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by geophile 2mo ago
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- MoltenMan 2mo agoI'm not a trump fan, but the antivax train has nothing to do with him. (Evidence: Canada is doing even worse then us when it comes to measles). If we want to fix this problem (we do), the first step is to recognize the actual problem, not to play the blame game on whichever politician you currently don't like!
- nemomarx 2mo agoYou don't think RFK has anything to do with it?
- MoltenMan 2mo agoThe reason there are measles cases is because a decent percentage of people aren't getting vaccinated anymore. If all of the cases were 2 year olds or younger (when RFK was put in charge) then possibly. But not only are they older (https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html), this is also happening in Canada. I don't see how it could possibly be RFK's fault.
- AnotherGoodName 2mo agoWhile It’s fair to point out that RFK is hopping on a train that’s already got momentum, your first comment reads as if it’s not caused by falling vaccination rates (your second comment clarified further). Also why not blame politicians doing the wrong thing?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- MoltenMan 2mo agoPerhaps I should've been clearer. And yes they aren't helping. And yes, we should blame them for the things they do. T But the comment I was responding to was acting as if MAGA was the reason for measles outbreaks, which is false. I'm an incredibly strong believer in the truth. An example of why I think this is an important separation: imagine you tried to fix the measles outbreak and miraculously got every single American to hate Trump and got Trump out of office. The problem would still not be fixed! People would still be dying of measles! The effort would have been almost completely wasted!
- stickfigure 2mo agoA major campaign by RFK's replacement could absolutely make a significant difference stopping the spread of measles. That's the whole point of the (proven extremely effective!) vaccine.
- MoltenMan 2mo agoDo you believe this? I think it might help a little, but so we're on the same page RFK has only been in charge for 2 years. Why wasn't the previous secretary of health doing this? The measles outbreaks may be relatively new but we've had the vaccination data to see it coming for over a decade. My personal belief is that there a lot of people who believe stupid things out there (and it's all only amplified by the news and social media), and for anti vaxxers especially I don't think an authority figure saying 'You have to get the measles vaccine!' is going to help much, unfortunate as it is. :(
- nemomarx 2mo agoI don't think it would be logistically that hard to criminalize the parents or take away their kids in those cases. It would have a lot of other downsides but it would probably reduce the rate pretty directly.
- stickfigure 2mo agoI'll bet it would be enough just to make sure that the vaccine waiver signature box is positioned directly below some glossy full color pictures of emaciated, rash covered dead children.
- renegade-otter 2mo agoCOVID and anti-vaxxing explosion happened 6 years ago.
- MoltenMan 2mo agoLook at the source I linked! Only 20% of cases are under 5!
- nkozyra 2mo agoUnlike a lot of pathogenic diseases, measles requires an extraordinarily high amount of herd immunity (upwards of 95%), so this isn't a particularly telling data point on its own.
- mrguyorama 2mo agoRFK Jr has been pushing anti-vaccine bullshit for decades. He was already taking defensive stances on his activism (Oh, I'm not anti-vaccine, I'm just providing nonsense arguments and clout for anti-vaccine stances) back in 2015. Kennedy was already pushing bullshit during the UK Measles vaccine fraud/scare, back in 2005. He was doing this along with a few other celebrities.
- renegade-otter 2mo agoIn fact, he is blamed for spreading vaccination hesitancy in Samoa and the deaths of multiple children there as the result even before COVID: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/newly-obtained-emails-undermine-rfk-jr-s-testimony-about-2019-samoa-trip-before-measles-outbreak https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/newly-obtained-emails-un...
- MoltenMan 2mo agoI've responded to a few people on this but the comment I was responding to was literally about the last 6 years! The context of this entire thread is about MAGA / Trump! I agree that RFK is hurting and has been for a long time, but that is not what this argument is about!
- nkozyra 2mo agoTrue, but RFK (and other politicians and celebrities) have been active in pushing some form of anti-vax ideology for a decade plus, in some cases back to the 1970s. It's been a growing movement, not something that kicked off when RFK assumed the HHS role.
- freediddy 2mo agoPre-Trump, anti-vaxxers were notorious left-wing granola types. Lots of anti-vaxxers were white liberals living in Marin and NorCal and sending their children to private schools like Waldorf. Only after Trump did people start lumping them in with right wing.
- wredcoll 2mo agoTrump gave them official government support and promoted them.
- riffraff 2mo ago> Pre-Trump, anti-vaxxers were notorious left-wing granola types so, exactly RFK's type :)
- secretsatan 2mo agoWell that’s just not true, anti vax has always been a theme of the far right, infowars and i’m sure others have a long history of it. The left wing libs types are far more recent, and i would lump them more in with the wellness brigade.
- freediddy 2mo agoYou are completely wrong. It's always been a far left concept until COVID. This is from Mother Jones, a very liberal web site. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/the-anti-vax-movements-radical-shift-from-crunchy-granola-purists-to-far-right-crusaders/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/the-anti-vax-mo...
- 2mo ago
- freediddy 2mo agoRFK has publicly come out and encouraged parents to get vaccinated for measles. I don't know why you are spreading disinformation. https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/article/rfk-jr-says-parents-should-vaccinate-children-against-measles-as-us-cases-hit-a-35-year-high-160031759.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/article/rfk-jr-says-pare...
- Hikikomori 2mo agoOh great he's doing it now after causing fear and doubt about them for decades, getting many people killed, in Samoa for example.
- maipen 2mo agoMost of his criticisms have been about the timing of certain vaccines administrations. He's not anti vax. If nobody can challenge science, then it's not science. Vaccines continues to help us, but that doesn't mean they are perfect and don't cause side effects on certain individuals. Hopefuly the future brings us highly personalized medicine instead of a 1 size fits all.
- onraglanroad 2mo ago> If nobody can challenge science, then it's not science. If someone has spent some time actually learning science then of course they can challenge science. If they are a lazy halfwit parroting crap they listened to on the latest podcast (because reading is hard!)... no. Not so much.
- epihelix 2mo agoClaiming RFK is not anti-vax, is like claiming Dario is not anti-open-weights. (Well, it's way worse that that, but I didn't want to invoke Godwin's law.) He is not "challenging science" with measured arguments and carefully controlled peer-reviewed research to back his claims. He's deliberately trying to silence science because of a completely unsupported brain fart. And no, it's not about "timing". It's about spreading baseless FUD to discourage any form of vaccination, because he believes (with no actual evidence, and despite vast amounts of research to the contrary) that vaccination causes autism.
- dofm 2mo agohttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/10/trump-vaccines-executive-order-measles https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/10/trump-vaccin... "The order recommends that all shots be given at separate medical visits, a frequent point Trump has made despite the safety, ease and lower costs of giving vaccines together." '“Together, there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal,” Trump said of the MMR vaccine at the signing of the order on Monday.' 'Asked if he had evidence that the combined MMR vaccine was “lethal”, Trump said: “No. What I’ve heard is that there are some people who say it is that way.”' Antivax fundamentally has its contemporary roots in Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent anti-MMR campaign. So directing by executive order and by his own admission without evidence that the MMR vaccine be split up into separate shots is, very clearly, an antivax action. This is the first victory that Wakefield (a man who had a patent on a single measles vaccine!) wanted, and RFK Jr was pursuing. But this is Trump saying this and signing it. So as of yesterday, it now has everything to do with Trump, sorry. He has handed the anti-MMR movement its ultimate victory and in so doing validated the entire antivax worldview.
- MoltenMan 2mo agoSee my other responses. Obviously this is bad. But the current measles outbreak is a symptom of a problem that's been happening over the last 1 or 2 decades. It literally CANNOT be caused by this, neither in the US or Canada. It's still not too late for anyone who is unvaccinated to get the vaccine! Hopefully the next administration undoes this change, but the really important part is managing to shrink the anti-vax movement (which, if you look at the data in my other comments, you can see has been a problem since before Trump).
- wredcoll 2mo agoWhat exactly do you consider "before trump"? Also, trump, as a representative, represents a large group of people. It's colloquial to refer to political parties by their leaders.
- dofm 2mo agoFWIW I think Trump #1 (45) wasn't an anti-vax presidency; it might have been suspicious of healthcare professionals (for the good reason that so many people know opioid epidemic victims) and he was always a bit equivocal around hydroxychloroquine and bleach and "powerful light inside the body" but Trump didn't start to lean antivax until not long after Biden took over. (And let's be clear: Operation Warp Speed was an enormous success even if Trump is an ignoramus) Some of that might have been expediency — Biden was catching shit from the antivax and healthcare-skeptical movement and moving in on that would be easy — but Trump has always been vulnerable to being influenced by people and RFK Jr appears to be generally so much more persuasive than bears thinking about, so he was a factor later on. Trump #2 (47) is fully an anti-vax presidency; even Hegseth backed away from flu vaccine mandates, only to have an outbreak in an Army (IIRC?) facility.
- basisword 2mo agoHe was literally spreading FUD about vaccines today. And the measles stuff has got so bad RFK had to mildy backtrack on his previous antivax statements in recent interviews. From today: Both Trump and Kennedy made repeated mentions of autism throughout the order signing, emphasizing a scientifically unproven link between vaccines and the condition. Dozens of studies show no link between the two. “Today we’re proud to officially announce the United States of America’s gold standard childhood vaccination recommendations. That has to do with many subjects including autism in particular,” Trump said at the beginning of the order signing. “I’ve seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination where it looks like the size of a bottle of soda, poured into a little child’s body and bad things happen in too many cases,” Trump later said on breaking up each shot into an individual medical visit, before adding: “This is an explosion, it’s an epidemic,” in an apparent reference to autism.
- fridder 2mo agoYou are willfully deluding yourself if you believe that. He put an anti-vax idiot as head of HHS. How is that "nothing"?
- MoltenMan 2mo agoSee my other responses. Do you really think RFK could possibly have had an effect on vaccinations over the last 2 decades in the US OR Canada? Since you seem very emotionally opposed to Trump and his administration: I also don't like Trump or RFK! However, to solve a problem, you have to find the root cause of the problem, and pointing at the most recent politician you hate will never help anyone.
- mexicocitinluez 2mo agoYES. Do you really think RFK appeared out of the ether? What do you think he's spent the last 2 decades doing?
- wredcoll 2mo agoWe can't solve the root cause until we fight our way through trump and his party.
- kube-system 2mo agoHe was appointed and holds those views because these ideas are now popular... not the other way around.
- stickfigure 2mo agoRFK and his anti-vax ideas are popular only within a small fringe of the American population. Enough to drop herd immunity to the point where we now have to worry about measles again, but it's far from the majority.
- kube-system 2mo agoI'm aware. The issue is that group, albeit small, is larger than it was.
- basisword 2mo ago>> Canada is doing even worse then us when it comes to measles Not in Canada but unfortunately US nonsense spreads globally pretty quickly these days. The amount of Trump support in the UK is both bizarre and surprising. When someone with the worlds largest megaphone lies about vaccines, unfortunately people everywhere listen.
- BLKNSLVR 2mo agoTrump is trying to hang Fauci. That goes in the completely opposite direction of promoting the trust of medical institutions in general society, and it's trust that will get people back to vaccinating themselves and their children.
- tonetheman 2mo ago[dead]
- scythe 2mo ago>I'm not a trump fan, but the antivax train has nothing to do with him. Well not nothing. But it predates him and he adopted the movement early in his political career. When I was in high school (2004-8) antivax sentiment was generally associated with liberal Democrats in places like Marin County. This was a favorite retort of conservatives when confronted with their own backwardness on scientific understanding of evolution and climate change. In 2015 Trump began courting the anti-vaccine crowd and the political valence of that flavor of woo-woo nonsense flipped seemingly overnight. It was surreal to see it happen in real time. By 2020 he had lost control of the monster he helped create and the crowd booed him when he said they should get the Covid vaccine.
- geophile 2mo agoIt has a lot to do with him. He doesn't actually have an opinion on any policy issue. For various political reasons, Trump decided to let RFK dictate public health policy according to his extremely delusional ideas. Yes, there was an antivax movement in this country for many years, just as there has been misogyny, racism, and transphobia. Trump has normalized and supercharged all of these moronic and dangerous ideas. I have not been following measles in Canada, so I can't address that.
- MoltenMan 2mo agoSee my other comments; it is not possible for RFK to have had any effect on this outbreak. If everyone getting measles was 2 or under, it could be possible; they aren't. The reason I bring up Canada is as counterevidence; if it was Trump or RFK'S fault, Canada should be doing just fine. They had twice the cases last year in 1/10 the population. The truth is this is a problem with people believing stupid things, and it's going to take a lot more than Trump going out of office to fix.
- stickfigure 2mo ago> it's going to take a lot more than Trump going out of office to fix Probably true, but it's nevertheless a necessary condition.
- wbl 2mo agoRFK has been the person behind the antivax movement for a long time.
- geophile 2mo ago1) Vaccines are not 100% effective. 2) Herd immunity is a thing.
- kube-system 2mo agoHe is amplifying the issue, but you're right, Trump is a symptom of the underlying problem. The problem is that internet gave these idiots a platform to mislead people. Back in the early 90s this wasn't much of a problem. Childhood vaccine requirements weren't some hot-button topic then. Most people would just get them when faced with the requirement. Most opposition was isolated to people who were otherwise contrarians already. The difference now is that the internet is full of these isolated contrarians who are now influencing gullible people who don't know who to trust.
- MoltenMan 2mo agoCompletely agree! I will add though: this is a symptom of a problem that started 10-20 years ago. There's a lot of lag time between parents not giving their babies vaccines and outbreaks actually happening. You can see ages here.(https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html) 5 and under are only 20% of cases.
- kube-system 2mo ago> this is a symptom of a problem that started 10-20 years ago. ... and that's right when social media gained majority adoption among US adults.
- sophacles 2mo agoMore like 25+ years ago. In the early 2000s you saw a lot of celebrities pushing vaccine fear because they read some book version of "doctors don't want you to know this one wierd fact" that made the best-seller list or another. I remember people arguing about it in college classes, and I graduated in 2003.
- NamlchakKhandro 2mo agoDo you think it's also helpful that they see these things being pushed "for profit)
- diroussel 2mo agoAre you blaming communication technology?
- verelo 2mo ago"Evidence" requires citations.
- MoltenMan 2mo agoUS: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html Canada: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/measles-rubella/archive/2025/ https://health-infobase.canada.ca/measles-rubella/archive/20... They have 10% our population and had twice the cases last year (admittedly, we're starting to catch up). But the truth is that there are huge lag times when it comes to measles / antivax. This is a symptom of a problem that started 10-20 years ago.
- verelo 2mo ago[flagged]
- mexicocitinluez 2mo agoRight, because tapping one of the world's biggest vaccine truthers to run the Department of HHS and then proceed to link autism with vaccines and change the recommended MMR vaccine scheduling for children has absolutely no impact on anyone. I can't help but feel this is ragebait or a bot.
- exe34 2mo agoPutting an anti-vax conspiracy theorist in charge of health is not the way to do it.
- undersuit 2mo agoHe knows he can't push his base too hard on certain things. He probably knows this about vaccines, he lauds Operation Warp Speed but as a win of his not a vaccine that could have saved millions more with his cooperation. He chooses his power over what's best for all of us. He's the leader of the antivax train by choice.
- tremon 2mo ago"has nothing to do with it" is not the same as "is not the cause of". Trump and antivax definitely are related as both are symptoms of the same public strategy that spreads misinformation, polarizes discourse and weaponizes stupidity.
- speed_spread 2mo agoYou think the Trump influence magically stops at the border? There are _plenty_ of Canadians who think Trump has all the answers and can't be wrong.
- GlibMonkeyDeath 2mo agoAmerica: hold my syringe...
- profdevloper 2mo ago[flagged]
- hereme888 2mo ago[flagged]
- Aurornis 2mo agoStrangely, anti-vax sentiment is surging in a lot of countries. Canada has higher rates of vaccine rejection than the United States in some categories, as one example. It’s a strange global phenomenon and I don’t think there is one single root cause. MAGA/MAHA definitely jumped on to the anti-vax train as it became popular, but many forget that Trump presided over the rushing of the COVID vaccine into availability and production. He hasn’t done vaccination any favors in recent years, but I’m skeptical that the widespread rise of vaccine skepticism can be attributable to this administration alone. I think there’s a bigger story about the cyclical nature of how the dangers of threats that previous generations faced is slowly lost over time, combined with the rise of contrarianism and conspiratorial thinking on social media.
- renegade-otter 2mo agoAnti-vaxxing goes back literally centuries, but the internet definitely made it a THING.
- crabette 2mo agoI would blame the "social" media, on the old internet they had barely any visibility. Now that we have the blame let's talk about the punishment.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago> I would blame the "social" media, on the old internet they had barely any visibility. They managed to get plenty of visibility long before computers. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-50713991 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-50713991 > There followed a 100-year battle between the authorities and an often sceptical, sometimes aggressive, public. In Britain, a succession of laws made vaccinations free, then compulsory - backed by fines and even imprisonment. While riots flared in some towns, there was also more restrained opposition in the form of anti-vaccination leagues. For an increasingly literate population, pamphlets were produced with titles like "Vaccination: its fallacies and evils", "Vaccination, a Curse" and the suitably Gothic "Horrors of Vaccination".
- ge96 2mo agoand screw worms
- __MatrixMan__ 2mo ago[flagged]
- chancer131 2mo ago[flagged]
- chancer131 2mo ago[flagged]
- r_lee 2mo agoI mean this is liberal/left heavy, it's to be expected, you can't just rummage in and expect people to be like hm good points you're right! when most of the audience is against you it's expected if you could delve into what supports your arguments that'd help more than "trust me instead" I personally am skeptical of many things, including pharma, but I'm not going to claim that vaccines don't work when historically they have, and I'd have to do a bunch of research to prove an internet argument wrong. do I think that covid vaccines were/are 100% safe and totally not rushed due to the pandemic? no.
- chancer131 2mo ago[flagged]
- fuckyah 2mo ago[dead]
- gadders 2mo ago[flagged]
- phillc73 2mo agoNot sure why the parent was downvoted, because I think it nails the current sentiment. For some people the COVID vaccine(s) were rushed to market, with limited clinical trials, intended to vaccinate the entire adult population, with limited data as to their immediate effectiveness and with no data about long term effects. You can debate whether the above points are valid or not, but for some people they certainly raised a safety flag. I completely agree that the vaccine scepticism around the COVID vaccines is now carrying over into other, well tested, well understood and very, very beneficial vaccines.
- gadders 2mo agoYeah. People are lumping all vaccines together in an attempt to boost the credibility of the COVID vaccine. Unfortunately what it is actually doing is ruining the credibility of all the other vaccines that have been around for years and are well understood.
- antonyt 2mo agoWere all the other vaccines "well understood" when they were initially rolled out en masse? Not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don't know the history. I don't really understand what people's expectations were for a new vaccine intended to combat an ongoing global pandemic.
- gadders 2mo agoI don't think they were developed in less than 6 months, and probably had more testing (and have had far more since).
- kansface 2mo agoSeveral labs that manufactured the original polio vaccine shipped the live virus - ie, we just injected kids with polio. Low double digits of people (kids?) died, a few hundred were paralyzed, etc. Later vaccines also had the same problem, but at very low rates (1 in millions maybe).
- boplicity 2mo ago[flagged]
- 1234letshaveatw 2mo ago[flagged]
- soperj 2mo ago> We included data from 21 studies (5 randomized trials and 16 observational studies) reporting on 149 685 women. The pooled rate of miscarriage among women who received a COVID-19 vaccine was 9% (n = 14 749/123 185, 95% CI 0.05–0.14). Compared to those who received a placebo or no vaccination, women who received a COVID-19 vaccine did not have a higher risk of miscarriage (risk ratio (RR) 1.07, 95% CI 0.89–1.28, I2 35.8%) and had comparable rates for ongoing pregnancy or live birth (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.97–1.03, I2 10.72%). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10152171/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10152171/
- 1234letshaveatw 2mo ago[flagged]
- drop_star 2mo agoHe stated that the FDA had found "no red flags" regarding pregnant women A "Red Flag" (or Safety Signal) is an actual, observed increase in adverse events in real-world data. What he was discussing in the text was a theoretical risk. A "Theoretical Risk" is a hypothetical concern based on known biological mechanisms (e.g., "high fevers can cause miscarriages, so a vaccine-induced fever might do the same").
- biophysboy 2mo agoYou should elaborate on your secret knowledge of COVIDs origin. I was not aware this was completely settled knowledge.
- bluedino 2mo agoPeople were refusing the measles vaccine back in 2000
- Aurornis 2mo ago[dead]
- thedrbrian 2mo ago[flagged]
- dakial1 2mo agoNot only bringing back but also exporting it. Currently we have a measles outbreak in Brazil brought from the US, so everybody is getting vaccinated (even those who already were, like me) to try to stop the spreading and protect those who can’t get vaccinated. Really would love for US social and media networks to get their shit together and stop spreading misinformation in the name of profit…
- bill_joy_fanboy 2mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- cdrnsf 2mo ago[flagged]
- karussell 2mo ago"great again" comes after them.
- cryptoegorophy 2mo agoI blame Facebook and not MAGA for this. Amplification is insane.
- N_Lens 2mo agoFuture to the Back!