when we talk about the damage that the anti
vaccine movement does and has done,
we usually talk about putting individual kids
at risk or causing localized breakouts of
diseases that maybe we thought we had eradicated
or almost completely eradicated, but there's
now a new report that confirms that the anti-vaccine
movements, negative effects are way bigger
than a lot of people are giving them credit
for.
The anti-vaccine movement has actually undone
decades, decades of progress in disease prevention
and it's truly disgusting.
This is one of those Kooky movements that
is actually really damaging and threatening
to human health.
Flat earthers prism.
We've talked about flat earth or ism before.
If you push me, I can come up with some indirect
ways in which flat earth or Isum connects
with other things that are damaging more broadly,
but it is sort of a stretch.
Anti Vax is truly a disaster.
The who no longer considers measles eradicated
in the United Kingdom and now Albania, the
Czech Republic and Greece, which have also
lost their previous measle free status.
And this is because of the anti-vaccine movement,
which claims as you know, that measles is
just not super serious.
It's not that common.
Most people don't die of it, so therefore
it's not necessary to be vaccinated against
measles.
And of course what they fail to understand
what that, uh, they, they might call it logic,
but it's really the opposite is that because
of vaccines over the last 50 years, measles
is not very prevalent.
And that is because the measles vaccine has
been so effective.
Remember that measles used to kill more than
two and a half million people per year in
the early 1960s right before the measles vaccine
was introduced.
And this has actually happened because this
has gone beyond just people on the Internet
repeating the nonsense because you see even
elected officials in some places, if not openly
supporting anti vacs, at least sort of playing
coy with it or conceding some elements of
it.
Like even our President Donald Trump did during
the 2016 Republican primary.
You may remember during Republican debates,
Donald Trump parroting anti vacs talking points.
This also relates to the post truth sort of
element of the Internet age where when you
try to engage with these people and uh, try
to ask the normal questions, one would ask
about evidence and all of this other stuff.
They'll say, listen, you know what?
In the end your mind is made up and my mind
is made up and somehow those positions are
supposed to be considered equivalent even
though the science is all on one side.
They pretend that this is just a matter of
perspective, for example, or the freedom to
just believe what you want to believe.
It is extraordinarily infuriating and some
incorrectly will say, oh, anti-vaxxers are
just really dumb.
That's all.
It's just these are stupid people lacking
intellectual capacity.
I don't believe that this is true at all.
I think that anti-vaxxers are likely of average
intelligence to slightly above average intelligence,
but they have a combination of intellectual
insecurity combined with either conspiratorial
tendencies and or an extreme antipathy towards
government or corporations depending on which
side of the anti-vaxxer movement they exist
on.
And it becomes sort of a perfect storm for
getting pulled down or going down the rabbit
hole combined.
By the way, with living in a time where thanks
to vaccines, there are way fewer issues with
many conditions, which unfortunately just
reinforces this idea that vaccines are not
only bad and harmful, but potentially completely
unnecessary.
And then on the back end, this lends itself
to massive propaganda efforts.
We talked about how a Russian trolls and these
dis information campaigns took advantage of
trying to foment racial unrest by using targeted
social media posts in places where there have
been issues like in Ferguson, Missouri, or
in Baltimore already, racial issues have an
often involving police.
Russian trolls have taken advantage of that.
Russian trolls are also believed to be using
and spreading anti-vaccination propaganda.
In the same way.
There are numerous headlines you can find.
Russian trolls promoted anti-vaccination propaganda,
which may have caused measles outbreak according
to one group of researchers.
And believing in this stuff is in a sense
a choice in that it's so easy to just do a
simple Google search and you find authoritative
sources that tell you MMR is not linked to
autism dispelling all of the other myths.
So it lends itself to propaganda zation by
adversaries in the exact same way that Russia
has tried and succeeded in fomenting racial
unrest through their social media campaigns.
This is really bad stuff.
And most of the people in the movement don't
understand the role that they are playing
and the importance of this in, in, uh, connecting
to so many of these other movements, which
I think they would probably be fighting against
if they understood the interrelatedness.
So this is really bad.
This is flat earth stuff which has sort of
minimal, systemic and broader impacts.
They are undoing decades of progress.
The WHO sees it.
There are a number of good reports about it
now and unfortunately it this, this, you wouldn't
think this, uh, being a sort of a, you know,
rational accepting of science, um, a program
with an audience that mostly does the same.
Every time I talk about this, I get very angry
emails from anti-vaccine people in the audience
who say, you're usually right on most stuff,
but on this you're just missing the boat,
David.
It's dangerous stuff.
