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It's Stupid Season. Have You Been Vaccinated? 4/2015 How the press turned a local issue into the fir

*GG*

senior member
Messages
6,389
Location
Concord, NH
n early February, some 11 months before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, a four-day foofaraw over vaccines provided a template for the tendency of the Fourth Estate and the partisans who game it to direct coverage away from government policy and toward a falsely Manichean separation between Team Science and Team Stupid.

It all started innocuously enough, with President Barack Obama going on the Today show February 2 and being asked by Savannah Guthrie whether, in the wake of increasing measles outbreaks near Disneyland and elsewhere, "there should be a requirement that parents get their kids vaccinated." The president then said three things that just about everyone on allegedly opposing sides of the resulting debate would also stress over the coming week: that "measles are preventable," that "you should get your kids vaccinated," and-through his spokesman Josh Earnest the following day-that "it shouldn't require a [federal] law for people to exercise common sense and do the right thing."

Given the volume and tenor of the ensuing brouhaha, you'd be forgiven for thinking that vaccine policy is largely determined by Washington. "The measles vaccine," wrote Los Angeles Timescolumnist Robin Abcarian, in a sentiment shared widely among the political press, "has become the first important controversy of the 2016 Republican presidential primary."

http://reason.com/archives/2015/03/10/have-you-been-vaccinated-for-stupid
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Anything partisan to do with the vaccination debate is not a great idea. That doesn't mean politicians cannot weigh in, but as individuals. The benefits of most vaccines, most of the time, are fairly clear. People forget how bad disease used to be. That does not mean, as some put it, that all vaccines for everyone is a good idea. Furthermore the science about safety is under developed, both from pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine sides.

This is not some simple issue, its about as complex as they get. It doesn't have simple answers, right now anyway.

Which means that anyone making this political is doing this to score political points.

Vaccination is such an important issue that non-partisan dealing with it is the good thing to do for any country. These kinds of issues are not limited to the US either, they occur all over the western world. Mostly this needs better science, and science that is not in the hands of anyone with vested interests from any side of the debate.

PS From the article this is good advice:

If you want less skepticism, stop earning it.