there's something to this but it's not the whole story imo. a) measles has been eradicated for decades but antivax sentiment has accelerated only recently, b) Covid just killed like a million people and still many turned against a highly effective vaccine gidmk.substack.com/p/the-proble... - ThreadSky

ryanlcooper.com • 24 days ago

there's something to this but it's not the whole story imo. a) measles has been eradicated for decades but antivax sentiment has accelerated only recently, b) Covid just killed like a million people and still many turned against a highly effective vaccine https://gidmk.substack.com/p/the-problem-with-vaccines?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7j5z5&triedRedirect=true

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samusishere.bsky.social•24 days ago

People really underestimate legacy media pushing “provocative” clickbait to fuel antivax sentiment from the early 2000s to now. The NY Times published multiple Op-Ed’s from one of the most notorious deceitful antivaxxers in the world saying the government shouldn’t push people to get COVID shots.

firerokita.bsky.social•24 days ago

It really started accelerating with the HPV vaccine. Evangelicals were apoplectic and ripe for any conspiracy theory they could use to protect imagined purity of their daughters.

repetitiveuser.bsky.social•23 days ago

Also the canary in the coalmine for "I am fine with my daughter getting a horrific, life ending cancer if that's the lesson she needs to learn for being a harlot"

haredurer.bsky.social•24 days ago

Yeah, the success of vaccines may make people complacent, but anti-vaxx sentiment is the result of an aggressive, decades-long propaganda campaign and grifter economy.

haredurer.bsky.social•24 days ago

As with so many things today, broader conditions may create opportunities for liars and grifters, but your focus should still be on the liars and grifters.

slooterman.bsky.social•24 days ago

I think a lot of anti COVID vaccine sentiment from people who should know better involves the fact that the COVID vaccine isn’t 100% protective. People get this all-or-nothing, it only really works and is worth doing if it works perfectly mentality and I don’t really know what to do with that.

ryanlcooper.com•24 days ago

my theory is that social media greatly accelerates the formation of cultish groupuscles based on crackpot nonsense

apearlma.bsky.social•24 days ago

yeah, i think most brains are not equipped to understand that 100 likes does not necessarily equal agreement from even 1% of the population

figgityfigs.bsky.social•24 days ago

I think this piece of it goes along with that decline in social trust in institutions, so scientific consensus has less pull than the guy you knew in high school whose wife sells essential oils.

ryanlcooper.com•24 days ago

yeah. and classic cult dynamics basically requires you to reject modern science so you can pose as the bold truth teller exposing the lies They won't tell you about

slooterman.bsky.social•24 days ago

You sort of see the same thing with the flu shot, but less political/intense.

repetitiveuser.bsky.social•23 days ago

People are very very bad at risk management

ahuihou.org•24 days ago

SUMMARY: “Darwin loves an unvaxed maga.”

judyprincz.bsky.social•24 days ago

The problem is extreme stupidity and ignorance of facts. It makes people vulnerable to charlatans and quacks.

figgityfigs.bsky.social•24 days ago

Yeah, I think this is a big part of it, when interventions are so effective that the thing they intervened against starts to seem like a fiction (Y2K, voting rights act, etc.), but you’re right that it can’t be the whole story. Something about it grows tentacles.

figgityfigs.bsky.social•24 days ago

Reaches out until it’s not just that the polio vaccine is bad because we don’t have a sense memory of polio, but the COVID vaccine is bad because…who knows?

exsibilation.bsky.social•24 days ago

Clearly attributable to malice. The usual suspects went out of their way to lie about it, and like many such things it stuck in Republican lizard brains.

cuddlessmash.bsky.social•24 days ago

From my experience and background in biomed, my sense is that the covid vaccine being "mRNA" has created an association with like jurassic park style gene modding and like sci fi mutants. Its all nonsense obviously but pop culture has set up an association with nucleic acids to that stuff.

dutchtreat.bsky.social•24 days ago

Exactly. It's new tech and you'll get anything from "Bill Gates is putting chips in us" to "it alters your genetic makeup". See also: 5G. We used to be able to use public campaigns to dispel fears like that but with today's social media it's like putting out a forest fire with a cup of water.

mgocoder.bsky.social•24 days ago

The story imo is that social media has turned confident idiocy into something to be celebrated.

wilterweight.bsky.social•24 days ago

The main culprit is the algorithm feeding us anti-vax narratives. Vaccines have been so successful at eliminating/controlling infectious disease that many parents have been lulled into a sense of safety from disease, giving rise to the "why do I need to get my kid vaccinated?" movement.

wilterweight.bsky.social•24 days ago

Then add to that mix the dangerous findings of the wholly discredited anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield, who back in the late 90’s convinced celebrities like Jenny McCarthy to speak out against vaccines.

wilterweight.bsky.social•24 days ago

These voices planted enough seeds of doubt in the public consciousness that many new parents were legitimately concerned about vaccine safety.

Now add to that social media and the proliferation of anti-vaxx groups online...

wilterweight.bsky.social•24 days ago

Facebook feeds on engagement, and moms who agree with science and understand that vaccines are safe aren’t going to be posting online constantly about it like the anti-vax moms who believe vaccines are inherently dangerous and killing their kids and must be stopped at all costs.

wilterweight.bsky.social•24 days ago

So of course Facebook pushed their garbage to the top of millions of feeds. A giant feedback loop of anti-science conspiracy theories. Because that noise gets engagement, public safety be damned.

ajaxsinger.bsky.social•24 days ago

A problem less with vaccines specifically and more a problem with our assumption of safety. We're turning against pasteurization and clean drinking water, too, and that really only makes sense if large segments of society truly believe the threats they protect from are imaginary. 1/4

ajaxsinger.bsky.social•24 days ago

Our collective memory in the West is generally about 70 years. Beyond that point it's not history but mythology and currently the threat of deadly disease wiping out whole swaths of society is slipping past the veil. 2/4

ajaxsinger.bsky.social•24 days ago

With Covid, most people weren't close to someone who died. If they were, the person likely died, in the average mind, bc it was "their time." They were old/ infirm. That reinforced a false sense of safety and the false utility of "protections" like vaccines, pasteurization, and water treatment. 3/4

ajaxsinger.bsky.social•24 days ago

The problem we have now is that bc of the nature of both cognitive dissonance and the sunk cost fallacy, it's going to take extraordinary pain for those who've "lost faith" in protections to find it again and that will likely mean a very high death toll. 4/4

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