The Scourge of Anti-Vaxxers

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They are mostly vaccinated themselves, that's not the problem, the problem is they are forcing their antivax BS on their kids, putting them at risk without any true concerns. Their kids are NOT themselves. No matter how badly they think so. It's medical neglect.

California's New Vaccine Laws Should Be A Model For All States

The saga began in late 2014 when a measles outbreak occurred at Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth. In the wake of that public health (and public relations) nightmare, California decided to crack down on anti-vaxxers in the state. So, it passed a law banning personal belief exemptions for vaccines. At the time, it was hailed as one of the toughest in the nation.

Anti-vaxxers weren't going to surrender so easily, however. Soon afterward, there was a noticeable increase in the number of medical exemptions issued by doctors. The Los Angeles Times reported that medical exemptions tripled from 2015 to 2016, indicating that anti-vaxxers found sympathetic doctors to hand out exemptions. So, California cracked the whip again.

The state passed new laws aimed at reducing the number of dubious medical exemptions. The two most important provisions allow officials to investigate doctors who give out five or more vaccine exemptions each year and schools in which the immunization rate falls below 95%. These are fantastic changes, and other states (or perhaps the federal government) should implement them.

As usual, anti-vaxxers weren't going to go quietly into the night. Before the new laws were passed, California state Senator Richard Pan, who is also a pediatrician, was assaulted. According to KQED, his assailant posted a video of the attack on Facebook and said, "Yes, I pushed Richard Pan for lying, laughing at us and for treason."

KQED goes on to report that:

"...the video depicts Bennett strolling in downtown Sacramento, discoursing on a series of topics he says he's concerned about: CIA "crimes," including what he called mind control efforts; angel statues on the Capitol Mall he described as preparing the way for the arrival of Lucifer and rule by the Antichrist; how President Trump has committed blasphemy "against the blood of Jesus Christ"; and the use of chemtrails for "mass spraying ... to stop the solar radiation" he describes as necessary to human health."

These people constitute the intelligentsia behind the anti-vaccine campaign. No wonder a woman thought it appropriate to throw a menstrual cup (supposedly) full of blood at California legislators.

Source: California's New Vaccine Laws Should Be A Model For All States

This is what happens when religious instruction is preferred over scientific instruction -- you get people who believe in anything, but only if it cannot be proven.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is one of the biggest scourges on public health, as he encourages the spread of measles, influenza, and cervical cancer through his anti-vaccine propaganda. (As if that isn't enough, he also blames vaccines for causing depression, anxiety, suicide, and dementia.) He has no business being on social media.

If the tech giants are really serious about putting a stop to dangerous misinformation, then the decision to ban RFK, Jr. should be a slam dunk. The anti-scientific, anti-medical nonsense he spreads literally kills people.

And yet, he's still there. Recently on Facebook and Twitter, RFK, Jr. said that the COVID vaccine was responsible for the death of legendary baseball player Hank Aaron. Specifically, he said that Mr. Aaron's "tragic death is part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration of COVID vaccines."

Tragic death? That makes it sound like Mr. Aaron's death was somehow preventable. But it wasn't. Sadly, Mr. Aaron passed away in his sleep at the age of 86 from natural causes. The fact that he received a COVID vaccine prior to his death means absolutely nothing. It would be like blaming his death on the breakfast that he ate. It's entirely coincidental. Furthermore, RFK, Jr.'s claim of a "wave of suspicious deaths" is completely fabricated.

But, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend that his claim is true. More than 428,000 Americans have died of COVID in the past year, with more than 80,000 deaths occurring in January alone. If it was actually true that the COVID vaccine is killing people (and it is manifestly not true), we're talking about a few dozen deaths. So even if RFK, Jr. was right, the virus is killing more people than the vaccine by several orders of magnitude.

Did social media punish RFK, Jr. for this deadly nonsense? Nope. Facebook put up a tepid notice that the post might be misleading, and Twitter did absolutely nothing. The companies' claims that they're trying to clean up disinformation ring hollow.

Source: Why Isn't Anti-Vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr Banned From Social Media?

But when their action impact public health, then their rhetoric is dangerous. We do not believe in selling fraudulent cures (is it OK to sell industrial bleach to cure childhood autism by drinking it?), why should we allow fraudulent information about real medications that can impact the health of others? I am not saying there is an easy policy solution, but to say beliefs are no big deal does not address the damage that some of these beliefs do.

Basically what the anti vaxxers are saying is that we are autistics are mutants and not in a good X-Men kind of way. If one believes that then we need to be “recovered” by any means necessary.

I'd like to scourge Andrew Wakefield with my bare hands.

Were I CEO of a manufacturer of vaccines I would feel tempted to pass all such stuff to the company legal advisers, and instruct them to launch a libel action, with the intention to make the people have to come to the court and present their evidence - Libel is an interesting legal matter, where in many jurisdictions the presumption of innocence is applied in the form of the person making the alleged libel has accused another person, and so the person who has been libeled is presumed innocent and the person accused of libel is required to prove their accusation. My aim would not be to deprive them of all their assets when they lost the case, but to make them squirm in public when made to attempt to prove herbicide was in our product and they could not provide any proof.

By depriving them of their assets, you would also be depriving them of their means to manufacture more of their "treatments" ... unless tap water is really, really cheap over there.

They're a scourge alright. I've been learning about vaccines in biology and if they really did have bad side effects for the majority of the population, they would have been stopped. There are people who get terrible side effects, but they are a huge minority. And autism definitely isn't a side effect.

This is purely as a historical note but when the first immunisations were done for smallpox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox) using cowpox which turned out to prevent smallpox many thought that this would turn them into a cow or cause them to grow cow-like deformities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox# ... w_pock.jpg

This is the ultimate example of prevention because thankfully smallpox is no more but the very stupid people that are anti-vaxxers are still with us.

^^ Yes, apparently you cannot get vaccinated against stupidity...

They upset me because of morals but also I'm scared of needles & I get scared to say I have needle phobia and I'm autistic in case people think it's linked.

I'm gonna be sensible & take emla cream & get my vaccine!

I'm more afraid of the buildup than the moment itself. I'm visually impaired, so I can't necessarily see the needle anyway. I tend to look away from where the injection is taking place.

Cheers for the reply.
By assets I was thinking of the loosing the case, being landed with everyone's costs to pay and loosing their homes as they were sold to pay for the costs and damages awarded. That would appear like a vindictive, powerful entity crushing an opponent rather than bringing them to account. Instead, giving them the humiliation of having nothing to back their allegation, and then the humility of receiving magnanimity from the victor rather than being able to make false claims of victim-hood from being utterly financially crushed by big bad organisations.

Last week, anti-vaxxers protests shut down the mass vaccination program underway at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. In Israel, the global poster child for a successful vaccination program, anti-vaxxers are making vaccine appointments, then canceling them at the last moment - causing needless waste of a still precious commodity. They’re also making threatening robocalls warning parents that the vaccine causes illness and death, using false statistics to back themselves up.

Much of the anti-vax message is disseminated on social media - along with death threats to pro-vaccine proponents and assaults on public health officials trying to increase vaccine uptake. Facebook and Twitter say they are restricting these messages. Youtube has taken down some anti-vax videos. But much misinformation remains. Nor is social media the only deployment vehicle. Conferences and pamphlets and robocalls are prime transmission vehicles, along with websites. So, even if we could remove Robert F Kennedy Jr. from Twitter and Facebook, as Dr. Berezow advocates, Kennedy-Jr’s website, Children’s Health Defense, for example, contains some pretty egregious stuff that would elude social media regulation.

Consider the article on the website by Claire Dwoskin (a wealthy funder of the anti-vax movement) regarding the apparent effects of autism and aluminum - sometimes used as a preservative in vaccines. Dwoskin reports that “[a] breakthrough study … has been published … demonstrating that significant correlations exist between rates of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and total aluminum adjuvants given to children through vaccines in several Western countries.” Reader, please note that this “study,” was done in mice.

According to Dwoskin, the “research” evaluated the social interaction of mice as a marker of a “key feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder” in humans -- social interaction. How? By measuring rodent sniffing! The researchers found that mice injected with aluminum spent more time sniffing an empty cage than a “stranger mouse” in a different cage. They concluded that this showed “showed diminished social interest...” at least in the world of rodents. Nevertheless, they admitted that:

“…this study alone cannot make any substantive claims regarding the link between aluminum and ASD in humans.”

But Dwoskin doesn’t tell us this. Instead, she blithely asserts, in a leap of faith - that the study “demonstrate[es] that significant correlations exist between rates of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and total aluminum adjuvants given to children through vaccines in several Western countries, and … that aluminum adjuvants can impair social behavior if applied in the early period of postnatal development.”

Source: Muzzling The Anti-Vaxxers: Can We Legally Do It?