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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Vaccination is one of those things that's presented as a choice, and so some people will think about whether to do it. And out of those, some will decide it's not for them. With all the misinformation on the internet it's probably quite easy to get the wrong impression of how it works.

I really hope this anti-vaxx thing is a passing fad. We're at a point where we can't live without it. People aren't spread out on farms anymore, we all jam together on public transport every day now.

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> I really hope this anti-vaxx thing is a passing fad.

Cartoon from 1930s: https://twitter.com/PhMai/status/1114922143387660290

From the 19th Century: https://twitter.com/lievesofgrass/status/1113386971076923393

Those were totally different movements, though.

A lot of the kids of anti-vax parents become strident pro-vaccination people. I would too if my parents had wilfully left me susceptible to deadly illness

Some. I know some kids who grew up more anti-vax than their parents. One girl told me she had whooping cough, it was awful, but still better than the side effects of vaccinations.

> well hey, my ribs are broken, my colon is falling out of my inguinal canal and I vomit every time I cough, but at least I don't have vaccine poisoning

Did she use modern medicine to treat the bacteria?

I don't think it's just a fad, sadly. It's a kind of post-modern hipsterism that borders on the quasi-reactionary, of a sort that seems to be weirdly popular as of late, and it might stay around for a while whether we like it or not. Yes, crowded environments will definitely be an issue. Hopefully wearing face masks in public will become more popular, much like we see happening in East Asia.

My understanding is that face masks help if you have a cold to avoid spreading germs but are pretty much useless in terms of protecting you from other people's diseases.

How are religious conservatives considered post-modern hipsterism?

It's not just religious conservatives. I hardly subscribe to "horseshoe theory" but there are similarities between religious conservatives and a particular sort of anti-authority people on the left, and this is one of them. Both slices of the ideological spectrum include the rejection of authority, namely in this case either the state or liberal (as in Liberalism) scientific epistemology, or both. Post-modern hipsterism isn't quite the right term, but it's in the right vicinity IMO.

EDIT: Just remembered this: practically speaking, you can find this overlap in the snake oil ingredients sold by both Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's "wellness" company, and Alex Jones: https://qz.com/1010684/all-the-wellness-products-american-lo...

Yup, the "post-modern" part I actually meant quite literally in fact. It's a societal attitude that somewhat widespread these days, of rejecting modernity in some forms (such as with the medical technology of vaccination, wrt. anti-vax adherents) while accepting it unreservedly in many other ways (as with the rise of the Internet, and especially the myriad local groups and weird "tribes" fostered by online social media - certainly a novel way to build up social capital, compared to the churches of old!). It's not really about the ideological spectrum per se, in fact focusing on that is more confusing than anything else.

Many anti-vaxxers are not religious conservatives but progressives who live in rich enclaves of Marin county etc.

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/kindergartens-vaccines-...

Waldorf Schools show a number of times too, they tend to mix up science with romanticized fake spirituality, which would make perfect sense some of them would go too far. The parents are typically well educated, but also have a wishy-washy spiritual seeker tendency.

In fact, there is no major religion that is against vaccination [1].

Even religions that you might expect to have a problem because of some of the ingredients in the vaccine, such as Hindus with vaccines that include bovine components, or Muslims and Jews with vaccines using porcine components, are fine with them even with if they include those components.

Jainism you might expect to have a problem because they are against violence against any life, including microorganisms. But vaccines are allowed, with regrets, as necessary to protect other lives. (The same reason they allow soap and cooking).

Scientologists are OK with vaccination.

Among Christians, most denominations are fine with vaccines. Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Amish, Anglican, Baptist, Mormons, Congregational, Episcopalian, Jehovah's Witness, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Quaker, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Seventh-Day Adventist, and Unitarian-Universalist...all fine with vaccination.

The Christians against vaccination are the Christian Scientists, the Dutch Reformed Congregations, and the faith healing denominations. (Christian Scientists think vaccinations are unnecessary because they think they can cure disease with prayer, but they don't have a religious problem with getting vaccinations if they are required to enroll in school or travel or things like that).

[1] https://www.vumc.org/health-wellness/news-resource-articles/...

Is Catholicism a major religion?

The Vatican issued an official statement about the morality of using, administering, allowing and requiring vaccines which include aborted fetal cells.

http://www.immunize.org/talking-about-vaccines/vaticandocume...

The document you cite concludes that it is OK for Catholics to use such vaccines on their children if there are no vaccines not derived from such cells available because the moral necessity to protect the health of your children and those they come in contact with outweighs the mild, remote passive material cooperation with abortion doing so provides.

That was from 2005. They updated their position in 2017 [1]. The two abortions that provided the cell lines used for vaccines were more than 50 years ago. That removes even that mild passive material cooperation concern:

> the cell lines currently in use are very distant from the original abortions and no longer imply that bond of moral cooperation indispensable for an ethically negative evaluation of their use

...

> The technical characteristics of the production of the vaccines most commonly used in childhood lead us to exclude that there is a morally relevant cooperation between those who use these vaccines today and the practice of voluntary abortion

They also say that there is a "moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others".

[1] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2019/03/20/vaticans-academy-for-...

Popularism of anti-vax movement is directly tied to social media and the ease of which people have been able to form communities around the issue. Combine that with Russian trolls and targeted advertising and you have can see why it's spread.

Question is whether Facebook in particular is going to do something about it so it is just a passing fad.

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