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Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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When vaccinating your kid (a US citizen) what vaccination schedule should you go with?

  1. The standard US one

  2. The standard of a different country which you think is better run (I picked Denmark)

  3. Something else

I had a discussion with Grok 3 about this, and it seemed like it wanted to defend the US schedule (35 shots) until I pressed it about the Danish schedule (11 shots). Then it claimed that US schedule is necessary in the US because of different socioeconomic conditions. It seems like the US recommendations are based on helping the underclasses. For example, Hep B. My wife doesn't have Hep B. My kid won't get Hep B as a child. But a kid whose mom is a prostitute very much needs to be vaccinated for Hep B at birth.

In any case, after the censorship and disinformation promulgated by the US health agencies during the pandemic, I don't trust them. And clearly there is a corrupting profit motive here too. In this corrupted epistemic environment we simply don't know what the effects of giving kids 35 vaccine shots (plus annual flu and Covid shots) will be. I make no strong claims about vaccine injuries, and I think most vaccines are net positive. But I think, for my child, the Danish schedule + chicken pox is sufficient. At a minimum, I am deadset against any Covid vaccines. Can't say I look forward to arguing with nurses about this.

Please please please follow the vaccination schedule.

Pediatricians take a 6 figure pay cut because of how much they care about protecting kids, everything on there is for a reason - COVID nonsense aside.

If you have something specific other than COVID you have concerns about you should dig into that separately.

Keep in mind we've already started to have things like Measles outbreaks because of people become vaccine hesitant. Many of these disease are very deadly.

You also may introduce logistical problems down the line as your kid can't go to certain schools or get certain jobs (like healthcare) without jumping through extra hoops.

Also considering almost every kids gets this stuff we'd know about problems for the older stuff at this point.

You also may introduce logistical problems down the line as your kid can't go to certain schools or get certain jobs (like healthcare) without jumping through extra hoops.

I didn't get several of the shots I should have as a child. It's been decades now so I don't remember the exact ones that were missing. I got most of the ones you are supposed to get as a very young child, but stopped somewhere around 4 years old I think. I do remember MMR being one of them as this alarmed the doctor enough that they commented on it a few times.

This came up later when I was graduating HS and preparing for college; they wanted proof of all kinds of shots I'd never gotten. So, over the spring and summer before college I had to get all/most of them. The clinic at the local health dept. was able to schedule them all in over three sessions with a month of so in between. It was not a pleasant experience.

edit - Downthread I was reminded there is a chicken pox vaccine now. I was deliberately exposed to chicken pox around 5 years old to 'get it out of the way' at a convenient time. A small group of mothers, including mine, all did it together by scratching our forearms and having us rub it against the infected kid. Good times.

At least they didn't get the infected kid to spit into your mouths.