Anti-Vaxxer Sympathy

[Redbeard The Pink]

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You're making a blanket statement that doctors/the medical industry are always responsible when a patient makes a fucked up decision, and seriously, you need to fuck off with that shit. It just isn't true.

Redbeard it is clear that you haven't read anything academic. At least read a Journal artice before coming on here and claiming I'm spouting "my" POV (which I'm NOT!!).

White et al. 2015.

My first wife and I had a horrible experience at the doctor one time over a form she needed signed for work. It was a total professional meltdown, complete with the staff violating Hippa right in the (very full) lobby concerning my ex's psychiatric history. Total clusterfuck. You know what we did? We got her a different fucking doctor. We could have forsaken medical care for ourselves and our (luckily non-existent) children forever, but we got a different doctor at a different practice. It wasn't even hard.

There are rural Communities in Australia that are 12 hours drive (or further) from the nearest city. And that's if there is a road - there is no road to Kiwirrkurra for example. We have Indigenous people who feel extreme distress any time they have move out of Country to receive health services:



Usually there is only one practise that is accessible by people in these remote regions - many of the people do not own cars and cannot travel the distance required to seek another service if they wanted to. Furthermore it is very difficult to persuade practitioners (including nurses) to go to these regions; and many of them cannot cope with being so far away from their friends, families, culture, and way of life (in fact this is a problem even in booming mining towns as well).

Exactly how do you expect the patients I just described - many of who do not speak English, and if they do it's a 3rd or 4th language for them (there are at least 150 different Indigenous languages) - to access an alternative health service? Furthermore when a person does travel, with an elder, for healthcare imagine how distressing it is for them to experience waiting extensively long periods of time at the hospital or clinic whilst they try to locate someone who can understand at least one language that they know between them. There are many languages that fewer than 1000 people speak. So tell me how do they have a "choice" in healthcare service - even if they were willing to travel to any point of Australia to receive it?

Just because the barrier doesn't exist for you Redbeard doesn't mean it doesn't exist for other people. I don't believe you or I could possibly imagine what it's like for someone who's never seen a city in their life to be forced to travel to a strange overcrowded place, where nobody understands your language, where there are none of your own people (except for an elder from your community who travelled with you and a translator to tell you what the clinicians are saying). You may even need a translator for your translator as well (so try guessing how difficult it would be to understand the foreign-language speaking person then).

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Honestly, after mh.brewer crushed you up and snorted you off his desk, I don't see why we need to keep going. I hope you're just taking your time typing up a really good reply to him and started with me since I seem to be easier.


Furthermore, your points (that aren't ad hominem) have been pretty well addressed by other people already. Indigenous people like the ones you describe are not the people we're talking about. When we say Anti-Vaxxers, we're talking about people in developed areas who have access to the right information and have the education to comprehend it and choose to ignore it because (insert reason), and I at least am generally talking about members of the American population. I'm talking about people who should know better and choose not to, and put their children at risk along with other population members who are not immunized and have no choice (like some of the people brewer mentioned). I'm talking about celebrities who have no medical training taking their pulpits and convincing their clay-minded fans that vaccines cause autism. Your point about indigenous people who probably don't have access to a LOT of things is practically unrelated to the topic at hand.