Ask Lemmy

No, it's not a joke, some people are that fucking stupid.

At a job in Silicon Valley I had a boss who had an autistic child and my boss told me directly that when they vaccinated their child, the child's behavior changed, and caused autism.

I have other friends in SV who are huge vaccine skeptics.

So, yes, even in deep blue areas there are anti-vax people. There are also Trump flag flying people in SV too.

Just wait until OP learns about us taking horse paste during covid

There is a small, idiotic group that thinks that. Unfortunately that group is growing.

You have to explain to them how vaccines work. I'm waiting for them to turn on antibiotics next. Soon we'll be shaking rattles and swallowing toads to cure diseases.

gulps

Even if it does(it doesn't), I would rather have autism than measles or pertussis, etc.

Not just America, up here in Canada too. It's real.

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

A nurse in my family went deep anti-vax during covid, and I still don't understand the motivation or logic. And they're definitely not an isolated story.

It’s all too real even today, however that might not be the cause of current measles outbreaks.

Measles was eradicated from the US years ago, thanks to high vaccination rates. However that means most people have never seen measles so there is a fringe belief that it’s not harmful or the vaccination is more harmful, and vaccination rates have been declining to the point we could get a larger epidemic.

We do have localized measles outbreaks many years but they’ve usually been attributed to a new infection from overseas and a very local community insufficiently vaccinated. Sometimes the population is from places where they’re not vaccinated, sometimes it’s a vulnerable population. While yes, it can also be from fringe anti-vax groups, I really think the bigger fear is whether those fringe groups open a path to much wider outbreaks or epidemics.

There's too many stupid people in power; idiocracy is becoming real

Robert DeNiro has a child with Autism he is absolutely positively convinced was caused by vaccines, he's shushed a lot in public, but it's a rock solid belief of his. I have no idea what to say except, the science says it's not true, so I either believe one man's (more than that but still) personal experience and unimaginable pain at the unfairness of life, or I believe demonstrable scientifically tested fact. I go with the later, but still wish Bobby well.

Some idiots in America believe this, most don't.

Yes, people truly believe this. It seems obviously bonkers to you and I, because we have at least average critical thinking skills. The people who believe these things have way below average critical thinking skills. And there A LOT of these people. Just look at your normal bell curve chart.

The rumor started with a few celebrities with their new age theories (from the same era that brought you "rock and roll comes from the devil", "Anne Frank didn't write her diaries", and "Elvis is alive but Paul McCartney is dead") and then it just kind of picked up because America isn't very pro-disability and gets alienated easily. Fortunately it has finally just about died down, but once in a while someone will bring it up.

Yes. There are people who believe it. I can't explain it, they have the education, they have the information, but for whatever reason they just want to believe a conspiracy theory instead.

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.