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Yes, it is absolutely being a freeloader, and that's one reason why I have opted out for my own children. I don't think enough other people have bought in to the common good, and so I don't see any reason to subject my children to autoimmune disease for some supposed public good that I see constantly denigrated by others. Another casualty of lowering the trust of society. I don't think it's worth it, but that trade has already been made without anyone asking me.
My kid had very bad eczema due to the oral rotavirus vaccine, and after that I simply said no thank you.
This comment is a travesty. If it wasn't clear, it is the majority of parents opting-in for scheduled vaccinations that's what creates the commons for you to free-ride off.
Even in a purely disinterested cost-benefit analysis, the odds of your child getting an autoimmune disease from vaccines is so low that the general benefit of them getting sick less often outweighs it. The number of people avoiding vaccination isn't at the point where you're benefiting from opting out, or pointing to others doing so as an excuse. The majority of vaccines are net positive in expectation, regardless of what others do.
Meta-rationality is a hard art to practice. You point to a minority of people hitting defect to defect just as hard.
It was very clear, and I know about the free rider problem from undergraduate economics. I am actively choosing to be a free rider, and relying on others to do what I am choosing not to. That's what free rider means. Other people are paying, I'm choosing not to.
I'm doing that because I am an individual, not a herd animal, and the things I do must actually benefit me in order for me to do them. I have no shepherd who owns me and is responsible for the herd to which I belong. There exists the possibility of a world where I do things for others altruistically, but that world is not this one, and the conditions for such a world are far from being met.
Defect is the rational response to defection, and tit for tat wins iterated prisoner's dilemmas.
I don't trust your calculations, mostly because I don't fear the diseases or believe in their prevalence. I see the risks as miniscule, but deliberately overblown in order to create a far response and enforce compliance. There is no guarantee I even encounter measles or hepatitis or haemophilic influenza b, but if I take the vaccine there is a 100% exposure rate to the contents of the shot.
Furthermore, my children can simply get the shots later in life, when they are grown and have a much larger body mass with which to accommodate, after development has been mostly completed.
The eczema finally went away, and there's no way to know the counterfactual, but I think if we were on schedule I'd still be seeing rashes all over the back and legs and ankles.
You can't trust what I haven't presented. I could do so, and I strongly expect to be correct, but I already do enough trawling of medical literature when I'm being paid for it.
It's your child, and I have some respect for your right to make decisions on their behalf, even if I think they're bad decisions.
My man, you're going from wrong to confused. There's good reason why you don't see doctors or nurses pull out dose calculators to account for body weight when giving every vaccine I can think of it. It's because it doesn't matter. If little Tommy is 4'6 and 35 kilos or 4'9 and 45 makes next to no difference, and this holds true once you're past the size of a premature infant on death's door, going to a land whale who needs a mobility scooter. Vaccines aren't like paracetamol, the dose-response curves are VERY different when it's the immune system we're talking about. Someone with a peanut allergy isn't twice as likely to die if you give them two peanuts versus one.
You're not doing a good job at probabilistic reasoning, but an eczematous rash is a minor vaccine reaction, and of very little consequence. If it was life threatening, I presume you'd have pointed that out, and even then, you'd be better off consulting your pediatrician about whether they could narrow it down to a particular constituent of the two common rotavirus vaccines in the States (fetal bovine serum or porcine circovirus, if I had to guess from looking at composition), and take precautions when administering future vaccines with similar compositions. Believe it or not, most doctors would be happy to answer those questions and offer reassurance if warranted, especially if you're paying them.
I think you can use this sort of pseudo-science to justify vaccines post hoc. You can also use the same pseudo-science to justify not taking them at all.
I know quite a few people who got lasting side effects from the Covid vax, and it’s nearly heretical to talk about it. (These are people I know IRL, not internet reports) That alone makes me extremely skeptical about anyone saying how there are ~zero risks from any and all vaccines. Why is there a giant propaganda campaign to cover up the risks? Am I just some crazy statistical outlier who knows 3+ people very closely who’ve been vaccine maimed, even though it “hardly ever occurs” in the general population? I wouldn’t bet on that
People win the lottery despite the odds not being in their favor.
If you've bought a ticket, and then you find a million pounds in your bank account, then congratulations, knowing that the odds were stacked against you doesn't mean you've not won.
I know literally zero people who have been "vaccine maimed". I used to be responsible for a COVID ICU before vaccines too, and I can definitely tell you that I saw plenty die of it.
It is far more likely that you are either:
Lying. On the internet, anyone can be a dog, or claim to be one.
Mistaken.
Surrounded by people who are mistaken or lying.
Assuming 150 people you could "closely know" (Dunbar's number as a first approximation), then someone, somewhere, out there in the world will find 3 people who were harmed by vaccines. Because vaccines are not perfectly safe, and I've never claimed that. If you consider people who are mistaken about their illness being caused by a vaccine, then the number skyrockets.
I don't know one single person who had lasting adverse effects from the vaccine. This includes professionally. I do know many with acute effects (including myself).
I've also met a few people who have made claims of adverse effects but they've all been clearly mistaken (typically it involves active mental illness, or sometimes other clear medical causes of the problem which they attribute to COVID).
I'll be real with you, I find the fact that you're being downvoted so heavily rather frustrating.
We're both doctors, and we're not perfect. Most doctors aren't perfect either, but I would expect you'd agree with me when I say the majority of our colleagues are smart, conscientious people who genuinely want to do right by the people who see them.
We've conceded that vaccines have risks. We've pointed out scenarios where vaccination might be technically net positive, but of such minuscule effect that people shouldn't run around screaming because they've missed a shot. We've pointed out circumstances where the calculations change, and that vaccination schedules are made for the whole population, and not just for conscientious upper middle class nerds who take care of their health.
If I was being paid at US rates, you'd bet I'd walk any neurotic person through an entire questionnaire that ticks off boxes and adds up net QALYs for any given vaccine. This isn't really feasible at scale, and mass media is necessarily something that must scale and reach the LCD.
Yet I see more FUD than I want to here. Somehow the whole profession is discredited by covid, even though quite a few doctors would happily tell you that the way the pandemic was handled was far from perfect.
It all strikes me as a gross over-correction. The public should trust the medical field and the US government less because of our errors, but some people are throwing out the unvaccinated baby with the bath water.
I know we've got more than our fair share of contrarians, the Motte encourages their presence, but damn.
I feel that.
Not sure what to do about it, though.
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