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Parents Who Don't Vaccinate Kids Tend To Be Affluent, Better Educated (go.com)
schwit1 quotes ABC News: Vaccines are universally backed by respected scientists and federal agencies, but that isn't enough to convince every parent to vaccinate their children. The decision to fly in the face of near universal scientific opinion doesn't come as a result of a lack of intellect, however, as experts who have studied vaccines and immunology acknowledge that many parents who don't vaccinate their children are well-educated. They also appear to be the victims of a widespread misinformation campaign, the experts said.
Daniel Salmon, who is the director of the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, said that existing research suggests that there are some common attributes that many parents who choose not to vaccinate their children share. "They tend to be better educated. They tend to be white, and they tend to be higher income. They tend to have larger families and they tend to use complementary and alternative medicine like chiropractors and naturopaths," Salmon said.
Salman also says outbreaks typically start when an American returns from a visit to Europe, where there are much higher rates of measles than in the U.S. But lower vaccination rates help it spread.
One study in August reported Russian trolls "seem to be using vaccination as a wedge issue, promoting discord in American society," though their campaign on Twitter failed to gain traction.
"I blame Amazon Prime," writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland. "That 'misinformation' they're talking about is the pseudoscience documentary Vaxxed -- and Amazon is one of the top site's pushing it. The movie is not only free for all Prime members -- Amazon's actually featuring it on the front page showing free-with-Prime movies."
Daniel Salmon, who is the director of the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, said that existing research suggests that there are some common attributes that many parents who choose not to vaccinate their children share. "They tend to be better educated. They tend to be white, and they tend to be higher income. They tend to have larger families and they tend to use complementary and alternative medicine like chiropractors and naturopaths," Salmon said.
Salman also says outbreaks typically start when an American returns from a visit to Europe, where there are much higher rates of measles than in the U.S. But lower vaccination rates help it spread.
One study in August reported Russian trolls "seem to be using vaccination as a wedge issue, promoting discord in American society," though their campaign on Twitter failed to gain traction.
"I blame Amazon Prime," writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland. "That 'misinformation' they're talking about is the pseudoscience documentary Vaxxed -- and Amazon is one of the top site's pushing it. The movie is not only free for all Prime members -- Amazon's actually featuring it on the front page showing free-with-Prime movies."
I don't think educated the word that you're looking for. How about uselessly credentialed?
There's plenty of issues people have with vaccines that are based in science, often from the vaccine companies themselves. It's a parent's choice to teach a child their culture, just the same to vaccinate or not... you cant shove a lifestyle onto anyone. One way or another...
Unless you're planning on home schooling them. No proof of vaccination, no public schools or most colleges for you.
Either this 'study' is deeply flawed, or it's actually the product of the Russian trolls it speaks of, since this makes precisely zero sense, someone not vaccinating their kids against common diseases is among the obvious definitions of 'unintelligent'. Don't really give a damn what anyone thinks of what I just said, either, so don't bother.
You might be referring to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Like somebody who is top of their game in field A assumes their knowledge is sufficient in field B.
They may also be bad at stats and be completely unaware of it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Randall Munroe seems fairly well educated in technical areas. Did I miss something? And, from my understanding,he's open and upfront that his comics aren't based just on his knowledge but that he has to do research fro them.
And I never heard anyone claim Ricky Gervais is particularly smart. Maybe you were confused by his accent into thinking people thought he was smart?/p:
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Antivaxxer kids are like dark humour - they never get old.
"Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
The article claims that:
Which is asinine. There's many ways to be smart, and many entirely different ways to be educated. A degree in business administration or economics gives you no insight into not getting fooled by dumbass anti-vaxxers or various conspiracy theories. In fact, it may make it easier, since they're "educated" and don't think they can be fooled! It's just as easy to trick so-called "educated" people as it is non-educated people. The only difference is the bait you use.
One of the reasons this anti-vaxxer stuff gets spread is we live in a world where we're taught that science is things printed in books, arguments that "sound right" rather than actually being educated on critical thinking skills, evidence based, and degrees of certainty.
There's a class of people that are smarter than the US average,
The title says "better educated" . . . not "smarter".
Lots of folks are educated way beyond their intelligence.
If your family is affluent enough to send you to Andover, Exeter or St Paul's . . . you're better educated.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Found one of the educated ones.
Vaccination is not a lifestyle choice, regardless of what the morons spouting anti-vaccination rumors say.
Vaccination is a medical choice. You either assist society by exterminating destructive diseases, or you literally empower your dumb-by-extension children to accidentally infect and kill children with responsible parents, who are too young to be vaccinated.
Does that mean you need to get every vaccine for your child? No. Chicken pox has a vaccine these days and it's not on the same tier as other diseases (though why risk it?). Measles though? That stuff will kill your child and, if not them, then your neighbor's younger child who cannot get it yet. Thanks to people making the decisions that you're describing, combined with immigrants coming from places without the vaccine, Washington State has had to declare a state of emergency.
I actually agree that you should be free to avoid any and all vaccinations because that's what freedom allows. But that doesn't mean that you should be afforded the tax payer-assisted opportunity to then put your child into contact with everyone else's children in publicly funded places, like public school. And it definitely doesn't mean that when your child does get those diseases that the government should assist you financially to get through it.
So then they're off the hook for school taxes, right?
LOL no. School taxes are based on owning property regardless of how many children you have in the household.
The real value would be having 10 kids, same price as one.
If you look at the pros and cons and there is no medical contraindication, but you still decide that your kids should not be vaccinated, then you can't blame it on science, you're just being a dumbass. This is not a lifestyle choice, the same way giving your children cigarettes is not a lifestyle choice. That's endangering a person in your care, and in the case of antivaxxers, many others too. If you and your kids are serious threat to the well-being of a population, that population is morally justified to defend against you. People are afflicted with lifelong handicaps due to that sheer idiocy. Some even die. This is not tolerable. People who do not have their kids vaccinated should be banned from medical insurance.
There's plenty of issues people have with vaccines that are based in science
Like what, exactly?
I don't respond to AC's.
I've met people who have plenty of fancy letters after their names, and they're dumb as rocks. They studied deep in a single field, but can only regurgitate knowledge, not integrate and extrapolate.
The more life I experience, the more I realize just how truly rare intelligence is.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Because your freedom ends when it endangers my life.
I have a younger relative who's an anti-vaxxer, and she has a master's degree in school counseling. She's not a bad person, in fact she's a good person but with overblown, romantic disposition that blinds her to her own folly on the issue.
Here's what I think happened. After Vietnam, and revelations about cigarette companies lying about lung cancer, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, we've done a good job teaching people to be wary of authority and corporate power. We haven't, however, done such a great job in giving them something *other* than trust in authority to fall back on. We haven't taught them to be skeptical.
Disbelieving a traditional authority figure and then putting your faith in an alternative authority is not skepticism. Treating every question of fact as if it were a matter of opinion isn't skepticism either. Both these things kinds of weak-tea skepticism are just alternative forms of credulity.
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Sorry to drag social media into the fray again, but it may have undue influence. The poorest, most ignorant people don't use social media much. When the doctor, or some authority, tells them to get vaccinations, they obey.
But those steeped in social media see lots of opinions, lots of controversy, lots of fake news. When an authority tells them to get vaccinations, they think they know better.
'All's fair in love and war', they say. Raising children is a very emotional activity. Parents tend to be protective and sometimes paranoid about obscure threats to their children. Rationality is sometimes overlooked when they find urgent online pleas to avoid vaxxing.
I work with illiterate adults, helping them to be readers. They are very docile and will do what doctors tell them to do. The rest of us are too smart to fall for that blind obedience trap.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Good point. I live in a somewhat rural part of Clark County, WA (where the recent measles outbreak is taking place) and know a fair number of parents who are adamantly against vaccines. They tend to fall into one of two camps. First, there is a more religious group (Apostolic Lutherans being a significant portion but a number from a variety of Christian sects) that homeschools their kids (although even homeschooled kids will have a number of interactions with regularly schooled children). Relatively few of them will go to college. Instead, they generally move into a skilled trade after getting their GEDs. These people have generally been living in the area for generations and I seriously doubt that any level of education will change their minds. Closing them off from public schools/colleges will have little effect. I read their posts on the community Facebook pages and the shortsightedness and irresponsibility makes my mind reel. While they don't like measles, the prospect of infection isn't nearly enough to make them change their minds. I question whether anything more serious would. Second, there is a large community of first generation Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, many of whom tend to look with suspicion at anything any government asks them to do. I suspect this community will come around after a generation, if not sooner, since this group, although wary of government, tends to be more pragmatic and some of the measles infections have occurred in Slavic community centers and private schools.
because there are some people that can't be vaccinated for various reasons and people who could be but choose not to put them at risk, kids who have certain disorders, newborns, women who are pregnant who may not be as well protected by their own childhood vaccinations because of changes in body chemistry, elderly people, etc, etc, etc
to address what some anti-vaxxers try to rely on, yes there is a herd immunity, but we rely on it for those that legitimately can't be vaccinated and not just those that choose not to because they are morons, besides the fact that if we get enough morons, then the herd immunity disappears anyway
The anti-vaxx conspiracy theory is that Big Pharma have co-opted scientists.
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The problem is "authorities" also told us to give up butter in favor of trans-fat laden margarine and keeps alternately telling us eggs are good and eggs are of the devil. Then the people who brought out that smoking is harmful and then somewhat exaggerated the claims for 2nd hand smoke have started going off about 3rd and even 4th hand smoke (I'm not kidding).
All of that really has left a vacuum that is now being filled by cranks and quacks.
It's not the dumb fucks but the selfish assholes. Gotcha.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do you get a smallpox vaccine? No, smallpox was eradicated.
Unless you are working in labs that maintain samples of smallpox for research, this is probably true. That said, if a new outbreak ever occurs somehow (e.g. cross-species transmission), then being able to rapidly ramp up those immunizations could be pretty important.
Do you get a chicken pox vaccine when you already had chicken pox? Probably not. The efficacy of having had chicken oox is better understood than the efficacy of the vaccine.
Actually, that's untrue. People who have previously been infected by chickenpox need a vaccine booster later in life. The chickenpox virus is never completely eliminated from the human body, and as a result, it can resurface in the form of shingles, a painful and debilitating condition that affects a million people per year in the United States alone. Given that the chickenpox vaccine was not approved for use in the U.S. until 1995, exactly zero percent of the main at-risk age group (elderly) were vaccinated as a kid, which is to say that (approximately) all cases of shingles occur in people who had chickenpox, not the vaccine. But periodic booster vaccination can prevent it from occurring/recurring.
Do you get your second dose of gardasil as a child? No, you get it later in life assuming you even want it or some guideline has not changed.
Huh? Like all vaccines, protection lasts for a period of time.
I would ask that you idiots please stop talking about vaccines as though they were some monolithic thing that everybody gets from big brother.
Vaccines aren't all the same, but they are pretty darn similar except for the virus itself. They confer an immunity to a particular virus and similar viruses for a period of time. They must periodically be supplemented by a booster if continued immunity is required, and mutation of viruses can result in less or no protection (e.g. influenza). The only questions you need to ask are:
That's it. There's really only a single factor to consider when deciding whether to be vaccinated. People who go to countries that have more viruses need more immunizations. People in the U.S. need fewer (but still more than none). And when groups of people refuse to get immunized, the herd immunity of the society they live in is reduced, and everyone is at greater risk of dying from what would otherwise be an entirely preventable disease.
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