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.

  • nibble4bits@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 hours ago

    Mostly the right-wing leaning Americans, who don’t like anything that costs them money even if it contributes towards a better society. They say they hate Socialism in all its forms, but had absolutely no problem accepting stimulus handouts. They are the pure leeches of our country.

    Left-wing leaning Americans tend to believe science even if it comes as a slight inconvenience to themselves, that includes things that sometimes cost them money.

  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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    43 minutes ago

    Having lived next to them for my whole life; For Americans if it sounds too stupid to be true it’s probably true

  • Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Back in the 90s a British doctor called Andrew Wakefield was bribed by a pharmaceutical company that made separate vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella to come up with a study to discredit the combined mmr vaccine. He found a bunch of parents in an antivax society and twisted the results of a very weighted questionnaire to demonstrate a link between MMR and the 'tism. It was quickly discredited, but the damage was done. He was stripped of his medical licence after that.

    • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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      31 minutes ago

      There’s a number of points this comment misses. First, it wasn’t pharmaceutical companies, but moms group of autistic children that approached him.

      [I]n 1995, while conducting research into Crohn’s disease, he was approached by Rosemary Kessick, the parent of a child with autism, who was seeking help with her son’s bowel problems and autism; Kessick ran a group called Allergy Induced Autism. In 1996, Wakefield turned his attention to researching possible connections between the MMR vaccine and autism.

      And the time, he was still a well regarded scientist and doctor:

      At the time of his MMR research study, Wakefield was senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine

      This was also published in 1998 in The Lancet an important medical journal, but the controversy didn’t start with this publication, but his press conference after the publication where he did advocate for single vaccines and not a combined MMR. Pretty poor form and highly criticized at the time.

      The media took this and ran with it. It caused wide spread misinformation about autism and the MMR vaccine. But it was also a media outlet that began to tear apart the claims in 2004.

      It wasn’t retracted until 2010 and a full write up about what went wrong in the BMJ in 2011. There was a lot of criticism before then, but I was also highly cited as well.

      There’s a lot of lessons to be learned here and that is best done with the full story.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      Don’t forget Oprah Winfrey giving Melissa McCarthy a mouthpiece in front of every suburban mom in the US. We have her to thank for both that and “Dr” Phil.

      • signalecho@lemmy.world
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        41 minutes ago

        If I recall correctly that was Jenny McCarthy, but correct otherwise (not looking to see Melissa McCarthy take the flak for that!). The amount of ugly pseudoscience and bullshit that has emerged through Oprah’s platform is horrifying.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      3 hours ago

      It makes me sad that the piece of shit Andrew Wakefield is still alive while so many better people than him have died for his bullshit.

  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    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.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Our “leader” is an anti-democratic felon rapist who incited an insurrection and illegally attempted to overturn an election.

    It’s not a joke.

    Americans are stupid as fuck.

  • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    It’s Poe’s law- sometimes it’s a joke, sometimes they’re serious, and it’s nearly impossible to determine which at any given time.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    5 hours ago

    I shit you not; my dental hygienist just confided in me that 5g towers scared her while she was taking my xrays. She thought they had adverse effects on the body. She has an associate’s degree. She mentioned they were thinking of dropping thee lead jacket requirement for patients and was shocked when I said yeah I totally agree.

    There’s a reason why there comparisons out there about x-ray exposure comparing a flight to number of dental xrays. She’s better off not getting it multiple times a day, but my annual xrays do no harm to me.

    I personally know nurses who I went to school with who are anti-vax.

    They are not joking. They are 100% conspiracy-theory loving, in it for the propaganda weak-willed individuals who will buy anything that shows the man is holding them down, and through some simple choices they themselves can make, they have an edge on the world in their own minds.

    I told her that I had a HAM radio license and a background in electronics and science and that understanding exposure to ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, there’s no serious effects from cell phone towers and that even if there was one in the room with her, the worst that would happen is heat.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      I personally know nurses who I went to school with who are anti-vax.

      Honestly, lockdown convinced me that most nurses don’t have enough education.

      • rumba@lemmy.zip
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        56 minutes ago

        Your average practice runs with one doctor on the books and a handful of nurses performing all the observations and making decisions by proxy.

        Even if they had the education and passed the classes, I worry. Working as a nurse in a regional hospital and being anti-vax isn’t a “didn’t know any better” kind of problem. These people can be trained to the gills, but if they were brought up anti-vax, they’re not going to do shit polio literally shows up on their own personal doorstep.

  • rikonium
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    7 hours ago

    It’s a very real belief, lot of folks here weren’t around to know the “before times” and nothing is ever real until it happens to them.

    • EndRedStateSubsidies@leminal.space
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      2 hours ago

      The American peasantry believe no shortage of absurdities because every media outlet they have is owned by a billionaire telling them how to feel about what they’re allowed to know.