The devastating impact of vaccine deniers, in one measles chart

This is tangental:

I am getting really sick of the use of the term "denier." It's become cliched to a point where it become a euphemism intended to heard people into mental boxes and obscure rather than convey meaning.

I don't have all that much sympathy for people who don't follow the normal vaccination schedule for their kids. I think it's somewhat complex though. For example, some vaccines are more for public than private health. I think it's valid to be weirded out by a strong demand that kids go through a medical procedure for the good of humanity, rather than their own health.

On one hand I think the work being done by the Gates Foundation on wiping out Polio is incredible. On the other, how much pressure is reasonable to put on parents to vaccinate their children against an illness that poses less danger to them than meteors.

In any case, "denier" has become a term that almost always diminishes nuance and meaning rather than enhancing it. It ensures an us-and-them format to a topic. It also has a real nasty connotation (in my mind) to heresy. A heretic is a denier. In the wake of last week's attacks in Paris, it sounds even worse to me.

These people may be wrong or misguided. You might disagree with their assumptions, their conclusions or even their values. But, there is no reason or utility in this nastiness. There is less chance of convincing anyone with this language. And to those of us on the opposite side of the debate, it makes us dumber to allow such mental patterns to dominate our thinking.

Vaccines are necessary and we shouldn't take the anti-vaccine movement lightly.

But -- the argument here, and the accompanying chart, make me very uncomfortable. The author makes the explicit claim that the chart proves vaccine deniers have caused a massive explosion of measles cases.

The author then offers one opinion poll's number, for a single year.

That's all we have, in this argument, to conclude causation. It's just not enough.

The trend is not at all clear from the graph -- with every line the same color, there is no movement, no trend here.

Without a matching history of even that one opinion poll, we can't even make a statistically inappropriate assumption that there's a correlation between vaccine opinion and measles cases.

This is a poorly formed argument about a serious topic. These sorts of misfires are dangerous in that they can add fuel to the non-science-based side of a debate that threatens lives...

Edit: The author misquoted the actual numbers in the 2014 study he linked through to -- 53% of respondents were Extremely or Very Confident that vaccines for children were effective. Another 30% were Somewhat confident.

In all, 83% of respondents were confident enough that they would/would probably have a vaccine administered.

The WonkBlog has been producing some hit-or-miss content recently. There was another "Literally every goat in the US" graph they put out that, while humorous, suggested rounding up to the nearest 500 goats was "literally" every goat...

those damn vaccine deniers like the cdc. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/should-not-vacc.htm

I'm pointing out that the issue is more complicated than most people make it.

1. Everyone has the right to deny being treated without stigmatization or punishment.

2. Everything the article depends on in its interpretation of the chart, mostly summarized by the 2nd paragraph, is based on unwarranted assumptions.

Kinda over the top, dontcha think? I had measles as a child, and it was hardly "devastating". Chart seems to be missing any indication of the percentage of people vaccinated, so that one can at least see a correlation, let alone infer causation, or "impact"! And since Disneyland is a tourist spot, isn't it at least possible that some of the guests could be people from countries which don't vaccinate for measles? That is assuming that the strain of the current measles outbreak is the same one prevented by the vaccine.