Ask Lemmy

50 years of cuts to the education system and the demonization of the Liberal Arts (history, sociology, etc...)

A country that would rather keep a football program than an arts program is always going to suffer.

HATE: They are willing to accept anything as long as the people they hate suffer.

Asking Americans why they are like they are is just going to result in a bunch of denial, obfuscation, rationalization, and misdirected aggression.

This is what kills Americans the most: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of-death/ And almost all of them are preventable.

How Not To Die in 82 minutes

How Not To Die in only 17 minutes

How Not To Die from Heart Disease, the leading killer of Americans

The leading causes of death of Americans are all preventable, and none of them are viral infections. (Though COVID might have moved the numbers somewhat.)

Because, quite frankly, Americans are idiots. They would rather scarf down misinformation given by their news anchors than open a book and/or think for themselves.

Anyone know why someone would think being in a house fire means you're relatively unconcerned about dying in a fire?

This is one of those scenarios where it may be better to look at fiber detail

• life expectancy by state has an 8 year range, from 72 to 80 years
• our nightmare of health coverage … In 2018, …coverage rates ranged from 82.3% of people in Texas to 97.2% of people in Massachusetts.
• average income almost doubles, from $87,063 down to $46,511.

You can go down a list of stats related to quality of life, and see similarly large ranges by state, and the ones on the low end correlate strongly with people who voted Republican. These are poorer people with worse education, worse health, much less income, voting for disrupting the status quo without understanding what that means

Almost every person I know got a measles booster in response to the recent outbreaks (all were vaccinated during youth).

Perhaps turn an eye on your biases.

Many Americans are exactly as the stereotypes about them say they are, loud and stupid.

If you're referring to the gains in the anti vax movment

It's the same reason why a large portion of Americans are anti environment.

It got politicized and instead of using critical thinking one side wants to win and thinks the other is lying to them about everything

Our educations system has been in decline for the last 20 years. Instead foreign money has combine with private interests to blast us with complete made up bullshit propaganda 24/7. Almost all of our major news sources are now owned or operated by MAGA donors, who care more about money than public well being. Basically, half this country is now too stupid to determine if the information they're viewing is corporate propaganda, or foreign government propaganda. Both are exploitative, and both want Americans sick because it's profitable to them. So despite having a president that publicly threw out our pandemic response killing more Americans than in all the wars we've ever faught in combined - 4 years later we reelected him. That's how bad the propaganda is here. Combined with poor education, we can no longer agree on how basic cause and effect works.

TL:DR - We're now too stupid and hopped up on propaganda to understand how preventing diseases works.

Americans are not a monolith. Tons of Americans are concerned. Tons are not. Also many Americans have lives where these issues the news typically stirs up don't really actually impact their daily lives. Others are dramatically affected. It really depends on location and status, among so many factors.

Various news and online channels might have you thinking all Americans are basically the same and experiencing things the same, but they are definitely not.

Because "totally preventable" is financially unaffordable for most of us. My insurance won't help pay for vaccines unless I get them done during a PCP appointment, but those are scheduled months in advance. I normally go to my local pharmacy and pay $20 for a flu shot, but covid vaccines are like $100-300 without insurance.

I've had gastro problems for a few years now, but because insurance and bureaucracy, I JUST got a scope done yesterday and they found a bunch of ulcers in my intestines that I've just been living with, untreated, because there's no option to speed things up without money. It COULD have been caught years ago, but getting prompt medical care is too bougie for me.

We're actively disinformed. That's why. It's really that simple.

Christ man, we're screaming about it and have been for decades. Nobody will listen.

Because we hate our lives and want to die.

👍

For a disease to be prevented from spreading, you need a certain percentage of people to be immune. It's different from disease to disease and also depends on the vaccine itself. Some diseases like Covid can still be spread to people who are vaccinated (though obviously the worst of the symptoms are mitigated).

For the sake of example, let's say you need 90% immunity for a disease to not spread. Maybe 5% of the population cannot be vaccinated due to immune conditions, being too young, etc. That gives 5% of wiggle room.

Then there are acolytes of the fraudster, Andrew Wakefield, who faked data to get a flashy headline to get published in a prestigious journal. That includes RFK jr., Jenny Mccarthy, mayim bialik, etc. Clinging to their views for so long makes them unable to change them even if you show them proof that they are wrong. That might be another 1% of people.

There are a very small percentage of people who shun vaccines for lets say "true" religious reasons. Most of the people who try to claim religious reasoning for refusing vaccines are members of religions that are completely fine with vaccines. They are usually just really stupid people who are scared of needles and/or don't think it's that big of a deal with modern medicine. That's probably another 1% of people.

Then there are people that are homeless or otherwise outside of the system. Vaccines are one of the most cost effective methods to improve health of a country, so despite the nightmare that is our healthcare system, you typically should never have to pay for a vaccine. It may be a bit more work than someone who is homeless and/or has substance abuse or mental health problems can prioritize. That might be another 1%.

All together, that would put us at 92%, above the threshold for a widespread epidemic, but all of those categories of people who don't get vaccinated tend to be in communities, and so we can have outbreaks in those communities.

With god as my armour I need no vaccines

I’m concerned but I don’t know what I can do about that other than make sure my whole family is vaccinated.

Because

1. taxing the rich is a partisan stance

2. people are unaware that the government would spend less on singlepayer than it spends currently dealing with middlemen

3. a non-negligible number of people don't believe in micro-organisms, nutrition, or cancer as it is understood by doctors

TLDR: decentralized education with zero funding makes a whole country of dumb assholes.

Because we also die from totally preventable school shootings too.

I mean anti-vaxxers believe vaccines to be essentially poisen, hence why they are opposed to them. They believe there are other remedies to cure diseases.

So to answer your question, yes they are worried but woefully misinformed.

Science showed things like climate change, which was hurting the bottom line of giant corporations who donate huge amounts of money to Republicans, so Republicans convinced their base that science is against God, and that it's all part of the evil woke liberals thing. So now anything that comes from science, including vaccines, is tainted.

If you think there are no anti-vaxxers in your country, you've got another thing coming.

Many of the anti-vax groups at the center of outbreaks are members of religious minorities. Menanites, Amish, and Hasidic Jews. The reason it's become more of a problem is that some upper middle class families have joined in and created more unvaccinated pockets in communities in the last decade.

For decades the conservative movement in the US has fostered a distrust in government and it has permeated just about everything.

Most of us are concerned.

The minority are concerned because the US government has done unethical and malicious medical stuff to minorities, which makes some level of hesitancy for those groups understandable. Not the cod oil instead of vaccines bullshit white middle class and up promote, that is pure snake oil propaganda.

I think a lot of Americans have the option that these contagious diseases aren't really dangerous anymore and that THEY won't be affected by any fallout. THEY will be able to survive it so THEY don't care.

In reality, lots of people live in small communities and even though they might go on the internet, they don't go very deep. So unless it's in their face, they don't know much about it. And "my gran pappy had the mumps and he was fine!" mentality.

1. The people who aren't idiots are already vaccinated so they'll be fine.

2. The people who are idiots think they are safer without vaccination. They are the ones who will die (or their children) but they aren't aware of it.

3. The people who can't get vaccinated but aren't idiots are kind of just screwed but this is an incredibly small minority of the population.