So, my an online american friend said"My mom didn’t want to vaccine vax cuzs autism". Is he joking? I know many people say thing like that but i thought they all were joking?
In my country which is a third world country no one believe shit like that even my Grand mother who is illiterate and religious don’t believe thing like that and knows the benefit of vaccine.
So this happened…
Saw that too. We are a joke.
If these people were around 50 yrs ago we’d still have polio and smallpox.
Nowadays, its spread to other things like blaming them for heart problems, GI tract issues, etc. People who were infected with covid, some multiple times, are blaming vaccines for various health issues they’re developing and refuse to accept that maybe the full-blown infection that nearly got them hospitalized could have just as well been the cause. Or just something that would have happened as they aged regardless.
Yes, they do believe it.
In my country which is a third world country no one believe shit like that even my Grand mother who is illiterate and religious don’t believe thing like that and knows the benefit of vaccine
That is because your country has recent, relevant experience with the efficacy of vaccines.
US citizens have been so coddled for so long by being an economic superpower and having access to medications and medical procedures that others do not that those who remember are beginning to pass from old age. This means an entirely new, always coddled generation literally does not know from experience how bad things can get without it. Due to that, and due to American obsession with “free speech” lies and misinformation have flourished, and made people believe that these things are dangerous instead of lifesaving.
Further, it’s tied in with how US citizens feel about being “different.” We live in a wild cult of individuality where everyone knows that if you’re actually really different that things can go sideways for you fast. They’d rather not risk a child being “different” and having autism, and they genuinely don’t understand that they’re choosing to risk death of their child instead.
Our education system is so broken, and our people are so fucking coddled, that they have the opportunity to pretend that these things don’t matter. It’s literally children tearing down things they don’t like because they don’t understand.
These are those “weak mean that create hard times.” Which is infuriating because anti-vaxxers and their ilk are the people who peddle that kind of bullshit ass saying the most, erroneously thinking they’re the “strong men” because they’re “willing to stand up to the man.” In this case, “the man,” being anyone with an education. Notice they don’t hate a rich idiot like Trump who does not care for them, but they hate intellectuals “in their ivory towers” (cough academia).
Yes, a society can be so coddled that the stupid resent the intelligent an educated to the point where they reject everything they say. They think they are fighting tyranny because they have convinced themselves we are lying to them to “get one over on them.” It’s absurd because the very people who put those ideas in their heads are the ones trying to get one over on them. Of course, this has been going on in America for long time.
-Isaac Asimov, 1980
I hate that Asimov quote, it makes me sad. We have been on this path so long and never figured it out.
Sagan wrote a lot of stuff that was right on and makes me sad, too.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
*cries in vegan*
I can’t decide if this comment is a vegan crying about being bamboozled into veganism or a vegan crying about others being bamboozled into hating veganism. Hoping it’s the latter.
Every time industrialists come up with a new way to help people lie to themselves about the moral, medical, and environmental consequences of animal consumption, no matter how gossamer the cover, people eat it up. But when the scientific community provides evidence that people can completely avoid T2 diabetes, heart disease, many major forms of cancer, and apparently even Alzheimer’s, it doesn’t move the needle one pip. People would rather lie to themselves and will selectively choose what facts to emotionally and intellectually process and which to pretend they never even heard.
Glad it was indeed the latter. Don’t need vegan bashing here.
Woah. This became the guidebook.
I honestly don’t know if we can. The last decade has really killed a lot of my hope for humanity. I think we’re destined to wipe ourselves out, because so many of us will sit by idly while the rich and powerful destroy our planet for short-term gain.
it’s tied in with how US citizens feel about being “different.”
I want to be different, just like everybody else I want to be like. I want to be just like all of the different people.
-John S Hall, 1992
No, it’s not a joke, some people are that fucking stupid.
FreeDUMD = the freedom to be stupid
Its real.
A doctor claimed a certain ingredient in vaccines was causing autism, while also trying to sell his own version without that ingredient. A massive conflict of interest and he lost his medical licence over it.
But damage was done and people freaked out over it. In fact, the ingredient was removed in order to alleviate peoples concerns but by that point the idea vaccines=autism had taken off and it was hard to stop that spread of misinformation. Especially since the dude doubled down on the stance.
Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, and RFK Jr. have so caused so much needless death and suffering. Fucking monsters.
And Oprah for platforming these grifters (among many others).
Just to add onto this, because Wakefield’s conflict of interest is one facet of the stupidity of the entire thing. Check out H.Bomberguy’s video about the whole thing, the poorly done experiment, the inconclusive research, the bone marrow autism cure guy, and how we went from “there is maybe possibly some interaction between some chemical in the vsccine and some as of yet unknown and undescribed connection between the brain and gut this chemical that may or may not have some impact on autism more research is needed,” to “vaccines are 100% the cause of autism”
Andrew Wakefield knowingly and intentionally misrepresented his scientific findings to further his own career ahead of the interests of humanity as a whole. Thomas Midgley Jr is the only person I’d put ahead of him in terms of the damage he’s done to the world.
It’s sadly real. There are a lot of parents who would rather their child died a preventable death than have trouble making eye contact.
Your friend is not joking. There’s an epidemic of disinformation washing across the USA.
And thanks to the disinformation around vaccines, there are also several other types epidemics breaking out…
Yup. Plenty of us sure do! It stems from bogus autism research by Andrew Wakefield like 20 years ago. There are a myriad of reasons for people to buy into it. We’ve even enabled them with religious exemptions at the state level (i.e. it’s against your religion to vaccinate).
Louisiana has even stopped promoting them, https://abcnews.go.com/Health/louisiana-health-department-stop-promoting-mass-vaccination/story?id=118819674
And we have a particularly nasty outbreak right now in one of our states because of vaccine avoidance, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8yvg5359po
IDK what country your from, but in the US, mistrusting doctors and the institutions of health is the most rational thing in the world. That’s because our healthcare is capitalistic and runs on that logic. People die all the time because helping them would cut into profits.
The real insanity is thinking that the government, corporations, and the media would suddenly work together to benefit the health of the public… for free.
Antivaxers are not stupid, they just never lived in a world where Doctors and Hospitals cared about public health.
Yeah, you’re not exactly sounding rational there buddy.
You think we should mistrust doctors who advise you take a preventative treatment that every healthcare system on earth recommends and has since the treatment was created because in one country the people who pay for medicine sometimes don’t want to pay for things the doctors recommend (and you’re saying don’t trust the doctors, mind you), even though the people who pay for it actually recommend it because they make more money if you don’t get sick.
Even in a full conspiratorial mindset your nonsense is disjointed.
Antivaxers are fucking idiots because they don’t have a coherent internal logic for their paranoid woo, they don’t have the ability to understand any of the research that’s happened, and they don’t want to trust the people who do because those people clearly want to hurt them and give them… A developmental disability. For profit somehow.
And this is where we see left-wing wackaloons finding common ground with right -wing wackaloons.
It’s easy to forget, the anti-vax movement used to be predominantly left. It only became popular on the right in the last ten to fifteen years.
they just never lived in a world where Doctors and Hospitals cared about public health.
Tons of doctors care about public health. Perhaps hospital administrations don’t and are only concerned with money, but they are not doctors.
Pharmaceutical companies may be suspect, but it’s the same thing: The suits in charge, not the people working to find solutions for people in need.
Ascribing these attitudes towards the people who are actual stewards of public health who are are constantly blocked by an administrative class that is more worried about profits has everything to do with being in a brutal capitalist society and almost nothing to do with “doctors who don’t care about public health.”
The people who come to conclusions that they can’t trust those in the medical field at all are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and have no ability to parse the nuance of such a situation.
I’m not saying all doctors are perfect, I have had some shitty doctors in my life. But by and large I’ve had more who were concerned with my health enough to help me than I have had those who simply don’t care what happens to me.
What about doctors from countries with public healthcare who are… also telling people to get vaccinated?
I’m just going to leave a link here to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study for the folks arguing against your point.
The study was a great example of unethical medical doctors, academics, and government officials. It is not an example of the greed of capitalism, since other than not being given penicillin, all participants were given long term medical care thanks to funding from the government.
The study ended 50 years ago, but I guess you got us.
I agree with you that rampant capitalism is the true primary source of distrust, but we’re not going to fix the full distrust without addressing the history as well.
all participants were given long term medical care thanks to funding from the government.
There’s a lot more than my cherry picked example in our history.
We have a history of treating our least privileged society members as lab rats.
Now we’re acting shocked that folks aren’t lining up for a poke in the arm.
Trust must be built, and we clearly don’t have it anymore.
Getting rid of our billionaires is step one, but it won’t magically change hearts and minds and create the missing trust.
My point is that they government itself doesn’t have a spotless history, and so cannot simply say trust me bro. It’s not just privatized healthcare that lost the missing trust.
Getting rid of our billionaires and un-privatizing healthcare is step one. After that, we still need an accountability overhaul, and a ton of patience to rebuild the lost trust.
If you are not American and have not interacted with the American health care system, it is almost impossible for you to believe how bad it is. I think this is a big part of what makes antivax believable to people here: The fact that it is absolutely undeniable that every part of the health care system they deal with day-to-day is shamelessly abusing them and their health for profit.
It’s not true that the public health apparatus that comes up with vaccines is a part of that same psychopathic system, it’s actually a rare and exotic thing that still cares about humans and is working hard to help them, but how would they know that?
I work with several people who believe this.
I think most of this is genuine belief. There was a doctor named Wakefield who fraudulently published this autism claim in academic journals. Those papers were retracted, but the damage was done.
I think it sticks around as a conspiracy, because otherwise there’s not a whole lot else that can explain the causes or origins of autism.
Well, aside from the boring “routine expression of a spectrum of neurodivergent traits being better understood leading to increased ability to properly diagnose it, and increased awareness and support in the public education system allowing more teachers to see early indicators and advise medical consultation early so kids can get better support”.
They used to just call mildly autistic people geeks and best them with rulers. Now they let them wear headphones to reduce distractions if they need it.
I’ve never met anyone like that in person, but some people genuinely believe it.
Your friend’s mom is a fucking idiot that would believe literally anything that the “right” person would say.
Absolutely a gullible little tool that’s behaving just as they want.
You have to explain to them how vaccines work. I’m waiting for them to turn on antibiotics next. Soon we’ll be shaking rattles and swallowing toads to cure diseases.
Actually, this tincture of viscous fluid from a legless reptile can cure many diseases!
I oiled it directly from the snake!
