Of course, the real solution is education: both of the purveyors of misinformation and of those who fall victim to it. That's a multi-generational process that should ideally happen in parallel with short-term fixes.
Of course, the real solution is education: both of the purveyors of misinformation and of those who fall victim to it. That's a multi-generational process that should ideally happen in parallel with short-term fixes.
You could replace that phrase with many different ideologies. Would you?
A huge part of this sort of thing is driven by distrust of institutions, which has been in long term decline. Can you trust doctors or are they in the pockets of big pharma? Is the government suppressing vital information related to the health of your child because they're afraid to admit they were wrong? Etc etc.
Attempting to suppress/oppress these people to shut them up is a bad idea because it'll simply be taken as evidence that there is in fact some sort of malign pro-vaccination conspiracy, that their arguments can't be rebutted, and they'll become more dedicated to spreading 'the truth' as they see it.
This is a typically short sighted decision by corporates. If GoFundMe don't like anti-vaxxers, they should make a video shooting down common anti-vaxxer ideas and then embed it at the top of every crowdfund related to it, so everyone who wants to contribute money to it is exposed to the counter arguments. Heck, make watching the vid mandatory before you can donate. But shutting down legal discourse is bad bad bad and will only inflame the situation.
A widespread highly contagious fatal disease puts society at an even greater risk: panic. There's all kinds of examples of humans, even in relatively modern times, trying to eject sick people from society. And that's the kind version. Locking sick people in barns and churches, and burning them down, barricading burning entire villages to the ground due to fear of contagion.
You think the anti-vaxxers are terrorists? Not a good word anyway, but when the general population starts to freak out over a disease, that will be terror. The idea we're really that different from medieval times in the face of a virulent contagion is hilarious to me, especially with all the fantastic obsession with zombie shows.