I really dislike vaccinations being a political issue.
Well, maybe we should stop teaching people that everyone’s opinions are valid. That, and that there are people out there who want you to be uninformed/misinformed.
I just don’t understand how not stopping people from easily preventing deadly diseases helps Republicans. It’s their people getting the diseases and dying.
I really don’t get them sometimes.
Reality is a threat to conservatives. Denying reality, in any form, weakens the arguments against conservativism. Claiming untruths is a quick and dirty way to determining who is in and who is out.
Anyone out is the enemy, and therefore evil. Anything they do, say, or believe is evil because they did, said, or believed it.
Anyone who is in is good. Anything they do, say, or believe is good because they did, said, or believed it.
Some may die of preventable diseases, but that’s a sacrifice the conservative doesn’t even acknowledge because fuck anyone who isn’t me.
Yeah, but it’s a loss in terms of votes. You aren’t going to win elections if the people who vote for you are dying out because of what you are telling them to avoid doing.
Short term vs long term gain
If you’re being nice, you’d say they’re contrarians.
If you’re being not nice, you’d say they all suffer from oppositional-defiance disorder from decades of right-wing propaganda rotting their brains. Democrats say vaccines are good, therefore they must really be tools of the satanic child molesting one world government globalist cabal to steal our vital fluids and turn all of us into gay transgendered purple-haired soy-latte-drinking they/thems.
Sad and bonkers how all of this is actually completely true.
Back in 1980, Isaac Asimov wrote:
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of 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.’"
It is as true today as it was then. The only difference is that since the '80s, the Republican party has weaponized this cult and is using it to undermine our democratic institutions and they have been astonishingly successful of late. Their goal isn’t to get their base to get sick and die. The goal is to convince their base that the intellectual elite, the people trying to give them healthcare and lift them out of poverty, are really their enemy. If the GOP base starts respecting intellectualism and, God forbid, educating themselves, then the GOP would be doomed. An educated base would eventually notice that the GOP is curtailing their rights, ruining their environment, shortening their lives, and all but enslaving them and their children. If a small fraction of the base should die and fall off the voter rolls, then that is a sacrifice the GOP is willing to make.
Personally, I had always assumed that such wilful ignorance would result in shorter lifespans for those cultists, and that a sort of unnatural selection would, if not end, at east manage the problem in the long run. But Trump and the pandemic have shown me that the cultists are able to out-breed even the most deadly effects of their ignorance.
If experts were always right, you’d have a point.
But history has shown that experts will routinely abuse their position of authority to exploit those who do not know any better.
All the more reason to teach people more reliable ways of evaluating claims and information. Then, when an expert—or more likely, a politician—spreads bullshit, people will be better equipped to detect it.
Definitely.
Politics is the side effect. Blame the media for all of it. This all started when the media decided they could increase ad revenue by prioritizing antivax grifters who lie about everything to sell their snake oil.
If the media stopped promoting grifters, they would get less ad revenue, but humanity would be much better off.
That’s what happens when you take a shot that doesn’t prevent the spread and force it on people, like what was done to us over covid. It’s up to those who did wrong to rebuild the trust they abused
I’m kind of OK with it…Darwin is about to step in and fix our political problems.
I really wish people would stop thinking like this, because it isn’t fucking true. Even as a joke, it’s not funny. The people suffering and dying are not the anti-vax dipshits. It’s the infants, the sickly, the elderly who are suffering and dying. It’s the random mother of five who happens to catch a particularly virulent strain of something that mutated in the lungs of a nutjob relative. Anti-vaxxers simply don’t die quickly or frequently enough to wipe themselves out, and most will claim their survival as evidence that they were right because they are, all of them, without exception, the stupidest and most dangerous humans to ever live.
the stupidest and most dangerous humans to ever live… so far
If an antivaxxer spreads covid to my immunocompromised friend, is Darwin gonna know to spare my friend or are they going to be an unfortunate statistic?
Ah yes, the eugenicists, the other wilfully ignorant evil the vaccine “debate” brings out…
You are literally no better than anti-vaxxers.I don’t know, just letting the stupid die doesn’t sound all that bad.
Really? They endanger us all and he just doesn’t give a shit what happens to them. Doesn’t really seem equivalent
I shrug…it’s clear the Democrats aren’t going to scare us with strongly worded letters rebuking the Rs thoughts and prayers.
We are doomed…so maybe nature will finally step in and fix all this. We are due for a population correction anyway.
The only person who should be able to “opt out” a child from vaccination should be a MD or DO, and they had better have a dammed good medical reason for it.
Doctors are susceptible to extremist indoctrination too. Just look at Frontline Doctors of America. They were aggressively pushing covid misinformation during the lockdown.
Plenty of sham Doctors pushing addictive prescriptions like opioids too.
People suck, regardless of education and career.
Doctors can also be held professionally responsible
They were fighting for the truth
I disagree because doctors lie all the time about having a ‘good medical’ reason for things.
Just look at how they all recommend routine neo-natal circumcision of males.
Homosexuality was once considered to be a mental disorder.
Lobotomies were once recommended treatment for ‘unruly’ wives.
Appeal to authority doesn’t work when there are countless instances of that authority taking advantage of its position to exploit others who don’t know any better.
I’m, of course, pro-vaccination. But it’s not solely because doctors recommend it.
Are you using “experts have learned new things and do not posses inherent omnipotence” as a reason not to trust experts?
I don’t agree with them per se, but I think the point they are making is that you can find a crazy doctor who will agree with anything. Like if all you needed to get your kids out of a vaccination was a doctor’s note, there would be a well known doctor writing so many to all the home school parents.
No. Doctors lie every time they recommend neo-natal circumcision with no underlying complications, for example.
Go to different countries and you’ll see doctors lying about different things because it’s what the culture has deemed appropriate and acceptable.
Are you trying to say that they’re always correct and we should treat their word as absolute fact? Or are you saying we should ignore the history of experts lying to exploit those who don’t know any better because there’s no chance it’s happening now?
I disagree. As a parent it’s you’re right on if your child should or shouldn’t get vaccinated. Just like you have a right to reproduce. And unfortunately stupid people reproduce.
No. Your rights end where other’s rights begin. You and your kids don’t have the right to get other kids, especially immunocompromised kids who can’t get vaccinated, sick because of your bad choices.
This is not a freedom issue, this is a public health issue. Allowing unvaccinated kids (who are able to be vaccinated) into a school is risking others’ lives. You do not have the right to do that as a parent any more than Typhoid Mary had the right to keep spreading typhoid fever.
Fuck that noise. Failing to vaccinate your kids puts my kids at risk. You have no right to endager the lives of people around you.
But you don’t have a right for your child to endanger someone else’s child. Obviously there is a blurry line there e.g., if my kid has a PB&J he might endanger the welfare of a child with nut allergies. Are we going to ban nuts? Probably not, because not enough kids can get sick from them to warrant that kind of action.
Everyone’s kids can get measles. Or covid. Or polio. Or -insert preventable disease here-
Therefore everyone’s kids should get vaccinated. I get that our government does shady shit sometimes, but people without any scientific background take that and then believe that vaccines are some huge conspiracy.
It’s not.
Science proves they work and do not harm you belong a tiny margin of fringe cases where people have severe side effects (like less than 0.1% of ppl).
Actually, at school parents do get notified if someone in their child’s class has a peanut allergy, in which case the children aren’t allowed to have PB&J at lunch.
I stand corrected! Just proves my point more though - even if a small population is at risk, we step in as a society decide that people should do/not do a certain thing that has the potential for harm.
If they’re going to public school, their decision affects all the other students. They don’t get to choose.
So you’re saying we need vouchers
No. They can home school or pay for a private school with their own money. I’d rather not subsidize their stupid
vouchers?
That’s a fine rationalization for private citizens in their private homes.
The issue here is that these children are being sent to public schools and they’re interacting with other children. Sure, those children are likely vaccinated, but what about the ones who are immunocomprimised? what about the elderly grandmother picking her grandkid up from school one day? What about the ones that just get unlucky, and the vaccine isn’t enough to protect them?
We let stupid people do a lot in modern society without consequence. Murder shouldn’t be added to that list. If parents don’t want to vacc their kids for stupid reasons, they should face the consequence of homeschooling them. If they want to be able to take part in polite society and send their anklebiter to public schools, then they must abide by the ground rules that are in place to keep everyone’s kid’s safe.
If you refuse to vaccinate your kids you shouldn’t be allowed to send them to public school.
