Argumentum ad Brady Bunchium has been a thing among antivaxers for quite awhile. Nice that “Marcia” is speaking out against it.
For something new in Antivax Loon World (or at least, I had never heard of this line of thinking), try Wayne McRoy’s new book, which links immunization to transhumanism, transgenderism, worship of Baphomet and other groovy things.*
*vaccines are being used to alter our genes to serve the Illuminati.
Here is a great animation showing a timeline of various diseases with infection rates. For those anti-vaxers that say the reason why some diseases have diminished is improved sanitation and nutrition, this chart illustrates the fallacy of that attitude.
In 1963, the measles vaccine was introduced and the measles rate plummeted. Ditto with chicken pox in 1995. At the same time, other diseases that did not have vaccines continued to be a problem. While correlation does not prove causation, it strongly suggests that something is going on here.
Yup, and it’s stupid, natch. As per the linked article:
It’s complete rubbish to suggest that just because we as a society joke about some preventable dangers with low but nonzero risks of devastating consequences, therefore we shouldn’t take steps to prevent them.
For instance, the novelist Shirley Jackson’s 1950s humorous autobiographical essays joked about her four-year-old daughter riding unsecured in her car:
Could this cavalier approach to child passenger safety have had disastrous consequences? Hell yes, and indeed child passenger fatality rates were much higher in the 1950s than nowadays.
Was the average risk in this situation nonetheless low enough to render it an ordinary jokeworthy part of everyday life? Sure. People joke about all sorts of dangers that are real and can occasionally have tragic results.
Does that mean that having child car seats and child passenger restraint laws isn’t a good idea? Of course not. Just because a situation is comparatively low-risk, even if some aspects of it are funny, doesn’t mean that it’s unnecessary to address that risk. Especially if we can easily and safely reduce it to almost zero, as in the case of childhood disease vaccinations.
How many of those 300 are actually getting vaccinated?
Cute - but probably too confusing for many people (it took me a couple of seconds to realize why the bars were moving forward and reversing).
Here’s a chart (published awhile back in Forbes) showing how much vaccine-preventable infectious disease incidence has declined since the corresponding vaccines came into use. It has never failed to draw zero reaction from antivaxers, who ignore it and/or change the subject.
Antivaxers use graphs too, for purposes of deception. A favorite ploy is to show how death rates from certain diseases had already significantly declined before vaccines. Yes, having antibiotics and ICUs to fight complications meant fewer died, but the diseases were still common, causing widespread misery, hospitalizations, sometimes permanent complications, and yes, deaths. 400-500 deaths a year from measles occurred in the U.S. in the years leading up to measles vaccine introduction, something that wasn’t shown on The Brady Bunch.
Education only works with reasonable people capable of changing their minds. It’s useless when dealing with hardcore antivaxers. I still engage them sometimes, to keep the reflexes sharp (and once in a blue moon they come up with a new form of stultifying stupidity, requiring a bit of applied research to refute).
Too many. Suffer, assholes. Though I hope the slaves don’t get the measles, just the Sea force pigs.
On my Panama Canal cruise our ship docked next to a Scientology ship in Aruba. Don’t know if was this one.
Time to overthrow the guv’ment!
“In the past two months, we located at least three posts referencing war against the government”
LOL
This is the year for breaking records–over 1,000 measles cases already this year in the U.S.–largest since 1992!
Here’s a report on an Orthodox Jewish anti-vax rally in New York:
I thought it strange it was led by a Hollywood producer (I would have thought Orthodox Jews would tend to be somewhat anti-Hollywood).
Del Bigtree is the co-producer of “Vaxxed” (along with Andrew Wakefield), a movie popular with antivaxers - not your typical Hollywood producer.
This is not the first time antivaxers have tried to stimulate ethnic resentments and hatred to promote their cause (a central theme of “Vaxxed” is that the CDC supposedly covered up a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in black children, and antivaxers teamed up with the Nation of Islam to exploit this nonexistent link).
The producer Del Bigtree told reporters outside the rally that he was affronted that so much fuss was being made over measles, which he called a “trivial” illness.
'“Measles killed 72 children and adults in the European Region in 2018. According to monthly country reports for January to December 2018 (received as of 01 February 2019), 82 596 people in 47 of 53 countries contracted measles. In countries reporting hospitalization data, nearly 2/3 (61%) of measles cases were hospitalized. The total number of people infected with the virus in 2018 was the highest this decade: 3 times the total reported in 2017 and 15 times the record low number of people affected in 2016.”
Bigtree’s definition of trivial differs from mine.
Apparently anti-vaxxers have used bogus medical claims to get around vaccination requirements. The California legislature is considering a bill that would tighten up medical exemptions:
Do parents generally have to have a doctor corroborate medical exemptions, or can they merely claim their child has a specific medical condition that makes vaccination contraindicated?
And was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. always a whacko, or is this a fairly development?
At least since 2005.
Bastion of Anti-Vaccine Fervor: Progressive Waldorf Schools
Thanks for the link, which says RFK, Jr.'s vaccine rant started 10 years earlier, so in 1995. I found a piece written by his relatives last month that slams him for the great harm he’s done. The piece points out JFK, RFK, and Teddy Kennedy all fought to have vaccinations mandated. Way to dishonor your father and uncles, Bobby, Jr.
Some good news in New York:
I know it is bad of me, but I would love for a few measles active people to visit that school. That’s enough kids that I think that maybe we could get a fatality out of it (that would be the evil part). Maybe some diptheria and pertussis patients also.
I remember having the measles (kindergarten, so around 1963 (and pre-vaccine)). I was so sick . . .
Two jails, one in New Jersey and one in Texas, have outbreaks of mumps. Quarantines have been instituted.
I remember as a kid hearing adults give joke warnings about how mumps “going down” was a danger if an adult male contracted it. I don’t see any mention of that danger in the jail quarantine articles, or in random articles on mumps in general. Aha! The keyword I needed was orchitis. Turns out it wasn’t an old urban legend.
This articlesays “Approximately one third of post-pubertal male patients develop unilateral orchitis.” The Mayo Clinic verifies the ratio.
Damn. It’s not safe to go to jail these days.
…unless your vaccinations are up to date.
My parents had a child every two years until Dad got the mumps. After that it was one every three years.
I just learned elsewhere today about RFK Jr.'s anti-vax idiocy, as it happens. What a shame. I had a lot of respect for his environmental activism before, but this pretty much cancels it out.
