Preventable deaths are on the rise in the European Union amid low vaccine uptake, putting young children most at risk, Europe’s disease agency has warned.
Officials from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) revealed new data Monday confirming an upward trend in measles and pertussis — or whooping cough — cases last year.
At least five people in EU countries died of measles between March 2023 and the end of February 2024, all in Romania, while data showed a more than 10-fold increase in whooping cough cases in the EU in 2023 and 2024 compared to the previous two years.
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“It is disheartening to see that despite decades of a well-documented safety and effectiveness track record of vaccines, countries in the EU/EEA and globally still face outbreaks of several vaccine-preventable diseases,” said Andrea Ammon, ECDC director.
I understand how “Big pharma” type conspiracy theories might appear in the USA, but how the hell can someone believe them in EU where the pharmaceutical and health industries are heavily regulated and vaccines are almost exclusively provided by the state? I just can’t wrap my head around this.
The antivax movement literally started in the UK, the US just got infected by it, no pun intended. Look into Andrew Wakefield.
Even before they left the EU I always considered the UK as different from mainland Europe. And stuff like this is a big part of it, along with culturally being more similar to North America and Australia.
No, I know that, but the original vaccination hesitancy in UK and Ireland made sense because Wakefield published a study in a reputable peer reviewed medical journal. Since then it has taken a life of its own in US even after the original claim was refuted. Political entities got involved and so on and so forth.
Dumb people exist in all countries unfortunately.
🇧🇷 EXCEPT IN #1 BRAZIL 🇧🇷
Conspiracy theories are fueled primarily by distrust in social institutions, so they can continue to spread just as effectively whether it’s a faceless, profit-driven industry or a national government that is perceived to be in control.
Would be cool if us humans didn’t do evil shit like pretend to treat syphilis just to watch each other die. We wouldn’t have such terrible distrust if dumb shit like, “We hired prostitutes to bring men into a room and drug them so we could learn if mind control is a thing.” didn’t happen.
I’m from Appalachia, I watched every man in my beautiful little town go from caring for their families to wandering around begging for drugs and then beating their wives overnight because some jackasses decided to go all, “Awww no, this isn’t just synthetic heroin. It isn’t addictive! Modern science saves the day!” so they could ride around in private jets and have museums named after them.
I understand the antivaxxer. There are people who fuck with the lives of their fellow humans. They do it for all sorts of reasons. Money, curiosity, sadism.
Of course some people are hesitant to trust people they don’t know and worry that it’s manipulation all the way down.
Are they dumb? Yeah, sometimes. Probably most of the time actually. So what?
I’m standing here watching my babies cuddle on the couch right now. I’m not smart enough to understand what modern vaccines are doing or how they work. I can get the gist. I have to just trust that people are better now and evil people are the exception to the rule. I definitely don’t want my kids to get illnesses that will make them suffer or kill them, so they get their vaccines. Sometimes from the same companies that doomed my childhood.
For idiots like me with no education, whose families were destroyed by big pharma, no shit people are skeptical.
Hopefully someone smarter than me comes up with a solution for that distrust by making everything transparent all the way down. It will have to be that way to fix it. Even then, some people are going to believe they’re being lied to.
When you’re poor, or a minority, there are a lot of people who believe that YOU DON’T MATTER. It makes navigating the world a little bit more difficult, that’s for sure. Sometimes that kills your kid with a preventable disease.
Yes but why are Europeans feeling the same? It has been quite some time without any (?) greedy/evil people injured the population.
Edit: good luck btw!
Because people are just people. People are hard to trust.
It doesn’t matter where you are on the planet, it’s people you gotta deal with.
I hope life is treating you good.
It’s almost as if the people’s trust in the regulators has been destroyed due to blatant corporate capture.