I’m of the mind that the medical industry brought a lot of this skepticism and doubt upon themselves by being a greedy, shit eating industry that frequently bankrupts people and/or allows them to die completely preventable deaths and that’s not even getting into their hand in the opioid crisis. That said, fucking sucks that this is how it’s manifested. As always disenfranchisement in the liberal establishment is more quickly picked up by right wing populist grifters (in large part due to their huge funding base) than by left wingers with systemic critiques
I still got family that won't vax bc Tuskegee is still VIVID in their memories. Shit, I was told that story by my uncle when I was ten. "If they offer you any 'free' vaccine, some 'free' medicine, anything like that boo-boo, that's 'cause they TESTING some shit on you." And really, who am I to argue that point when they lived it, remembered it, and passed it to me? These are fears that go back multiple generations among my blood-- we can't trust Amerikans to not be pulling dodgy shit with medicine.
It's kind of telling that two hours into existence, this somehow has the most downvotes-- will the settlers ever not disapprove of the colonized trying to protect themselves from their predators?
The rate of parents who refused one or more recommended vaccines increased from 9.1% in 2006 to a staggering 16.7% in 2013 1
What happened between these two time periods?
-CIA faked a vaccination drive to collect DNA from children in Pakistan. (2011) 2
-Beta Israelis were secretly given birth control shots believing that they were flu shots in some cases (2013) 3
Stop screwing around with medicine. Blaming the people doesn't get at the root of the issue when their governments fomented mistrust in the first place. It takes decades to build up public trust and the antivax movement is a symptom of distrust in institutions, not the cause.
Being a biologist, I was very much against antivaxxers. With the Covid pandemic I started seeing some things their way. You hit the nail on the head. The problem shouldn't be people asking questions (no matter how "stupid" they may be/seem). The problem is governments and corporations creating an atmosphere of mistrust. The way COVID was handled through fear mongering and demans of blind faith, just so the politicians wouldn't get blamed for any mishandlings in the future, created way more antivaxxers than any religion/dogma has ever created before.
The questions are usually stupid, but the fear behind them isn't completely unfounded. The trick is to get people to understand and ask the right questions instead of pointless fearmongering.
Yeah the US is reaping what they sow here. Americans may be politically illiterate, but they do notice the corruption in their country and the exploitation in their lives.
It's no wonder why so many people are suspicious of something that's free (what's ever given to them for free?) that is produced by the private sector (how will they profit from this?) for their benefit (since when do businesses or the government ever help them?). A lot of conspiracy theories are basically updated versions of real historical atrocities, like the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.
Ultimately they are victims of the system. They begin with a kernel of justified and understandable suspicion toward big corporate pharma but they build around that a whole edifice of paranoid conspiracy theories and unscientific bunk because they lack the dialectical materialist understanding to contextualize what is happening in the world around them. Like most people they instinctively feel that something is wrong and that the capitalist system does not serve their best interests, but not having (and not being allowed to have) a coherent systemic critique they resort to idealist fantasies and the blaming of individuals and secret cabals. Initially they harm themselves and those closest to them (especially their children) by refusing to vaccinate, but they do also harm society when their numbers grow to such a extent that almost eradicated diseases like measles start making a comeback.
