3 ms·

Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious. "Skepticism with vaccines crosses party and

Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious. "Skepticism with vaccines crosses party and demographic lines, according to the Pew Research Center study released Monday, with about 5% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats saying vaccines are unsafe, and 11% of men and 8% of women saying the same. Younger people, however, were significantly more likely to believe vaccines are unsafe, with 15% of Americans aged 18-29 saying vaccines aren’t safe, compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65." https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-vaxxers/ https://time.com/3701543/measles-vaccines-poll-anti-vaxxers/

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
open-source-ux 7y ago
"Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious." The MMR vaccine (a 3-in-1 vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella) has been dogged by claims that it is unsafe and causes autism. These claims have been proven false, but the damage persists. I recommend anyone interested in this subject read this article: 'No link between MMR and autism,' major study finds https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-autism-major-study-finds/ https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-a...
- the_af 7y ago
  It's even worse: there are no reputable claims that vaccines are unsafe (in the sense anti-vaccination advocates mean, anyway). The only semi-scientific paper was the one which sparked it all, by Andrew Wakefield [0], who is: > "a discredited former British doctor who became an anti-vaccine activist. He was a gastroenterologist until he was struck off the UK medical register for unethical behaviour, misconduct, and dishonesty for authoring a fraudulent research paper that claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism and bowel disease" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Wakefield had a financial interest, as well. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_tried_to_capitalize.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_t... > In the new report, Deer describes a variety of efforts Wakefield undertook to make money from his work. For example, Wakefield and his associates predicted they could make more than $43 million a year from diagnostic kits alone for a condition he argued affected autistic children dubbed "austistic enterocolitis," according to one 35-page document.
lliamander 7y ago
> compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65 I.e. people who remember life without vaccines.
- jpollock 7y ago
  My great grandmother lived through the last smallpox outbreak in Canada, where their boarder caught it and she had to be quarantined. My grandmother told us about how she come back to school after summer vacation and found out about friends that died from measles. I had a vice principal who had polio as a child. None of those are around now, although measles is making a run for it.
- bjoli 7y ago
  There are still loads of men around that have decreased fertility or even infertilitt due to mumps. Without ever asking around I know at least three men that had fertility problems, probably due to severe orchitis after mumps. In Sweden they included mumps in the vaccination programme 1975ish, which probably means the USA got it sometime during the 60s. That means you have probably all met someone that had testicle or pancreas inflammation due to mumps. Both of them very very painful.
NikolaNovak 7y ago
In North America there is a sizeable, vocal, and vehement population who doesn't think they're safe. They tend to range from "I'm not certain that statistical pros and cons of vaccination make sense to my particular situation" to, very much, very explicitly "GOVERNMENT CHEMTRAILZ ARE IN VACCINES TO AUTISTIC EVERYONE!". I wish I were making up or exaggerating the latter - but on daily basis I scratch my head at any number of opinions and fervent beliefs regarding medical items. There is a tremendous amount of semi-open Facebook groups and other social communities which are actively and openly policed (i.e. it's explicitly in their rules) to prohibit any advice to see a doctor, take medicine, or consult any means but whatever that particular group believes is the fix-all "natural" panacea. There's people who believe chlorine bleach, coffee enemas, your own aged urine (topically, orally, or as a suppository), flesh-eating salves, or any other improbable substance will fix what ails them much better than vaccines or medicine. Like with religion (* within context of politics, persuastion/evangelization, and human rights etc - not on its own, where it's "to each their own" as far as I'm concerned), a lot of it is presented either consciously or subconsciously dishonest. Just like "Blind Faith" became "Creationism" became "Intelligent Design" to make it more palatable, mainstream, and pseudo-scientific (Hello, "Discovery Institute"); so are a lot of the most quack and dangerous opinions disguising themselves in public as being about rights, freedoms, parents' choice and informed consent. Meanwhile they're spreading pamphlets on how to shop for doctors, fake religion exemptions, create their own bleach for ingestion, and recruit others into their group/cult/whatever. This is not to say I don't empathize with some of the more earnest types' goals; some of them are just scared parents, overwhelmed by information on social media, without framework to judge, and picking whatever is most comforting, gives them most seeming control over their lives, and clutching to it for all the right or wrong reasons. A lot of it is heart-breaking: all the right intentions in all the wrong directions. Others are just koo-koo conspiracy types where the more woo the merrier.
- the_af 7y ago
  As a soon to be parent, I've discovered the world of "coded" words that people use in facebook groups to refer to illegal health practices, including not vaccinating their kids. Context: where I'm from, education from age 5 up to the end of elementary school is mandatory (as in: as a parent, you're mandated to provide this level of education for your kids). Schools are in turn mandated to verify that students have been vaccinated with a list of vaccines for diseases deemed a threat to public safety (small-pox, measles, tuberculosis, and I forget what else). Therefore, there is a list of vaccines which are effectively mandatory and which are illegal to skip. Anti-vaxxers in "parenting" groups will ask for and provide references for "respectful" pediatricians. I've learned that "respectful" is a coded word which means "willing to forge a certificate saying my kid has been vaccinated". What truly puzzles me is that there are trained doctors willing to bypass public safety in this way. It's one thing for anti-vaxxers to be clueless about this, but doctors?
DCoder 7y ago
If you look at other areas of the world, Philippines is interesting [0]: > [I]n 2018, 32 percent of the surveyed 1,500 Filipinos trusted vaccines. In the 2015 iteration of the poll, 93 percent of the respondents said they trusted vaccines. > Health Secretary Francisco Duque III attributes the lowered trust on the government's immunization drive due to the Dengvaxia controversy. --- I also saw someone on Twitter questioning if that decline in trust was related to the Philippines' continued obsession with social media [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbr... [1]: https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worlds-top-social-media-user-study https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worl...
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
More Democrats than Republicans? I find that surprising.
- dekhn 7y ago
  that's not the right breakdown; it's really far-left progressive democrats who associate with natural living.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    I can see that. But are there more of them than there are Republicans who don't believe in science?
    - dekhn 7y ago
      Take a look at the article the article links to (https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measles-vaccine-is-safe-for-healthy-children/ https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measl...) and you'll see it's more nuanced.
- temp-dude-87844 7y ago
  A nontrivial amount of opposition to vaccines comes from communities, both online and in person, that circulate accounts of atrocities committed by authorities. Naturally, accounts of mistreatment, whether or not its systemic nature is seeming or proven, will weaken trust in institutions. Good actors are always having to compensate for the activities of bad actors, even if those bad actors were in the distant past. But it says a lot about our society and the quality of our institutions that the lack of trust isn't just among groups that have themselves been mistreated, but is also found in others who observe these issues of social justice from a position of relative privilege. Based on their observations, some of them have concluded that it's far from certain that malice, corruption, or lack of transparency don't factor into the mainstream stance on this issue today, likely because there is evidence that similar factors were at play in similar issues in the past, and the incentive structure of actors and organizations need not have meaningfully changed.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

open-source-ux 7y ago

"Posts like this make me wonder who doesn't think they're safe so I did some light digging for anyone who's curious." The MMR vaccine (a 3-in-1 vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella) has been dogged by claims that it is unsafe and causes autism. These claims have been proven false, but the damage persists. I recommend anyone interested in this subject read this article: 'No link between MMR and autism,' major study finds https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-autism-major-study-finds/ https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/no-link-between-mmr-and-a...

the_af 7y ago
It's even worse: there are no reputable claims that vaccines are unsafe (in the sense anti-vaccination advocates mean, anyway). The only semi-scientific paper was the one which sparked it all, by Andrew Wakefield [0], who is: > "a discredited former British doctor who became an anti-vaccine activist. He was a gastroenterologist until he was struck off the UK medical register for unethical behaviour, misconduct, and dishonesty for authoring a fraudulent research paper that claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism and bowel disease" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Wakefield had a financial interest, as well. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_tried_to_capitalize.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2011/01/wakefield_t... > In the new report, Deer describes a variety of efforts Wakefield undertook to make money from his work. For example, Wakefield and his associates predicted they could make more than $43 million a year from diagnostic kits alone for a condition he argued affected autistic children dubbed "austistic enterocolitis," according to one 35-page document.

lliamander 7y ago

> compared with just 4% of Americans over age 65 I.e. people who remember life without vaccines.

jpollock 7y ago
My great grandmother lived through the last smallpox outbreak in Canada, where their boarder caught it and she had to be quarantined. My grandmother told us about how she come back to school after summer vacation and found out about friends that died from measles. I had a vice principal who had polio as a child. None of those are around now, although measles is making a run for it.
bjoli 7y ago
There are still loads of men around that have decreased fertility or even infertilitt due to mumps. Without ever asking around I know at least three men that had fertility problems, probably due to severe orchitis after mumps. In Sweden they included mumps in the vaccination programme 1975ish, which probably means the USA got it sometime during the 60s. That means you have probably all met someone that had testicle or pancreas inflammation due to mumps. Both of them very very painful.

NikolaNovak 7y ago

In North America there is a sizeable, vocal, and vehement population who doesn't think they're safe. They tend to range from "I'm not certain that statistical pros and cons of vaccination make sense to my particular situation" to, very much, very explicitly "GOVERNMENT CHEMTRAILZ ARE IN VACCINES TO AUTISTIC EVERYONE!". I wish I were making up or exaggerating the latter - but on daily basis I scratch my head at any number of opinions and fervent beliefs regarding medical items. There is a tremendous amount of semi-open Facebook groups and other social communities which are actively and openly policed (i.e. it's explicitly in their rules) to prohibit any advice to see a doctor, take medicine, or consult any means but whatever that particular group believes is the fix-all "natural" panacea. There's people who believe chlorine bleach, coffee enemas, your own aged urine (topically, orally, or as a suppository), flesh-eating salves, or any other improbable substance will fix what ails them much better than vaccines or medicine. Like with religion (* within context of politics, persuastion/evangelization, and human rights etc - not on its own, where it's "to each their own" as far as I'm concerned), a lot of it is presented either consciously or subconsciously dishonest. Just like "Blind Faith" became "Creationism" became "Intelligent Design" to make it more palatable, mainstream, and pseudo-scientific (Hello, "Discovery Institute"); so are a lot of the most quack and dangerous opinions disguising themselves in public as being about rights, freedoms, parents' choice and informed consent. Meanwhile they're spreading pamphlets on how to shop for doctors, fake religion exemptions, create their own bleach for ingestion, and recruit others into their group/cult/whatever. This is not to say I don't empathize with some of the more earnest types' goals; some of them are just scared parents, overwhelmed by information on social media, without framework to judge, and picking whatever is most comforting, gives them most seeming control over their lives, and clutching to it for all the right or wrong reasons. A lot of it is heart-breaking: all the right intentions in all the wrong directions. Others are just koo-koo conspiracy types where the more woo the merrier.

the_af 7y ago
As a soon to be parent, I've discovered the world of "coded" words that people use in facebook groups to refer to illegal health practices, including not vaccinating their kids. Context: where I'm from, education from age 5 up to the end of elementary school is mandatory (as in: as a parent, you're mandated to provide this level of education for your kids). Schools are in turn mandated to verify that students have been vaccinated with a list of vaccines for diseases deemed a threat to public safety (small-pox, measles, tuberculosis, and I forget what else). Therefore, there is a list of vaccines which are effectively mandatory and which are illegal to skip. Anti-vaxxers in "parenting" groups will ask for and provide references for "respectful" pediatricians. I've learned that "respectful" is a coded word which means "willing to forge a certificate saying my kid has been vaccinated". What truly puzzles me is that there are trained doctors willing to bypass public safety in this way. It's one thing for anti-vaxxers to be clueless about this, but doctors?

DCoder 7y ago

If you look at other areas of the world, Philippines is interesting [0]: > [I]n 2018, 32 percent of the surveyed 1,500 Filipinos trusted vaccines. In the 2015 iteration of the poll, 93 percent of the respondents said they trusted vaccines. > Health Secretary Francisco Duque III attributes the lowered trust on the government's immunization drive due to the Dengvaxia controversy. --- I also saw someone on Twitter questioning if that decline in trust was related to the Philippines' continued obsession with social media [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Philippines_measles_outbr... [1]: https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worlds-top-social-media-user-study https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worl...

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

More Democrats than Republicans? I find that surprising.

dekhn 7y ago
that's not the right breakdown; it's really far-left progressive democrats who associate with natural living.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  I can see that. But are there more of them than there are Republicans who don't believe in science?
  - dekhn 7y ago
    Take a look at the article the article links to (https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measles-vaccine-is-safe-for-healthy-children/ https://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measl...) and you'll see it's more nuanced.
temp-dude-87844 7y ago
A nontrivial amount of opposition to vaccines comes from communities, both online and in person, that circulate accounts of atrocities committed by authorities. Naturally, accounts of mistreatment, whether or not its systemic nature is seeming or proven, will weaken trust in institutions. Good actors are always having to compensate for the activities of bad actors, even if those bad actors were in the distant past. But it says a lot about our society and the quality of our institutions that the lack of trust isn't just among groups that have themselves been mistreated, but is also found in others who observe these issues of social justice from a position of relative privilege. Based on their observations, some of them have concluded that it's far from certain that malice, corruption, or lack of transparency don't factor into the mainstream stance on this issue today, likely because there is evidence that similar factors were at play in similar issues in the past, and the incentive structure of actors and organizations need not have meaningfully changed.