Obviously, not all Americans – and I even thought nowadays the sentiment was only shared by a small niche amount of people.
But I’ve suddenly been seeing this anti-vax sentiment being talked about and agreed on in a lot of American spaces, and what shocked me to the core was when a popular American mum influencer shared an instagram story with all of her followers, being mothers as well essentially saying they don’t trust vaccines and kids need germs etc in their life, excuses like that.
Again, not all Americans but I’m shocked seeing how this sentiment is being spread and talked about so nonchalantly.
Comments
Can I r/tooafraidtoask your question?
Why do you care? If we’re done centering Americans. If we are excited for their downfall. Why do you care? Even if it is a loud small portion. It doesn’t matter. Let them deal with it
Because it’s becoming more and more clear that there’s huge financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies to give you more vaccines and where there’s money there’s usually corruption.
Mistrust of our healthcare system due to exploitation by health insurers and the explosion of alternative news sources.
A lot of American culture at this moment in time boils down to “who’s an easy person to blame for this larger and far more complex issue.” The American healthcare system is a mess (as someone who works in healthcare), and it’s way easier for people to create a boogeyman (aka vaccines) than it is for them to deal with the more nuanced issues with the system.
Usually because their favorite political talking head or YouTuber with an agenda told them to be . The majority of us aren’t .
Ignorance.
Also, you can blame their culture, which is very prone to conspiracy theories, so if someone tell them vaccines give autism they find a conspiracy that supports their fear.
Finally, it is very human to stop believing something is necessary when you can’t see the problem. As vaccines are so effective, diseases start to give the impression that doesn’t exist. Thus, why take medication for something that doesn’t exist? This is true for all other containment measures (rules) that we fail to understand their purpose.
Lack of education.
A lot of people have forgotten how horrific some of the diseases they won’t vax for were before, and that, combined with political views, makes them believe it can’t possibly be that bad. They’re fucking around now, but I fear all of us will be on the finding out end…
We’re not.
A small percentage of people are and that percentage is loud. It’s like people running around wearing tin foil hats and yelling about the moon landing being fake. Most people don’t believe that, those people are just loud.
When you combine that with social media echo chambers, people who don’t have a great grasp on basic reasoning, and people who get their news from social media as opposed to reliable sources, unsupported and unsound ideas proliferate.
Because there is a lot of misinformation about vaccines and people focus the minority of data to validate their feelings and ideas over looking at the data as a whole.
The Average American doesn’t know in the world science it is constantly evolving and improving on what the current understanding is as well as nothing is ever 100%. Vaccines as a whole are generally safe. But some people might experience side effects…
Fun little side note, aspirin if it were invented today would get denied right away because of how dangerous it is as an over the counter medication that is often abused in order to ease or remove pain and inflammation. Those anti-vaxxers I bet also pop those things without a thought in the world. But will claim that is more safe than something that was tested and proven safe for the majority of people.
For $1000, what was Mike Judge’s inspiration for Idiocracy?
The direct marketing from social media has given scam companies and influencers direct access to millions of people.
Add that to our for profit health system that ignores women’s pain ( leaving only scammers to listen), creates addictions as a marketing plan, having cuts to new parents education programs, also political types who exploit these resentments to spread fear, and create chaos.
The direct marketing from social media has given scam companies and questionable influencers direct access to millions of people.
Add that to our for profit health system that ignores women’s pain ( leaving only scammers to listen), creates addictions as a marketing plan, having cuts to new parents education programs, also political types who exploit these resentments to spread fear, and create chaos.
I’m pro vaxx, anti covid mrna
I know no one who is anti vax. It’s a loud minority.
I know no one who is anti vax. It’s a loud minority.
It’s not as many as you think. Social media is very responsive to our viewing. If you hover over a Facebook post, TikTok video, Instagram post, etc. for literally just a second, it registers that as interest. Even if you were only on that post long enough to read the captions, determine you weren’t interested, and scrolled away. Even if you were only lingering there because someone in real life started talking to you and you looked up to listen. Even if that content actually really bothers you. If it registers you lingering, it assumes you’re interested. This process happens tenfold if you actually engage in some way (comments, likes, etc.). Even a dislike will produce more of those posts because ragebait is actually one of the best ways for them to keep you on. If they’ve got you angry enough for you to go ranting on a whole bunch of posts on similar topics, cha-ching! That’s ad revenue baby.
I’ve accidentally ruined my Facebook, YouTube, tiktok, etc. feeds a few times because of this. I found one true crime tiktok interesting, next thing I knew my feed was filled with stories about death which I hated. I see one funny meme from a recommended group, don’t interact with it at all, next thing I know, Facebook is filling my feed with posts from that group that I’m not even a part of. In any cases like this, I’ve fixed it by purposely scrolling away as fast as I can if it even looks like it might be the stuff I don’t want.
All that is to say if you lingered on one American anti-vax post, it’s gonna give you more. You linger on even a couple of those, you get even more. Next thing you know, you feel like lots of Americans are anti-vax. This is how bubbles form and how we all end up believing that nearly everyone thinks a certain way. It’s how those on the left only hear good things about the left and bad things about the right and vice versa. One survey found 16% of Americans are distrustful of vaccines as of 2023. Another found that 88% of Americans believe the MMR benefits outweigh the risks, 70% believe childhood vaccinations should be required for school, and 62% of Americans believe the benefits of the COVID vaccine outweight the risks as of 2023. This study from 2022 finds that 83% of Americans strongly support vaccines, support w/ concerns, or are vaccine hesitant (but not anti-vax), similar to Canada (80%) and the UK (83%). Americans are still largely pro-vaccine, you’ve just found yourself in a bubble.
It is a very very small group.
Partially our governments terrible handling of COVID, partially people getting really into qanon and similar conspiracy theories in response to covid lockdowns and poor handling by the government and then one party really leaning into the conspiracy stuff. Plenty of Americans also feel the healthcare system is just there to get money and not care for people (for obvious reasons) and it’s an unfortunately short leap from there into the waiting arms of “alternative medicine” peddlers and antivaxxers
Erm, isn’t the whole point of the movement to quietly reduce healthcare costs by letting people die?
How else do you explain the fact that many “leaders” in the movement have vaccinated themselves and they and their family and go to regular doctors (esp when they get brain worms and give themselves mercury poisoning).
Break it down:
The elderly and the very young are the biggest consumers of healthcare.
By driving people away from vaccines, you increase infection rates of preventable (and lethal) diseases. That kills infants—who can’t yet be vaccinated—and the very old, whose immune systems can’t keep up. FWIW, I can state for a fact that it did not go unnoticed that COVID disproportionately killed older Americans.
Pushing people toward homeopathy, you keep them away from real treatment until it’s far too late. See: Steve Jobs and his fruitarian “cancer cure.” (Hint: it wasn’t a cure).
All of the above saves money by getting people to die. Treatment costs money. Dead people don’t seek care. Remember: in the US, healthcare is accounted for in terms of cost—not value (i.e., not dying or being permanently cured of ever getting measles). It’s bad, distorted accounting but that’s where we are.
There’s a very vocal minorty that is extremely inflammatory and controversial on purpose so they can play martyr if you try to tell them they’re wrong. It’s honestly gotten to the point where they won’t just play a victim they’ll be openly hostile. And like a group of teens, seeing one attack someone inspires the others and makes the initial instigator feel vindicated.
So the rest of us keep our heads down so they don’t get cut off. And then there’s the third group that doesn’t believe in it,but they see that that minority is getting attention and well they want it to so they sell out.
As an American, I gotta admit… it’s kind of embarrassing how loud the anti-vax crowd can be. But honestly, they’re a small (albeit very vocal) minority. Most Americans are vaccinated—it’s just that social media and news algorithms love controversy. So the loudest, most extreme voices get the most attention, making it look like we’re all out here injecting bleach and protesting polio shots.
Add in America’s reputation for individualism—aka, ‘you can’t tell me what to do even if it saves my life’ and it becomes an easy narrative for outsiders to latch onto. I promise we’re not all like that. Some of us are just quietly vaccinated and minding our own immune systems…
It’s fairly simple,stupidity
Being Anti-Vax has cross appeal between Liberal Hippie types that prefer “natural medicine” and Conservative Conspiracy types that don’t trust the government.
This cross appeal has helped it gain momentum over the years between different groups
While there was an anti vax movement prior to 2020 It really took root that year. To explain supporters of Trump got so use to hearing conspiracy stories about others out to get him using underhanded means that when the virus started to spread in his reelection year, they thought that was super odd and super “convenient”.
When the health experts were correctly asking for reductions in person to person contact at the start, people didn’t believe it. They didn’t see people getting sick or dying, so they thought it was all a ploy to make things difficult for Trump’s reelection.
To be fair the last time this happened was a 100 years earlier and that event wasn’t commonly discussed in history compared to say WW1 and WW2.
So many people spread the idea that the health precautions were a political stunt, this caused a weird polarizing effect during the largest health crisis of our lifetime.
Those people who thought the virus and the precautions were all way over exaggerated and merely meant to be mean to Trump then had to explain away vaccines for it.
They outright rejected the idea the vaccine was a critical life saving tool, but the only way they could dismiss it was to latch on to the idea that the vaccine had some sinister purpose.
Social media extended the influence of these people. Unfortunately there is a social element to many of these beliefs.
Covid was scary for everyone, but people seemed to latch on to very different reasons about why it was scary.
As for me I lost multiple family members to that horrible disease and the only real lesson to learn from Covid is that society is far more fragile than we realize. sci-fi always had these cases where a disease that wipes out 99% of people.
The reality is far scarier, all it takes is a virus with “only” a 2% fatality rate to upend our way of life.
We all want to believe society is rock solid, but it’s not, it needs our help to survive.
Safe and effective. We where lied to bud.
We aren’t.