As recently as last summer, 45% of Americans (according to one credible survey) “doubted” the safety of vaccines. This did not necessarily translate in to opposition to requirements for children to be vaccinated before going to school, for example, but it remains the case that most states have broad exemptions from mandatory vaccination.
The politics of this defy easy explanation. If the Great Karnak were asked to provide the question to the answer “California, New York, West Virginia, and Mississippi,” there is no chance he would have said “states with the fewest exemptions to mandatory vaccinations.”
Yesterday’s election results, coming as they did on the brink of the now virtually inevitable Covid-19 pandemic, offer early evidence that the tide may be turning. Last year, Maine’s legislature eliminated most exemptions from vaccination requirements by a one-vote margin, effectively turning it from dark blue to yellow on the map above. The anti-vaxxers being nothing if not committed tried to overturn the new strict law by referendum. They were destroyed.
Of course, it is impossible to know whether the anti-vaxxer referendum would have passed in the absence of the recent scare, but we strongly suspect that at least the margin of its defeat was so great because we have been reminded, rather harshly, of the social and economic consequences of unchecked infectious disease.
6 Comments
It’s not that people don’t trust vaccines. The problem is that people do not trust the governments and the medical establishment and Big Pharma and the rest of the corrupt criminal ruling class. Real vaccines are swell, but what sort of an idiot lets arrogant authoritarians inject things in to their body?
Well, I certainly agree that is a significant part of the anti-vaxxer strain, if you will (although Big Pharma hates the vaccine business, which is broadly unprofitable, so they are probably a misplaced target). Surely you agree, however, that infectious disease presents a particular collective action problem. We have been blessed to avoid this issue for a long time for two reasons: First, vaccines are widely used, so autonomy-libertarians have been able to free ride on herd immunity. Second, the combination of antibiotics and vaccination and sanitation have, for the time being, turned death by infectious disease in to a fairly rare event. That has allowed us the luxury of asserting our rights against the authorities. If that changes, won’t we be on the horns of a very difficult dilemma?
You continue to make this a false dichotomy. I mostly vaccinate but i do not agree 100 percent with the CDCs “recommended “ list (their words not mine) and you continue to ignore scheduling and frequency because you are both scared and lazy.
We have vaccines given at the wrong time, vaccines that failed cost benefit and vaccines effective at high 9s at fewer doses.
To the dismiss me as an anti-vaxxer reveals your lack of seriousness and confirms your danger to the public . Are you are too lazy to ask and we should take your kids?
Sheeple.
T Howr, I certainly did not mean to dismiss you. Have we encountered before?
“…autonomy-libertarians have been able to free ride…”
Their free riding just about kills any goodwill libertarians have among the general voting public. Libertarians also free ride on community accepted moral standards while trying to tear them down. Ironic.
In the real world outside Libertopia, libertarianism can only succeed among a very moral people who respect the two great commandments. Real life libertarians fall far too short. Thus, people who know libertarians tend to despise them.
I have no problem with vaccines, as a medical concept.
I have a great problem with vaccines that were made in China and India. If you wouldn’t trust your kid’s life to an airplane or an automobile built there, why would you let anyone shoot your kid up with Chinese vaccines? All of these things were invented in the West, but you will look long and hard for pharmaceuticals of any kind made in the US since NAFTA and Most Favored Nation status for China.