Yeah, we failed to get a good interview this episode. And then we picked topics that we all felt like talking about for longer. 
Iām curious if you (and others, too) enjoyed it more like thisā¦ or the traditional ~10 minute segment show structure weāve been doing. I have a personal opinionā¦ but Iād love to know what everyone else thinks. Longer discussions or more topics? (Or justā¦ a shorter show?)
Thatās so totally true. The decision of whether to use any given vaccine is hard, isnāt it? My wife and I have really struggled with it.
What makes it extra hard (at least from my viewpoint) is that there are such a diverse set of proās and conās to every decision.
For exampleā¦
In the case of, say, Measlesā¦ this absolutely applies. Except when it doesnāt.
My wife is, right now, pregnant. Most people, in the area we live, are vaccinated with a version of a Measles vaccine (including my wife from when she was young). The fact that the vaccine rate is so high means that my wife hasnāt been exposed to Measles very often ā in āthe olden daysā people would get exposed far more regularly which would then help to keep a persons immunity up. Measles can cross the placental barrier. Because of the lack of exposure to my wife, that means that exposure during pregnancy can be a problem to the growing baby.
Which meansā¦ the people vaccinating themselves are actually causing a potential problem for the unborn child of a vaccinated woman if that women is exposed to the virus.
How might she be exposed to the virus? By a kid who just got vaccinated (a weakened strain of the virus can be āshedā for a period of time after the vaccination is administered).
All of which means a scenario is created by large-scale vaccination programsā¦ whereby a vaccinated child can, unknowingly, harm an unborn child.
I should be clear ā before I get lynched for trying to spread an āAnti-vaxxā viewpoint ā that there are many (MANY) scenarios like this that this specific vaccine can actually help avoid. And that becomes the problemā¦ weighing the proās and conās. Weighing all of the scenarios and seeing what is likely (and not likely) for your particular family and region.
And then thereās the whole question ofā¦ āDo you do whatās good for a larger community even if it harms your childā¦ who is not yet old enough to make decisions for his/herself?ā The answer to which doesnāt even necessarily mean āNo vaccinesā or ālots of vaccinesāā¦ it justā¦ it justā¦ is hard.
)
), what I have a problem with is letting poisonous memes like anti-vaxing be spread among populations without the proper inoculation (Iād say vaccination, but those donāt seem to popular in these parts today 
). The Jenny McCarthy body count might sound a bit funny, but the the anti-vax movement has done a fair amount of damage. I was waiting for someone to call Bryan on his bullshit, you normally have no trouble doing so, because Bryan mostly pulls shit out of his ass, but today Bryan was armed with the best bullshit the anti-vax movement has to offer and the counterpoint was a quick Wikipedia search and stunned silence as Bryan deftly stuffed any attempt to contradict him down a rat hole (viral shedding of the recently MMR vaccinated as a serious concern, where was the peer-reviewed research Bryan reviewed on that, oh wait, itās from an anti-vax organization that sewed together WHO, CDC and NIH sources, yeah ājet fuel canāt melt steel beamsā) or straight up talked over Stuart until Stuart gave up.
