The scary thing about anti-vaxxers, at least to me, is how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering.
So when I worked at Google I (and many others) got into an argument with a software engineer who had strong anti-vax opinions and honestly, it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education.
I'm glad California has started clamping down on personal belief exemptions. That still leaves medical exemptions and unfortunately it seems like some doctors are complicit in giving baseless medical exemptions.
In New York we've had cases of immunization records being falsified. I'm not sure if it's by doctors or parents (maybe both).
Honestly any medical professional who falsifies immunization records or provides bogus medical exemptions needs to be jailed.
So I'm honestly not surprised measles is showing up in SV tech companies.
From the anti-vaxers I've talked to, it's not so much the fear mongering, it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives.
Smart people especially know that it's relatively easy to lie with statistics and to generate studies with subtle selection bias.
If your premise is that most/all modern scientific studies are funded by drug companies and therefore cannot be trusted, then being anti-vax is still a stretch but you can at least see how it could be rationalized. Especially given the rich history of money suppressing/biasing scientific studies in the past: smoking, asbestos, j&j baby powder, round-up, etc.
> it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives.
The fallacy, of course, being the idea that only scientific studies are susceptible to perverse economic incentives, and that people pushing anti-vax narratives can't possibly be trying to sell you anything. I have a hard time ascribing this mentality to mere healthy skepticism when it smells more like anti-intellectualism disguised as anti-establishment rhetoric.
I used to spend time in an online antivax community because it was a good source of alternative health info. Some members had Phds and we're published authors.
Most people there had very negative personal experiences with vaccines. Either themselves or one of their children had a serious reaction.
It's known that some people have serious reactions. This isn't something made up by anti-vaxxers. But the current climate gets people with real problems treated as nutters who simply don't have a real medical issue.
When I was growing up, we counted success in terms of how many people got vaccinations, but there was no expectation it would ever be 100 percent. Now, we act like we "failed" to get 100 percent when we quote stats rather than counting the high percentage of vaccinated as a big success.
I think the root cause of the antivax movement is probably that we are leaving no room for those edge cases who have a genuine problem with vaccines, medically speaking. Those edge cases -- those people for whom this is a real problem -- seem to have concluded that the only way to protect their own right to choose is to make antivax the default norm instead of pro vax.
It's probably doomed because vaccines have proven to be beneficial to society as a whole. But if it is clear in your own mind that vaccines are a threat to your life, it readily becomes a hill you are willing to die on, so to speak.
I'm neither antivax nor pro vax. I think vaccines have their uses, but we need room for those edge cases to have the right to choose.
I get vilified by both camps because neither can tolerate a moderate position, which suggests to me they are both basically equally crazy. A reasonable person is aware that exceptions exist and that you have to have a system that makes allowances for that reality.
Actually my mom almost died from vaccination, her arm got swollen up and she must have been close to some kind of allergic shock. (Must have been in the 60s - one can only speculate for the reasons, obviously hygiene wasn't that far back then/perhaps it was a 'living' vaccine.) So luckily I did get all basic vaccinations as a young child but when my parents divorced, visits to the doctors happened only in case of emergency if you will. There was a deep distrust towards doctors because of this traumatic experience.
And yes, I agree, the discussions have become useless. In fact I would go so far to say that in middle-class society people avoid discussions and at best just agree which is actually meaning a slow death for democracy. Those who still continue to do discussions end up doing these in closed circles apart from public discourse, that's tragic and easy loot for alt-rights/anti-vaxxers who can then claim that discourse isn't working because we didn't practise it properly. From a philosophical standpoint I think foundations of all knowledge must be observed and talked about.
Those that have serious real issues with vaccines are the ones that rely on herd immunity so it is quite counter-productive for them to work towards making anti-vax the norm.
This assertion contradicts the comment by you that I replied to, which asserts reasonable doubt can exist in people who aren't fundamentally nutters concerning the value of vaccines. I agree with your previous comment.
> This assertion contradicts the comment by you that I replied to, which asserts reasonable doubt can exist in people who aren't fundamentally nutters concerning the value of vaccines.
No, that comment asserts that it only takes one small unreasonable conclusion to send you down the path toward an anti-vax conclusion. That's not what reasonable doubt is.
> ... but there was no expectation it would ever be 100 percent
Not sure where this straw man argument came from but I'll bite.
The point isn't to get a certain number of people vaccinated and never was. The point is to eliminate preventable diseases that can be deadly or cause permanent harm (eg paralysis, infertility). To do that you need herd immunity, which is typically quoted at 95%+ immunity.
The US achieved this and "eliminated" measles in 2000 but thanks to promulgating baseless falsehoods and people losing the memory of the effects of diseases, immunization rates began to fall and diseases that were effectively eliminated returned.
While you seem to want to paint anti-vaxxers as those simply having a bad reaction, I beg to differ. Even if true, the tactics border on the truly abhorrent [1].
Some people genuinely can't get vaccines. This is also why vaccination never will be at 100% and why it's important that anyone who medically can get a vaccine should as that herd immunity protects the vulnerable.
While you seem to want to paint anti-vaxxers as those simply having a bad reaction
No, and I'm not sure how to more clearly state that isn't my point.
Certainly at this point, it's a movement and there are latecomers who believe in it without having been personally burned. But I spent some years on a forum where active members were people trying to resolve serious health issues and being dismissed by mainstream medicine as nutters in a way they found very personally threatening because of their history.
Some of those people were very well educated and articulate. If you radicalize a small group of persuasive people, it shouldn't be shocking when the result is some kind of movement born of their efforts at self defense for survival reasons.
I'm sorry but taking a 'both sides' stance here is remarkably disingenuous and ignores the current reason why anti-vaxxers exist.
We, as a society, already make exceptions for people who cannot have vaccines. I would know, as I went through an incredibly bad allergic reaction to vaccines as a child. You can ask anyone advocating for vaccinations and they will tell you that yes, vaccines can have side effects and people can have adverse reactions.
The root cause of the anti-vaxx movement isn't those people. It's people who take a purely ideological stance against vaccines, ignoring the scientific fact that vaccines in general are safe in favor of believing that vaccines cause autism or any number of bullshit things created by quacks. People are abusing exceptions to vaccinations and in turn are directly threatening people like myself who may not have an actual choice in the matter. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't use people like me as a smokescreen for those that threaten my well-being.
When you choose to not vaccinate, you're no longer talking about just your life. You're talking about the lives of those around you.
You cannot frame the argument solely in terms of 'your own life' unless we're talking about vaccinations for diseases that don't spread across the population. The flu may be milder than most diseases, but the flu can and does kill people. Including those that are young and healthy.
People give you absolute hell for it because it's a selfish line of thought if you don't actually have a good excuse for not vaccinating. And the anti-vaxx movement more often than not does not have a good excuse.
So it's okay for you to not vaccinate because you have a good excuse. It's not okay for me to skip a historically non mandatory vaccine, nor to advocate for my own right to protect my own life and health.
This is exactly the line of reasoning I'm criticizing. This is the type of ugly argument that radicalizes people with serious health issues who find it beneficial to not vaccinate, but don't have "the right excuse" to make that okay for them.
You were all up in arms at the idea that I was talking about you. You are still being attacking when it's my life on the line here.
Okay then, let's establish a baseline: What, exactly then, is your reason for skipping vaccination? What is your exact reason? I've given mine for why I have had to avoid some vaccines in the past.
Because as I've established above, people who cannot get vaccines for legitimate health reasons (such as allergic reactions or compromised immune systems) are already protected by the system that exists. Otherwise if you're denying vaccines for ideological reasons: You are threatening the lives of other people for no good reason.
I've already stated my reason above: people who were helping to save my life recommended against them and skipping them has proven beneficial.
I'm supposed to be dead. Much of the world has a very big problem with my rude failure to die on schedule from a condition so bad it's classified as a dread disease.
Your further insistence that I owe you some kind of explanation for my personal medical choice flies in the face of HIPAA, something
I had annual training in when I had a job with a Fortune 500 company.
> You can ask anyone advocating for vaccinations and they will tell you that yes, vaccines can have side effects and people can have adverse reactions.
This isn’t my experience. Most people I know refer to people who do not vaccinate their kids as “antivax wackos” because they (my friends) believe that vaccines are almost 100% effective and 100% harmless. If they thought there were side effects or adverse reactions they couldn’t paint all people who don’t vaccinate with the “wacko” brush.
I’m glad to hear that you have encountered people who are more enlightened, but I wanted to point out that this is not everyone’s experience.
Note: I have vaccinated my kids and I regularly get the flu shot. I live in Silicon Valley, for context of where I’m encountering the folks I described.
EDIT: can you explain why you’re downvoting this? Do you doubt that this is my experience, find it irrelevant, or something else?
I'm just going to note here that all replies to me have been pretty ugly, even -- to my surprise -- the reply from the person I replied to who was actively taking an apologist position on behalf of anti-vaxxers, yet still has some big issue with me tossing out my two cents as to the likely origins of the movement.
My point is only that being between two arbitrarily chosen extremes does not make a position any more or less likely to be correct. It's not a sound form of reasoning and not a good foundation from which to argue correctness.
To pick an extreme example: the morally correct position between "genocide" and "no genocide" is not "some genocide".
You implicitly assume that I chose some random midpoint based on mathematically dividing the two.
You are still guilty of assuming that it isn't possible to have some more nuanced position than "either for them or against them!" rooted in actually reading and thinking through things.
Implying I'm utterly crazy with your first example doesn't exactly help here.
> You implicitly assume that I chose some random midpoint based on mathematically dividing the two.
Please accept my apologies for being less than maximally clear.
I am not assuming your position is a randomly selected midpoint. I am not assuming your position is based on mathematically dividing between two extremes. I am asserting that you have a position between two extremes.
Which, assuming that I interpret what you have written correctly, is what you have claimed to be true.
> You are still guilty of assuming that it isn't possible to have some more nuanced position than "either for them or against them!" rooted in actually reading and thinking through things.
Again, please accept my deep and heartfelt apologies for being unclear. It's definitely, absolutely, completely possible to have a nuanced, thought-out, and supportable position between any two extremes. To draw on a previous example, not everyone agrees that broccoli is delicious, and this is both a reasonable and defensible position to hold.
It may be worth considering that the reasonableness of a position could be independent of its distance from extremes. Or even independent of who does or does not agree with you.
My point is merely this: being a moderate between any two extremes is not magical. It does not a position correct. It does not make a position incorrect. It is completely irrelevant to the question of correctness.
Again, please accept my apologies if I was in any way unclear. I intended no insult whatsoever, in any way, shape, form, or manner. I do hope I have helped clarify matters somewhat, but please let me know if I have not risen to the task I have set myself.
My point is merely this: being a moderate between any two extremes is not magical. It does not a position correct.
I never asserted that it did. Only that both camps are equally unwilling to consider the possibility that a reasonable position exists other than their own. Pro vaxxers and anti vaxxers are equally guilty of framing this as "you must be in one camp or the other, period." Such framing inevitably sucks the oxygen out of the discussion and makes it impossible to have civil intellectual discourse.
To extend, being attacked by multiple camps of people who all disagree with a moderated position is silent on the correctness - or sanity - of all involved.
No. The pattern of behavior in both this discussion and the world generally is not rational.
My original comment was simply about my opinion about where this movement began. You and other people have largely ignored that to engage in various forms of dismissiveness of me personally.
If pro vaxxers were as rational as they like to claim, commenting on the origin of the antivax movement shouldn't result in this kind of pattern of behavior.
I can kinda sorta see that for new vaccines. But old vaccines like measles and polio? Those scourges are demonstrably defeated by the vaccines.
That’s what really drives me nuts about this. People lined up to receive these miracle cures. Devastating common diseases became near myths. All of this happened within living memory. And we’re to believe that it’s all a conspiracy by big pharma?
So how do they explain away the USSR (which I presume is understood not to have operated under similar economic incentives)? They also believed in vaccination and did vaccinate their population. Were they complicit in a world-wide cross economic-system conspiracy to get everyone vaccinated?
I think these people are constructing a made up excuse to excuse themselves.
"it's not so much the fear mongering, it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives."
It's fear that fuels that distrust and places the burden of proof on the pro-vaccine side. A rational person, unmoved by emotion, would see that there's far more reason to trust vaccines than to not. It's not irrational to say there's some reason to scrutinize medical industry studies, but in the case of vaccines there's also overwhelming evidence that they work. Fear turns that small case against the studies into a foregone conclusion which must be disproved, instead of simply the side with less supporting evidence. And it's much harder to disprove something than to provide greater evidence to the contrary.
Ask any pro in their profession what do they think about newspaper articles from their own area of expertise. Now where do most people get information about areas they aren't working in? If it's that bad in paid journalism, how much worse is it when you expand your source of information to Reddit, YouTube autoplay etc.?
I hear this a lot but this website right here is full of professionals reading news articles about their area of expertise and besides the occasional accusation of sensationalism most articles are treated as accurate.
Mainstream press gets details wrong all the time; when I read newspaper and magazine articles about a subject I'm very familiar with, I can usually identify some misunderstanding or oversimplification or other mistake. But I can't recall any instance of encountering mainstream media getting something so egregiously wrong as to be comparable to mixing up "vaccinate" vs "don't vaccinate". Nor have any of the health care professionals I know ever disputed the pro-vaccination consensus as reported by the press.
Because we have been conditioned to accept that journalists use the wrong facts or incorrect values when reporting about something and we automatically correct the context and semantics.
Say what? The global vaccine market was over 30 Billion dollars in 2018. This is the most lucrative pharma market because you are medicating the whole population including healthy people, no other medication can top that.
Not only that, but in the US the pharmaceuticals are shielded from liability for vaccines in stark contrast to any other medication type. How's that not a profit center?
The whole reason the liability shield program exists is concerns that if pharma companies were exposed to lawsuits from the inevitable vaccination reactions that happen or are purported to happen, they'd just drop out of a low-profit market.
Don't you see certain hypocrisy in this? Aren't we told that vaccines are safe?
The whole reason that the liability shield exists was a reaction to the DTP vaccine debacle. Which was eventually taken off the market in many countries including the US.
Nothing is perfectly safe. To be clear, I'm not in favor of anyone being held down at gunpoint and administered a vaccine. I'm fine with at least some organizations, including schools, requiring participants to have been vaccinated or have medical exemptions.That preserves the ability to opt out if you are so concerned about the risks but implies certain trade-offs.
You are confusing revenue and profit. Vaccine companies historically don’t make much profit, especially when compared to pharmaceutical companies who make and sell drug compounds.
Uh....you just responded to someone saying "most of the profits aren't from vaccinations" with the profit for an entire company that provides everything from cancer treatments to diabetes medications to also everything else.
They did call out Gardasil as a major cause of the increase in profits from the previous year, but it wasn't 6.2B by any stretch of the imagination.
> From the anti-vaxers I've talked to, it's not so much the fear mongering, it's their distrust of scientific studies due to economic incentives.
I would call that the equivalent of fear mongering because pharma companies don't make much or any on vaccines, and the US government had to even pass a special liability law in order to keep vaccines being made.
I think it’s this (skepticism that big-pharma funded studies can be legit) plus a reaction to the intensity of the aggressive push to vaccinate. (My friend put it to me this way- The government wants me to vaccinate my kids, but doesn’t want me to have public health insurance, paternity leave, etc. If they really cared about health, why are they not pushing vitamins or organic vegetables?)
Vaccinations are really low-hanging fruit. Even severely underdeveloped economies get their pops vaccinated. It staves off mass pandemics. And it costs so little to prevent so much. I really can't understand these kinds of absurd arguments.
> My friend put it to me this way- The government wants me to vaccinate my kids, but doesn’t want me to have public health insurance, paternity leave, etc. If they really cared about health, why are they not pushing vitamins or organic vegetables?
vaccines are a (roughly) one-time cost. you can be vaccinated faster than you can eat an organic carrot, and with wildly less infrastructural overhead than paying for everyone's health care.
the benefit : cost ratio for vaccines is astronomical compared to the benefit : cost ratio of any of those other things, even if they had the benefits ascribed to them.
Can we please stop it with this "Organic vegetables are better than normal vegetables" nonsense? Seriously, I can't even tell you how many times I've heard that BS as an excuse for why these mother forkers out there say they can't afford to eat healthy, and I'm saying this as a poor very fit person myself.
You don't need to eat organic vegetables to eat healthy. You just need to eat vegetables, period, full stop, hold the phone, stop the presses, etc.
There's many that believe that educated people are above having baseless beliefs. There's plenty of evidence showing that that belief itself is baseless too. Funny that.
You can see this mistaken belief whenever people decry that there are "smart" people that believe dumb things outside their profession. Well, "dumb" people believe dumb things outside their profession too.
When it comes to believing this stuff, people tend to just be people. The "smart" get special attention because some of us incorrectly assume they should be immune to it. But they're obviously not.
Honestly, for most people, an effective model is to think of it like a sport. It's something people obsess over, can impact their emotions and otherwise is pretty harmless
> No one who doesn't believe it would phrase things that way.
And why do you say that? Do you have any reason to think I'm not being earnest other than your "hunch"? Is that really the quality of discussion you want to have with complete strangers who are otherwise saying nothing offensive whatsoever- to question their sincerity? Seems pretty whack to me.
I believe you're being earnest. I'm taking what you're saying as what you mean.
When someone says "I don't believe X" it means they don't believe it.
When someone says "I don't necessarily believe X" it means they kinda do believe it.
Not one person who believes the world is spherical would ever say (or agree that it correctly captures their view) the statement "I don't necessarily believe the world is flat".
[EDIT: I thought this example might help make things clearer.
version 1:
- wife to husband: you're spending a lot of time with that new co-worker. Do you find her attractive?
- husband: no, I don't find her attractive.
&
version 2:
- wife to husband: you're spending a lot of time with that new co-worker. Do you find her attractive?
- husband: no, I don't necessarily find her attractive.
A husband that genuinely did not find the co-worker attractive would never express things in the second way. It's clear in that second way that he does find her attractive to some extent but doesn't want to say it]
Sometimes "I don't necessarily believe..." is used when the person feels awkward admitting that they have some belief, or when they haven't consciously realised that they do. It can be when they haven't fully admitted it to themselves.
Actually I'm with you. I had to google the definition of "necessarily" and it does imply that I could believe it. Maybe I'm culturally programmed to use the word even if I don't understand it's full meaning when I'm using it?
Anyway, I would reword the entire post to remove the word necessarily but I'll leave it in case anyone else reads it and might make the same
Mistake.
I don't think you're completely wrong to be offended, but it's also worthwhile to know that people may interpret your phrasing differently than you intended.
New York in general is a very superstitious place. There are a lot of people here who came from the Old World a century ago and those superstitions came with them. Psychic readings, crystal balls, crystals, Tarot cards, all that.
But this kind of thing tends to also serve as a psychological aid. People with anxiety being told things they want to hear. For some psychics serve as de facto therapists.
This isn't to say there aren't charlatans and scammers who take advantage of the vulnerable and impressionable.
But on the whole, Astrology and the like are "harmless", at which point I personally don't care. People are entitled to their personal foolishness.
So here's one thing to consider about Astrology -- it is essentially a natural calendar. And there is the phrase that history repeats itself, or at least it rhymes. So putting those two together, I can see how people can look to the stars for answers. Well, that and confirmation bias whenever a coincidence happens.
For the kind of statistical significance (read: confirmation bias) that astrology relies upon, anything will work. Horoscopes could be written based not on astrological sign, but on the first letter of street name of a person's first address and apply. Search hard enough, and some sort of correlation can almost always be found.
Astrology has some value, in the same way alchemy has value: it helped start serious scientific inquiry into astronomy. Sadly, while there are now vanishingly small amounts of people who take alchemy seriously, astrology is a relatively common belief to hold, even among people who are scientifically-minded. It puts me in mind of the first 9/11 truther I knew, who was a close friend who should have known better. However, at the time she was willing to buy into it, simply because it played into her anti-GWBush sentiments. This is after I explained how the statements were false, and backed it up w/ evidence (having queried my father, who was a mining engineer and had done building implosions in his career as a blasting contractor).
Unfortunately, "smart people" can just as easily fall prey to these types of delusions, it seems to be a common human trait (like all the logical fallacies). Thinking that one is immune paradoxically makes one more susceptible to these types of errors, rather the best defense is to recognize that no, nobody is immune. Much in the same way as ignoring advertising's effect on decision-making.
> Those early formative years influence attitudes and expectations about success, academically and socially, and that can possibly stay with an individual.
Maybe there’s no measurable difference by adulthood, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was.
I don't understand this comparison. The calendar we use is already natural and the most logical one. Days and years are very real physical phenomena. One tracks the highly relevant daytime/nighttime light cycle and the other tracks the highly relevant annual seasons cycle. And then behind these two there's also the Lunar calendar, which can be relevant if you're near the ocean because it's connected to tides, and also the amount of available light at night when the Moon is shining.
Compared to days, years, and Lunar months, what does astrology give us, orbits of other planets? Distant constellations? Who cares?! This doesn't affect our daily life in the slightest. Astrology doesn't add anything. The normal calendars we already use are the best and most relevant.
Celestial bodies give multiple calendars covering different periods, and taken in various combinations they give patterns that are at various rhythmic intervals. I wonder if that affects people's beliefs in astrology somewhat, that gives more opportunities for a coincidence to occur?
what about the fact that the constellations have move significantly since the dawn of astrology thousands of years ago? shouldn’t something be updated, or why is/isn’t the “calendar” way off?
>>it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education.
There's an old adage that science advances one funeral at a time - The scientific community is far from immune to this problem. People who are trained and employed full time to apply critical thinking and empirical testing still fall for superstition. It's an unsolvable problem until we reach a point where we can replace human brains with cold, unfeeling robots.
Fear warps cognition. It doesn't matter how smart or educated you are, fear will reshape the way you think, and in a way that's really hard to be aware of even if you're a generally self-aware person. The only way to break out of it is to distrust fear itself and postpone decisions about fearful topics until you've released the emotion itself. I almost think mindfulness should be a part of standardized education.
Plenty of really smart people believe in religion, too. It's a lot more complicated than just saying "Someone believes in X irrational belief, thus they can't be smart", especially since they easily could be really smart in other areas. Your views on vaccines, religion, and any number of other things really have very little bearing on how good of a software engineer you are.
Trouble is, people tend to forget they are domain experts. I trust my doctor for medical advice, but I don't consider them any more competent to dispense legal advice than a random acquaintance. However, it is common for highly-competent people in a domain to feel they are more qualified than average in other domains (which is a trait I actively work to control myself). Software devs seem very susceptible to this, since a large part of the field involves being able to quickly learn enough about a subdomain of knowledge to implement a required solution. I'm no expert statistician, but I have implemented multiple projects that required knowledge of statistics. However, I'm just at the point of "knowing what I don't know", while I haven't studied enough classical mechanics to truly grasp how much I don't know. So while I feel I have a good working knowledge of statics, asking me to design a bridge would be foolish. Sure, I may think I 'could' design a bridge, but that is just folly.
Yeah, 100% this. What's more, this is also quite common among actual scientists too. Quite a few creationists/intelligent design advocates are academics whose credentials are in fields completely unrelated to biology/evolutionary biology, but quite a few cranks/pseudoscience believers/theorists are in a similar situation.
> how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering
If I were to wager a guess, I'd say this is because people who feel like they're very good at logic/rational thought underestimate the effect emotions can have on motivating a belief?
I wonder if technology could be used to push back against this problem.
For example-- what if there were a hub for videos that would analyze an anti-vaxxer's viewing habits and recommend level-headed, reliable scientific content in the sidebar?
I'm glad California has started clamping down on personal belief exemptions
... but CA has a high propensity of foreign travelers and entrants. The big North Bay school infection stemmed from travelers returning from Vietnam, where all the kids in the family were infected.
> The scary thing about anti-vaxxers, at least to me, is how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering.
Argh, it sucks... it sucks so friggin much. I've been trying to articulate my feelings on this for the past few weeks. There is a breakdown of thinking throughout our society. It's not just that critical thinking is impaired, but rather the ability to endure any sort of criticism of one's belief structure is gone.
So we know you can't throw facts down at a person when they state an immediate falsehood. You must combat it, but the tactic to combating such a falsehood requires an emotional component.
Seeing videos of iron lungs terrified me as a kid, I had remembered seeing a few elders with shriveled arms from polio. These emotional experiences burn upon you far more than the impersonal fact: that diseases maim and kill. But we just want to develop fantasies and live inside our filter bubbles because of course it's easier to believe the distrust that vaccines are just a delivery mechanism for the government's nanomachines.
> is how susceptible educated people can be to essentially baseless fear mongering
The same argument is being used against the pro-vax community. The article by the ahem "esteemed" journalism that is Buzzfeed is an example that seems to be pandering to a certain audience. The kind of audience that is quick to insult anti-vaxxers as being some sort of stupid degenerate or other over the top propaganda. Propaganda being another reason not to trust the message.
> it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education
Same accusation going the other way. I'm don't want to get into the particulars (this will be a long thread), however, there are a number of pro-vax advocates who don't make a good impression with their obvious sophism. I can provide links to videos of debates involving highly reputable pro-vaccine advocates to back this up, but I want to keep this first post more at a meta level.
I understand that you are preaching to a certain choir & I will suffer the wrath because I dare question the orthodoxy, but that's the rub; our own presuppositions affect how we perceive the matter.
> giving baseless medical exemptions
Many people see forced medication as being a baseless intrusion by the state onto a population. For example, have you read "A Brave New World"? Injections were used to create the caste system. Forced inoculation & diet has been used to create an underclass in many societies. Many people also oppose Fluoride & Lithium being added to the water supply. For how long was Glysophate deemed "proven safe", yet we find out later it's highly toxic. Note that there were people who were opposed to the usage of Glysophate for a long time & many of those same people oppose vaccines.
There's also a lack of studies of the individual compounds & even less research into the combination of said compounds. Yet vaccine proponents are uncomfortably eager to deem vaccines as safe despite a lack of research. So safe, as safe or safer than saline solution it seems...It makes the pro-vaccine crowd sound delusional & religious at worst, or rash in judgement due to fear of the global pandemic apocalypse at best. Not saying there aren't good arguments, but much of the rhetoric being thrown around is hostile bullying, tbh.
I recommend that proponents of vaccines strongly discourage bullying from their side, because it completely discredits their argument of forced vaccination & makes them look like proponents of totalitarianism.
> In New York we've had cases of immunization records being falsified
Does this imply the validity of some studies are in doubt? New York, for being such a large population, seems to have a lack of outbreaks since the Spanish Flu.
I did some quick research, and I fail to find proof that glyphosate is "highly toxic". Sounds like the consensus is that it is either mildly bad for you, or not bad for you.
This is why we have an independent media, since corporate media tends to favor their customers (the advertisers & major shareholders); that is until it become blatantly obvious there's a problem. Then other tactics are used to gain control of the narrative. This is also why some monopolists are angry & want to censor & co-opt the independent media; too much competition in the marketplace of ideas...
Also, vaccine manufacturers are legally immune from lawsuits & there's a fund to pay off victims of vaccine damage.
So the argument in question was about a technical matter which is not appropriate to share externally. The software engineer with "strong anti-vax opinions" believed that vaccines are net beneficial, but not that they should be absolutely forced by pulling a child out of parent's arms. In return, you and "many others" threatened to report their kids to authorities.
Or maybe it was another debate, can't tell from limited context. In any case, either it was work-related, in which case engineer in question had full right to express an opinion. Or, it was pure idle chit chat, in which case it seems unprofessional to pile on, let alone share externally years later. Are you also in the habit of posting office gossip from Facebook on this site?
As for personal belief exemptions, Trump declared a national emergency on Southern border. If civilians are somehow deputized to build the wall, do you want to be forced into it or to be able to declare a personal belief exemption?
Your argument would be more effective if you don't state it in such absolutist terms. Do you really believe that vaccines are so safe that anyone who has any doubts about their safety is anti-science? The science of immunology itself does not give you that level of certainty.
Here is a book on Vaccines and Auto-Immunity written by highly credentialed immunologists.
So when I worked at Google I (and many others) got into an argument with a software engineer who had strong anti-vax opinions and honestly, it's mind-boggling how removed from reality people can get, even people with a supposed science education.
I'm glad California has started clamping down on personal belief exemptions. That still leaves medical exemptions and unfortunately it seems like some doctors are complicit in giving baseless medical exemptions.
In New York we've had cases of immunization records being falsified. I'm not sure if it's by doctors or parents (maybe both).
Honestly any medical professional who falsifies immunization records or provides bogus medical exemptions needs to be jailed.
So I'm honestly not surprised measles is showing up in SV tech companies.