{"id":3733,"date":"2020-03-04T09:05:35","date_gmt":"2020-03-04T15:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/?p=3733"},"modified":"2020-03-04T21:50:25","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T03:50:25","slug":"is-covid-19-the-end-of-the-anti-vaxxers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/04\/is-covid-19-the-end-of-the-anti-vaxxers\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Covid-19 the end of the anti-vaxxers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As recently as last summer, 45% of Americans<\/a> (according to one credible survey) “doubted” the safety of vaccines. This did not necessarily translate in to opposition<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t3qc-Yd","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3736,"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions\/3736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueberrytown.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}