How many studies do you have to throw at the vaccine hysterics before they quit? How much of a scientific consensus, how many unimpeachable experts and how exquisitely rational an argument must you present?
That’s a trick question, of course. There’s no magic number. There’s no number, period. And that’s because the anti-vaccine crowd (or anti-vaxxers) aren’t trafficking in anything as concrete, mundane and quaint as facts. They’re not really engaged in a debate about medicine. They’re immersed in a world of conspiracies, in the dark shadows where no data can be trusted, nothing is what it seems and those who buy the party line are pitiable sheep.
And, boy, are they living at the right time, when so much information and misinformation swirl by so quickly that it’s easy to confuse the two and even easier to grab hold and convince yourself of whatever it is you prefer to believe. With Google searches, you find the ostensible proof you seek. On social media, you bask in all the affirmation you could possibly want.
The parents who are worried or sure about grave risks from vaccines reflect a broader horror that has flickered or flared in everything from the birther movement to “Pizzagate,” that nonsense about children as Democratic sex slaves in the imagined basement of a Washington pizza joint. Their recklessness and the attendant re-emergence of measles aren’t just a public health crisis. They’re a public sanity one, emblematic of too many people’s willful disregard of evidence, proud suspicion of expertise and estrangement from reason...
(Frank Bruni, continues)
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Doctor on Video Screen Told a Man He Was Near Death, Leaving Relatives Aghast https://nyti.ms/2VMsXAT
An Unvaccinated Boy Got Tetanus. His Oregon Hospital Stay: 57 Days and $800,000. https://nyti.ms/2EY6jjb
Have anti-vaxxer friends? Share this educational video. pic.twitter.com/GQQTRO6E5m— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) March 11, 2019
Doctor on Video Screen Told a Man He Was Near Death, Leaving Relatives Aghast https://nyti.ms/2VMsXAT
An Unvaccinated Boy Got Tetanus. His Oregon Hospital Stay: 57 Days and $800,000. https://nyti.ms/2EY6jjb
There is definitely a wave of skepticism sweeping our country, which is very reasonably deemed unhealthy. The systemic belief that vaccines have the potential to cause autism is plaguing our nation's overall health. Due to a combination of American parents' neglect, lack of education and ignorance, our country is again having to tolerate diseases that were all but history 30 years ago. While it may seem like an epidemic isn't something that could happen to us, it is a reality that is far closer to plausible than we think.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that "vaccine hesitancy" is one of the top 10 threats projected to be an issue in the year of 2019 is staggering. This alone shows the potential impact that a lack of popular vaccinations could have on the US population, rivaling it with the likes of cancer, and air pollution. The reason that this absolutely baffles me is that it is simply based on a personal decision made by a hive-minded group of uneducated parents. There are other diseases that plague humanity across the face of the earth, that we have yet to develop cures, or even treatments for. Meanwhile, there are parents rejecting the perfectly valid forms of treatments and cures that we have developed as of our current point in history, and therefore reintroducing these diseases into the population after their effective eradication. Epidemics from newly introduced diseases have riddled the history of man with plagues and extinctions of towns, and even whole populations of people. With the slow reintroduction of these previously managed diseases back into society, one can only hope that something similar does not happen again.
The illusion of choice allows people who are misinformed or jaded to choose whether or not your family is safe from conditions we keep in biological records alone. We could make conditions that cripple individuals a thing of the past and because people care about their own opinions alone and are afraid of ghost stories. Granted, odd situations happen, but that is no excuse for these outbreaks, fearing the tool helps nobody.
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