Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised [LWN.net]

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 26, 2016 9:27 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised by Wol
Parent article: Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

I am afraid I am personally disposed to being on Mr Wakefield's side ...

The problem with Wakefield isn't that he said vaccines are dangerous. The problem with Wakefield is that he was out to discredit the popular measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) combination vaccine because he had a financial stake in a measles-only vaccine (so Wakefield wasn't actually “anti-vaccine” at all). He basically made up some data to support his claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism, which according to the overwhelming scientific consensus, based on numerous large studies from various places around the world, is complete and utter BS. Being “on Mr Wakefield's side” is basically being on the side of crookery and scientific fraud.

Sometimes – very occasionally – people do react very badly to vaccines. This does not detract from the fact that vaccination is the #1 public-health intervention in terms of lives saved all over the world. Pretty much the sole reason why there are anti-vaccine activists in the Western world at all is that vaccines have helped us eradicate or push back terrible diseases such as smallpox, polio, diphtheria, measles, or pertussis to a point where people aren't confronted with them any longer on a daily basis, so they have no mental picture of exactly how terrible these diseases are.

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Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 26, 2016 20:01 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (9 responses)

> Pretty much the sole reason why there are anti-vaccine activists in the Western world at all

Or, like me, they've seen the bad side of vaccines at first hand, and also experienced the reports being swept under the carpet and ignored ... :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 26, 2016 20:53 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

It is necessary to balance the risk of serious vaccine side effects (which is very, very low – 1 in hundreds of thousands of vaccinations or less, and that's counting all sorts of things that don't have a clear causal relationship to the actual vaccination) against the risk incurred by not vaccinating, which is way higher, especially in communities where there is insufficient “herd immunity” because there are too many anti-vaxers. The problem is that by not having yourself or your kids vaccinated, you're endangering people who cannot be vaccinated at all because they're too young or immunocompromised and have to rely on herd immunity to ensure that infectious diseases (like measles or polio) don't come near them.

We see this in real life with the recent measles outbreaks in the US or Germany. Here in Germany, these usually take place in or around Steiner schools, where parents tend to be against vaccination. Anti-vaxers often claim measles are just a harmless childhood disease, but in fact measles (or complications from measles) can severely disable or kill you and that happens far more often than any sort of serious vaccine side effect. More than 300 people worldwide die of measles per day (115000 deaths in 2014, according to the WHO), usually in places where there are no vaccination programs. Even in Germany, at least one child died recently during a measles outbreak, and it is overwhelmingly likely that this could have been prevented by vaccination.

There is a certain risk to vaccination but the risk/benefit ratio is so clearly in favour of this very important public-health measure that scaring people away from it is disingenuous. In fact, people who think vaccination is too risky should never use a car, bus, or bicycle, because the risk of getting seriously injured or killed in a traffic accident is orders of magnitude greater, even if you believe that serious vaccine side effects are consistently underreported.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 26, 2016 23:15 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (7 responses)

That's not correct. US has a vaccine court ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court ) which routinely awards compensations for vaccine side effects (even when there's no clear causal relationship).

UK has something similar: https://www.gov.uk/vaccine-damage-payment/overview

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Mar 1, 2016 1:22 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (6 responses)

> That's not correct.

So you're telling me my personal experiences are fake?

Anyway, who gives a **** about a court and compensation (and what happens in reality probably isn't as nice as you'd like to think).

My point was that reports of bad reactions to vaccines (and, presumably, other medicines) GET SUPPRESSED!!! Some doctors are good, and will fill in a yellow card as a matter of course. Unfortunately, many doctors will not, and have to be forced to. Which many patients are not prepared to do!!! So the *evidence* that vaccines are safe is seriously compromised :-(

What you say is nice in theory. The reality is, it probably doesn't work that well in practice - many people do not get (often, do not WANT) compensation. And don't have the energy to fight the system, anyway.

Again, I have PERSONAL EXPERIENCE of this - my wife (imho) has been injured by a medical mistake. We don't want compensation - we just wish it had never happened. And, as so often is the case, it's only in hindsight that we realised what had happened.

Cheers,
Wol

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Mar 1, 2016 2:15 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

> My point was that reports of bad reactions to vaccines (and, presumably, other medicines) GET SUPPRESSED!!!
No, they're not. At least in the US they are registered centrally: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/index - it's even available for download. And the reporting is _mandatory_ for doctors.

> Again, I have PERSONAL EXPERIENCE of this - my wife (imho) has been injured by a medical mistake.
Sorry, nope. I don't believe you or your wife. Vaccines are extremely safe unless you have a direct allergy to one of the components.

Pretty much the only medical mistake is NOT getting a vaccine absent clear contraindications.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Mar 1, 2016 8:29 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (4 responses)

To be fair, he never said that his wife's problems had anything to do with vaccination. Even with modern (science-based) medicine, stuff sometimes Goes Wrong, and that can of course be devastating to the people concerned. It's probably a good idea not to put too much blind faith in what a medical doctor tells you – second opinions are generally available – but if you consider the alternatives to modern science-based medicine you will quickly find out that there really aren't any that on the whole are anything near as successful.

As far as adverse vaccine side effects are concerned, there may be some underreporting going on but personally I don't think that this happens enough to make a significant dent in the risk/benefit ratio (as I said in my other message, a 3.5-order-of-magnitude difference in fatality rates is hard to beat). When you're talking about adverse vaccine side effects, it's also worth remembering that pretty much anything bad that happens to you after a vaccination may be (and often is) written up as an adverse side effect. There doesn't have to be an obvious cause-effect relationship. In principle, if you step out of the doctor's office after your vaccination and get hit by a car in the road, that can go into the database as an adverse side effect of your vaccination.

Finally, different countries operate their own separate tracking systems for adverse vaccine reactions. Since these all agree that the risks of vaccination are vanishingly small, there must be a global conspiracy going on where doctors and public-health organisations everywhere collude in playing down vaccination side effects, and that becomes progressively more unlikely the bigger the conspiracy needs to be.

So, people, get vaccinated. It's really quite safe and it helps protect you and the people around you from all sorts of nasty, debilitating, and possibly lethal diseases, including nasty diseases that we don't know how to make better once you actually have them.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Mar 1, 2016 10:42 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> To be fair, he never said that his wife's problems had anything to do with vaccination. Even with modern (science-based) medicine, stuff sometimes Goes Wrong, and that can of course be devastating to the people concerned.

It was painkillers, actually. And now she can't walk without sticks, or walk very far ...

> It's probably a good idea not to put too much blind faith in what a medical doctor tells you – second opinions are generally available –

: -) Including using your own common sense. But the painkiller incident was lack of experience (by a very well-respected Doctor!), and all too often this does boil down to experience or lack thereof. The more I experience of the system, the more I see its failings in sharing experiences ... :-(

> but if you consider the alternatives to modern science-based medicine you will quickly find out that there really aren't any that on the whole are anything near as successful.

Which is why I repeatedly stress that I'm in favour of this stuff. I just come across far too much evidence of dishonest (typically American sharp) practice. Unfortunately, I get the impression that Cyberax is very insular and thinks "everyone does it the American way". THEY DON'T.

We have a major advantage over here in that health care is free. If it wasn't, we'd probably be destitute trying to pay for my wife's care. But that has the side effect that when things go wrong, we get "the linux warranty attitude". In other words, they'll refund us what we paid for it - nothing. But if it's cost you your job, your health, etc etc that's a pretty appalling attitude. And sadly, it is NORMAL over here. Too many people (including Cyberax) take the "I'm all right, Jack" attitude. Until it happens to them. And then they scream and say "why isn't anybody doing anything!?!?". Well, I'm trying to do something, because it's happened to us, but it's hard work against the megaphone of "I'm all right".

Cheers,
Wol

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Mar 1, 2016 16:46 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oh, painkillers are really dangerous -- but, of course, so is pain. Both can and do kill.

And this has nothing whatsoever to do with vaccines. My twin brother died because of pretty staggering levels of medical incompetence, but that doesn't mean I think vaccines are bad or even that doctors are evil or covering anything up: I just think that doctors should go back for retraining every so often (the doctor who accidentally killed my brother at birth through failing to notice that he existed was almost forty years out of training and probably still believed in the leech cure). Mind you it is fairly hard to cover up dead people, except literally.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Mar 1, 2016 18:47 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> Unfortunately, I get the impression that Cyberax is very insular and thinks "everyone does it the American way".
Nope. I'm not even an American.

However, there's nothing gray about vaccines - it's completely black and white. You should always get vaccinated against common diseases in the absence of clear direct contraindications (allergy to components of vaccines, weakened immune systems due to HIV/cancer/...).

Other medical procedures and medications are more complicated (painkillers, antidepressants, ADHD drugs) and there absolutely is a lot of potential for medical mistakes. Not so with vaccines.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Mar 7, 2016 12:28 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Your wife having issues because of some medical errors with painkillers is _not_ a good reason to become an anti-vaccer, is _not_ a good reason to start saying Wakefield should be looked on favourably (seriously, he was an utter charlatan; worse, a charlatan who did lumbar punctures on children for no justifiable reason).