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Teen Who Defied Anti-Vax Mom Says She Got False Information From One Source: Facebook (washingtonpost.com)
An 18-year-old from Ohio who famously inoculated himself against his mother's wishes in December says he
attributes his mother's anti-vaccine ideology to a single source: Facebook [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: Ethan Lindenberger, a high school senior, testified Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and underscored the importance of "credible" information. In contrast, he said, the false and deep-rooted beliefs his mother held -- that vaccines were dangerous -- were perpetuated by social media. Specifically, he said, she turned to anti-vaccine groups on social media for evidence that supported her point of view. In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Lindenberger said Facebook, or websites that were linked on Facebook, is really the only source his mother ever relied on for her anti-vaccine information.
I started to base all my opinions on stuff that I read on 4chan. You wouldn't believe the change in my quality of life.
Facebook wasn't around 18 years ago. Even the stupid summary says that she went to Facebook to CONFIRM her already held idiotic beliefs. That means she did NOT get the false information from ONE source - Facebook. She already had the false information from somewhere else - probably that idiot Jenny McCarthy since that would be closer to the time. She used Facebook for confirmation bias only. Stuck in her bubble of idiots.
... breaking news at 10
I don't respond to or upvote ACs
...because the people who are stupid enough to easily believe all the crap they read on social media are usually the ones who are on social media the most. Oh, and those are the people having the most kids. The world is rapidly becoming the Idiocracy movie.
Well, that settles it then. Emmanuel Goldste ... I mean, Facebook, is the source of all evil.
Seriously, what are we supposed to do with this? Lynch Zuckerberg? Set up an office of censorship to make sure that no Moms get false information from anywhere? What, exactly?
Are they implying that unpopular opinions are a new thing and are the Internet's fault? What is this... the basis for censorship?! Humans, please stop blaming the Internet or Mikey's Web Page for reinforcing you own strongly-held beliefs!!
Seriously, who cares? People are going to pick and choose their sources to support their views. The implication of this "story" is more "wrong think" suppression, and that is far more dangerous than a few idiots not vaccinating.
It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.
Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So why the moral panic?
Because people who don't get vaccines don't just kill/maim themselves, they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
No the implication of this story is that social media once again enables the gullible to be targeted via misinformation campaigns. What do Anti-vaxers, flat earthers, Anti-gmo crusaders, and a certain branch of one of our main political parties all have in common? They get their information from Facebook. Ill actually defend Facebook here. They are the platform, the scammers and the scammed just happen to both use it.
Looks, I'll be the first in line to trash Facebook for all the things they do wrong. But just the same, I prefer to have an honest discussion about root issues. Facebook didn't tell him mom that vaccinations were bad. Stupid people using Facebook did.
If you don't want to use Facebook because they're not cracking down on anti-vaxxer crap, fine, boycott it. I'm surprised all the flaws about Facebook haven't led you to boycott it until now, in fact. But don't suggest that Facebook is at fault. They're not.
- Pacific Bell didn't call in the bomb threat.
- The US Postal Service didn't send someone anthrax.
- Highway 101 didn't stop you from getting to work on time.
These are all networks being used by people to do harmful (or at the very least, stupid) things. Go after them. Regulate them. Do the hard work and propose how we're supposed to, in the realm of free speech and the right to be wrong, regulate stupid people.
Facebook is a megaphone for disinformation. True, there was disinformation around before they existed, before the internet existed, but to spread it you needed a budget. Facebook is like owning a printing press with a built-in distribution system.
If you're disseminating information that harms people, seriously harms them in some instances, where's the accountability?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It's important to add this qualification: multiple *independent* sources of information. It's a well-known tactic for propaganda to use multiple mouthpieces. When you see a bunch of people taking *exactly the same position* (often in the same words) it's really just one source of information.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Is it not obvious to everybody that this show is all being orchestrated to drum up support for censorship?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
We can't rely on natural selection to solve all our problems. For one thing it takes too long and there's no guarantee that the stupid people will get a preventable disease that kills them before they pass on their stupid genes. Secondly, it mostly doesn't even effect them, just their children and other people's children. Thirdly, as the brave young man in the story proves, stupidity seems to be transmitted mostly by memes rather than genes, so natural selection doesn't work on it at all.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Morons just look for confirmation of their misconceptions. Ordinarily, I would not mind, but anti-vaxxers inflict serious harm on others, in particular on those that cannot be vaccinated for medical reason and on their own children, which clearly is child-abuse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right."
That isn't my experience. Because it isn't enough to be right for the wrong reasons. You win people over with a strawman oversimplified version of the truth and then they very quickly get swayed by a slightly more informed person with the opposing view. The truth is usually complicated and grey and full of thousands of concessions to the other sides talking points that are crippling in SOUNDING right but essential to actually being right.
Very few people actually want to be right, they just want the people they are impressed with to be impressed with them and pretend that means they are right.
Why the fuck is an adult (well, legally anyways) getting all this attention for doing something that adults are expected to do? I just filed my taxes, where's my standing ovation?
Let's start with, I'm very pro-vaccine. However, pro-vaccine people always make the arguments based on the incredibly small risk of taking vaccines versus the potential side effects and the small (but much bigger) risk of the associate diseases. This is a correct, rational assumption. What I don't understand is how so many people in the pro-vaccine camp lose their goddamn minds over the incredibly tiny risk to people who can't get vaccinated. We're talking about an incredibly small number of people, facing an incredibly unlikely disease, and facing an incredibly small added risk due to a small number of unvaccinated people. This incredibly small number, whatever it is, is some how good enough to justify people to be forceably injected with a foreign substance that has an incredibly tiny, but existent risk associated with it. That math doesn't seem very rational to me.
He also said his mother wasn't stupid. These two positions are in direct conflict with each other. Regardless, good for him.
On another level, I can't help but feel this anti-vax nonsense is a species response to an unhealthy breeding environment.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"Lindenberger said Facebook, or websites that were linked on Facebook, is really the only source his mother ever relied on for her anti-vaccine information."
It looks like the article is targeting FB for the false information -- except for the sub-clause, "... or websites that were linked to Facebook..." I'm not anti-vaxx or pro Facebook but this has all the earmarks of somebody's witch hunt.
The point of this story is that people are unable to tell fact from fiction and fabrication. It's not about "wrong think" it's about believing bullshit and not being able to tell when you're fed bullshit.
People lack the ability to identify when they're being lied to. That in turn is mostly due to them having a crappy education level that doesn't even allow them to question what they're told because they have no information to rely on as a gauge to test new information. They have been taught by schools that put more emphasis on believing what an authority tells them, rote learning that leaves you completely unable to learn anything but what you are force fed and a system that rewards conformity rather than questioning.
So when they start "questioning", it usually takes the form of "The elites/illuminati/big pharma/boogeyman-du-jour have told me A, so I will instead blindly believe B instead because B must be true since it is the opposite of what (insert boogeyman here) says".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Most antivaxers are vaccinated. Their parents made them get vaccinated a long time ago. Given the age of the movement, there isn't a large overlap between people who are adults now and are also young enough to have not been vaccinated before the movement took off. So they aren't even harming themselves, they are harming their children.
There are a large number of those who depend on herd immunity without it being a choice (IE they're immunocompromised or allergic to the appropriate vaccines). It's kinda like saying drunk driving is a self-correcting problem because drunk drivers are more likely to be in accidents than sober drivers.
What right is being taken away here? The right to be wrong? The right to believe any bullshit no matter how insane? The right to be an utter moron that's easily convinced because he's too stupid to tell when he's being bullshitted?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It is not. Non-vaccinated people primarily harm others. Sure, they get sick themselves, but the main harm they do is that a) they infect people that cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons and b) most vaccinations are not 100% so they increase the risk to people that actually got vaccinated.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
>Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right.
Unfortunately there are many studies that show otherwise. There's a reason cult de-programmers use strong appeal to emotion instead of logic, you can't 'logic' someone out of something they didn't 'logic' themselves into to begin with.
For once, human nature serves humanity. The teen urge to rebel against their parents is remarkably constructive in the face of the rampant stupidity of the anti-vaxxers. Now all we need is for this guy to produce a Vaccination Challenge video and stick it on Youtube and ten thousand teens will sneak behind their parents' backs to seek out a medical professional.
You can't make this shit up.
I don't really care what's happening as long as it's detrimental to Facebook.
#DeleteFacebook
Because the idiots then seek medical aid for preventable diseases and I get to foot the bill.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem with identifying independent sources is that this requires common sense. Most people do not have much of that and the anti-vaxxers clearly have none.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Probably the biggest source of misinformation when I was younger was email forwards. There was no quick way to verify the information, it was written to sound compelling, and it was very easy to share with your friends and relatives. Snopes became huge by becoming the de facto source to check on the validity of a forwarded email.
Before that, it was actually faxes. I'm not old enough to have worked in an office before email really replaced it, but people used to forward hoaxes, chain letters, and all the same stuff to their colleagues by fax machine.
What's changing is the transaction cost, and reach. With fax machines the cost was quite high (paper/phone line tied up), and the number of people you could reach was limited. With email it got cheaper and easier to spread faster. Facebook is the next generation of that, because it even shows you stories that didn't come from your acquaintances. Facebook spreads the misinformation itself, to the people most inclined to believe it.
There has never been a time when "everyone knew that information was not reliable." Every single person had to learn that the hard way, sometimes by a parent explicitly explaining it to them, or by being embarrassed when they forwarded something that turned out to be false.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
What do Anti-vaxers, flat earthers, Anti-gmo crusaders, and a certain branch of one of our main political parties all have in common? They get their information from Facebook.
All of these movements predate Facebook, sometimes by centuries.
There was strong resistance to smallpox inoculation in Britain, that was only somewhat reduced when the children of the royal family were inoculated in 1722.
Throughout the 19th century, there was religious opposition to vaccinations, and resistance to vaccinations today is strongest in muslim countries such as Pakistan where Facebook is not so pervasive.
The anti-GMO movement started in the 1990s, long before social media became common. Facebook was started in 2004.
Believe it or not, political extremism also predates Facebook. Seriously.
Facebook doesn't stop vaccinations, parents do.
Stop lying. This always comes up through a someone like you who abuse this topic of national health to inject their other political agendas.
You think a fence will protect you from disease? Or maybe you want to argue for forced vaccination for illegal immigrants?
I'll humour you. I'm from West Europe and there's a lot of illegals that have entered our wealthy western countries among the refugees here.
I have a friend who happens to work as a general physician at a hospital. According to them immigrants (also illegal ones) make up a large group that get their children willingly vaccinated. And our doctors do it for free, because that's what they do with such basic vaccination as MMR in our country. Apparently they do this so often that my friend is concerned about them using up the resources that are meant for our native population. Take it with a grain of salt, as that friend is a bit on the nationalistic side.
Or in other words, that may fit better into your perspective: The illegals who we expect to breed like rabbits, because that is what it took in their home countries, are ensuring the survival of their children with our advanced medicine while the native morons are exposing their offspring to unnecessary dangers by refusing to use our advanced medicine.
they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
It may seem heartless, but from a Darwinian perspective, this is also a self correcting problem.
I think the big point that Facebook which is a popular widely used source (much like broadcast TV a generation ago) is being used to tout misinformation, which people who have such views, can more widely get a hold of and strengthen their resolve, even if they are fully in the wrong.
The problem is that too many people are getting news from Facebook, and a lot of it very fake and dangerous. (Like, yelling fire in an auditorium type of dangerous which could be outside of First Amendment Speech ) And Facebook still hasn't done much to fix this.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The right to contribute to both your children's and society's collective vulnerability to potentially deadly disease outbreaks?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Exactly why you don't bring your own research to your doctor, he took decades to be wrong, you took months to be right.
If you don't vax your kids than you shouldn't be allowed around other people. You guys benefit from herd mentality. So when one of you guys get chicken pox, it spreads to other anti Vaxers. There a currently outbreaks cropping up again because of this stupid anti vaccine movement.
What I don't understand is how so many people in the pro-vaccine camp lose their goddamn minds over the incredibly tiny risk to people who can't get vaccinated. We're talking about an incredibly small number of people,
That's not how it works. Most vaccines aren't 100% effective. However, if almost all of the population is vaccinated, an outbreak is still unlikely to obtain critical mass to spread even if the vaccine is only, for example, 80% effective.
However, if a bunch of people refuse to vaccinate, then it can add enough susceptible people to get critical mass for an widespread outbreak. In this example, that could cause harm to the 20% of the population that vaccine failed to fully protect.
You arguing that being right is no substitute for being a good debater. I agree. But it's still loads easier when you're actually right. Much like it's easier to keep your story straight when you're telling the truth.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Fuck the marketplace of ideas. If that concept had any merit, why is this the state of affairs in the Western world after practicing it for so many decades? Actually being right does not do much to convince the Average Joe that you're right, especially after they've sought out and indoctrinated themselves with beliefs that are wrong. We have disproved the marketplace of ideas through experiment, and our reality is the aftermath.
We need to use our freedoms to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public rather than continuing to wait for the marketplace of ideas' invisible hand to lead people to the truth while it merely points out rabbit-holes to madness for vulnerable people to gleefully leap into. Call it corporate censorship if you like, but the alternatives are common carrier status or forced speech. Choose one.
It's also strange for someone who expresses such worry about corporate censorship to be so gung-ho about corporate and government propaganda campaigns.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That is exactly the right being discussed. It's a fundamentally important right, because almost every statement we now consider correct was popularly considered batshit at some point, and vice versa. The world has certain immutable, objective truths, but it's ridiculous to think humans could ever know them with certainty.
... is like a dog walking on its hind legs. You can train him to do it, but it will never come naturally.
People are social animals; prisoners who are put in solitary confinement for extended periods come out with serious psychological disturbances, even if you do nothing more inhumane than make them sit by themselves for months. In a less extreme version of this, it will always feel uncomfortable to hold an opinion without supporters, even if you know you're right. On the flip side it's all too easy to go along with apparently popular ideas you disagree with. Eventually you'll believe those ideas.
Don't get me wrong. Groupthink is mankind's killer evolutionary advantage. If you disagree with *everyone* around you, chances are you're wrong, although of course that varies depending on you and the people around you. But social media is unlike anything humans have ever experienced before. If you designed an operant conditioning experiment with the aim of producing group think on an unprecedentedly vast, society-wide scale, social media is exactly what you'd end up with.
It's like sugar. Favoring sweet foods is good for you if you're a member of a small band of hunter-gatherers. A sweet tooth is not so good for you if you live in a society that boasts a sugar industry. A bias toward consensus is good for you if you're human living in a small group. It's bad for you if you live in a society with a groupthink industry.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What I don't understand is how so many people in the pro-vaccine camp lose their goddamn minds over the incredibly tiny risk to people who can't get vaccinated.
I'm in the "pro-vaccine camp." I don't lose my goddamn mind over the issue you've cited - I lose my goddamn mind over two other things:
1) The fact that parents who don't vaccinate their kids are putting their own little kids at risk of unnecessary suffering. I know a lot of Slashdotters would say "Let them suffer" as if its the kids' fault for having stupid parents. However, I suspect the Slashdotters who say that either aren't parents or lack empathy - And have never spent a wakeful night or two dealing with an ill, suffering kid, powerless to do anything. I'm in my early 50s. When I was a kid there was no Chicken Pox vaccine. I still remember, 40+ years later, the terrible suffering my brother went through when he suffered from the pox, and the stress it put on my parents. So I lose my goddamn mind over potential child suffering when people choose to not vaccinate for things like chicken pox.
2) The fact that, while my kids are vaccinated, the fact is that vaccines are not 100% effective on all biochemistries means that disease prevention also depends on herd immunity. If there are kids in my kids' classroom that aren't vaccinated, then they in turn are putting my kids at risk, even though my kids are vaccinated - Because the vaccine my kids took might not be effective with them.
they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
It may seem heartless, but from a Darwinian perspective, this is also a self correcting problem.
I suppose so, slowly killing off the population that cannot be vaccinated? Though I question the value of Darwin in modern days. A person's contribution to the future is not always in genes these days but in knowledge added to humanity. Of course it can be argued this is also weakening the gene pool. I guess only the future will tell what is the right perspective.
The real issue that we allow parents to override medical professionals and scientists. Unless you can demonstrate, with valid medical testing, that your children is allergic to, or would have medical complications, from a vaccine, you should not be allowed to reject a vaccine.
"We need to use our freedoms to limit our freedoms." You're a fascist.
Ah, the good old Nihilism argument. Because there's no absolute truth, everything is an opinion and the end. And all opinions are equally valid.
However, some opinions have resulted in us being able to converse about this nonsense over the internet at about the speed of light, while half a planet may be between us.
Don't you think these are a bit more desirable than those opinions that, to use one other extreme as an example, caused genocides?
Funny, the ownership class uses their freedoms to limit our freedoms and nobody has ever accused them of being fascists. Let's admit that "freedom" by itself is a word that's vague to the point of uselessness and be more specific:
Let's exercise our civil liberties and private property rights a way to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public rather than to perpetuate their debate in the mistaken belief that it might achieve the same end.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
FB has not been around 18 years.
If that concept had any merit, why is this the state of affairs in the Western world after practicing it for so many decades?
Quality of life seems to track directly with amount of freedom of speech, so I'm not sure what you're going on about?
I think you're upset that what makes most people happy isn't what makes you happy, and you want to force everyone else to change. Thing about dictatorships: you don't get to be the dictator. So what alternative do you propose? An autocratic system where you're banned from arguing against any position taken by the autocracy? You do realize those won't be positions that you like, right?
We need to use our freedoms to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public
That didn't work out so well for the people when Mao, Stalin, and Hitler did it. Do you imagine it will be your ideas the next time around? Sorry, hate to break it to you, that's not how any of this works.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I forgot that Slashdot cuts off long titles on mobile. :/
That was supposed to read "...people who think Facebook needs to fix it are evil."
You get your kids initial vaccinations when they're babies... Facebook wasn't around when she made this decision... and in it's early years it wasn't really a place where people got their news from...
Accountability is the key here, I think...
Facebook was founded in 2004. Even if she signed up as soon as anyone was able too, her 18 year old son would already be 4 years old at that time, and would have already missed a boatload of early childhood vaccinations. Facebook's echo chamber undoubtedly reinforced her misguided beliefs that vaccines are dangerous, but they are not the source of them.
The "marketplace of ideas" does not equal free speech, they're different things. The "marketplace of ideas" is the concept that it's beneficial (or at least harmless) to expose the public to a debate of terrible ideas and falsehoods. "Invite the nazi to speak at the college, we'll curb-stomp him with facts and reason and show everyone how wrong his ideas are, thus making the audience less supportive of nazi ideas" - that's the "marketplace of ideas."
I don't propose any government censorship, I propose that we realize that debating these ideas spreads them to vulnerable people who aren't swayed by logic, and that citizens should use their civil liberties and private property rights to deny these debates a venue, forcing them into smaller and more obscure venues where less people would be exposed to them. Don't let the nazi speak at your college, don't allow anti-vax content on your social media platform, etc.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
censorship. Its a preamble to "lets block content to anything we don't want you to see". This group is insane, we have to censor them or they will brainwash millions. Its total bullshit. Only stupid people are susceptible. Censorship is a slippery slope. Once you justify one exception, the next will follow. After a handful of exceptions, the rate at which they arrive will be exponential. The very first exception was the fire in a crowded theater ruling. The time between exceptions being made get reduced each time. Its already happening in the loose way they define hate speech, which turns out to only be hate speech spoken by a far-right group, far left groups get free passes for the exact same rhetoric, for now. Anything someone doesn't agree with is instantly labeled hate speech. Don't like the idea of a guy pretending to be transgende, 'identifies' with women, and gets to use the bathroom to spy on your teenage daughter? hate speech the second you voice a concern. Its not like you stood up and rally a bunch of people to go hang a bunch of transgenders (which really would be hate speech). Mere the idea of disagreeing with anything 'politically correct' is now defined as hate speech and worthy of censorship. What happens when the PC comes for your porn? Don't bother to speak out against porn censorship, you'll be labeled a hate-speech loon and shut down instantly. This is a very dangerous genie to let out of a bottle.
You dont have to shut down the speech. Schools already refuse admission without proof of vaccination. Problem solved. Either home school your kid in a bubble or get him vaccinated.
I frequently accuse them of being fascists. Nobody wants to hear the truth if it would mean they have to risk their lives to fix the problem.
Getting vaccinated doesn't guarantee a protective titer, if too many people opt out it will lose societal level effectiveness.
Lawsuits and concerns about Russian trolling to sway elections are causing pressure to curate the postings. Won't this coincidentally end the safe harbor provisions for copyright violations, currently limited to DMCA takedowns in a timely manner?
For if they filter, they can filter for copyright, and thus can be sued immediately because now they are a publisher?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Well, faxes were certainly in use, but email had taken over as far as forwarding stuff to other people. :)
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Participating in it? Not intentionally. It certainly doesn't mean I support the concept. Learn what it means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population.
That central tenet is demonstrably false. We would not live in a world of viral fake news and large subcultures who believe in clear falsehoods if it were true. Exposing the public to falsehoods for the purpose of debate was not harmless or, on balance, beneficial.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.
Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.
That' a nice idea but there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...
https://www.scientificamerican...
They also tend to change the argument to avoid facing inconvenient facts.
https://www.scientificamerican...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Much like it's easier to keep your story straight when you're telling the truth.
At the amateur level, maybe. A well-thought-out and practiced lie, however, can easier to keep straight than the truth. Reality tends to be messy, and when people aren't deliberately trying to keep their story straight the details tend to get blurred. Stories that fit together unusually well often contain a fair bit of fiction—either deliberate deception or simple subconscious editing and rationalization.
It does help to have solid evidence on your side, if the people you're trying to convince are the type to be persuaded by the evidence. If not, your skills as a debater will matter far more than whether you're right or wrong.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Isn't that where we are headed anyway? Government control of everything?
Shall we dig out the Jackboots and brown shirts now? (sarc off)
May I suggest we take a bit less aggressive stance here.. Government isn't the answer to everything. In this case, a bit of an educational effort may go a long way towards warding off the dis-information campaigns that come from the AntiVaxx Dogma. Can we at least try that first?
The battle over "fake news" will only be won when "real news" is recognized and applauded for being right and that takes education on the issues, balanced and factual education.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It would only be fairly mitigated if homeschooling meant keeping non-vaccinated children quarantined from society, which it doesn't.
And how did free speech get into this? There's been no talk of governments criminalizing anti-vaccine speech.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The "marketplace of ideas" does not equal free speech, they're different things.
I don't see the difference.
. The "marketplace of ideas" is the concept that it's beneficial (or at least harmless) to expose the public to a debate of terrible ideas and falsehoods. "Invite the nazi to speak at the college, we'll curb-stomp him with facts and reason and show everyone how wrong his ideas are, thus making the audience less supportive of nazi ideas" - that's the "marketplace of ideas."
Sounds like free speech. The alternative is "not free speech". Especially in modern times, when almost everyone is a "Nazi", at least by social media standards.
Don't let the nazi speak at your college,
Everyone you disagree with is a "Nazi" these days, so you're saying "don't let people you disagree with speak at a government-funded school. I don't see any daylight between that and government censorship.
don't allow anti-vax content on your social media platform, etc.
Censorship by effective monopolies that dominate public debate is nearly as bad as censorship by governments. Anyway, since when are "forbidden ideas" less attractive? I don't think the human mind works that way.
Debunk the bunk. Especially, do so in a way that kids of anti-vax parents get the full story.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Does Microsoft Outlook allow companies to pay to be at the top of your inbox based on the content of all of your previous emails?
Yahoo Mail does. (Unless you run an adblocker.)
Please, don't give MS any ideas on how to further monetize Office.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Don't worry too much about changing the minds of specific individuals. Instead, think about the drift of ideas between generations (the old definition of "memes" pre-2000). That is where the difference is made. You can't e.g. convince someone not to be racist, but you can change the statistical likelyhood of their kids being racist.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
However restricting speech that represents a clear and present danger has never been part of the first amendment... though I'm not about to claim to be smart (dumb?) enough to try to apply that outside of the most blindingly obvious examples.
for stupid.
Telling the truth doesn't innately make you right. If a schizophrenic tells the tale of their alien abduction they may well be telling the truth as they see it. Also, an attention seeking liar could tell the tale of their abduction while an alien zips overhead unseen.
If you are a good debater you'll have learned that the issues where it is possible to be entirely right are rarely debated in the first place and the best strategy for dealing with subpoints of your opponents argument of that sort is usually to concede them instantly. What makes being right so hard is that there is rarely a complex issue without several of these objective and definitely right sub-issues that conflict with the arguments of both sides and it is usually only an inability to remember those details (or masking them via bias) that lets a rational thinking person to fall to one side or other when all sides are argued well.
Kid goes against his mom's wishes, congress investigates.
What?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
The right of self determination - the right to decide for yourself what you do with your body and your life. In other words, the fundamental right that is the basis for democracy. The entire premise of democracy is that people will on average make the right decision. So if you let them freely choose what they want to do, most of the time it turns out right. Concede that right, and you're basically admitting that the fascists are sometimes right.
That's why the correct solution to this problem is education. Teach people how to think critically and make rational decisions. Then the problem solves itself - people view stuff they read on Facebook with a skeptical eye, research both sides, and decide for themselves that the anti-vaxxers are full of $#!t. As a bonus, it doesn't just fix the anti-vaxx problem, it fixes a host of other problems.
Unfortunately, educating people is a lot harder than banning speech, or making vaccinations mandatory, or otherwise infringing people's rights. So people who want a quick and dirty solution but don't really think about the long-term consequences of their decisions, tend to favor these right-infringing methods. (The people who want to be fascists and dictators also favor them, though they try to keep their true motivations secret.) Think about it - making vaccination mandatory is basically giving the state the power to inject the entire population with whatever substance it deems necessary. Just about every dystopian sci-fi story ever written has warned us against exactly that. But sugar-coat it with public health and put idiot anti-vaxxers on the opposing side, and suddenly people are tripping over themselves to give the state exactly that power. To me, that's a bigger travesty than the anti-vaxxer movement.
"Reality tends to be messy, and when people aren't deliberately trying to keep their story straight the details tend to get blurred."
Which of course will also be useful for a practiced liar. An inexperienced liar will be trying to keep every detail straight and terrified is something contradictory creeps in. An master liar will ride the chaos because they know it is present all over the place when people are telling the truth as well.
Don't worry too much about changing the minds of specific individuals. Instead, think about the drift of ideas between generations (the old definition of "memes" pre-2000). That is where the difference is made. You can't e.g. convince someone not to be racist, but you can change the statistical likelyhood of their kids being racist.
Good points.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"Free speech" means "you're free to say anything without being charged with a crime." And there are limits to that even in the US - incitements to violence, for example. Very different from the "marketplace of ideas" concept which has nothing to do with criminality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Everyone you disagree with is a "Nazi" these days, so you're saying "don't let people you disagree with speak at a government-funded school. I don't see any daylight between that and government censorship.
It may amount to government censorship at a public school. However most colleges are privately funded so there's no issue.
Censorship by effective monopolies that dominate public debate is nearly as bad as censorship by governments.
Nearly as bad in your opinion, but legally worlds apart. Again, the alternatives are enforced common carrier status and forced speech. Choose.
Anyway, since when are "forbidden ideas" less attractive? I don't think the human mind works that way.
Doesn't matter how attractive they are if they're highly elusive and largely unknown. Pushing ideas underground works.
Debunk the bunk. Especially, do so in a way that kids of anti-vax parents get the full story.
This is what the Western world's been doing for much of the late 20th century, and as you can see the bunk has been winning. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Rawhide “Incident at Red River Station” (1960) – Gil and Rowdy get exposed to smallpox and leave the herd to find a vaccine. They instead find a town that believes in Asafoetida bags, leeches and herbal tea, pushing the real doctor out of town to care for patients in a pest house. “There are very few people around here who believe in vaccination,” says Dr. Flood, at least until people start dying of smallpox and they line up for the batch of vaccine he makes from the cowpox of a nearby herd.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
I really *want* to agree with you, because it seems reasonable. We know that Nazis are bad, and we know that anti-vax is wrong. We know that because we've studied the effects of both and they're undesirable.
We also know that exposing people to these concepts will cause them to be sympathetic to them, although I we don't fully understand the scale. In the US, exposing people to Nazi propaganda seems to create a ~9% supportive effect[1], while in Germany in the 20s and 30s it was far higher. The truth is, if you or I were a student in Germany in the 30s, we'd almost certainly be Nazis.
The problem with suppressing wrong/hate speech is that the same argument could be made about Galileo in the 1600s or US racism in the 60s. Let me "quote" you: "Don't let the black man speak at your college, don't allow black content on your social media platform, etc. Letting them debate ideas spreads them to vulnerable people who aren't swayed by logic, and citizens should use their civil liberties and private property rights to deny these debates a venue."
We would be much better off if only correct arguments can be platformed, so that weak people aren't swayed by incorrect arguments. Unfortunately, we don't have a way of perfectly identifying "correct" arguments. Even if we could, "correct" changes over time, as people and cultures change. Life is complex and complicated enough that anyone who thinks they "know with certainty" anything about any complex topic is kidding themselves. If you restrict speech based on what you "know" is right, you will get it wrong some of the time. Furthermore, evil people will come along and use those restrictions as a weapon to create further oppression. History shows us that.
If we seek truth and a better life for all, the best way I've found is to allow people to speak freely, debate, argue, and pick at truth. It's messy and often has horrible outcomes. It causes Measles outbreaks. It allows Nazis to march and alienate people. It allows speech that is utterly hateful to homosexuals and racial groups. It allows speech that marginalizes people of less common attributes (appearance, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, etc). But I'll take all of those downsides in a heartbeat if the alternative is oppression, exploitation, and dictatorships.[2]
I strongly recommend you read "The Gulag Archipelago" from Solzhenitsyn.
Sources:
[1] https://www.elitedaily.com/new...
[2] https://stanfordfreedomproject...
-=Lothsahn=-
Let's take measles as an example. Measles is so contagious that in order for herd immunity to be effective, at least 95% of the population needs to be immune. Now consider that the measles vaccine currently in use is 98% effective. So what percentage of the population needs to be given the vaccine in order to get to that 95% immune level? If you do the math, at least 97% of the population needs to be given the vaccine. Now consider that there are some people who should NOT receive the measles vaccine due to legitimate medical conditions such as severe allergic reaction to neomycin, compromised immune system, etc. The best thing for those people is to be covered via herd immunity and they can legitimately be part of the 3% of the population who do not need to receive the vaccine. And these anti-vaccine idiots effectively eliminate the effectiveness of herd immunity. To illustrate. A 2015 study indicates that for the measles vaccine, 9% of the American population believe it should not be given to their children.... 9% people. Now contemplate that 9% and see if there's some way using the above figures to get the immune population up to 95%.
Where, exactly? There are several States that allow exemptions from vaccination for "personal reasons" or "religious belief". Those States allow unvaccinated children to attend public school.
The most aggressive States in requiring vaccination are, I believe, Mississippi and West Virginia. The only exemptions accepted are from a medical doctor who testifies that the child is allergic to the vaccine itself.
Mississippi ran a campaign for medical professionals called "If you get 'em, stick 'em." to encourage universal vaccination.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
My mom, rest her soul, was an anti-vaxxer (and a research Nurse no less). Facebook would let her spread that nonsense. It would give her a safe space to discuss it and get it reinforced.
Reinforcement's the big thing. My bro and I were just talking about the Dem primary. Based on his news feeds Kamala Harris is the front runner. Based on mine it's Bernie and Harris is dead in the water. The two of us had to do a mess of googling to get out of our bubbles.
That's because services like YouTube and Facebook are built to keep funneling content to you that your receptive of so they can get more "engagement" (e.g. eye on glass) and more ad impressions. It's real time and designed around sessions. Click a Bernie video and your feed blows up with Bernie. Click a gaming video and suddenly it's gaming. Whatever it takes to keep you clicking one more video.
True story, YouTube decided a buddy was trans. Apparently several of the Warhammer 40k players and painters he subscribed to were, and they'd done videos about the Trans issues they were facing on their 40k channels. I guess that's one way to get out of the Bubble. But baring that you really have to try to step out of it.
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Slashdot, as a private platform, should be free to ban my anti-marketplace-of-ideas speech if they wish - legally they're free to do so. It's only a problem if a government bans that speech.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Awesome! I can't wait to yell "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. When the police come to arrest me, I'll tell them that Nuh-uh! Drethon said I have Free Speech!!!
Hmm, didn't think I had to be explicit that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater was one of the blindingly obvious examples I was referring to.
The problem with suppressing wrong/hate speech is that the same argument could be made about Galileo in the 1600s or US racism in the 60s. Let me "quote" you: "Don't let the black man speak at your college, don't allow black content on your social media platform, etc. Letting them debate ideas spreads them to vulnerable people who aren't swayed by logic, and citizens should use their civil liberties and private property rights to deny these debates a venue."
A good point. And here's where the closest thing to a true "marketplace of ideas" comes into play: The "correct" position can organically win a long uphill battle, but "wrong" ones can only win if a complacent populace lets them. Civil rights leaders in the '60s were in fact widely "de-platformed," even if that's not what it was called back then, and they eventually won anyway. The entire arc of the moral universe toward justice had to be forcefully gouged through every obstacle you can imagine, but it wasn't stopped. Therefore we shouldn't be afraid to de-platform ideas that we can reasonably agree are "wrong."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Stop using the "Fire in a Crowded Theater" argument
Check the history to get an idea.
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/graph-us-measles-cases
Before vaccination, measles used to infect 700,000 people per year, just in the United States. Combined, diseases that are now preventable by vaccination used to infect millions, and cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands worldwide.
This type of information doesn't seem to survive from generation to generation. My grandparents knew people who died from diseases like measles, rubella, small pox, polio, etc. I don't, because widespread vaccinations have all but eliminated these diseases. People no longer come face-to-face with the horror of their young children dying regularly, so they forget.
The math is so small exactly because people were forcibly injected with a foreign substance in the past. Or, faced with the horrors of preventable deaths, gladly lined up.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
""There has never been a time when "everyone knew that information was not reliable.""" Actually there was. Schools would not accept any web sources at all even Wikipedia or the top google search result.
You have not chosen peer-reviewed journals to support your (likely false ) contention. Why not? Because most careful studies show prudent discussion of a factual position wins over bad-faith, falsified arguments.
Cite?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Insert your villian here: Terrorists, Child molesters, Gun Owners, Anti Vaxers, Russian bots, Hate speech....
Or to some the favorite villains could be: minorities moving to my neighborhood, minorities wanting to vote, gays wanting to get married, people choosing the wrong religion, all reasons to motivate some to try and restrict rights.
One day my mother is saying how we must protect the freedom of religion and get rid of government intrusion. The next day we drive past a mosque and she says "that shouldn't be allowed". The human brain is perfectly capable of believing in to contrary ideas simultaneously. Freedom for me, but restrictions for you!
Nobody's being "suppressed". Stupid people are being called out for being stupid. That's not "suppression" in any way, shape, or form. This kind of discussion is exactly what the First Amendment was for.
I don't respond to AC's.
If government DEMANDS you get all those vaccines, ...
Seems to me back in the days when vaccines were typical, there was no anti-vaxxers and nobody had to worry about polio, it was also when pharma companies were not out to bankrupt much of the population. It was simply civic duty to get your kids vaccinated as was regularly attending your VFW and Rotary Club meetings. But these days maybe not worry about a vaccine causing autism but FDA (with a director who worked as a lobbyist for drug companies) says must have mandatory vaccine containing opioids or some other goofy requirement.
mfwright@batnet.com
That "incredibly small number" includes all children under ab out a year old, where measles is concerned. It also includes pretty much everybody over a certain age, too.
The guy's 18, Facebook has only existed for 15 years, and vaccinations start well before age 3.
His mother's been an idiot longer than Facebook has existed.
To the tune of 49,000 violent attacks on US citizens a year.
Boy that sounds bad. It's too bad you didn't provide enough context to actually evaluate the number. 'Cause our native-born population commits about 2 million "violent attacks" on US citizens a year. Also, that 2M statistic uses traditional definitions of "violent attacks", as opposed to property crimes that are included in your 49,000 statistic.
Meaning our native population causes violence at a higher rate than the immigrants you want to exclude.
So, when you say everyone should care about the violence of immigrants and ignore the actual rate of violence in the country, you demonstrate you don't really care about crime. You care about hurting brown people.
And to bring it back to the subject at hand, infectious diseases kill far more than 49,000 people per year, and death is a wee bit worse than the very loose definition of "violent" used to create that statistic.
So, when you constantly whine that people should care more about immigrants than deadly diseases, you don't really care about people dying. You care about feeding your racism.
Facebook's algorithms feed anti-vaxx propaganda to parents, because they're designed to reinforce subjects you appear interested in.
So while Facebook didn't write the propaganda and the parents are the ones who fell for it, Facebook's delivery makes it far more likely parents will fall for it.
There's no particular reason Facebook has to send only anti-vaxx propaganda when you search for information about vaccines. Their algorithms could also choose to show you truthful articles or articles that debunk the propaganda.
And really, there's no reason to blindly assume that any NEW vaccines that come along will be as safe or effective to receive as the tried and true ones we've been collectively receiving for decades.
Except for several laws and FDA regulations that require any NEW vaccines to be as safe or effective.
But it is a very pretty strawman. I like what you did with the hat.
What happens if a dozen new vaccines are developed for other diseases, but we discover the human body can't create immunity for all of those things and maintain it at one time?
Then we'd already be extinct.
We're exposed to a truly unfathomable quantity of different pathogens every day, and our immune system just handles it. We vaccinate against a very, very small percentage of those pathogens because they are particularly bad when you are exposed to the full-strength virus. We are in no danger of "overwhelming" our immune system by exposing it to dead viruses, weakened viruses or bits of virus protein. Long-term immunity is not like a thumbdrive with a limited storage.
with anti-vaxxers. There is real, definite harm. The FCC should step in and treat it as a false advertising issue. Cut it off at the head. Facebook is profiting from the anti-vaxxer movement by serving up adverts themselves.
Basically, through their algorithms spreading false information that is itself a product for Facebook. It should be regulated as such.
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The hallmark of bad fiction are stories that fit together too well. As the master liar Garak put it, "I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences." It's also a large part of the reason why I think Garak's lying is being done more to toy with his friends than actually convince them of a fiction--he fundamentally lost a reason to tell convincing lies, so he's actually just practicing his lying to try to keep well adapted at it. I think the only thing worse than a liar with an agenda is someone with an agenda who believes lies as truth. That is why the anti-vax stuff is so depressing and why things like CPS should be more involved, if necessary.
Facts are still a good thing, but they're only one arrow in the quiver so to speak. You need to also engage people and get them thinking critically. Facts by themselves don't change people's minds because they have built up mental tools to work around them and preserve their world view.
Like most things, changing the minds of people who are wrong is complicated.
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At 18 he is an adult, nothing to see here, carry on.
or does support for Anti-Vaxxers seem to come mostly from the right? When I see votes on vaccine legislation the anti-vaxxer stuff is normally coming from the GOP and the pro-vaccine laws from the Democrats (with some moderate GOPers crossing party lines).
I _think_ this is because the GOP has been willing to exploit the subculture around anti-vaccination to win some close races while the Dems and the left in general have not. I'd like to say the the left wing is also more pro-science, but I know anti-vaxxers who are otherwise left wing. That said, I know left wing anti-vaxxers who'll vote GOP on that one issue alone, and again, in a tight race they might turn elections...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
if "his mom's wishes" have a price (to her), we don't need to forbid anything... :P)
* wallets are the more sensible part of the human body (anyone with litle knowledge in anatomy knows that
To slowly put censorship in place on an issue.
Then the next issue can apply for censorship.
Later brands, ads, DRM, crypto, faith groups, political parties can all have their issues considered for the same level of control.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
But anti-vaxxers aren't refusing to take the vaccine - they are refusing to have it administered to someone else. There's no 'right to self determination' going on here, only the right of children to be treated as people and not property.
Society (properly) defers to parents in any case where harm is not immediately apparent. However, children are not owned, they are *entrusted* to their parents, and if the parents fail to provide, then society steps in. Then the standard is 'in the best interests of the child'.
Outside documented medical exceptions, vaccines are in the best interest of the child. Why should we let *anyone* prevent that?
One of the common complaints though is that the FDA seems to fail at its job disturbingly often. Just look at how many drugs end up being recalled because they do more harm than good. With vaccines this is exacerbated by the fact that you can't go after the company in civil court if it hurt your child. There is a special legal system setup specifically to protect the producers of the vaccines. To make things more complicated doctors are pushed to administer vaccines on a short schedule with multiple shots per visit. In the event a child does react negatively to a vaccine trying to figure out which one caused the problem is complicated by the scheduling. All that said I'm for mandatory vaccination, but I can understand why people have concerns about it.
That'd be great if it was what I trusted any of the involved parties to do. It's not what they're going to do. They're going to try to have bullshit regulations about "fact checking" and try to make platforms and the people who use them liable for some kind of damage or guilty of some kind of crime.
But this never exists as a complete absolute and it is harmful to dumb down that it has. People don't exist in isolation and a huge amount of what would constitute this freedom for one individual would restrict the freedoms or cause harm to others. The moment you accept that people aren't free to commit murder without consequence you are accepting that this freedom isn't absolute.
When your choice is between a world where people with immune deficiencies have to hide away because of the risk of catching a disease with a widely available vaccine that others are choosing not to take or requiring people who don't have the vaccine to stay away from society to make things safe for those more susceptible there is no option that satisfactorily gives complete freedom to all parties.
Facebook almost surely wasn't the source. It was the medium. We could also say the kids mother got all her information from one source: "the internet', then blame "the internet" for propagating anti-vax info. That would be wrong for the same reasons.
Jesus, are you my landlord? You don't even read the shit you're replying to, you just figure out which team it's for and go apeshit.
slashdot posts..
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The implication of this "story" is
that we're going to f'n burn the quack doctors if they keep preying on the children.
Snake oil is for adults who are old enough to understand the choice.
The implication is that society is pissed off about this problem, and people are holding hearings to talk about who to blame. But make no mistake, this is not a slippery slope; society is ready to fight over the specific issue being discussed: Intentional transmission of preventable diseases. There is no hand-wavy abstract danger, this is the hill being fought over that we're already on and "eradicated" diseases have already returned; not by accident, but by willful actions of individuals who sought to profit from fear and ignorance.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like?
Wait, wait, you're accusing Facebook of having intentionally published this content because they believe it?
That's actually a rather serious accusation. And that is whose speech rights are implicated in hearings about misinformation on Facebook. Facebook.
Most of slashdot thinks they have a Right to have their Letters to the Editor published in the local newspaper, and that they're being oppressed and their frozen peaches were all stolen because their letter didn't get published.
if you don't like the word god, just replace it with the word natural. Natural Rights. If you don't think they exist i dare you to stand empty handed in a savanna.
You can. And, I strongly suggest you would benefit from looking up what that phrase actually means. And what the legal conclusion is.
"If you get 'em, stick 'em."
Maybe this whole problem could be solved with a bounty and a dart gun.
It is also one of the most stupid fallacies possible: Look over there, there is a problem that is worse! Stop dealing with this problem already!
Some people just do not have any rationality, just irrational fear and hate.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
How about this: I know that medical advice should come from real doctors, not quack doctors.
Maybe we shouldn't grant "safe harbor" provisions to reprinting medical opinions from non-doctors. Require publishers to take responsibility for only publishing medical information from people who are currently qualified to give medical advice.
The problem isn't people's individual Freedom, the problem is allowing specific types of unlicensed commercial activities to bypass the normal protections for those activities, because "it's on a computer." Without the parasites making money off of the fear and ignorance of parents, then it wouldn't be a problem; it would just be regular fringe rantings at the natural rate. It is only because it is a medical issue, and medical issues are important, that there is even a problem with it in the first place.
This is very similar to the fact that in most places no license is needed to fix a computer, but you need to be a special type of licensed doctor to do heart surgery. The specific activities present different dangers. And generally speaking, the right to give medical advice is already regulated.
there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.
It is almost as if what you need is a counter-conspiracy-theory that generates a new revelation about the old conspiracy without ever directly arguing with it.
Or even, the point could be that the children aren't the ones making the choice, but they're the ones the choice most directly affects.
This story basically says that Facebook is using mind control to create an army of zombie cultists who rely exclusively on them for social sustenance.
It is much worse than you realized.
--
#TheyLive
underscored the importance of "credible" information.
https://youtu.be/g5vnZec964c?t...>Amen!
He's 18. Of course he doesn't know.
Folks,
Men within a certain age range can be drafted into the US military "at gunpoint" to fight and die for their country.
In order to defend our country from infectious diseases that have killed hundreds of millions, we need another MANDATORY civil service.
Namely, everyone must be vaccinated with just a few medical exceptions. This is what is necessary to defend our country. This is what we should expect and demand of our fellow Americans.
The End.
--PeterM
The definition of social media: a group of people who can espouse, or appear to support, any point of view; can believe and adopt anyone else's point of view without supporting evidence; don't have to interact face-to-face with those with whom they agree or disagree; and don't have to take responsibility for their positions or statements.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Yeah, well... when the time comes to kick ass their ass, Facebook better hope there's enough bubblegum on the planet.
#DeleteFacebook
I remember doing a bit of research and finding that vaccination rates in may Latin American countries (everything south of the US, essentially) is higher than vaccination rates in the USA, at least for measles, which is what I found data on.
I suspect that claims that people from Latin America are a risk to USA disease wise are exaggerated and probably have more to do with racism than fact.
--PeterM
You raise a good point (probably by accident, but still...): For people to live in a group, they have to agree on limitations to certain rights. Your right to extend your arm ends at my nose. The right of anti-vaxxers to raise their children as they see fit ends when their children begin infecting other children with the diseases they didn't get vaccinated against. Has it escaped you that we have multiple measles outbreaks around the country now?
I'm sorry to say that even smart people fall prey to the mental traps of confirmation bias, groupthink (where they adopt the beliefs of their community correct or not), anchoring bias, and other mental fallacies.
You may define such people as morons, but I *almost* guarantee you, that you do the same in some areas where YOU have incorrect beliefs.
Not everyone has the time to put all their beliefs under a microscope and people use mental heuristics to come to quick conclusions that are unfortunately wrong, sometimes. Even really smart people.
Such as you, in simply defining people who have some incorrect beliefs as "morons". Just as with them, the truth is a bit more nuanced, but you just simplify it.
--PeterM
Hello,
To put a more optimistic spin upon human nature, let me repeat something I read:
What's really remarkable about people is not how much we fight and have conflict, but, by and large, how well we *get along*. There's pretty much no other animal on the planet that manages to live in big complex societies so well, and that's PRECISELY because "human nature" lets us get along in groups.
You could even argue that getting along in groups is more important to humanity's success than big brains or tools--though big brains certainly helps with getting along in groups--but isn't necessary (see ants and bees.)
--PeterM
Herd immunity is a real factor in vaccinations.
Those who refuse to vaccinate are, in a sense, betraying the rest of us in the war vs. merciless, pitiless, brutal enemies of all humans, namely, contagious diseases.
You could think of getting vaccinated as like registering for the US draft. It's part of the national defense. Arguably more important, in terms of casualties, than military service is.
Conscientious objectors to the draft are often made to serve in non-violent ways. Perhaps we should make "conscientious objectors" (if we allow this at all) to vaccination live in isolation from everyone else, on an island perhaps, where they can be quarantined.
--PeterM
Getting vaccinations is like registering for the draft. All eligible Americans ought to do both, it's our duty as Americans to help with the national defense.
And whomever thinks that fighting contagious diseases with the most effective tool available--namely widespread vaccinations, isn't part of the national defense is really, really wrong.
Getting vaccinations is nothing more or less than everyone's minimum contribution to the national defense--and should be seen that way.
--PeterM
Let's leave politics out of this. Politics is the absolute *worst* source of ignorant tribalism in this country.
And tribalism is EXACTLY what hardens a lot of people into insane positions such as refusing vaccinations.
They go with their TRIBE instead of with the FACTS.
So leave politics out, for the love of humanity and our hope of being FREE of infectious disease!
It's ironic that you're trying to prove this assertion with facts.
Good luck with that! And I mean that literally--I really wish you the best of luck, and I hope you succeed. I say the same thing as you to people when I can, might even use your links (thanks for those).
--PeterM
You know, there are news stories I've read that have found a correlation between increased autism rates and being near agricultural fields where insecticides are sprayed. I like pointing out these news stories I've read to people. (See below).
While I will concede that correlation doesn't prove causation, in the face of data contradicting other causes for autism, I find that exposure to known neurotoxins sort of plausible as a cause for autism, much more so than other soundly discredited theories.
I think the apparent correlation between autism and insecticide exposure warrants further study. How about you?
https://www.iflscience.com/hea...
--PeterM
Regardless of your views on vaccination, Facebook did not exist for the first five or six odd years of this childs life. He claims to have been completely unvaccinated. This is not something you can land on facebook. As the provax forces push ever more draconian demands, it only reinforces the perception that they may have something to hide. They have no idea of PR how to, and I suspect it's all going to blow up in their faces when the informed consent issue is properly ventilated. If you believe in vaccination, remove the exemption from liability from the manufacturers, do actually independent multi site, double blinded controlled clinical trials using actual placebos and earn your trust like any other medical product. Hide behind the law or lie and people will smell a conspiracy (even if their isn't one).
I have a lot of empathy for your points:
My coworker's child died from whooping cough. She was too young to be vaccinated. Better herd immunity would have protected her, saved her life. She didn't just suffer, she died, because the herd immunity around her was too weak to prevent her being exposed to whooping cough.
I'd vote with you on the point of whether parental rights outweighs the imperative of society's interest in protecting ITSELF and protecting these kids, and protecting those who can't be vaccinated, and those for whom vaccines weren't effective.
--PeterM
Facebook, is really the only source his mother ever relied on for her anti-vaccine information.
This 'girl' is 18. She was born c. 2001. Facebook opened to everybody in 2006. Most kids receive a full panel of immunizations before they are five, at the recommendation of their physician.
This mother obviously and provably had other influences. The girl is lying in testimony, if the story is reported correctly.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Not at all. But silencing the group will not stop the problem. Theres a really old saying ‘keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer’. Silencing them does the exact opposite of the goal of saving lives. I dont want to know whats going on in the shadows. Its hard to see and there is too much slight of hand. Give them a stage so you know what to expect. Getting you to trigger into wanting to silence them is how they get you to give up your freedoms. Its small. Its not like youre hit with a binary decision of freedom | no freedom. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. They bombard us with this shit so they can take our freedom one bite at a time. This problem can easily be disolved without censorship. Censorship isnt even the most productive means. But of all the possible solutions, censorship advances a side effect that pertains nothing to the problem at hand. It is the preverbial two birds with one stone.
Believe me, im pretty pro vaccine, but im not willing to cross that line in the sand to make my point. Someones right to not agree with me is that line in the sand. I would rather be able to spot people that disagree with me than never know what goes on in the shadows. Maybe they wore a big red ballcap. I am less stressed knowing people are free to identify themselves than have to guess who conspires when I am not around.
Lindenberger said Facebook, or websites that were linked on Facebook, is really the only source his mother ever relied on for her anti-vaccine information.
Really, how empty a statement is that. He could have said, "The Chrome browser (or websites that were accessible via Chrome) was the only source" or "The Google search engine (or websites that were linked by search results) was the only source".
Noah Draper: 'There is no such thing as objective truth.'
Is that true?
I suppose you want us to make an exception for your objective truth statement that there is no objective truth, don't you?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The science behind vaccines was a lot less established in the 1700s. Given how haphazard medicine at the time was, I can't blame someone at the time from refusing to get contagious viruses inserted in their skin.
Of course, such excuses no longer imply.
And that's the thing that gets my piss to a boil. Essentially, these parents go down the "a dead kid is less hassle than an autistic kid, so let's not take chances" thought train.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The right to be wrong is absurd and worthy of mockery. Yes. You think I'm wrong, well, then you might want to tell me where I'm wrong. People can only learn if correct information is presented to them. So present.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you can show me how me looking at porn can have a negative impact on my children, we'll continue this conversation.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's fairly easy. If someone who has no qualification to talk about a subject whatsoever says something that contradicts what people who studied it throughout their lifetime agree on, it's very likely WRONG. Have people who know the subject examine the claim but don't follow some quack who pretends to "speak THE TRUTH (tm)" just because he says so.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
However restricting speech that represents a clear and present danger has never been part of the first amendment... though I'm not about to claim to be smart (dumb?) enough to try to apply that outside of the most blindingly obvious examples.
In this case, anti-vax is essentially fraud. As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain". Surely I'm not the only one who's noticed a lot of these Anti-vaxxers are selling something (at least in Australia and the UK).
As far as I know, your 1st Amendment has never protected fraudulent expression.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You're essentially saying it's ok to be evil as long as you tell yourself that you're good ("reasonably agree" the other side is wrong), because even if you turn out to be wrong and was actually doing evil, the moral universe will correct you (eventually). The victors write the history books.
That's actually not far off what I'm saying, the difference is that I don't think that deplatforming is inherently evil (and therefore I'm not necessarily "being evil" by advocating it) and that I think we can get a good handle on discerning right from wrong.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
incitements to violence, for example
Only when there's an immediate and clear danger. You can exhort people to violence all you want, as long as it's abstract. That's because that's not a restriction on speech per se, it's the police stepping in to stop violence.
It may amount to government censorship at a public school. However most colleges are privately funded so there's no issue.
In the US, there are only a handful of universities that don't take government funding. And even the ones that don't: what value is there to society in a "university" that does not encourage free ad lively discussion of every idea? Not much.
Nearly as bad in your opinion, but legally worlds apart. Again, the alternatives are enforced common carrier status and forced speech. Choose.
The laws will probably change. There's a rising tide of sentiment on the right against corporate control, and is the left really going to stand up and defend corporations against individual rights?
I'd be delighted if Facebook were forced to choose between publisher (with liability) and common carrier (with no editorial discretion).
This is what the Western world's been doing for much of the late 20th century, and as you can see the bunk has been winning. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity?
The world does not move at internet speed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
One of the common complaints though is that the FDA seems to fail at its job disturbingly often.
That complaint comes from people who do not understand a study of a thousand people can not find all possible interactions with any new medication. The interactions that are found later involve a combination of drugs that just didn't happen in the initial study.....and result in the FDA ordering the drug pulled.
Just look at how many drugs end up being recalled because they do more harm than good
No, they still did plenty of good. And the vast majority who got the drugs did benefit. They had an interaction that didn't happen to occur in the human trials, because it is impossible to test every possible drug/medical condition interaction. That's why new drugs are prescription-only - your doctor is supposed to monitor for such interactions.
Literally every drug is a poison. Including the ones you think are "safe". It's just the dose that makes it "safe".
With vaccines this is exacerbated by the fact that you can't go after the company in civil court if it hurt your child.
You're misrepresenting the situation here. You can't go after the company because you can go after the government. The government claims liability for vaccine injuries and even has a special fund and claim program set up so you don't have to actually sue.
To make things more complicated doctors are pushed to administer vaccines on a short schedule with multiple shots per visit. In the event a child does react negatively to a vaccine trying to figure out which one caused the problem is complicated by the scheduling.
They're only given in the same visit after the vaccines have been proven safe in the overall population. They don't just throw a new one in when they feel like it.
Because violent crime actually hurts people, usually irreparably. Overstaying a tourist visa doesn't.
Because it's the one type of crime that is 100% preventable
The vast majority of undocumented people in the US are here because they stayed beyond the end of their perfectly legal and valid visa.
So it is not close to 100% preventable without a police state that you will find unacceptable. Police constantly saying "Papers Please!" is required to catch the majority. And even then, people will have false papers.
Skin color does not matter. Language does not matter
It matters when the people claiming it is "100% preventable" are only looking at people with one skin color and speak one language, and seek moronic solutions like a wall that only blocks one border.
and no illegal alien can possibly exist in the USA for long without comitting additional crimes like identity theft and welfare fraud.
Wow have no idea what you're talking about.
First, undocumented people don't make welfare claims. They are seeking to minimize interaction with the government, because interactions with the government is how they get caught. So no "welfare fraud" when you don't make any claims. Also, welfare doesn't exist anymore. It was eliminated in the 1990s. But it's still used as a boogeyman for people who want to demonize the poor because folks like you already bought into the lies about "welfare queens", so they're gonna keep running with it. Re-branding is so hard.
Second, there's plenty of employers who will happily pay in cash. If an employer insists on paying by check, you can take that check to the employer's bank to cash it for free. Or use a myriad of check-cashing places that will gouge the employee. Thus no false identity required.
In the US, there are only a handful of universities that don't take government funding. And even the ones that don't: what value is there to society in a "university" that does not encourage free ad lively discussion of every idea? Not much.
Unless the government funding came with an agreement to allow any and all speech, a minority of government funding doesn't count. What value would there be in a university that does not encourage free and lively discussion of every idea? Well let's say there's one that used to have no limits but now doesn't allow, for example, free and lively discussion of putting puppies in a blender. Is it now worth not much? No, the university's value is practically unchanged. Disallowing discussion of a handful of bigoted and counterfactual ideas does not diminish its value much more than that.
The laws will probably change. There's a rising tide of sentiment on the right against corporate control, and is the left really going to stand up and defend corporations against individual rights?
I'd be delighted if Facebook were forced to choose between publisher (with liability) and common carrier (with no editorial discretion).
Good luck changing those laws. And quite unfortunately there's no rising tide of sentiment on the right against corporate control, just against very specific forms of private censorship, which is why they still want wanton deregulation and aren't bothered by the Citizens United decision. So yes the left really is more pro-free-speech in the proper legal meaning of the word, that shouldn't be a surprise.
The idea that Facebook could ever be forced to choose between being a publisher and being a common carrier is based on a false dichotomy or perhaps a misunderstanding of what a publisher is. They're already liable for what's hosted on their platform, which is why they'll get their pants sued off if they don't promptly take down child porn etc.
The world does not move at internet speed.
Meaning what?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well let's say there's one that used to have no limits but now doesn't allow, for example, free and lively discussion of putting puppies in a blender. Is it now worth not much?
Let's say we ban discussion of putting human embryos in a blender, and ban fetal stem cell research. Surely that's OK? As soon as you set limits on discussion, you stop being good at "university".
Another fun example: Chinese scientists, for many years, could not use the term "sun spots", for political reasons. This got really awkward for solar researchers, as you might imagine.
Each and every little thing matters. And therenever just one once you cross the line, there's an ever-rising tide of restrictions, where researchers must carefully edit their publications for political acceptability, and can still be burned for something they published 10 years ago, when the rules were different.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So you appear to be arguing that deplatforming is inherently evil, and also that it's impossible to discern good from evil. The first point is highly questionable and the second is utterly ludicrous. The fact that most people who have done evil didn't realize that they were being evil in no way makes it harder to tell that they were being evil.
I also didn't say that the people who can't tell real from fake or logical from illogical are people who can't tell good from evil. They could. There are some who can't, but they're not the same people, and neither are majorities.
If we can't discern right from wrong, then why take any action to correct wrong? It's a recipe not merely for societal stagnation, but moral backsliding. You know the quote: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oops, hit reply too early.
Good luck changing those laws. And quite unfortunately there's no rising tide of sentiment on the right against corporate control,
I fell you have no experiential basis for what's commonly discussed on right-wing forums. The entire immigration debate is about corporate control vs our rights as citizens, from the point of view of the average conservative. And it's the single most important issue. The anger about this has been rising for years, and is getting near to violence now. You clearly have no idea.
The idea that Facebook could ever be forced to choose between being a publisher and being a common carrier is based on a false dichotomy or perhaps a misunderstanding of what a publisher is. They're already liable for what's hosted on their platform, which is why they'll get their pants sued off if they don't promptly take down child porn etc.
Perhaps, but even so, it's a better set of rules to protect us against monopoly control of public discussion. Facebook does not currently have liability in the US for pretty much anything unless they're told to take it down and fail to do so. Publishers are different. They're liable immediately for libel, obscenity, copyright violation, you name it. Facebook is not held to that standard, but it should be if they're going to censor their platform beyond what's legally required.
>The world does not move at internet speed.
Meaning what?
Meaning you seem to be expecting bad ideas to be debunked in a short time, not in a generation or two as is normal.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm aware that another apparent pet peeve conservatives have with corporations in general is their desire to import infinite numbers of cheap foreign laborers and illegally hire non-citizens. But if they really want to stop this, it should be fairly easy to get their lawmakers, particularly Mr. loose-cannon answers-to-noone President Tweety, to limit this and put employer-side legal consequences for illegally hiring non-citizens. That would end it quickly and easily, but they don't. So if they're honestly against corporate control, they're doing a really bad job of it. It's hard to imagine a group so incompetent would direct any violent urges effectively.
Perhaps, but even so, it's a better set of rules to protect us against monopoly control of public discussion. Facebook does not currently have liability in the US for pretty much anything unless they're told to take it down and fail to do so. Publishers are different. They're liable immediately for libel, obscenity, copyright violation, you name it. Facebook is not held to that standard, but it should be if they're going to censor their platform beyond what's legally required.
Facebook is nowhere near a monopoly player in online discussion or even general-purpose social media. You could argue that there's a social media oligopoly. Also, again the idea that Facebook should be held to the standard of a publisher if they're going to censor beyond what's legally required is a false dichotomy. To make it real would require sweeping free speech restrictions, in the proper legal sense of the word. I'm not for that.
Meaning you seem to be expecting bad ideas to be debunked in a short time, not in a generation or two as is normal.
It doesn't take a generation or two to debunk bad or factually wrong ideas after they're introduced or repopularized, and that's a great thing because we wouldn't have made it this far as a civilization otherwise - we'd drown in every lie and prejudice ever invented. This is a relatively modern problem with relatively modern causes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But if they really want to stop this, it should be fairly easy to get their lawmakers, particularly Mr. loose-cannon answers-to-noone President Tweety, to limit this and put employer-side legal consequences for illegally hiring non-citizens. That would end it quickly and easily, but they don't. So if they're honestly against corporate control, they're doing a really bad job of it. It's hard to imagine a group so incompetent would direct any violent urges effectively.
You've identified why the average conservative has become so angry. The mainstream GOP is blatantly corrupt and firmly in the pocket of the very very rich. The mainstream Dems are too of course, but that's just expected. The fact that the King of Tweets could do nothing to get a wall up when the GOP held both Houses spoke volumes. Let alone more effective legislation along the lines you describe.
Naturally the right is far more pissed with the GOP than the Dems, as is always the way with schisms.
So if they're honestly against corporate control, they're doing a really bad job of it. It's hard to imagine a group so incompetent would direct any violent urges effectively.
You're inappropriately conflating the politicians with the masses. The discord between them is the heart of current politics.
And it's not so much different on the left. The anger isn't as strong or as focused (yet), but it's also building. In Seattle during the run-up to the 2016 elections, it seemed like every 3rd car had a Bernie sticker on it, but I only saw 1 Hillary sticker that year. And I saw 3 "Giant Meteor of Death 2016" stickers! But the Dem primaries are rigged by design, so we got Trump vs Hillary.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sorry, again.
Facebook is nowhere near a monopoly player in online discussion or even general-purpose social media. You could argue that there's a social media oligopoly. Also, again the idea that Facebook should be held to the standard of a publisher if they're going to censor beyond what's legally required is a false dichotomy. To make it real would require sweeping free speech restrictions, in the proper legal sense of the word. I'm not for that.
The oligopoly acts in uniform, is the problem. Deplatforming one outspoken conservative after another (well, specifically those who speak out against Muslim immigration in Europe, again for reasons of corporate profit).
As far as "sweeping free speech restrictions": tell me straight up, do you believe that publicly held corporations have free speech rights?
It doesn't take a generation or two to debunk bad or factually wrong ideas after they're introduced or repopularized
Seems to, when it's more than a fad. And anti-vax has moved beyond fad into deep-seated prejudice. People can't get over the correlation in timing between when kids get vaccines, and when autism first becomes obvious. It's a very strong emotional impact, unlikely to be overcome by reason in the short term. But logical argument does seem to make a difference in what beliefs pass from generation to generation.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Oh I believe there's objective truth but but we'll never know what it is the closest we ever get is convincing ourselves within the tiny localized system that we interact with in our tiny lives. Made things are regarded as truth are just relative constructs. True relative to another artificial construct or imagined idea. So the best anybody ever has is what they are capable of believing and perceiving. And everyone has a slightly different version. So while we're must be some kind of objective truth, we're too small scale do, I'm too limited to ever observe anything with full comprehension. as soon as we tell ourselves were right we then cut off the infinite levels of detail and lines of causality that are part of that dynamic, for the sake of convenience.
But from a psychological standpoint there is no such thing as deprogramming gonly alternate programming.
So if deplatforming isn't inherently evil, and we can reasonably tell right from wrong, why not do it? Because racists and bigots used the same tactic? They've marched with signs and chants too, are those tactics similarly tainted? If so, we'd be edging into "Hitler drank water" territory.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yes, you would be compensated by the government if you won in the special system setup specifically to handle those cases. That system though is designed to limit your chances, not that I can blame the government for making it that way. Otherwise the system would be ripe for defrauding the government.
Safe overall is small comfort to a parent trying to minimize risk for their baby. From what our doctor told us the vaccine schedule is strongly influenced by the fear that parents would skip or be unable to bring their child in for all the appointments of individual vaccination shots. And that similarly the Chicken Pox vaccine was made mandatory simply to force insurance companies into covering it.
Does that mean America lost that battle already, or perhaps should I be less cynical?
My "why do it" is because I think it's good and it's clearly effective. I'm not going to not do something that furthers my goals because I think there's some tiny chance I might be completely wrong despite my best judgement and most careful consideration.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That system though is designed to limit your chances
Then sue the government instead. The existence of the vaccine injury program does not mean you are required to use it.
Safe overall is small comfort to a parent trying to minimize risk for their baby.
As the parent of two young children, no it really isn't. It's only difficult if you trust the people trying to sell you snakeoil instead of the scientists and doctors.
From what our doctor told us the vaccine schedule is strongly influenced by the fear that parents would skip or be unable to bring their child in for all the appointments of individual vaccination shots
Again, they don't just throw a new vaccine in for fun. They only give the vaccines at the same time when they've been given independently for a long time.
The schedule is also an age range, not a specific date. So if you don't understand how the immune system works and want to make extra trips to the doctor to alleviate your misinformation, go ahead. No one will stop you.
And that similarly the Chicken Pox vaccine was made mandatory simply to force insurance companies into covering it.
Well, chickenpox is actually not nearly as safe as we pretended when we were children. About 2 in 1000 cases require hospitalization, about 1 in 60,000 are fatal. And it confers immunity to shingles, which itself causes hospitalizations and death (about 1-4% of cases require hospitalization.)
Golly, what a terrible thing to include in the vaccine schedule!!!! :eyeroll: