The antivax movement’s preferred stereotype of itself as merely consisting of “concerned parents” falls apart under minimal scrutiny.
It might be well to remember that these folks (of the sort Bob Sears was associating with at that Autism One conference) clobber their opponents when it comes to spite and hatefulness.
Many years ago, I agreed to do some standardized test tutoring to help out a friend. The clients were students whose parents wanted them to improve their scores to get into better colleges. While this modest score-improvement goal was achieved, I found the experience somewhat mystifying and frustrating. How, I wondered, could the kids look at a question with the answer built right into it and not see it? I could understand how they would have difficulty if there were unfamiliar words in the question, and worked to expand their vocabularies, but sometimes an unfamiliar word was not the problem.
Can it really be that you don’t know what the word “most” means? Good god, is this normal?
No. You surely must know what it means. I hope. No, maybe I hope not? I don’t know which is worse, misunderstanding such a common word or being unable to do the simplest possible logic.
Maybe you don’t mind though, or even feel the lack of these things that seem so basic, so your life is probably fine this way.
See normal parents would realize their precious baby had been forced to have surgery and suffer because they were fucking idiots. Normal parents would be ready to smack themselves for being such shitty people. But not in the world of Dr. Sears. In that world you’re supposed to feel good about yourself for your supposed educated decision.
Most parents vaccinate. They don’t need to be talked into it because they are not stupid fucking idiots. Those that do not need to be patted on the back and lied to as Dr. Sears does. They need to be ignored, isolated from many activities so they don’t directly endanger other people and then quarantined when outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases happen.
Here’s how people like that think:
Let eight hundred kids a year die each year because she’s too stupid to understand vaccine science.
It isn’t as if we’re not trying to being down the rate of deaths from car accidents, either. They just came out with a new recommendation for rear facing car seats until age 4. We’re putting airbags wherever they will fit. We’ve made texting while driving illegal. We’re trying to reduce car accident deaths in many ways. What does that have to do with measles? That’s what I really don’t get. Kids die from car accidents so they don’t need to be protected from measles? What? That doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve got a late notice from my cable company, so I’m not going to pay my light bill either. What?!
See, here’s the problem. When antivaxxers say “most” in that context, let me tell you what they don’t mean: everyone except people allergic to the vaccine. It’s all about the dog whistle, and with your track record in this thread, it’s phenomenally hard to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I’m sure I’m not alone in my desire to have zero preventable child deaths per year.
What though, is the cost of preventing each death? Not just the cost in dollars, but any and all costs of money, time, effort, etc. associated with the prevention.
It’s not comfortable to think about where to set the level of “expense” of this nature that is worth spending to save a child’s life, but surely we want to save as many lives as possible per “expense unit.”
Apparently in 2012 one child dies from a TV tip-over every two weeks and TV tip-overs account for 18,000 ER visits per year. Apparently these rates just keep going up.
If we eliminated TVs entirely, think of the savings… But we don’t think the “cost” is worth it. We could insist that televisions only be installed by licensed professionals who would secure them properly to the wall and save a lot of lives and injuries. But this is also objectionable and not seriously considered by many people either. Where would it end, after all? Next thing you know, they’ll come for our bookcases, our fish tanks, our unbarred windows, our ladders, and our staircases. Sorry kids, some of you are going to die from televisions because you are clumsy and your caregivers are too dumb to affix their TVs properly to the wall.
The life of one four-year-old I will never meet is worth exactly the same amount to me as that of any other four-year-old I will never meet. Why should I be enraged because one child dies from measles, but shrug off another TV-crushed child’s death?
We should shrug off neither death, you may be thinking… But when the cost of saving one more child gets too “expensive,” like getting rid of all the TVs, we eventually must admit that we can’t save them all. That any one “preventable death” may be prevented, but it is not worth the cost of preventing them all.
Is it because the TV-crushed child is the victim of their own caregiver’s stupidity, while the measles case may be the result and therefore, fault, of the stupidity of someone unrelated?
I think a lot of non-vaxxing parents believe that if their child is the extremely rare case that suffers harm from a vaccination, that harm is their fault, whereas if the child suffers less-rare harm from a disease, that is fate. Possibly religion plays a role in this as well, as they conclude that the disease must be “God’s will.” It’s frustrating that they seem so bad at playing the odds, but their feelings about who is to blame for the consequences are different, so it isn’t simply a question of odds in their eyes.
What does this have to do with the TVs?
If I go to my non-vaxxing friend’s house and try to talk them into vaccinating their toddler by showing them CDC statistics and such, I should not expect to succeed. No lives saved. If however, I instead use that time to convince them to let me help them attach their TV to the wall properly, that’s more likely to succeed. Possible life saved. If while I do that, I ask if they’ve heard about the delayed vaccination schedules and get them on board with that, better still.
If that makes me an idiot in some people’s eyes, so be it.
Well, a guy who drinks and drives and then t-bones my car when I’ve got my baby in the back seat isn’t doing it out of spite or hatefulness either, but he is a bad person who could kill my baby. He’s 6 months old and too young for the MMR. Somebody who doesn’t vaccinate their kid “trying to do what’s best for them” who then exposes my baby to measles is a bad person who could kill my baby just the same.
I don’t mean “everyone except people allergic to the vaccine” and neither does the CDC. See this link of their childhood vaccination contraindications: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/vac-admin/contraindications-vacc.htm
I said “most” because that’s what I meant. “Most” indicates a quantity more than half but less than all. There is no built-in implication beyond that. If the quantity is 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%, the word “most” is NOT “incorrect” as you claimed.
Since I have actually said what I mean, it is counterproductive for you to “translate” it into something completely different.
If what I have said is TRUE, it is not somehow actually false, because you “know” what I “really” mean, which is something false.
Sorry, I don’t know how to speak your special language where words have ever-shifting arbitrary meanings according to what you’ve decided I think.
If you lump them all together as “bad people,” I guess we can stone them to death in the town square and feel good about it. Call me an idealist, but that seems wrong somehow.
You look like an idiot because you fail to admit that most people are vaccinating and all that people like Dr. Sears do is mostly make people feel good when they don’t. You do that while patting yourself on the back for your critical thinking skills. Anti-vaxers are a fringe group. They need to be treated like we treat other fringe groups: isolated whenever possible in the event of a vaccine-preventable disease outbreak and ignored on most other occasions.
Oh the cost of Dr. Bob’s anti-vax idiocy? Lots of needless suffering and lots of public funds that are better spent elsewhere:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5708a3.htm
These people are idiots. You don’t reason with idiots and make other people think they have a point. You take measures to protect vulnerable non-idiots from them.
Ignoring and isolating is not stoning. We have the right to make sure that we don’t have measles or other vaccine-preventable diseases in our community. If you deliberately compromise that right you must expect consequences. You’re not an idealist or a critical thinker. You’re just some schmuck who thinks he’s better than the rest of us when Dr. Sears panders to his vanity. You have sympathy with them because you buy into the kind of thinking that they do.
I don’t “admit” that most people are vaccinating??
I didn’t realize that that was even in question. Of course most people are vaccinating. Nearly all, even, though never enough. And I’m definitely glad that they are – the more, the better, in my opinion.
I disagree with how fringe groups “should” be treated and the value of making people feel bad. I’d like people to vaccinate, not to feel bad. I have no desire to isolate or ignore groups of people under this circumstance. What next, relocate them to some sort of camps for the protection of others?
Vulnerable CHILDREN are people I am interested in protecting, and it seems pretty harsh to write off babies and little kids as idiots that should be isolated.
No, I have sympathy for them because they are human beings. If you don’t, that’s your business.
:rolleyes:
Just like your strawman of Dr. Offit that is not whom **LavenderBlue **is talking about. He is referring to the **adult **idiots that are putting their children that can not decide for themselves into harm’s way and the children of others.
Oh, we isolate the parents, but let the unvaccinated kids roam free?
Well, I hadn’t even considered that brilliant solution!
Isolation is how you protect them. That’s what we do for kids who cannot be vaccinated because of an underlying medical condition. I fail to see why this offends you.
They’re idiots. Your sympathy for idiots is equally idiotic.
I reserve my sympathies for people like my friend Stacy who has a son who had a heart transplant. She gets to live in fear for her son because the morons you find sympathetic want permission to spread disease that could kill her son without consequences. I reserve my sympathy for my friend Toni who lost her daughter to pertussis because Australian vaccination rates are too low.
It is my business if you don’t want to vaccinate. Measles can be contagious days before you have symptoms. Those who aren’t vaccinated are 22 to 224 times more likely to contract measles then those who are vaccinated. As this same source points out,in Iowa, the public health response to one imported measles case cost approximately $150,000.
If you’re going to be deliberately stupid and spread disease, you cannot expect people to pat you on the back, let alone sit there and tell you how smart you are.
No, we isolate the kids and the parents. Anyone who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons as well as those who voluntarily forego vaccines. Good god take some reading comprehension lessons.
I am completely vaccinated, but I will somehow carry on without your compliments.
You can and should “save” your sympathy for those you feel are most-deserving. It would sure suck if you ran out because you wasted it on some unworthy idiot, since you have such a meager supply.
I’d sure hate to live in a world that wasn’t harsh enough. :rolleyes:
I understood you perfectly the first time, thanks.
Now you want your friend Stacy’s poor heart-transplant kid put in isolation? Seems kind of harsh, but what do I know, I’m Sympathy Restriction Challenged.
Oh fuck off already.
Global Eradication of measles is thisclose if the yahoos didn’t stop thinking they are smarter than the rest of us sheeple.
One of my dear friends died all too early last September from a nasty case of breast cancer. At one point Moira had to worry about pertussis on top of everything else in her life because of an outbreak of pertussis in our community. Shortly before I gave birth some idiots from France showed up at my local Jewish restaurant (a place I often eat) with measles in tow. I would have killed those fuckers if my newborn had been accidentally exposed to the disease because of their deliberate stupidity.