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    EldritchAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 1:07pm

    This weekend an unvaccinated six year old boy was the first person to die of diptheria in 28 years in Spain. His parents rejected getting him vaccinated and now he’s dead. A vaccinated child is much better then a dead one.

    These people are maddening. Vaccinate your fucking kids, learn some fucking science and stop taking your fucked up harrassment and stalking cues from the Gamergate playbook.

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      LunaaaEldritch
      6/29/15 1:16pm

      I' ve seen a lot of these people argue that vaccines aren't the reason why diseases like polio and measles have been eradicated. They argue that nutrition and sanitation are the real reasons why. They won't accept the evidence no matter how clear it is and their children will end up dead like this kid.

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      FarticusEldritch
      6/29/15 1:19pm

      But according to anti vaxxer logic, it’s better to be dead from a preventable disease than possibly autistic/vaccine damaged/wtf ever other bullshit they think (like breaking a bone after falling off your roof 30 years after a vaccine is a vaccine injury).

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    FieryAntidoteAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 1:15pm

    I’m not yet a parent, but seriously thinking about going forward with it and I find this “parental choice/parental control” obsession in the US to be scary. Please, don’t make me 100% responsible for the life of a tiny human! I’ll do my very best to keep said human alive, healthy, and happy, but I don’t have the time to become a medical expert. I just want a smart doctor who is up to date on the current research to tell me what to do. Ditto with education. I could certainly home-school a kid, but I really don’t have the patience or the time to come up with an elementary school curriculum. Pretty sure I’d wing it and procrastinate on Jezebel while my kid played. Why do parents in the US have to 100% responsible for their kids? Isn’t there a reason we live in an organized society and have people trained to be experts in child development to guide us?

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      Ken Yadiggit, AdiosFieryAntidote
      6/29/15 1:24pm

      It takes a village...

      just hope and pray it’s not made up entirely of idiots.

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      monaFieryAntidote
      6/29/15 1:34pm

      I am very, very much in favour of vaccines, even mandatory vaccines, but I think some of it comes down to a (not entirely unwarranted) distrust of the medical community and their motives. Who here can say they haven’t experienced a doctor ignoring what you’re telling them about symptoms and distrusting your self-reports? And if you’re a) female, and b) a mom, anecdotally it tends to be even worse. Not having a medical education does not make you stupid and incapable of observation, and some doctors can be very arrogant and dismissive at times. If you’ve experienced this, it’s not out of the question that you’d want to retain veto rights over your kids’ medical treatments.

      Secondly, there’s the fact that medical treatment is a very different animal when you have to pay for it and are living in a country where profit and the rights of corporations tend to be the highest law; regardless of whether the situation is practically much different from countries with universal healthcare, it’s still a very different environment to grow up in, one which naturally breeds suspicion. If you know that a company makes a profit on vaccines and that company is lobbying for laws that make it harder for people to opt out, again, it’s not a leap to want to keep veto rights.

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    randilynAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 12:58pm

    (again)

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      Kishrandilyn
      6/29/15 1:37pm

      “My blood hurts” made me laugh harder than it probably should.

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      randilynKish
      6/29/15 1:48pm

      Me too.

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    accordingtoAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 1:09pm

    folks are cleverly infecting anti-vaccination activists with computer viruses embedded in photos and links.

    So they don’t believe in anti-virus software, either? Because that’s totally just a vaccine for your computer.

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      CarlySparklesaccordingto
      6/29/15 1:29pm

      I'm just shocked they aren't whining about the radiation from the phones they're posting this stuff from.

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      ElfInBrooklynaccordingto
      6/29/15 1:34pm

      NEEDS MOAR STARZZZZ!!!!!

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    cew-smokeAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 12:57pm

    It’s amazing to me what people will turn into a religion. People feel this deep rooted need to belong to something and they’re willing to buy into whatever level of crazy is necessary to remain a part of it. Sometimes... humans are fantastically unimpressive.

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      Mujercew-smoke
      6/29/15 1:02pm

      “Fantastically unimpressive”-that made me laugh.

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      saltyladycew-smoke
      6/29/15 1:13pm

      Nailed it. It’s clearly their sense of purpose and belonging, and that dose of paranoia fuels it nicely.

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    adultosaur married anna on the astral planeAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 2:55pm

    “You have people who believe vaccines contain RFID chips, or people who believe jet contrails in the sky are chemtrails that are really aerosole vaccinations.”

    would watch this movie tho

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      spockjonesadultosaur married anna on the astral plane
      6/29/15 4:20pm

      Hah! Me, too.

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      Chrisadultosaur married anna on the astral plane
      6/29/15 5:10pm

      The idea of an aerosole vaccine like this just makes me hurt. Im a scientist and it boggles the mind that people think this is even possible. I mean, if it was, that’d be impressive, but its not.

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    QuanYinAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 1:11pm

    Remember back when anti-vaxers were just a few misinformed hippies that no one took seriously?

    How did we go from that to this in less than a generation?

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      Boojum2kQuanYin
      6/29/15 1:19pm

      Andrew Wakefield, who should be sitting in solitary confinement in a SuperMax prison for the rest of his days.

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      CurieCatBoojum2k
      6/29/15 1:27pm

      Plus Jenny McCarthy, and Oprah (who gave platforms to her and Dr. Oz and has been a mouthpiece for so much pseudoscientific bullshit that I have zero respect for her at this point).

      http://www.antivaccinebodycount.com/Anti-Vaccine_Body_Count/Home.html

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    000Anna Merlan
    6/29/15 12:57pm

    “ The cloud of terror that anti-vaccination activists live in is almost unimaginable, the suspicion they feel towards their neighbors, their towns, their government. But because that fear is self-created and self-sustaining, there’s simply no way to dispel it, and the endless echo chamber of the Internet to keep it fed and growing.”

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      Carrie Nagy Swain000
      6/29/15 1:01pm

      Why is an 11 year old on Facebook?

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      000000
      6/29/15 1:01pm

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    adultosaur married anna on the astral planeAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 2:46pm

    communicable disease like measles, pertussis, mumps, rubella, chicken pox and poliovirus,

    how i read it:

    communicable disease like measles, PARSNIPS , mumps, rubella, chicken pox and poliovirus,

    i was confused for a solid 20 seconds

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      Anna Merlanadultosaur married anna on the astral plane
      6/29/15 3:36pm

      parsnips are a cancer on society tho

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      jll3Anna Merlan
      6/29/15 3:46pm

      And turnips. Don’t get me started on turnips.

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    CurieCatAnna Merlan
    6/29/15 1:11pm

    There is simply no reasoning with these paranoid nutjobs. As someone with severe asthma, I get my annual flu shot in late summer and worry until March that someone who’s decided they’re a special snowflake will give it to me (because vaccines don’t have to be 100% effective to be beneficial and necessary).

    But the research shows that trying to engage will only make anti-vaxxers dig in their heels more, and ignoring them leads to hysterical discussion boards. Since they won’t listen to reason, isolating them from public life is really the only way to keep people who actually care about herd immunity and the health of other people’s children safe. I’m ok with this.

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      TrulyScrumptious103CurieCat
      6/29/15 1:41pm

      I love your chart. I have a question though - I no longer get a flu shot because the 5 years in a row that I did get it, I got whopping cases of the flu (in bed for 2+ weeks). I know I’m jinxing myself but I now haven’t gotten the flu or shot in 4 years. I don’t blame the vaccine - I know it was just a different strand than I was vaccinated against and I am by no means an anti-vaxxer, but does this mean that I think I’m a special snowflake? I want to help mankind and if a shot is the way to go, I’m happy to do it!

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      CurieCatTrulyScrumptious103
      6/29/15 1:49pm

      Well, you’re right that they don’t and can’t cover every strain in the annual vaccine, and even the best ones aren’t bulletproof. I’d recommend you talk to your doctor about it, since you might have an immune issue that renders them less effective, or might just be unlucky.
      In general, it’s a good idea for everyone to get it, but the most important groups are healthcare/childcare/eldercare workers, children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems or respiratory problems.

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