So, my an online american friend said"My mom didn’t want to vaccine vax cuzs autism". Is he joking? I know many people say thing like that but i thought they all were joking?
In my country which is a third world country no one believe shit like that even my Grand mother who is illiterate and religious don’t believe thing like that and knows the benefit of vaccine.
It’s both. They actually believe it and it’s a joke that they do.
MIL100% believes this. Her son was normal until about 3 and then developed seizures and is now brain damage. She blames vaccines and it doesn’t help a few other kids in area had similar experiences. She thinks there was a bad batch distribution.
It’s a loud minority. Also not just in America there are anti-vax people all over the world. Mostly in developed countries where they have eliminated diseases like polio. And where outbreaks of measles are really rare. Anti-vax don’t believe vaccines are necessary since they personally never seen diseases like polio. While everyone in the developing world knows that vaccines are necessary since they’ve seen what those diseases can do to people.
You know the meme Hard Times Create Strong Men, Strong Men Create Good Times, Good Times Create Weak Men, Weak Men Create Hard Times Well antivax are the weak men.
It is a predominant US minority who tries to spread their nonsense worldwide.
No there’s really people that stupid. It’s tragic.
The rumor started with a few celebrities with their new age theories (from the same era that brought you “rock and roll comes from the devil”, “Anne Frank didn’t write her diaries”, and “Elvis is alive but Paul McCartney is dead”) and then it just kind of picked up because America isn’t very pro-disability and gets alienated easily. Fortunately it has finally just about died down, but once in a while someone will bring it up.
Someone like the secretary of health or the president, as it currently stands
The American president?
When did this happen?
Most people? No, definitely not. Most Americans get vaccinated. More people than you would hope? Yeah, absolutely.
There’s so many people who have crazy views on health and wellness generally. Juice cleanses. Chiropractic. Homeopathy. Fad diets. Faith healing. I think some of it is because people can’t afford real healthcare, but most of it is anti-intellectualism and propaganda.
Most of the western world have free healthcare. But this is an America view so I understand.
A friend of mine went to hospital like 5 times to check out his belly with various advanced machines and the final bill was equivalent to like 50 dollars. The taxi rides to the hospital cost him more than that. :)
I think its amazing.
I would say that compulsory voting would change things, but lol, it doesn’t. Fuckers vote for the right reasons, the wrong reasons, and just neutral reasons because they don’t give a fuck/care/have time to know. Fairly unrelated, I know.
I guess the connection is how politicised basic science has become. The dummining is really ramping up.
Wait an actual Chiropractor? I’ve been seeing a Chrio for my back for years, in New Zealand that is, found them way better than physiotherapy.
For your own sake, go see a proper doctor.
A good PT will make “chiropractic adjustments” when it’s in the patients best interest. They will also recommend surgery or refer to an MD if drugs will help. Chiropractors will almost never do these things because they make money treating, not curing. If it’s been years, and you’re still seeing them, what have they cured?
I suffered with what turned out to be a near-herniated disc for years. Tried chiro, tried PT. The difference was the PT kept track of progression, and as soon as I couldn’t progress, sent me for imaging, saw the bulging disc and referred me to a specialist. After a year total of PT, steroid injection, ablative surgery, and recover; I went from being unable to bend down and pick up a sock to doing karate classes with my kid.
Chiro has its place in a treatment plan, it shouldn’t be the only part of a plan.
Kinda makes you wonder if the chiropractor made your situation worse.
But I did just discover the term vertebral subluxation: We don’t need to see it to know you have it, and we can fix it!
In my anecdotal experience chiropractors are often drawn to pseudoscience in the US. The last one my spouse went to was handing out anti-vacc pamphlets to the patients. I’d never seen such aggressively dumb ones before, just the usual scummy claims of being able to cure Crohn’s disease and such.
Chiropractors are, by definition, peddlers of pseudoscience.
D. D. Palmer founded chiropractic in the 1890s,[21] claiming that he had received it from “the other world”.[22] Palmer maintained that the tenets of chiropractic were passed along to him by a doctor who had died 50 years previously.[23
There’s a few people who practice quackery and making bold claims bout magic being responsible for ills and pushing the “HOSPITALS ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU, SPIRIT SCIENCE SAID SO!” conspiracy nonsense, and still get covered by insurance.
Because they’re technically chiropractors, which do not require an MD.
And many in America falsely write off ALL of chiropractory as bullshit because throwing out the baby with the bath water is easier than real research.
Yes, they do believe it.
In my country which is a third world country no one believe shit like that even my Grand mother who is illiterate and religious don’t believe thing like that and knows the benefit of vaccine
That is because your country has recent, relevant experience with the efficacy of vaccines.
US citizens have been so coddled for so long by being an economic superpower and having access to medications and medical procedures that others do not that those who remember are beginning to pass from old age. This means an entirely new, always coddled generation literally does not know from experience how bad things can get without it. Due to that, and due to American obsession with “free speech” lies and misinformation have flourished, and made people believe that these things are dangerous instead of lifesaving.
Further, it’s tied in with how US citizens feel about being “different.” We live in a wild cult of individuality where everyone knows that if you’re actually really different that things can go sideways for you fast. They’d rather not risk a child being “different” and having autism, and they genuinely don’t understand that they’re choosing to risk death of their child instead. You can be different, just so long as you’re exactly like everybody else!
Our education system is so broken, and our people are so fucking coddled, that they have the opportunity to pretend that these things don’t matter. It’s literally children tearing down things they don’t like because they don’t understand.
These are those “weak mean that create hard times.” Which is infuriating because anti-vaxxers and their ilk are the people who peddle that kind of bullshit ass saying the most, erroneously thinking they’re the “strong men” because they’re “willing to stand up to the man.” In this case, “the man,” being anyone with an education. Notice they don’t hate a rich idiot like Trump who does not care for them, but they hate intellectuals “in their ivory towers” (cough academia).
Yes, a society can be so coddled that the stupid resent the intelligent and educated to the point where they reject everything they say. They think they are fighting tyranny because they have convinced themselves we are lying to them to “get one over on them.” It’s absurd because the very people who put those ideas in their heads are the ones trying to get one over on them. Of course, this has been going on in America for long time.
-Isaac Asimov, 1980
I hate that Asimov quote, it makes me sad. We have been on this path so long and never figured it out.
Sagan wrote a lot of stuff that was right on and makes me sad, too.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Woah. This became the guidebook.
I honestly don’t know if we can. The last decade has really killed a lot of my hope for humanity. I think we’re destined to wipe ourselves out, because so many of us will sit by idly while the rich and powerful destroy our planet for short-term gain.
Yes, there are fuckheads here that genuinely believe it (and other crazy shit) and I wish they’d all get cancer and die.
They contribute nothing to society and they typically have zero redeeming qualities. The entire world would be better off if they were dead, full stop.
It’s so bad Texas currently has a measles outbreak.
The belief is real (but the claim is not).
A doctor claimed a certain ingredient in vaccines was causing autism, while also trying to sell his own version without that ingredient. A massive conflict of interest and he lost his medical licence over it.
But damage was done and people freaked out over it. In fact, the ingredient was removed in order to alleviate peoples concerns but by that point the idea vaccines=autism had taken off and it was hard to stop that spread of misinformation. Especially since the dude doubled down on the stance.
Andrew Wakefield knowingly and intentionally misrepresented his scientific findings to further his own career ahead of the interests of humanity as a whole. Thomas Midgley Jr is the only person I’d put ahead of him in terms of the damage he’s done to the world.
Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, and RFK Jr. have so caused so much needless death and suffering. Fucking monsters.
And Oprah for platforming these grifters (among many others).
Just to add onto this, because Wakefield’s conflict of interest is one facet of the stupidity of the entire thing. Check out H.Bomberguy’s video about the whole thing, the poorly done experiment, the inconclusive research, the bone marrow autism cure guy, and how we went from “there is maybe possibly some interaction between some chemical in the vsccine and some as of yet unknown and undescribed connection between the brain and gut this chemical that may or may not have some impact on autism more research is needed,” to “vaccines are 100% the cause of autism”
There’s too many stupid people in power; idiocracy is becoming real
We passed well beyond Idiocracy, they eventually changed for the better when they listened to the smart guy, we have actively hostile people in charge rather than simple idiots.
I stopped enjoying Idiocracy as satire or humor about 10-15 years ago when I watched it the 3rd time.
Your friend is not joking. There’s an epidemic of disinformation washing across the USA.
And thanks to the disinformation around vaccines, there are also several other types epidemics breaking out…
I have very religious family that repeatedly told my 90 year old grandma not to get vaccinated in the depths of COVID-19. I have other, not-at-all religious family that works as a nurse… And is anti vaccine.
It’s like a parody.
…But it is no joke. I can answer questions about them if you want.
If you’re wondering why, it’s because many Americans are inundated in really scary social media and TV. That part of my family is constantly on Facebook, watching Fox, doomscrolling whatever. Even their church preaches some really, uh, interesting things now.
It’s this way because there’s a lot of profiteering. For example, the current head of the FBI is apparently selling and promoting some kind of “brave anti vaccine” health merchandise. The current head of the US health department made a lot of money and fame off vaccine skepticism. And their church clergy is crooked in ways I can’t even publicly discuss.
And if you ever happen to look at the shit hole that is truthsocial, it’s a breeding ground for this shit, in order to propagate scans and grifts.
TBH I don’t know a single person that’s ever used Truth Social, or many that even know what it is. I think it’s more of a niche, not something affecting the masses.
I thought a lot of Trump supporters used it. I had signed up with a throwaway account just to look around. Seems like a bunch of scammers.
The only person I know who believes this twaddle about vaccines is a retired nurse and very religious (Christian). Even though everyone in our friend group and in her own family has survived multiple vaccines unscathed, she still issues dire warnings about the latest batch. Arguing has no effect, so I just laugh in her face now.
A nurse in my family went deep anti-vax during covid, and I still don’t understand the motivation or logic. And they’re definitely not an isolated story.
No, it’s not a joke, some people are that fucking stupid.
FreeDUMD = the freedom to be stupid
