A pair of Eastern Rosellas spotted over the road from our place this time last week. They make a fine sight on a clear, brisk morning. My guesstimate would be that there are twenty or so pairs living within four hundred square metres of our house, so they can often be found.
Things that are annoying me this morning:
1. the same old morons;
2. the burn I picked up on my right hand last night;
3. anti-vaccination idiots;
4. stubborn, hard to remove stains;
5. play dough.
Comments
As for your list: I say yes to 1,3 and 4. Burns or cuts make life interesting when on your dominant hand. I suffer quite a few. As for play dough, I am quite sure that Henry and soon to be followed by Ezra would have an entirely different opinion.
The saddest thing to me is that a number of spurious lawsuits in the US backed not no evidence whatsoever has seen a number of these drug companies back away from the development of vaccines. The notion of 'power' in this sense is often illusionary, as the power of unsupported anecdote should never, ever trump proper, refereed scientific study.
WHO estimate that 1.4 million deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. Measles is the big killer here.
Here's what we know about measles: one in 1000 cases of measles results in encephalitis, with a high rate of permanent neurological complications in those who survive; approximately five percent develop pneumonia; the fatality rate is between one and three per 1000 cases; death is most commonly seen in infants with measles; subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a rare complication of measles infection that occurs years after the illness in approximately 10 of every 100,000 cases.
Of the vaccine: It causes fever and a mild rash in 5-15% of recipients; 0.03% will have a febrile seizure – likely not a result of the vaccine itself, but simply a child’s individual predisposition to febrile seizures; One in 10,000 children will have a more serious event following the vaccine, such as a change in alertness, a drop in blood pressure, or a severe allergic reaction; Approximately 1 in 25,000 cases is associated with an asymptomatic drop in the blood platelet count, which quickly returns to normal without any consequences.
Bear in mind that I've not mentioned here the complications associated with a patient with measles itself. A typical sample looks like: “The experience with measles at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles during the measles epidemic in 1990. We diagnosed 440 cases between January 1st and June 30th. Of these cases 195 (44%) had to be admitted for one or more complications of measles. We documented the complications in all 440 cases and they included 63% with ear infections, 45% with diarrhea, 39% with dehydration, 36% with pneumonia, 19% with croup, and about 3% with other bacterial infections. Three children died all of pneumonia. Measles is not a trivial infection as you inferred. We would not be having a debate about vaccines at all if people realized the tremendous costs in suffering and human life we incurred before vaccines became available.”