Its always a bit of a dilemma when writing an entry that doesn’t really touch on autism at all. But I have become convinced that the population beyond the autistic and autism community need to know that most of us within these communities do not support the know nothing anti-science, anti-medicine and most of all, anti-vaccine community that has a vocal minority place within our communities and that as such we owe it to our societies to vocally counter these idiots such as those at Age of Autism who spread lies and promote an age of ignorance.
I’ve heard it said by writers and readers of blogs like Age of Autism and sites like JABS that H1N1 is ‘no big deal’ and that the H1N1 vaccine is a dangerous and untested shot. Both of these things are untrue.
My partners youngest daughter (not autistic, although her eldest is) recently received an invitation to participate in the H1N1 vaccine testing which would involve three visits to the local hospital over a four week period. And over the 4 week period they would take two blood draws. This is for an ongoing safety and efficacy testing.
Swine flu is a big deal. In the UK there have been over 150 deaths since June 2009. Thats about 1 death per day.
In the US, the latest FluView weekly roundup notes 18 flu related child deaths of which 15 were due to H1N1. Fifteen in 7 days.
Next time someone says H1N1 is a ‘nothing’ issue, point them to these stats, behind which lie the dead bodies of real people.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Swine flu has shut down schools in California, including at least one autism school:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13727275
The same article notes about 23 dead in two counties alone just since May.
It isn’t directly autism related. But since “autism” organizations are spreading the myth that H1N1 is mild I think it is worth a short blog post, Kev.
There are those who are kind of paranoid and don’t trust government data. To them I’d simply suggest running a Google Trends query on a neutral word like “cough.”
Note that the current query count is higher than the peak in all years since 2004. The peak every year should occur at about the end of December, beginning of January.
I really don’t think the Swine Flu is any different from any other flu. How many people die each year from the seasonal flu or other more common types of illnesses?
I had H1N1 and the way the media portrayed it I thought it was going to be a killer. I was sick for about three days and I didn’t take any prescription medication: I drank plenty of orange juice, soup, took warm, steaming showers and slept most of the day on the couch: the same thing I do whenever I get sick.
I do understand that it could kill those who are fragile and those with respiratory problems, such as the elderly and young. It clogs up your respiratory system and I had some difficulty breathing but I definitely wasn’t in danger of dying, though.
I’m not against vaccines I just don’t get vaccinated for everything. I’ve never had a flu shot or anything of the sort except what has been required. The way I see it is that it’s better to get sick every now and then so that it builds up a person’s immune system. When I get sick it’s almost always very minor and I rarely have to see a doctor while other people try to avoid getting sick at all costs and when they do they get very sick.
My choice has nothing to do with vaccine safety just my personal philosophy on how I care for myself. But I’d say that if a person is fragile and has respiratory problems and is very young/old than the vaccine would be a good idea.
The way I see it is that it’s better to get sick every now and then so that it builds up a person’s immune system
Where that viewpoint goes wrong, at least in my book, is when you get to pass the disease on to others who may not have such a good immune system.
My choice has nothing to do with vaccine safety just my personal philosophy on how I care for myself. But I’d say that if a person is fragile and has respiratory problems and is very young/old than the vaccine would be a good idea.
I will almost certainly survive the flu, regular or H1N1.
It isn’t just how I care for myself. It is precisely those fragile people who could be helped by me not getting sick. We don’t always have a way to know when we are first coming down with a disease and are already infectious, so just staying in bed doesn’t protect others.
Just my personal view.
That information is mistaken for H1N1. It might be true for the seasonal flu. H1N1 is killing people 20 to 40, some of whom are otherwise healthy.
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/11/06/h1n1-media.html H1N1 is overblown in the media. That kid that died in Toronto broke 2 of the rules of having a fever. You DO NOT exercise and you do not take either a hot nor a cold shower.
Also, Dh’s Aunt – breast cancer survivor and Type 1 diabetic got it and she’s survived it just fine. Dh’s Grandfather just got a flu bug and he’s 92 and survived it just fine. My kids probably had it in May along with their Mother the first time ’round.
It’s a flu. We get them every year, people get sick every year, adults and children die from them every year. We’ve never once had it recommended that the children get the flu shot and we aren’t starting now.
But then again, we take being ill seriously and stay home here. We’ve already had a head cold, they tried to tell us it was H1N1… it wasn’t.
The swine flu is no better nor worse than any other kind they all kill, so incidentally does the common cold, did you not know that?
Get a sense of proportion. Water kills, you can drown in it or drink too much, that is the way of the world as the Bible says “in the midst of life we are in death” I am sure T S Eliot had sommat to say about that too, but then he has gone before us into Avernus.
Whether or not I recently had the swine flu or just some ordinary winter virus (and there are a hell of a lot of them) I am fit as fiddle today, but I could be dead tommorrow, who knows what is in store, a year ago I did not expect that I would be driven from my home by a fire, tommorrow I might get shot, who knows.
More people have died on Snowdon than Everest, but more people have died from lightning strikes, it is a matter of how you frame the evidence, and all in all the actuarialists (who don’t walk any tightrope) are the ones who know the score.
The flu vaccine builds your immunity. That is precisely how it works, by getting your immune system to it.
While I realize that I could die of almost any unforeseen circumstance, I take precautions for what I can foresee. I wear a seatbelt, I swim where there are lifeguards, and I (try!) to get vaccinated.
H1N1 is particularly volatile. It is more dangerous to those who don’t have previous immunity (the young) and to those particularly with pre-existing breathing problems. A 92 year old in relatively good health has a far better chance of surviving it than a perfectly healthy 15 year old.
If you count the life-years H1N1 has taken away, it is far more damaging than the seasonal flu.
I find it amazing that people will use re-uable bags at the grocery store and drive hybrid cars to “save the environment”, but won’t take a flu vaccine to save their fellow man.
You go to work everyday, and by the time you feel sick enough to stay home (meaning your work doesn’t get done or someone else has to do it)you have already infected several co-workers.
So people are ok to spread disease in their “environment” while carrying their little re-usable bags to the grocery store.
When I was seven months old I had pneumonia, my mum didn’t recognise it but my gran of an older generation did. Back in the 50’s that wasn’t good, antibiotics had only just come in and the dosage wasn’t really understood. I survived, another child of similar age did not, who knows why? Kismet.
My dad had meningitis and survived, Kismet. I had a cousin who was burnt to death in a car accident, Kismet.
We have no absolute expectation of survival, that we have a right to survive any disease or misfortune is but a delusion, we merely do what we can.
Larry
Yes, we could die tomorrow from any number of things. And for most of us the swine flu would probably be an annoyance more than life threatening. I am much more likely to get in a car crash and die then of the swine flu. It has, unlike the seasonal flu, been targeting the young (6M-24 years old) and they have had far more deaths in those age groups than the typical flu. I guess my feeling is if I could go in a take a shot that would prevent my untimely death from any number of causes car crashes, drowning, lighning strikes, ect…why would I choose not to have the shot? It seems like a no brainer to me. I am certainly not going to gamble my son’s life on a hunch that he can take it because the kid down the street had it and was fine. I guess I just prefer to air on the side of caution in life.
As usual, I’d caution against basing decisions on anecdotal data. This is not “just another flu season.” Check the stats.
And Larry, if you had pneumonia at a child (as did I, BTW) I believe you’re at greater risk of getting it as an adult. Depending on your age, that could be very bad.
I had the flu for a week a couple of months ago. Don’t know which kind, but the day after I got over it, I heard on the local news that a 20 yr old local Stanford student died of H1N1. It gave me pause…
I’m not at all surprised at farmwife dismissing it with – “It’s a flu. We get them every year, people get sick every year, adults and children die from them every year.”
That’s some attitude – “It culls the herd – all the more for us!”
What most people don’t realize is that if H1N1 had shown up just a couple of months sooner, it would have been included in the regular seasonal flu shot, and there wouldn’t have been all this foolish debate about it. I had my regular flu shot last Friday, didn’t get the H1N1 shot only because it was delayed in getting dispensed to the VA Clinic. I’ll get it next month, when I go in for my regular checkup.
Imagine if someone said “It’s just autism; lots of kids get diagnosed with it every year. It happens.” Then she’d be up in arms, wouldn’t she?
Lots of deaths every year? Just an unfortunate fact of life.
[insert facepalm]
Here are some influenza facts from the US:
Number of pediatric deaths caused by the H1N1 (“swine”) influenza as of last week – 129
Number of pediatric deaths caused by influenza in the 2007 – 2008 influenza season – 88
[Note: the 2008 – 2009 influenza season includes several deaths from H1N1 but had 83 deaths prior to the onset of H1N1]
Number of pediatric deaths caused by influenza in the 2006 – 2007 influenza season – 78
The influenza “season” runs October through May and typically “peaks” in January or February, so the current influenza season is just getting started.
Those who would prefer to continue thinking of the H1N1 (“swine”) influenza as “no big deal” or “overblown” are free to continue burying their heads in the sand.
Prometheus
How about “It’s a vaccine. We get them every year, people get side effects every year, A few adults and children get sick or die from them every year.”
Thousands of people are killed by flu every year but farmwifetwo’s family have survived so far so that’s alright then?
It would seem so, Mike. Perhaps FW2 will come back by and explain what she meant, since it seems rather callous.
This whole issue of H1N1 is getting blown way out of proportion. Yes this flu season is off to an earlier start and yes this flu is effecting more younger people than is normal. Yes, people, even healthy ones, die from complications from the flu ever year.
Yes, the flu can kill young children. But, lets keep this in perspective.
A child is more likely to develop autism than to die from the flu.
A child is much more likely to die from SIDS, cancer, or the results of an accident than to die from the flu.
This is not to say that each of those deaths isn’t tragic, they are. But H1N1 is not any deadlier than the “normal” flu virus. The problem with H1N1 is that most people, especially younger ones, have not been exposed to it before and as a result are more likely to catch it (and spread it). And if more people have the flu, there are going to be more fatalities in otherwise healthy people.
What seems to be happening (so far at least) is that the H1N1 is replacing the “normal” flu virus and so the majority of the cases of flu this year will be H1N1. This sort of thing has happened before, sometimes with little problems, other times with major consequences. The best write up that I have seen so far of this process is here –
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18063-timeline-the-secret-history-of-swine-flu.html?full=true
So far, the consequences this time are relatively mild – the flu season is getting started a earlier than normal and more people are catching it but it is not more deadly than the average flu, just more common.
And if you look at the at the most recent data that the CDC has published there are some hints that we may already be close the peak, but it is too soon to say for certain.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2009-2010/AHDR43.htm
A child is more likely to develop autism than to die from the flu.
A child is much more likely to die from SIDS, cancer, or the results of an accident than to die from the flu.
So what? Why not draw some sort of conclusion? Why link a bunch of *unrelated* events into a sentence?
I am much more likely to be struck by lightning than to fall off of a cliff. Guess what, I’d like to prevent *both* events. And, since they are unrelated, I will take *separate* actions.
If a child is more likely to die of SIDS than the flu…well, both are bad outcomes (DEATH) in my book. How about we do something about both.
But, in classic ad-hominem style, put them in a single sentence to imply that somehow they (flu and SIDS, cancer and autism) are related.
Guess what–they aren’t.
The hypocrisy of so many in the autism-parent community is sickening. The weak should be protected when it comes to a faux epidemic of vaccine-induced autism. But, when it comes to the flu, just keep those coffins coming. Better people die that people take vaccines.
And you wonder how you’ve earned the label “anti-vaccine”.
Kwombles said:
“Perhaps FW2 will come back by and explain what she meant, since it seems rather callous.”
It wouldn’t bother me if fuckwit2 didn’t come back to explain herself. 😉
Now I am convinced that there is bias and a lack of proportion amongst those who I would normally consider on the same side of the autism debate.
To set the record straight, vaccination is certainly less risky than the disease itself and I am not against the vaccination, I am just saying that swine flue is not the new black death, sooner or later something really nasty will come along. That does mean to say I think swine flu is a good thing, or particularly pleasant, just that it is still fairly low on the mortality statistics for communicable diseases.
As I said has everyone forgotten about meningitis, that is deadly and a regular child killer, always has been, and there is a vaccination. And what about legionaires disease, not common, but very much a modern disease born of modern life styles.
Those of my generation and my parents generation will realise swine flu is not worse than the other major child killers that were around when we were growing up. To recognise things in proportion is not to be callous, it is to be realistic.
Flu unlike smallpox, is not something that could be completely irradicated by vaccine, it will be around for a long time, which is why those who were around before 1957 when H1N1 was still the predominant strain have a better chance against the current variety because they are likely to have some residual immunity.
I don’t know what I have just got over, other than that there is a lot of it about to compare symptoms, and whatever it was it hit me before any chance to be vaccinated.
Not a bias or an imbalance, Laurentius Rex, but a direct response to the anti-vaccination side of the autism community who would see all vaccines stopped, who dismiss flu deaths as insignificant while screaming about the supposedly vaccine induced autism. It’s about calling out their hypocrisy, their callousness. It’s about standing firm, holding the line, and stating that where and when possible, we should protect ourselves from these diseases and illnesses where there are vaccines available.
It doesn’t mean we have forgotten the other deaths from preventable illnesses, but that we are responding directly to the current tripe being served by sites like AoA.
I really don’t believe this is correct, and I think it’s imprudent to be spreading misinformation like this.
Take a look at these CDC stats. If you’re 25 to 49 years of age, and you get H1N1, your odds of being hospitalized are around 16%. If you are hospitalized, your odds of dying are about 10%.
We’re not talking Spanish Flu here, but it’s not a walk in the park either.
The second wave of swine flu has arrived as 84,000 contracted the virus in the UK last week Swine Flu UK
MJ comments:
All true. All irrelevant.
So far as we know, autism is not preventable; neither are SIDS or cancer. Accidents – well, you can argue whether they are preventable or not.
Influenza is preventable – by vaccination.
The death of a child is a tragedy – the preventable death of a child is even worse.
According the “logic” presented by MJ, any cause of death that is less prevalent than autism (or SIDS or cancer – it’s hard to say) is not worth preventing.
I hope that MJ will pardon me for doing what I can to protect my children from preventable death, injury and disease, even if the chance of them dying is slight.
And death isn’t the only complication of influenza – since the beginning of September 2009, about 14,600 children (ages 0 – 17 years) have been hospitalized with H1N1 (“swine”) influenza. That’s about 2 per 10,000.
And that’s after only two months and well before the peak of “influenza season”. We can expect those numbers to continue to climb.
Prometheus
Joseph, the link to the CDC stats you provided doesn’t add up to the statistics that you are quoting. Furthermore, that link seem to be based on data from H1N1 from the end of the last flu session instead of the current one.
You may want to look at what the CDC says here – http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm
This is for this season and from what I can tell there is not a higher chance of being hospitalized as you are saying. Now, there are more people being hospitalized but that is not the same thing as a higher percentage.
I have no idea were you pulled the 10% mortality rate from, do you have a source for that figure?
Sullivan – as usual, you come up with the most bizarre and entertaining statements. Where exactly did you see me saying anything about the H1N1 vaccine or that people should not get it?
P.S. you also used ad-hominem incorrectly. If I said something like “Sullivan’s analytical skills are so poor that listening to his thoughts in regards to any data-driven analysis would be a bad idea” – now that would be an ad-hominen argument.
Prometheus, you said –
“All true. All irrelevant.”
No, they are relevant for exactly the reason that I said – perspective. It is easy to get worked up about anyone dying – but the numbers of flu victims so far are largely background noise to other causes.
And compared to other flu seasons H1N1 is not yet showing any signs of being more deadly that the ordinary flu – it is just more common.
If you have figures that contradict what I am saying then please point them out.
“Influenza is preventable – by vaccination.”
Good. Now how effective is the H1N1 vaccine at preventing the flu?
“According the “logic” presented by MJ, any cause of death that is less prevalent than autism (or SIDS or cancer – it’s hard to say) is not worth preventing.”
Really, I said that? Where exactly did I say that?
MJ,
I wish I found your bizarre statements entertaining.
As Prometheus has noted:
“According the “logic” presented by MJ, any cause of death that is less prevalent than autism (or SIDS or cancer – it’s hard to say) is not worth preventing.”
Not amusing. Not entertaining.
@MJ: The CDC page I posted is linked from the CDC page you posted. Go to “Facts and Figures,” then “2009 H1N1 Early Outbreak and Disease Characteristics.”
Again, I was specifically referring to the 25-49 cohort. You have 124 deaths there and 1184 hospitalizations. So the odds of dying if you’re hospitalized would be about 10%.
If you’re younger than 25-49, the odds appear to be considerably lower.
Joseph,
I assume you are talking about the data from graph B –
“Graph B (below) shows the estimated novel H1N1 flu hospitalization rate in the United States by age group from April 15 to July 24, 2009”
So the 1184 is from the last flu season ( a small part of it at that) and as such might not be representative of what we are currently seeing this year. The death total is also from the same time and suffers from the same limitation. I also am not sure whether these are confirmed cases of H1N1 or suspected cases.
If you look at the most recent data on the link I included last time you would see that in week 43 the odds of dying if you are hospitalized are about 3% – although this data is not broken out by age. For the flu season to date you have –
“From August 30 – October 31, 2009, 17,838 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated hospitalizations and 672 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated deaths were reported to CDC. ”
Which is about a 3.78% chance across all ages for the entire season. It is certainly possible that this percentage is higher for certain age groups, but I have not seem any data from this flu season that breaks it out this way.
MJ retorts:
MJ, do you have any data showing that the H1N1 (“swine”) influenza is “more common” than previous seasonal influenzas? And, for that matter, wouldn’t an influenza that was more contagious than previous seasonal influenzas be more dangerous, as well? [that’s a rhetorical question – the answer is “yes”]
Comparing vaccine-preventable disease (and, yes, the H1N1 vaccine does prevent the H1N1 influenza) to non-preventable diseases and accidents is like comparing apples and orangutans.
Prometheus
Prometheus you said –
“MJ, do you have any data showing that the H1N1 (“swine”) influenza is “more common” than previous seasonal influenzas?”
Yes, look at the data here – http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/fluactivity.htm#VSL
If you notice, the confirmed cases of flu this season (5,258) are about 74% H1N1 and the rest other types of flu. Also, if you look at the article that I included earlier from the new scientist, the “normal” pattern with a new flu virus seems to be that it replaces the existing circulating virus – I would expect something similar to happen after this year.
“And, for that matter, wouldn’t an influenza that was more contagious than previous seasonal influenzas be more dangerous, as well?”
It isn’t more contagious – most people have less immunity. I realize that this is two sides of the same coin but I am thinking that after this season H1N1 is going to become the “common” flu and that most people will build up an immunity to it from being exposed this year. However, this is just my opinion and I could very easily be wrong.
“My kids probably had it in May along with their Mother the first time ‘round”
Who’s their mother?
No-one is going to like me saying this, but from my perspective I see no difference between the autism panic and the swine flu panic in sociological terms. These are both folk demons, and again the blinkers of the contemporary ‘advanced’ western society are on, with the blind faith in a ‘science’ which has a solution for everything.
It is almost as if illness is becoming a crime of negligence, it’s getting like Samuel Butlers ‘Erewhon’
It seems to me, you pick your argument and then defend it with the same vehemence whichever side you are on and demonise the opposition in whatever case.
We are living in a period of illusion, because sometimes what prevents the disease only makes it stronger in another form, for instance all the antibiotic resistance that is building up in some bacteria.
The ‘war’ against flu won’t be won by vaccines as it is not like smallpox, there will always be a new variety a step ahead of the vaccines. Until there is a step change in the way vaccines are manufactured (so much for ‘science’ that they are not synthesised yet) or biological warfare with genetically modified wild viruses is instituted (with it’s own dangers)the flu viruses will have a natural advantage.
Technology changes but peoples reactions don’t hence the persistance of the onions myth.
That’s for all ages. You’ll note that most H1N1 deaths last season occurred in the 25-49 cohort.
You could also make the same argument about, say, global warming: There’s no difference between the autism panic and the global warming panic.
Except there is a difference. One is not science based, and the other one is.
Ho hum here we go again. You believe something and you want to bludgen your opponent by assuming some sort of moral high ground, so you invoke the magic words “it’s science based”. Well listen up, that is what they all say.
It does not do to use ad hominem arguments, so the next best thing will do, ad hominem by proxy, to imply that your opponent is not worthy because they are not “science based”
Well let me tell you this much, rhetoric, and psychology, which is what you are using as much as statistics, isalso ‘science based’, there is method and reliability, research and testing to it all, it is just that many in this corner of the blogoshpere seem to have a bias against the ‘social’ sciences as if somehow there version of science is any better, well as for what you are calling ‘science based’ here – hard physics it ain’t.
It seems that the new vogue in demolishing your opponent, (other than invoking Godwins law) is to imply that they are a global warming deniar, which is no different to accusing one of being a creationist or a flat earther.
But where is your evidence that I am denying global warming? That argument doesn’t work. You have simply failed to convince me with your ‘evidence’ that H1N1 is any worse than any other new strain of flu that we have seen over the last century or so. It’s flu, it is not the first new strain facing a population with little immunity, it won’t be the last, in a few years vaccine or not it will become the endemic winter strain until something else comes along to knock it off it’s perch, and there is not a lot that can be done about it.
Nowhere am I saying that people should not get vaccinated, or that the vaccine is dangerous, or that you are better off chopping onions, so what gives, why the pejoratives. I am a child murderer suddenly!?
My 6 year old daughter got a very mild version of the flu… over it in 2 days. My 4 year old autistic daughter had it a little worse… higher fever, more severe cough, rapid breathing, sick for 5 days. My fit and healthy husband, age 46, got a VERY severe case… H1N1 for 6 days, then bronchitis, and then pneumonia that came on so fierce and so fast it genuinely scared me. I didn’t get sick at all. You just never know who it will affect and how it will affect them, so why take the risk?
Also, as my pediatrician pointed out, if I don’t get vaccinated, and get sick or exposed to H1N1… who am I going to pass the virus onto? I don’t want to be responsible for getting a vulnerable person sick.
And… lastly.. the more of us that get vaccinated the safer we’ll all be! Herd immunity, people!
If we can’t agree on fundamental premises, like the fact that science is the most reliable way of knowing (because it clearly works) and that in fact some people are scientifically-minded and others are not, then there’s no point in arguing matters of fact like whether global warming is occurring, or whether we’re in the midst of a flu pandemic, or even whether autism is not significantly more common now than it was in the past.
Not all positions are equally valid. I absolutely believe that. If that means I’m claiming a “moral high ground,” so be it. I don’t care.
In this thread, for example, you have people like Prometheus, who is obviously scientifically-minded and has opinions based on data. Then you have someone like FW2, who is not, and has opinions that are clearly anecdote-based (and maybe ideology-based.)
Do I think Prometheus’ methods of evaluating reality are better than FW2’s? Absolutely. No question.
No one has argued that, because this is clearly not going to be any worse than the flu pandemic of 1918. There have been several other flu pandemics, and I don’t think anyone is claiming that this is going to be worse than them, even.
But then there’s the precautionary principle. I think this is what Kev, Sullivan, Prometheus and others are arguing in this thread. There’s enough data to caution that this is not simply a normal flu season.
Yes but what is this “science” you talk of.
You use the word as if it has personality, you use it in the same way social darwinist might use the word “nature” as if it justifies everything.
Science is not an absolute, it is not even a world view, it is a product of the human intellect and social interaction. It has evolved over time and has encompassed much from the deductive method, to empiricism and latterly the use of numbers to model everything.
Statistics first entered the fray through the sociologists, who found it a useful way of modelling and measuring social trends. That methodology was only later adopted by physical and natural scientists.
Science is a word that can be appended to many fields of knowlege, indeed that is all the word means when stripped of it’s connotations.
Those who have a physical or natural science bias should continue to pay heed to the social scientists who probably have a much more difficult job trying to predict rules and universalities from the stuff they are working with. Yet somehow that is not included as “real science” because it does not have laboratories, microscopes petri dishes and white coats.
Scienctific results can be warped by faulty measuring instruments, and the most faulty of all of those is the scientist operating them. That is the only true scientific and objective viewpoint, in the words of Descartes, to doubt everything first.
Laurentius Rex,
you are stating the obvious as though it is profound. No one thinks science is an absolute. Science is still evolving, of course.
The fact that science and, more precisely, people using the scientific method make mistakes is not news. More importantly, it isn’t a reason to discount the entire methodology.
The reason why the physical sciences are not as dependent on statistics is quite simple: they work with more simple systems, systems which can be modeled to varying degrees of precision mathematically. A closed-form solution is preferable to an emprically derived model.
You make a rather bold unsupported assertion that somehow social scientists are not considered “real science”.
“That is the only true scientific and objective viewpoint, in the words of Descartes, to doubt everything first.”
The key word there being “first”. Once you have evidence, reproducible evidence, it is perfectly reasonable to place some confidence in the result.
Science is a method of evaluating reality. I’m not even referring to “scientific consensus” or anything of the sort. In this case, I don’t think there’s time to try to apply heuristics like that,
or even “peer review” and others.
Basically, you have claims like “X’s grandfather got the flu and he was fine,” and you have other types of claims like “many more children have died this season than the previous season by this time of year.” Scientific thinking involves evaluating the relative merit of the different types of claims, and basing opinions on this evaluation, rather than on some other arbitrary decision making process.
What you do with the information is a different matter altogether. For example, MJ’s approach is not to disbelieve the data, but to suggest it’s not that bad, so no action should be taken.
BTW, in computer science you also don’t have white coats, petri dishes and microscopes (not necessarily anyway.) It’s a straw-man argument to suggest that disciplines are considered science simply based on arbitrary things that are sometimes associated with certain scientific endeavors.
What is considered science? We’d get into philosophy at this point, and you’ve all probably heard of Popper and falsifiability. I personally like the criteria of a more modern philosopher, blogger Skeptico. He argues that the main difference between science and pseudo-science is provenance. For any scientific theory you can always find out how it came to be historically, all the way to its origins. Pseudo-scientific ideas, on the other hand, typically start out with something that was completely made up out of thin air.
I thought I had done with this, but why let a good argument go to waste.
No it is not a straw man, I am talking about the popular media image of science which has contributed to the infallibility myth, the imagery and semiotics which has long been used as an advertising staple, so again I am talking within the constructs of a different discipline.
Science does proceed from philosposophy and certainly sociologists such as Weber had something to do with its current trajectory, and following on from him Quine has much to say about ‘scientific’ uncertainty. The problem is that in constructing a model of nature, whatever instruments we can invent, we can only invent them, and our transmission of the scientific method and culture of science is dependent upon that most unreliable of entities language, and the conceptualisation of it dependent upon those cognitive faculties that allow us to use forms of logic.
Let us not forget that Darwin, oft regarded as the paragon of scientists, started out with ‘blue sky thinking’ he had a notion that what he was observing could lead to an understanding of natures laws, and proceeded deductively and intuitively, to construct a working hypothesis. The next step of course is devise some sort of a test of that idea, but that does not invalidate the method that does require originalityand novelty even if that originality may subsequently prove wrong.
Anyway it is interesting to note that when the mathematicians had a go at Lakoff over his book “Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being ” they missed the point by attacking his understanding of mathematics, Lakoff is not a mathematician and his examples were not germane to the proof, they missed the cognitive aspects of it, not of course being cognitive linguists.
That in essence is the problem of science, it is too specialised, it is no longer possible to have an overview of it all, as one expert does not have the expertise in another experts field to mount an effective criticism, and here in the blogosphere we are all attempting to be generalists relying on others expertise to bring into the argument. Epidemiologists are one thing, molecular biologists another, and the flu itself is happening within the social domain, it comes with it’s own special provenance dictated by folk memories from the pre scientic era.
MJ comments:
What a pompous ass (me that is) I got carried away as I usually do.
The point is, germane to this topic, that I will not be convinced by amateur interpretations of CDC statistics, I will wait to see what concensus emerges out of the analysis of the virus itself, it’s mechanisms for infection etc. etc. and then I will conclude as definitively as I can whether it is more virulent than existing strains.
I have a right in the meantime to maintain a hypothesis that it is not, nor will it be. I don’t care at all about MJ’s philosophical stance on vaccination, I am interested in the arguments and from a sociological point of view what I am seeing is the meeting of two very opposed and entrenched cultures, it does not mean that BOTH do not have something valuable to impart to each other.
Maybe in a year or so’s time some of the bloggers here might like to come back to these posts and see how objective they really are. Hindsight is a wonderful thing 🙂
In other words, let’s wait until the season is over, and do body counts to evaluate the risk in retrospect?
Sometimes you need to be able to make a judgment with imperfect information. Global warming is in a similar boat.
When does the precautionary principle kick in exactly? The US phased out thimerosal from pediatric vaccines based on little more than a hunch.
BTW, Darwin didn’t just dream up the theory of evolution out of thin air. In the Origin of the Species, it’s clear he was basing much of his thinking on domestic animal breeding, which was well known at the time. There was also Lamarckian Evolution.
For goodness sake Joseph, you really are one of the curebies, trouble is you don’t know it.
You have no real perception of risk, how you get out of bed in the morning amazes me, look at the statistics of people who are fatally wounded from falling out of bed.
You are NOT in the real world. Your science is not my science I do not think it is even rational science it is prejuduce and bias, a total cultural production.
Here endeth the lesson, it profiteth me not to go on down this line, you will learn (I hope)
“In other words, let’s wait until the season is over, and do body counts to evaluate the risk in retrospect?”
That is how they measure the actual effectiveness of the vaccine.
Chuck,
Are you another of our hit-and-run commenters?
Just in case you aren’t, you’ve never heard of a phase III study apparently?
Here’s one on a Rotavirus vaccine (not made by Dr. Offit), discussing the efficacy before the licensure.
Now, if you are talking about the influenza vaccine, true each year’s vaccine isn’t tested for efficacy. BUT, it is essentially the same vaccine as used in previous years, with only the virus strain changed.
“Now, if you are talking about the influenza vaccine, true each year’s vaccine isn’t tested for efficacy. BUT, it is essentially the same vaccine as used in previous years, with only the virus strain changed.”
Most years you have better odds in Vegas that they guessed right for the prevalent strains.
Even if true–it isn’t true this year. We know exactly a strain that is prevalent.
And, still, people are fighting the vaccine.
Very telling, that. It isn’t whether the vaccine has the correct strains or not. It is simply that it is a vaccine.
Again – What most people don’t realize is that if H1N1 had shown up just a couple of months sooner, it would have been included in the regular seasonal flu shot, and there wouldn’t have been all this foolish debate about it. Anti- vaxers are just looking for an excuse to run their mouths.
“Chuck” comments:
This shows poor understanding of both influenza vaccine development and gambling.
The fact is that picking the “correct” strains to make the influenza vaccine is a bit of a gamble. The group that picks the virus strains for the Northern Hemisphere vaccine looks at which strain(s) are most prevelant in the Southern Hemisphere in their winter and generally picks the top three (and vice versa for the Southern Hemisphere).
Most of the time, that works pretty well. Once in a while (such as the 2007- 2008 influenza season), a virus strain that was a minority strain in the Southern Hemisphere “comes from behind” and is a significant problem in the Northern Hemisphere.
The vaccine committees try to “better the odds” by picking three strains, but there are times when even that doesn’t cover the essential randomness of nature.
The alternative, of course, is to switch to picking four or five virus strains, but that increases the cost and time to make the vaccine without completely preventing a “come from behind” influenza “winner”.
Another alternative – favored by a vocal minority – is to throw our hands up in despair because there will always be a chance that the influenza vaccine will miss the dominant influenza strain.
As for “Vegas” – if they are giving odds on the seasonal influenza vaccine (and they may, because they’ll bet on anything in Vegas), they would base them on the past performance of the vaccine committees and add just a bit for the “house cut”. So, you wouldn’t get “better odds in Vegas” (‘cuz the house always wins).
As for the H1N1 (“Swine”) influenza vaccine – that is a single strain vaccine that you won’t get odds on in Vegas – the “fix” is in because it is directed at a single strain of the virus.
Prometheus