Call it what it is–the US has lost its hold on measles elimination

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/cidrap-op-ed-call-it-what-it-us-has-lost-its-hold-measles-elimination

by eatonphil • 29 days ago

28 7 29 days ago

cidrap.umn.edu

peterlk• 29 days ago

The chain of “Why?”s here is really baffling to me.

Why do we have measles outbreaks? Because people aren’t vaccinating their kids.

Why aren’t people vaccinating their kids? Because there seems to be a generalized fear of vaccinations and their side effects

Why does this fear exist? I’m at a loss. Is it because people aren’t less educated now than they were 30 years ago? Is it because deadly diseases have fallen out of public consciousness? Was there a coordinated external effort to psyop the American people into believing such things (now I’m starting to feel like a conspiracy theorist)?

None of these reasons seem super compelling to me. The “diseases fell out of public consciousness” feels compelling at first, but why would there not have been some admonishment from grandparents who knew someone who died from polio? That seems like family lore that wouldn’t get lost.

Why not run a publicly funded ad campaign with images that look like cigarette packaging? Remind people what these now-preventable diseases look like.

It just seems wild to me that this issue seems to be getting worse. It’s like watching car crashes rise while people are cutting their own brake lines and then continuing to cut brake lines (and encourage others to di so) after their friends die. Wtf is even happening?

mindslight• 29 days ago

Media saturation/psychosis driving self-centered ignorance. At first social media - instant validation for whatever wackadoodle idea you've got, criticism pushed away by engagement algorithms, both directly and by the flash mob of supporters they create. And now LLMs which will eagerly indulge whatever nonsense you throw at them, from a position of authority created by marketing ("AI").

I'm sure there are overt foreign campaigns driving these memes as well though. Not so much for the direct goal of spreading measles, but rather to undermine belief in our institutions and create political divisions out of whole cloth.

And this has been festering so long that it has become quite lucrative. Embracing the nonsense and grifting the herds of followers will not only make you a lot of money, but can put you in some of our highest political offices.

fzeroracer• 29 days ago

Why does this fear exist? I’m at a loss. Is it because people aren’t less educated now than they were 30 years ago? Is it because deadly diseases have fallen out of public consciousness? Was there a coordinated external effort to psyop the American people into believing such things (now I’m starting to feel like a conspiracy theorist)?

There was essentially a coordinated effort and it's not particularly a conspiracy. Shock Jocks, YouTube personalities, folks like Alex Jones etc all would gleefully share anti-vaccine sentiment because it got eyeballs and eyeballs is more money. Then it travels up the chain, creating an entire industry around anti-vaccine sentiment by selling snake oil. Eventually you get stupid enough politicians to genuinely believe it and enact policy on it.

And unfortunately most people are incredibly stupid with zero foresight. Someone's kid will die of measles and they'll just shrug and say it was God's plan. They'll gleefully send their kid with fifty preventable diseases out to die and kill others along the way.

marssaxman• 29 days ago

The fear began in 1998, when a fraudulent research paper was published in the Lancet which claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. The fraud was exposed in 2010, prompting retraction of the paper and revokation of the author's medical license, but twelve years was plenty of time for a folk suspicion of the MMR vaccine to put down roots independent of the original cause.

pseudohadamard• 29 days ago

During the Covid vaccination campaign, the people I knew who were the first in line to get vaccinated were the ones who remembered polio and classmates in iron lungs and similar. They knew what happens without vaccination. OTOH more recent generations have grown up with vaccination programs having eliminated all of those things, so all they see is the imaginary conspiracy theories rather than the invisible-to-them benefits.

gonight• 29 days ago

It's cheesy and stupid, but especially when I find things like this that genuinely get under my skin, I try to remind myself to 'be starfleet about it'.

Outside of confiscating children, I think the move here is education campaigns explaining that diseases like this are not common colds and have serious consequences. I don't think a federal campaign like this would be possible given the current state of the government, but I do think it's something to strive for.

LocalH• 29 days ago

Unfortunately, I think we're reaching the point (if we haven't already) where we should be less Starfleet and more Fenris Rangers

Call it what it is–the US has lost its hold on measles elimination

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