Rasman,
I think your point about the lack of deaths caused by h1n1 is logical only in a cursory examination.
I am no fan of the current FDA it is largely funded and controlled by lobbyists and appointees of politicos who are bought and paid for by big pharma. I very rarely use pills, or traditional western medicines. I readily adopt holistic preventative measures from both east and western hemispheres. I think most of us on punaweb do the same to some extent, be it through local or herbal means or more aggressive and intentfull research.
At one point in history some vaccines had enough mercury in them to be unhealthy. No longer. Most all marine organisms and a lot of hawaiian soils and groundwaters do have appreciable amounts of mercury. Thank-you Big Sugar. Some people do have immune responses to some vaccines. Some have even died of complications. BILLIONS of lives have been saved. I don't even need to go into the horrors that smallpox and polio wreaked upon our ancestors.
Honestly, flu vaccines are of negligible efficacy. If you are healthy and not overly exposed, you probably shouldn't get one. If you work in healthcare, schools, transport hubs, etcetera you are very likely to be exposed and contract some version of this year's flu. The statistics make it worthwhile for said persons to innoculate themseleves to avoid a lenghty period of sickness AND contagiousness.
Which brings us to my point. Flu viruses (and others) mutate rapidly. Everything mutates, this is natural. The more a virus reproduces,(which requires a host)the more the likelihood of mutations. The more mutations the more likely an espceially virulent or mobile form will be generated. Thankfully for our ecology the same mutations occur in humans, just on a much slower scale. Our reproductive rates and generation times are magnitudes lower than that of viruses. Milions of viruses live, mutate, reproduce, and die in the course of the average flu infection. We generally need around 20 years for ONE mildy mutated human to become reproductive. Thus while humanity is unlikely to go extinct without vaccines, because of the incredibly small number of people with natural immunity, the cost in human suffering would/can be staggering. Examples: Cholera and the New World (largely extinct or disease decimated races: aztecs, mayans, incans, native americans, innuit), the Black Plague, the Great Flu Pandemics of the early 1900's. When we see avian and swine flu's that wipeout 75% of the animals they infect it's pretty humbling. That could easily be us, dying like, well, animals. Life is very cheap in natures eyes. Asian countries have slaughtered insane and disgusting numbers of animals in the last decade trying to stop the spread of these flu's. We will not be killing millions of exposed people to protect our species. Thus vaccines.
Influenza is a virus that can infect different species. It can mutate in one species before jumping to another. All of this is constantly ongoing, statistically we are bound to encounter a high moridity, extremely virulent form of the flu. It could concievably wipe out large portions of humanity. Think of how deadly ebola is. Ebola is so deadly it usually kills people too quickly for them to spread it. The flu is seen as commonplace and with our modern transportation systems can easily be in every continent, major country, and airport in a couple weeks before we know how deadly it is. Since the cessation of DDT use in the U.S. (production and export continue) bedbug populations have been increasing 10 fold every year. I will argue against the use of DDT until i die. It almost sent most of our countries raptors into extinction. I will argue against pasteurization of cheeses and beers. But in a world where money and profit margins are often more important than safety we often need to find compromises. It used to be more vaccines were mandatory. We live in a time of freedoms.
Federal school lunch program suppliers have been found to be far inferior to fast food chains suppliers. Money and lawsuits have driven McDonalds and Jack in the Box to provide bacterially safer meats than our public schools.
There is no clear easy conclusion to be met here.
Corporations suck...some of the time.
Governments suck...some of the time.
Corporate/Government vaccines suck, sometimes, like if they were medically ineffective and federally mandated, all to increase lucrative contracts to campaign contributors. That would suck. Is it happening? Are the bills in your wallet evil because they are connected to the Wars in the Middle East? If you buy an airline ticket with a card from one of the federal bailout recipients, is the the ticket you use to go see someone you love evil?
Parts of all levels of government are concerned about the lives of their constituents. We can argue about organic vs. corporate farms, parks vs buisnesses, and anarchists vs socialist until we all wither away. Day to day we care about our own lives and those of people in our community more than anything else. IF a deadly flu (which h1n1 might have been) started killing your neighbors, or if you refused vaccination and quarantine during a PANDEMIC state of emergency and unwittingly infected others, or caused a reinfection you and your peers, you would have some serious issues. When things are tough people need to compromise and band together. When things are nice, i'm with you man; life, liberty, and the pursuit of freedom.
I love puna's libertarian cant, but i'm also a progressive. No mandatory vaccinatons are happening. Frankly, if a dangerous flu does occur our response will probably be too slow and mandatory vaccinations could be way too late. After that, people will be railing against these same officials for not doing enough, for getting vaccinations themselves, or for being "responsible" for killing their loved ones. Public service sucks that way, someone's always going to hate you.
We should ask hard questions about how vaccines are approved, manufactured, paid for, and who stands to make money from those processes. But one also needs to recognize that disease is not a person you can not deal with it as such. Viruses are mathematical, flexible, and unfeeling, only through such methodical and consistent methods can we in our unnaturally populated and modern world hope to deal with them humanely. Massive amounts of human suffering exist now because of inequitable medical services in the world. I suggest you try to reallocate money spent on Viagra and Botox to those starving or dying for lack of care. Those are causes that need energy and action. Dedicate some time to the Christmas Wish Program. It's local and largely effective both psyhcologically and materially in helping the same people in our community that you feel need to be protected from non-mandatory, unavailable, safe vaccines.
Hazen
(notice i bought it back around to puna rob
)
