creolensoulful: currygoatboi: hatey-mchaterson: timemachineyeah: a-spoon-is-born: funoftheday: You d
creolensoulful:currygoatboi:hatey-mchaterson:timemachineyeah:a-spoon-is-born:funoftheday:You don’t say.For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late. Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.Damn all 7 tho @timemachineyeah I’m with you on all of what you wrote except this passage“She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. “There are literally tens of thousands of medical studies and medical/research professionals from around the world who have literally screamed from the rooftops to vaccinate kids since the first vaccine was created. There are FAR fewer sources for anti-vaccination so it takes more effort and skill to seek them out than it does to do a simple search on what’s been proven for over 80 years. I’m glad she came to her senses but I’m certain her doctor(s) were the first people she ignored and continued to until her kids were at risk of becoming ill. I commend her for admitting she was wrong but I don’t for a nanosecond believe its because she lacked the skill or was under-taught on the dangers of not vaccinating which is such a cop out.As the child of a doctor, doctors can be, and often have been, wrong. We have dozens of examples throughout even recent history of the medical community fucking up, or changing their recommendations, or not knowing what they’re talking about but asserting it as fact anyway. Widespread biases and financial motivations muddy up medical practice all the time. I’m super pro-vaccination, but I have no problem seeing where someone could be suspicious of a mainstream medical belief, especially with regard to their children’s safety.This isn’t to say doubting the validity of vaccines is reasonable. If you have reasoning skills, which are real learned skills and not default, it is obviously correct. But an appeal to authority ( “Doctor knows best” ) isn’t critical thinking skills or reasoning. And “well EVERYONE knows that!” could be used to justify atrocities just as easily as it can be used to justify good choices. That vaccines work is obvious to us who know how to tell good science from bad, but not everyone knows how to do that.Understanding and interpreting the huge amount of data available, and what makes data good or bad, is the skill needed. But that is a learned skill. That is not something that people just pop out of the ground knowing how to do. I know it can seem wild to people with certain backgrounds, certain upbringings, access to certain kinds of education. I get it. It can sound completely bonkers that someone can not know these things. But it isn’t bonkers. Interpreting data. Verifying data. Validating claims. Knowing what questions to ask and how to get answers. Knowing which authority to listen to. It’s all form of literacy. And I don’t get mad at people for being illiterate, I get mad at the people who never taught them the skills they’d need to navigate life. I get mad that those skills aren’t standard and available everywhere. And this isn’t to say that we should be gentle on people whose false beliefs are actively harming others. Anti-vaxxers hurt their own children and put so many others at risks with their anti-science nonsense. It’s a disgusting blight of a movement. Even for the most sympathetic anti-vaxxer, they are still making harmful choices, and still practicing some amount of willful ignorance to do so. But there all also many other malicious anti-vaxxers higher in the ranks who make money and gain social power through their willful ignorance, and when you have charismatic leaders you have otherwise good (but also usually vulnerable) people getting swept up and taken advantage of and lied to and hurt, and convinced to do things that hurt others.Which means that a parent can be talked into making a bad choice against their better judgment by a persuasive-sounding argument when they don’t know how to tell the difference between a good argument and a bad one.I also have no doubt that people told her the risks of not vaccinating. I also have no doubt that people told her a lot of scary stories about vaccination. And, yes, I genuinely believe she lacked the skill to assess the two conflicting claims and choose who to believe. And in that scenario, well - you can’t unvaccinate your kids, but you can always vaccinate them later. If you have two claims about what presents a danger to your kid, and acting is irreversible, but you can always choose to act later? Choosing not to take the action is a rational response to the information as you are able to interpret it. Because, she lacked the skill to value, rank, understand, and interpret the information. Again, I’m not saying we should start an anti-vaxxer cuddle pile. Endangering your kids like is horrible. I’m just saying trying understand why and how people make mistakes (and how they are able to be reached to correct those mistakes!) is essential to addressing and preventing those mistakes. -- source link
#antivaxxers