As an American that lives 20ish miles from the boarder of Idaho state (on average poor, uneducated, and conservative population), let me tell you its fucking real. Those people are ignorant and proud. It is depressing.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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The irony is it was all started with a guy trying to spread FUD over existing measles vaccines to try getting his own vaccines picked up.
United States citizens have reasons not to trust their government with their health. Trust takes a lot time to build, and recent administrations haven't been building it.
Yeah this is a true thing. This person that knows me asked me if vaccines caused my autism.
It's both. They actually believe it and it's a joke that they do.
MIL100% believes this. Her son was normal until about 3 and then developed seizures and is now brain damage. She blames vaccines and it doesn't help a few other kids in area had similar experiences. She thinks there was a bad batch distribution.
Here's the funny thing, if that had actually happened (bad batch of a vaccine hurt kids) there is an entire Vaccine Injury Fund that will pay out to her. Medical providers have been reporting vaccine injuries for as long as we've had vaccines and there's lots of very real side effects. However, it's extremely difficult to get the payout because you have to prove the vaccine caused the injury and provide evidence that batches were the same. It's probably gone with DOGE but the vaccine manufacturers did pay in to the fund so the money is there and always has been if people can provide their allegations.
Depends on which vaccine. There are two agencies, there is the VICP and the CICP. The VICP only covers a short list of vaccines that doesn't include COVID. (https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/covered-vaccines). COVID vax is covered by the CICP and doesn't pay anything out for pain and suffering, only your medical bills for what your insurance didn't cover from treatment.
I was thinking about the VICP as it's usually the one involved in child cases. I didn't know the COVID has an independent one but with the rapid change in vaccine tech, that makes sense.
It’s a loud minority. Also not just in America there are anti-vax people all over the world. Mostly in developed countries where they have eliminated diseases like polio. And where outbreaks of measles are really rare. Anti-vax don’t believe vaccines are necessary since they personally never seen diseases like polio. While everyone in the developing world knows that vaccines are necessary since they’ve seen what those diseases can do to people.
You know the meme Hard Times Create Strong Men, Strong Men Create Good Times, Good Times Create Weak Men, Weak Men Create Hard Times Well antivax are the weak men.
It is a predominant US minority who tries to spread their nonsense worldwide.
The modern anti-vax movement started in the UK with Andrew Wakefield, I wouldn't be quick to square the bulk of the blame with the US.
It's a global phenomenon of the gullable, the willfully ignorany, and the vulnerable (usually through personal loss or trauma) - and the fraudsters who wish to take advantage of them.
No there's really people that stupid. It's tragic.
And these fuckfaces act like they’re enlightened.
And it's a growing trend.
Do you see how these days anyone challenging authority and pointing out issues gets labeled and dismissed as a "conspiracist"? In the past years governments worldwide with the help of social networks and mass media pushed stupid ass conspiracy forward like flat earth and no vax as a tool to control and downplay dissent.
With the healtcare system being controlled by for profit evil corporations, medics treating people as if they were robots and after the covid pandemic where experimental vaccines got forced on people against their rights, vaccines misinformation found a fertile ground.
Most people? No, definitely not. Most Americans get vaccinated. More people than you would hope? Yeah, absolutely.
There's so many people here who have crazy views on health and wellness generally. Juice cleanses. Chiropractic. Homeopathy. Fad diets. Faith healing. I think some of it is because people can't afford real healthcare, but most of it is anti-intellectualism and propaganda.
Yep. There was a solid base pre-Covid that could be built off of as COVID was shown to be as bad as it was.
I also feel like a lot of vaccine rejection was built on having to justify that COVID wasn't as bad as people were saying it was.
Most of the western world have free healthcare. But this is an America view so I understand.
A friend of mine went to hospital like 5 times to check out his belly with various advanced machines and the final bill was equivalent to like 50 dollars. The taxi rides to the hospital cost him more than that. :)
I think its amazing.
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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. You can be different, just so long as you're exactly like everybody else!
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 and 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
I hate that Asimov quote, it makes me sad. We have been on this path so long and never figured it out.
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.
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*
Woah. This became the guidebook.
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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.
Someone like the secretary of health or the president, as it currently stands
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The belief is real (but the claim is not).
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 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.
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).
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It’s so bad Texas currently has a measles outbreak.
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...
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