orwin 2 hours ago

Already told this story, but basically my mother overreacted to a vaccine in the 80s, became an early antivax, had me, only did the bare minimum, I got pertussis at 4-5yo (lucky it wasn't earlier), and since no doctor in the area ever saw pertussis (everyone being vaccinated at the time, and everybody thought I was too, through my mother antibodies), I spent 4 month coughing (I was told), until a retired doctor diagnosed me, and then a few months again, but it was manageable. I have three memories of that time, the first three memories of my life: once coughing so hard I cried on the playground, one lying on my grandmother couch, coughing while she helps me drink, and one after getting treatment (probably for the first time?).

My siblings all got vaccinated after that, and my mother stopped being antivax (still taking 'alternative' medecine, but also still taking conventional one). I guess seeing your child in so much pain and develop arythmia because of your 'beliefs' can make you change. Hopefully things like this will be less and less common.

  • ambicapter an hour ago

    > I guess seeing your child in so much pain and develop arythmia because of your 'beliefs' can make you change.

    keyword being "can" there.

EasyMark 2 hours ago

This is what happens when you ignore basic science and say vaccines that have worked for decades don't work, and then convince 25% of the USA into believing that it's the politically correct stance to take on the topic.

  • dboreham 33 minutes ago

    Remember: everything you see that seems odd is in service of someone's business model.

  • vacct 2 hours ago

    [flagged]

    • add-sub-mul-div 2 hours ago

      Just because you hadn't heard of it before 2020 doesn't mean it was brand new.

      I'll never understand how the party that's famously against government red tape got away with manipulating its base to be against a reasonable streamlining of said red tape, once it was appropriate to do so.

      • vacct 2 hours ago

        [flagged]

        • lawlessone 2 hours ago

          The covid one.

          Why cant you use your real account, not one you made half an hour ago, to ask these things?

          • renewiltord 2 hours ago

            > Why cant you use your real account, not one you made half an hour ago, to ask these things?

            https://imgur.com/a/WCAdMLV

            What an interesting example of a symbiotic species! One draws out the prey and the other strikes. Jumped the gun this time though.

          • jojobas 2 hours ago

            Well it's the point isn't it? It wasn't new, but unlike classic vaccines there wasn't a decades safety data. Manufacturers knew it and demanded to be exempt from normal vaccine injury schemes, governments agreed and introduced mandates.

            My wife and I got the shots as soon as we could, she got a kidney complication, like quite a few people. Too bad, says govt.

            https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000296292...

            • etchalon 16 minutes ago

              We only have decades of safety data because those vaccines have existed for decades.

              This is one of the stranger complaints of the anti-vax movement.

            • estearum an hour ago

              There were decades of safety data when previous vaccines came out?

              Anyway:

              1. All vaccines have liability protection.

              2. You could know of literally 10 people who had significant adverse effects (which you don't) and, given the scale of vaccine rollout, it would still be mathematically safer than pretty much every drug on the market.

              Sorry, but you've been successfully lied to on this topic.

        • protocolture 2 hours ago

          Considering the weight of death they propose to enable, are you aware that it is morally permissible to terminate the life of an antivaccination campaigner?

          • kingkawn an hour ago

            Too far.

            • protocolture an hour ago

              They earnestly want you and your children to die.

            • renewiltord an hour ago

              One thing I really liked about old Amazon reviews is that the fake ones were always obvious. "In exchange for an honest and unbiased review, I received..." blah blah. Keeping obviously shitty reviews visible was actually a signal. In that respect, it is much better for everyone if the guys with the opinion "I want to kill you" say so rather than saying "Why are you posting anonymously? What's your real name?" because someone might respond to the latter earnestly.

CGamesPlay 2 hours ago

Hot take: delaying without completely suppressing this alerting is the best way to change people's minds about the benefits of preventive measures like vaccination without massive loss of life.

  • nyc_data_geek1 15 minutes ago

    Get in loser, we're making Polio Great Again

  • Esophagus4 2 hours ago

    Meaning, let the outbreak get bad enough to remind people that vaccines are helpful?

    • pinkmuffinere an hour ago

      I think that is what they meant. It is crazy, but there's some reasoning behind the crazy. And they did say it was a hot take.

      • Esophagus4 an hour ago

        That’s true, it was a hot take indeed.

        Hot as in, I’m feeling kind of feverish because I’m now sick because we let whooping cough spread to prove a point to people who get their medical information from Facebook.

        • TheOtherHobbes an hour ago

          Think of it as vaccination, but cultural.

          Of course it's horrific. But it's a predictable outcome of antivax culture.

          When nothing else works, what are you supposed to do?

    • jojobas 2 hours ago

      It could be that the only way to remind people is to get them to see some deaths or near-deaths first-hand.

      • Esophagus4 an hour ago

        Ah, I was thinking that’s what the argument was.

        To which I’d say… maybe?

        I was able to dig up this paper that showed 66% of the COVID unvaccinated regretted their decision after hospitalization. The rest were undeterred, even after hospitalization, mostly due to ideology and conspiracies.

        But the problem is that I wouldn’t be comfortable risking public health to prove 2/3 of a point to vaccine skeptics who should’ve known better anyway. The Hippocratic oath is to do no harm, and I wouldn’t want a loved one with a suppressed immune system or lung problems to get seriously sick because we let the disease spread by choice.

        https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8950102/

        • TheOtherHobbes an hour ago

          The real vectors of disinformation are social media, and antivax deaths are downstream of that.

          But we don't have any kind of cultural immunity to the kind of propagandised and designed messaging that drives these campaigns.

          In the absence of that, learning through consequences - and coming in with the messaging after they happen - is the only thing that can make a difference.

          • Esophagus4 37 minutes ago

            > But we don't have any kind of cultural immunity to the kind of propagandised and designed messaging that drives these campaigns

            It seem like if we can find a vaccine for propaganda, we would get a lot of mileage out of it.