You're right - we shouldn't celebrate alienating people who need help.
You're wrong, because there is no argument that can convince someone who doesn't care about evidence.
So, please forgive us our gallows humor about this. After all, these people are content in risking the health of MY child on their Jenny McCarthy-inspired HUNCH that vaccines are bad.
If anti-vaccine folks were only risking the health of their own children, their anti-science stance (or selective-science stance) would be tolerable. As it is, they're a menace.
My main issue with "science," which I put in quotes because there is the ideal of science and the reality of science which are unfortunately not the same. It is purported that science is objective, and that is the admirable goal, but it hasn't been successful.
For every study purporting one thing, one can find an equal an opposite study purporting the opposite (or nearly opposite). Now, that is hyperbole, as usually one of they studies is inferior in some way that is not obvious to the lay person, but it won't stop them from taking an overly strong stance based on an inferior study.
I believe a lot of the "vaccines are bad crowd" fall into a few categories:
1) the group that is very susceptible to confirmation bias
2) the group that has seen some studies that weren't conducted very well and were possibly informed by the first group.
3) those that fall victim to circular references in their proof (e.g. wikipedia article citing a magazine citing the wikipedia article, with possibly a few steps in between)
4) those who choose to believe something because the alternative is terrible for them. I see this one a lot. If you are discussing with someone of some modicum of intellect, you'll detect the situation when "slippery slope" starts being mentioned.
I'm sort of friends with a "vaccines are bad" person. I've cited numerous studies, which, while I'm no expert at interpreting studies, seemed to have rigor. Didn't phase her in the slightest, and we just don't talk about that subject anymore. Or at least I don't, and I don't take the bait. I believe she has an autistic grandson, and if she didn't have vaccines to blame, she'd have to believe that God caused the autism and that's too terrible for her.
If your child is vaccinated, they aren't really at significant risk of catching a preventable infection from an unvaccinated child, since that's the sort of thing vaccines are designed to prevent. This isn't to say that anti-vax is a rational position, but I don't think (disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional) it puts vaccinated children at additional risk.
Vaccines by themselves are not 100% effective (see the Measles outbreak from earlier this year [1]). The additional benefit of Herd Immunity[2] helps to increase the effectiveness, which is at risk of being lost the more the anti-vax movement gains traction.
> This isn't to say that anti-vax is a rational position, but I don't think (disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional) it puts vaccinated children at additional risk.
1) Vaccinations aren't 100% effective.
2) All unvaccinated kids aren't unvaccinated because of anti-vax parents. Some can't receive them for medical reasons, others are exposed to the disease before they could receive the vaccines.
3) The effectiveness of vaccines decreases over time, this is why adults with or around children are being encouraged to get boosters for things they were vaccinated for 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.
4) Sometimes vaccines don't take.
5) Sometimes immune systems are compromised (ever gotten sick and then, right when you were getting better, a cold takes you out for a week or more?). This can happen to both adults and children.
Ultimately, we need to achieve a high rate of vaccinations in order to minimize/eliminate the disease. The anti-vax movement is doing all it can to destroy our herd immunity and bring back diseases that we should've been on the verge of destroying (at least within certain regions of the world). The more the disease is around you, even if you're vaccinated, the higher the chance that you'll contract it or become a carrier of it. In the end, we're all less healthy as individuals and a species because of these morons.
> So, please forgive us our gallows humor about this.
Apologies for my pedantry, but dreaming about harming people is actually pretty much the opposite of gallows humour. A more appropriate phrase might be "power fantasy."
You're right - we shouldn't celebrate alienating people who need help.
You're wrong, because there is no argument that can convince someone who doesn't care about evidence.
So, please forgive us our gallows humor about this. After all, these people are content in risking the health of MY child on their Jenny McCarthy-inspired HUNCH that vaccines are bad.
If anti-vaccine folks were only risking the health of their own children, their anti-science stance (or selective-science stance) would be tolerable. As it is, they're a menace.