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kleinbl00  ·  2148 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Daniel DeNicola: You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to

Your understanding of the anti-vax movement is not helpful to you. You're right: they have beliefs that are dangerous for everyone else, and they mistrust the consensus. But you've assembled the wrong exemplar.

It's fair to say that the anti-vax crowd mistrust scientists and pharmaceutical companies. But the nexus of belief is not around conspiracy, it's around what they see as a paucity of safety research. The anti-vax crowd will point to thalidomide and rofecoxib. They will argue that the vaccine schedule is greatly increased from what it was and they will argue that it's better to be safe than sorry. And they will do so thankful that you are vaccinating your kids because they do understand herd immunity and they do know that you are allowing them their (admittedly selfish) choices.

It's also fair to say that the mainstream response to their skepticism has been an eruption of safety studies to go along with the outrage. For anyone who is actually using reason, it's a lot harder to be anti-vax now than it was ten years ago. This has had an effect on numbers, as has beefing up exemption procedures in California and Oregon. There are still anti-vax parents and you're right - if you're vehement at this point you're halfway to chemtrails. But the original flourishing came from ordinary citizens attempting to parse immunology studies while the media, always eager to push a controversy, gave a voice to a group of advocates who should not have had one. Skepticism gave rise to "belief" for some people but for many, once that controversy was answered they returned to the mainstream. "epistemic divide" is an inaccurate turn of phrase. They look at the same studies we do, they just look for holes instead of planks. They also don't think we're assholes. They think we're overly trusting of an industry that hasn't earned it. If you've encountered animosity, it's likely been triggered by dismissiveness and antagonism (and hey - I get it. Measles doesn't make a comeback without people imagining Wakefield as credible).

Then of course there's Pakistan, where they have every reason to distrust the vaccinators.

Mountain out of a molehill, I know. Sorry. It's just that my wife ran vaccine workshops in and around the southern nexus of the anti-vax movement for years and she's been beat up by both sides (the science side for daring to humor the antiscientific musings of those child murdering troglodytes; the hippie side for daring to suggest that vaccines are totally in line with homeopathic and naturopathic theory and that the only agents with any causation have been banished from vaccines long since). I guess I've been too close to the sides that are busy shouting past each other to let statements like yours slide by uncommented.