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- Hacker News
- Why is a this news headline using the slang "jabs"?by Supermancho
- Commonwealth countries say "jab" instead of "shot."by redwall_hp
- In the UK it's commonly said, and the Guardian is a UK paper.
Though you've noticed a real thing: for some reason during and after the pandemic publications outside of the UK started saying it too and I don't know why.
by graeme - Can we stop calling vaccines jabs?by Escapade5160
- Every-time the HPV vaccine stuff comes up there’s a ton of old guys bragging about how they got it AMA.
This doesn’t make you seem like a good person. It makes you seem like you don’t trust public health officials.
I had this conversation with my doc. He said dont get it. Going around that doesn’t make me a good person, it makes me dumb.
Don’t listen to what a forum says. Listen to your doctor.
by pyuser583 - I'd be curious to see how much the decision to not recommend it in older people is "cost / benefit" ratio (the vaccine is expensive and if you say it may be slightly useful you might be putting pressure on yourself (as a government agency) to reimburse it even if the money would be better spent elsewhere) and how much is "actual risk (including getting hit by a truck on your way to the doctor) / benefit" ratio. I don't know of significant side-effects of the HPV vaccine, though my understanding was that there was some misinformation going around when the first vaccine became available which may have made governments more cautious regarding rollout. I don't know much at all about this topic however so this comment is likely full of mistakes.by Krssst
- I was lucky my pharmacist didn't listen to my doctor when I showed up with a prescription for a misdiagnosed disease. Would have delayed getting effective treatment for a life threatening disease. If I'd read forums I could've spotted it too. Don't just listen to your doctor.by lolc
- I see one single comment from a person who self-identifies themselves as a 50yo male. Nothing in his comment could be reasonably interpreted as "bragging."
Where are you seeing "a ton of old guys bragging"?
- What's the rate for the unvaccinated group? So a comparison can be made vs. the vaccinated one.
The fact that they leave this out is a bit weird, sloppy journalism I guess.
by moralestapia - This is a vaccine that does contribute to herd immunity, if enough people get it then transmission goes to 0 and it dies out, even unvaccinated people wont get it, because of the vaccine. The article says "0 cases" in the entire population, in this case the people who get vaccinated are carrying the unvaccinatedby Taniwha
- Looking at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11733696/ it seems like the base rate was 0.04 per 100,000. So ~70 female deaths per year in a population the size of the USA. That link suggests the mortality rate was reduced by a factor of 2-4, so vaccinating 2 million (?) girls per year saves 30-50 lives.
Some back-of-the-napkin math puts the price tag per life saved in the 8 digit range.
- Every time HPV comes up, someone says “guys should get the vaccine too” but I’ve never managed to succeed. Even after last time someone mentioned it I tried and I got the absolutely worst result where they recorded me as being given it but then said it wasn’t meant for men my age. Had to get it removed from the record by the One Medical people I saw next.
And when I saw them, they said it wouldn’t be covered under insurance and would be like $1.2k. I intended to just get it on my next visit to India but ended up not traveling.
I don’t get it. Is this like those Internet memes “don’t mess with the postal police” and stuff or is it a real thing? Any guy in their late 30s in the US who managed to get it?
by arjie - Here in Ontario it's just offered to all grade 7s, boy or girls.
- I (male, 40s) paid Planned Parenthood in Florida for the three Gardasil doses out of pocket after the male age limit was raised to 45 circa October 2018 (as I wanted to ensure I was vaccinated before exiting the permitted age limit). Insurance covered it for my kids with no cost at their pediatrician.
Ask your doctor, get a quote, if you’re unsure what the cost might be. Your insurance may cover it with no cost to you.
https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2018posts/fda-approves-hpv-vac...
by toomuchtodo - I got it in the US in my late 30s or early 40s - I think it was even at One Medical (though I assume One Medical may be fairly different now after Amazon took it over). It was covered by my insurance.by jrgoff
- It cost me 600€ privately in Europe because it's not available for people my age.by wolvoleo
- Yes I got Gardasil 9 for free in San Francisco.by iknowstuff
- American experience. It's free in Australia for people aged 12-25 and men who have sex with men (increased risks) and nothing like that price for private script.by ggm
- This is such a ridiculously complicated subject, there are people who spend ten years in training just so they can handle the complexities of individual instances of this kind of health issue. Why would a corporate media outlet try to weigh in? A crossover between the pharma marketing and the news division seems most likely. Someone said I used AI in my posts recently, and no, I write all my words by hand. But I do use things like this:
Role: You are an expert in the clinical detection and medical treatment of cervical cancer in human females over the course of the 20th century.
Objective: Review the totality of evidence for the cause of these cancers, including but not limited to environmental exposure, viral infection, or any other factor whatsoever that has been reputably liked to the incidence of cervical cancer in human females over the 20th century timeline as reflected in the reputable medical literature.
by photochemsyn - For information (for men who think this doesn't apply for them especially), some strains of HPV have very inconvenient dermatological effects that can leave scars on your thighs, bother you when walking and make masses that are quite ugly and might bother your partner. I had those effects for ~3 years.
If you are a young man not vaccinated yet and sexually active, you should get the vaccine if you can.
by orwin - I wasn't allowed to have it from the official health service because I'm already 50 even though I've not been very active in earlier years. But I paid for it myself (600€ for the 3 shots, quite expensive). I'm glad I did, when reading stuff like this.
They don't usually give it to older people because the more you have been exposed to the virus the less effective the vaccine is. But it protects against 9 variants and I think it is very unlikely I've encountered them all.
by wolvoleo - It was $600 13 years ago when I got it too
I paid for it out of pocket as well with a cursory understanding of the data and why it wasn’t given to men at all at the time, and then not to men in my age range before expanding to far beyond my age range
This affected it being covered by insurance
Even to help protect women was good enough, but I had predicted the throat cancer link as well
On the self serving side, it was also a supporting reason to pursue relations with younger women going forward since they would have received the vaccine and older would more likely be carriers. The situation with men being that there is no test for men to tell if exposure occurred already and like the above person said, the vaccine doesnt work if youve already been exposed. I didnt really need a reason to date specific age range its a timeless tale, but now I can adapt it to herd immunity.
by yieldcrv - My oldest daughter almost died from the first Gardasil, so you may not die from cervical cancer, but die from something else. I am not against vaccines; my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months, and so am I, but the HPV vaccine was not mandatory, so, given the experience and the similar genetics, we didn't do it for the other two kids. Yeah, there's a risk of cancer, which might be curable 5-10-15 years from now, but the risk of side effects is here now... for some. So, it's not always a win-win, and we've got no interest from health authorities in assessing the risk for my other two kids, so they also seem very risk-averse and want us to assume all the negatives.by nikolay
- I find it extremely troubling that this comment detailing your very personal experience was flagged because it went against a prescribed narrative.
- My condolences and a hug.
Please forgive others who are insensible in this community and downvote you in spite of the terrible situation you had to deal with.
by moralestapia - When you got the shot didn't they tell you about the possible side effects and what to watch for?
I know for the Covid vaccine I had to sit for an hour to make sure of something not happening.
by ourmandave - Anaphylaxis is going to happen something like 3 per million Gardasil doses.
The math doesn’t math on the decision not to get the vaccine unless you know for a fact that you’re going to have an anaphylactic reaction. The risk of cancer is far higher if you choose to take the alternative risk.
- > my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months
Why? At what point did you say “I know a better vaccine schedule than highly trained specialist doctors who have done decades of research on hundreds of thousand of children”? You don’t find this incredibly naive to think you know better than them?
by bluedevil2k - Yeah I thought about mentioning the fairly rare but awful cases that seem pretty clearly linked to the shot. It may be not very common, but it is a thing, and it's worth considering in the cost-benefit analysis.by apparent
- Just a note: the article focuses on the ladies, but men should absolutely get it as well because it cuts risk for other types of cancers. I was looking for a better link, however this is the only one I found (I had an older one saved, however I can't find it):
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/health/hpv-men-vaccine-cancer...
by eek2121