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Comment by Sarki | Hacker News Reader

This mostly comes down to the irrationality regarding risks when you're having kids.

Out of my own experience, and given the worst cases scenarios you hear from it's difficult not to fear for your loved ones (and I mean you literally feel it in your loins) especially when YOUR decision can have even the slightest chance of ruining their lives. -- Edit: Please don't get me wrong, I have kids, and their vaccines are up to date (like mine). A chat with an hospital pediatrist can help, for me it's when he clearly explained that without vaccines a kid can be gone within 2 hours. And virtually it's as narrow minded as refusing to take antibiotics.

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It's something more than this.

There was a discussion on the "American Cargo Cult" some days ago on HN: https://web.archive.org/web/20030812081806/http://klausler.c...

It’s not difficult. There’s ample statistical evidence available, and super high quality resources online such as CDC if one wanted to educate themselves.

It’s people being lazy and wanting to subject the world to their ego of “I’m so smart because I believe in something contrary to the mainstream or against the establishment”.

There’s clear proof of fraud by the idiot that started the nonsense rumors of vaccine harm, and not a single person who knows basic math has shown risk of harm. There is no excuse, other than wanting to satisfy your own ego.

Nope, you misread me, I clearly stated the term "irrationality".

I consider myself as educated, though having your own kids and being responsible for their life and well-being is what makes you doubt vaccines, especially when you read about people developing multiple sclerosis or other neurodegenerative symptoms following a vaccination.

The cause of the irrational behavior is the idea that one is more qualified than medical researchers in every developed country after reading a few websites about vaccine “effects”. To me, that is to satisfy one’s ego. An educated person knows where the limits of their knowledge is, and becoming a parent does not endow you with the ability to analyze vaccine efficacy, or any other subject matter.

For some parents it may be ego or hubris, for others irrational fear, and in many cases it may be driven by the consensus of a social group that someone identifies with.

The fact that individuals are making decision contrary to available evidence and data may be hard to accept (esp. for the HN community) but it happens all the time.

In order to convince people to change their behavior, appealing to the emotional and pro-social drivers may be more effective than providing better rational arguments.

To be clear: I am not endorsing people making obviously bad decisions, it drives me crazy, and I am 100% pro vaccines.

I have kids. I have not once doubted vaccines, because I am literate and have a minimum level of reasoning ability.

You're misreading the GP just so you can be a pedant about it.

GP's post is excellent because it highlights where the irrationality comes from. If you want to convince parents with antivaxx tendencies of anything, don't begin by calling them lazy or having ego issues.

Address their fears, explain how the risk of not vaccinating 1000x higher than any perceived risk vaccination can have.

I'm a parent and my kids go to a hippie school (hippie by Dutch standards, i.e. not very). The school is great but one downside is there's a disproportionate amount of antivaxxers among the parents. They very deeply believe in it, not unlike deeply religious people. I've seen it happen, calling them idiots is only going to light their fire. But reminding people why this entire vaccination thing got started in the first place can truly help sway people who are on the fence. Most young-ish people who grew up in the west have no perception about how terrible these diseases are because nobody around them gets them anymore.

Friend of a friend stumbled across a more effective method.

Ask antivaxxers "What if anti-vaccine information is fake news planted by Russia to weaken our country?" (Not sure if the geopolitics play in your locale, salt to taste)

Only half-joking. It's surprisingly effective because it plays with their (a) propensity to believe conspiracies, (b) distrust of traditional media, (c) distrust of governments, (d) desire to feel smarter than everyone else.

I think the inquisition against the ignorant is also in it to satisfy their egos, so we have two groups that are playing this game.

We have public health care and you always get at least a vaccine against tetanus if you even hit your small toe and go to the doc. Slightly exaggerated but not by much. Nobody questioned it. And it wasn't esoteric moms on youtube that let people be skeptical, it was the pressure to enforce vaccination that did. I have no data, but these are the usual behavior patterns you can currently observe in almost all political debates.

Enforcing vaccinations is mostly a populist policy.

> And virtually it's as narrow minded as refusing to take antibiotics

Antibiotics are over prescribed. And due to that we enjoy Multidrug-resistant bacteria. Antibiotics are the opposite of vaccines. By taking them needlessly you fuck up everyone else.

No, I think this is a dangerous excuse for unacceptable behaviour. Caring "irrationally" about your kids is taking them to the doctor a small cough that is probably zero cause for concern. It's zealously taking them for their shots and for their medicine, etc.

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