Don’t blame Tea Partiers for liberal #Antivaxxers
Tea Party movement once again gets wrongly blamed by complicit mainstream media.
In my last post on the continuing measles outbreak, I encouraged Americans to consider vaccinations.
Imagine my surprise upon discovering that, as the co-founder of a San Diego Tea Party group, I am also labeled one of the dreaded #antivaxxers!
Dear @GovChristie, have you no shame? Does your pandering to the tea party & anti-Obama crowd have no limit? #AntiVaxxer #VaccinateYourKids
— Brian (@bmancuso7) February 2, 2015
Well, then I personally would like to welcome an iconic Democrat, Robert T. Kennedy, to the ranks of the Tea Party!
While some “Tea Party” people don’t choose to vaccinate themselves or their children, a look at the states where non-medical exemptions from vaccinations are an option shows that many of them went for Obama in the last election.
The Obama Administration must be worried that the lack of immunization for childhood diseases is going to blossom into a major healthcare PR crisis of Ebola-like proportions, because its friends in the mainstream media are now smearing those who don’t vaccinate with that vile term, “Tea Party.” How, then, can these mainstream publishers explain the preponderance of progressive non-takers?
By using another derisive phrase, “limousine liberals.”
And while there are surely some Republicans keen on an anti-vaccine message, it’s wealthy, progressive Californians who basically started the movement.
…This is the same crowd that loves hybrid vehicles, organic foods and saving the whales and is often derided by conservatives as tree-huggers. The anti-vaxxer movement has scrambled the ideological divide in some ways, lumping crunchy California types with small-government libertarians. It’s helicopter parenting, mixed in with mistrust of science and the government.
While I love seeing progressives toss each other under buses, it is worthwhile to step back and evaluate the situation through less political eyes for a few minutes.
A series of disease outbreaks, including one of whopping cough, caused a 30% increase in cases from January 1-August 16 as compared with the same time period in 2013.In fact, my son’s school just had its first pertussis alert in recent memory.
As is often the case, the reason for the spikes is complex — and does include the steady increase in children not receiving their immunizations and yet being permitted to attend school activities and extracurricular functions. Here is a look at the cases of whooping cough over the years:
So, why the jump? Partly, because the need for booster shots has only been recently recognized. Additionally, new strains of the disease do not respond to the vaccine.
However, the bulk of the problem stems from the mainstream media making the vaccine-autism connection without verifying the facts. Here is one of the many interviews with Jenny McCarthy that connected vaccines to autism; keep in mind that CNN is a cable outlet that is not exactly a purveyor of “Tea Party” conservatism.
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The media have promoted the connection between autism and vaccination for many years. Here is a summary of a NOVA episode on the subject:
The assertion that vaccines could be linked to autism burst onto the international stage with the 1998 publication of a paper in the British journal The Lancet. Sensationalist media coverage of the claim followed. The paper, which suggested a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, was eventually retracted in 2010.
So, how to fix another big problem our media created? Name-calling isn’t the solution. It will be a combination of stricter rules for injection exemptions, a wider array of vaccination options, recognizing there are side-effects to the current array of vaccines, encouraging research into new vaccination methods and formulations, and distinguishing between “behavior-based” infections that should not require strict mandates for inoculation, and those diseases that are more easily transmissible…and of course, doing real reporting on actual data.
Once all of this is in place, Americans will be in a position to make fully informed choices that make sense for their specific situations and lifestyles. Ultimately, Tea Party participants tend to be “pro-choice” on matters such as vaccinations. Karen Siegemund, founder of RageAgainstTheMedia.org, offers this perspective on the subject:
Tea Party people are generally for individual choice, and against government regulations, even while most believe strongly in vaccinations. There are, of course, some who prefer to not vaccinate, but by far most Tea Party members from what I see believe that at least some vaccines are good but would rather be left to make that choice on their own.
Someone should really inform the Obama administration and its media lapdogs that not every problem can be solved by a clever hashtag.
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Comments
Gotta hit the anti-vaxxers where it hurts.
Don’t want the vaccine? Fine, but if your kid gets whooping cough, measles, polio, or any other disease or illness that could have been prevented by vaccination…don’t let insurance cover it. No insurance involvement at all. All full-price treatment costs are on you.
The government is liable to cover the costs of injuries caused by alien or exotic diseases introduced through its migration, immigration, and open border policies. It is because of these policies that once suppressed diseases are reemerging and harming people who are marginally vaccinated, unvaccinated, or with a depressed immune system.
I was part of starting a TP group in eastern NC about the same time Leslie was starting theirs in CA. In all the time since I don’t believe I heard the subject of vaccinations come up once. I know it never did as part of any event, and I don’t recall it ever coming up even in casual conversation. For farm animals and pets, maybe.
I feel horrible now. I’m an anti-vaccer and I didn’t even know it. What else am I not???? Oh, God……..
What else am I not????
Guilty?
Anti-vaxxism entered the public through Jenny McCarthy and Oprah so if the Media is going after anti-vaxxism those are the two they should be going after.
Of course this should also be a powerful lessen for the LIVs – if you listen to the state media, and Oprah was a very important part of the State Media, they will deceive you…
Well, let’s get real here, peeps.
I am a TEA Party person. I am a BIG C Conservative.
But “vaccine” is WAY too loosy-goosey a term to mean a damn thing.
I have NOT had a flu shot, for instance, in decades. I’ve considered the cost/benefit ratio for misef, and just elected not to have the shot. No harm whatsoever.
I did have all my chil-ren fully vaccinated for the usual battery of childhood diseases. No harm to them whatsoever.
I would do it now. Again. Some more.
We also use the term “mandate” too loosely, as well. In many/most states a “mandate” includes an “opt-out” provision. Most “mandates” are found in a state’s education code, so if you are able to send a kid to a private school, or home school, you just wired around the “mandate”. I think if a parent has strong objections they should be provided a route to avoid a “mandate”, but it should not be without effort.
I believe that some public health laws are simply good “small government”, and they always were. Ellis Island was what it was largely for that purpose…public health.
Exactly. Vaccines are part of a risk management protocol. As with all open problems, best practices preclude singular, monolithic solutions. Individuals possess or develop natural immunity. The herd is only protected as long as it is not infiltrated by an alien or exotic pathogen. Also, vaccines are more than just a serum of antigens. They contain additives and preservatives, as well as proteins that are not native to an individual, which in addition to causing a subset of the disease’s symptoms, may be toxic and inflammatory.
Both the vaccine and disease pose a risk, which should be weighed and acted upon rationally and reasonably. The vaccine may cause more harm than good, which is why generally they are selectively administered based on risk profiles. Vaccines are not magic. They are induced immunity (i.e. mitigative) or a mimic of natural immunity.
We don’t need mandates because rational thinkers like you are declining flu shots.
We need mandates because millions of dumb-ass Obama voters think childhood vaccines “cause kids to turn retarded – I seen it on The View“.
Autism IS INDEED listed among the “adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripeda vaccine” in the FDA insert that comes with the vaccine. Also listed is SIDS (you know: as in “dead baby.”)
People ARE injured by vaccines. That’s why there’s a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
It’s not all crackpottery. (Geeze! You people sound like Global Warming enthusiasts here!)
Here’s the New England Journal of Medicine (not Jenny McCarthy) reporting on an outbreak at a school where 99% of the students had their shots:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198703263161303
The money quote: “We conclude that outbreaks of measles can occur in secondary schools, even when more than 99 percent of the students have been vaccinated and more than 95 percent are immune.”
those with fibromyalgia have to be careful with vaccinations, even flu shot, as it can greatly strengthen the symptoms.
doesn’t make me/us anti-vaxxers just we have to get info before hand about suspension liquids and stuff if possible.
wife had flu shot his year and I didn’t. we both caught it. her symptoms lasted 5 days and mine lasted 6 days.
on a side note there was some research into fibro and vaccinations causing it but I don’t think thats the issue. for me I suspect its drinking benzine saturated water at ft mcclellan as many graduates from there got it and teeth (soft enamel) issues.
All the anti-vaxxers I know are progressives. Let’s not forget the contribution illegal immigration has on our new outbreaks of formerly eradicated diseases like polio.
Illegal immigration, yes, but also legal immigration, and exposure of Americans to alien or exotic pathogens while traveling. This is why it’s necessary to consider mitigation for even contained diseases in America. The herd is protected only until it is infiltrated by alien and native carriers.
True, Obama has opened the floodgates to immigrants from crap Muslim countries that don’t vaccinate because it’s evil Western stuff so they still have polio and smallpox epidemics.
I don’t think they have smallpox, but correct otherwise.
They are able to smear the Tea Party with this because the Tea Party was all on board with Rand Paul when he, like Daddy, only told them the sensible aspects of Libertarianism (all of which were taken directly from mainstream conservative thought) and papered over the psychotic anarchist underneath.
Nuts don’t fall far from the tree.
But since both Obama and Hillary were all about the phony autism scare in 2008, based on a paper so fraudulent the author lost his medical license over it, it will be hard to hide.
We have mandatory vaccination for measles and other childhood pathogens for the same reason we had them for polio and smallpox. The herd needs close to 90% immunization to be protected since no vaccine is completely effective in all persons.
That allows exceptions for compromised immune systems, known allergies to vaccine components, and strongly held religious beliefs. For Prius-driving yuppie moms who read an article by Jenny McCarthy in US Magazine, not so much.
Only an idiot would accept your view of Tea Party, policies, and beliefs.
You SERIOUSLY have no FLUCKING idea what you are talking about, do you?
I’ve been a critic of Ron Paul for a coupla decades, ya moron.
Libertarianism is not anarchic. It is the reduced reliance and deference to a central authority. It is a self-emergent, dynamically stable ideology suitable for a population capable of self-moderating, responsible behavior, with a moderate distribution of resources.
Conservatism as defined by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution is certainly not anarchic. In fact, it is based on a religious foundation that normalizes voluntary compliance with two moral axioms: individual dignity and intrinsic value.
Anarchists are the foot soldiers and serve to justify the goals of left-wing ideologues to establish a left-wing or authoritarian regime designed to consolidate capital and control under minority supervision.
Making the right decision: Benjamin Franklin’s son dies of smallpox in 1736
The conventional goal is to maximize posterior probability of survival. However, an increasingly popular goal is to also maximize posterior probability of quality of life (e.g. disability, aesthetics, religious or moral beliefs). The decision tree enables people to evaluate both choices with a structured, reproducible process. The alternative is an ad hoc process that may misidentify or misrepresent the optimal decision with a given set of criteria and estimates. And with suitable weighting, unknown or unconfirmed outcomes can be methodically analyzed.
The Tea Party is first and foremost concerned with government misappropriation of capital and control, and the corruption that these practices sponsor, including denigration of individual dignity and debasement of human life, and the devaluation of capital and labor. Anything else is incidentally or individually related. That is to say it is not a unifying principle of the distributed movement and therefore cannot logically serve to create a perceived consensus or assign general liability.
I’m very much aware of that a lot of the anti-vax sentiment comes from the granola- and kale-crunching and sandal-wearing long-haired crew.
However, as a self-admitted Evangelical rightist (who had his kids vaccinated, BTW),I recall being rebuked by the pastor of the church I attended back then when I wasn’t hoarding guns and canned food for Y2K, as well as inwardly groaning when what I thought would be midweek studies in something like Isaiah or Matthew turned out to be meetings for whipping up Y2K hysteria. We’ve got our kooks on our side of the spectrum, and, unfortunately, the MSM will pay more attention to them any day of the week, while ignoring the even crazier people on the Left.
BTW, since I have admitted being an Evangelical Rightist, let me also add that neither Pat Robertson, Bob Jones, Jerry Falwell, Rousas Rushdoony, nor the Westboro Baptist guy was ever my Pope, no matter how much the MSM might have demanded that I recognize one of these as such. One reason why the MSM hates us so much is because we don’t really fit the model of Rome at its most post-Napoleonic defensive or decaying Hohensollern-era Landeskirche which, Karl Marx has assured them, we truly have to be.