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> I don't disagree that people are complacent, Good, because you're an example of someone who is complacent. This is what complacency looks like: > but on a f

> I don't disagree that people are complacent, Good, because you're an example of someone who is complacent. This is what complacency looks like: > but on a factual level, most kids who don't get vaccinations do not get measles. Most who do get measles have a few weeks of discomfort and get over it. Most who do get measles do not give it to anyone else except maybe other unvaccinated kids. "Most." "Most." "Most." Let's say only one child in the entire U.S. will die of measles over the next 10 years. Now, let's say you know it will be your child, or your neice, or your friend's child. Still seem acceptable? The point is, there is no acceptable level of measles incidence in the U.S. Zero. Period. > de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data. This is not true. The rhetoric around vaccines started out de-escalated, because everyone thought the benefits were so obvious they did not need defending. That's what allowed anti-vaccine scammers to gain mindshare in the first place. Only by aggressive counteracting the anti-vaccine message will that be reversed.

aetherson 8y ago
My child won't get measles because my children are vaccinated. But my children will get other diseases because most diseases can't be vaccinated against. And also because I'm not willing to sacrifice every part of my life to make sure that my children have the minimal possible risk of disease. So my kids will, for example, go to school rather than be home-schooled or tutored. My kids are allowed to travel on BART, despite their propensity for touching everything and putting their hands in their mouths. And, like, I'll try to teach them not to do that, but it's not like I'll smack their hands. My kids will probably at some point travel abroad to places where there are disease risks that there aren't in the United States, and while if travel vaccinations are available we'll certainly take advantage of them, we won't refuse to travel to Africa because malaria exists. Also, my children are allowed to travel by car -- even in the cars of say their friends' parents who I haven't extensively vetted for maximally safe driving habits. And they're allowed to go into San Francisco and Oakland, cities that are statistically more violent than their home town of San Bruno. You can't remove all risk from people's lives -- even your own children's -- and if you try to, you end up making bad decisions. This is a microcosm of what happens when you try to make policy around zero tolerance policies. Look, I wish that everyone would vaccinate their kids. But it simply doesn't make sense to sacrifice every other priority in the world to try to chase down a very small number of people who object to doing that. And aggressively countering the message isn't working -- which we would have expected if we had seen every other case of aggressive messaging, which broadly speaking is more about virtue signaling than convincing people. Anti-vaxxers today are much, much, much more rooted in their opinions than they were at the beginning.

aetherson 8y ago

My child won't get measles because my children are vaccinated. But my children will get other diseases because most diseases can't be vaccinated against. And also because I'm not willing to sacrifice every part of my life to make sure that my children have the minimal possible risk of disease. So my kids will, for example, go to school rather than be home-schooled or tutored. My kids are allowed to travel on BART, despite their propensity for touching everything and putting their hands in their mouths. And, like, I'll try to teach them not to do that, but it's not like I'll smack their hands. My kids will probably at some point travel abroad to places where there are disease risks that there aren't in the United States, and while if travel vaccinations are available we'll certainly take advantage of them, we won't refuse to travel to Africa because malaria exists. Also, my children are allowed to travel by car -- even in the cars of say their friends' parents who I haven't extensively vetted for maximally safe driving habits. And they're allowed to go into San Francisco and Oakland, cities that are statistically more violent than their home town of San Bruno. You can't remove all risk from people's lives -- even your own children's -- and if you try to, you end up making bad decisions. This is a microcosm of what happens when you try to make policy around zero tolerance policies. Look, I wish that everyone would vaccinate their kids. But it simply doesn't make sense to sacrifice every other priority in the world to try to chase down a very small number of people who object to doing that. And aggressively countering the message isn't working -- which we would have expected if we had seen every other case of aggressive messaging, which broadly speaking is more about virtue signaling than convincing people. Anti-vaxxers today are much, much, much more rooted in their opinions than they were at the beginning.