Anti-Vaxxers Are Dangerous for Children AND Democracy

The number of measles cases around the country is rising. Rapidly.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--as of April 4--has already reported 465 cases of the disease, more than the total for all of 2018. In California, legislators are looking to tighten the medical exemptions loophole by requiring the state health department to sign off and have the authority to revoke exemptions found to be inconsistent with CDC guidelines.

While there are certainly physicians willing to exploit the misplaced concerns of parents, the time has come to recognize anti-vaxxers as a symptom of a much larger problem, namely that too many people are suckers for exploitation because they don’t or won’t comprehend the world around them.

Health officials have said that the proliferation of anti-vaccine rhetoric has, in part, fueled an increase in the number of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases worldwide.

Measles has been found in more than a third of U.S. states — up and down both coasts, and across the plains, the Midwest and the South — with most of the illnesses occurring in children. That’s a horrible statistic, considering officials considered the disease eradicated domestically as of 2000.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/449525268529815552

The marketing of fraudulent claims often supported by pseudo-scientific evidence isn’t a new phenomena. Millions of jars of snake oil (most of which contained the same ingredients found in Vicks VapoRub) were sold to a gullible public prior to enactment of the 1906 Food and Drugs Act.  

An anti-Masonic political party emerged in the 1820s, claiming Freemasonry was secretive and elitist vehicle for the ruling elite undermined the nation’s democratic institutions through corruption.

The anti-Vaxxer movement transcends political silos, with influence in conservative Christian homeschooler circles, crunchy granola California coteries, and ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews.

The 21st century twist on deliberate ignorance comes to us via the internet. Social media and chat rooms provide a platform for (usually) faux-credentialed wise-persons with outlandish tales to tell and sell.

Personal branding derived from flaunting commonly accepted standards is also a path toward recognition (fame?) in a world where individuality is overwhelmed by mass marketing and group think. There is a culturally baked-in empathy for rebellion, based on a flawed understanding of real-world historical advances made by social justice movements.

The bottom line on whether violating norms can be a good thing has to come from an understanding of the underlying economics of a situation and a sense of empathy for our fellow humans. The malicious part of rebellion comes down to whether the beneficiaries amount to the few or the many.   

There is not much distance philosophically from sending a child to “measles parties” (to gain them natural immunity) and some incel picking up an AR15 to rescue imaginary children from a conspiracy theorist-created pedophile ring supposedly run by Hillary Clinton.

Whether it’s the smug self-satisfaction of beating “the man” or buying into the mythology of heroism, the only real “winner” is the self righteousness for those taking the actions.

Make no mistake about it, control of measles and other infectious diseases is a needed element in an ever-increasingly crowded world. The inactions of a few when it comes to public health endangers us all.

Our institutions are far from perfect; they’re run by humans with the usual gamut of weaknesses and greed. Big pharma and the concept of healthcare as a "business opportunity" rather than a right are dangers to us all.

But as I like to say to the ‘repeal Obamacare’ crowd, destruction for destruction’s sake is a fool’s errand.

Don’t like immunizations? Fine, show me something else that won’t hurt people. And if there is no alternative on the table, shut up.

https://twitter.com/olivertatom/status/1116170152674873345

It should surprise nobody that forces seeking to undermine societal cohesion are in the game, in this instance, our frenemies in Putinland.

Using the Soviet era model of disinformation created by Operation Infektion, a campaign so effective that a 2005 study found more than 25% of African Americans surveyed considered HIV to have been created in a U.S. government lab.

From Foreign Policy:

In the United States, measles has a surprising booster: Russian trolls and bots.

The existence of a Russian disinformation campaign that could make Americans hesitant to vaccinate their children highlights something important about the Kremlin’s information war on the United States. Moscow’s goal has never been to advantage Republicans or Democrats. Instead, it is after a far bigger prize: the exacerbation of Americans’ distrust of one another and, in turn, the erosion of their confidence in society and the U.S. government.

A recent study from David Broniatowski, a professor at George Washington University, and his co-authors found that thousands of Russian accounts used to spread disinformation had seized on anti-vaccine messaging.

After combing through nearly 2 million tweets recorded between 2014 and 2017, the researchers found that Russian troll accounts were significantly more likely to tweet about vaccination than general Twitter users. They had turned to vaccines as a wedge issue in an effort to ramp up social discord, erode trust in public health institutions, and exacerbate fear and division in the United States.

As history professor Mark R. Cheathem says in a recent essay at  Zocalo Public Square

This enduring belief in vast, unexplainable conspiracies has often contributed to voters’ feelings of powerlessness, increasing their cynicism and apathy. And of course, conspiratorial rhetoric undermines the nation’s democratic institutions and practices. Politically motivated conspiracy theories, ultimately, bring the same result as conspiracies themselves: a small number of elite Americans wielding immense power over the future of the United States, power that may not account for the will of the majority.

So, yeah, anti-vaxxers ARE a threat to democracy. Combine this conspiracy nonsense with an authoritarian president along with an economy structured to reward oligarchs and the future looks mighty dim.

The answer to all this is, of course, not to sit on your ass. Or to feel better by sharing your angst on Twitter. These folks who think one REALLY big protest/or general strike/election will fix everything are as delusional as the parents who refuse vaccinate their children.

There’s work to be done. And it will take many of us taking many steps to reach the promised land.

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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com