A wave of parents has been radicalized by Covid-era misinformation to reject ordinary childhood immunizations — with potentially lethal consequences.
There were anti-vax folks around before the covid pandemic, and now their ranks are growing!
This is a long article but you also have the option to listen to it. Access is free.
So tragic that the politicization of COVID has caused people to double down on ignorance as an identity marker.
Should we be considering turning all the hysteria around to advantage to help people out? Fight fire with fire?
Somebody needs to start a rumor that Bill Gates has been planting microscopic tracking chips in assault weaponry. Or that there’s a conspiracy to keep large groups of people from taking vaccines as a way to mitigate overpopulation.
We should be able to do something with NWO spelled backwards too, shouldn’t we? XD
I miss the days when anti-evolutionism was a primary identity marker. Nobody got hurt.
When I was a kid, it was not optional. If you did not get the basic vaccines and bring proof of it you could not register for public school and come. You would have to find either a private school that did not care, and all of them basically did , or you would have to be home schooled.
Is it not a law that you have to be vaccinated to go to school? If not then perhaps the solution is to push for that law and having it enforced. Create dumb laws that strike fear into hearts of idiots. Such as if a kid is not vaccinated the kid and their family gets added to a public list online that includes their name addresses. Let all the conspiracies mix up of people using the list to attack them, or some jobs double check the addresses you have them and if it’s on the list they did not hire you and things like that. Many just because they will feel socially naked with their name and addresses posted will get their kids vaccinated just to avoid it. Allow stores to have non vaccinated shopping hours or either you must park and call in your order or order online and they bring it out to you if it’s during non vaccinated hours.
It was still true when I taught in California. No admittance without proof of vaccination.
Locally, a dentist who is big into removing fillings due to mercury and other weird stuff, promoted a seminary where Wakefield will be one of the speakers. Weird world, where someone who is responsible for more childhood deaths than guns is revered.
I’m guess that’s must’ve a British guy named Andrew Wakefield? Never heard of him but when I googled Wakefield and child deaths that popped up as some anti vaccine guy who wrote some lancet paper that encouraged people to not give vaccinations to their kids or something.
He had to be pretty infamous in Oder for that to be what google hits on. It’s crazy indeed he’s a speaker. Though maybe he’s changed positions or something since then? I never heard of him beyond just this bit and so I have no idea if he “repented” or whatever happened.
No repentance, just escalation. He is mentioned in the opening post article. His false claims literal wasted billions in research of false autism/vaccination links as well as fueled the anti-vaccination movement worldwide.
My mother was raised during the Depression, and had classmates who were killed or crippled by polio. Having her kids vaccinated was a no-brainer! But these days, many people lack critical thinking skills.
Just look at Angie Maksem, Cantonment, FL, Anti-vax nurse sick with Covid for the THIRD time. What’s wrong with people?
He has blood on his hands.
Weird indeed. I think I may have actually got in a argument with that person. I’m not sure. I probably get 5-10 jobs a year there. It’s like an hour away and there is a FB group that is county focused ( our counties touch ) It may not be but I distinctly remember a woman telling me she’s a nurse from there and was anti vaccine. I’ll have to see if I can find it. I think she may be a friend of my cousin’s wife who is also a nurse but in Pensacola. I think pensacola is in there same county.
And where I live, that is exactly one of the big reasons for the huge increase in home-schooling. And also the desire to keep kids safe from “godless science indoctrination.” It sounds like hyperbole, but it isn’t.
And then there is my scientifically well-trained cousin, teaching gen sci in the local homeschool co-op that uses an AIG “science” curriculum, who hesitated, when I expressed my disdain for AIG.
Kind of a cycle building here, eh?
It’s hard to comprehend how successful James Dobson has been at altering the culture of American evangelicalism.
Wow! A lot of that going on in Florida.
Yes, but many states/districts also had religious and/or philosophical exemptions – which may have been fine back when only a small percentage of people used them, but when everyone who’s watched a scary YouTube video wants one, it becomes problematic. Maine just voted to remove philosophical exemptions to vaccines about a year ago (after anti-vaxers collected enough signatures to put it on the ballot – I ran into professional signature collectors in a few different public gatherings), and I’m sure that’s prompted more homeschooling. I have a hard time finding a homeschool group where I feel like I fit in. I’m grateful to have found a small pro-vax group, but it’s not faith-based.
This might sound childish, but it might also be oversaturation by obnoxious pro-vax ads that are driving people to act this way; I for one feel like licking park benches every time I see them on tv!
I suppose it’s like why people choose to believe in a flat earth or a young one: humans are rebels. We all want to be special, we all want to be Neo sticking it to “the man” by seeing things how they “truly are.”
What obnoxious pro-vax ads are you talking about?
There’s this one in PA that drives me nuts with a little jingle
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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