So, my an online american friend said"My mom didn’t want to vaccine vax cuzs autism". Is he joking? I know many people say thing like that but i thought they all were joking?
In my country which is a third world country no one believe shit like that even my Grand mother who is illiterate and religious don’t believe thing like that and knows the benefit of vaccine.
Just wait until OP learns about us taking horse paste during covid
Your friend is not joking. There’s an epidemic of disinformation washing across the USA.
And thanks to the disinformation around vaccines, there are also several other types epidemics breaking out…
I think most of this is genuine belief. There was a doctor named Wakefield who fraudulently published this autism claim in academic journals. Those papers were retracted, but the damage was done.
I think it sticks around as a conspiracy, because otherwise there’s not a whole lot else that can explain the causes or origins of autism.
Well, aside from the boring “routine expression of a spectrum of neurodivergent traits being better understood leading to increased ability to properly diagnose it, and increased awareness and support in the public education system allowing more teachers to see early indicators and advise medical consultation early so kids can get better support”.
They used to just call mildly autistic people geeks and best them with rulers. Now they let them wear headphones to reduce distractions if they need it.
Yes, they do believe it.
In my country which is a third world country no one believe shit like that even my Grand mother who is illiterate and religious don’t believe thing like that and knows the benefit of vaccine
That is because your country has recent, relevant experience with the efficacy of vaccines.
US citizens have been so coddled for so long by being an economic superpower and having access to medications and medical procedures that others do not that those who remember are beginning to pass from old age. This means an entirely new, always coddled generation literally does not know from experience how bad things can get without it. Due to that, and due to American obsession with “free speech” lies and misinformation have flourished, and made people believe that these things are dangerous instead of lifesaving.
Further, it’s tied in with how US citizens feel about being “different.” We live in a wild cult of individuality where everyone knows that if you’re actually really different that things can go sideways for you fast. They’d rather not risk a child being “different” and having autism, and they genuinely don’t understand that they’re choosing to risk death of their child instead.
Our education system is so broken, and our people are so fucking coddled, that they have the opportunity to pretend that these things don’t matter. It’s literally children tearing down things they don’t like because they don’t understand.
These are those “weak mean that create hard times.” Which is infuriating because anti-vaxxers and their ilk are the people who peddle that kind of bullshit ass saying the most, erroneously thinking they’re the “strong men” because they’re “willing to stand up to the man.” In this case, “the man,” being anyone with an education. Notice they don’t hate a rich idiot like Trump who does not care for them, but they hate intellectuals “in their ivory towers” (cough academia).
Yes, a society can be so coddled that the stupid resent the intelligent an educated to the point where they reject everything they say. They think they are fighting tyranny because they have convinced themselves we are lying to them to “get one over on them.” It’s absurd because the very people who put those ideas in their heads are the ones trying to get one over on them. Of course, this has been going on in America for long time.
-Isaac Asimov, 1980
it’s tied in with how US citizens feel about being “different.”
I want to be different, just like everybody else I want to be like. I want to be just like all of the different people.
-John S Hall, 1992
I hate that Asimov quote, it makes me sad. We have been on this path so long and never figured it out.
I honestly don’t know if we can. The last decade has really killed a lot of my hope for humanity. I think we’re destined to wipe ourselves out, because so many of us will sit by idly while the rich and powerful destroy our planet for short-term gain.
Sagan wrote a lot of stuff that was right on and makes me sad, too.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Woah. This became the guidebook.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
*cries in vegan*
I can’t decide if this comment is a vegan crying about being bamboozled into veganism or a vegan crying about others being bamboozled into hating veganism. Hoping it’s the latter.
Every time industrialists come up with a new way to help people lie to themselves about the moral, medical, and environmental consequences of animal consumption, no matter how gossamer the cover, people eat it up. But when the scientific community provides evidence that people can completely avoid T2 diabetes, heart disease, many major forms of cancer, and apparently even Alzheimer’s, it doesn’t move the needle one pip. People would rather lie to themselves and will selectively choose what facts to emotionally and intellectually process and which to pretend they never even heard.
Glad it was indeed the latter. Don’t need vegan bashing here.
Its real.
A doctor claimed a certain ingredient in vaccines was causing autism, while also trying to sell his own version without that ingredient. A massive conflict of interest and he lost his medical licence over it.
But damage was done and people freaked out over it. In fact, the ingredient was removed in order to alleviate peoples concerns but by that point the idea vaccines=autism had taken off and it was hard to stop that spread of misinformation. Especially since the dude doubled down on the stance.
Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, and RFK Jr. have so caused so much needless death and suffering. Fucking monsters.
And Oprah for platforming these grifters (among many others).
Just to add onto this, because Wakefield’s conflict of interest is one facet of the stupidity of the entire thing. Check out H.Bomberguy’s video about the whole thing, the poorly done experiment, the inconclusive research, the bone marrow autism cure guy, and how we went from “there is maybe possibly some interaction between some chemical in the vsccine and some as of yet unknown and undescribed connection between the brain and gut this chemical that may or may not have some impact on autism more research is needed,” to “vaccines are 100% the cause of autism”
Andrew Wakefield knowingly and intentionally misrepresented his scientific findings to further his own career ahead of the interests of humanity as a whole. Thomas Midgley Jr is the only person I’d put ahead of him in terms of the damage he’s done to the world.
Yup. Plenty of us sure do! It stems from bogus autism research by Andrew Wakefield like 20 years ago. There are a myriad of reasons for people to buy into it. We’ve even enabled them with religious exemptions at the state level (i.e. it’s against your religion to vaccinate).
Louisiana has even stopped promoting them, https://abcnews.go.com/Health/louisiana-health-department-stop-promoting-mass-vaccination/story?id=118819674
And we have a particularly nasty outbreak right now in one of our states because of vaccine avoidance, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8yvg5359po
No, it’s not a joke, some people are that fucking stupid.
FreeDUMD = the freedom to be stupid
I’ve never met anyone like that in person, but some people genuinely believe it.
I work with several people who believe this.
It’s sadly real. There are a lot of parents who would rather their child died a preventable death than have trouble making eye contact.
I have very religious family that repeatedly told my 90 year old grandma not to get vaccinated in the depths of COVID-19. I have other, not-at-all religious family that works as a nurse… And is anti vaccine.
It’s like a parody.
…But it is no joke.
If you’re wondering why, it’s because many Americans are inundated in really scary social media and TV. That part of my family is constantly on Facebook, watching Fox, doomscrolling whatever. Even church preaches some really, uh, interesting things now.
It’s this way because there’s a lot of profiteering. For example, the current head of the FBI is apparently selling and promoting some kind of “brave anti vaccine” health merchandise. The current head of the US health department made a lot of money and fame off vaccine skepticism.
The only person I know who believes this twaddle about vaccines is a retired nurse and very religious (Christian). Even though everyone in our friend group and in her own family has survived multiple vaccines unscathed, she still issues dire warnings about the latest batch. Arguing has no effect, so I just laugh in her face now.
And if you ever happen to look at the shit hole that is truthsocial, it’s a breeding ground for this shit, in order to propagate scans and grifts.
TBH I don’t know a single person that’s ever used Truth Social, or many that even know what it is. I think it’s more of a niche, not something affecting the masses.
I thought a lot of Trump supporters used it. I had signed up with a throwaway account just to look around. Seems like a bunch of scammers.
Yeah, but Facebook and Twitter still have the critical mass.
Most of my family’s Trumpism is grassroots, either from their church or other real-world connections.
Hey, at least give discredit where it’s due, the brits are the ones who started it.
True-ish :)
Wakefield went after the MMR vaccine. The whole (separate) mercury thing was started in the US and later perpetuated by people like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey among others.
Nowadays, its spread to other things like blaming them for heart problems, GI tract issues, etc. People who were infected with covid, some multiple times, are blaming vaccines for various health issues they’re developing and refuse to accept that maybe the full-blown infection that nearly got them hospitalized could have just as well been the cause. Or just something that would have happened as they aged regardless.
Your friend’s mom is a fucking idiot that would believe literally anything that the “right” person would say.
Absolutely a gullible little tool that’s behaving just as they want.
