Anti-vax movement effectively reversing decades of progress internationally | Hacker News Reader

Anti-vax movement effectively reversing decades of progress internationally

qz.com

51 pointsrahuldottech31 comments

I will write the same comment I wrote on the reddit thread.

I think calling it a 'movement' is part of the problem. We as a society allow this discourse which gives it a legitimacy that it simply should not have.

The most immediate consequence of this is that suddenly journalists are forced to entertain vacine ignorance as a 'valid' or defensable viewpoint to pretend that we have both sides of the 'argument'.

It's 2019, there is no argument to be had, stop trying to be respectful, entertaining this is a public health threat.

> I think calling it a 'movement' is part of the problem. We as a society allow this discourse which gives it a legitimacy that it simply should not have.

But it is a movement. That it is has nothing to do with the legitimacy of their goals and ideas. We haven't elevated it by calling it a movement. That we call a spade a spade doesn't imply respect.

> The most immediate consequence of this is that suddenly journalists are forced to entertain vacine ignorance as a 'valid' or defensable viewpoint to pretend that we have both sides of the 'argument'.

What is the basis for saying that this is a consequence of calling it a movement?

Let's pick up the good old reductio ad Hitlerium.

Neonazis are also a movement, but nobody thinks even a split second of giving them platform to spread their ideas.

Views that kill people are rightly prohibited.

What will be next, an anti-seatbelt league?

> Neonazis are also a movement, but nobody thinks even a split second of giving them platform to spread their ideas.

Hence no one has taken the word "movement" in that case to imply respect and legitimacy. Why should you?

Although the word itself is technically neutral the word 'movement' is loaded with positive connotations such as 'civil rights movements', people will automatically associate it with a progressive/positive mobilization of people.

Taking the example from parent you would not see the wording used for far-right groups. Although they are 'technically' a movement you would see them described as far-right 'groups' or even far-right 'radicals'.

> Although the word itself is technically neutral the word 'movement' is loaded with positive connotations such as 'civil rights movements', people will automatically associate it with a progressive/positive mobilization of people.

So if I call something "neo-nazi movement" will people automatically associate it with a progressive/positive mobilization of people? I think that you overestimate the positive connotations of what you already agree is an entirely neutral word.

> Taking the example from parent you would not see the wording used for far-right groups.

I frequently see neo-nazi groups referred to as movements (especially in plural, since there are many different ideologies with followers that can all fairly be described as neo-nazi movements). To call them "far-right groups" or "far-right radicals" is an euphemism because it drops specificity and bundles neo-nazis together with other radical far right movemenents. Referring to nazis and fascists as the "alt-right" has probably done them a greater service than calling a spade a spade ever has.

Full title:

The anti-vax movement is effectively reversing decades of progress in disease prevention. WHO no longer consider measles to be eradicated in the UK, Albania, Czech Republic, and Greece.

Weirdest intro I've seen all week

> It is a coincidence that the news broke the day after Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, provoked widespread outrage by proroguing parliament.

It's not a coincidence; it's just something completely unrelated.

This is the age of confirmation bias. Something bad happening? It’s because is your political opponents and policies you disagree with.

Also the UK government is explicitly pro-vaccination.

It's so bizarre seeing measles come back. It's like some terrible thing out of Jurassic Park, "life finds a way."

Well I guess the antivaxers will be eradicated before the diseases.

Unfortunately, they will end "eradicating" some sane people as well....

Dividing the issue into pro-vax and anti-vax spreads FUD and obscures the real problems: what preservatives are in the vaccines, what growth medium proteins are in the vaccines due to improper filtering and poor manufacturing processes, how many vaccines are administered at what age, and what all of that that has to do vaccines harming kids (which happens all the time)... bring up any of these issues and you'll be attacked as an antivaxxer who's trying to send us back to the stone age.

I think the fact that we need to portray vaccines as essentially infallable in order to combat the insanity of the anti-vax movement is indeed very dangerous and worrisome. There's so much nonsense to combat that having an actual conversation is impossible.

After all, vaccines aren't risk-free, but they don't cause autism.

This is one of these things that is technically true, but still misleading.

Nothing is risk-free. Eating food has risk, taking paracetamol has risk, getting blood drawn has risk.

Saying something has risk without talking about the amount of risk and the context of the risks it mitigates is pointless.

Vaccines introduce negligible amounts of risk. Giving your child a peanut or taking them for a drive is much riskier, and we almost all do those things without a second thought. By contrast, they mitigate huge risks: the diseases we vaccinate against can, did and do cause horrific harm up to and including death, and do so very well.

Vaccines are not immune to criticism, it is just they have weathered all the reasonable criticism leveled at them. If you are willing to put your child in a car, giving them a vaccine should be a complete non-issue for you.

Yup, some conversations you’re just not allowed to have. Same with discussing the degree to which humans are contributing to climate change.

No. Impurity problems have occasionally come up over the years, but they have largely been addressed quickly by existing regulations. And at no point have they ever approached the level of risk posed by the return of deadly infectious diseases. Age-related harms are largely unproven, and while they certainly warrant research, the percentage of issues again doesn't approach significance with comparison to infectious diseases.

There isn't a mass conspiracy of doctors to cover up the harms done to kids by vaccinations. The harms are understood well enough, now, to know unambiguously that the tradeoff of vaccinating your kids is more than worth it. More knowledge is always worthwhile, but we have enough knowledge now to decide that vaccinations are unambiguously the right path, and there is no scientific basis for reopening the discussion on that subject.

The "real problems" are the returning infectious diseases which have the potential to kill millions of people. I simply do not care about the issues you are bringing up when i.e. the return of rubella or polio is a real possibility.

The reason you get "attacked as an antivaxer" is because you are using weasel words to come to a conclusion that is not supported by any evidence, and presenting it as basic fact.

The claims that all of these vague areas you point to might be issues are clearly just designed to put doubt into people's minds. They sound like they could be reasonable concerns, but I have never seen any evidence to back any of these up as real issues, despite intense scrutiny of vaccines.

Am I the only one who doesn't actually care what anti-vaxxers do?

It's their purpose of life and happiness. If they want to die from easily preventable diseases, who am I to tell them otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

Sure.

That general principal for any number of partially or fully controllable diseases.

But how far does that go?

How much can I assert control over general sexual behavior because I want to contain AIDS?

It's called herd immunity, and they're undermining it.

Are they, though? I was under the impression anti-vaxxers are a tiny minority of mostly crazy people. Do we have hard numbers of the number of kids not getting vaccinated?

Follow the links in the article. For example:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/19/mmr-vaccine-...

The figures are sourced from Public Health England which is part of the UK Government.

Also in the article:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/29/lives-at-ris...

Data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed nearly 90,000 cases and 37 deaths were reported across 48 of the 53 countries in the WHO European region in the first six months of 2019.

The data is coming from reputable sources.

> mostly crazy people

Sadly there's plenty of non-crazy parents who've spent far too much time believing the conspiracy theories and rubbish that originated from Andrew Wakefield's[0] bogus claims. I have a friend who's grandchildren haven't yet been vaccinated because their parents believe this rubbish. These are not crazy people.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

Ask the parent of a premature baby, or a child on chemotherapy or immuno-compromised in some other fashion. The rage of a mother bear is comparable.

The problem is that vaccines are not 100% effective even on people that receive them so that group of people could still get the disease and now there is a percentage of people not getting the vaccines at all and creating a greater opportunity for exposure.

Ignoring the herd immunity benefit for the moment, most anti-vaxxers are making the decision for their innocent kids and not themselves.

but notice they only do it for their kids out of selfishness

The problem is this reduces herd immunity and radically increases risk to people who for medical reasons are at high risk already and can't have vaccines for one reason or another.

They are making these choices on behalf of kids. So it's not just their own life and happiness.

As others have already mentioned it also reduces herd immunity that's needed to protect people who cannot get the vaccine for legit medical reasons: allergy, cancer treatment, recent coma, etc.

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