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Monday, December 23, 2002Meanwhile, Israel is now weighing the decision to vaccinate everyone, and the Brookings Institute along with researchers at Johns Hopkins, have put forth a proposal to re-vaccinate everyone who has already had the vaccine. It's an approach that will boost community immunity with the most minimum of side effects. The more immunity in a population, the better. (This is a pretty good alternative, actually.) And while the Brookings Institute and Israel weigh risks and benefits, the American public health community continues to campaign against the vaccine. Here's the health officer for Nevada County on the incidence of side effects from the vaccine: Johnson cited figures estimating that for every 100 million vaccinations, the vaccine would cause between 100 and 400 deaths and 2,500 cases of potentially fatal side effects. That’s an interesting way of putting it. Most people express the incidence in per million not per 100 million. Expressing it per 100 million makes the incidence seem larger than it is, since we’re used to thinking in per million. The CDC website puts the estimate for serious, but not life-threatening side effects at 1,000 per one million, and the estimate for life-threatening complications at between 14 and 52 per one million. So, while he’s technically telling the truth, he’s telling it in a skewed sort of way. This is one doctor, by the way, who plans to get the vaccine - if I'm ever allowed the chance. The risk of a bioterrorist attack with smallpox may be considered low, but in truth I don't think anyone can ever know what the chances of a terrorist attack are. Would anyone have ever bet that the chances of terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were high? I don't think so. No one ever cropped up afterwards saying, "I told you so." And I'm not so confident about the medical community's ability to accurately diagnose, or to suspect smallpox in a patient. The man in the New England Journal's case study from Cleveland went to two emergency rooms and one family practice clinic before being sent to the dermatologist who finally feared he might have smallpox. That was a false alarm, luckily, but there's no reason to think our performance would be better with the real thing. posted by Sydney on 12/23/2002 07:49:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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