So, my an online american friend said"My mom didn’t want to vaccine vax cuzs autism". Is he joking? I know many people say thing like that but i thought they all were joking?
In my country which is a third world country no one believe shit like that even my Grand mother who is illiterate and religious don’t believe thing like that and knows the benefit of vaccine.
IDK what country your from, but in the US, mistrusting doctors and the institutions of health is the most rational thing in the world. That’s because our healthcare is capitalistic and runs on that logic. People die all the time because helping them would cut into profits.
The real insanity is thinking that the government, corporations, and the media would suddenly work together to benefit the health of the public… for free.
Antivaxers are not stupid, they just never lived in a world where Doctors and Hospitals cared about public health.
If you are not American and have not interacted with the American health care system, it is almost impossible for you to believe how bad it is. I think this is a big part of what makes antivax believable to people here: The fact that it is absolutely undeniable that every part of the health care system they deal with day-to-day is shamelessly abusing them and their health for profit.
It’s not true that the public health apparatus that comes up with vaccines is a part of that same psychopathic system, it’s actually a rare and exotic thing that still cares about humans and is working hard to help them, but how would they know that?
Yeah, you’re not exactly sounding rational there buddy.
You think we should mistrust doctors who advise you take a preventative treatment that every healthcare system on earth recommends and has since the treatment was created because in one country the people who pay for medicine sometimes don’t want to pay for things the doctors recommend (and you’re saying don’t trust the doctors, mind you), even though the people who pay for it actually recommend it because they make more money if you don’t get sick.
Even in a full conspiratorial mindset your nonsense is disjointed.
Antivaxers are fucking idiots because they don’t have a coherent internal logic for their paranoid woo, they don’t have the ability to understand any of the research that’s happened, and they don’t want to trust the people who do because those people clearly want to hurt them and give them… A developmental disability. For profit somehow.
And this is where we see left-wing wackaloons finding common ground with right-wing wackaloons.
It’s easy to forget, the anti-vax movement used to be predominantly left. It only became popular on the right in the last ten to fifteen years.
What about doctors from countries with public healthcare who are… also telling people to get vaccinated?
Tons of doctors care about public health. Perhaps hospital administrations don’t and are only concerned with money, but they are not doctors.
Pharmaceutical companies may be suspect, but it’s the same thing: The suits in charge, not the people working to find solutions for people in need.
Ascribing these attitudes towards the people who are actual stewards of public health who are are constantly blocked by an administrative class that is more worried about profits has everything to do with being in a brutal capitalist society and almost nothing to do with “doctors who don’t care about public health.”
The people who come to conclusions that they can’t trust those in the medical field at all are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and have no ability to parse the nuance of such a situation.
I’m not saying all doctors are perfect, I have had some shitty doctors in my life. But by and large I’ve had more who were concerned with my health enough to help me than I have had those who simply don’t care what happens to me.
I’m just going to leave a link here to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study for the folks arguing against your point.
The study was a great example of unethical medical doctors, academics, and government officials. It is not an example of the greed of capitalism, since other than not being given penicillin, all participants were given long term medical care thanks to funding from the government.
The study ended 50 years ago, but I guess you got us.
I agree with you that rampant capitalism is the true primary source of distrust, but we’re not going to fix the full distrust without addressing the history as well.
There’s a lot more than my cherry picked example in our history.
We have a history of treating our least privileged society members as lab rats.
Now we’re acting shocked that folks aren’t lining up for a poke in the arm.
Trust must be built, and we clearly don’t have it anymore.
Getting rid of our billionaires is step one, but it won’t magically change hearts and minds and create the missing trust.
My point is that they government itself doesn’t have a spotless history, and so cannot simply say trust me bro. It’s not just privatized healthcare that lost the missing trust.
Getting rid of our billionaires and un-privatizing healthcare is step one. After that, we still need an accountability overhaul, and a ton of patience to rebuild the lost trust.