Your argument is "i'm right, because". I don't buy your objectivity argument.
Risk calculations are never as straightforward as that because you always have to consider both the risks and the stakes. Some things have very high stakes but very low chance of happening (like having to use a gun defensively). Everyone has to wiegh those kind of decisions for himself. It's easy to say "omg you could die", while neglecting to mention that your chances of getting e.g. Whooping cough may be a million-to-one, and only a small percentage of those cases are fatal, those often being individuals compromised to start with due to age or other complication. That 25000 kids died of polio in 1974 is essentially irrelevant to why I should take a vaccine today. The chance of complications, which can be 100% avoided, may well top the risk equation. That's why they have stopped recommending yearly mammograms...yes you could omg die from breast cancer, yet even the very small risk of a simple mammogram turned out not to be worth it in the big picture, and it took how many years? Guess what, it didn't make sense for all those years they were still recommending it either.
You sure about that? On both counts? (The
why and
individualized mammogram risk.) Understand the difference between testing and immunization.
I am sure the individualized benefits of testing and early detection have not changed. What changed was the
perspective of the PAYER. Note from whom and when these sudden, new "no need to test for this & that" studies originate. On breast cancer, PSA, colonoscopies, etc. Since BHO and Obamacare came on the scene, many "preventive" medical procedures have been poo-pooed and/or data presented from a
collective perspective.
IOW, it still makes sense, from a quantitative POV, for an
individual to get such testing, especially if they have insurance and risk factors. OTOH, if you are designing a system of pseudo/masked socialized medicine, maybe not so much. An awful lot spent on testing healthy folk so that the socialized medicoes started trumpeting such data. Sort of gives up the lie that "preventative" medicine saves money. It doesn't. But when employers were the ones on the hook to pay for it, it was a great thing. When those numbers are applied to Obamacare, they cried, "Whoa, Nelly! No need for all those 'wasted' tests on perfectly healthy people. The cost of all those tests on healthy folk is more than paying for the one in a thousand who benefits and lives to see their gradkids instead of dying young."
My argument is not "I'm right" its "people who don't vaccinate don't understand risk".
I do understand risk. Math is math, probabilistic risk assessment isn't that hard, the inputs are easy to find, and the result is clear.
Math answer: vaccine wins. Non-vaccinated is dumb.
My point early on in the thread.
Math is hard (to refute).
An informed decision not to vaccinate will not be based on the math, but on some other premise.
