Vaccine Efficacy

Vaccines are once again being pressed by the news and the government following the recent California law. Normally speaking, the issue shouldn't be important. Like terrorism, infectious disease kills almost no one. Furthermore, almost the entirety of infectious disease damages are caused by a very limited set of diseases, most importantly, the flu. We have been unable to create a vaccine that has any significant impact on these diseases.

American infectious disease death rate is currently about 40 per 100000. In 1940 it was about 300 per 100000. Nearly half of the current deaths from infectious diseases can be attributed to influenza and pneumonia.

From 2000 to 2015, a little over 3000 Americans were killed by terrorists. This calculates out to about .06 deaths per 100000 per year.

4.7 Americans per 100000 die per year due to intentional homicide.

About 815 per 100000 Americans die every year. In 1940 about 1080 per 100000 died.

Thus, the chance that a particular random American will die in a year is about .8%.

This suggests a half life of 85 years. In turn, mean lifetime would end up at 122 years.

This is unreasonably long. Death rates have been reduced below the plausible range by interfering with the age pyramid. America is unsustainably young. In fact, the entire world is unsustainably young.

Our death rate should be 1262 deaths per 100000.

So, with a little background we can return to the actions of the ruling class- the media and the government. On one side of the vaccine debate, we see Narrative A-

Foolish, half religious, conspiracy nuts fail to vaccinate their children, which in turn allows diseases to use those children as vectors through which diseases spread, eventually reaching vulnerable subgroups and causing deaths. The wisdom of the chosen elite is only hampered by controls on the powers of government, while science has firmly solved the issue at hand.

As for Narrative B-

Vaccines are popular among the ruling elite because they are another pathway by which the common man can be vilified. Vaccination is a fundamentally half religious tool, similar to kosher eating or Islamic fasting, which is used to build an in group and an out group.

In other words, the vaccine debate is actually a debate between the wisdom of the ruling class vs the wisdom of first degree related individuals. So... does the government have a case wherein, in its wisdom, its able to force a stupid and dangerous group to give up its beliefs for the greater good?

Such scenarios should exist. The world is filled with individuals, and over half of them are idiots. People are known to build groups around known fallacies, and in many case larges swarms of idiots can gather together to support almost any variable X. 

Specific examples where governments have come into conflict with such groups, for example, violent religious terrorists and cruel, unreasonable, dictatorial foreign powers, do exist.

That said, the above isn't as clear cut as it would seem- such groups don't exist. Not that they are not physically real, but that they are illusions created from the conniving imagination of the elites. To put that in more simplistic terms- for each person killed by terrorism, the American government spends 500 million dollars. The real threat is insignificant compared to the virtual threat.

In other words, the elites create strawmen to wage war upon. What they say is technically correct, but not in the manner that what they say sounds like.

Here we reach the crux of the vaccination debate-

On one side, we have people who do not support or believe in a certain vaccine or group of vaccines. On the other, we have the government.

The government's arguments are predictable. Vaccines are safe and effective. Science is on our side. Measles and Polio prove how great we are.

For the most part, the facts cited are true- Measles and Polio used to be a big deal, and now they aren't. If a person is vaccinated, and then exposed to a disease, he's less likely to catch the disease than a control.

But this doesn't add up to the original statement. Measles and Polio were never very deadly to begin with. Death rates were in a long term declining trend-line before the vaccines became widespread. There is very little evidence to show that measles and polio were driven out by vaccination.

The issue of clean water needs to be addressed here. The elites blamed the polio breakout on our clean drinking water, which is also directly inferable from the science behind vaccines. But, studies have demonstrated that clean water prevents polio, directly conflicting with the establishment narrative.

The historical data isn't favorable towards vaccine. Deaths rates have declined severely in all diseases, not just the ones with vaccines. Furthermore, cliffs should appear a few years after the implementation of widespread vaccination programs. This does not happen at a rate above expected constellation probability.

Setting aside the historical data, an analysis of relevant studies is called for. Here, we see an annoying problem- very few studies address the efficacy of a vaccine on a population. The tests are all done under laboratory conditions, and cannot be translated to real world application.

The idea that a cure would work for an individual but not a group is not unexpected. It is normal in medicine. Diseases adapt. Asymptomatic carriers are worse infection vectors than normal. Immunities wear off. Pathogens have large numbers of unexpected behaviors, not visible in the laboratory. Pathogens kill other pathogens, steal vectors, and starve competition of nutrients. An infection while young can give a strong immunity once old, that a vaccine cannot replicate.

The studies conducted on vaccine efficacy generally take the form of a couple hundred test subjects that are followed for a few months. Studies wherein similar groups with dissimilar vaccination rates are tracked for a sustained period of time and display life expectancy discrepancy, do not exist.

Almost all of the time, when asked for science supporting vaccines, the pro vaccine side points to a series of studies verifying that vaccines are safe. But this runs into two problems-

A- Homeopathy is, generally, safe. No one cares if vaccines are safe, if they're not effective.

B- The studies do not say that vaccines are perfectly safe. In fact, they say vaccines kill over a hundred Americans every year.

So, we ask, is the government really demonstrating its superior intellect? What would it suggest if it were?

We can start with the global warming debate- it's fundamentally identical. The alarmists repeats the wonders of carbon heat trapping, throws out a couple models saying how awesome he is, then says he's peer reviewed by cool people. Or, to put it another way, it also uses the science card.

Here we've reached a larger problem. Science is just a word. Anyone can call anything science. In the past, science was reliable. This is because people didn't trust science. Science didn't have any positive connotations. It was just a word used by a group with a certain ideology and work style. Nowadays, people have learned that science is where the facts come from, so, of course, the propagandists, the advertisers, the manipulative and corrupt, have come for the title. The difference between a modern scientist and an 1800s scientist is as wide as that between an A.D. 200 christian and an A.D. 400 christian.

And then, we start reaching the absurd stances of the government.

Let's imagine that vaccines are effective and global warming is real. Would it be better to trust the government, or would it be better to be wrong about the above?

The elites have opposed genetic modification at every turn.

Regarding plants, the FDA delays almost every new product for at least ten years, and the major news outlets attack GMOs far more often than they support them. Nutrition is far more important than vaccines. Nearly 15% of Americans are on a highly limited food budget. Raising the price of food, is stealing the vegetables from babies.

And, then there's the other half, which the government has almost entirely destroyed- human genetic manipulation. Imagine a world where everyone has over 120 IQ, blue eyes are as common as brown, anxiety, depression, diabetes, etc. have all been eliminated, parents get along better with their children, and etc.

None of those are particularly difficult. All of them are frustrated by the elite's weird religious demands, their faith that humans are perfect as they are and that meaningfully changing the natural order is evil.

The elites have, quite unsuccessfully, opposed cryptography since the earliest computers. Quite contrary to their rhetoric, if we hadn't disobeyed and overpowered the government, the internet wouldn't exist.

The elites support weird economic theories, which basically say they should control everything. The issue there is larger than can be addressed easily, but, at the least their weird anti-trade beliefs, their continuing mercantilist trade deficit theories, and their illogical belief in the efficacy of sanctions are worth mentioning.

Basically, the vaccine debate isn't really about vaccines at all. It's just one part of the larger debate- should the elites be trusted when they press for counterintuitive, self serving duties? Like usual, every position proves every other position. The government asserts that it is wise, because it handled WW2 and the great depression, because it journeyed to space and freed the blacks. And, because it vaccinated the masses.

In other words, the elites have created a narrative. Each element doesn't look all that important, each element creates a feel good story that only a Nazi, a monster or a bigot could oppose, but together they form an unassailable wall.

Generally speaking, anti-vaccination is met with confusion, the issue draws up a sort of Pascal's wager, since vaccines aren't particularly expensive, and they can't cause too much harm, given that death rates are already unreasonably low. And no matter how much theorycrafting says that vaccines don't work, that isn't much relief to a parent who failed to vaccinate and then watched a child die to measles. On the other hand, if a parent does vaccinate, and the child still dies, at least the relief of having done what was possible exists. Instinctively, vaccines are hard to attack.

The popular version of deaths by preventable cause is 48.2%. However, smoking, drinking alcohol, obesity- government can't prevent these things. The relevant rate is closer to 8.4%. In other words, infectious agents (3.1%)+ toxins (2.3%)+ traffic accidents (1.8%)+ firearms (1.2%).

The elites rely on the typical christian defense- Without their religion people will turn to sin, immorality and decadence, so it's evil to even analyze what they say.

However, these threats cause very little impact on most people's lives. We're already living as long as the human body is capable of. Further extension of lifespan through reduced deaths, is about as credible as further increases in profit due to a company's third round of downsizing.

The main reason why people die is aging. The second biggest reason is that they don't value their life enough (and thus take drugs, to include alcohol and cigarettes, overeat, participate in dangerous sports/other entertainment, etc.)

If vaccines really were safe and effective they wouldn't need a gigantic propaganda apparatus to function. Antibiotics do just fine without blackmailing people into submission, without weekly news stories about how great they are, etc. The same can be said of clean drinking water, toilets, nutritious food, protection from nature, avoiding contaminants, etc.

Vaccines are on the side of health insurance, doctors and organic food. They rely on the elites to force it upon the masses, through law and lies, and are not independently sought out through their own merit.

It's currently impossible to prove the vaccine debate one way or the other. It cannot be proven that vaccines are ineffectual, because that would be proving a counterfactual.

However effective vaccines are, they can't do much, because life expectancy does not vary sufficiently between countries. Infectious disease is complicated enough, that any activity can be accounted for using any number of alternate movers, such as sanitation, pollution, nutrition and evolution.

That said, the pro-vaccine side isn't positing simply that vaccines are beneficial. They claim that vaccines are the end all be all of healthcare, and that only non-compliance prevents the complete elimination of disease.

Vaccine compliance is around 98%. Like racists, terrorists and mass killers, the group in question has nowhere near the power required to achieve all the evil deeds attributed to them. Vaccines cannot fail due to people raising philosophical objections, because almost no one does. This is the Trotsky defense from animal farm.

The programs never reach their supposed potential, and in turn, the proponents call for ever more power with which to suppress their enemies.

The Human Body is No Longer Self Sufficient

Scenario A-

Person X decides to have a child, knowing that the child will be born severely crippled. Person X finds this to be desirable because the child will now be utterly dependent upon Person X, who will use this as leverage to control the child throughout its life.

Can this be condoned?

Scenario B-

Person X decides to have a child, knowing that the child will be born with an illness. The illness is sure to kill the child within eight years of birth.

Can this be condoned?

Scenario C-

Person X decides to have a child, knowing that the Earth is so polluted that no more crops can be grown, and currently stored food will run out within 8 years.

Can this be condoned?

In other words, is it okay to create humans that are given no options, or very few options with which to live their lives?

I would answer that clearly, this is not acceptable.

Humans have an innate fear of death. Once given life, they cannot reject it easily. In addition, humans have an innate preference for their own well being, and will put others through considerable trouble for their own sake, especially when the alternative is death or a near equivalent.

Therefore, a human who can do nothing but suffer and then die, or a human who can only obtain resources through a life of theft, should not be created.

Humans are naturally empathetic. Even from a more psychopathic outlook, humans at a low enough standard of living are heavy anti-utility objects. In other words, at a low enough standard of living, others will sacrifice their well being willingly, as a moral necessity. This too does not imply that the target should be considered a positive loci of utility. It is closer to a form of blackmail.

In explanation-

Scenario D-

Person X creates five million people in the depths of space, granting them just enough air/gravity/etc. that they somehow, just barely survive. In response, an interstellar civilization builds all of these people a planet.

Can this be condoned?

If our latest Person X was allowed to continue as he pleased, he's now offloaded some 90% of the cost of reproducing onto others. This gives him a huge competitive advantage. Suddenly, he has almost complete control over who gets to live in the next generation, and on the sole basis that he's willing and able to manipulate his competitors with threats of leaving innocents to a fate of natural torture.

Even if we assume that no one is actually directly hurt as a result of Person X's actions, and that the civilization would have made some new planets anyway, we can see that Person X has managed to override the decision making of his competitors with his own, without demonstrating in any significant manner the superiority of his direction.

As such, it should be clear, when creating sentient beings, the tools necessary to achieving that entity's will should also be supplied. Anything less is slavery, blackmail or torture.

Throughout history, this logical necessity has been largely ignored.

There are two primary reasons. The first is that it implies the killing of babies, which humans find naturally repulsive. This is an instinctual response built by evolution for evolution's own purposes.

The second is slightly more complicated, and will be broken down further into two pieces-

A- Throughout history, morality has been treated in a generally Darwinian, or rather, tribal manner. In other words, negative utility effects created through invasion of foreign territories was not included.

B- Given A, the human body represented a valuable asset. Occasionally wars could be won using metal, or horses, or stones, or some other limited resource. However, normally speaking, a war was won using the human body. Nothing else was as finely controlled, as agile, as energetic, as enduring or as powerful as a human. The energy generated through eating, the control granted through the brain, the mobility of the legs, the leverage of the arms- these creations of evolution were difficult to compete with. Even in those cases where machines replaced the arms, or where animals replaced the legs, it was almost always the case that arms and legs were still scarce, since they were needed to control the machines or the animals.

Winning in war was essential. Invading foreign territories netted new resources. And even if you didn't want a war at the moment, everyone else was eyeing your territories.

Essentially, humans evolved to see children and other humans as an asset, to continue having children even in the face of famine and plague, because humans were necessary to winning wars, and even if there were too many, they could easily and profitably be consumed in warfare.

In other words, so long as wars could be won with infantry, we could not produce more human bodies than we could employ effectively.

Thus, anyone with an operable human body, was easily leveraged for profit.

Note that while the female body was not of equivalent military worth, it had the obvious advantage of creating male bodies. Throughout most of history, this was considered the female's main worth, and they were kept pregnant.

Men were raised to be zerglings, and women were the hatcheries. It was simple, primitive, easy and barbaric.

However, around 60 years ago, somewhere between 1957 and 1960, everything changed. The age of profitable warfare was brought to an end, by the ultimate weapon of mutually assured destruction.

An age of peace began between nuclear powers. Slowly, people came to realize how savage and evil warfare is. As a moral awakening, it remains, in many way, inadequate. However, at the least, very few wish to return to the era, to the policies, that characterize this segment of history. And, at the least, we want to believe that we're better people than the ones before us.

By abandoning the previous glorification of warfare, we dismissed the people's honor. Humans could no longer justify themselves merely through patriotism. Honor was abandoned.

However, humans are innately competitive. We create rankings. We rank. We try to surpass the neighbors. Previously, patriotism, faith, proving yourself as a loyal member of the tribe- this was the ranking system. But, as warfare regressed, so too did our hostility towards outsiders. In turn, we abandoned our admiration of insiders.

To replace this we needed a new ranking system.

The 1960's were, generally speaking, boom years. Employment was easy. Work was available. Everyone could find someone to pay him for his actions. This, was a consequence of a larger trend-line reaching all the way to the 1700s and a short term catalyst, the general destruction caused by world war 2.

Jobs posed a convenient solution. Everyone had them. They contained a clear hierarchy. They were sustainable.

For 30 years the American economy continued expanding the job pool. Simultaneously, population grew rapidly. America assumed that anyone with a functional human body could make himself rich, and for the most part the facts did not pose a contradiction.

In 1990, the jobs peaked. Americans blamed the lazy youngsters, they blamed the ignorant, the emotional, the greedy and the selfish, they assumed it could be solved.

The solutions they desired were implemented. College graduation rates climbed, government financial engineering exploded, government job programs expanded- America created the modern three prong system of education, financial engineering and nationalization.

The result was laughable.

After all, the problem wasn't that sinners weren't doing their part, and needed to be educated and disciplined. It was that the elites were automating all of the jobs.

Work, is basically the art of redistributing painful things to those most able to bear the weight. Jobs are simply a particularly servile form of work.

On any particular issue, a human will admit that eliminating a job is a good thing. The utility is obvious.

However, as jobs began declining in availability, the moral fabric of America was threatened once again. Just as the nuclear bomb destroyed Christ, and opened up a new era of sex and science, robots are destroying the concepts of responsibility and productivity.

As of now, these forces are still the fringe. Although labor force participation is falling rapidly, is has not yet fallen so far as to bring about significant change to the average person.

However, there is no reason to believe that the fall will end. None of the answers are working. None come even close to working. Simultaneously, the catalysts are accelerating.

Meanwhile, children continued to be mass produced at a geometric rate.

Without anything to kill them, population is doubling roughly every fifty years. In itself, this is clearly unsustainable. At that rate we'll fill everything reachable under the speed of light within 8000 years.

Of course, obviously, we cannot sustain current population growth for 8000 years. Earth will run out of space, the sun will run out of energy, etc.

The point is, the human body is not innately self sufficient. The total employable population is limited.

That said, the physical maximum of employment is not equal to the maximum efficient use of employment, and here is where automation enters the picture.

We cannot yet rely heavily on lights out factories. However, to efficiently employ farmland, only one farmer is needed for around 7 million dollars worth of farmland. One worker on a drillship is needed for 6 million dollars worth of oil drilling equipment. One worker in a textile mill requires about fifty thousand dollars worth of machinery. An employee at a major game studio requires around 2 million dollars in capital. An employee in a hospital requires about thirteen thousand dollars in capital goods.

In comparison the average net worth of an American is around 300000. The median net worth of an American is around 45000.

Some jobs still exist. Obviously. Most people are still employed.

However, most critical jobs require large amounts of capital. In most cases the shortfall of capital goods eclipses the value of the worker. We cannot leverage a larger population to obtain more oil. We cannot leverage a larger population to farm more food. It's mathematically impossible. Even for jobs such as those in a textile mill, or a hospital, the capital costs are cripplingly high-

This is because the above figures only work correctly assuming all capital is geared towards production, a logical impossibility. In reality, humans need houses (100000 dollars) cars (30000 dollars) and other capital goods for their own use. About half of our net worth is locked away in consumer goods. In addition, the economy cannot be freely retooled to completely ignore goods that do not provide much in the way of employment per unit of capital. In other words, to give everyone jobs at textile mills, our asset allocation would have to be about 1/6th textiles. Hospitals would need about 1/25 of our asset allocation.

Construction work is largely done using labor. It's a major source of jobs.

Once oil, electricity, food, housing, clothes, health and entertainment are addressed, that basically covers what people want and need. Of course, education exists, but I don't care because it's a sham. Of course, education is another major source of capital free jobs.

It's easier to be capital free when you don't actually do anything. That's why jobs in government intensive industries produce so many jobs at such a low cost, explaining healthcare and education.

This basically leaves manufacturing and construction as a source of rational work. However, there is no reason to believe that those won't change. Even if they don't, they only encompass a certain percent of our asset allocation, so we still reach a shortfall.

Other jobs, such as waiters, retail sales and gardeners exist, but they're non-essential. As such, as capital increases in productivity, such jobs will be pushed to the wayside. Furthermore, they'll be increasingly competed for. Finally, they're just fundamentally not worth doing.

In other words, labor is losing its role as a limiting reactant. It has already lost functionality in most fields. This is unique within history. Evolution has not prepared us for this reality, nor has culture, which was also evolved, though not in the biological sense.

Different actions will lead to different results. What I expect to happen is the blind stupid path- population growth continues geometrically. Fake jobs are created to employ all these useless people. The economy becomes increasingly nationalized, until it all collapses in a new round of war and famine.

We could, theoretically, allow the poor to starve. The rich could sit back and laugh at the stupid cattle and their unending sex. However, practically speaking, this can't happen, because the poor will vote and riot, and the rich will sympathize with them even if they don't. Even if the rich were willing and able, this scenario is still not optimal, since it involves starving millions of people to death, and likely involves imprisoning and/or slaughtering them to keep them under control until then. And, the slaughter is likely to never end, as new people lose their jobs or their fortune but continue to have children.

The alternative is birth licensing. Or, in other words, redefinition of the human body. We can't live like hunter-gatherers in the modern age. Everything is already owned, and we'd lose 98% of our productivity if we went back. So why do we expect people to make do just because they have arms and legs?

Parents should be required to provide adequate capital to their children.

In the modern age, capital can easily produce a return of 5%. A human can live off 7000 dollars a year with no difficulty. In other words, 140000 dollars is an adequate replacement for a job.

Of course, very few Americans own 140000 dollars, much less the 280000 they would need if they wanted to maintain their own living standards. A direct imposition of a 140000 dollar requirement per child, would effectively wipe the 99% from the gene pool.

This is neither necessary nor desirable. It is within our powers to give everyone in America 300000 dollars.

It is not necessarily within our powers to do so immediately. That isn't an issue. The government would immediately owe everyone 300000 dollars, and the recipient can immediately have a child. The debt would then be transferred to the child.

Of course this program would require scaling back the omnipotent rights of a parent over a child. Children should be allowed to own their own assets, free from parental meddling. Upon birth, money would be transferred, where it would be kept in sequester until the child claimed it.

As to the standard required to claim the assets, I would wait for the child to ask for the money, or until the age of 10. The money wouldn't be released immediately, but once the trigger is met, would be given over the next ten years.

While the assets are in government holding, the government would invest it, targeting a normal and safe return through some sort of government ETF. The interest would be added directly to the related asset pool.

So, where will this money come from?

We could redirect it from government waste, AKA, the vast majority of what we currently spend on the military, the education system, bankers, healthcare and the police. In addition we can end social security (and no one will have to live in deprivation since... they're getting 300000 dollars.), welfare (see above), and... basically everything. One 300000 dollar payment would replace our entire welfare system, all of our fake jobs, everything. The government would be left with a military comparable to what every other nation in the world gets by with, those few police who aren't chasing traffic offenders and drug addicts, a mail delivery network, some roads, anything it spends on research, and a large number of minor programs that don't really cost anything anyway.

The government already spends about 20000 dollars per person per year. Assuming 2/3rds of its spending were redirected, it would take 23 years to give everyone 300000 dollars. In the end, rich and poor alike benefit, compared to the current system (where taxation isn't cut by 2/3rds in 20 years), or the basic alternative (where the rich and poor fight it out on the streets)

We could also sell government assets. Since these are already publicly owned, no one has any special claim. It's already "the people's" wealth.

Federal oil, coal, mineral and gas reservoirs could be worth over a hundred trillion, potentially sufficient on their own to pay off everyone in one go. It's unlikely a buyer could come up with the cash to buy all that in one go, but just opening the land to leasing would provide a major income stream until they sell. The government owns around a third of America's landmass.

It could also raise trillions by selling its gold, by selling most of its offices, by selling dams, lakes, rails, by selling debt owed to the government and other assets. Individually each item doesn't add up to much, but together its a significant, if difficult to ascertain, net worth.