The anti-Vaxx mindset is perhaps perfectly captured here. Anti-Vaxx cardiologist from Arizona says he doesn’t care if his kids make other gravely ill. “I’m not going to sacrifice the well-being of my child. My child is pure,” Dr. Jack Wolfson. “It’s not my responsibility to be protecting their child.” Watch.
There’s a point here that is critical to understand about the anti-vaxx movement. One very important element is the ignorance and magical thinking of people who either (on the concrete side) think immunizations will give their children autism or (more lyrically) upend their chakras. This article in the Times is filled with the sort of happily militant ignorance about immunization and epidemiology that is by turns comical and horrifying. Kelly McMenimen is an anti-vaxxer who doesn’t want to inoculate her son even against “deadly or deforming diseases” because she doesn’t want “so many toxins” going into 8 year old Tobias’s body.
After Tobias cut himself on a rusty wire fence even she briefly considered a tetanus shot before realizing that it would be fine because “he has such a strong immune system.”
But there’s another, perhaps more significant, part of the equation which is quite simply selfishness or perhaps more specifically the anti-social mindset. If you have whacky anti-vaxx belief, refuse to get vaccinations but live in a society where vaccination is pervasive, you’ll probably be fine because of herd immunity. So you can have you nutball beliefs and be safe because you’re free riding on the community’s responsible behavior. But if enough people adopt your ignorant and anti-social mentality, suddenly everyone is in danger.
Epidemiology and inoculation is the social reality par excellence. It’s one thing if you don’t believe in Western medicine and treat your kids’ grave diseases with herbs and supplements. The state has some say in not letting you endanger your children. But the peril to your children created by your stupidity does not affect the community at large. That’s not the case with immunization. It has to be everybody or very close to 100% or the system doesn’t work.
