Quote from Salt

This is one of the reasons why we need herd immunity. If all the people who can afford vaccines do take them, then there's a lower chance for whoever can't afford it to get sick.

Wouldn't making everyone get them free make better herd immunity?

Most people can afford to pay for vaccines, no? I've never met a person who hasn't. I know after walking around in a few streets in America, you can receive a flu shot from your local pharmacy if you're older than 18.

Quote from Raptor

Most people can afford to pay for vaccines, no? I've never met a person who hasn't. I know after walking around in a few streets in America, you can receive a flu shot from your local pharmacy if you're older than 18.

In England most travel vaccines cost nearly £100, although a bit less as capsules.

I'd expect most people low on money are those that tend to be ignorant anyway, thus you'd be mainly targeting those that wouldn't bother if they thought not nothing but autism and money loss would come of it.

Quote from Skeletonxf

It's quite clear already in this discussion that vaccines are essential and shouldn't be ignored, but should they be paid for? With them being so essential and some even going as far to say they should be mandatory is pricing them then something that should be done?
Vaccines cost ridiculous amounts of money to make and the companies mostly won't make the things if they don't pay back themselves, so the company is going to want money either way, and although old vaccines get opened up legally after a while for all to make and sell at cheap prices that will never likely be for all vaccines. Should the government pay for people to take vaccines mandatoryly?

Quote from Skeletonxf

In England most travel vaccines cost nearly £100, although a bit less as capsules.

I'd expect most people low on money are those that tend to be ignorant anyway, thus you'd be mainly targeting those that wouldn't bother if they thought not nothing but autism and money loss would come of it.

Most necessary vaccines are probably covered by your health insurance I believe. Giving people every vaccine would be rather expensive since they might not ever be in risk of exposure to certain diseases, a £100 for a single shot seems quite excessive though.

Quote from Gunnii

Most necessary vaccines are probably covered by your health insurance I believe. Giving people every vaccine would be rather expensive since they might not ever be in risk of exposure to certain diseases, a £100 for a single shot seems quite excessive though.

Malaria, though it wasn't a single shot, it was two weeks of doses so I may have misinterpreted the price of a single one a bit there XD

Great Britain doesn't have health insurance, you get some stuff free off the NHS and have to pay for the rest. I've had a few free ones from the government through my school, but I suspect most of the people including me wouldn't have ever taken them if it wasn't for the fact they were opt out (by skiving) rather than opt in (by paying).

Quote from Skeletonxf

Great Britain doesn't have health insurance,

You can get health insurance if you want it. I had it as a child. It's just that most people don't bother because you get everything you need regardless.


If you're going to make a vaccination compulsory then yes it will need to be free, otherwise you're literally saying "we will arrest you if you have less than $x". The reason we have to pay for some things, like flu vaccines, is that they are non-compulsory and we won't die without them (those who are at risk from flu, i.e. over 65's and sick children, do get them free). It has been argued that flu vaccines should be free for all children because they're the ones who tend to spread the disease - 70-80% vaccine coverage in children reduces the odds of an outbreak to virtually 0 - but those numbers will be very different for other diseases and the cost/benefit analysis depends on a load of other factors too. Basically, some vaccines should be compulsory (and free), some should be free and optional, some should be subsidised, some shouldn't.

Quote from Zed

If you're going to make a vaccination compulsory then yes it will need to be free, otherwise you're literally saying "we will arrest you if you have less than $x". The reason we have to pay for some things, like flu vaccines, is that they are non-compulsory and we won't die without them (those who are at risk from flu, i.e. over 65's and sick children, do get them free). It has been argued that flu vaccines should be free for all children because they're the ones who tend to spread the disease - 70-80% vaccine coverage in children reduces the odds of an outbreak to virtually 0 - but those numbers will be very different for other diseases and the cost/benefit analysis depends on a load of other factors too. Basically, some vaccines should be compulsory (and free), some should be free and optional, some should be subsidised, some shouldn't.

I guess that takes my question to a conclusion. Such decisions on which to make free/compulsory could be interesting though. With resurgence of old diseases that vaccines exist for already, deciding which vaccines should be free wouldn't be as simple as those that people are catching currently (especially if some are life threatening, you can't be 1 step behind the outbreaks and still keep the population healthy), as older diseases have a habit of coming back if the protection stops.

Quote from Zed

If you're going to make a vaccination compulsory then yes it will need to be free, otherwise you're literally saying "we will arrest you if you have less than $x".

This is more wishful thinking than fact. This is the case in the US with health care at the moment. Everyone is required to have some kind of health insurance otherwise you pay an increasing tax penalty. While I doubt that it would end in an arrest for either case, there's no precedent for making something free if you're going to make it compulsory. Though, in the US at least, because health insurance is already mandated I would imagine vaccines would simply fall under your insurance plan.

Quote from Apex-Predator

I should have my right to not want to be injected with crap. I'm not say they are completely terrible (depends on what part of world you are in anyway), but I'm pretty sure more than five in one day is ahem well.

EDIT: Also many parents out there have their own believes and principles, are you saying they should be charged and convicted for not wanting to break those principles due to past experiences?

There's nothing that I hate more than people who insist on stubbornly holding beliefs with no evidence (and conspiracy bandwagoners). You call vaccines "crap" yet that crap has saved hundreds of millions of lives, and will continue to do so. You have no valid reason whatsoever to oppose vaccines. No one does.

Quote from Apex-Predator

I should have my right to not want to be injected with crap. I'm not say they are completely terrible (depends on what part of world you are in anyway), but I'm pretty sure more than five in one day is ahem well.

EDIT: Also many parents out there have their own believes and principles, are you saying they should be charged and convicted for not wanting to break those principles due to past experiences?

I'm with Apex-predator. Especially when the whole Idea behind how vaccines work is by injecting you with that said virus to boost immunity. I don't see why you couldn't simply be shot with the cure instead of the actual virus. The sad part is that most parents aren't notified of what the vaccine contains, if it has a chance of damaging their child, or even why they have to receive the shots. There is a certain type of medicine that doctors have given to their patients that have actually given the males a side-effect of growing female breasts. To tell you the truth, that scares me.

Quote from Miracle

I'm with Apex-predator. Especially when the whole Idea behind how vaccines work is by injecting you with that said virus to boost immunity. I don't see why you couldn't simply be shot with the cure instead of the actual virus. The sad part is that most parents aren't notified of what the vaccine contains, if it has a chance of damaging their child, or even why they have to receive the shots. There is a certain type of medicine that doctors have given to their patients that have actually given the males a side-effect of growing female breasts. To tell you the truth, that scares me.

I don't think you understand what a vaccine is. A vaccine is a guaranteed harmless strand of the virus itself (as opposed to an actual strand, which is what you're thinking of), making your B-cells recognize it and create B-memory cells (and thus antibodies) so they can fight off the actual disease later. In short, your immune system now recognizes this disease even though it was a harmless strand and is now able to fight against any future harmful or harmless strands of the same disease. There is no risk in injecting the vaccine. If there was, millions of people wouldn't be taking it and there's no way any government or hospitals would even put the okay stamp on it. You can't just give someone a cure. A cure is, by comparison, similar if not equivalent to injecting antibodies; in other words, it's a one time use. By injecting yourself with a cure, you aren't protecting your body from future attacks but only the attack that you'd currently having. So if you're not suffering from whatever disease, the cure for it isn't going to do much good. The ratio of what a vaccine can do to help versus what it can do to harm you is astronomically skewed towards helping people. Almost everyone you know and their parents should have taken a vaccine before, and I doubt that any of them have mental/medical issues that have resulted from a dysfunctional vaccine.

Quote from Miracle

I'm with Apex-predator. Especially when the whole Idea behind how vaccines work is by injecting you with that said virus to boost immunity.

What are you talking about?
Do you have the slightest idea about the function of vaccines?
Taken from the CDC:

Vaccines help develop immunity by imitating an infection, but this "imitation" infection does not cause illness. It does, however, cause the immune system to develop the same response as it does to a real infection so the body can recognize and fight the vaccine-preventable disease in the future. Sometimes, after getting a vaccine, the imitation infection can cause minor symptoms, such as fever. Such minor symptoms are normal and should be expected as the body builds immunity.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/vaccine-decision/prevent-diseases.html

I don't see why you couldn't simply be shot with the cure instead of the actual virus.

What do you mean by 'shot with the cure'? Please explain what this cure is.

The sad part is that most parents aren't notified of what the vaccine contains, if it has a chance of damaging their child, or even why they have to receive the shots.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf

There is a certain type of medicine that doctors have given to their patients that have actually given the males a side-effect of growing female breasts. To tell you the truth, that scares me.

I've never heard of a vaccine causing having breast growth as a side effect. I did a little googleing and couldn't find anything about vaccines causing serious hormonal imbalance, your claims sound like bullshit to me.

Really. I had no idea that the strands were 100% harmless. By the way my teacher talked about it, he conveyed it as if doctors simply shot you with tiny amounts of the virus, and your body just reacts to it. And my arguement about cures, I assumed that there were cures for all these viruses children were getting vaccines for, since the media only brings up various cancers, as if every other harmful bacteria was non-existent. My apologies if my point came across wrong, I' m a bit limited to only my parent's and media's point of view in this.
And the breast thing isn't from a vaccine, it's from an unknown substance that doctors gave their patients. It's briefly summarized through a government commercial claim.

Antibiotics work in a very different way to vaccines. With vaccines you are preventing someone from getting the disease, giving them antibiotics without the disease would most likely have much worse results. Antibiotics are usually some kind of fungi that is set loose to wreak havoc on the bacteria that is bothering you, but they generally have a large impact on the rest of the bacterial flora in your body as well. Your actual immunity for the disease would be gained in the same way as it would have been gained with a vaccine.

And the breast thing isn't from a vaccine, it's from an unknown substance that doctors gave their patients. It's briefly summarized through a government commercial claim.

Then how is that relevant to this discussion?
I don't know where you live, but if doctors are administrating 'unknown substances' to their patients you can be sure you're healthcare system is shit.

here's a small crash course in how the immune system responds to things. it's a lot more complicated than this on the cellular level, but this is basically all you need to understand to get how vaccines work.

firstly, antigens are substances that provoke an immune response. this could be a virus, bacteria, splinter, or something else. there's a wide variety of receptors for different kinds of antigens.

the body has two different systems of immunity; innate immunity (also called non-specific immunity), and adaptive immunity (also called specific immunity).

innate immunity is made up of two lines of defense. the first line of defense is the membranes that are exposed to the environment (for example your skin, or mucous membranes of the gut). this line of defense simply prevents antigens from entering the bloodstream as a physical barrier. the second line of defense of the innate immunity is a bit more complicated. but it basically boils down to the body's automated responses against anything it doesn't recognize. this includes the use of substances that discourage microbial growth, certain white blood cells that attack foreign cells or particles, inflammatory response, and fever.

adaptive immunity is the ability of the body to defend itself against specific invading antigens. the key thing about adaptive immunity is that it has the ability to learn, so that it can respond faster to destroy antigens it recognizes from previous attacks. basically, when something enters the body that it doesn't recognize, the adaptive immune system develops antibody cells that are designed to respond to that antigen specifically. it pumps out a shit ton of these, and stores what could be considered a 'blueprint' of the antigen. if the antigen enters the body a second time later on, it will be compared against this blueprint, and if it's a match, the body will be able to respond much much faster.

this is the basis of immunizations. if you show your body what a specific, dangerous antigen looks like in an inactive state, it will memorize it and be prepared to obliterate it quickly if the real thing should attack one day.

now, you've asked why you can't just pump in the cure? if the body can produce an antibody, why not just harvest/simulate that and inject that into everyone? it's not that simple. every cell in the body has proteins sticking out of it that act as identity markers. i mentioned above that in the second line of defense of innate immunity, there are white blood cells which attack any foreign cells. these are called "natural killer cells", and they work by checking if other cells are displaying the exact correct identity markers, (which are different for every person and specific to your DNA). if the markers on a cell don't look right, NK cells attack and destroy. so if you wanted to give someone an antibody to cure some illness, you would need to manufacture (or modify) it to have identity markers which are identical to those that naturally occur within the person you want to cure. this is extremely impractical, and probably very expensive (if it's even possible). additionally, you would need to provide antibodies for every person every time they get sick, as well as be able to identify exactly what antigen you're dealing with in all of those people. again, impractical, expensive, and maybe not even possible.

it's much more efficient to give people the means to produce their own antibodies, and let their body naturally identify that shit for them. so, that's why.







also, i'll just leave this here
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X14006367