Fuck you, anti-vaxxers

[bennyboy]

Measles is a thing again.  Thanks, fuckheads. When my kid dies because you're too stupid to understand how numbers work, I'm going to be pretty unhappy about it.

[Losty]

Is your child unvaccinated?

[tackattack]

Yes mine are. Aside from Dutch reformists and Jewish and Islamic dietary concerns I’m having a difficult time actually finding out what the actual objections to vaccinations are. Any antivaxers care to illuminate me?

[Homeless Nutter]

Yes mine are. Aside from Dutch reformists and Jewish and Islamic dietary concerns I’m having a difficult time actually finding out what the actual objections to vaccinations are. Any antivaxers care to illuminate me?

Some people got into their heads, that vaccines cause autism, among other things. It's mostly conspiracy theory nonsense, but it's been gaining momentum among the general public, largely because of one fraudulent medical study from 20 years ago and support of dim-witted and/or misinformed celebrities.

[FatAndFaithless]

Yes mine are. Aside from Dutch reformists and Jewish and Islamic dietary concerns I’m having a difficult time actually finding out what the actual objections to vaccinations are. Any antivaxers care to illuminate me?

Some people got into their heads, that vaccines cause autism, among other things. It's mostly conspiracy theory nonsense, but it's been gaining momentum among the general public, largely because of one fraudulent medical study from 20 years ago and support of dim-witted and/or misinformed celebrities.

It's mostly completely conspiracy theory nonsense.  The Wakefield study has been so discredited that it's an indictment against the Lancet that they even allowed it to be published at all.  The extent to which Wakefield fabricated results and interfered with his patients is breathtahking, and not to mention the fact that the reason he wanted to prove the link between the MMR vaccine and autism was... because he was developing a competitor for the MMR vaccine of his own.

I wrote my thesis on the history of anti-vaccination movements, and while they certainly didn't start with Wakefield, his brand of bullshit is the first to enjoy the broad reach of the internet and mass media to millions of ignorant parents...who themselves are vaccinated.

I try as best I can to not judge people right off the bat for their stances, but in this specific case I agree with the OP. Fuck anti-vaxxers. They aren't just putting their own child at risk for easily preventable diseases that haven't been an issue in decades thanks to vaccines, they putting everyone else's children at risk as well.

[Figbash]

I was just reading about the link between anti-vaxxers and conservatives in the U.S.:

"So how did this happen? Part of it is ideology. Republicans don’t like government forcing people to do stuff, and requiring children to be vaccinated in order to attend public school runs afoul of that libertarian impulse. (Notably, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was one of the first nationally known Republicans to propose making vaccination non-mandatory.)

Part of it is the magnifying effect of social media, which flattens the difference between truth and lies.

Part of it, as a Daily Beast study showed in 2016, is Donald Trump personally. More than any other politician, Trump normalized anti-vaxx mythology, expressing doubts about the efficacy of vaccines and concerns about their (non-existent) link to autism. As measured in July, 2016, 23 percent of the respondents who said they would vote Trump said they were unlikely to get vaccinated. Of the pro-Clinton respondents, 13.5 percent felt the same way.

And part of it, surely, is the anti-science bias of the current administration. Sure, not a single peer-reviewed study has linked vaccination to autism. Sure, the entire myth, as is now known, derives from a single, wholly debunked bit of pseudoscience by Andrew Wakefield—a report discredited, withdrawn, refuted, and disavowed."

I also wonder how many people think that their decision to not vaccinate their own kids won't harm the general public. They are seriously unschooled (read: completely fucking ignorant) on herd immunity.

[FatAndFaithless]

Ehhh, there are plenty of left hippy new agers that don't vaccinate as well. It's not really a super partisan issue. The lefty healing crystal chakra-aligning granola-munching west coast is just as anti-science as parts of the right.

[bennyboy]

Ehhh, there are plenty of left hippy new agers that don't vaccinate as well.  It's not really partisan issue.  The lefty healing crystal chakra-aligning granola-munching west coast is just as anti-science as parts of the right.

There's a common link: individuals who, despite knowing fuck all about anything, are so confident in their world views that they won't listen to the experts.

[FatAndFaithless]

Ehhh, there are plenty of left hippy new agers that don't vaccinate as well.  It's not really partisan issue.  The lefty healing crystal chakra-aligning granola-munching west coast is just as anti-science as parts of the right.

There's a common link: individuals who, despite knowing fuck all about anything, are so confident in their world views that they won't listen to the experts.

Yup, plus the ease with which they can find "data" to confirm their beliefs all over the internet.

[Brian37]

Yes mine are. Aside from Dutch reformists and Jewish and Islamic dietary concerns I’m having a difficult time actually finding out what the actual objections to vaccinations are. Any antivaxers care to illuminate me?

I love how theists cherry pick science. I agree you should vaccinate your kids. The science is in on vaccines and they do work. But yet you still buy an old book of mythology that makes tons of fantastic claims that are not true.