The Anti-vaccination movement!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Anti-vaccination movement!

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

E-Tank posted:

Its less that, and more lacking in knowledge of exactly how dangerous diseases are. A mother hears that your child might be turn autistic if you get him vaccinated thinks "Well, if he gets sick I can take him to the doctor and we can get medicine for that sickness. . . but autism has no cure and that's *FOREVER!*"

So in the pros/cons of things, they view it as a short term con and a long term pro. Their child might get sick, but we have doctors and if vaccines can stop people from getting sick surely medication can cure a sick child, but there's no cure for mental issues like autism.

Not defending them, I just can see how someone whom doesn't know how exactly diseases work and that any disease if it hits the child in the right way can be loving fatal, would look at it like that.

It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the logic is: "I would rather have a dead child than a child with a mental disability." I can tell you that this sure makes a lot of the adults with autism feel grand about themselves.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 20:30

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 11, 2024 19:48

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Cache Cab posted:

I understand that some kids might get sick and maybe even die due to a lack of herd immunity, but how many are having mental issues from unregulated substances we're injecting into them?

So you're saying you're OK with dead kids, as long as you don't get autistic kids, even though your solution to avoiding the latter, will only generate the former. Does this extend to your own children?

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 17:39

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

PT6A posted:

Frankly, whatever sort of mental disease causes people to become anti-vaxxers is at least as frightening to me as autism. If you're an anti-vaxxer, something has gone wrong in your head to make you think that a dead child is better than a not-100%-normal child, and at the same time be completely unable to comprehend how causation works. That's the sort of cognitive impairment I'd be much more worried about, because it doesn't seem nearly as treatable for one thing.

I don't think it's necessarily irrational, they're concerned that their child will become a burden and that they would have to engage in lengthy, grinding care for that child due to those disabilities. Now we leave aside, of course, that the vaccine is completely irrelevant to whether those disabilities occur, or the fact that being willing to let your child die or be injured by a disease in order to avoid having to care for them is moral... But I don't know if you can call it a disease.

If anything, by returning to treating children, and the adults they become, purely as objects and creations of the parent, they're returning to time tested, old-fashioned values!

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 22:14

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

This is a bit tangential, but I notice a lot of you guys saying "woo" specifically to refer specifically to "alternative medicine bullshit." What's the origin of that turn of phrase (or terminology I guess)?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2014 23:02

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Crain posted:

It's weird that people think "getting/giving my child the HPV vaccine is the same as giving them a bunch of condoms" and on top of that they think "Giving my child condoms and teaching them about safe sex is the same as buying them a set of dildos and a membership in a sex club".

Ask him if he hopes for grandchildren. Then ask him where he expects them to come from, exactly. Then ask him further how likely it is that her hypothetical future husband was completely chaste until meeting her.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2014 20:43

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

pangstrom posted:

I mean I like his response better, but there is no way your average Native Amerian got to their mid-70s back then. I'd be surprised if the average guy even got to his mid 40s.

While this is probably true, it is literally the average guy, and would be skewed for the same reason it would be skewed for anyone: It's the average, and a whole lot of children died of diseases. I doubt the Native Americans had no childhood diseases, though it's certainly true they appear to have had fewer than Europeans did.

We get this strange image that people would be "old" at 32 or whatever because that's the average life expectancy, but that's not the way that figure works - a 32 year old in that society might be slightly more battered than us, but also likely more physically fit from having to work hard. I imagine the average cro-magnon would have hit his late fifties before being seriously or permanently impaired - but he might have a couple of siblings who died as infants, skewing the average down.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 00:32

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

OwlFancier posted:

Rare steak is lovely, but I tried it blue once and it just didn't taste of anything.

But yeah eating stupid crap because it's nice is fine, claiming it's actually good for you is pretty retarded.

I'm reminded of that old goon repost with the guy whose wife had Mystery Disease and was slowly dying and vomiting up food but was able to hold down raw organ meat and 'feel it digest,' which led to them living in a tent and eating rotten meat.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 09:56

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 11, 2024 19:48

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

GreyPowerVan posted:

When you grow up reading books 24/7 because you live in a lovely boonie of a country town, that's pretty much all you've got is vocab. I'd read books in like 1 day and teachers wouldn't believe me until I did the AR quiz things that we did. If like 70% of the grade did enough AR quizzes, we'd get a pizza party at the end of the year

I was also a precocious reader. I remember we had to do a thing where we did little quizzes about books we read, and we had to read a certain number of them per report card period. Since I'd already bulled through the Lord of the Rings books, which were worth like 30 points each, I did well. They even came round with a goodie cart so you could get value for those points. Much better than Book-It.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2015 23:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Anti-vaccination movement!