I disagree. While it’s frustrating that people believe politicians and talk show hosts over scientists, it’s reasonable to fear something you don’t understand. What’s immature is a lack of critical thinking which much of the population seems to exhibit by choosing to listen to others or, in doing fact finding, allow for confirmation bias.
This statement is not helpful. If we’re looking to increase the number of people getting vaccinated, shame or embarrassment will likely lower that number further. People have a fear of making the wrong decision. If you share with them that you’ve been vaccinated and leave it at that, that’s someone real who has contradicted the narrative they subscribe to. If they respect you as a role model, they may change their behavior.
Everything republicans do is childish playground bully behavior
Yeah but unfortunately they are doing a lot more harm than beating me up at recess because I’m brown.
It’s definitely regressed to full Nazi behavior unfortunately.
I don’t think its childish not to want the government to mandate bodily choices.
What I really dislike is the parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, because big pharma/nature best/other insane arguments, but then take them to an ER when they inevitably get that preventable disease. For fuck’s sake, stay consistent. If you don’t vaccinate, do not go to the hospital later.
Devil’s Advocate: Being sick is an immediately visible problem; vaccinations… viruses are invisible and you don’t see symtoms till its too late
Which is why we have decades of medical science that has gone to great lengths to discover these things. They can’t be seen by the naked eye but they can be seen with a strong enough microscope. We know they exist and we know what they cause. We know how to prevent that from happening.
Yet these mouth breathing troglodytes have been conned into distrusting science on a fundamental level.
Most people don’t understand vaccines and being afraid of what you don’t understand is completely reasonable.
When you have influencers feeding on that fear and making it grow then it becomes an issue.
Add to that we’re constantly being lied to it’s hard to know what the truth is and what isn’t unless you deeply research a topic, and honestly:
“Being afraid of what you don’t understand is completely reasonable”
No it isn’t… It’s common, but not reasonable, and it’s a big factor in so much bad about humanity. We need to teach people to specifically NOT be afraid of stuff they don’t understand and instead learn more about that those things, and to never have strong opinions (which includes fear) about things they know nothing or little about.
Being afraid of what you dont understand is instilled to us by our own evolution. We lived tens of thousands of years in a state where unfamiliar berry or strange animal could mean death.
But you are right. School system svould be better in explaining what vaccines do and how they work and society should be better shooting misinformation down.
Also instead of ridiculing the antivacciners people should try to be polite and try to help them understand what vaccines are. Being hostile or condesending just makes people to withdraw in to their own safe belives
Na a bunch of them are actually afraid of the pointy needle.
Gear of medical debt comes up for some too, but since the covid vaccines were free they had to pretend they weren’t afraid of the needles instead.
Let’s be honest, its the covid vax being rushed to market and the politics of it that made this happen. Before that it was an issue with total idiots, but now I have “normal” family members not vaxing their children for things eradicated 50 years ago.
I can totally see the skepticism on the covid vax. You really cant trust anything. Lets not pretend the covid vax didnt have issues (and we plebs dont really know for sure how many bad side effects there are/were yet. No matter what you think). And in my opinion government should not control your body. However these people not getting children vaccinated for measles are just absolute idiots.
And now people who think everything is black and white can downvote me to hell!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study#Public_trust
There’s been a systematic undermining of public trust in health and safety instructions going on for decades.
Some of this distrust is earned as with Tuskegee, the bungled Anthrax vaccine, the Reagan Era response to the AIDS epidemic, scandals with weight loss drugs like Fen-phen and Redux, Oxycodone, etc.
Some of it is purely manufactured, with the CIA-sponsored agitation against the Chinese COVID vaccine being a major font of modern day anti-vax Truther Lore.
But to no-sell skepticism as just “you’re a little baby who is scared of needles” really under plays the shift in attitude nationally. We used to be a country that whole heartedly embraced a preventative for small pox, polio, and influenza. Now we’re more terrified of kids getting the shot that gives you bad grades in school than getting measels.
We used to be a country that whole heartedly embraced a preventative for small pox, polio, and influenza
Yea, no… you got a very rosy image of history in your mind. There were massive protests and constant public pushback against vaccines for as long as vaccines have existed.
The fight for widespread adoption of vaccination has been rough fought against the tides of the confidently ignorant who let their irrational emotions control them.
There were massive protests and constant public pushback against vaccines for as long as vaccines have existed.
There were a handful of outspoken reactionary groups in the early 19th century who registered outsized alarm. But when you look at the data, the rapid decline in smallpox over the century was the direct result of the success of inoculation domestically. By 1898, the mandatory imposition of vaccinations was functionally unnecessary, due to the near complete eradication of the disease on the island. People were - by and large - more than happy to undergo inoculation at a level that provided herd immunity.
The fight for widespread adoption of vaccination has been rough fought against the tides of the confidently ignorant who let their irrational emotions control them.
Confident ignorance has been as much a benefit to vaccine campaigns as an opposition to it. People are, by and large, trusting and appreciative of advancements in medical science, especially when they are subject to regular and repeated trauma from a chronic malady.
Quackery succeeds on this sense of naive desperation. Vaccination does, too (with the added benefit that it actually works). A straightforward solution to an immediate problem is an easy sell.
The real detriment to vaccination policy is its own success. Once you’ve systematically eliminated a disease, the social memory of the disease’s consequences fades through generations. People aren’t afraid of Polio because they don’t have a President in a wheelchair who fell victim to it. People aren’t afraid of measles because they’ve never experienced it, or had to care for children suffering from the disease.
The rapid adoption of prophylactics in the sex work community comes from people who are regularly faced with the threat of STIs, both personally and in their peer groups. People with little direct or indirect exposure to recreational sex are a much harder sell. And so we see STIs flood through religiously insular communities (ex. the sudden surge in Syphilis in Salt Lake City) that had historically shown very low rates of incidence.
This tends to set off a rebalancing of behaviors, as the community rapidly adopts the techniques for prevention. When news of an outbreak spreads, vaccine hesitancy collapses in its wake
America doesn’t just do this domestically. They have interfered in other nations public health perceptions as well. The CIA undermined polio vaccination programs in Pakistan when global eradication actually seemed possible.
America doesn’t just do this domestically.
They do. It’s just tied up in the private sector. Tons of quackery on American TV and in news journals. Everything from “Head On, Apply Directly to The Forehead” to Dr Oz shilling ginseng as a panacea to the social media conspiracies about MedBeds that Trump himself retweeted.
The CIA undermined polio vaccination programs in Pakistan when global eradication actually seemed possible.
Can’t let the wrong kind of people benefit
my brother is a 45 , socially he acts like a 8 year old all the time. Of course he worships trumps and refuses to get vaccinated ( even telling my elderly mom to not get the flu and covid shot) . This is why I only see him one day out of the year, and that will turn to Zero days of any time when my mom dies and he has no reason to come over for one day a year.
those blood test needles are the real scary shit
I’m only scared of vaccines because they’re delivered via a needle. At this point I really shouldn’t be acted of needles any more after injecting myself every week for ages, but for some reason I am 🤷♀️
I’m also a needle-weenie. I tell a different nurse each time and we joke about it – despite getting like 9 shots in one day in Basic. Then I wince a bit as I get the shot, put my stereotypically plaid coat back on and off I go.
If you’re an American, having deep seated mistrust and skepticism of the medical establishment, pharma, and government is 1000% justifiable. Every one of these institutions has exploited, abused, abandoned, and murdered people, all in the name of public health.
As a person who grew up in poverty, the idea of trusting doctors and medical authorities is just as ridiculous as trusting the police.
Assuming that social problems are the sum of individuals making dumb choices is an easy shortcut that not only eliminates the discomfort of thinking about the issue, but has the added benefit to implying that you’re superior.
this is why we need to educate people. it does require a certain level of trust in the system to accept a shot will prevent your kid from dying of measles or whooping cough. a system that also conducted the heinous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, then never held those same criminals or the decision makers accountable for their crimes.
governments do thousands of things; not every single one is predicated on evil intentions, many, probably most, are for the good of their people. think running water and sewage. think power and roads.
sometimes they go fuckbrained. which is why we need whistleblowers, accountability, CONSEQUENCES, etc.
I think the correct term for adults who are afraid of them is ‘bitch baby’
I’ve found the best way to deal with a fear of needles is to scream slurs
Yeah because people afraid of vaccines never grow up…
Wow stone cold take right there.
It’s a shower thought, not a hot take. It completes with other thrilling thoughts, such as “it sure is wet in here” and “time to wash my butthole”
There are risks involved with vaccines. These are usually low and can be mitigated or decreased severely. E.g. don’t run a marathon the same day you get a COVID-19 shot.
Small world. A cousin of mine had a negative reaction soon after getting the 2nd dose of Pfizer. Got rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night from what I heard, spent long time in ICU, got their parents worried, they were talking about it on the wechat group. Sent a wave of panic throught the entire friend circle.
Imagine having one of the people you know IRL having a bad reaction to the vaccine.
(not anti-vax btw, just sharing anecdotes)
