D
D. C. Sessions
Guest
In <[email protected]>, Roger Schlafly wrote:
> "David Wright" <[email protected]> wrote
>> Consider the experience in Scandanavia when pertussis vaccination
>> rates fell, ...
>
> Yes, consider it. They were using an inferior and ineffective vaccine.
> Vaccinated kids were getting pertussis at much higher rates than
> other countries. The authorities should have spotted the problem,
> but didn't. The collective wisdom of the parents was apparently
> greater, as they figured out that the vaccine was not working, and
> they started rejecting it. Vaccination was not mandatory, so they had
> the advantage of getting a market response to a problem. The parents
> were right -- the vaccine was no good. The health authorities only
> figured out what was going on when they were confronted with the
> task of persuading the parents to voluntarily take the pertussis vaccine.
> Then they learned that the vaccine was no good. The parents never went
> back to that bad vaccine, either. They were only persuaded by the
> importation of a better vaccine.
Ah! That makes perfect sense: the vaccine was less effective,
so they decided that none at all was better. Of course, we don't
have any /other/ indication that the vaccine wasn't effective,
but that "collective wisdome" appears to have some sort of group
ESP which determined the ineffectiveness of the vaccine even
before any cases happened to disambiguate the probability functions.
--
| Microsoft: "A reputation for releasing inferior software will make |
| it more difficult for a software vendor to induce customers to pay |
| for new products or new versions of existing products." |
end
> "David Wright" <[email protected]> wrote
>> Consider the experience in Scandanavia when pertussis vaccination
>> rates fell, ...
>
> Yes, consider it. They were using an inferior and ineffective vaccine.
> Vaccinated kids were getting pertussis at much higher rates than
> other countries. The authorities should have spotted the problem,
> but didn't. The collective wisdom of the parents was apparently
> greater, as they figured out that the vaccine was not working, and
> they started rejecting it. Vaccination was not mandatory, so they had
> the advantage of getting a market response to a problem. The parents
> were right -- the vaccine was no good. The health authorities only
> figured out what was going on when they were confronted with the
> task of persuading the parents to voluntarily take the pertussis vaccine.
> Then they learned that the vaccine was no good. The parents never went
> back to that bad vaccine, either. They were only persuaded by the
> importation of a better vaccine.
Ah! That makes perfect sense: the vaccine was less effective,
so they decided that none at all was better. Of course, we don't
have any /other/ indication that the vaccine wasn't effective,
but that "collective wisdome" appears to have some sort of group
ESP which determined the ineffectiveness of the vaccine even
before any cases happened to disambiguate the probability functions.
--
| Microsoft: "A reputation for releasing inferior software will make |
| it more difficult for a software vendor to induce customers to pay |
| for new products or new versions of existing products." |
end