I am happy for people who give dangerous and false medical advice that kills people to be punished under law. Egregious examples: sure, have them serve jail time.
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Anti-Vaxer's ideal Paradise.
- Thread starter PhantomWolf
- Start date
I am happy for people who give dangerous and false medical advice that kills people to be punished under law. Egregious examples: sure, have them serve jail time.
Skeptic Ginger
Nasty Woman
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Before the measles vaccine measles killed an estimated 6 million people a year.
Just sayin'
Seriously?
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I actually had it as a kid, but was a teenager so a bit ok. Mumps as well.
Indeed, perspective is often illuminating.
https://www.france24.com/en/20191128-more-deaths-than-ebola-measles-outbreak-hits-drc
At the height of Ebola epidemic in Congo, twice as many people died from measels than Ebola, in Congo.
McHrozni
It also causes permanent brain damage, deafness, and long term immunosuppression in many of those it doesn’t kill.
Very nasty virus. Probably because many people in developed countries managed to survive measles infections okay prior to availability of vaccine the worse risks were not widely recognized... except by the less lucky ones who experienced them. But I do remember being told as a child that measles was a particularly severe disease to get and my parents tried to be extra careful to reduce my risk of getting it.
catsmate
No longer the 1
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Six million deaths is a low estimate; other estimates suggest seven to eight million children died each year from measles (Ludlow, McQuaid et al).
Currently around 125,000 died each year from an easily preventable disease.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The thread title just rubs me the wrong way.
I don't think a measles-ridden world is an anti-vaxxer's ideal, any more than it's yours or mine.
I think the anti-vaxxer's ideal paradise is exactly the same as ours: Little to no measles, with no attendant risk of autism etc. Their mistake is in not realizing (or not being willing to accept) that we already live in that world, and that vaccines are a necessary (and non-autism-causing) part of it.
I don't think a measles-ridden world is an anti-vaxxer's ideal, any more than it's yours or mine.
I think the anti-vaxxer's ideal paradise is exactly the same as ours: Little to no measles, with no attendant risk of autism etc. Their mistake is in not realizing (or not being willing to accept) that we already live in that world, and that vaccines are a necessary (and non-autism-causing) part of it.
I am pretty sure the “paradise” in the title and the OP refers to the lack of vaccinations, not the consequential measles, which the anti-vaxers in their ignorance did not foresee. Assume a strong level of irony in the OP in terms of the contrast between the two...
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ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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And syphilis is questionable. Related diseases have always been endemic to the old world, such as yaws.
Armitage72
Philosopher
Seeing this headline on CNN reminded me of something I recently saw online.
"Why is it that when the CDC tells you to throw away contaminated lettuce, you accept it without question, but when they tell you to vaccinate your kids, they're part of the Illuminati?"
"Why is it that when the CDC tells you to throw away contaminated lettuce, you accept it without question, but when they tell you to vaccinate your kids, they're part of the Illuminati?"
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Luxury and accessibility. Contaminated lettuce is an accessible risk. Easy to believe in.
It's been two or three generations since the scourges of measles and polio were real problems that people had to deal with. That generation believed in vaccines because they saw polio first hand, and saw the salvation from the scourge of polio first hand. Today's generation has no idea what that was like, and how fortunate we are to have been liberated from it before we were even born. We have to take it on faith that this all happened as described.
It's a lot easier to believe in contaminated lettuce.
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There's also another angle. Contaminated lettuce is a breakdown of the supposedly-reliable system of government-regulated infrastructure that brings us our food. A message of "we the government screwed this up" is fairly palatable to someone who is suspicious of government competence.
A message of "we the government screwed up your food supply - again - but please trust us about the vaccine thing" is kinda lame. There's not really a contradiction between throwing away the lettuce when the CDC tells you the government screwed up, and then also throwing away the vaccine even though the CDC insists that the government isn't screwing up.
I agree completely. Newer generations did not see first hand the diseases. My sister is old enough to have seen kids she knew catch polio. She and my parents lived with the fear that she might be next. Was she in contact with the affected kid? Did they both go to the same pool? Or the same movie? Was she getting a sore neck (an early sign of polio, as well as many other things). Their relief when the vaccine came out was overwhelming. People lined up to get their kids vaccinated. They do not question its value: they saw it first hand. The same experience also led them to not question the value of other vaccines.
PhantomWolf
Penultimate Amazing
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This, also that Samoa is a Pacific Island and thus seen as a Paradise, so thus an added play on words.