We were discussing the Disneryland measles outbreak at work, and I was appalled to find some of my co-workers refuse to vaccinate their kids. They (grudgingly) receive the vaccines they need to remain employed, but doubt their safety/necessity for their kids.
I must say, I am absolutley stunned. How can one be a nurse and deny science?
As a nurse, you should darn well know what the scientific method entails and what phrases such as "evidence based" and "peer reviewed" mean.
I have to say, I have lost most of my respect for the nurses and mistrust their judgement; after all, if they deny science, on what premise are they basing their practices?
I highly doubt we would see a disaster. These diseases are rare. Take Ebola for instance, it came here to the US and now boom, it's gone. Not that many got infected....because of precautions and better sanitation. If everyone were to stop being vaccinated, I really wonder if we would even see a large scale disease outbreak. As was said before, the rates of the diseases we vaccinate against were in decline when the vaccines came out. What we should be worrying about are superbugs and the overuse of antibiotics. Will our antibiotics even work in 10 or 20 years? That's much more scary don't you think? But we continue to feed antibiotics to livestock, the live stock most people eat unless you can afford organic and grass-fed. Also, it's in the water supply. Then doctors prescribe them to patient's for a little sniffle. Most illnesses are caused by viruses, which we all know antibiotics won't help.
You reach dangerous and sometimes BIZARRE conclusions.
Science, medicine and epidemiology in general are not beliefs at all. Beliefs are for church or politics, not for healthcare. It's part of why your conclusions are getting such a response.
When this many people challenge you, or disagree with you, that means something, it means something empirical (read: obvious, factual, observable and agreed upon by many). This is the first clue. This sounds like an ego trip to me, a collective ego trip that pays out feeling persecuted and slightly superior. It is so much like religious zeal I can't help but make the comparison.
I represent a growing number of people though. This message board has been very heavy in your favor; however, there are plenty more people out there who are beginning to question vaccines. There are many questioning a lot about our society. I feel we are on the verge of something new.
No you don't. This 'group of people' have always been agitating around the porch light like a bunch of moths, and don't get any 'bigger' or any more validated than they ever did. There is nothing 'new' about being counter-culture or identifying yourself with a fringe-y victim group for the self importance it generates. You aren't old enough to have seen these waves come and go, form and dissolve, but each group believes they are 'the first ones' to discover THE TRUTH in all the lies.
In another 30 years, we'll see what you think then :) Honestly, I relate with you, been in a similar state of mind as you, how else would I know? I've been looked at like I was nuts plenty of times, after running my mouth. When I expected praise or hushed respect, I got looked at like I was nuts. I was. The good news for you is you don't make a very good sheeple, and you are not intimidated by massive overwhelming disagreement (or evidence to the contrary, alas!).
Get some actual facts beneath your belt, get over the ego trip, you are not a victim any more, and if you want to educate people as you seem to, know your stuff first. Make sure what you know is at least in the theory stage. "The Man" doesn't really exist. It's just a state of mind :)
I highly doubt we would see a disaster. These diseases are rare. Take Ebola for instance, it came here to the US and now boom, it's gone. Not that many got infected....because of precautions and better sanitation.
These diseases are rare, in this country, because vaccines have nearly eradicated them.
Remember measles has a R0 of 15. Ebola has an R0 of 2.5. That's why Ebola was able to be controlled in the country without vaccines.
Prior to 1963 when the measles vaccine started, more than 3 million people a year in the U.S. got measles. Now between 100-500 cases a year. Would you call 3-4 million cases per year rare? Do you think our sanitation is 100,000 fold better in the US than it was in 1963?
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge or information. It does not relate to intelligence. One can be ignorant of a fact, but once the fact is presented and understood, one is no longer ignorant of that fact. One is then educated regarding that fact.
Stupidity is the state of one who has been presented with knowledge, information, but is unable to understand it. It relates directly to intelligence, as someone who is stupid cannot understand the facts and therefore continues to refute them, despite their clear presence.
Unfortunately, as he (Dr Offit) states, "anecdote trumps epidemiology" And that's a hard thing to overcome.
Thanks for linking that.
What can we do about this? Just as citizens of the human race. This kind of 'research protocol' where anecdote trumps epidemiology is just a symptom of a society that doesn't discern between what they want to believe and reliable information. The latter is often NOT what we want to believe! I don't WANT to believe that snarfing a half bag of chips is bad for me (that's a bad example) . . . I don't want to believe that when I die, my body will rot and my conscious self will just be gone, as if it never existed in the first place. Poof. I could really dig a cool hippy heaven, with long lost pets and loved ones. I REALLY would love to believe this. But I can't BELIEVE it. I'd also really LOVE to believe that bad people get what they deserve, that the Karma Bus is gonna leave tire tracks right over their face. That 'good people' are rewarded and 'bad people' punished. That victims rise up and defeat their oppressors. All that malarkey is darn wonderful and would make this one too-short life seem like it means a helluva lot more than it apparently does.
The trouble with BELIEVING what you want to believe is that it doesn't just affect YOU, it affects your decisions, many of which directly affect other people -- adversely. Andi78 had to admit over and over again that it was not important to her if other people were adversely affected by her choices. Her right to choose was more important, in principle, than basic, disease-free well-being for others. She had to openly deny 'herd immunity' exists at all to avoid saying "My personal rights are more important to me than other people's personal rights are to them. As if all these 'other people' were figments of her imagination, and she could just say "I don't believe in herd immunity" and down the mountain the stone tablets came.
It's making her look like a sociopath, which she obviously is not, just a bit self-centered. And her casual attitude toward facts and lack of discernment is far from unique. Hey, who put that soapbox under my feet??!
This 'group of people' have always been agitating around the porch light like a bunch of moths, and don't get any 'bigger' or any more validated than they ever did. There is nothing 'new' about being counter-culture or identifying yourself with a fringe-y victim group for the self importance it generates.
I want to cut and paste this into every debate I ever get into again, forever.
Anyone notice that there seems to be a collective of people who fall under the heading "Against"? As in, against everything. Not FOR anything. Against vaccinations. Against GMO. Against seatbelt regulations, helmet regulations. Against fast food availability. Against school requirements, against anything they perceive as 'forced'. Against any law or concept for which being FOR it would get them out of the self-important "Against Group".
What are they really for? Nothing that I can see....the united effort is to be 'Against'.
IMHO, merely being 'Against' isn't enough. One must stand FOR something in order to matter in this world, not just be in opposition to all concepts presented.
And that's a hard thing to overcome. 
Horseshoe, BSN, RN
5,879 Posts
LOL, I've kind of danced around that concept for a while. And I'm considered to be overly blunt.
LOVE it.