Assuming that the US was the root of the current surge of anti-vax idealism is not supported by the facts.
Anti-vax culture was prominent in the UK, Australia, Canada, and many other countries at the same time. I'm not seeing any strong reason to blame the US as the root or solo cause.
Hmmm. By that logic, does it mean the US can also take credit for most trends?
This also involved, whether he pushed it or it was organic, the tabloid press of the UK.
Eventually this filtered back to the US, despite already being largely debunked and retracted, but that didn't matter to the early 2000s celebrities looking for whatever confirmation bias sources they could.
The histeria started in the UK, slowly crept over the atlantic to the US, and now has filtered back, all while it was based on absolute fraud and lies, the exact criticism all these morons insist applies to real scientists.
The modern anti-vaccine movement was nearly entirely started by a doctor fraudulently publishing fake science to make money. The supporters of course refuse to see that, because it would burst their bubble, so only their enemies can possibly be guilty of it.
Even the 12 or so parents involved in that fraudulent "study" cried foul, as he literally put words in their mouths and made up testimony from them to support his scheme. Actual autistic children continue to suffer from his bullshit, entirely made up illness.
> Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born 3 September 1956[a]) is an English fraudster and anti-vaccine activist. Formerly a senior surgeon, he was struck off the British medical register in 2010 for "serious professional misconduct" due to his involvement in the fraudulent 1998 Lancet MMR autism report, (wikpedia)
Sadly debunking fraud doesn't seem to stop the misinfo on social media. "Vaccines cause autism!" gets more clicks than the truth and so you get JFK Jr.
But the King of Graft installing the halfwit RFK to run HHS is next level and I assume fellow grifters are making serious bank off this shit.
Reminder, the vengeful Orange also installed a climate change denier to run NOAA after he lost the election, who posted bogus claims on the official NOAA website which grifters used to give legitimacy to their bullshit.
America made one of his adherents the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Wakefield arguably assaulted his patients (most of whom were children, IIRC) when conducting his research. What do you do with people who arguably assaulted someone? You get the Crown to make that argument. Why didn't that happen?
Also worth noting: according to the logic upon which the British system of government is based, no lesser a party than God Himself put a major believer in homeopathy on the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
I'd love to see Wakefield go to jail for fraud, nor am I a fan of Charles even if he's on my passport. But Charles doesn't set UK health policy, or UK policy at all.
You're correct. He lives off the civil list and lets his nonce brother crash at a luxury home. But someone else does set UK health policy, and someone else does prosecute crimes, and since that's the case, then why didn't someone else in the UK with the ability to charge him do so?
If that happens, there is no adherent in charge of the DHHS. There are no kids dying of easily-preventable diseases in the UK, US, or anywhere else. Just a quack sitting in a jail cell.
I'll still take "no longer a doctor" over "gets to set American health policy".
I like pancakes and waffles, in other words.
Probably more on a per-capita basis than Americans have impact on what DHHS does, though. Especially if it became something focused on by the British public. Which, strangely, it hasn't. Not since 2010 when he was struck off.
> I'll still take "no longer a doctor" over "gets to set American health policy".
You really should aim higher. The man performed colonoscopies and biopsies on autistic children to support a scientific fraud with the hopes of becoming wealthy off of it. In other words, at the very least, he committed battery on disabled kids. That should earn more than getting struck off after twelve years. It should earn prison. It's purely on the British government that it hasn't. And since doing that would have prevented his scientific fraud from reaching the heights it is at now, modern antivax can be pinned on the UK and the lack of action from His Majesty's government.
... and the USA did it too, trying to discredit China’s Sinovac: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
All this "natural something" and antivax movement certainly is the other direction. Maybe it's subconscious population control, maybe informational warfare... maybe people just got a little detached from reality by not dying all the time, as you suggested.
>in a 1722 sermon entitled "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation", the English theologian Reverend Edmund Massey argued that diseases are sent by God to punish sin and that any attempt to prevent smallpox via inoculation is a "diabolical operation"
Vaccines date from about 1800.
Now that we have the blame let's talk about the punishment.
They managed to get plenty of visibility long before computers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-50713991
> There followed a 100-year battle between the authorities and an often sceptical, sometimes aggressive, public. In Britain, a succession of laws made vaccinations free, then compulsory - backed by fines and even imprisonment. While riots flared in some towns, there was also more restrained opposition in the form of anti-vaccination leagues. For an increasingly literate population, pamphlets were produced with titles like "Vaccination: its fallacies and evils", "Vaccination, a Curse" and the suitably Gothic "Horrors of Vaccination".
Once the barrier came down and the floodgates of "average intelligence" were opened, it was over.
At least in my area, there are pockets of (relatively) new immigrants that have MMR vaccination rates at around 30% (that's very low, much lower than the anti-vaxxer population could account for imo), and the reasons for that have nothing to do with MAGA/MAHA as far as I can tell.
It's an entirely different problem (that needs solving), and pretending that this is simply the by-product of uneducated crazies on the internet feels like it's over indexing on a loud and flashy but ultimately small part of the problem.
So to answer your question, I don't personally think it helps or hurts in any significant amount relative to other cultural drivers.
the whole rollout and lockdowns, Fauci, etc. were a perfect storm to cause skepticism towards vaccines
[1] - https://xcancel.com/ITGuy1959/status/1581034815700488192
Unfortunately, they are the only ones like that I know. Most other I encountered just peddle products for their financial gain. Snake oil salesmen.
I am aware I live in a dictatorship which drove a lot of smart and good people away from the country, skilled doctors and nurses were among the first to go. Hopefully it'll get better once we overthrow the dictator.
I'm certainly a part of that group. For instance I ended up doing extensive research on e.g. MMR before deciding to vaccinate my kids for it. If this were a decade ago, I almost certainly would have done it without a second thought, just as I took all recommended vaccines before traveling without a second thought. So I'm obviously not anti-vaccine in the least, but I no longer trust public messaging on the topic.
It was just another (of the increasingly endless) examples of governments/companies pursuing short-term interests while ignoring long-term consequences. When it comes to what people put in their bodies, trust is more important than literally anything else.
[1] - https://xcancel.com/ITGuy1959/status/1581034815700488192