Yes, even in this age of record
Decoding Anti-Vaccine Protests
What reasons do they have to intentionally not vaccinate their kids?
As many reasons as there are anti-vaccine talking points…
What is truly disturbing though, is that today’s anti-vaccine protestors are co-opting many symbols, language, and slogans and using them to get attention.
Remember when anti-vaccine folks had to be called out for using Holocaust imagery to protest against vaccines.
How Did These Become Anti-Vaccine Slogans?
That’s not all they are doing though.
Did you know that they are also using:
- Me Too – a movement to support survivors and end sexual violence, anti-vaccine folks use it to when they talk about vaccine injuries.
- I do not consent – typically about limiting searches when police don’t have a warrant, the anti-vaccine movement abuses it for something that they do have to consent for – getting vaccinated! If you do not consent, you won’t get vaccinated and protected.
- Informed consent – again, this is something anti-vaccine folks abuse, as their decisions are being influenced by myths and misinformation, so it is not informed consent. It’s more like misinformed consent.
And then there are the anti-vaxxers who use “choice” as their argument.
Anti-vaxxers are only pro-choice for not vaccinating their kids though. They don’t care if we have a choice about wanting to be protected from being exposed to vaccine-preventable diseases.
Dog Whistles for Refusing Vaccines
What’s the big problem with choice as an argument for anti-vaccine folks?
They already have choices!
No one is forcing them to vaccinate their kids.
Of course, what they want is more choices. They want the option to send their intentionally unvaccinated kids to daycare and school, where they would pose a risk to others. They want to limit our choices for decreasing the risks of keeping our kids safe from vaccine-preventable diseases.
How? Their intentionally unvaccinated kids are at greater risk to get measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, which they can then spread to others.
What does all of this really mean?
Just realize that all of these slogans are being co-opted and are being used as dog whistles for the anti-vaccine movement, diluting their original meaning.
More on Decoding Anti-Vaccine Protests
- 12 Things Anti-Vaccine Parents Get Wrong
- Can You Prove That Jamie McGuire Books Don’t Make Teens Do Drugs?
- How Do Anti-Vaccine Folks Think?
- Making Sense of Anti-Vaccine Arguments
- Worst of the Anti-Vaccine Movement
- How Is California’s New Vaccine Law Working?
- How the anti-vaccine movement crept into the GOP mainstream
- Anti-Vaxxers Are Cozying Up to the Far Right Online
- A look inside the angry, fractured world of Ireland’s ‘yellow vests’
- Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars
Anti-vaccine slogan being pushed – close but no cigar- “Dr. Bob” Sears: Perfecting the art of the antivaccine dog whistle
- An antivaccine-sympathetic legislator right in my own back yard
- Blowing the antivaccine dog whistle again
- Antivaccinationists and the Nation of Islam protest in front of the CDC, but don’t you dare call them “antivaccine”
- An anti-vaccine protest in New York today
- Yet another antivaccine rally, yet another yawn
- #CDCTruth protest 2016: Harassing CDC employees in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience
- What if Vaccines Are Harmful?
- No Jab No Pay No Way protests – anti-vaccine to their very core
- Auschwitz Museum Blasts Anti-vaxxers for Donning Yellow Stars in Protest
- Anti-vaxxers are comparing themselves to Holocaust victims — who relied on vaccines to survive
- Refusing to vaccinate isn’t just a personal choice
- Deciphering Anti-vaccine Code Words
Vaccines often kill.
Often kill measles, rubella, polio and other life-threatening viruses and bacteria. Yes.