
I’m an Anti-Braker - mzs
http://robertmoorejr.tumblr.com/post/110101466091/im-an-anti-braker
======
dang
This is not a good HN submission. It doesn't teach us anything; its purpose is
to arouse indignation in favor of what one already believes.

In other words, it's a riler-upper. Please don't post riler-uppers to Hacker
News.

~~~
emil10001
Reads more like satire to me.

------
joezydeco
We need to think of a better way to convince parents to vaccinate their
children than hitting them with sarcasm. While these are fun to read from our
smug pro-vax point of view, they provide no effect on everyone else.

We need to show parents what life was like before the polio vaccine. Before
measles/mumps. Hell, before smallpox. Part of the problem is that younger
parents don't believe that these diseases were all too real and way too common
before the treatments. There aren't many polio survivors around anymore, and
the only place you'll ever see measles is on Brady Bunch reruns.

~~~
falcolas
If they aren't convinced by science, and they can't be convinced by satire,
what is left to convince them with?

This isn't limited to anti-vaxxers either. The number of people who believe we
haven't visited the moon is growing year over year. There are also people who
believe that the Holocaust did not happen, despite having survivors and well
documented photographs.

As unfortunate as it is, there's little we can do for some folks, other than
treat them as we do children who don't understand why sticking their fingers
in outlets are bad, and say "Because I said so".

~~~
CJefferson
Except it was science which told them vaccinations were dangerous and caused
autism in the first place. Now of course the scientific position has (rightly)
changed, but we have to explain when it wasn't correct before, and is broken
now.

When I talk to my relatives, they remember when vaccinations were dangerous,
when we switched from "global warming" to "global cooling", and now to
"climate change" which lets science claim any old change as forwarding their
cause.

To be clear, I side with science on this, but for people who don't follow
science all the time, I can see how it's easy to get tired of the "no, we have
the right answer now, ignore that previous answer". See also basically
everything to do with eating/fats/etc.

LATER EDIT: I was not clear in this post. By "science which told them" on the
first line, I meant to say "The version of science as portrayed by much of the
media". The media blew the autism/vaccine issue hugely, and kept the
controversy going for a long time.

~~~
krschultz
_Except it was science which told them vaccinations were dangerous and caused
autism in the first place. Now of course the scientific position has (rightly)
changed, but we have to explain when it wasn 't correct before, and is broken
now._

That's 100% false. The scientific _consensus_ has always been that vaccines
are safe and effective, and do not cause autism. One individual paper that
said otherwise was an outlier, and was relatively quickly debunked.

It's important to differentiate between a single paper written by a scientist,
and the scientific consensus, which is what the bulk of scientists agree is
right. It's not that the consensus is never wrong, but it is wrong a lot less
often than a individual paper is wrong.

The consensus on vaccines has never changed and to desribe it as such is
misleading.

~~~
CJefferson
Sorry, I should probably have put science in quotes, or more particularly,
many media outlets suggested that science believed that vaccines were
dangerous, and caused autism. In general the media made the process of the
debunking much more confusing than it had to be.

------
transfire
I know this will be down voted, nonetheless, after reading many of these
threads it is clear to me that most pro-vaxxers are horribly uneducated about
the facts, and simply go around parroting others and making holier than though
smug comments. If they would actually take the time to _listen_ they would see
that most so called "anti-vaxxers" are nothing of the sort. While there will
of course always be the few that are extreme about it, most are simply
concerned about safe delivery and over vaccination for the sake of
pharmaceutical company profits. They want better oversight and safe guards.
They want to spread vaccination schedules out and not have to get any that
aren't absolutely necessary. If these concerns were addressed, the die-hard
"anti-vaxxers" would be such a small number as not to matter for herd
immunity.

~~~
kstrauser
> for the sake of pharmaceutical company profits

Ignoring the fact that 1) vaccines are low-profit items, to the point that
some companies have stopped making them, and 2) it's way less profitable to
prevent illness than to treat it.

If you want to believe a conspiracy, you've got to go all it. And if you do
that, the _real_ conspiracy would be that vaccine manufacturers are spreading
mistruths about them so that you'll buy their expensive cures rather than
their cheap, low-profit preventative vaccines.

Which is hogwash, of course. But if you're in for a penny, might as well be in
for a pound.

------
lisper
Not all anti-vaxers are stupid or ignorant, some of them simply have a
different quality metric. I've had extensive correspondence with a former
colleague who fully accepts all the science, but simply believes that natural
immunity is "better" than artificial immunity, and that a 0.1% mortality rate
(which is about what measles produces) is an acceptable price to pay. We both
accept the science, but he likes the odds and I don't. I have no idea what to
say to someone like that.

~~~
michael_h
You could go Socratic method on him:

    
    
      You: "How does natural immunity work?"
      They: "You get really miserable and sick and...something something antibodies and maybe t-cells"
      You: "Oh, I see...and vaccines work differently?"
      They: "Well, vaccines are made of, uh, weakened or dead virus cells that induce the creation of, hmmm, antibodies...and maybe t-cells."
      You: "Those sound really similar"
      They: "Yes, but natural immunity is *stronger* and *more complete*."
      You: "It is?"
    
    

Any whiff of patronizing in your voice will invalidate any progress you make.
There will be no satisfying payoff for you on this - they will never outright
admit that you've convinced them. You're just planting the seed of 'Oh crap,
this doesn't really make sense'.

    
    
      > Not all anti-vaxers are stupid or ignorant

Maybe not stupid, but ignorant...'liking the odds' of not vaccinating is the
same as 'not knowing statistical methods'.

~~~
lisper
I assure you this person is not ignorant, and he understands statistics and
how vaccines works. He really is just choosing a different risk posture than
most people do.

~~~
michael_h
> He really is just choosing a different risk posture than most people do.

'different' being 'higher', sure.

He doesn't understand statistics. Take measles: If you happen to contract
measles, you have about 0.001% chance of getting measles encephalitis which
can kill you in a day or so. Extreme situation for sure, but the game then
becomes _reducing the total number of people roaming around with any form of
measles_. When you look a graph of the number of measles cases over time, you
can easily see when the measles vaccine was introduced (just by eyeballing
it). The vaccine unequivocally works effectively.

Severe risks associated with the vaccine? About 0.000001%, which is low enough
that it is probably not the fault of the vaccine.

Result: statistics decimates arguments against the measles vaccine. The only
reason he can even make a quantum of a argument is because the population at
large has gotten the vaccine and so his selfishness is not as noticeable.

~~~
lisper
> He doesn't understand statistics

I assure you he does understand the statistics. He just doesn't think that
have one in a thousand children die of encephalitis is too high a price to pay
for the "benefits of naturally acquired immunity".

~~~
michael_h
I don't know why I'm being so aggro about this, sorry. Lack of sleep plus
having an infant that cannot yet get the vaccine, I suspect.

------
kyledrake
In snow in the winter, slamming on the brakes actually can prevent you from
stopping your car. I grew up in Minnesota, where you learn how to deal with
this very quickly.

If you've never driven in snow/ice before, there's a situation where the
brakes can "lock up", causing your tires to freeze instead of slowly spin
down. For some physics reason I don't entirely understand, the tires have
better friction with a slippery surface when they're still spinning, so when
they stop spinning your car just turns into a giant hockey puck, and you can
no longer stop the car without getting the tires to spin again.

Newer cars have what's called an "Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS)", but it
usually doesn't work very well. I'm pretty sure it's just there for the people
that have never driven in snow before. It's actually worse to trigger it
sometimes.

If you've never driven in snow before and just moved to a place where it does,
find an empty driveway and learn how to pulse the brakes. Seriously could save
your life.

~~~
pedrocr
_> For some physics reason I don't entirely understand, the tires have better
friction with a slippery surface when they're still spinning_

Nothing complex about this, the coefficient of friction in most reasonable
cases is higher when the two surfaces aren't sliding.

 _> Newer cars have what's called an "Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS)", but it
usually doesn't work very well. I'm pretty sure it's just there for the people
that have never driven in snow before. It's actually worse to trigger it
sometimes._

ABS is far from new. It was introduced in airplanes in the 1930s and has
existed in cars since the 1970s. It's rare for cars these days not to have it.
It's also much safer than pulsed braking because the anti-lock feature is
applied per-wheel and not globally, so you can safely steer for example.

Apparently ABS reduces braking distances on asphalt and may increase them on
snow/gravel because in some of those situations locked wheels can actually
brake more by digging into the surface. More modern systems probably fix that
and I bet even the old ones are still safer in real situations where you need
to brake and steer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
lock_braking_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system)

------
nostromo
If you want to convince skeptics to get vaccinated, being insufferably smug is
probably the worst way to go about it.

~~~
karlshea
Might as well since reason, facts, and logic don't seem to be working.

~~~
sanderjd
In my experience, this sort of intellectual smugness is one of the main causes
of people on the other side ignoring reason, facts, and logic. They get the
picture loud and clear that people think they are too dumb to understand
things and that they're being talk down to, and it makes them far less likely
to believe the facts. This is the same problem that the climate change
movement has. People who say "it is not plainly obvious to me that this is
what's going on" and are scoffed at for being stupid are much more likely to
listen to somebody who says "no, you're not stupid, here are some (potentially
incorrect) facts that confirm your point of view". The fact is that these
complicated sciency thing are _not at all obvious_ and those who can should be
doing the hard work to convince people who don't have the time or ability to
study this stuff themselves, rather than just thinking people who don't
inherently trust the "right" scientists for their expertise are stupid.

------
alttab
The analogy doesn't really hold up. And I love it how you can be so right, so
unwaveringly correct as to leave no air or room for debate. While illustrating
a point poorly the author just comes across like an asshole to anyone that
doesn't completely agree with him. Circle jerk much?

------
chrisBob
I have a strong personal stake in this one right now. I am the parent of a 2
month old who can not get the MMR vaccine for another 10 months. Knowing that
I have to take my daughter on a commercial flight in the next few weeks scares
me, especially with the recent news of the outbreaks.

Maybe education about protecting infants could go a long way to change
people's minds. Maybe there needs to be more legal action against the anti-vax
movement. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/01/28/measles-
is...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/01/28/measles-is-spreading-
and-kids-might-die-sue-parents-who-didnt-vaccinate-absolutely/)

------
TeMPOraL
Anti-vaxx movement seems to be a symptom of a deeper problem - I see it as a
combination of people being increasingly unable to comprehend the world around
them _and_ growing mistrust toward the authorities.

The second one is perfectly understandable - politicians cheat us all the
time. Journalists lie in every other sentence. Big companies consistently spew
bullshit. A lot of small companies are run by fraudsters. The fundamental
trust of society toward its structures is broken. It's easy to assume that
politicians and businessmen try to push things for profit and not for the
social benefit.

That itself is not enough for a movement like anti-vaxxers though. I'm pro-
vax, but not because I trust the government or pharmaceutical companies.
There's definitely a lot of fraud, bribery and fudging results there. But the
general scientific idea is sound, and it adds up to other things.

It's the kind of feeling I believe big part of population doesn't have. That
things add up. I believe in mainstream science because it's coherent, logical
and agrees nicely with observable reality. I understand some genetics, know
enough maths to have a feel for exponential growth, etc. But many people don't
really understand anything about the world (yay education!), it must seem like
a black box for them. Some things happen because they happen. When you eat
dirt you get sick, etc.

Along with anti-vaxxers, I often talk with anti-GMO and anti-nuclear people.
The situation is always the same - they don't trust the autorities _and_ they
don't understand a thing about the topic domain. "Nuclear energy" is the scary
thing. Chernobyl. Soviet lies. Fukushima. Japanese lies. It's hard to make
them do the math and understand that this is our only viable option for now.
They don't trust governments _and_ they don't have enough knowledge to
evaluate the topic themselves - so they don't trust the solution.

I'm afraid that as a civilization, we're going to really hurt ourselves
beacuse of trust issues. That's why in my books, lying to people is one of the
biggest sins. It's literally destroying humanity's ability to work together.

~~~
jrs235
"I'm afraid that as a civilization, we're going to really hurt ourselves
beacuse of trust issues."

And that (FUD) is what people are fed when they sit in front of a television.

------
jacquesm
The biggest problem with the anti-vaccin groups is that not only does it
negatively affect their children (which is bad enough), it also negatively
affects others due to reduced herd immunity. In other words, those that have
had ineffective vaccinations or that are simply more susceptible are also at
an elevated level of risk.

------
leichtgewicht
The sarcasm was completely lost of me because of the brakeless bicycle
movement: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-
gear_bicycle#Brakeless](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-
gear_bicycle#Brakeless) I thought he is just a crazy bad-ass.

------
transfire
The more appropriate analogy:
[http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/Vehicle-
owne...](http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/Vehicle-owners-with-
defective-airbags-urged-to-take-immediate-action)

------
rkroondotnet
Here is a good article on non-medical exemption rates
[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-
exemp...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-exemptions-
states-pertussis-map)

TLDR: Oregon, Michigan, Idaho and Vermont are the worst offenders with over 5%
of their kindergarten students having nonmedical exemptions.

------
allthatglitters
After reading the 123 comments so far of this delightful discourse, I'm
curious why no one has mentioned how we handle the immigration issue and
vaccination? Does ICE check the health records or what? I guess those legally
entering with visas etc are good... dare I mention illegals?

------
sidcool
I actually and really went through half the article thinking 'Wow, what an
interesting point of view!'. It was only in the last couple of paragraphs that
I realized the satire. I am not a very bright person.

~~~
supercanuck
guilty as well.

------
sanderjd
I thought it was going to be a metaphor about central banking systems and the
gold standard. Perhaps this is generally a style of argument that works
against any sort of "things used to be better" viewpoint.

------
ColinDabritz
Delightful. Satire is an excellent way to illuminate inconsistent or
unreasonable positions.

~~~
api
It's a great way to self-congratulate, but it never changes anyone else's
opinion. If anything it makes others' opinions more entrenched by pushing
antagonistic emotional buttons.

~~~
ColinDabritz
I disagree, it affects public discourse and how we reason as a society. It
does change opinions.

[http://www.shalhevetboilingpoint.com/top-
stories/2015/01/14/...](http://www.shalhevetboilingpoint.com/top-
stories/2015/01/14/opinion-from-charlie-chaplin-to-charlie-hebdo-satire-is-
crucial-force-for-change/)

[http://www.ted.com/conversations/6205/what_role_does_satire_...](http://www.ted.com/conversations/6205/what_role_does_satire_play_in.html)

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/laugh-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/laugh-
satire-establishment-ridicule-democracy)

------
gear54rus
An exemplary piece. For a second there, I thought he was serious.

For the added effect, we don't have that kind of movement where I live so it
was not immediately on my mind.

------
engendered
The whole vaccination thing has taken a turn much like the AGW debate -- it
has become religion, and people define themselves by their (painfully
simplified) position on it : I have Facebook friends who post such clever
articles and meme images daily, literally preaching to the converted for
absolutely no gain but their own smug sense of superiority.

But here's the thing -- vaccinations carry risks. Of course they do. They have
massive upsides, but they _invariably_ have downsides, bad reactions, and so
on, and it is the utter foolishness that so many try to paint it otherwise.
The net result is of course a major positive -- if 1% of the population has an
adverse reaction, but 10% avoids getting a painful disease, then a win for the
whole (even if it sucks if you're the 1%) -- but it is infantile if not
ignorant to not only pretend these risks don't exist (which is ridiculously
common), but to actually question people's own assessment of their risk
profile.

[http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/05/hpv-vaccine-
ga...](http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/05/hpv-vaccine-gardasil-has-
a-dark-side-star-investigation-finds.html)

All of those incidents might very well be entirely coincidental. Or maybe they
aren't. Such is the nature of massive, widespread immunizations, where the
abnormal immune system of one person might be sent spiraling out of control,
while another might suffer a critical allergic response.

Despite endless evidence to the contrary, many seem to believe we have a
complete understanding of medicine and the human body. In some ways we remain
hacks, and more often than not luck upon our algorithms. But this blind march
really makes the movie "The Children of Men" seem more like a prophecy than a
fiction.

EDIT: -2 within a minute. HN has taken a perilous dump into garbage land --
the classic ignorant back-slapping and sophistry -- as more and more entirely
ignorant people get down arrow rights.

~~~
tfinniga
Vaccinations carry risks, but so does not vaccinating.

If you just want to talk percentages, what is the chance that you will have an
unusual or adverse reaction to a vaccination vs. what is the chance that you
will contract and have an adverse reaction to the illness?

Even on those terms it seems worth it to vaccinate against MMR. Those vaccines
have been around for a long time, they are effective, and they are safe. They
are certainly much safer than measles, mumps, and rubella.

It used to be that you could avoid the risk of vaccination entirely by
assuming that everyone else around you would vaccinate. That's no longer a
good assumption.

Plus, there is the compounding factor that by not vaccinating, these people
are facilitating harm to others.

Government is all about balancing benefit and risk as a whole.

~~~
ptaipale
And the risks of vaccination are largely externalities, risks on other people.
If you don't vaccinate, you are not only taking a calculated risk with your
own child. You are also taking a risk with other kids, which others cannot
necessarily even calculate, let alone mitigate.

------
xai3luGi
classic vindictive "well then why dont everybody"republican lowest common
denominator derivative calculator math at best... seen it a thousand times...

------
carsongross
I wonder how many kids will end up dead due to these shitty, point-and-laugh,
self-congratulatory articles, rather than positively and honestly engaging the
anti-vax sides concerns.

------
smileysteve
While I appreciate the satire, there is a legitimate argument that bad drivers
brake too much.

Braking, brake lights, etc create a change that cascades to other drivers. The
driver in front of you on the highway is predictable UNTIL they put on their
brakes via their relative distance. If you have to put your brakes on on the
highway (in the left lane) you are following too closely.

~~~
emodendroket
You probably also shouldn't inject the polio vaccine into your eye. So what?

------
justizin
"Waaah, wahh, my corrupt mechanic who installs my brake pads calls me ignorant
because I'm a know it all, but I don't fucking work on cars for a living."

Shut the fuck up. You hit a cyclist with that car and I will throw you under
it, motherfucker.

Seriously, the notion that brake pads are a conspiracy by auto mechanics is
simply.. Words cannot.

Let's try this:

    
    
      In driver's ed, they tell you not to use the brake as a solution to all problems.  If you cannot follow those instructions, you should not operate a motor vehicle.  Do not modify the motor vehicle to remove essential safety equipment because YOU cannot fucking drive.
    

DRIVING IS A PRIVILEGE!

