Already told this story, but basically my mother overreacted to a vaccine in the 80s, became an early antivax, had me, only did the bare minimum, I got pertussis at 4-5yo (lucky it wasn't earlier), and since no doctor in the area ever saw pertussis (everyone being vaccinated at the time, and everybody thought I was too, through my mother antibodies), I spent 4 month coughing (I was told), until a retired doctor diagnosed me, and then a few months again, but it was manageable. I have three memories of that time, the first three memories of my life: once coughing so hard I cried on the playground, one lying on my grandmother couch, coughing while she helps me drink, and one after getting treatment (probably for the first time?).
My siblings all got vaccinated after that, and my mother stopped being antivax (still taking 'alternative' medecine, but also still taking conventional one). I guess seeing your child in so much pain and develop arythmia because of your 'beliefs' can make you change. Hopefully things like this will be less and less common.
This is what happens when you ignore basic science and say vaccines that have worked for decades don't work, and then convince 25% of the USA into believing that it's the politically correct stance to take on the topic.
Hot take: delaying without completely suppressing this alerting is the best way to change people's minds about the benefits of preventive measures like vaccination without massive loss of life.
Hot as in, I’m feeling kind of feverish because I’m now sick because we let whooping cough spread to prove a point to people who get their medical information from Facebook.
I was able to dig up this paper that showed 66% of the COVID unvaccinated regretted their decision after hospitalization. The rest were undeterred, even after hospitalization, mostly due to ideology and conspiracies.
But the problem is that I wouldn’t be comfortable risking public health to prove 2/3 of a point to vaccine skeptics who should’ve known better anyway. The Hippocratic oath is to do no harm, and I wouldn’t want a loved one with a suppressed immune system or lung problems to get seriously sick because we let the disease spread by choice.
The real vectors of disinformation are social media, and antivax deaths are downstream of that.
But we don't have any kind of cultural immunity to the kind of propagandised and designed messaging that drives these campaigns.
In the absence of that, learning through consequences - and coming in with the messaging after they happen - is the only thing that can make a difference.
Already told this story, but basically my mother overreacted to a vaccine in the 80s, became an early antivax, had me, only did the bare minimum, I got pertussis at 4-5yo (lucky it wasn't earlier), and since no doctor in the area ever saw pertussis (everyone being vaccinated at the time, and everybody thought I was too, through my mother antibodies), I spent 4 month coughing (I was told), until a retired doctor diagnosed me, and then a few months again, but it was manageable. I have three memories of that time, the first three memories of my life: once coughing so hard I cried on the playground, one lying on my grandmother couch, coughing while she helps me drink, and one after getting treatment (probably for the first time?).
My siblings all got vaccinated after that, and my mother stopped being antivax (still taking 'alternative' medecine, but also still taking conventional one). I guess seeing your child in so much pain and develop arythmia because of your 'beliefs' can make you change. Hopefully things like this will be less and less common.
> I guess seeing your child in so much pain and develop arythmia because of your 'beliefs' can make you change.
keyword being "can" there.
This is what happens when you ignore basic science and say vaccines that have worked for decades don't work, and then convince 25% of the USA into believing that it's the politically correct stance to take on the topic.
Hot take: delaying without completely suppressing this alerting is the best way to change people's minds about the benefits of preventive measures like vaccination without massive loss of life.
Meaning, let the outbreak get bad enough to remind people that vaccines are helpful?
I think that is what they meant. It is crazy, but there's some reasoning behind the crazy. And they did say it was a hot take.
That’s true, it was a hot take indeed.
Hot as in, I’m feeling kind of feverish because I’m now sick because we let whooping cough spread to prove a point to people who get their medical information from Facebook.
Think of it as vaccination, but cultural.
Of course it's horrific. But it's a predictable outcome of antivax culture.
When nothing else works, what are you supposed to do?
It could be that the only way to remind people is to get them to see some deaths or near-deaths first-hand.
Ah, I was thinking that’s what the argument was.
To which I’d say… maybe?
I was able to dig up this paper that showed 66% of the COVID unvaccinated regretted their decision after hospitalization. The rest were undeterred, even after hospitalization, mostly due to ideology and conspiracies.
But the problem is that I wouldn’t be comfortable risking public health to prove 2/3 of a point to vaccine skeptics who should’ve known better anyway. The Hippocratic oath is to do no harm, and I wouldn’t want a loved one with a suppressed immune system or lung problems to get seriously sick because we let the disease spread by choice.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8950102/
The real vectors of disinformation are social media, and antivax deaths are downstream of that.
But we don't have any kind of cultural immunity to the kind of propagandised and designed messaging that drives these campaigns.
In the absence of that, learning through consequences - and coming in with the messaging after they happen - is the only thing that can make a difference.
> But we don't have any kind of cultural immunity to the kind of propagandised and designed messaging that drives these campaigns
It seem like if we can find a vaccine for propaganda, we would get a lot of mileage out of it.