Anti-vaxxers Still a Thing…
Aren’t anti-vaxxers, like, so 2008?
I know they are still a loud, obstinate-in-the-face-of-overwhelming-evidence-to-the-contrary group. But anti-vaxxers must be a gaining adherents because a billboard campaign in my hometown has taken over the skylines above Boise buildings. Signs designate those who vaccinate their children as heroes. Man, used to be you had to manifest some superlative powers to be called a hero. Now you just need to not be an anti-vaxxer. Way to see merit in inoculating your children from pestilence, Ma and Pa!
See, as critical as I might be about our society’s over-reliance on prescription drugs, I will readily tout modern medicine when it is so adept, and so appropriate to deal with what ails us. Uh-oh. My guts shouldn’t be cascading from my abdomen like that. While I respect alternative healers along with spiritual teachers, please take me straight to a surgeon thank you much. Polio can leave children crippled, measles get them killed? By all means, shoot some vaccines into those ankle biters. Because that is the way we cure the communicable diseases, folks. With medicine.
Anti-vaxxers tend to rely on fallacious logic. Hell, detailed in the minutes of the 2013 Idaho Immunization Summit, Dr. William Atkinson pointed out that providers of vaccinations need to be able to point out cause and effect chains to people seeking care in order to reduce vaccination hesitancy. Because apparently that’s a thing that needs taking care of. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, homies. Because you think getting little Sally a booster shot caused her grades to drop or her disdain for cleaning her room to rise doesn’t provide a causal link. I’m all for creating fictions. It’s my passion. But not when it can lead to epidemics.
Here are some of my personal favorites (quotes concocted by me) when it comes to anti-vaxxers and fallacies:
- anecdotal: “Well my son started showing signs of autism after his MMR vaccine. To hell with the copious amounts of scientific evidence demonstrating vaccinations are safe for the majority of the population. Statistics be damned. My son is special. He’s part of a different 1%.”
- false cause: “Sure, since the invention of modern vaccines we’ve seen a staggering drop in deaths and permanent disability due to disease, but we’ve also started regulating our water and food sources during that time. Perhaps this could be why mumps are kept at bay. Timmy, drink your Evian.”
- appeal to nature: “Vaccinations aren’t natural. It’s an abominable thing to inject yourself with a sickness you’re trying to not get. That doesn’t even make sense. I cure all my ills with regular colloidal silver baths and plutonium radiation.”
- bandwagon: “My favorite blogger wrote that I shouldn’t vaccinate my kids because she has one million subscribers and they’re all staying away from needles.”
Sometimes, though, a bandwagon can be a good thing. According to the BBC, someone actually died of measles this past spring. In the United States. They go on to write,”measles infections there are at their highest since the disease was supposedly eradicated. The reason for this is that the number of people vaccinated against measles has been falling.” Further into the article they mention “herd immunity.” Herd immunity means that a certain percent of people within a community need to be immune to a disease in order to stop the epidemic spreading of said illness. If you don’t reach that very high saturation point of immunity, likely over 90%, those within the community who aren’t inoculated and many who can’t be because of fragile health or preexisting conditions are sitting ducks. This mirrors the pickle we’ve all been in at one point or another, where we assume someone else has done a job we should have done ourselves and then we got in deep shit for resting on other people’s laurels. Anti-vaxxers can’t rely on everyone else vaccinating their kids to keep their kids safe from polio or rubella. Not only is it irresponsible, it’s also questionable unethical.
Smallpox decimated indigenous populations in the Americas. Yet most people today wouldn’t be able to diagnose the symptoms of the disease because they have never seen it. Why haven’t they? Vaccinations. These diseases haven’t gone away. They’re still circling the house, trying all the doors and windows but finding them locked. Nostalgia and vintage things are cool, but not in the disease category. We don’t need rickety wheelchairs and iron lungs to be in vogue again because of polio.
If the world of Chemicals were to come about, I’d be terrified to have a generation of children going without vaccinations. Reasoned discourse about medicines and science must occur. Open-mindedness is a virtue, but as the old adage goes, you don’t want your mind so open your brains fall out. If they do, go see a surgeon. Do not put a compress of nettle and mud on it. Treat it with a proven treatment. Anti-vaxxers, I’m open-minded enough. Convince me I’m wrong. Until then, keep your capes and red knickers tucked away in your dressers.
In parting, check out this video: “How Anti-vaxxers Sound to Normal People.”
