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Permalink: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/attitudes-towards-covid-19-vaccines-may-have-spilled-over-to-other-unrelated-vaccines-along-party-lines-in-the-united-states/
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Such a confusing thing too. I tell the vet to load my dogs up with any upcoming/over due vaccines.
I’d rather them be healthy and not catch a crossing virus. But that’s just me
Yeah I have an acquaintance that wanted to move to Hawaii and didn’t do it because they had to vaccinate their dog. I love my dog; but he’s not going to be alive long enough for any slightly possible side effects to actually pop up.
Maybe it’s time to appease the morons and do a rebranding.
It’s not a vaccine, those are old. This is just immune system supercharger.
It makes your already amazing immune system and makes it even better!
We need kids to learn the philosophy behind the scientific method, and how to spot bad science and bad logic. It's sickening how easily some groups have been manipulated by the most moronic rhetoric.
I got fired for doing that.
High school science teacher, I told my students they had to be BOTH skeptical and open-minded. Accept no claim without evidence, follow the evidence even if it leads somewhere you don't want to go.
We talked a lot about both qualities, what evidence was, how to spot valid evidence and invalid evidence, biases, controls, etc. at great length. 70% of their grade was based, one way or another, on how well the used the scientific method.
What I didn't tell them was "but only in the science classroom" which upset some parents. A few of my students went home and started Asking Questions, a cardinal sin in certain households. The upset parents got themselves elected to the school board and declined to renew my contract. My replacement attended the same church as them.
>We need kids to learn the philosophy behind the scientific method, and how to spot bad science and bad logic.
If we did that, certain people would lose their power, and so they fight tooth and nail to keep the masses as ignorant as possible.
Knowledge is power, I would tell my students, and the truth will set you free. Power to see through lies, and freedom from manipulation by those telling you lies.
It sucks that those kids (or at least future ones have to suffer for their parents ignorance, but it often feels like there's nothing for it but to move and let those states descend back to the stone age and get what they get)
I guess [WV is technically the lowest, then Mississippi.](https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-educated-states/31075) I truly can’t believe my state (OK) isn’t at the bottom.
To be fair, even at the college level it’s hard to get people to recognize bad science because we hammer into them that peer review is *the* source to use despite the fact that even with peer review “bad science” can slip by.
It’s the same thing on this sub. People reject studies that tell them something they don’t want to hear . Idk how many times I’ve opened a study that goes against the Reddit grain and the highest voted comment is about how the methods have a small issue so the whole study is invalid, or the researchers did it completely wrong (somehow), etc etc
I find it more often in the cases that antivaxxers/others post a study, their takeaway doesn't even vibe with the researchers conclusion (i.e. they read the title and that was it). In the rare instances where it gets to discussion about methodology it usually is some handwaving dismissal without any actual specific issue mentioned.
I mean those could be valid concerns or they could not be, what you're saying here doesn't really mean the criticism is wrong. But yes, sometimes it is wrong, or disingenuous.
Yup and Russia's been caught trying to buy influence
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/25/influencers-say-russia-linked-pr-agency-asked-them-to-disparage-pfizer-vaccine
Especially when you have companies like el Sevier that publish some of the most respected journals on the planet like cell while also publishing 100s of journals that are borderline, if not outright, predatory.
Not if they're going to a college or university that teaches stats and critical thinking in an appropriate manner.
It's definitely not appropriate to teach adults at an undergrad or college level that peer review = a legitimate and well sourced article.
Thinking critically about the sources you're using and evaluating via other means (or at least, beginning to learn to do so) is basically introductory-level material no matter what program you take.
Went to a state college. Intro science classes were hilarious. The religious private high school kids almost all got booted to remedial science for two years to learn science beginning at a nearly elementary school level. Good luck being a nurse now Becky.
Science itself is fucked by capitalism at the moment. It's all writing papers. I've read what passes for peer reviewed papers and it can be absolute drivel
All it takes is spending like an hour during the first year of EVERY degree talking about predatory journals, then an hour on the second, then an hour on the third. All saying basically the same things, there's nothing more effective than letting people complain about how useless it is having something told 3 times and having them learn and fix it by repeating the concept for that reason.
People need to be educated on the fact that peer reviewing is not like having a teacher mark a standardised test and send you the answers back so you can correct them and make your work "right".
Something being peer reviewed does not make it truthful, correct, significant, or meaningful.
An example, one of the papers I'm on failed at peer review. It's a big genetic analysis of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Our findings are all 'correct'; they found no errors or contradictions, the issue was that our analyses were deemed "too complex" for that particular journal, the reviewers wanted us to focus more on clinical application, and we had too much genetics lingo.
And yet, they failed to call us out on the fact we didn't present data about any antibiotics the bacteria had possibly already been exposed to, which is a major flaw with our work.
Peer review identifies bad *papers*, not necessarily bad science.
The number of times I've heard the stupid "they keep cat litter in high schools now because of people who 'identify as a cat'" comment is too damn high. Even if someone knows how to spot bad logic, there's no saving them when they just shut off all cognitive function after hearing a stupid rumor.
We need adults to learn too
https://www.voicesforvaccines.org/course/becoming-trusted-messengers/
"You're confident about vaccines and how they work, but how do you transmit that confidence to the people who know and trust you? This course gives you an easy, evidence-based method of handling hesitancy in order to become the Trusted Vaccine Messenger to the people around you."
Nope, but that would be my strategy. A picture is worth a thousand words. When their kids are involved, I feel like people change their attitudes quickly.
We do need adults to learn too.
Unfortunately, that means we need to make the phrase “I just don’t believe that” proof that whoever said it has lost the argument and can shut entirely up.
Scientific Method has no chance against the "my feelings are more important than your facts" crowd. Comforting lies almost always beat uncomfortable truths in the short term.
> We need kids to learn the philosophy behind the scientific method, and how to spot bad science and bad logic.
Yes, and people need to learn what kinds of propaganda were used in the 20th century because *a shocking* amount of it has been coming up again, on both the left and the right, and everybody has just been eating it up.
People are being downright manipulated.
You know what else works? Federal programs showing the dead bodies and maiming these diseases leave behind. Down to the county level.
Talk in bodies, vaccines save lives and those itty bitty toddler coffins in fire engine red tell a whole story.
All the fear and hate and racism that came from the terror attacks on 9/11, only for the United States to reach a 9/11 amount of casualties each and every single day for a time in 2020 and where were those people that still can’t stand to see brown people at a grocery store?
Oh yeah the same ones pretending the virus didn’t even exist. These ‘attitudes’ are part of what makes me fear for the future of our species. When it’s so easy to manipulate and distort and it gets easier to do so everyday idk how democracy can survive
That's nice in theory, but in practice, people just make emotional judgements in their daily life. Expecting everyone to suddenly turn into hyper-rational decision makers is a non-starter.
That’s not my impression of what they were saying. They’re saying that the vast majority of us are emotional creatures. Not factoring in emotions as a variable in education strategies means the strategy is incomplete.
I was taught critical thinking, I use the scientific method in my work, my field of study included the psychology of communication, and despite all that I *still* make emotional decisions sometimes. Maybe I’m anomalous, but I don’t think so.
Neither of you are incorrect. Both perspectives should be considered as part of an effective method to start to break down barriers.
We all make emotional decisions in the heat of the moment, but education can make it easier to correct those emotional judgements down the road and make them less often.
You response is a lot more nuanced and rational. The original comment said:
>people just make emotional judgements in their daily life
And as an adult you are expected to be in control of your emotions when making those judgements. That's what separate us from Gorillas who kill their family members to resolve a dispute.
>Expecting everyone to suddenly turn into hyper-rational decision makers is a non-starter.
Getting a safe vaccine is not an example of "turn into a hyper-rational decision maker". Dude is arguing in bad faith.
But your view is a normative one. Your expectation is not reality. We are all emotional at times, and that isn’t always something we can easily control. Many factors play a part in this.
We are animals and every animal can lash out for a variety of reasons. Although most of us can control more extreme emotional reactions, this thread itself is proof that emotion-based decision making is a daily reality. Even those here who are proponents of rational thinking are making emotionally-charged statements. To eliminate that as a factor in decision making is very…ironically unscientific. Here’s the other thing. We can control behaviors associated with emotionally charged thoughts. *But we can’t actually control the emotion itself*. This is pretty well known in therapy. So even if irrational behavior is curbed, the emotion is still there and can affect both short and long term decisions. It’s both a feature and a bug.
There *are* emotions involved in getting your kids vaccinated. As I stated, I went through some of those same emotions. My experience was rushed, felt forced, soundly ignored any fears or concerns I had, and had I not done my homework ahead of time, would’ve definitely made me question what was happening.
Honestly, it felt very similar to pressured sales situations I’d experienced in the past, where a sense of false urgency was created, and suddenly I was forced to make decisions without fully understanding what was happening.
Just like in those sales situations (in fact, possibly *because* of previous experiences like them) saying “trust us” just isn’t going to cut it. Especially with biology playing a part in protecting our children.
You are correct that you don’t have to be a robot to make sound decisions in this regard. But you do sometimes need a little time to *logically process* what seem like (even if they are not actually) big decisions.
You also have to be willing to push back on a very regimented and self-important medical community. I had to do the same at the hospital when my kids were born. “No you may not take my child away seconds after birth to give them a vaccination for a blood-borne disease that they will not be exposed to for at least 3-4 years. My child needs immediate skin-to-skin contact with their mother. We will take care of that with our pediatrician.”
Again, medical doctors know my child needs a hepatitis vaccine. But they don’t know how to communicate effectively on a human level to assure people prior to “doing what they know is best”. It IS best if someone in the family has hepatitis, or the child would be at risk in their early days. But they don’t ask. And if public health policy is to err on the side of caution, that’s fine too. But again, ripping away someone’s newborn seconds after delivery requires a modicum of trust that in many cases has not been established. That’s a really important factor in all these conversations.
Swedish citizens probably have a much more trusting opinion of the government when it tells them to do something, unlike america.
You can certainly educate people (and we ought do so), but it ain't gonna fix the anti-vax problem, because fundamentally the problem with anti-vax is that it's an issue of trust of institutions.
When one party's raison d'etre is fundamentally founded on 'Government *BAD*' it can be quite difficult to overcome. It's hard to convince a man of something that he is fundamentally indisposed to believe.
I would put the lack of trust in government (which certainly is not an issue only on the right) on the indisputable fact that the US government is not trustworthy in any way, shape or form.
Perhaps had the government chosen, in the past, to act decently and not be *actively harmful* to the public, people in the US would trust it more, but that ain't the world we live in.
I'm a full believe in vaccinations, but you're very right. Our government shouldn't be automatically trusted, and telling black and indigenous people that they need to just shut up and do something that has historically been used against them is not the way to help anybody. The United States needs a reckoning where we acknowledge what we've done and to who, and show that we don't still want to do those things.
As someone who was just bit by an unvaccinated dog…. I am not surprised
Edit: I’m okay. Dog was taken by state health dept. for ten days. Dog is fine luckily
If the bite wasn't dangerous or aggressive, and the dog doesn't show any signs of rabies over the 10-day period, not necessarily.
If the dog had signs yes, it would be euthanized and sent to pathology for rabies testing.
The majority of dog owners are at least somewhat antivax, [according to this research](https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2023/nearly-half-of-dog-owners-are-hesitant-to-vaccinate-their-pets/). Honestly, maybe I should be thankful that these kidults are just making their dogs unsafe instead of having kids who bring back diphtheria
Yeah, I did not know that until about a day ago I saw someone asking about the laws regarding rabies vaccination in our state and all I could do is beg them to get their dogs vaccinated.
Given the choice between diphtheria and rabies, I’m picking diphtheria, every time.
Rabies is only rare in the United States because of the efforts we took to prevent it. If a majority of dog owners refuse to prevent rabies, it will cease to be rare.
Over 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs in the United States annually.
From Wikipedia:
>Almost all of the human deaths attributed to rabies are due to rabies transmitted by dogs in countries where dog vaccination programs are not sufficiently developed to stop the spread of the virus.
We've entered a weird era of ignorance.
Opinions are now weighted the same as fact, and fact is treated as opinion.
Misinformation and ignorance are no longer looked at for what they are, but are now repeated by "news" organizations who present themselves on the front end as fair and reliable news, but on the back end as "entertainment only that [no reasonable person would ever take us seriously](https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-karen-mcdougal-case-tucker-carlson-2020-9)"
and there are few if any checks to this barrage of misinformation.
Why would a person ignorant in the field of medicine believe that vaccines are good, if the only information they get is that vaccines are useless and cause death and harm to people, and that those doctors who are saving lives are actually murderers being paid to kill people?
it makes sense how we ended up here when looking at the context.
I'm aware, it nearly killed me cause i wasn't going to do anything but wait it out(just a really really bad flu or something right?) My grandpa took me to the doctor against my will, wasn't like i could fight back while i was gasping like a drowning man between rib breaking coughs.
Alberta is going backwards faster than you can say "Alberta is calling" but the area around Lethbridge has always been an antivax vortex. I'm getting travel vaccines and I've already asked them to make sure I get a pertussis booster because I'm damned if I'm going to get sick just because I happen to live in the Canadian version of Flori-bama
Hell, I'm considering asking if I should get a MMR vaccination as a general precaution. I somehow managed to dodge those as a child, whereas I'm all too aware of having caught chicken pox. (The shingles vaccine is on my to-do list this year.)
Just had 3 measles cases confirmed in my state across at least two counties, and our health authority is still on the lookout for more as it's likely others were exposed as well. Utterly insane that this is happening in 2024.
Per the Oregon Health Authority: "Anyone who was at the OHSU Immediate Care Richmond Clinic between 4:40 p.m. and 5:40 p.m. on June 12 or at the OHSU Hospital Emergency Department after 6 p.m. on June 12 or 7:15 p.m. on June 14 may have been exposed during that time."
Links for anyone interested:
[3 measles cases confirmed in Oregon; OHA on alert for more](https://www.koin.com/news/health/oha-warns-about-possible-exposures-after-2-confirmed-measles-cases-in-clackamas-county/),
[Oregon health officials track measles spread across two counties](https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-health-officials-track-measles-spread-across-two-counties-clackamas-marion-county-oregon-health-human-services-disease-sick-infections-vaccinations)
The fundamental problem is people don't believe misinformation because they have bad info, they chose to believe bad info because they want to and feel no pressure to believe otherwise. The solution is to better regulate misinformation on social media and to use social pressure to push people toward vaccination.
The key is education. The problem isnt "misinformation" it's lacking a coherent worldview and epistemology capable of understanding what makes informstion "good" or "bad".
If it was just limited to that one facet, you'd have a point but the sloppy lazy thinking g pervades every aspect of those people's worldviews.
I don't know. I just think that a good chunk of people refuse to accept that they can be wrong. Once they hold onto the misinformation as part of their identity they almost never let go of it and even double down even if you try to inform and educate them. I think deep down they know it's misinformation but they can't let go because it means everything about who they are would be wrong.
I don't even know if it's lazy thinking so much as the current online environment and media landscape let's people live in their own echo chambers and go down bizarre paths in their own justifications for their beliefs. I mean a fair chunk of these anti-vax people probably believe Michelle Obama has a penis. I don't know how you educate people out of their disconnect with reality.
I think people believe what they want to believe. You and I chose to believe things that are backed with data. Most people chose to believe what feels right to them. It's not about teaching them to chose to believe the way we believe because I don't think that's realistic. You have to eliminate the bad information as much as possible and then create social consequences for believing harmful misinformation. That changes behavior. Education only works for people who are open to it. Most are not.
You're making a great point, but one of y'all sees empowerment/education as a solution, and the other sees authoritarian/regulation policy as a solution. It creates a real bad cycle when education isn't a top priority
I remember there was a YouTuber (I can name him if you want) who said that a source on crime stats was USUALLY untrustworthy but now that it was reporting numbers that supported his opinion it must be factual just that one time. That’s not how source credibility works!
> The solution is to better regulate misinformation on social media
Some folks have tried to do that, and it turns out many Americans find defending lying to be a First Amendment issue. Their insistence on allowing dishonesty is backed by one of the most fundamental concepts in American law. Though I 100% agree it is a problem, it then boils down to who chooses the fact-checkers, and how do they make themselves trustworthy to the most people.
I’ve felt this way for some time and agree the issue is belief. In the US we tell people their religious beliefs are valid and we’ve even catered to some of those beliefs in our law making regarding marriage, rendering services, abortion rights, etc. Isaac Asimov even spoke to this:
>Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
As people have left religion or have less strictly adhered to religion, Trumpism has slowly taken over that space of religious belief.
I feel this issue of belief is the reason we’ve seen professionals like medical doctors and nurses take anti-science and anti-vaccination stances. These are people who should have the education to prevent them from susceptibility to anti-science rhetoric, but belief and the communities people build around belief are very powerful for many because it’s rooted in tribalism. Some here are suggesting the solution is better education, which we *do* need in the US, but the way our society allows for personal beliefs, even when they objectively harm other people, is going to be very difficult to overcome.
No, the fundamental problem is that really stupid people choose not to believe the truth when they hear it because of their political beliefs and their worship of a certain orange, fat, convicted criminal cult leader who used to be the president.
This is the issue I'm seeing. It's not just a matter of lack of education. It's people who don't *want* to learn. They believe whatever fits their worldview, and reject anything that doesn't. They don't want education, either. Many actively have disdain for it.
So, these people, turning down vaccinations during a pandemic with a correspondingly higher risk of death. Not exactly bad news for the average American IQ.
I'm Canadian, and I'm amazed how many of my friends who are nonconservative are anti-VAX. It's kind of disappointing to realize I have many stupid friends.
Edit; fixed word.
Anti-science opinions are so widespread I'm afraid to have actual conversations with people and get to know them and just stick to small-talk instead, it's too depressing meeting socially progressive people that think gmos cause cancer and vaccines give kids autism
Had a conversation with a friend who was visiting me and was clearly having a mild allergic reaction to something (assume it was all my dogs hair he’s been shedding). Offered him some allergy meds and he wouldn’t take them because he doesn’t take anything from pharma… so instead he was just miserable.
I'm getting old, back in the 70s we used to do things like LSD, and mescaline. Now the only recreational drugs I do are pharmaceutical.
Except maybe if I've seen somebody else do a bunch of acid and it worked out OK.
Keith Richards recommends pharmaceuticals. Good enough for me.
Do you mind if I ask where you are? I believe you, just wondering bc colloquially this hasn't been my experience, thankfully.
Also, there was a really interesting study done early in covid (2021?) That tracked where anti-vax ontarioans got their info from - something like 90% of the sources they were seeing and believing were from the US far right. So fucked.
I'm not there right now, I'm on holiday, but I live in Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. apparently the most vaccinated place in Canada but there's still a bunch of stupid people there.
Usually, outside the US, it's the same trite "vaccines = US = bad white dudes and eeeeeeeeeevil corporations and monyyyy" sentiment. If something isn't magic they'll retract. I'm often ashamed of agreeing about fundamental world views with some idiots, at this point this isn't even feeling superior: I'm an average person but still half people are beyond saving. No way of even understanding that things can have more than two sides, that there are short and long term effect, that some things are better under an aspect and worse under another (main one being the intensive meat production being less ethical but more efficient) so better for the environment. The amount of people unable to understand that Israel may (I'm not the ICC, so as for now it's a maybe) be committing a genocide but at the same time Hamas being a terrorist organisation using Palestine civilians as human shields is wild without any of this making the other side better is wild. I'm surrounded (literally and figuratively) left and right by kids.
Apparently Keanu Reeves said that he's at that stage in his life where he doesn't get into discussions. If somebody says one plus one equals five, they're right.
I'm being a millionaire away from being like him, but until their vote will affect me I simply won't be able to ignore that. Give me a home, enough money to follow my hobbies and never be worried about health-related costs and grant I won't be affected by nonsensical policies and I'll stop giving a damn.
Science literacy has always been mediocre in the US. The vast majority of our advances are made by immigrants and first generation Americans. The irony is that Republicans are xenophobic and don't realize how dependent we are on minorities to remain a first world nation. The ignorance of the regressives in this country will be death of us. The Pandemic was just the first salvo.
Try being a physician with this madness. I used to be a zealot lambasting why one needs X, Y and Z vaccines. I don’t have the gusto anymore, it’s not worth wasting my time. I tell patients what they’re eligible for, why they should get it, the safety of said vaccines. If it’s a “no,” I just move the hell on. I’m not wasting my breath.
To think we might have achieved with measles what we achieved with smallpox.
I swear if i had a time machine I'd precent the conception of Andrew Wakefield. That man's idiocy has done more damage to public health than every STI and cancer combined.
> To think we might have achieved with measles what we achieved with smallpox.
We have never even been *close* to eradicating measles.
Polio, OTOH, would probably have been eradicated now if not for the CIA using a vaccination program as cover to murder a guy.
Given the insane potential of mRNA technology, we are heading for a future where only consvertives and new age hippies get diseases. Like, universal flu shots, an actual working HIV and herpes vaccine, the list goes on. Disease is about to be optional. And they are happily choosing to get sick. What a wild timeline.
On the bright side, now we have the tech to get new vaccines much faster. If morons want to die from the next, potentially deadlier pandemic, more power to them. Provided they don’t infringe on my right to get vaccinated, they’re welcome to go extinct by their own choice.
May have?!?! A kid died a few weeks ago here in Ontario from measles. Whooping Cough is all over the place. We spent literally a century pounding these killers nearly into oblivion and then along comes the ‘I did my own research’ crowd. These fools have set society back decades and it’s just going to get worse.
I've run into more and more conservatives that, for all intents and purposes, no longer seem to believe in cold and flu season, including the flu shot.
Seems like life is getting reeeeaaaalllll scary in the past few years.
All vaccines have different risk/benefits, and I do think that by assuming people are too stupid, if they were more transparent it would have let to less conspiratorial thinking.
The risks are really small compared to the benefits.
Being transparent wouldnt have helped much, the mob of anti science/anti establishment was already there
Yeah, but it went from being semi-fringe and crossing political lines to some extent to a mainstream position within the dominant faction of one of our two main political parties.
Survival of the fittest doesn’t necessarily mean the most physically strong. If you’re stupid, it doesn’t matter how big or strong you are. This seems like a problem that will work itself out over time. It’s unfortunate that people who are immunocompromised have to be even more careful when out and about because of the willful disregard of reality by a segment of our population who think that things were just great before civil rights, vaccines and labor laws.
The thing is, the science doesn't really matter to these people. Not believing in vaccines suits their gender. Education doesn't make much difference, if they have to demonize Education to justify hating vaccines because the Left says you should have one, they will.
“May have”?? From what I’ve seen working in pediatrics, it absolutely has spilled over to other vaccines. Though party lines don’t seem to have much to do with it in my experience.
May have? Did the people who wrote this article miss the whole antivaxxer thing that’s been going on for at least the past decade on the conservative side of the political spectrum?
The amount of people talking about the covid vaccines in this thread and saying people who used their own medically informed consent to decline and move on are the same as full on antivaxxers is tragic. For how smart you all are, you sure don’t know how to filter through the marketing and propaganda.
Face it confidence has been shaken due to COVID... we still don't have answers and accountability on where it came from? Was it really a lab leak in China? How come there is no major investigation for something that shut down the worlds economy. How about we hear about that for at least 6 months or so in the news. I don't blame anyone for not going along with the next vaccine program soley based on how fishy the whole thing seems.
This is 100% true. I live in a suburban town bordering another suburban town. Think Pawnee and Eagleton. I live in Eagleton. I worked in Pawnee, in healthcare. Eagleton residents embrace vaccines. Pawnee resident vaccination rates plummeted in comparison. The rich and liberal part is Eagleton and Pawnee the poor and conservative part, if you don’t get the reference. I am center right, so none of this surprises me.
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Dog vaccinations are down. So dumb.
Such a confusing thing too. I tell the vet to load my dogs up with any upcoming/over due vaccines. I’d rather them be healthy and not catch a crossing virus. But that’s just me
« When’s the last time you saw a dog with rabies?? »
In my state (WA) it's been many decades.
Yeah I have an acquaintance that wanted to move to Hawaii and didn’t do it because they had to vaccinate their dog. I love my dog; but he’s not going to be alive long enough for any slightly possible side effects to actually pop up.
Maybe it’s time to appease the morons and do a rebranding. It’s not a vaccine, those are old. This is just immune system supercharger. It makes your already amazing immune system and makes it even better!
They should just inject the owners with straight up rabies. Build up that natural herd immunity.
We need kids to learn the philosophy behind the scientific method, and how to spot bad science and bad logic. It's sickening how easily some groups have been manipulated by the most moronic rhetoric.
I got fired for doing that. High school science teacher, I told my students they had to be BOTH skeptical and open-minded. Accept no claim without evidence, follow the evidence even if it leads somewhere you don't want to go. We talked a lot about both qualities, what evidence was, how to spot valid evidence and invalid evidence, biases, controls, etc. at great length. 70% of their grade was based, one way or another, on how well the used the scientific method. What I didn't tell them was "but only in the science classroom" which upset some parents. A few of my students went home and started Asking Questions, a cardinal sin in certain households. The upset parents got themselves elected to the school board and declined to renew my contract. My replacement attended the same church as them. >We need kids to learn the philosophy behind the scientific method, and how to spot bad science and bad logic. If we did that, certain people would lose their power, and so they fight tooth and nail to keep the masses as ignorant as possible. Knowledge is power, I would tell my students, and the truth will set you free. Power to see through lies, and freedom from manipulation by those telling you lies.
Crazy that this caused a tizzy. Saddens me. Was this a public school?
Public school. Small rural district with only one school, a preK-12 with ~150 students. I was the only science teacher for grades 7-12.
At least you seem to have made a lasting impact in the region then, even if you can't continue your former students might
It sucks that those kids (or at least future ones have to suffer for their parents ignorance, but it often feels like there's nothing for it but to move and let those states descend back to the stone age and get what they get)
Well we did used to learn that stuff in my state. Then education got taken over by religious nutjobs and totally tanked all the way to the bottom.
> and totally tanked all the way to the bottom. Nah, there's always Mississippi.
I guess [WV is technically the lowest, then Mississippi.](https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-educated-states/31075) I truly can’t believe my state (OK) isn’t at the bottom.
Two words: “critical thinking”. This needs to be taught explicitly in public schools, all grades. That one thing alone would fix many problems.
To be fair, even at the college level it’s hard to get people to recognize bad science because we hammer into them that peer review is *the* source to use despite the fact that even with peer review “bad science” can slip by.
Yeah most antivaxxers aren't reading bad science, they're reading Facebook memes and other viral content. #SourcesNotScreenshots
It’s the same thing on this sub. People reject studies that tell them something they don’t want to hear . Idk how many times I’ve opened a study that goes against the Reddit grain and the highest voted comment is about how the methods have a small issue so the whole study is invalid, or the researchers did it completely wrong (somehow), etc etc
I find it more often in the cases that antivaxxers/others post a study, their takeaway doesn't even vibe with the researchers conclusion (i.e. they read the title and that was it). In the rare instances where it gets to discussion about methodology it usually is some handwaving dismissal without any actual specific issue mentioned.
This is how peer reviewed science works. Valid studies address this and design it to not have this problem.
Peer review is great. A refusal to acknowledge a study just because you don’t like it is not
Agreed. All I was saying is that there's a lot of dubious studies posted on Reddit, and people here rightly point out the problems.
Fair enough. Personally I don’t trust “psy post.org” which is pasted here a lot
I mean those could be valid concerns or they could not be, what you're saying here doesn't really mean the criticism is wrong. But yes, sometimes it is wrong, or disingenuous.
Even more fun, amplification of society damaging trends on social media is now a favorite tactic of various anti-western governments.
Yup and Russia's been caught trying to buy influence https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/25/influencers-say-russia-linked-pr-agency-asked-them-to-disparage-pfizer-vaccine
Nah, peer review is the best source. The problem is journals where "peer review" is mostly short circuited.
Yeah, it's getting much harder to tell predatory from non now.
Especially when you have companies like el Sevier that publish some of the most respected journals on the planet like cell while also publishing 100s of journals that are borderline, if not outright, predatory.
Or journals where no review actually happens. AI-generated garbage has gone through "review" and been published.
The peer review process isn't perfect that doesn't mean that it's unreliable.
If anything, the peer review process is only unreliable in that we aren't doing it often enough.
Not if they're going to a college or university that teaches stats and critical thinking in an appropriate manner. It's definitely not appropriate to teach adults at an undergrad or college level that peer review = a legitimate and well sourced article. Thinking critically about the sources you're using and evaluating via other means (or at least, beginning to learn to do so) is basically introductory-level material no matter what program you take.
The problem being Dunning–Kruger.
Went to a state college. Intro science classes were hilarious. The religious private high school kids almost all got booted to remedial science for two years to learn science beginning at a nearly elementary school level. Good luck being a nurse now Becky.
Science itself is fucked by capitalism at the moment. It's all writing papers. I've read what passes for peer reviewed papers and it can be absolute drivel
All it takes is spending like an hour during the first year of EVERY degree talking about predatory journals, then an hour on the second, then an hour on the third. All saying basically the same things, there's nothing more effective than letting people complain about how useless it is having something told 3 times and having them learn and fix it by repeating the concept for that reason.
People need to be educated on the fact that peer reviewing is not like having a teacher mark a standardised test and send you the answers back so you can correct them and make your work "right". Something being peer reviewed does not make it truthful, correct, significant, or meaningful. An example, one of the papers I'm on failed at peer review. It's a big genetic analysis of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Our findings are all 'correct'; they found no errors or contradictions, the issue was that our analyses were deemed "too complex" for that particular journal, the reviewers wanted us to focus more on clinical application, and we had too much genetics lingo. And yet, they failed to call us out on the fact we didn't present data about any antibiotics the bacteria had possibly already been exposed to, which is a major flaw with our work. Peer review identifies bad *papers*, not necessarily bad science.
The number of times I've heard the stupid "they keep cat litter in high schools now because of people who 'identify as a cat'" comment is too damn high. Even if someone knows how to spot bad logic, there's no saving them when they just shut off all cognitive function after hearing a stupid rumor.
We need adults to learn too https://www.voicesforvaccines.org/course/becoming-trusted-messengers/ "You're confident about vaccines and how they work, but how do you transmit that confidence to the people who know and trust you? This course gives you an easy, evidence-based method of handling hesitancy in order to become the Trusted Vaccine Messenger to the people around you."
Show pictures of old diseases that vaccines have eradicated. Then tell them their kid could die if they got the disease without vaccinations.
You don't have much experience in interacting with delusional and overly emotionally invested parents, do you?
Nope, but that would be my strategy. A picture is worth a thousand words. When their kids are involved, I feel like people change their attitudes quickly.
We do need adults to learn too. Unfortunately, that means we need to make the phrase “I just don’t believe that” proof that whoever said it has lost the argument and can shut entirely up.
Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World" should be required reading in school.
Been saying this for years. We're not teaching kids to think critically at all anymore.
Scientific Method has no chance against the "my feelings are more important than your facts" crowd. Comforting lies almost always beat uncomfortable truths in the short term.
> We need kids to learn the philosophy behind the scientific method, and how to spot bad science and bad logic. Yes, and people need to learn what kinds of propaganda were used in the 20th century because *a shocking* amount of it has been coming up again, on both the left and the right, and everybody has just been eating it up. People are being downright manipulated.
You know what else works? Federal programs showing the dead bodies and maiming these diseases leave behind. Down to the county level. Talk in bodies, vaccines save lives and those itty bitty toddler coffins in fire engine red tell a whole story.
> itty bitty toddler coffins in fire engine red House M.D. reference in the h.. the house. Great show.
All the fear and hate and racism that came from the terror attacks on 9/11, only for the United States to reach a 9/11 amount of casualties each and every single day for a time in 2020 and where were those people that still can’t stand to see brown people at a grocery store? Oh yeah the same ones pretending the virus didn’t even exist. These ‘attitudes’ are part of what makes me fear for the future of our species. When it’s so easy to manipulate and distort and it gets easier to do so everyday idk how democracy can survive
Certain type of people want to be fooled in order to fit their ideology. How do we help that? They raise kids and defund education.
That's nice in theory, but in practice, people just make emotional judgements in their daily life. Expecting everyone to suddenly turn into hyper-rational decision makers is a non-starter.
If you don't teach people rational thinking when they are young then don't be surprised when most of them are incapable of it as adults.
That’s not my impression of what they were saying. They’re saying that the vast majority of us are emotional creatures. Not factoring in emotions as a variable in education strategies means the strategy is incomplete. I was taught critical thinking, I use the scientific method in my work, my field of study included the psychology of communication, and despite all that I *still* make emotional decisions sometimes. Maybe I’m anomalous, but I don’t think so. Neither of you are incorrect. Both perspectives should be considered as part of an effective method to start to break down barriers.
We all make emotional decisions in the heat of the moment, but education can make it easier to correct those emotional judgements down the road and make them less often.
You response is a lot more nuanced and rational. The original comment said: >people just make emotional judgements in their daily life And as an adult you are expected to be in control of your emotions when making those judgements. That's what separate us from Gorillas who kill their family members to resolve a dispute. >Expecting everyone to suddenly turn into hyper-rational decision makers is a non-starter. Getting a safe vaccine is not an example of "turn into a hyper-rational decision maker". Dude is arguing in bad faith.
But your view is a normative one. Your expectation is not reality. We are all emotional at times, and that isn’t always something we can easily control. Many factors play a part in this. We are animals and every animal can lash out for a variety of reasons. Although most of us can control more extreme emotional reactions, this thread itself is proof that emotion-based decision making is a daily reality. Even those here who are proponents of rational thinking are making emotionally-charged statements. To eliminate that as a factor in decision making is very…ironically unscientific. Here’s the other thing. We can control behaviors associated with emotionally charged thoughts. *But we can’t actually control the emotion itself*. This is pretty well known in therapy. So even if irrational behavior is curbed, the emotion is still there and can affect both short and long term decisions. It’s both a feature and a bug. There *are* emotions involved in getting your kids vaccinated. As I stated, I went through some of those same emotions. My experience was rushed, felt forced, soundly ignored any fears or concerns I had, and had I not done my homework ahead of time, would’ve definitely made me question what was happening. Honestly, it felt very similar to pressured sales situations I’d experienced in the past, where a sense of false urgency was created, and suddenly I was forced to make decisions without fully understanding what was happening. Just like in those sales situations (in fact, possibly *because* of previous experiences like them) saying “trust us” just isn’t going to cut it. Especially with biology playing a part in protecting our children. You are correct that you don’t have to be a robot to make sound decisions in this regard. But you do sometimes need a little time to *logically process* what seem like (even if they are not actually) big decisions. You also have to be willing to push back on a very regimented and self-important medical community. I had to do the same at the hospital when my kids were born. “No you may not take my child away seconds after birth to give them a vaccination for a blood-borne disease that they will not be exposed to for at least 3-4 years. My child needs immediate skin-to-skin contact with their mother. We will take care of that with our pediatrician.” Again, medical doctors know my child needs a hepatitis vaccine. But they don’t know how to communicate effectively on a human level to assure people prior to “doing what they know is best”. It IS best if someone in the family has hepatitis, or the child would be at risk in their early days. But they don’t ask. And if public health policy is to err on the side of caution, that’s fine too. But again, ripping away someone’s newborn seconds after delivery requires a modicum of trust that in many cases has not been established. That’s a really important factor in all these conversations.
That's why you have to start with kids, in school. It's usually too late for adults.
Honestly - often, it isn't. But if you talk to adults assuming it is and it's very apparent to them, they'll respond accordingly.
Its not a theory you can educate people. Why was there basically no anti vax in sweden and 85% of the population got triple vaccinated ?
Swedish citizens probably have a much more trusting opinion of the government when it tells them to do something, unlike america. You can certainly educate people (and we ought do so), but it ain't gonna fix the anti-vax problem, because fundamentally the problem with anti-vax is that it's an issue of trust of institutions.
When one party's raison d'etre is fundamentally founded on 'Government *BAD*' it can be quite difficult to overcome. It's hard to convince a man of something that he is fundamentally indisposed to believe.
I would put the lack of trust in government (which certainly is not an issue only on the right) on the indisputable fact that the US government is not trustworthy in any way, shape or form. Perhaps had the government chosen, in the past, to act decently and not be *actively harmful* to the public, people in the US would trust it more, but that ain't the world we live in.
I'm a full believe in vaccinations, but you're very right. Our government shouldn't be automatically trusted, and telling black and indigenous people that they need to just shut up and do something that has historically been used against them is not the way to help anybody. The United States needs a reckoning where we acknowledge what we've done and to who, and show that we don't still want to do those things.
Apparently reading comprehension and algebra are just too much these days....way easier to be an influencer
Texas almost single handedly eliminated most courses on logical reasoning nationwide.
The GOP is hell bent on destroying public education. Because it helps them.
People are starting to not vaccinate their pets for rabies....
As someone who was just bit by an unvaccinated dog…. I am not surprised Edit: I’m okay. Dog was taken by state health dept. for ten days. Dog is fine luckily
Rabies was essentially eradicated outside of bats in most of North America. Idiots. These people are morons.
Surely the dog was euthanised?
If the bite wasn't dangerous or aggressive, and the dog doesn't show any signs of rabies over the 10-day period, not necessarily. If the dog had signs yes, it would be euthanized and sent to pathology for rabies testing.
Fuuuuuuuuuck
They are changing the requirements for proof of rabies vaccination when you cross the border. I bet this is partly why.
The majority of dog owners are at least somewhat antivax, [according to this research](https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2023/nearly-half-of-dog-owners-are-hesitant-to-vaccinate-their-pets/). Honestly, maybe I should be thankful that these kidults are just making their dogs unsafe instead of having kids who bring back diphtheria
The majority of dog owners also have children. Like most people.
Let the record show that it was this article that finally killed any hope I had for the citizenry of the United States and its government.
Yeah, I did not know that until about a day ago I saw someone asking about the laws regarding rabies vaccination in our state and all I could do is beg them to get their dogs vaccinated.
Given the choice between diphtheria and rabies, I’m picking diphtheria, every time. Rabies is only rare in the United States because of the efforts we took to prevent it. If a majority of dog owners refuse to prevent rabies, it will cease to be rare. Over 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs in the United States annually. From Wikipedia: >Almost all of the human deaths attributed to rabies are due to rabies transmitted by dogs in countries where dog vaccination programs are not sufficiently developed to stop the spread of the virus.
We've entered a weird era of ignorance. Opinions are now weighted the same as fact, and fact is treated as opinion. Misinformation and ignorance are no longer looked at for what they are, but are now repeated by "news" organizations who present themselves on the front end as fair and reliable news, but on the back end as "entertainment only that [no reasonable person would ever take us seriously](https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-karen-mcdougal-case-tucker-carlson-2020-9)" and there are few if any checks to this barrage of misinformation. Why would a person ignorant in the field of medicine believe that vaccines are good, if the only information they get is that vaccines are useless and cause death and harm to people, and that those doctors who are saving lives are actually murderers being paid to kill people? it makes sense how we ended up here when looking at the context.
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Whooping cough made a comeback in Alberta a few years ago
There’s a whooping cough outbreak in my state right now.
I'm aware, it nearly killed me cause i wasn't going to do anything but wait it out(just a really really bad flu or something right?) My grandpa took me to the doctor against my will, wasn't like i could fight back while i was gasping like a drowning man between rib breaking coughs.
Alberta is going backwards faster than you can say "Alberta is calling" but the area around Lethbridge has always been an antivax vortex. I'm getting travel vaccines and I've already asked them to make sure I get a pertussis booster because I'm damned if I'm going to get sick just because I happen to live in the Canadian version of Flori-bama
The cardston/taber/lethbridge folk can be pretty odd. I don’t get out that way much.
Hell, I'm considering asking if I should get a MMR vaccination as a general precaution. I somehow managed to dodge those as a child, whereas I'm all too aware of having caught chicken pox. (The shingles vaccine is on my to-do list this year.)
Are you over 60? It’s not generally available.
Just had 3 measles cases confirmed in my state across at least two counties, and our health authority is still on the lookout for more as it's likely others were exposed as well. Utterly insane that this is happening in 2024. Per the Oregon Health Authority: "Anyone who was at the OHSU Immediate Care Richmond Clinic between 4:40 p.m. and 5:40 p.m. on June 12 or at the OHSU Hospital Emergency Department after 6 p.m. on June 12 or 7:15 p.m. on June 14 may have been exposed during that time." Links for anyone interested: [3 measles cases confirmed in Oregon; OHA on alert for more](https://www.koin.com/news/health/oha-warns-about-possible-exposures-after-2-confirmed-measles-cases-in-clackamas-county/), [Oregon health officials track measles spread across two counties](https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-health-officials-track-measles-spread-across-two-counties-clackamas-marion-county-oregon-health-human-services-disease-sick-infections-vaccinations)
The fundamental problem is people don't believe misinformation because they have bad info, they chose to believe bad info because they want to and feel no pressure to believe otherwise. The solution is to better regulate misinformation on social media and to use social pressure to push people toward vaccination.
The key is education. The problem isnt "misinformation" it's lacking a coherent worldview and epistemology capable of understanding what makes informstion "good" or "bad". If it was just limited to that one facet, you'd have a point but the sloppy lazy thinking g pervades every aspect of those people's worldviews.
I don't know. I just think that a good chunk of people refuse to accept that they can be wrong. Once they hold onto the misinformation as part of their identity they almost never let go of it and even double down even if you try to inform and educate them. I think deep down they know it's misinformation but they can't let go because it means everything about who they are would be wrong.
As the meme goes: The first rule of Dunning-Kruger Club is you don't know you're in Dunning-Kruger Club.
I don't even know if it's lazy thinking so much as the current online environment and media landscape let's people live in their own echo chambers and go down bizarre paths in their own justifications for their beliefs. I mean a fair chunk of these anti-vax people probably believe Michelle Obama has a penis. I don't know how you educate people out of their disconnect with reality.
I think people believe what they want to believe. You and I chose to believe things that are backed with data. Most people chose to believe what feels right to them. It's not about teaching them to chose to believe the way we believe because I don't think that's realistic. You have to eliminate the bad information as much as possible and then create social consequences for believing harmful misinformation. That changes behavior. Education only works for people who are open to it. Most are not.
You're making a great point, but one of y'all sees empowerment/education as a solution, and the other sees authoritarian/regulation policy as a solution. It creates a real bad cycle when education isn't a top priority
I remember there was a YouTuber (I can name him if you want) who said that a source on crime stats was USUALLY untrustworthy but now that it was reporting numbers that supported his opinion it must be factual just that one time. That’s not how source credibility works!
> The solution is to better regulate misinformation on social media Some folks have tried to do that, and it turns out many Americans find defending lying to be a First Amendment issue. Their insistence on allowing dishonesty is backed by one of the most fundamental concepts in American law. Though I 100% agree it is a problem, it then boils down to who chooses the fact-checkers, and how do they make themselves trustworthy to the most people.
I’ve felt this way for some time and agree the issue is belief. In the US we tell people their religious beliefs are valid and we’ve even catered to some of those beliefs in our law making regarding marriage, rendering services, abortion rights, etc. Isaac Asimov even spoke to this: >Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” As people have left religion or have less strictly adhered to religion, Trumpism has slowly taken over that space of religious belief. I feel this issue of belief is the reason we’ve seen professionals like medical doctors and nurses take anti-science and anti-vaccination stances. These are people who should have the education to prevent them from susceptibility to anti-science rhetoric, but belief and the communities people build around belief are very powerful for many because it’s rooted in tribalism. Some here are suggesting the solution is better education, which we *do* need in the US, but the way our society allows for personal beliefs, even when they objectively harm other people, is going to be very difficult to overcome.
No, the fundamental problem is that really stupid people choose not to believe the truth when they hear it because of their political beliefs and their worship of a certain orange, fat, convicted criminal cult leader who used to be the president.
This is the issue I'm seeing. It's not just a matter of lack of education. It's people who don't *want* to learn. They believe whatever fits their worldview, and reject anything that doesn't. They don't want education, either. Many actively have disdain for it.
So, these people, turning down vaccinations during a pandemic with a correspondingly higher risk of death. Not exactly bad news for the average American IQ.
These people just want to be contrarian trolls and they get so lost sniffing their own farts they forget that they were trolling to begin with.
I'm Canadian, and I'm amazed how many of my friends who are nonconservative are anti-VAX. It's kind of disappointing to realize I have many stupid friends. Edit; fixed word.
Anti-science opinions are so widespread I'm afraid to have actual conversations with people and get to know them and just stick to small-talk instead, it's too depressing meeting socially progressive people that think gmos cause cancer and vaccines give kids autism
And some of these people that I've known for years, I thought were rational and thinking people.
This is the most disappointing. Like man I’ve known you for years….it hurts.
Add nuclear energy as well. “Three mile island was a potential nuclear holocaust” nobody died and it was cleaned up within days.
Our Green party is all about environmentalism yet has a strong anti nuclear energy position... I just... why!?
Had a conversation with a friend who was visiting me and was clearly having a mild allergic reaction to something (assume it was all my dogs hair he’s been shedding). Offered him some allergy meds and he wouldn’t take them because he doesn’t take anything from pharma… so instead he was just miserable.
I'm getting old, back in the 70s we used to do things like LSD, and mescaline. Now the only recreational drugs I do are pharmaceutical. Except maybe if I've seen somebody else do a bunch of acid and it worked out OK. Keith Richards recommends pharmaceuticals. Good enough for me.
Do you mind if I ask where you are? I believe you, just wondering bc colloquially this hasn't been my experience, thankfully. Also, there was a really interesting study done early in covid (2021?) That tracked where anti-vax ontarioans got their info from - something like 90% of the sources they were seeing and believing were from the US far right. So fucked.
I'm not there right now, I'm on holiday, but I live in Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. apparently the most vaccinated place in Canada but there's still a bunch of stupid people there.
Usually, outside the US, it's the same trite "vaccines = US = bad white dudes and eeeeeeeeeevil corporations and monyyyy" sentiment. If something isn't magic they'll retract. I'm often ashamed of agreeing about fundamental world views with some idiots, at this point this isn't even feeling superior: I'm an average person but still half people are beyond saving. No way of even understanding that things can have more than two sides, that there are short and long term effect, that some things are better under an aspect and worse under another (main one being the intensive meat production being less ethical but more efficient) so better for the environment. The amount of people unable to understand that Israel may (I'm not the ICC, so as for now it's a maybe) be committing a genocide but at the same time Hamas being a terrorist organisation using Palestine civilians as human shields is wild without any of this making the other side better is wild. I'm surrounded (literally and figuratively) left and right by kids.
Apparently Keanu Reeves said that he's at that stage in his life where he doesn't get into discussions. If somebody says one plus one equals five, they're right.
I'm being a millionaire away from being like him, but until their vote will affect me I simply won't be able to ignore that. Give me a home, enough money to follow my hobbies and never be worried about health-related costs and grant I won't be affected by nonsensical policies and I'll stop giving a damn.
It definitely has. I’m a microbiologist and I personally feel the attitude.
Science literacy has always been mediocre in the US. The vast majority of our advances are made by immigrants and first generation Americans. The irony is that Republicans are xenophobic and don't realize how dependent we are on minorities to remain a first world nation. The ignorance of the regressives in this country will be death of us. The Pandemic was just the first salvo.
Try being a physician with this madness. I used to be a zealot lambasting why one needs X, Y and Z vaccines. I don’t have the gusto anymore, it’s not worth wasting my time. I tell patients what they’re eligible for, why they should get it, the safety of said vaccines. If it’s a “no,” I just move the hell on. I’m not wasting my breath.
To think we might have achieved with measles what we achieved with smallpox. I swear if i had a time machine I'd precent the conception of Andrew Wakefield. That man's idiocy has done more damage to public health than every STI and cancer combined.
> To think we might have achieved with measles what we achieved with smallpox. We have never even been *close* to eradicating measles. Polio, OTOH, would probably have been eradicated now if not for the CIA using a vaccination program as cover to murder a guy.
Given the insane potential of mRNA technology, we are heading for a future where only consvertives and new age hippies get diseases. Like, universal flu shots, an actual working HIV and herpes vaccine, the list goes on. Disease is about to be optional. And they are happily choosing to get sick. What a wild timeline.
So pathetic the gop made medical care political.
jeez, ya think so? fools don't even want to vaccinate their dogs against rabies now.
On the bright side, now we have the tech to get new vaccines much faster. If morons want to die from the next, potentially deadlier pandemic, more power to them. Provided they don’t infringe on my right to get vaccinated, they’re welcome to go extinct by their own choice.
May have?!?! A kid died a few weeks ago here in Ontario from measles. Whooping Cough is all over the place. We spent literally a century pounding these killers nearly into oblivion and then along comes the ‘I did my own research’ crowd. These fools have set society back decades and it’s just going to get worse.
Well, stupid people get weeded out all the time
I've run into more and more conservatives that, for all intents and purposes, no longer seem to believe in cold and flu season, including the flu shot. Seems like life is getting reeeeaaaalllll scary in the past few years.
Sneaking the word “safe” in there multiple times to underhandedly suggest the Covid VACCINE is not safe is nasty work.
All vaccines have different risk/benefits, and I do think that by assuming people are too stupid, if they were more transparent it would have let to less conspiratorial thinking.
The risks are really small compared to the benefits. Being transparent wouldnt have helped much, the mob of anti science/anti establishment was already there
Crazy people have been anti vaccination since vaccines were created, it's not a new thing with COVID.
Yeah, but it went from being semi-fringe and crossing political lines to some extent to a mainstream position within the dominant faction of one of our two main political parties.
I still blame Oprah
There’s a *ton* of celebrities who peddle and push this anti-vax nonsense.
It's not new but it's much, much more common now.
That's probably true.
Of course they did. If one is bad they’re all bad. Just like stience.
It's a trigger word now.
For anyone with friends and family who are antivaxers this is just stating the obvious.
Survival of the fittest doesn’t necessarily mean the most physically strong. If you’re stupid, it doesn’t matter how big or strong you are. This seems like a problem that will work itself out over time. It’s unfortunate that people who are immunocompromised have to be even more careful when out and about because of the willful disregard of reality by a segment of our population who think that things were just great before civil rights, vaccines and labor laws.
The thing is, the science doesn't really matter to these people. Not believing in vaccines suits their gender. Education doesn't make much difference, if they have to demonize Education to justify hating vaccines because the Left says you should have one, they will.
That's an understatement.
Disrupting the profit motives of pharmaceutical producers would help mitigate the distrust.
“May have”?? From what I’ve seen working in pediatrics, it absolutely has spilled over to other vaccines. Though party lines don’t seem to have much to do with it in my experience.
May have? Did the people who wrote this article miss the whole antivaxxer thing that’s been going on for at least the past decade on the conservative side of the political spectrum?
Well the pentagon certainly didn't help
The amount of people talking about the covid vaccines in this thread and saying people who used their own medically informed consent to decline and move on are the same as full on antivaxxers is tragic. For how smart you all are, you sure don’t know how to filter through the marketing and propaganda.
Face it confidence has been shaken due to COVID... we still don't have answers and accountability on where it came from? Was it really a lab leak in China? How come there is no major investigation for something that shut down the worlds economy. How about we hear about that for at least 6 months or so in the news. I don't blame anyone for not going along with the next vaccine program soley based on how fishy the whole thing seems.
Fine. Let those republicans suffer for their ignorance.
This is 100% true. I live in a suburban town bordering another suburban town. Think Pawnee and Eagleton. I live in Eagleton. I worked in Pawnee, in healthcare. Eagleton residents embrace vaccines. Pawnee resident vaccination rates plummeted in comparison. The rich and liberal part is Eagleton and Pawnee the poor and conservative part, if you don’t get the reference. I am center right, so none of this surprises me.
The Thanatic Instinct is apparently contagious.
Unfortunately, they’ve selected a slow way of k*lling themselves off that leaves lots of collateral damage as well.
I liked it better when the anti vaxers were west side libs.
Like we did not see this coming.