Measles 2015

[Lamplighter]

2/3/15 - in 14 states and growing....

[BigV]

what does the caption have to do with the thread title?

[xoxoxoBruce]

It means having measles blows because you can't see anybody.

[glatt]

And what imbecile thinks Portland is in Nebraska?

[/CNN sucks]

[Lamplighter]

All right you silly people... it was just a screen shot, not a legal exhibit in a court case

... try this one from Boston:

[classicman]

Originally Posted by glatt

[/CNN sucks]

yup

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by glatt

And what imbecile thinks Portland is in Nebraska?

[/CNN sucks]

It's a typo... Portland, Maine

[infinite monkey]

Eh, lamp, nobody wants to deal with the fact that measles are a 'thing' again.

ffs

[Lamplighter]

Yes, I'm aware of that.

But it's on it's way to being a political issue as well as public health,
so either way it's going to be around for a while.

I'm sorry if it makes people uncomfortable... blame Jenny.

[BigV]

Measles is *extremely* contagious. It's ten times more contagious than, say, ebola. And we lost our fucking minds when the shadow of ebola threatened to darken our shores. Jon Stewart has a brilliant piece about the "strange hospital bedfellows" made of people who show off for the camera their ignorant *and* mindful stupidity as anti-vaxxers. Civilians and politicians alike hold forth providing comic fodder for Stewart. I especially liked the part where President Obama was asked about measles, he said "parents should vaccinate their children". Which sent Stewart into a tizzy remarking that now half the population of the country will avoid vaccination, just on their political principles. duuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Which brings me to this related news item about a politician who thinks individual freedom from government meddling in things like public health should take the form of... different governmental meddling.

Thom Tillis: Keep Government Out of the Bathroom

Freshman Sen. Thom Tillis likes to tell a story about why he doesn’t believe government should require coffee shop employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom.

“Just to give you an idea of where my bias is when it comes to regulatory reform,” the North Carolina Republican said Monday, before telling the story at a discussion at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

In 2010, when he was in the state legislature, he had a conversation with an opponent of his views on regulations at a Starbucks.

He was arguing businesses should be allowed to opt out of regulations as long as they were upfront and transparent to the public about the move.

The two were sitting at a table near the restrooms, which prompted his opponent to ask Tillis if he would be OK with the Starbucks opting out of any regulation requiring that employees wash their hands after using the bathroom.

Tillis said he saw the question as an opportunity to illustrate his point.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after they use the restroom,’” Tillis responded. “The market will take care of that.”

So, a regulation requiring that a business has to post a sign saying that "We don't require our employees to wash their hands after they use the restroom" is OK, but a regulation an individual to wash their hands after using the restroom is some kind of burden. To me, it sounds like he wants regulations to be more like... suggestions, and "let the market decide" what's best. But we all know that the business will strive to keep their own costs and overhead down and push as much as possible onto anyone else. Why not opt out of all regulations? Be "upfront and transparent with the public" about the choice, what could go wrong?

Shit's spilled, people are sickened, or injured, or killed, but hey, we were upfront and transparent, so what?

You know? We're only having a conversation about an outbreak of measles, we only have an OUTBREAK of measles strictly because of the effectiveness of vaccination. JFC.

[Clodfobble]

Things that were also very effective at their given purpose: asbestos, Thalidomide, DDT. The argument has never been over effectiveness, and it's a straw man to keep pointing it out.

Phil Plait, aka Bad Astronomer, has a good piece about all the anti-anti-vax polemics.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro..._all_this.html

In short, you are making your own problem worse with all your ranting and facepalming and JFChristing.

[infinite monkey]

Thanks all the non-vaxxers! You've done society such a huge favor! Thank gawd measles are making a comeback. It gives the medical professions other things to worry about, like all the Munchhausen 'diseases' so they don't have to concentrate on the things that would be anti-money makers.

Next up: smallpox. Wheee, that'll be fun!

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by BigV

Thom Tillis: Keep Government Out of the Bathroom
...
So, a regulation requiring that a business has to post a sign saying that "We don't require our employees to wash their hands after they use the restroom" is OK, but a regulation an individual to wash their hands after using the restroom is some kind of burden.

If the regulation was just to have the sign, he'd be trying to get that repealed.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The reality is the regulation makes Starbucks post the sign. It forces neither the employee to wash their hands, nor Starbucks to enforce it.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Things that were also very effective at their given purpose: asbestos, Thalidomide, DDT. The argument has never been over effectiveness, and it's a straw man to keep pointing it out.

Phil Plait, aka Bad Astronomer, has a good piece about all the anti-anti-vax polemics.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro..._all_this.html

In short, you are making your own problem worse with all your ranting and facepalming and JFChristing.

Yeah, no.

We, as a nation, are having a conversation about measles outbreaks. The reason it's noteworthy on a national scale is because it's novel. It's novel because it's uncommon and it's uncommon because of the effectiveness of measles vaccinations throughout our population.

This is not a straw man argument.

I am not doing anything like this:

Quoting an opponent's words out of context—i.e., choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see fallacy of quoting out of context).

Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then denying that person's arguments—thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.

Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.

Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.

Perhaps you're suggesting that I am making a straw man argument by oversimplyfing, calling all anti-vaccination supporters "stupid". That would be a straw man argument, but I'm not doing that. Stupid people are stupid, vaccinations notwithstanding. But opting out of vaccinations for stupid reasons is stupid. Like the woman in Stewart's clip (no link before, but here ya go: Liberal idiocy, Les Measlesrables) who chooses to avoid vaccination for stupid reasons, that's stupid. Science denial is stupid. There *are* circumstances where the choice to avoid vaccination isn't stupid, for children who have compromised immune systems. Not stupid.

Anyhow, I'm not making blanket statements.

While we're discussing each other's logical arguments, associating "asbestos, Thalidomide, DDT" with vaccinations is just throwing some unhelpful red herrings into the conversation. Not helpful.