Anti-vax conspiraloons actually killing people.
Discussion
durbster said:
Were they? Prior to the internet age, people got their information from trusted sources such as newspapers or TV. There wasn't much opportunity to investigate anything yourself so you didn't really have much choice.
There was no need to learn how to parse vast amounts of information yourself, so why would they have learnt how?
Read a newspaper from the 1960's, then go pick up a copy of the Daily Mail. The one written in 68 would be more erudite, more factual and far less inflammatory.There was no need to learn how to parse vast amounts of information yourself, so why would they have learnt how?
You cant teach critical thinking, it's something that is learned by experience. The fact that people think what is published by the Daily Mail or Fox News is normal and factual stunts that development. Its little wonder people are accepting "alternate facts" as truth.
Also back then people tended to trust in scientists, doctors and other people who earned their titles, especially when they didn't understand the concepts themselves. Now every Anti-Vaxxer is an expert backed up by Natural News.
hidetheelephants said:
It's got a thin coating of homeopathic anti-vax tinfoil, so thin it cannot be detected.
Odd thing is, tinfoil tends to pick up radio waves where as water tends to distort and block them.So a water containing tin-foil hat may actually stop the brain influencing waves.
captain_cynic said:
durbster said:
Were they? Prior to the internet age, people got their information from trusted sources such as newspapers or TV. There wasn't much opportunity to investigate anything yourself so you didn't really have much choice.
There was no need to learn how to parse vast amounts of information yourself, so why would they have learnt how?
Read a newspaper from the 1960's, then go pick up a copy of the Daily Mail. The one written in 68 would be more erudite, more factual and far less inflammatory.There was no need to learn how to parse vast amounts of information yourself, so why would they have learnt how?
You cant teach critical thinking, it's something that is learned by experience. The fact that people think what is published by the Daily Mail or Fox News is normal and factual stunts that development. Its little wonder people are accepting "alternate facts" as truth.
Also back then people tended to trust in scientists, doctors and other people who earned their titles, especially when they didn't understand the concepts themselves. Now every Anti-Vaxxer is an expert backed up by Natural News.
Jasandjules said:
What always amuses me when I read threads like this is my old plumber saying doctors are liars and they didn't save millions of lives, plumbers did. That it was clean water and good hygiene and sewer plumbing etc stopped diseases rapidly and long before vaccines - he had a massive rant whilst fixing our taps !!
Actually it was a doctor who first identified the water link and inventing GIS 150 years early, in the process.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow
Shakermaker said:
Which is, for all the critical thinking I can apply, the main reason that a) Wakefield was so accepted - "He's a doctor, he must know what he's on about!" and b) why so many people now don't trust doctors - "They all said Wakefield was wrong, and he was a doctor, maybe this other doctor is wrong as well"
Wakefield wasn't accepted because he was a doctor, most of us saw through his charlatanism. The problem was he was a very good showman, good at tugging on the heart strings with fake graphs and graphics. The science was always clear on the matter, but people would always take a comforting lie over a cold fact if given the choice.His arguments were never good, but they were emotional and that's what sold it.
Why is this a problem? I've been vaccinated as have all my family and probably most of my friends. If people are dying unnecessarily due to having idiot parents then that is sad and hardly their fault but not really my problem. Or is it?
I know that sounds incredibly harsh and callous but I'm just trying to understand the wider issue here. Is it the same as banning people from smoking in a car when a child is present, it's to protect the child who won't have any other recourse so needs The State to provide some protection.
I've read this is a big problem in Poland where apparently now there are so many people without vaccinations that they've essentially lost herd immunity. Can someone explain that as it's one of those things which sounds obvious but I'm not sure exactly what it means.
I know that sounds incredibly harsh and callous but I'm just trying to understand the wider issue here. Is it the same as banning people from smoking in a car when a child is present, it's to protect the child who won't have any other recourse so needs The State to provide some protection.
I've read this is a big problem in Poland where apparently now there are so many people without vaccinations that they've essentially lost herd immunity. Can someone explain that as it's one of those things which sounds obvious but I'm not sure exactly what it means.
captain_cynic said:
Wakefield wasn't accepted because he was a doctor, most of us saw through his charlatanism. The problem was he was a very good showman, good at tugging on the heart strings with fake graphs and graphics. The science was always clear on the matter, but people would always take a comforting lie over a cold fact if given the choice.
His arguments were never good, but they were emotional and that's what sold it.
This might be true for "at the time" but we're now 30-odd years down the line and it is people about my age who's parents were taken in by all of this who have been affected/will be affected by this, because they didn't have the critical thinking to apply the logic as you have above. It doesn't need to be that many people to have the effect, as per the thread really. I would think that the "comforting lie" held more weight with the susceptible people because he was a doctor, and then turn that same thought process around when people try and refute it. His arguments were never good, but they were emotional and that's what sold it.
Whilst it isn't the kind of thing that comes up during pub conversations, now that I a lot of my friends have started having children of our own, the new extended network of other people you encounter, this kind of talk can seep in. I didn't have the desire to debate this with one mum that we overheard at a children's group a few months ago, but we haven't seen her since either.. maybe she got banned or "asked not to return" if she was willing to let her unvaccinated child into the room with children 0+ who won't yet have had a full round of jabs yet.. but she basically thought it was worse to get them done than not.
jurbie said:
Why is this a problem? I've been vaccinated as have all my family and probably most of my friends. If people are dying unnecessarily due to having idiot parents then that is sad and hardly their fault but not really my problem. Or is it?
If it were just the parents at risk, I wouldn't have an issue. Even if it were just their kids at risk, I'd still grant you a valid point. However anti-vaxxers however are putting everyone's kids at risk by compromising herd immunity. There are people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, they depend on others around them being vaccinated and not carrying the disease. Also vaccinations are not 100% effective. In 2015 there was a measles outbreak that occurred at Disneyland in California. There were 59 victims, only 28 of which were not vaccinated intentionally (an additional 6 were too young to have been vaccinated, which is why herd immunity is vital). So that is 29 victims who were vaccinated, herd immunity had failed.
And measles is pretty benign in the grand scheme of vaccinated diseases, Polio which often doesn't kill will leave it's victim disfigured and/or disabled. I went to school with a Vietnamese kid permanently disfigured from Polio. A bloke my age who had simply lost the birth lottery and was born into a developing country. That is how recently the disease has been virtually wiped out and if we allow anti-vaxxers to continue, it could come back just as measles has.
As far as I'm concerned, the parent's of intentionally vaccinated children should be charged with GBH if an vaccinated child infects another, upgraded to manslaughter if that child dies. These idiots wont learn any other way.
Its developing nations that now have higher vaccination rates than developed western ones. This is because people there my age have known these horrible diseases, seen the results first hand... Many of these diseases were wiped out in Oz before my mum was born.
captain_cynic said:
hidetheelephants said:
It's got a thin coating of homeopathic anti-vax tinfoil, so thin it cannot be detected.
Odd thing is, tinfoil tends to pick up radio waves where as water tends to distort and block them.So a water containing tin-foil hat may actually stop the brain influencing waves.
Shakermaker said:
This might be true for "at the time" but we're now 30-odd years down the line and it is people about my age who's parents were taken in by all of this who have been affected/will be affected by this, because they didn't have the critical thinking to apply the logic as you have above. It doesn't need to be that many people to have the effect, as per the thread really. I would think that the "comforting lie" held more weight with the susceptible people because he was a doctor, and then turn that same thought process around when people try and refute it.
Largely, I don't disagree with you. Critical thinking skills have taken a dive in recent decades. Sadly, once the anti-vaxxer ball was rolling, it's difficult to stop even though in 2012 Wakefield admitted he made the whole thing up.
We've still got plenty of charlatans selling anti-vaxxer lies, utter s
te like David "Avocado" Wolfe or the recently disgraced Belle Gibson in Oz. Oddly enough anti-vaxxers love to say "follow the money" with "Big Pharma" but don't get that Wolfe and Gibson made huge amounts of money selling snake oil to the foolish. They're not following that money?However what can we do, I generally get rid of anti-vaxxers and other forms of stupidity out of my life, but as a society we need to accept that some people are terminally stupid and until stupidity becomes painful, all we can do is tell them they're idiots and ignore them. Even arresting Wolfe opens up a can of worms, he is culpable in harming people, but he didn't do it directly.
BTW, "Big Pharma" makes most of its money from hardness pills (because desperate men will pay anything) and vitamins (made for pennies, sold for pounds, most of the cost is in the marketing to "convince" people they work). I followed the money, vaccinations are often made for little more than cost (or less under licensed in developing nations). I'm sure you didn't need convincing of the last bit at least
s2art said:
?? The older generations (at least the ones who had good educations) were taught critical thinking.
I'm not convinced by that. The "older" generation (by which I'm thinking about my parents born around the second world war) seem at least as prone to believing nonsense as subsequent generations - "spaghetti trees" ... . If anything, I would say we are much more sceptical as a nation than we used to be.What has changed is that the newspapers (tabloids and broadsheets alike) peddle more obvious nonsense these days - at least the newspapers had a thin veneer of respectability in the past. And the internet (I'm looking at you, facebook) gives weight to the old adage that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
jurbie said:
Why is this a problem? I've been vaccinated as have all my family and probably most of my friends. If people are dying unnecessarily due to having idiot parents then that is sad and hardly their fault but not really my problem. Or is it?
I know that sounds incredibly harsh and callous but I'm just trying to understand the wider issue here. Is it the same as banning people from smoking in a car when a child is present, it's to protect the child who won't have any other recourse so needs The State to provide some protection.
I've read this is a big problem in Poland where apparently now there are so many people without vaccinations that they've essentially lost herd immunity. Can someone explain that as it's one of those things which sounds obvious but I'm not sure exactly what it means.
Herd immunity for measles is generally obtained once >95% of a population have been inoculated as it's infectious as fI know that sounds incredibly harsh and callous but I'm just trying to understand the wider issue here. Is it the same as banning people from smoking in a car when a child is present, it's to protect the child who won't have any other recourse so needs The State to provide some protection.
I've read this is a big problem in Poland where apparently now there are so many people without vaccinations that they've essentially lost herd immunity. Can someone explain that as it's one of those things which sounds obvious but I'm not sure exactly what it means.
k; this allows for the small number of people who cannot safely be immunised, due mainly to compromised immune systems. The idiot parents are not hazarding their own health, they're vicariously hazarding the health of their offspring, immuno-compromised people and those in the population who while immunised have not retained full immunity(genetic oddities, improperly stored or administered vaccine, etc). The level at which herd immunity is reached depends on the ease of transmission, contagiousness/infectiousness, etc.
bloomen said:
Um, he's right?
Clean water and proper sewage for all would probably prevent more disease than any other one single measure worldwide.
Yes, he was in fact, which was astonishing to me given what I had been taught. Clean water and proper sewage for all would probably prevent more disease than any other one single measure worldwide.
After his rant I spoke to a friend who is a doctor who confirmed the history shows quite clearly that many infectious diseases had massively declined to being almost non existent before the vaccines came along and there was a massive drop in the months following the sewer opening in some city or other (London perhaps?). Who knew ?!?!
We believe scientists in the same way others believe vicars. Take the rev prefix away and replace it with a Dr. and we feel that the dependability is increased. It was in The Lancet and Private Eye, so why shouldn't we believe it?
I would not blame any parent at the time for being concerned. I wondered what I would have done had my kids been of that age.
Now though, with the idiot being debunked by just about everyone, except, it seems, the White House clown, it is confirmed.
I probably would have still gone ahead with the vaccine. I remember polio killing kids, the 'fever' hospital that was really where kids went to die, or put in an iron lung to die later. A girl at my school was wheelchair-bound due to polio. She died before the age of 11. It was scary before vaccinations.
It was odd. No one mentioned polio yet everyone knew all about it.
A mate of mine had one leg shorter than the other, a result of a mild dose of polio.
If you had to make a decision about whether to go ahead or not at the time then risking your kid's health on the statistically small chance of contracting measles . . . difficult, eh? But that was at the time. If it was just the terminally stupid now who were resistant to inoculations one might be able to understand it, but it is not.
I would not blame any parent at the time for being concerned. I wondered what I would have done had my kids been of that age.
Now though, with the idiot being debunked by just about everyone, except, it seems, the White House clown, it is confirmed.
I probably would have still gone ahead with the vaccine. I remember polio killing kids, the 'fever' hospital that was really where kids went to die, or put in an iron lung to die later. A girl at my school was wheelchair-bound due to polio. She died before the age of 11. It was scary before vaccinations.
It was odd. No one mentioned polio yet everyone knew all about it.
A mate of mine had one leg shorter than the other, a result of a mild dose of polio.
If you had to make a decision about whether to go ahead or not at the time then risking your kid's health on the statistically small chance of contracting measles . . . difficult, eh? But that was at the time. If it was just the terminally stupid now who were resistant to inoculations one might be able to understand it, but it is not.
Jasandjules said:
bloomen said:
Um, he's right?
Clean water and proper sewage for all would probably prevent more disease than any other one single measure worldwide.
Yes, he was in fact, which was astonishing to me given what I had been taught. Clean water and proper sewage for all would probably prevent more disease than any other one single measure worldwide.
After his rant I spoke to a friend who is a doctor who confirmed the history shows quite clearly that many infectious diseases had massively declined to being almost non existent before the vaccines came along and there was a massive drop in the months following the sewer opening in some city or other (London perhaps?). Who knew ?!?!
the originators of epidemiology knew (John Snow for example). Faraday (a bit of a have a go amateur physicist type) pushed for clean up of the Thames, and the Great Stink did the rest - at least in terms of diseases like cholera.
Drugs and nets have averted c 2/3rd of a billion cases of malaria in sub saharan Africa in the last 20 years alone - so that might be the biggest 'save'
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