One has to remember that antivaxxers ignore that both sides are not equal, the gaslighting from anti vaccine people includes a lot of gas by making the asinine argument that the health experts “repeatedly lied” when the case is that anti vaccine people produce a mountain of lies that also include lying about what the health authorities said then or do now.
Absolutely.
I get heartily sick of idiots bleating “scientists lied!!1!!”, when what really happened is that scientists obtained new data that led to them refining their conclusions.
Guess what people? Science is willing to change in the face of new evidence. That is one reason why science advances and works so well. Slamming science for doing exactly what it is supposed to do is good evidence that you’re all a pack of morons.
Similarly, the total rejection of ‘mainstream’ media, as if it’s all singing from the same conspiratory hymn sheet is offensively stupid. What journalist wouldn’t want to unearth massive, unforeseen vaccine side-effects if they were actually going on? The fabulous UK satirical magazine Private Eye digs up evidence of (less exotic, self-enriching) conspiracies regularly, for instance. Admittedly, they were on the wrong side of the Wakefield vaccine/autism bullshit for a time, before realising.
The difference is that that process, or at least a good chuck of it, normally plays out when (as far as the general public is concerned) nobody is paying attention. This time, the whole world was paying attention, and an awful lot of people misinterpreted the reason for the changing information.
Vaccine hesitancy isn’t going away in our lifetime, so while I definitely lean on scale, esp. with friends, I don’t let it occupy too much of my time.
The_cow_pock.jpg (1279×915) (wikimedia.org)
1802 smallpox era
If they’re Sheeple, wouldn’t that be flock immunity?
worth restating this, because the MASSIVE DROP, deserves capitals and bolding.
It has cut the rate of cervical cancer in young women by an estimated 87% in the UK. That is fairly astonishing.
I’ve actually heard (herd?) antivaxers pretending that the very name “herd immunity” is insulting to human beings, implying that we are naught but brute beasts.
Incidentally, if there’s any remote silver lining to the current antivaxer excess about Covid-19 immunization, it’s that they’re spending less time screeching about HPV vaccination, previously a major emphasis.
Would you want to be referred to as a “sheep flocker”?
Quoted from your link (bolding mine, link broken). While I find this appalling, I can’t say I’m surprised. A brief aside, while I couldn’t find any quick stats, oral cancer cases are expected to take a major tumble as well.
I’ve even seen claims that “shaken baby syndrome” (now known as abusive head trauma) is actually a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury(http s://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-antivaccine-lie-that-just-wont-die-shaken-baby-syndrome-is-really-due-to-vaccine-injury/), with antivaxers going so far as to defend child killers by claiming that it was vaccines that killed the baby, not the child abuser
Boy, that was close:
Darn, and I thought flocks had wings and feathers! So sheep can fly after all, Monthy Python was right! Imagine the commertial possibilities!
Well, we do know that more than half of all covid deaths in Arizona were in people old enough to vote (per the Arizona Dept of Health Services, just 75 out of those 32K deaths were in people less than 20 years old). Most died after the vaccine was available: Arizona made the vaccine available to all adults on March 22, 2021, at which point 1.8 million Arizonans had already received at least one shot, and the death toll stood just below 17K (cite). Republicans outnumber Democrats in voter registration (cite). That means at least some of your predicate conditions have been met.
“Sheep lie.”
“…but you flock one sheep…”
I don’t think you can flock just one sheep.
I mean … do you have to?
It’s like lay’s potato chips.
But you lay one potato chip…
I am in awe of your humor.
To have a meaningful change in voter demographics I think you’d need a more virulent pathogen than SARS-CoV-2 and a much greater emphasis on vaccine refusal by adherents of one party/philosophy.
Not an impossible scenario though…