Anti-Vax Movement

[melty]

I don't find it all that surprising that a mother or father would choose protecting their kid from autism over protecting a bunch of other kids from death. Some mothers (parents) are just really crazy/selfish. Who here has seen Torchwood: Children of Earth? Small spoiler if you haven't but might want to.

Spoiler

The aliens in the series were going to kidnap ten percent of all the children on Earth and whisk them away to a fate basically worse than death. One father who knew what was going to happen to his kids shot and killed them to save them from it. Anyway, the Torchwood team figured out a way to save all these millions of children, but it would cause the death of just one of them, and the mother of the kid freaked out and did everything possible to stop it and was basically like fuck all those people and those millions of kids, even after she saw exactly what was going to happen to them.

This scared me because it was very plausible. I can see people being selfish enough to not want to have to deal with autism in their life (remember, they don't think THEIR kid will die) and not care if there are a few dead kids because of it. But I don't know, I'm not a parent and I hate kids so I don't know what goes through these peoples heads. One more reason not to become a parent imo.

 

[CatParty]

https://archive.today/1qetz

 

[Pine Tar]

https://archive.today/1qetz

 

[melty]

One would wonder if these people were literally prosecuted for such things. The fact that five to ten die because they weren't vaccinated simply because the parents thinks "God will handle it" just endangers the child's life. Whether its for religious belief or thinking autism will be hell thanks to vaccinations, the fact these people refuse them (as said, either religious belief or autism) may as well have this question asked: Do they really care about their children?

Reminds me of those religious parents who let their kids die because they don't want them to have chemo or whatever modern medicine it is they don't like. What happens when it's the parents who have the disease? Do they refuse the treatment? I might be biased/jaded but I bet God suddenly decides they don't have to.

 

[Bluce Wee]

My question is how they even came up with the ridiculous premise that vaccinations cause Autism.

Signs of autism start to manifest around the same time as Johnny is getting his vaccinations. Johnny's mother sees the shot go in and sees him go autistic like so many other kids she's read about in the news. She doesn't remember so many autistic kids when she was a child. She also didn't get nearly as many vaccines as Johnny and his peers are getting now. There has to be a connection (never mind that autism diagnoses seem to be on the rise now because we're getting better at identifying symptoms earlier and more behaviors are counting as symptoms or warning signs). Andrew Wakefield, Scumbag Extraordinaire's paper wasn't the first thing to make the connection but it was published in a respectable medical journal, giving it that "good, sound research" polish that was missing from the movement in the years leading up to it.

To Johnny's mother, it doesn't matter that Wakefield was later discovered to have falsified results, broke ethical boundaries, and had conflicts of interest through financial ties to the anti-vaxxer community and the patent for the "single-jab" measles vaccine (the paper argued that the MMR shot, the three-in-one vaccine that was in wide use by then, was responsible for the autism) and that the Lancet retracted the paper and study after study and study have debunked it. An autism diagnosis is pretty rough news for a parent to hear and many feel desperate to A: get help and B: find someone/something to blame. The anti-vaxxer community provides everything for Johnny's mother: community support, something to rage against and to blame, and plenty of therapies to try on Johnny that the mainstream medical industry (which she doesn't trust already because they told her to get him vaccinated and look what happened) doesn't want her to know about, all available if she's willing to pay money. And she is, so she tries things like giving her son the Miracle-Mineral-Solution, which is basically just bleach or buying the advice of noted childhood autism experts Mark Geier and his son David (the former being a disgraced doctor who has no experience in pediatrics or autism and the latter having a BA in biology) in giving their kids drugs that will chemically castrate them or go to China to get "stem cell treatment". She's desperate for something to fix Johnny and she doesn't trust the medical establishment anymore and the anti-vaxxer community feeds this desperation and distrust by promising her that there IS a cure and that mainstream medicine doesn't want her to have it. Even though it's tragic and misinformed, it's hope.

That's why the Wakefield paper is so important to them: it confirms their beliefs and justifies their quest with the sheen of solid medicine. The fact that Wakefield (and Geier and all of the other quacks that peddle their snake oil at conferences like Autism One) were chased out of the medical establishment and stripped of their licenses proves that everything that they said were right. They spoke truth to power and were punished for it, giving them martyrdom.

 

[Marvin]

maddox covered this very well on his podcast:
http://thebiggestproblemintheuniverse.com/episode-21/

I listened to this, and maddox brought up the socioeconomic angle. The "rich people are the devil" angle isn't something I go for very often, but I think it's right on point when it comes to anti-vaxxers.

A lot of anti-vaxxers are rich people. The more wealthy places in LA county at times have vaccination rates comparable to those in South Sudan. Which is nuts. And it's the public at large that's going to bear the brunt of their stupid shit.

Like, what if the shoe were on the other foot? How do these anti-vaxxers interpret poor people with crazy beliefs? Oh, those poor crazy people are ignorant yokels, they don't know what they're talking about. But me? I'm rich, I know better than doctors or science or evidence, fuck the public!

If you want to listen to it, the anti-vaxxer talk starts at about 0:44:18 in maddox' podcast. It's pretty good, I recommend it.

 

[Pine Tar]

I listened to this, and maddox brought up the socioeconomic angle. The "rich people are the devil" angle isn't something I go for very often, but I think it's right on point when it comes to anti-vaxxers.

A lot of anti-vaxxers are rich people. The more wealthy places in LA county at times have vaccination rates comparable to those in South Sudan. Which is nuts. And it's the public at large that's going to bear the brunt of their stupid shit.

Like, what if the shoe were on the other foot? How do these anti-vaxxers interpret poor people with crazy beliefs? Oh, those poor crazy people are ignorant yokels, they don't know what they're talking about. But me? I'm rich, I know better than doctors or science or evidence, fuck the public!

If you want to listen to it, the anti-vaxxer talk starts at about 0:44:18 in maddox' podcast. It's pretty good, I recommend it.

It's like they don't get that death unites us all. It unites race, class, national origin and any other status you want to claim makes you inferior or superior to anyone else. We all die. Even the powerful, even the mighty. But, their pride seems to blind them to that fact.

 

[Bluce Wee]

A lot of anti-vaxxers are rich people. The more wealthy places in LA county at times have vaccination rates comparable to those in South Sudan.

That's not that strange. I read a book that delved into the origins and the mindset of the anti-vaxxer movement and it really comes down to: when a parent chooses to vaccinate, they're weighing the devil they see versus the one they can't. They never got mumps, measles, whooping cough, etc. Depending on the sickness, nobody in their parents' generation did. But there are growing rates of autism diagnoses (that's more due to the fact that we understand the condition better than we did when our parents were kids, that we're better at identifying the early signs and that more things are considered early signs) and there's all this convincing, emotionally appealing literature out there that links autism to vaccination. That's enough for one set of parents, people who are otherwise perfectly rational, to say, "Okay...maybe it's not worth it," because you don't want to run the risk when it's your own kid.

The fact that these are wealthy people who likely have the best healthcare and the best hospitals and the best doctors kinda doubles-down on that feeling of medical invincibility.

The book is "The Panic Virus" by Seth Mnookin if anyone's interested. Highly recommended.

 

[An Ounce of Vagina]

https://archive.today/1qetz

Someone remind me why universal suffrage was a good idea? These people should never be allowed to make a decision that could possibly affect another person, they are clearly far too incompetent for such responsibility.

 

[Foxkittykin]

I work with kids, and they are germ and lice factories. So many parents send their sick kids to school and afterschool activities like it's no big. I spend a lot of time disinfecting things... I would be terrified to send my child to school without being vaccinated.

I'd say "Well, serves those idiots right that their children have horrible preventable diseases," except it's not the children's fault their parents are morons, and there's still that small percentage of kids who can't be vaccinated.

Basically, fuck those parents so much. Vaccinate your kids, or keep them away from everyone else.

 

[CatParty]

https://archive.today/43kBv

Fox News guest Jonathan Hoenig said on Saturday that those advocating mandatory vaccinations for the "so-called public good" could be ushering in "forced abortions" and "forced pills."
After host Eric Bolling noted a bill in California proposing mandatory vaccinations regardless of religious belief, Hoenig breathlessly condemned forced immunization by government.
"Think about where this could lead if government gets involved in science and medicine— forced sterilizations, forced abortion, forced pills, forced treatments," he exclaimed.
Hoenig did add that he thought if someone were contagious, they should be quarantined (forcibly).
"Oh my god," said another exasperated guest Nomiki Konst, who informed Hoenig that 48 out of 50 states already have mandatory vaccinations for children who enter public schools.
"They should absolutely be mandatory," she added.

 

[Dilbertmann]

https://archive.today/43kBv

Ah, the ol' "VACCINATIONS EQUAL FORCED ABORTIONS" route. Those silly republicans.

Oh wait, they were always silly.

 

[Dalish]

ANDREW WAKEFIELD, HACK, RESPONDS TO MEASLES OUTBREAK IN US:

In the wake of the most recent measles outbreak in the U.S.—which began at the Disneyland theme park in Southern California in late December 2014 and has since spread to 17 states and infected more than 100 people—Wakefield defends his views about the measles vaccine. “The responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of those that have been involved in vaccine policymaking, which is totally inadequate and bordering on dangerous,” he says. “The government has only themselves to blame for this problem.”

https://archive.today/aCx7F

 

[RP 520]

ANDREW WAKEFIELD, HACK, RESPONDS TO MEASLES OUTBREAK IN US:



https://archive.today/aCx7F

Good to see he never let go of the lie nor take responsibility for the disaster he started.

 

[Randall Fragg]

https://archive.today/43kBv

Hello Slippery Slope Fallacy.

 

[IwegalBadnik]

Good to see he never let go of the lie nor take responsibility for the disaster he started.

Likely due to narcissism. His research and ideas are infallible, and none of those dumbass doctors know what he knows. That's why they disagree!

 

[HG 400]

Until we stop living in the prehistorical rethuglican age and pass more liberal laws on post-birth abortions, I'd rather risk my kid getting smallpox than autism. Smallpox cures itself, but if you cure autism you can be found criminally liable.

 

[melty]

Shame the good old-fashioned "whoops, left my kid in a hot car" defense doesn't really work anymore, at least that didn't end up killing other people's kids too.

 

[IwegalBadnik]

One would wonder if these people were literally prosecuted for such things. The fact that five to ten die because they weren't vaccinated simply because the parents thinks "God will handle it" just endangers the child's life. Whether its for religious belief or thinking autism will be hell thanks to vaccinations, the fact these people refuse them (as said, either religious belief or autism) may as well have this question asked: Do they really care about their children?

If laws were pushed that made rejecting vaccines a crime carrying huge penalties, I think that might entice these wonderful parents into accepting vaccines. The label of bio-terrorist and offer of a free trip to scenic Guantanamo Bay, Cuba might also impress these caring mothers and fathers too.

Just some ideas on how to address this lovely crowd.

 

[Dilbertmann]

Shame the good old-fashioned "whoops, left my kid in a hot car" defense doesn't really work anymore, at least that didn't end up killing other people's kids too.

Don't forget the subversion defense: "whoops, I left my dog/cat/rabbit/parents/a kidnapped hooker/aborted fetus/23-year old pregnant lady with Down Syndrome and herpes/etc."

Naw, just kidding. I think the burning hot car stuff is more prevalent in the summertime methinks.