus, those were so severe that a certain amount of risks was warranted. This flu will likely mutate (evolve) rapidly like flu does anyway. Otherwise, it could be a repeat of 1976. When some people's children die from a botched vaccine for swine/avian flu, there will be a different kind of song playing instead of the one by the Pied-Piper and the Lemmings. It well be one of the lemmings that goes off of the cliff and survives that will want to sue somebody. However, Mass is making sure via that legislation they won't be able to.

Well, that's actually a reason for this legislation. A lot of our hard-evolved instincts when dealing with something like this either don't apply to modern situations, or, frankly, are there cause those with a strong instinct to flee sickness (usually after it's too late) and didn't inadvertently kill everyone they fled to ...are in fact the lucky survivors. (So maybe they didn't 'learn' nothing, I dunno)

That's why emergency management plans are important. In a crisis like this, (say pandemic in cities and towns) humanity has a real history of doing the exact wrong thing. Usually multiple wrong things. You hope you don't have to use them, but such plans (Or something else that'll do the job are pretty necessary.

I don't like the idea of mandatory vaccinations and quarantines any more than you do, but in the case of an outbreak, there's things that have to be done to try and give everyone the best chance for survival. No one's really got American liberties if social order breaks down and the food stops coming in.

Yes, the vaccine is rushed into production: it's a new strain. But it's not the one virus or the other that makes the difference. It's the *other* stuff in the vaccine which got fastracked under a deregulated FDA and if tested at all, some of this stuff was tested on soldiers with suspicious results.

If there's been more planning and research all along, the only thing 'rushed' that'd be coming out of the possible needles would be the kind of virus itself. Which would obviously be what you *want* in a hurry.

As far as the Panic goes, Joe Biden was Mr. Panic (what's Biden's qualifications). I'm not anti-vaccine. However, all vaccines have a risk and the risks have to be weighed against the benefits. People should go research the chicken pox vaccine as a starter and the HPV vaccine that Merck tried to get made mandatory.

The HPV vaccine isn't experimental in that way, and the reason some tried to oppose a vaccination program *there* was because they believed, since a lot (not even all) of the infections and resulting horrible cervical cancers it protects against can come from *sex,* they figured that suddenly young women would become less chaste if they were no longer fearing a virus they probably never heard of.

[slomojoe]

Some numbers, to put things in context. (Not that I would expect them to help with the crackpots.)

- The 1976 swine flu vaccine was administered to 48 million people. Of these, 500 had severe reactions (1/100,000) and a couple dozen people tragically died. It is true that this was of course far more victims than the swine influenza killed that year (1 dead), because the pandemic never realized. However, if the virus had spread out of Fort Dix, and its lethality and epidemiology had been no worse than the seasonal influenza's, 10-15,000 people could have been expected to die in a cohort of 48 millions. Even assuming a vaccine efficacy of 80%, close to 10,000 lives out of those 48 millions would have been saved by the vaccine. So much for the scientific "fiasco".

- Of course, this time we don't have the luxury to wait and see if the current H1N1 pandemics happens - it already is happening.

- In Australia, where the peak of the flu season has just passed (but H1N1 got there relatively late), there have been so far about 35,000 recognized cases of H1N1 infection and 160 dead (that's a scary 1/200, but the number of actual infections is probably much higher than reported), with thousands of hospitalizations and a hundred people still in ICUs. Note that Australian authorities have been very proactive, and have a more widespread and efficient public health system network than in the US (that nationalized medicine thing), which probably helped.

- By simple extrapolation, assuming the best case scenarios that a) the virus does not worsen by the time it comes back to the northern hemisphere, as it's usually the case for second-wave flu epidemics (unfortunately, there is some evidence that this may already not be the case) and b) similar infection and mortality rates will occur in the US as in Australia (not very likely, for a number of socioeconomic and demographic reasons), we would expect at least something like 4-6,000 H1N1-related deaths in the US, in the absence of a vaccine. Actual infection rates in the tens of millions, possibly hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations. A vaccine as "bad" and "hurried up" as the 1976 version (and the current candidate under testing is of course neither), would cause ~3000 severe reactions and 150 dead nationwide, assuming 100% vaccination rates.

[Ratmagiclady]

So provide an option of mandatory vaccine OR voluntary self-quarantine. Legally requiring citizens to have something they know nothing about injected into their bodies is a recipe for trouble. Mandatory vaccines like we have for schools are one thing; they've been used on millions for decades. A rushed, unproven vaccine is a whole different matter.

I agree in principle with a lot of this. In fact, the vast majority of people, when faced with the actual danger, will most likely follow any such things as quarantine protocols or even evacuations quite willingly. That doesn't help much if a small group decide to ignore them and go infect whoever they feel like.

This Massachusetts law is *specifically about a particular kind of declared state of emergency.* Let's hope it never comes to that.

In fact, a good way to avoid it ever coming to that is to be informed and prepared. Not try to spin it into the general paranoia of the Right which was hardly in evidence when it came to the Patriot Act having similar provisions.

I have no doubt that the threat is real. I also believe that there's a certain line where individual liberties can't be crossed. The larger and more complex a country gets, the less realistic my beliefs become, and I know that. That's why I believe in smaller countries with capitalist economies based on informed consumers (actual education is the fix for a lot of our evils...), because smaller groups of informed people can control themselves rather than needing to be controlled. That's also why I have so much distrust for the people in power today. If I were them, and my chief and only concern was either A) to make money/accumulate power, or B) to ensure the health of the human species, well, drastic population reduction is, objectively, a very appealing solution. Why should we assume that the people in power have the same inhibitions we'd like them to have?

People who want to keep power of the sort they could, profit by *fear,* not actually making people sick. Some kind of 'biowarfare' might appeal to *lunatics* (And of course you should never assume a *lunatic* is playing to *win:* they may *want* to bring about an apocalyptic scenario from which they hope their 'chosen people' will emerge triumphant, ...but most aren't stupid enough to think they can target a virus or the resulting sorts of economic collapses that way.

The only answer, of course, is to look at what they're doing and what happens when they do it. Suspending basic rights like habeas corpus and posse comitatus over political issues as happened in the last administration got more or less brushed off by conservatives. Even if the measures were unnecessary and directed toward really small and remote threats and had political implications... Well, conservatives like to think they *understand* 'There's bad guys all around us, get the bad guys.'

A pandemic virus outbreak is a bit different. They'll be right here saying, "It's the flu, it's acting more or less like any other flu, what's the problem?"

The problem is of course, those two 1's in the name. Which is an uncommon configuration of a flu virus, which means most of us have no natural resistance to it. If that flu spreads far enough, the virus will mutate, as viruses do very quickly. If one of those mutations means a strain of the virus becomes more lethal and or more contagious, it could kill or immobilize vast swathes of the population.

This isn't as simple as ''There must be bad guys, get the bad guys, this is war, do what you got to, protect me from the bad guys,"

It'd be nice if there was another option for this kind of disaster scenario than some kind of emergency powers (Those would be invoked, anyway, there may as well be a *plan* rather than trying to adapt ...what, counterinsurgency plans? Martial law? ) or make things up on the fly cause it was more politically palatable to say, "Well, we won't spend money on the levees in New Orleans, let's deny a big hurricane is bound to happen by not having a plan for *that* contingency, either."

I'm not saying there's a "them" that's trying to kill us all. I'm just saying it's important to be vigilant and not throw out viable possibilities just because a bunch of people say "that's crazy talk."

I think the problem with the crazy talk is that it *obscures* the real concerns. Also actually encourages the government and other powers that be to do *nothing* or to do it where no one's looking.

[Blue]

Biden did plenty of fear mongering on this. As far as the law goes in Mass., putting in provisions for marshal law with bureaucrats running things with the Bill of Rights suspended is very dangerous. The unPatriot Act is also a danger to the Constitution. With the risk of biological agents in terrorism, this should be a bigger concern.

There is a big damn difference in extrapolating risks on something known and actually lethal to the healthy i.e. polio, & small pox. Even those didn't have a Martial Law dogma with idiots like Joe Biden who don't know who was Pres. in 1929 running things. Plus, with Polio vaccines, we didn't have a sheriff or other LEO showing up with a bureaucrat and no warrant with the authority to seize people and their property because said bureaucrat decided someone was a risk.

There are always issues out there like Erwinia pestis and the fleas that carry it along with other things like Hantavirus, West Nile V., WEE, and EEE.

[Ratmagiclady]

Some numbers, to put things in context. (Not that I would expect them to help with the crackpots.)

Thanks, though, Brer Bear. Numbers aren't a strong suit of mine anyway, and it's helpful to have them in context. Hopefully others than crackpots are reading.

The 'figures' some cite to construct some scenario of 'Liberal fascism' are generally not in the context of what is actually going on, and what different scenarios of doing something/doing nothing/having a plan for the worst case scenarios (which I hope folks can see are not what we're looking at *yet* (Or hopefully ever.) ...not in a context of what those scenarios actually entail, how they work, and what the real risks are. We could have something like Australia had, we could, Gods avert, have something really worse. Side-effects from most vaccines pale in comparison to either.

Some people actually just love to say that because something *worked* means there's nothing to worry about anyway.

Blindly saying 'Don't take the vaccine' is no more responsible here than it is to cultivate hysteria and disinformation in Africa about AIDS, hepatitis, and also ironically enough, condom use.

Having a good vaccine, toot sweet, and making darn sure the vaccines are safe as possible (perhaps using more tried-and-true methods of making em, but all we can do about that is really to start now: it's not the fact it's an H1N1 vaccine to worry about, again, it's how the stuff is made, and what with. The time for FDA oversight was before they tried this on our soldiers. Now we're left with a potentially-worrisome option.) ...actually make good economic sense, just in averting lost work, lost economic activity, and of course, emergency medical care expenses.

Also in terms of saving lives, cause as Joe mentioned, we *don't* have the kind of health services Australia does, and it's shown time and again in drills and simulations how quickly what we have would be overwhelmed if there was a serious outbreak of anything.

[benjikan]

I'm still waiting for Ben's blog post about how you can use tinfoil to keep the government and/or aliens from reading your brainwaves.

I'll get to that when I have a moment and yes, my Doctor does not recommend I get the Swine Flu vaccination. So if I bite the dust, i'll let you take the helm regarding the tinfoil-alien lighting technique.

[RoxnDox]

I'll get to that when I have a moment and yes, my Doctor does not recommend I get the Swine Flu vaccination. So if I bite the dust, i'll let you take the helm regarding the tinfoil-alien lighting technique.

Your doctor is very likely making the recommendation you not get the shot, because you are outside the highest-risk group, as are most of us on this forum. And because the vaccines are in short supply and should be directed to the higher risk patients. NOT because the doctor buys into the fear-mongering of this Horowitz fella.

Jim

[Wildnsyko]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree on the flu vaccine thing. I had to get a flu vaccine when I was in the Navy. Mandatory. I got sick that year, the sickest I've ever been in my life. I refused to get one since then and have not gotten any kind of flu since. (knock on wood) And now I work in the retail business around people, including sick people who come into the store. I take good care of myself, take vitamin C during the sick months (when people seem to be the sickest), and wash my hands all the time.

How do we know what kind of reaction people are going to get from these vaccines? What if it's more harm than good? How can the government "force you" to get the vaccine? If that is the case, then I may to move to Canada. I need a change of scenery.

[Ash]

Pharmaceuticals are into vaccines for the money. Nothing new there.
That doesn't translate to anything other than a necessary product for mankind that will make the pharmaceutical company a lot richer. Live with it.

One cannot make an effective judgement call on such an issue until they've worked in the field to see the devastation a particular disease has on a community. H1N1 claims lives, just like regular influenza, but it also has caused a huge burden on the health system due to significant morbidity to a segment of the younger population, esp. young obese women, and even more esp. those who are pregnant or have an underlying chest condition such as asthma.

Primary prevention will ALWAYS save health dollars, regardless of the motive. Reality is if I see someone who is at a significant risk of contracting H1N1, then I'm going to strongly suggest the vaccine. I've already been promoting the regular fluvax in order to limit the chance of an elderly person or baby from contracting the flu, and then be susceptible to H1N1.

It's no different to any other vaccine, whether live, live-attenuated, killed, conjugate or subunit... some (very few) patients WILL be hypersensitive to it, but this will be made very clear prior to administering the vaccine, just like any other vaccine. But just because there are political and economic motives behind the vaccine, doesn't mean it is evil, wrong or inappropriate.

Ben, don't put this kind of thing on your blog - stick to your gifted and talented field of photography. Give this topic a break, and get some sense before believing and acting upon the usual scaremongering that occurs when such big healthcare products are announced.

[ve2vfd]

Wildnsyko I hate to tell you this, but if this swine flu turns out to be a real nasty pandemic and people do start dropping like flies, I can guarantee mandatory vaccinations will happen in Canada before the USA.


As for myself I can guarantee I'll get my H1N1 flu shot AND my seasonal flu shot as soon as they are available.

I work with sick people on a daily basis and though my immunity is above average from daily exposure, I am not taking any chances. I had the flu (the REAL influenza, not that a cold most people mistakenly call the flu) once in my life, I was down for the count for over a week and I won't ever let that happen again if I can help it.

I think the real problem here is that the vast majoprity of people out there have never had a full blown case of influenza. We've all had colds we thought were the flu and most people think it's no big deal. Add the effects of the anti-vaccine movement (which has a body count! they managed to re-introduce diseases that were practically extinct and kids have died!) and we have a recipe for a major disaster.

Pat

[Ash]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree on the flu vaccine thing. I had to get a flu vaccine when I was in the Navy. Mandatory. I got sick that year, the sickest I've ever been in my life. I refused to get one since then and have not gotten any kind of flu since. (knock on wood) And now I work in the retail business around people, including sick people who come into the store. I take good care of myself, take vitamin C during the sick months (when people seem to be the sickest), and wash my hands all the time.

How do we know what kind of reaction people are going to get from these vaccines? What if it's more harm than good? How can the government "force you" to get the vaccine? If that is the case, then I may to move to Canada. I need a change of scenery.

Unfortunately, this is the story heard a lot from people who could have sworn 'the flu vaccine makes you sick'.

The live-attenuated vaccine causes the body to react to the particulate matter of the vaccine as if it were a foreign infection. Hence, the body develops an immune reaction along a spectrum of intensities depending on the body. One can't foretell who will react more severely than another as each season's fluvax is developed for a different strain of the virus.

Most immunocompetent individuals (ie. healthy adults) will only be affected relatively mildly from a flu and maybe not even notice they've had the flu ('oh, it's just a little headcold'), but who's to say the next flu that comes around doesn't knock you flat on your back? That's why the fluvax is advisable for everyone, and mandatory/free for certain higher-risk individuals. It saves health dollars and decreases morbidity and mortality, whether we like it or not.

Handwahsing perhaps the single best preventative action against infectious diseases, however vitamin C supplements will do nothing to stop the next flu from taking hold (99% of the population will get more than enough of the daily requirement of vitamin C in their diets).

But people are entitled to their opinions, as uninformed as they are, and the medical world cannot change health outcomes unless the general public have faith in them...