Anti-Vaxxers are Just a Symptom of a Much Bigger Problem
Probably the most debated issue in public health is the safety and need for vaccines. It’s really stupid that we’re debating the safety and need of vaccines since the performance and safety of vaccines has been settled for decades. The problem is that junk science, with the assistance of social media, has become pervasive among those who are more inclined to superstitions and myths than to critical thinking. That superstition was on public display this week when Arizona state representative Kelly Townsend idiotically claimed that requiring children to get the measles vaccine is somehow “communist”. Never mind that “communism” has nothing to do with science or public health policy, Townsend’s nonsensical declaration is just another example of the damage that poor education, ignorance, and the proliferation of pure bullshit can inflict on a free society. That pure bullshit is easily obtained online or by tuning into Fox Noise and other outlets of propaganda.
In the 21st century, we’re debating the efficacy of vaccines which has been settled science for decades. We’re also debating the assertion that massive tax cuts increase government revenues. We are debating national healthcare policy with those who believe that the rigged healthcare system is “free market”, which it’s most certainly not. We are actually debating putting MORE guns out in public because some people believe that the most armed society in the developed world is suffering gun violence because their aren’t yet enough guns. We are arguing over public education with some who believe that “school choice” is actually a serious proposal beyond the actual goal of killing public education. We argue that labor unions, which protected the income of middle Americans for almost 100 years is actually evil and should be destroyed.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. The problem with all public policy debates these days is that one side wants to argue policy, and the other side wants to argue bullshit. And that bullshit is ALWAYS politicized. When you can’t even agree on the facts, informed debate is impossible, which is exactly the problem today. Civil discussion is impossible because many live in an alternative reality while the rest of us live in the real world.
Idiots like Kelly Townsend actually believe the uninformed bullshit that they spout because all they hear or read is bullshit. Because she read on the internet that vaccines are bad, she chooses to ignore the mountain of settled science about vaccines. Because gun nuts believe a radical interpretation of the Second Amendment, they believe that God gives them the right to carry an AK-47 into Kroger to stock up on their weekly supply of Twinkies. All of these radical ideologies carry a common thread, and that is that one American has no burden to carry their own weight in a civilized society. They believe that their own private “liberty” overrules the rights of all others because of “freedom”. Radical libertarianism has infested one side of the political spectrum, but that radicalism only extends to the first person; this is the irony of this way of living. An individual has the right to do whatever they want no matter the damage to others, but others don’t have the right to do the same. This way of thinking is irrational, non-historic, and can’t stand up to even the most casual straight faced test.
Such is the condition of our society today. Logic is inundated by a virtual tsunami of bullshit, and it’s driving our society backwards. That’s the bigger problem.
Glorification of ignorance is a hallmark of “populism”
Remember “populism” gave us the klan.
1Progressives gave us the Grange movemnet.
Populism is generally infected with the delusionalism of some magic creature in the sky bestowing his ( rarely if ever hers) favors upon the choosen
Progressives have historically been based upon reason not magic.
When I read about people who make an effort to devolve mentally and cling to concepts that leaves them two orders of genus above a mushroom, I wonder in what place they exist. Or if they just stare at florescent light.
So, by way of visualization:
2000 light years from home
2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRc0yaMW7Mw
Anti-vaxxers are one of those things that make me hop right up on my soapbox and start hollering. There was a particularly nasty FB thread on my neighborhood page recently. One “neighbor” (luckily I don’t know him) said to me, “ are you actually saying that unvaccinated kids are causing the measles outbreaks?” Well, OBVIOUSLY. But he debated that! I was just shaking my damn head.
3<>
Hear, hear!
4Back in the 1970’s, I became part of the ZPG movement because I perceive it as a necessary part of ensuring the survival of humanity. I did my part by not having kids.
Today, anti-vaxxers are doing their parts by making sure their kids get sick and, likely, die while taking the very young and the very old with them.
Gun nuts are doing their part by seeing to it that as many people as possible are killed in the streets, schools, theaters, supermarkets, you name it.
And climate change deniers are doing their part by making certain-sure the planet will refuse to support us.
I like my way better.
5A quote I heard long ago….’when science and logic walk out, myth and religion walk in’.
6Libertarian: A person who can believe both that no other person can tell them what they can or cannot do, and also that they have the sole right to decide what others can or cannot do. See e.g. “hypocritical tinplated dictator with delusions of godhood.”
7I lived a good part of my life with someone who survived the world wide flu pandemic in the early 19 hundreds. She lost 2/3’s of her hearing and the same with her eyesight. It also left her with a damaged heart valve. This is what is missing. Experience of survivors to teach the rest of us that if there had been vaccines back then, millions would have never died, and millions would not have be scarred for the rest of their lives. Without them, the gullible will believe anything.
8This is a soap box issue for me.
9Seen to much, remember too many stories, read to much history.
I did question getting my younger son vaccinated because he had a bout with febrile seizures. But did my research and he got his vaccinations.
And do not get me started on the parents who won’t get their daughters the vaccination against cervical cancer because it might inspire them to become promiscuous sluts, and they’d rather their daughters die of cancer…. (And boys should get it too!)
10On top of all the nonsense is the (in my humble opinion) is the possibility that there is real purpose applied to create the furor. Whether through malice for all, or just another grain of shite added to the dungball to make it harder to roll, in pursuit of sheckels or souls, gains at the expense of our societal good disappear.
And we now have to expect saviors that believe businesses are people and healthcare is an option…
11Let’s try this again:
…All of these radical ideologies carry a common thread, and that is that one American has no burden to carry their own weight in a civilized society. They believe that their own private “liberty” overrules the rights of all others because of “freedom”…
Hear, hear!
12El Jefe and everybody else:
13Please check out Jim Wright’s piece titled Rage on Stonekettle Station.
None of this behavior is new. Through out history this seen at some level. The dimwitted xtians and their midevil ages, & killing right and left all over the continent.
14Then isLame stopped doing science and became a strong source bigoted st00pidity. Look at all the big novels written thru the ages, the smart characters were always suspect or full out evil and the dimwitted idiot with the big sword killing everything was the hero. Never underestimate the power, breath, or depth of human st00pidity, in general people dislike and distrust really smart people, look how they use the word elite, and as shown in 2016 they would rather vote for aholes dimmer than themselves.
Anti-Vaxx is largely sustained by the parents’ belief that they are exercising intelligent control over their child’s upbringing: What better way to prove one’s mastery than to stand against the commonly accepted opinion? Unfortunately, they are paying more attention to their own sense of well-being than to their children’s by taking a stand against a scientifically proven accepted opinion.
15There was no MMR vaccine during my childhood. I nearly died of measles at the age of six. There were quilts hanging over my bedroom windows so I wouldn’t become blind. I could eat nothing but liquid Jell-O, and dropped a huge percentage of my (already very small) body weight. The fever was out of control, and I ate so much St. Joseph’s Aspirin for Children that I developed Reye’s syndrome, the mysterious “child killer” of the 1960s.
Fortunately, mom had nursing skills. She was a nurses’ aide during WWII, when so many of the nurses went overseas that the nurses’ aides were, in effect, nurses. When the fever got so high that I was going to die, she put me into a bathtub full of cold water and ice (if you’ve seen the movie Jacob’s Ladder, picture a skinny little six-year-old girl in place of Tim Robbins) while awaiting the doctor (they made house calls then).
When Dr. Alloway showed up, he had snow in his hair; he’d forgotten a hat. I saw the shiny drops on his crewcut, and said “The Snow Prince has come for me!” Mom was sure I was going to die. With her ministrations, I didn’t. I didn’t suffer brain damage or go blind.
Any asshole who thinks measles is no big deal should talk to me.
16Don’t you find it interesting (glenbecky pervasive lead-in) that the parents who are anti vaxx most likely had vaccinations themselves as children. Oh …… maybe they were damaged …
17Speaking of vaccines, where’s HHS and the CDC of this maladministration with their explanation as to why those of you of the age to have had chickenpox and are at risk for shingles have no vaccine available? We’ve heard unconfirmed rumors of a recall, but no explanation as to why the shots have been unavailable for months.
18Linda Phipps@17 Good point/observation! Hadn’t thought of that before. Will be using it soon.
19My mother had, what was then called, German measles in her first trimester with me. Anxiety was so high about the outcome that neither parent picked out a name until I was born and was deemed (relatively speaking) normal. When I was a kid another little girl down the block whose mother went through the same thing was profoundly deaf and intellectually impaired. Even a small kid in the 60s I understood the power of vaccination. Sad to think that a whole new generation will learn that same lesson the hard way.
It’s the internet, stupid. Massive falsehoods promoted and postulated by bad actors weren’t much of an issue until those bad actors got active on the modern marvel of data and opinion distribution, the world wide web. They now so dominate it that people believe almost everything on the web is true, unless it IS true, then they think it’s fraudulant.
20Texas state rep Bill Zedler says measles only kills people in “third world countries,” because here we can cure it with antibiotics. Please inform him that antibiotics have no effect on viral diseases like measles, chicken pox and polio. WHICH IS WHY WE HAVE VACCINES. I had mumps, measles, chicken pox and rubella, in that order, and my parents made damn sure I got both kinds of polio vaccine (Salk and Sabine) when they became available.
21yet another baby boomer @19, in the early 70’s when the hubs was a student pastor in southern Indiana I met the daughter of church members who had had whopping cough at age four or five. She coughed so hard for so long it caused brain damage. She was a normal child until that illness. When the hubs became a college professor he had a student who married a woman from the Philippines who had not had vaccinations as a child. When she was pregnant with their first child she was exposed to German measles. Yes, the child was deaf and blind and intellectually impaired. It was/is profoundly sad and totally preventable.
In my own case, when I was in third grade I missed a whole six weeks of school because of a succession of mumps, measles and chicken pox. I know I had vaccinations but I can’t remember why for me they weren’t totally effective. It could have been a matter of timing. This was about 1958. And, thanks to allergies made worse by my dad’s smoking, I don’t have the best immune system. I suspect that my poor eyesight comes from that event.
So yes, I get very angry at anti-vaxxers. They are selfish and stupid beyond measure.
22Giving these deniers facts just confuses them.
23“Don’t confuse me with the facts” seems to be the bumper sticker for too many, who can’t admit they have been wrong about anything: evolution, O’Bama’s birth certificate, going to war in (fill in the blank, but especially Iraq), vaccines, non-citizens being bused in to vote, etc. It must be ” If I was wrong about x, maybe I’m wrong about Y, and I just can’t deal with that.
I believe that these anti-vaxxer’s should be publicly identified so that everyone that is vaccinated can steer clear of them!
24Every school nationwide should publish and keep a up-to-date list of those parents that refuse to get their precious snowflakes vaccinated!
The local health dept’s should lead the way into identifying these morons for the public safety!
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192
25“Russian Trolls ‘spreading vaccination disinformation’ to create discord.” They have been doing this particular campaign off and on even before the internet was a thing–using email.
I have vague memory that a fetus is in extreme danger from extreme birth defects when the pregnant mother is infected with measles (rubella).
It might be harsh but maybe it’s time to let these anti-vaxxers see the photos of the deformed tortured for life victims their ‘freedom’ causes.
“Radical libertarianism has infested one side of the political spectrum, but that radicalism only extends to the first person; this is the irony of this way of living.” That statement reminded me of a saying:
“Libertarians: anarchists without balls”
Finally…a big thanks to Megazoid for the Stones video! Psst! They are doing a tour in the US soon!
26Susan on the Left Coast@ Thanks you. My own memories are along the same lines as the others. I had measles and chickenpox but no shots. Although did get one for polio. Couple of years later, I do remember seeing a young boy wearing braces on his legs.
The home treatment for the pox and measles was a vaporizer filled with Vicks Vaporub and lots of sweating under blankets and calamine lotion drying and cracking all over my skin.
If you have kids, don’t rely on net, neighbors or nitwits. ASK A DOCTOR.
27@twocrows & RA – the problem is that a certain percentage of people vaccinated – it does not take. We rely on the herd method, everyone getting vaccinated. When you have a group of morons refusing vaccination, they endanger not only their own children, but those that did not affected by their own vaccinations. Here is Lewis Black’s take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQpQOLnzQ6E
28I was born before the MMR and other vaccines were available. However, I do remember getting the polio vaccine (oral I believe) in 1956 or so while living in Ontario Canada. Then moved to BC Canada and was given the vaccine again because I didn’t have records or earlier vaccine/s. I remember having to sleep with my mother when she had the mumps and toint 5o chicken pox/measles “parties” with other kids when I was a kid. I believe I only had Rubella (German/3 day measles) as a kid. For some reason, I never had any of the other kids diseases. As an young adult, I had to have smallpox shots for working overseas and I never had a mark on my skin like most people do. I am thankful that I seemed to have a natural immunity. However, I did have my kids immunized and now my grandchildren are immunized to ensure their safety. I’m thinking that if a child has a really bad reaction to a vaccine, that it is more likely that s/he would die if contacting the actual disease! While I don’t follow all the recommended protocols for health, I do believe in vaccines to save lives.
29Jane & PKM: Glaxo is having trouble ramping up their Shingrix production and demand is high. It’s not a recall problem. I was on a waiting list for a couple of months. I had an extremely mild case of shingles about five years ago and would prefer not to repeat even that!
30Juice Box @30. Thank you! As a fiscal conservative and supporter of single-payer health care for all, the lack of the vaccine was puzzling me nearly as much as what seemed to be a lack of reason. Hope you never experience the shingles again, along with the millions of baby boomers who are susceptible.
Glaxo must be going nuts with a huge market at $200+ a pop and not being able to capitalize. Global economy mixed with global epidemics, it follows that medical research and available vaccines should rise in importance. That the 3 drug protocol for targeting HIV was successful in curtailing the Ebola virus is only one example.
Interesting parallel in Louisiana with a Hep C outbreak and Medicaid leading to a new way of providing the drugs and keeping cost out of the prohibitive zone. https://crooksandliars.com/2019/03/new-way-pay-innovative-drugs-provide
31“free society”? “settled science”? Talk about bullshit.
32@Ed Really? Do tell… And FACTS only, no propaganda allowed.
33At Ed:
The term “settled science” is a lazy, non-scientific term.
Science is a method. What comes out of the scientific method (in this case vaccines) is technology.
There were anti-vaxxers in Jenner’s day when he developed the first smallpox vaccine; political cartoons in newspapers appeared of people growing cows out of their bodies and such (since his smallpox vaccine was derived from cowpox).
Using that lazy term however in a colloquial sense, the evidence is so overwhelming for the effectiveness and safety of vaccines that it would take a monumental discovery to overturn current knowledge (which would also have to overturn biology, internal medicine, chemistry, &c).
If you had a complicated plumbing problem in your house and sought help, you wouldn’t accept “Do your own research” from a Playboy model (Jenny McCarthy). You wouldn’t seek help from a plumber who’d been stripped of his license for fraud (as Dr. Andrew Wakefield was).
I got measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox when I was a small child before the vaccines were available. As it turns out, having a disease doesn’t make you 100% immune to it again.
Thus in the Navy I contracted chickenpox a second time (again before a vaccine was available).
In 2012 Christmas carolers from 4-H came by my house in my then-new town. One of the girl’s mothers is apparently an anti-vaxxer, and her daughter gave me the mumps a second time.
I nearly died from the disease, with a 105°F fever for several days and bits swollen the size of oranges. The VA told me “hell, no, don’t come to the hospital or a clinic” and checked up on my by telephone as I suffered for two weeks. It took several months before I was back to normal.
So while the “science isn’t settled” in the sense all scientific discoveries are tentative pending more evidence, we have about three hundred years of evidence for the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
34Susan on the Left Coast@26: Rubella is sometimes called German measles; it’s different from the other kind of measles, which is sometimes called rubeola. Rubella is the kind that causes birth defects.
I had both, as well as mumps, chicken pox, and whooping cough. Born 1956 in southern Indiana.
35Anti-intellectualism has always been a hallmark of American society.*
These fools who question medical science are an example. They think some celebrity’s opinion outweighs those who went to school and studied things like…. science.
*Example: TV stations go on about “signing day” regarding kids getting scholarships for chasing balls. Meanwhile they ignore the smart kids who get full rides to study (academics) at prestigious universities.
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