On evolution and creationism, I find alot of people unsure. They believe in a wide spectrum like where either a supreme being created the earth and left it to develop on its own, a supreme being made the earth and plants and animals but some evolution has occurred, to the people who believe the earth formed naturally but some outside group like aliens came in and introduced the various plants and animals.
On global warming deniers. Around here in the midwest its obvious the winters havent been near as harsh which is something we dont mind when you consider the horrible blizzards of the past. Something we dont mind. Whereas someone from Florida wants cooler temperatures. So where does WANTING some global warming put a person?
It’s fine to “question things”, but not to uncritically swallow every meme someone posts on Facebook, on the grounds that “you can’t trust the government” and “they don’t want you to know”.
In my experience you are undoubtably correct but its not quite inexplicable. I would be willing to bet if you took a survey, the vast majority of these people have degrees in the liberal arts and the remainder in business. Its basically the same here on the left coast. Very few physical science or engineering types are anti-vax. Something about the novel idea of proof, I think.
I’m in a fairly conservative upper middle class area. We have a facebook page devoted to the area where people ask about services and businesses, the going on’s around town, stuff like that.
People often ask for recommendations for pediatricians, and it is not infrequent that they have something like “and I’m looking for a doctor that will respect my wishes as regards to vaccination.”
The site I linked to in post #38 posits that if your kid does get the measles or any other such disease, fill 'em full of vitamins and they will heal just fine.
:dubious:
In the bible-belt in the Netherlands, vaccination rates have always been low. They’re Calvinist Protestants who believe that vaccinating is interfering with god’s will. The GGD (municipal public health authority) cooperates with secret & discreet home visits to vaccinate, to keep up the levels. Apparently many parents are quite happy to secretly protect their children from god’s nasty will.
Hijack, but what you’ve got there is a misunderstanding of the concept of gender that generally underlies support for transgender rights.
Supporters of transgender rights aren’t claiming that there exists any mystical “ability to change” one’s chromosomal structure or birth sex. What they’re arguing, and with AFAICT a lot of scientific justification, is that gender identity is not automatically determined by one’s chromosomes or genital anatomy at birth, any more than sexual orientation is.
If having a penis and XY chromosomes automatically made you sexually attracted to women, there wouldn’t be any male homosexuals. And if having a penis and XY chromosomes automatically made you instinctively identify as male, there wouldn’t be any transgender women. But in fact, it turns out that both sexual orientation and gender identity depend on other factors besides chromosomes and anatomy.
Because the vast majority of people are cisgender-identified and heterosexually oriented, it’s easy for them to naively believe that same-sex sexual attraction or transgender identity is just a ridiculous delusion or an unhealthy abnormality. In reality, though, both of them are natural and normal among humans, although relatively rare.
The Times had a fascinating article on vaccination rates in California today. In 2014, only 70% of counties (or it might be cities) had vaccination rates of 95%, which is needed for herd immunity. After the new law, this has climbed to 97%. Places with low vaccination rates have become much higher.
The article says that some of this was due to the elimination of the personal exemption based on belief, but much was due to the elimination of conditional enrollment, where parents could enroll unvaccinated kids in school with the promise of later vaccination. Now vaccination records are required.
So regulations do help. And Mississippi was way ahead of California before, I don’t know where they are relatively today, but I think both are in good shape.