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  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study#Public_trust

    There's been a systematic undermining of public trust in health and safety instructions going on for decades.

    Some of this distrust is earned as with Tuskegee, the bungled Anthrax vaccine, the Reagan Era response to the AIDS epidemic, scandals with weight loss drugs like Fen-phen and Redux, Oxycodone, etc.

    Some of it is purely manufactured, with the CIA-sponsored agitation against the Chinese COVID vaccine being a major font of modern day anti-vax Truther Lore.

    But to no-sell skepticism as just "you're a little baby who is scared of needles" really under plays the shift in attitude nationally. We used to be a country that whole heartedly embraced a preventative for small pox, polio, and influenza. Now we're more terrified of kids getting the shot that gives you bad grades in school than getting measels.

    • There’s been a systematic undermining of public trust in health and safety instructions going on for decades.

      A lot of it perpetrated by those very industries themselves. It's the natural consequence of letting every facet of societal motivation be dictated by profit maximization.

      Like I said in another comment, I think what the antivaxers are incapable of understanding and expressing is that they are not actually questioning the science, they are questioning the health care industry and the systems meant to keep them honest. And in that I would agree with them, if only they were able to articulate it.

      • I think what the antivaxers are incapable of understanding and expressing is that they are not actually questioning the science, they are questioning the health care industry and the systems meant to keep them honest.

        A lot of the opposition to vaccination reads like fad diets and self-help trends from 20 or 30 years ago. You can prevent autism by fumbles around playing Motzart to your baby in utero? Meditating during Yoga? Eating chocolate? Pick your Oprah-sponsored poison.

        But, like, why are we seeing a fixation on a proven medical treatment and not some generic "don't let your kids eat jelly beans" or "do headstands to get the blood flowing to the brain" hookum?

        I think that's where you get to people really running afoul of an increasingly dysfunctional health media ecosystem. One whose reputation is bloated with empty promises about The Perfect Cancer / Alzheimer's Cure or Living Forever With Blood Transfusions. And then it's colliding with an actual system that just seems to throw enormous bills at you for pain killers and palliative care.

        On the one end, there's supposed to be a recipe for perfect health if you have enough money. On the other, I can get a flu shot and still get the flu? How unfair.

    • America doesn't just do this domestically. They have interfered in other nations public health perceptions as well. The CIA undermined polio vaccination programs in Pakistan when global eradication actually seemed possible.

      • America doesn’t just do this domestically.

        They do. It's just tied up in the private sector. Tons of quackery on American TV and in news journals. Everything from "Head On, Apply Directly to The Forehead" to Dr Oz shilling ginseng as a panacea to the social media conspiracies about MedBeds that Trump himself retweeted.

        The CIA undermined polio vaccination programs in Pakistan when global eradication actually seemed possible.

        Can't let the wrong kind of people benefit

    • We used to be a country that whole heartedly embraced a preventative for small pox, polio, and influenza

      Yea, no... you got a very rosy image of history in your mind. There were massive protests and constant public pushback against vaccines for as long as vaccines have existed.

      https://historyofvaccines.org/vaccines-101/misconceptions-about-vaccines/history-anti-vaccination-movements

      The fight for widespread adoption of vaccination has been rough fought against the tides of the confidently ignorant who let their irrational emotions control them.

      • There were massive protests and constant public pushback against vaccines for as long as vaccines have existed.

        There were a handful of outspoken reactionary groups in the early 19th century who registered outsized alarm. But when you look at the data, the rapid decline in smallpox over the century was the direct result of the success of inoculation domestically. By 1898, the mandatory imposition of vaccinations was functionally unnecessary, due to the near complete eradication of the disease on the island. People were - by and large - more than happy to undergo inoculation at a level that provided herd immunity.

        The fight for widespread adoption of vaccination has been rough fought against the tides of the confidently ignorant who let their irrational emotions control them.

        Confident ignorance has been as much a benefit to vaccine campaigns as an opposition to it. People are, by and large, trusting and appreciative of advancements in medical science, especially when they are subject to regular and repeated trauma from a chronic malady.

        Quackery succeeds on this sense of naive desperation. Vaccination does, too (with the added benefit that it actually works). A straightforward solution to an immediate problem is an easy sell.

        The real detriment to vaccination policy is its own success. Once you've systematically eliminated a disease, the social memory of the disease's consequences fades through generations. People aren't afraid of Polio because they don't have a President in a wheelchair who fell victim to it. People aren't afraid of measles because they've never experienced it, or had to care for children suffering from the disease.

        The rapid adoption of prophylactics in the sex work community comes from people who are regularly faced with the threat of STIs, both personally and in their peer groups. People with little direct or indirect exposure to recreational sex are a much harder sell. And so we see STIs flood through religiously insular communities (ex. the sudden surge in Syphilis in Salt Lake City) that had historically shown very low rates of incidence.

        This tends to set off a rebalancing of behaviors, as the community rapidly adopts the techniques for prevention. When news of an outbreak spreads, vaccine hesitancy collapses in its wake

  • I disagree. While it’s frustrating that people believe politicians and talk show hosts over scientists, it’s reasonable to fear something you don’t understand. What’s immature is a lack of critical thinking which much of the population seems to exhibit by choosing to listen to others or, in doing fact finding, allow for confirmation bias.

    This statement is not helpful. If we’re looking to increase the number of people getting vaccinated, shame or embarrassment will likely lower that number further. People have a fear of making the wrong decision. If you share with them that you’ve been vaccinated and leave it at that, that’s someone real who has contradicted the narrative they subscribe to. If they respect you as a role model, they may change their behavior.

  • I don't think kids are afraid of vaccines per se, it more so a:

    poke-y sharp metal object that OW IT HURTS!

    sort of thing

    Taking blood is even scarier... aaahhhh

    THEY'RE STEALING MY BLOOOD AAAAHHH HALP MOM

    seriously tho. I was told that an adult human has like 2.5 liters of blood kids have 1.5 liters (from memory, no google)

    so I got scared they took too much and I was afraid I'd drop dead if I didn't have enough blood... lmfao

    I was like... idk 8-12 I think...

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