Without a coronavirus vaccine, we will never be able to live normally again. The only real exit strategy from this crisis is a vaccine that can be rolled out worldwide…
Today there’s also the paradox that some people who owe their lives to vaccines no longer want their children to be vaccinated. That could become a problem if we want to roll out a vaccine against the coronavirus, because if too many people refuse to join, we will never get the pandemic under control.
************
Ignorant, belligerent anti-vax cults present a real, ongoing challenge to civilization.
May 9th, 2020 at 8:27PM
Also linked from that article:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/fact-checking-judy-mikovits-controversial-virologist-attacking-anthony-fauci-viral
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/12/updated-rare-move-science-without-authors-consent-retracts-paper-tied-mouse-virus
May 10th, 2020 at 2:56PM
I doubt if the problem is formalized cults so much as it is the influence of various celebrities, who assume and have an influence all out of proportion to their knowledge and thinking ability.
Also, how many people learn–as part of their K-12 educations or even college educations–about such things as the discovery of microbes, how inoculation for smallpox was discovered, who Louis Pasteur was, etc?..I’m guessing about as many as learn the rudiments of physics, which is to say, not very many.
May 10th, 2020 at 6:46PM
Hi David: True, formalized cults are only part of it. Plenty of individuals, and plenty of non-formal groups, add to the anti-vax debacle. I think celebrities play less of a role than you assume; they amplify a bit, and they offer something that looks to some like legitimacy, I suppose.
Some anti-vaxxers are worthy of pity – in particular, people heartbroken and confused by their child’s autism, and therefore prey to people like Andrew Wakefield.
Aside from ultraorthodox kids, many of whom learn virtually nothing about science, I’d bet that almost every American school kid knows the basics about the germ theory of disease. They don’t need to know physics to know that they live in an empirical world that plays by certain rules.
May 10th, 2020 at 6:52PM
Thanks, Ravi.
May 10th, 2020 at 9:49PM
Hi UD….”Aside from ultraorthodox kids, many of whom learn virtually nothing about science, I’d bet that almost every American school kid knows the basics about the germ theory of disease.”
They know that there are things called ‘germs’, which can cause disease…but how many know how a vaccine actually *works*, even at the most vague and general level?
re an empirical world operating according to certain rules…there are an awful lot of people holding beliefs ranging from homeopathy to magical crystals to various mystical ‘forces’ to astrology.
May 10th, 2020 at 10:23PM
Fortunately there is no way celebrities can achieve real political power like governorships or the presidency.
June 23rd, 2020 at 5:59AM
What if all your premises havent been backed up by rigorous science…so you perpetuate myths…I am currently reading “What makes you really ill” by Dawn Lester and David Parker. Have you the capacity to read and absorb it?….and to provide them with the answers no-one in the scientific/medical establishment have been able to do in the course of their 10years of researching. Time for truth is now…yes. Are you for or against? http://www.whatmakesyoureallyill.com. Cheers