Don't try to reason with vaccine-skeptic parents. Scare them.

CBC News ^ | March 4, 2019 | Robyn Urback

[rickmichaels]

A baby in the midst of a whooping cough (pertussis) fit will appear to cry without making a sound. Her mouth will be open as she tries to cough to clear the mucus from her narrowed airway, but if she's really struggling, nothing will happen. Her lips and tongue might turn blue. She could seize. When the fit is finally over, she'll vomit.

It's absolutely terrifying to watch (and no doubt, to experience), and precisely the type of picture public health organizations need to paint to counter anti-vaccination propaganda. No more stats about the infrequency of adverse reactions, or sterile "myth vs. fact" pages on government vaccine information websites. Facts don't move people the way that an appeal to emotion — fear, specifically — does.

Anti-vaxxers know that. Their dispatches are compelling: Vaccine Choice Canada, a registered not-for-profit, posts devastating, detailed, first-person stories on its website by parents who report taking their perfectly healthy children in for their scheduled vaccines and leaving with sick, disabled or otherwise "vaccine-injured" children.

There are, of course, the requisite stories about children exhibiting autistic behaviours after vaccination — anecdotes that are easily dismissed by people who already know that there is no link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism.

But some of the other stories are harder to shrug off. They include tales of babies experiencing seizures, anaphylaxis and even paralysis after vaccinations. According to the parents' own accounts posted on Vaccine Choice's website, emergency room physicians dismissed their concerns, telling them that they were simply overreacting.

These are the critically dangerous stories from a public health perspective, in that they can't be flat-out rejected as false. That makes them potentially persuasive even to parents who know better. We know the chance of a serious adverse reaction as described above is exceedingly rare — about three in a million, according to the most recent data out of Ontario — but statistics don't stick in the mind the same way a single story of a mother's anguish does. And anti-vaccination groups tell those stories perfectly.

Right now, British Columbia is currently grappling with a measles outbreak, and so too is Washington state, Texas (where a lawmaker erroneously suggested that antibiotics could clear up the outbreak) and a handful of other regions mostly along the Pacific Northwest. Not surprisingly, the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified "vaccine hesitancy" as one of the top 10 threats to global health in 2019.

Vaccine hesitancy, however, is an umbrella term that really describes two distinct groups. There are the strident anti-vaxxers whose opposition to vaccination is entrenched and full-throttled — the organizers and proselytizers, who made up less than three per cent of parents surveyed, according to one study. And then there are those who can more accurately be described as vaccine-hesitant — those who are worried about adverse reactions, or autism, or the pace of the vaccine schedule, or about putting "artificial" medicines in their children.

The former group might be impossible to influence, but the latter group can still be reached, though bombarding them with stats about safety and sterile warnings about vaccine-preventable illnesses obviously isn't working.

So scare them. Show them what a child hospitalized with measles-induced encephalitis looks like. Tell stories like that of Jamie Schanbaum, whose legs and fingers were amputated after she contracted meningitis as a Texas University student. Let them see what it's like for a baby with whooping cough try to struggle to breathe.

Then let the anti-vaxxers try to counter with stats: But encephalitis from measles is rare! (True) Vaccines don't prevent against all kinds of meningitis! (True) You can still get whooping cough even if you've been vaccinated! (True) But alas, information about the relative infrequency of complications doesn't stick in the mind the way the image of a baby's blue lips and tongue does.

Some might be uncomfortable with pro-vaccination efforts using the same appeal-to-emotion, anecdotal tactics as do anti-vaxxers. But offending our collective polite sensibilities matters less than herd immunity and the suffering of children who have little to no say in their own health care.

Some regions have adopted or are considering adopting policies that essentially make life more difficult for anti-vaxxers; for example, by preventing them from sending their children to public schools unless they have been vaccinated or have a legitimate medical exemption.

But these measures just tend to galvanize the most militant anti-vaxxers, many of whom are convinced that there is a government and pharmaceutical conspiracy to vaccinate children. (In my day, the goal of government conspiracies were a lot more nefarious than trying to keep kids alive, but I digress.) It also does little to actually help the children of vaccine-hesitant or anti-vaxx parents, other than entrench their parents' beliefs. These sorts of prohibitions also do little to mitigate the risk of measles spreading at the grocery store or community centre or anywhere else these banned-from-public-school kids can still frequent.

The better way is to reach vaccine-hesitant parents before, or more effectively than, the anti-vaxxers do. Anti-vaxxers know how to turn suffering into propaganda: to use anecdote to stoke fear. Fighting fear with information doesn't work as well, unfortunately, as fighting fear with fear. Anti-vaxxers have graciously already given us the formula. All we have to do is follow it.

[Okeydoker]

Yup . Last thing to do on FR is talk about anything the govt mandates. Most people left on FR are too stupid or ignorant to tell the difference between a mandate that makes sense and one that is idiotic.

[piytar]

OK, I disagree with this statement: “Most people left on FR are too stupid or ignorant to tell the difference.” You are here, I am here (I’m not stupid or ignorant — have three degrees including a doctoral).

A lot of people just avoid these threads because they know it’s like trying to teach a pig to sing: never works and just annoys the pig.

But there are a lot of smart and knowledgeable people here. They just don’t bother with countering the idiocy on these type of threads.

[SecAmndmt]

I see multiple claims made without any supporting evidence, the first being that all the “good” Freepers (ie. who agreed with you) have left. People who talk like this are NO different than the Democrats. And funny thing, the Dems are the ones who think that Constitutional freedoms should be conditional on the science that you choose to believe.

We have medical doctors, scientists, engineers, and other educated people on our side.

You can always tell when someone has lost an argument: when they start insulting the other side.

The level of discourse has gotten much better since I came here more than ten years ago: from frantically waving Bush pompoms, to having eyes opened.

[SecAmndmt]

Gun control mandates, and global warming mandates make sense to socialists. So do gender-neutral bathrooms. I don’t see any federal powers to mandate medical treatment in the Constitution. Moreover, informed consent to medical treatment is a foundation of ethics in medicine.

[BlackbirdSST]

Yup . Last thing to do on FR is talk about anything the govt mandates. Most people left on FR are too stupid or ignorant to tell the difference between a mandate that makes sense and one that is idiotic.

I long ago figured this would be the result of Vaccine overdose. This is what insanity looks like.

[Yaelle]

Ask your family doctor since you are obviously too obtuse to figure this out on your own.

---

“Ask your family doctor.”

Tells me all I need to know about your argument.

I love and respect lots of doctors, mostly for their experience and expertise. Not for their scientific knowledge on vaccines and wellness.

[JohnBovenmyer]

>Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer.

Pure speculation AND false! Jennerian Vaccination for smallpox came out in the last years of Henry’s life. I don’t know whether history records any of his thoughts on it. But it does record his important action regarding its predecessor, variolation! During the Revolutionary War, at the urging of Gen. Washington, then Gov. Henry repealed the Virginia law against variolation so that Washington could mandatorily Variolate our entire army. This ended our previously severe military problems from smallpox at a 1% fatality cost. The disease had been costing 10-20%. This was a major key to our final independence, using real smallpox virus, not a safer vaccine, but using it in a routine crudely calculated to usually produce a milder case of smallpox. When pushed Patrick Henry acted on the Vaxxer side of the argument. Without his action we might now be fearing King Charles rather than the horde arrayed against Trump.

[editor-surveyor]

.
No, you must have read your own post, that is the most ignorant byu far.

[editor-surveyor]

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>> “Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer.” <<

Absolutely.
.

[editor-surveyor]

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>> “This is what insanity looks like.” <<

Yep!

Most of the thinkers left FR several years ago.

[Boogieman]

Oh really? Show me the link.

[SecAmndmt]

Yep. Vaccination is religion to conventional doctors. When I interviewed my pediatrician prior to my child being born, he was not aware of vaccine injury (despite the VAERS database and the federal vaccine Court), did not know the difference between different kinds of vitamin K, and seemed to have no desire to know anything beyond the “standard of care”. Over the years it has struck me that many conventional MD’s are little more than prescription pushers.

[so_real]

@JohnBovenmyer, variolation for soldiers was about the same thing as sending your kids to a chicken-pox party. There are almost no similarities between variolation and vaccination outside basic exposure to an antigen. To say Patrick Henry would be pro-vaccination based on variolation is akin to saying all chicken-pox party host mothers are pro-vaccination. And if that is the case, then we are all pro-vaccination ... all we have to do is stretch the word definition to meet your expectations of it. I have little doubt that Patrick Henry would be vehemently apposed to a federal government usurping the citizens rights to administer to their own health without infringement. That would be the common sense position of the day.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Little kids are designed to be exposed to multiple new infectious challenges at once. They get into every mess imaginable, stick everything in their mouth, played with every other filthy kid in the neighborhood, ttackle every critter they can grab regardless of its dentition. Their immune system responds much faster and stronger to new antigens than an adults’ system. If your kid brings home a bug you’d missed as a kid you are going to be much sicker and sick longer than the kid was with it. Multiple vaccinations at once? How many bugs are circulating at once at their school or preschool? Multiple vaccinations leverages the strongest immune system they’ll ever possess to learn how to defeat the greatest numbers of and most serious infectious foes they’ll face. And does so with optimized exposures that although not quite zero risk have much lower risk than exposure to the natural disease. And in a few cases offer the chance for future generations to have truly zero risk by rendering the disease, and thus the need for its vaccine, extinct.

[so_real]

"Hey all you anti-vaccine idiots: the Polio vaccine is why this is now an obsolete piece of equipment: Iron Lung"



There was no polio vaccine prior to 1944 when the cases per year were less than 10,000 annually. There was no polio vaccine prior to 1955 when the number of annual cases returned to the 1944 levels without vaccinations. I'm not saying the polio vaccine was bad. I'm saying you should know history a little better before calling others "idiots". Was the polio vaccine "good". Probably, yes. Can it be used as an excuse to allow an overreaching federal government the ability to pump whatever corporate product for which lobbyists mandate into the veins of our children ... cuz "iron lung"? Oh, hell no.

[so_real]

You believe that bollox, which is fine. By all means go ahead and do your part to render some bacteria and vira extinct. Good luck with that. But don't think for a moment the rest of us will release our children into your care, or allow you to mandate they join you, on such a ridiculous quest. We love our children and they are not to be trifled with. I prefer to limit children's exposure in a slow and controlled manner. And I'll have that. You can take your children to a 3rd world country for the mother-of-all chicken-pox parties all at once if you like. But for the health of your children, and for the love of your children, I don't recommend it -- even if it comes in a bottle at your local doctor's office.

[terycarl]

Vaccines, like ALL medical procedures, should be voluntary.

oh great....then hoime school and keep your sick kids away from mine......when science comes up with solutions for things (nothing is perfect) then take advantage of it.....do you wear seatbelts, do you strap your kids in??????is that a perfect solution...no...but its far better than the past...my kids used to play in the back of a station wagon when we traveled....not a good idea nor is skipping immunization shots.

[SgtHooper]

When the rats care nothing about babies, they surely care nothing about experimenting on babies/children with drugs! But hey, vaccinate at your own risk!

[SgtHooper]

Funny! I refused the flu vaccine, and I am still alive. Huh!

[SgtHooper]

These scum should be treated like the zombies in World War Z!! Shoot to kill!!