Comment by hilbert42
21 days ago
"Not to stir the pot even more however when a vaccine does go bad, it goes really bad"
I'm frightfully aware of that. I'm old enough to remember the polio epidemic in the 1950s and the bad batch of polio vaccine that killed kids.
I wasn't in the US and the Salk vaccine wasn't available where I was living and it was another five or so years before we were vaccinated. Before that one kid in my school class died and another ended up in calipers.
Despite everyone knowing about the bad batch and the deaths I cannot tell you how relieved everyone was when the vaccine finally arrived. No one—not one single kid—at my school skipped the vaccine. To not have it would have been unthinkable, it wasn't even a consideration.
Frankly, it horrifies me how risk averse and timid people have become these days. How thinking has changed since that time is frightening.
That's not to say things don't go wrong—they do and all too often as you are aware, and even at this distance I can't help but feel sorry for both you and your wife.
Right, that Salk vaccine killed people but saved millions of others, even now the live attenuated Sabin vaccine occasionally goes rogue mutates and gives people polio but both of those vaccines have almost eradicated that fucking horrible disease from the face of the planet, it's only politics and misinformation that have stopped that from happening.
What are we to do when things are beneficial on a large scale yet are nevertheless responsible for a small number of tragedies? For instance, almost everyone on the planet loves their smartphone yet they kill innocent people—albeit indirectly when irresponsible drivers who are driving and texting at the same time hit and kill pedestrians.
When that happens we don't call for smartphones to be banned, same when a passenger jet clashes. But it's a different story with vaccines, fluoride in water, chemicals in foods. For some illogical reason suddenly all hell breaks loose and people become quite irrational.
BTW, over the years I've had many, many dozen vaccine shots for many different diseases and I've never had a negative reaction. That's not to say it won't happen on my next visit to the doctor or, say, to next person who's next in line in the doctor's surgery.
Unfortunately, life's dangerous and it's eventually fatal. As I see it, these scientific discoveries—whilst imperfect—ameliorate that condition somewhat.
I think there should be such a thing as just compensation when anyone effectively takes one for the team for the rest of humanity. There is one way to help significantly once something bad does happen.
Awareness too, and more testing never hurts. One thing we learned about post incident is that a test of her immune system would have likely shown she shouldn’t be vaccinated at all, due to potential reactions. Why not work on making such tests cheaper and faster so we can prevent needless harm?
"I think there should be such a thing as just compensation when anyone effectively takes one for the team for the rest of humanity."
I agree absolutely. What really pisses me off is how governments seemingly everywhere become misers—miserable bastards—and either deny responsibility or when cornered screw compensation down as far as possible.
It's not only in matters such as vaccine failures, or Flint's lead-in-water crisis but you see this miserly attitude with war veterans, and so on.
Trouble is, we the citizenry are ultimately responsible. For some reason we see someone getting something from government that we are not getting and that brings out the worst in us—we seem to forget too easily that the injured or those disadvantaged through no fault of their own deserve fair and reasonable compensation.
In my opinion that all-too-common attitude is a blight on the human character.
Awareness, that goes back to proper schooling. That that's lacking is another tragedy.
Edit: both government and the companies responsible for vaccines, pharmaceuticals, etc. ought to take much greater responsibly to inform people of the risks even if they are minor. One way of achieving this would be to hold those employees (both in government and in those companies) directly responsible for providing the necessary information. This would go a long way in stopping pharmaceutical companies hiding the unsatisfactory results of drug trials etc.
Don't hold your breath though, I can't see that happening anytime soon.