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Measles Is Coming Back. We’re Not Prepared (thetyee.ca)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Canada is below the required immunity threshold to sustain elimination. How did we get here?

all 32 comments

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If only there was a way to prevent a person from getting measles. Hell, mumps and rubella too!

[–] [email protected] 65 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But the shot gave me 5g or whatever, they’ll know where I am all times!

Sent from my iPhone

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

More likely is that no one in the government gives 2 shits what some MAGA retiree is doing. Those types are desperate to pretend they are relevant.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

It's like when someone leaves a real asshole comment and then goes "I'm being brigaded!!!" lol. Naw lil buddy. You're not that important people just saw your comment and thought you were being a jerk

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Alas... Medicine has yet to advance from leeches.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Anti-vaxxers, of course. Everyone thank the anti-vaxxers with both middle fingers!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

Agreed, but not just them, it is also about making sure vaccines are properly available and accessible, the clinics are open when parents are able to get to them (or out of work hours) and that their availability is properly advertised and promoted. It needs to be made as easy as possible for people to get their kids jabbed with as little impact on their daily schedules as possible.

[+] [email protected] -26 points 7 months ago (3 children)

How? There has always been X number of people who do not take vaccines, the largest group are the Amish and other smaller religious groups? The crazies you speak of are a tiny minority.

If there is more measles but the same group of people are taking the shots then measles would not increase by much. You think that people who took shots before are not taking them anymore?

[–] otp 39 points 7 months ago

In the last 20 to 30ish years, there's been a rise in anti-vax rhetoric, including massive campaigns specifically against the MMR vaccine.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

What makes you think it hasn't increased?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

What do you mean, the same group of people? You take the vaccine once, usually when you are a child. So if you got it for your kid, and they decided you are an archaic, brainwashed fool and didn't get it for theirs, there you go.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Andrew Fucking Wakefield can never suffer enough for everything he’s responsible for

[+] [email protected] -12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

At this point, he was a symptom. He was pushing a narrative those people already wanted to hear. They'd likely still be the way they are. They'd have found their excuse somewhere. And by now, anyone not immediately, loudly, aggressively pushing back on the bullshit narrative are bad actors with ill intentions

[–] otp 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

He was doing it to make money. I don't think it's sufficient to call him a symptom. I'd argue he was one step away from bringing it to the mainstream. (That celebrity was responsible for making it mainstream imo)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What I mean is that whether he existed or not, something was bound to mainstream the antivax movement

[–] otp 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think I disagree that we would've had mainstream anti-vax even without Andrew Wakefield (and Jenny McCarthy).

That's like saying we'd have Microsoft without Bill Gates. Sure, we don't need Gates now to have Microsoft, and it feels like an inevitability in hindsight. But he was such a major player that moved MS forward that things would be very different without him.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

He's all of one half of one sentence in the main wiki article on the centuries-old antivax movement, shared with a 1980's similar scare.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy

I think we have age bias -- it was the story of our time so we as more weight to it. There are so many true and false stories of vaccines for centuries.

I think a better analogy is you're trying to say without Bill Gates, personal computing wouldn't exist, when it was already moving in that direction, and Hell, I'm pretty sure apple and Microsoft build their idea on an operating system that was created by xerox first.

[–] otp 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Great points.

Didn't Jenny McCarthy leverage Andrew Wakefield's research for her position, though? Because I feel like that's when it started becoming "mainstream".

I'd say it was during the pandemic that it went crazy though. Actually mainstream, where parents stopped asking each other "Where do you take your baby for their boosters?", and started asking "So are you choosing to vaccine your baby?"...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

She absolutely did, but she isn't even a footnote. People having kids today might not even know who she is.

If you look at data, vaccination support was lower in 2008 than it got in 2014 when it dipped again due to Wakefield. He is blamed for specific incidences, like measles outbreaks at the time. But a bigger dip happened in 2019 with the bullshit nationalism messaging (don't let the government tell you what to do)

https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-health/immunization/

[–] [email protected] 42 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Idiots like my sister.

She once sternly advised me "I won't have any chemicals in my home"

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wait until she hears about dihydrogen monoxide...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I asked her how she felt about nitrogen on her lawn

She exploded. I WON'T ALLOW IT!

I said what do you think most of the breathable atmosphere is made of and what do you think comes down with rain that makes your grass grow?

You know how well that went.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I often wonder what can be done to help these people escape the cycle of ignorance, but so far I have no clue.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Well SOME of us are prepared, since we had parents who actually cared about our lives rather than virtue-signalling to their Facebook groups.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The problem is that the voluntarily unvaccinated give the disease the chance to circulate. Once in circulation it will harm some people who are vaccinated and some people who can't be vaccinated. Vaccination is in part an altruistic act that helps protect others. But antivaxers don't seem to understand this notion of doing something to protect other people.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Nice. 🙂🥹😭

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I am, I don't leave my house.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago

Well, I’m fully prepared. And I’m also prepared to watch Darwinism in action.