Would it still be ok to lump them in the “ignorant and dangerous” category?
During the last discussion even here on BB were a handful of anti-vaccine-enthusiasts.
the vast majority of Americans already ignore Jenny McCarthy’s medical advice and it’s inaccurate to characterize the few that don’t as hippies.
I think the important question is if there are enough of the anti-vaccine minority to threaten the “herd-immunity” for those that are not able to use vaccines.
Is this actually a surprise? In my mind the anti-vax crowd was just as lunatic fringe as the fluoridation is mind control people and the flat Earth society. I didn’t know that people were apparently taking them seriously.
I guess that the importance is that certain topics unite both fringes. So the anti-vax, fluoridation, homeschool, and “Frankenfood” crowds are all at the edges of the (arbitrary) political poles where there’s a lot of overlap.
Yes, there are enough of them to threaten herd immunity.
There have been outbreaks (maybe they’re calling them “clusters” which would have a different epidemiological implication or something) of vaccine-preventable diseases in places where they had previously been essentially eliminated by vaccination - precisely because one anti-vaxxer travelled to a country where the disease remains endemic, and then touched off a series of infections among fellow anti-vaxxers, those too young or immuno-compromised for vaccination, and the small minority of the vaccinated who acquire no immunity.
To paint parents as anti vaccine entirely misses the point and is down right wrong.
As a parent I am not against vaccines,its a natural occurrence in nature as your body builds its own immune system against disease.
What I am very much against are two things:
- the inclusion of mercury in many vaccines as a preservative
2 giving multiple vaccines in one shot to babies and small infants.
Where I live I did not have the choice to not give my 6 month old daughter multiple vaccines as one shot because they do not make them available as single shots, to be given separately over time.
If health officials would only listen to the concerns of parents then the vaccine uptake would be much higher. Stop painting many parents with genuine concerns as anti-vaccine when this is absolutely not the case. What concerns us is the manner in which the vaccines are given and the additives that are in them
If most anti-vax people were as reasonable, that might be helpful, but unfortunately most of the people I’ve encountered are filled with fear and don’t let their kids get ANY vaccinations, thus opening their kids up to all sorts of diseases that have been effectively eradicated.
Shocked at how many vaccines they wanted to inject our kids with at once, we chose to space our childrens’ vaccinations out when they were babies, but we did make sure they had all of them.
The vaccines build up their resistance to this stuff. Your body won’t build natural resistance to measles, for example, because measles isn’t encountered in daily life here in the USA. If you didn’t have the measles vaccine and traveled to a country where it’s common, you’re just begging for trouble–for yourself and others.
The only difference between sample groups was a “priming” article to be read, it seems to me that the study is showing that reading a single article has minimal effect on the average person’s opinion, not that people aren’t scared of vaccines.
Part of it showed that 25% of subjects believes the autism meme, with lesser percentages on the less prevalent allegorical side effects of vaccines, showing that it’s still rather entrenched in society.
Presumably most of these subjects were members of urban or suburban populations. As population density grows, the smaller the percentage needed to break herd immunity (exponentially more disease vectors).
If 25% of parents in relatively well-off populations believe the myth, Dollars to donuts the myth is even more prevalent in rural populations.
Nationwide percentage stats are too broad to determine risk, sample subjects need to be examined at a higher population resolution to tell how accurate the premise is, compare a heat graph of childhood vaccination to believe in anti-vax memes, and my guess is they’d overlap strongly with other socio-economic county heatmaps of the USA, like religiousity, average income, or obesity stats.
Perhaps your concerns have no basis in science. Feel concerned all you want, it doesn’t change the data. Thank goodness most health officials agree.
Actually, there are two solutions to your feelings of concern. You could complain until the government obeys you; or you could educate yourself and find out exactly why the majority of scientists don’t share your concerns.
If health officials would only listen to the concerns of parents then the vaccine uptake would be much higher.
Yeaaaaah, no. See, I’m rather content that health officials listen to scientists and medical researchers rather than the misguided concerns of self-righteous parents. As a new parent myself, I was quite happy to hand my kid over for multiple vaccinations.
Complaining about mercury in vaccines is like complaining about poisonous chlorine and explosive sodium in your table salt. It’s also extreme old hat, because the ethyl mercuric chloride which was targeted by the anti-vax witch hunt hasn’t even been used for more than a decade.
I can understand how the “ZOMG Mercury is POISON!” panic started, but whats the problem with sticking your kid only once for their regimen vaccines instead of multiple times?
Unfortunately, those few are very loud, and the news media likes to show that. Most people really don’t know anything about science or medicine, they just want to look to someone they trust and find knowledgeable and their advice on what’s good or bad. If that happens to certain news personalities, then that’s bad. Especially because they have lost trust in doctors who’s only job is to keep their patients healthy.
You have provided absolutely no citations for any of your absurd, incorrect and out-of-date claims. SHOCKER.
I was about to type “In before OMG IT HAS MERCURY YOU TRY TO KILL MUH BABAH” but now I can’t because I’m not in before. Crap.
Now I will fearlessly drink a shit-ton of isopropyl alcohol because I can get this shit for pennies to the pint yo & it sez it’s alcohol! PARTY ON!
Home-schooling is not a crazy person thing but you will meet a larger proportion of those others if you engage in it. We are doing a blend of a private school & home-schooling. I now regularly see people & their kids that I forbade the presence of when there was an infant pre-immunization in my house.
Just anecdotal, but among all the various parents on the facebook with us, there are far more frequent “My kids sick, fever of etc etc” posts from those who do the anti-vax etc & those who do the CLOROX EVERYTHING method of keeping their children in a “germ-free” home. I mean like, I feel sorry for them their kids are sick so freakin frequently.
Dirt saves yo, so do immunizations.
Actually, I wouldn’t lump “homeschool” in there. With secular liberals increasing among homeschooling ranks, the reasons for homeschooling are less frequently based on questionable data, but rather fundamentally personal choices.
Also, though I’m not against GMO’s, I don’t think people who are are on the fringes. It seems to be a rather popular position.
The link doesn’t work.
[it leads to the abstract, but there’s no way to see the full article]
The one in Maggie’s post? The link works on my end.
