Anti Vaxx movement growing in Canada

Post Reply New Topic

Well, it has finally happened. News this week of widespread and disruptive anti-vaccine protests at Canadian medical centres means that America’s destructive, self-defeating and totally nonsensical anti-vaccine movement has begun crossing the border.

As a pediatrician, vaccine-scientist and parent of an adult daughter with autism and intellectual disabilities, I have had a front-row seat to America’s anti-vaccine movement for the last two decades. I’m also a lead target, and sometimes known as the ‘OG Villain’ for writing the book, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism a few years back.

When I learned of this, I had to Google it — OG means ‘original gangster.’ My gangster status has since accelerated,when our research group at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine developed a global health COVID-19 vaccine now being scaled for production in India and Indonesia.

Not being vaccinated against COVID-19 became a new badge of allegiance to conservatism. The result? Devastating consequences. Roughly 100,000 unvaccinated Americans have lost their lives to COVID since this spring.

Today, the anti-vaccine movement has three major drivers. One of them is anti-science aggression from the far-right, as highlighted above. However, there are also at least a dozen non-governmental groups identified by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate as responsible for approximately two-thirds of the anti-vaccine disinformation in America.

The third is Russian propaganda, which promotes anti-vaccine disinformation as a means to destabilize the U.S. and other democratic countries, possibly including Canad

I hope things do not degenerate further in Canada. I love the Canadian people. My grandfather, Morris (aka Maurice, aka Moishe) Goldberg, grew up in the Jewish Quarter of Paris, but later immigrated to Montreal in the 1920s, well ahead of the Nazi occupation in France. I often say, the only reason I exist is because of the goodness of the Canadian people who accepted my grandfather. In return, I’m a life-long Habs fan, and there aren’t too many of those here in Texas.

But I wish you the best in dealing with what is to come. Watch out for it. In the U.S., anti-vaccine groups can become extremely aggressive and hostile, and increasingly they are imbued with far-right extremist ideologies and zeal. They also love their Nazi imagery.

Good luck. You didn’t deserve this.

Sorry Canada for my country's contagious stupidity.

Canadians are plenty capable of being dumb without it being America's fault. These people would be just as ignorant and prone to believing conspiratorial nonsense without influence from the south of the border.

Canadians are plenty capable of being dumb without it being America's fault. These people would be just as ignorant and prone to believing conspiratorial nonsense without influence from the south of the border.

The opinion piece that Americans are polluting Canadians minds was written by an American.

The opinion piece that Americans are polluting Canadians minds was written by an American.

Many, many countries happen to be more "ethnocentric" than the US.

"American," if truth be told, is actually not an ethnic group.

I hate to use the example of Rwanda, 1994----but this was the ultimate expression of "ethnocentricity." Same with the Nazis.

And as a Canadian I'm saying they're full of dookie.

Neither Americans nor Canadians should blame America for Canadian crazies. The crazies have been here all along and they'd find their own conspiracies to get worked up over if there weren't globally popular ones to adopt.

Neither Americans nor Canadians should blame America for Canadian crazies. The crazies have been here all along and they'd find their own conspiracies to get worked up over if there weren't globally popular ones to adopt.