The problem with the issue of vaccine deniers and the increasing prevalence of people who have PhD’s from the University of Google is that they know a LOT about how to find information that confirms what they already believe or think they know.
What’s missing is that vaccine deniers–and the VAST majority of the population in general has a classic First World Problem: Many of us have little to no actual firsthand experience with the diseases theses vaccines prevent. Or what happens when someone we know/love gets these diseases.
For the most part, only those over the age of 60-65 or even older can even remember a time when people actually got these diseases like polio.
My father was growing up during the last great polio epidemic in the early 1950s. His best friend Terry, one block up the street disappeared from school one day. This was NOT in Minneapolis or St. Paul, this was in little ol’ Morris, Minnesota.
Terry got polio before there was a vaccine. Back in that day and age, there was no contact with anyone who got polio and even their families had to be avoided to a large extent, so dad had no information for weeks on what happened to his 10 year old buddy for weeks.
Terry survived. He was confined to a wheel chair and only slowly over many years recovered enough to walk with the aid of braces and crutches. He went on to become a lawyer and a judge. I met him many times when I was a young kid, he was dad’s friend and I never even knew WHY he was in a wheelchair or had to walk with crutches until dad told me the whole story much later in life.
I don’t think people understand these days that a vaccine is NOT a cure. You or your children can STILL get polio and there STILL is no cure for polio or many of these other diseases that vaccines now prevent. A child that gets polio TODAY will either die or be handicapped for the rest of their lives. Why would anyone want any part of allowing that to happen?
Well, of course the answer is that people have lost the very bitter firsthand knowledge of pain and loss when it DOES happen.
Grouse