Why is anti-vax content so popular. Looking at places like Fox news, Rogan, others who fed into that content (and made it more legitimate seeming to many people) the only reason I can detect to make such content is that it's popular with a segment of the population.
So, that explains why people make it. To make money.
@futurebird I believe it plays into a bigger con going where people and even large businesses make money off of ignorance of disease and disorders. The "dietary supplement" loophole has allowed for a market that makes hundreds of billions a year in the US alone. There is a lot more profit in selling "Airborne" to people to prevent the flu than in them getting a flu shot and being careful (especially since "being careful" can mean going out less and spending less.)
@futurebird
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having grown up knowing anti-vaxers
the rank-and-file believe they have the superior blood, or superior faith in god, which will see them through the illnesses, and they'll prove themselves strong by being willing risk themselves and cull the weak, whether those weak be of weak blood or of weak faith.
If they should have a very sick or sensitive to infection child ... would that move the needle at all?
Having contempt for "the weak" as an abstract concept is one thing, you can imagine they made themselves weak by being terrible in some way. But come face to face with a person who is vulnerable and weak? Someone in your family if you need that also to care?
Ablism is the root and blossom of bigotry. The end, and where it always begins.
@futurebird
I don't know. Sometimes, it seems they blame the vaccines - this is why they talk about "vaccine shedding". Sometimes, it seems they get vaccinations in secret.
I've talked to a few antivaxers in this situation. They were extremely emotionally vulnerable about it: from their perspective, they had just seen proof that their own beloved child was too weak or unfaithful. This is no place for either a fanatic or a parent to be, and they were both.
I talked to one person who said that she had gotten in touch with a healer. She said he was expensive but was her last hope.
Another was looking into treatments "that doctors don't want you to know about." When I tried to talk to him about the potential dangers, he became aggressive and accused me of being a shill for big pharma.
Both of these interactions made me extremely sad.
I haven't seen any for whom such a crisis turned them away from antivax; it seems to send them further into the arms of grifters and conspiracy theorists. If anyone has seen (or experienced) such a thing, I'd love to hear about it - I like happy stories.
@futurebird I have read more than once about studies showing a correlation between vaccine hesitancy and not only higher rates of sickness but also things like divorce, domestic violence, accidents (automotive and otherwise), alcohol and drug abuse and so on.
Obviously beyond disease/sickness there is no actual causal link between lack of vaccination and any of those factors, but the correlations suggest that a certain group of personality traits are associated with a tendency to resist expert advice and a lack of communal concern.
I figure in America that group encompasses up to a third of the population to some degree.
Anti-vax seems to appeal to those with that defiant, selfish streak...the "you can't tell me what to do" types who still think smoking is cool, ignore speed limit signs, would never eat their vegetables growing up, etc.
Somewhat counter-intuitively they also seem to admire authoritarian leaders despite seemingly anti-authoritarian behaviour...
@futurebird ...I think they are what you might call "selectively anti-authoritarian". Such people reject the authority of domain experts and leaders whose advice they do not like...like when mum said to eat your vegetables. However they see authoritarians like Trump, Putin, Musk etc. as aspirational...they not only agree with their stances they also admire how such dictators in waiting speak and behave without regard to consequences.
@futurebird worth remembering anti vax really started with those really enamored with everything “all natural” in the 90s, so what we would call more left wing. They laid groundwork for network of quack docs and internet communities plus kernel of doubt around safety of vaccines in general which politicization of covid then sent into overdrive. But real core I would come back to for-profit healthcare making people suspicious if doctors really had best interests in mind
They found much more fertile soil on the right. The problem with new age types is that they will always know someone who really works in medicine or science and so it was contained in that subculture... like a festering cyst.
Every now and then the local Waldorf school would have some kid sent home with measles and then everyone would cut out the nonsense for a few years... no longer.
Wait till measles shows up where it can't be easily dealt with. It's going to be horrible.
@futurebird I'd say because the medical establishment in this country is so deeply hostile to its patients and human flourishing more generally, so people's justifiable anger towards the obscene financial exploitation of billing and insurance and doctors abusing the people they are supposed to be helping gets misdirected into opposing one of the few things the industry does well
@NatureMC@funkula@futurebird
They say conspiracy theories are comforting over-simplified (but wrong) explanations of a world that's unfair for complex reasons.
It'd be interesting to study whether there aren't as many anti-vaxxers in countries where the medical system isn't an actual conspiracy to defraud and euthanise large segments of the population like the US one. I don't hear much of that anti-vaxx nonsense here in Scotland, but I might be in a progressive politics bubble.
@NatureMC Germany has a HUGE alt med community and history of this kind of thing because it's where quite a bit of this nonsense started!
Homeopathy, for instance, was invented in Germany 200 years ago. The whole Nazi health and physical purity thing is not unrelated to this (for people interested in the links between this kind of pseudoscience and fascism). Much like "traditional" Chinese medicine as we think of it in the West was really an invention of Mao to sort of paper over the lack of available evidence-based medicine available in China at the time.
It's more than a tiny bit ironic that the homeopathic idea of "like cures like" is almost but not quite like the reality that inoculation with cowpox protects from another pox....vaccines were "invented" in Europe, the concept and practice of inoculation far predates Europeans and modern medicine, shortly after Hahnemann's death. But, then again, most people into "homeopathy" don't even understand the difference between homeopathy and herbalism (which is just using herbs and is not unrelated to pharmaceutical industry and most definitely isn't homeopathy). @petealexharris@funkula@futurebird
@futurebird
Because a segment of the population is deeply uncomfortable with the idea that individuals have a level of inherent responsibility as members of a community.
@futurebird I think people like believing they know something others don't, that they're smarter than the "sheeple" who fall for the "mainstream narrative". Couple that with the fact that a large section of the population has been historically exploited or neglected by the medical establishment so has grounds to suspect the motives of people in authority.
All you said, plus: a large section of the population has been exploited and neglected by authorities in general.
Many have a deep feeling that they are being exploited, and are right about it.
But anyone explaining the reason why exploitation is the norm, and/or naming who is doing the exploiting can do so on mass-media only once. If they do, they won't speak through such media again, as a rule of thumb.
This leaves said feelings open to exploitation by grifters.
To give it some causal form, here's sort of a hypothetical narrative about "you" the notional vax skeptic:
Things you were used to seem to be changing rapidly. It used to feel like they'd stayed the same longer. It used to be possible to "politely disagree" over serious issues. Now you hear you're wrong all the time and that people who used to tolerate you are angry you won't change fast enough.
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Conservative sites reassure you that the world was better back in the day, and these changes are bad, and that the you aren't bad, its the changing world that's wrong.
(For their own reasons) conservative sources tell you not to trust "experts". These sources also sow doubt and provide alternate facts.
3/x
They suggest every scientist working for the government or academia is probably trying to make a buck or push a social agenda. There's always an ulterior motive. You don't understand the biological processes, and you don't know who to trust to even start down the path to understanding. [This is what I think of as the modern crisis in epistemology.]
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