If there is one thing you can count on when it comes to the anti-vaccine crowd is that they will try to defend their worldview tooth and nail, against all odds, even in the light of overwhelming evidence. Not only that, but they will get oh-so-upset if you call them “anti-vaccine”. Some of them will say that it’s an epithet against their “pro-informed consent” stance. Then, when asked what vaccine they would support, they are quick to run away and hide, like roaches when the light switch is flipped on.
Go ahead and ask the kid what vaccine he’d approve of. He’ll tell you something this ridiculous:
In other words, the government should not promote other things like seat belts or crash standards, just ensure that cars are safe. If it doesn’t make any sense to you, you’re not alone. Nothing that kid has ever written has ever made any sense to me, ever.
Anyway, this other anti-vaccine activist decided to write the “Ten Things You Don’t Know About the So Called ‘Anti-Vaccine’ Crowd“. It is comedy gold:
1. “Most of these people actually believe in vaccines and trusted their pediatricians, and allowed their children to be vaccinated only to have something happen.”
Again, they “believe” but at the same time work hard to dismantle the vaccine infrastructure in the country out of a feeling that maybe, sometimes, in some instances, and some cases, on Tuesday mornings, vaccines could, maybe, if the moon is right, cause, or be associated with, or trigger autism. I once got vaccinated and then got a nasty cold two weeks later. That is, “something happened”, but I didn’t go with my bias and blame it on my biggest fear: Gnomes.
2. The (sic) do not want anyone to be harmed. Not from disease, illness, nor vaccine reactions. They believe ALL children have a right to a healthy, happy life. No life is more or less valuable than another. And no child is born to become a sacrifice.
Ah, of course, they’re only lying and misinforming out of concern for kids, not because they want harm to come to anyone. How can we be so callous and think that people who promote pox parties, selling pox lollipops, and justify the murder of a child by his caregivers be the kind of people who want anyone harmed? Then again, “want” is the operating word. They may not “want” people to be hurt, but people, especially children, are being hurt, killed even, because of anti-vaccine rhetoric.
3. They spend more hours a day reading medical and science journals on vaccinations than doctors receive in their entire years of medical school (average is four hours).
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Sure, do your own research, but prove to us that you can do the research. In essence, reach the right goddamn conclusions. To think that you know more than physicians who go to and graduate from universities is incredibly deluded. It makes you sound crazy, self-absorbed, pretentious, anti-vaccine. You can read all the medical and science journals you want, but your anti-vaccine rhetoric tells us that you have no clue, not one iota, of what you just read. You’ve wasted your time.
4. They understand very well the difference between causation and correlation, they also know that there is no such thing as millions of the same coincidences.
Actually, there is such a thing as millions of the same coincidences. There are thousands of deaths associated with increased ice cream consumption. Does ice cream lead to drowning? Of course it doesn’t. It just happens that more people swim AND eat ice cream in the summer. (More on Ren’s Epi Night School class on confounding.) Likewise, and this is something Ren mentioned, the diagnosis of autism typically comes around the same time that the first vaccines are given. Vaccines, ice cream. Autism, drowning. Get it? (Except that autistic kids are not dead, not by a long shot.)
5. The statistics on parents who do not vaccinate or delay or skip vaccines actually show them to be the highest formal-educated in our country.
So what? This is a very “elitist” way of looking at the problem, an appeal to popularity. Hey, if most parents who don’t vaccinate are educated, they can’t possibly be wrong, right? Can you think of other instances where educated people (though not educated on the subject itself) have come to the wrong conclusion? I can.
6. This crowd is not just made of parents, but parents who are also doctors, nurses, researchers, teacher, professors, lawyers, emergency workers, and every other imaginable profession.
Again with the appeal to popularity. By random chance alone, there are going to be people from every walk of life who are anti-vaccine. That, again, doesn’t mean their views are correct.
7. These people are not seeking someone to blame, they blame themselves. Instead they are devoting their lives to making sure no other parent has to do the same.
Oh, they’re not seeking to blame someone? Then what’s up with all the “pharma shill” this and “CDC liars” that? Why waste time with Congress if you’re not seeking to blame someone? This point is patently false. Anti-vaccine people, like the author of this list, are very much looking to blame someone, anyone. And they’ll go to great lengths to place that blame on anyone they see as their enemy.
8. They want nothing more than for every parent to have the information that they did not so that they can make the best decision for their own child and without regret.
Make no mistake. Anti-vaccine advocates don’t want “information” for parents. They want “misinformation.” They want information that is so skewed to their side that it is counter to almost everything we know about science, biology, and immunology. I mean, just look at what NVIC writes about Hepatitis A, or what it is said about the HPV vaccine. What is it if not misinformation? Lies? Probably that too.
I’m also getting very tired of seeing parents of autistic children “regretting” their situation. That kind of attitude doesn’t help.
9. They know that labeling them “anti-vaccine” is a tactic to make them seem like they are crazy and discredit what they say, but these are people who are against the “idea”… they are against the lies.
No, not a tactic. I’m all for theatricality and deception, but not on that scale. We just call you like we see you. You are against vaccines, all vaccines — since you can’t tell us of one you are for — and you go to great lengths to push your misunderstanding of the literature, make big waves out of news of vaccine injuries (many since cleared, but you still push them), and you celebrate — yes, celebrate — when someone is legitimately hurt by a vaccine because you think it promotes your point.
10. They are loving, caring, amazing people who take their time (which is limited) to speak for their kids who cannot or are not here anymore to do so. They will stop whatever they are doing to help you find the information you need, without judgement. They will cheer you on and be there when you cry. They are smart, talented, and so much more than just vaccine issues, and yet they fight on because their kids and yours are worth it.
I’m all for support and assisting each other. But the way you anti-vaccine types do it. You curse, you waste money, you try to get people fired from their jobs, and you give out the wrong information, inflating the vaccine injury probabilities and minimizing deaths and injuries from vaccine-preventable diseases. With that kind of love and caring, who needs enemies? The right thing for you to say is that you are simply anti-vaccine and leave it at that. But to continue to spread around bad information? To continue to, individually and as a group, lie to parents who are on the fence about vaccines?
That’s downright evil. And that’s fact #11 about you.
The Poxes Blog 
I really like how you say how if they just simply said they don’t like vaccines and then shut the heck up then that wouldn’t be so bad. But, instead, these lunatics work to scare parents away from vaccinating by lies, bullsh*t and fear mongering. That is why I’m now mad as all get out –as well as the 24th case of pertussis out here where I practice thanks to their scare tactics and they have the nerve to say that the outbreak here is because “vaccines don’t work”.
to speak for their kids who cannot or are not here anymore to do so
WHERE ARE ALL THESE KIDS WHO HAVE DIED?!?!?!?!? Goddamn. Unless they died like Jenny McCarthy’s kid “died,” for two minutes. She desperately needs a lesson on what constitutes “death.”
As far as numbers 3, 8 and 10: I have found them quite reluctant to answer many of my questions.
For instance, they won’t tell which vaccine on the present American pediatric schedule is only available with thimerosal. Also, since the USA had been using the MMR since 1971, almost two decades before the UK, they won’t provide the evidence dated before 1990 that there was an increase in autism in the USA. It is obvious (at least to me) that if the MMR caused autism it would have been noticed in a larger country that had been using lots longer than the UK.
And my favorite: lots claim vaccines don’t work and aren’t needed because deaths were declining long before there was a vaccine. So I ask why the incidence rates for measles dropped 90% between 1960 and 1970. I never get an answer, but the excuses are amusing. 😉
They are anti-vaxxers (and anti-science), to the core. They lie and they confabulate about their childrens’ “vaccine-injuries” and subject their autistic children to biomedical *cures* that are invasive, painful, dangerous and not-clinically indicated, which they learn about from their sole sources for science (that notorious anti-vaccine, anti-science blog).
This pro-vaccine, pro-science poster is open for alternative suggestions when she refers to them.