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Religion, plain and simple. Religious zealots turning their back on science.
And Christian Nationalist lobbying pushing anti intellectual legislation and measures.
It keeps republicans in power
This is entirely too simplistic of an answer.
Religion is part of it for some people, but on the whole, this trend is the result of multiple issues with our culture, our education, our media, and a whole host of other things big and small. All of which have been exacerbated in recent years by bad actors.
It's really satisfying to say things like "religious zealots" but the world is not that simple.
Religion is a root cause, or at the very least (on a good day) a root enabler
All religion is a borderline cult and with that you can control: Peoples sex habits, Peoples tastes, Peoples beliefs and from there you can control their very core behaviors and moral definitions (What's right and wrong)
Read up on how brainwashing happens and then read up on what most religions control and teach and you'll notice a lot of similarities to bonafide cults. The only difference is Catholicism makes you not eat meat on Fridays and wears you down through indoctrination little be little, a bonafide cults will idk throw you in a small room to starve until you believe the leader is God reborn or something.
I'm not saying the world would be united and there would be no evil, but maybe if religion was never a thing we would default to logic and reasoning instead of defaulting "to a higher being"
To anyone who includes the education system in the argument about why people are stupid:
Teachers in those schools are either teaching through their ignorant religious lens or have their hands tied by the religious government. They teach them math, but not to think critically.
They're taught to start their logical process with far different assumptions/givens than pure science. In what other circumstance would "because it's written in an ancient book" be understandable reasoning.
I firmly believe that without religion, all those other "complicated" problems would not be nearly so complicated.
...... Bad actors who all have ties to american religious institutions.
Education slashed by religious politicians backed by religious pundits and think tanks.
Media run by religious big wigs who push puritan religious values on their channels.
Culture pushes driven by religious talking heads who repeat religious talking points about religious traditions and beliefs on all topics from science to gender to race to politics.
Its still religion, youre just pointing at both of its arms and claiming its two people.
I work in vaccine tech (though mostly to make them cheaper or make them for things rich countries don't care about). It is absolutely religion that is the problem in the US. Show me the atheists that aren't taking MMR, TDAP, flu, hep, and covid. That's not a thing.
Can we agree religious zealotry isn't helping?
With all due respect, my friend, you've given an unintentional answer to OP's question. Americans have become so convinced that there are only two sides of every issue and all of life's problems are caused by the people on the side opposite me. This is a false dillema and plays directly into the hands of people who are most powerful. "United we stand, divided we fall", indeed...
In truth, there are many reasons why people don't vaccinate their kids and I'd be willing to bet that religion isn't at the top of the list. Many parents are simply negligent. Either they're too busy or stressed or incompetent or so unaffected by the issue that they simply can't make it a priority to commit to the regular procedure of vaccination. Or they simply don't trust the government or institutional authorities who promote vaccination. I imagine a lot of people are simply "natural health" fanatics. At least that's what I've seen in California.
Anyway, I think it's not very helpful to reduce complex issues affecting the world's largest diverse population to mere frustrated axiom.
That Venn diagram, tho
Religion is a plague of idiocy, but that is not what's causing this. Conservatism is what's causing this.
Progressive people who are religious tend to be pro-vaccine. Conservative religious people and conservative atheists tend to be anti-vaccine.
Tbh I have no idea what sort of thing is going on in the US, but it’s not religion, I have not seen any of this weird shit you all claim where I live, like you said it maybe tied to conservatism rather than religion
Religion zealousy can't be "it".
Even the Taliban are now in support of vaccinations.
Anti vaxxers are having a hubris that it hard to find in many other places of the world, but wealthy industrialized countries. I cannot speak for the US, but here in Germany the majority of anti-vaxxers are well educated (but not necessarily smart) upper middle class people, often with links to esoteric believes.
We've politicized everything. Seemingly at random, but we seem to have decided science is left wing lies. Send help.
I wish the left had 1% of the power the Christian right weirdos think we do.
We are the help, friend. You, me, and everyone else in the US that opposes the bullshit. We're also the majority, and you shouldn't let the vocal minority forget that.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/mmr-vaccination-rates-in-us-states.html
Florida is ranked 25 among states, right in the middle, with 91.9% vaccinated against measles.
The problem is when the exceptions group together such as in a school with a reputation for allowing any exception, and become a huge risk cluster. Clearly that many unvaccinated kids are not normal
I didn’t find a ranking by country but at least one map grouped US as “purple” in the most vaccinated group. I think we basically had a success and called it a day. The crazies came out, they got together, they built on their craziness, and created their own high risk areas that brought measles back. Meanwhile we’re complacent, thinking it’s a solved problem
Unfortunately, the antivax crowd is not unique to America, but has spread worldwide
Unfortunately that is not a US only thing. MMR vaccination rates have fallen in quite a few countries.
It isn't just the USA. There are anti-vaxxers all over the world.
But you are seeing a transition from a relatively stable and prosperous time to one less so and people are freaking out as to why. One of the seen solutions is to reject modernity and embrace tradition.
You also have a lot of mothers who have hinged their entire self worth on being good mothers. They've been sold an idea that vaccines cause autism and there hasn't been an outbreak of these diseases within their lifetime, so they don't understand the benefits in this cost-benefit scenario.
The way it was explained to me, or at least the way that made me really comprehend the underlying why… is that this is a direct and foreseeable consequence of our for-profit medical system and the systemic abuse of trust it’s bloomed.
Say, for instance, you suddenly feel ill.
You have to avoid calling an ambulance because the ride alone with bankrupt you.
So you learn to mistrust emergency responders.
You se the doctor and learn your ailment is uncovered.
So you learn to mistrust medical insurance.
You go to the pharmacy and your medication costs almost as much as your beaten down used car. And to boot, it’s full of ingredients you can’t even spell. Who knows what it does?
So you mistrust medicine.
But hey, there’s this Organic all natural snake oil, it’s only $10. You take this placebo, and hey (by complete coincidence) You feel better, and more importantly, you’re not bankrupt!
So the masses have been taught, at every stage of medical care, that ‘the system’ causes more harm than good. So now you’re subconsciously looking for any reason to reject it.
Enter Trump and the Pandemic.
The man didn’t just light the oil spill that was the American distrust of the medical system, he took an industrial flamethrower to it.
It’s easy, and even justified, to blame Trump for the embarrassing and deadly rejection of modern medicine we’re afflicted with, but it wouldn’t have gained traction in the first place if capitalism hadn’t gotten so beyond out of control.
You have the same issues with anti vaxxers in countries with universal healthcare though. They also have a distrust of "school medicine" but it is not because of financial worries. Instead it is often people with plenty of money that they put into homeopathics, going to "healers" and other nonsense.
You’re not wrong, but I honestly wonder what the baseline of that would be if America didn’t have this issue, and how much worse it is now because of us.
Conservatism. That's why.
While I have plenty of issues with modern American ‘conservatism’; a good chunk of the anti-vax movement was initially driven by some of the ‘crunchier’ members of the left (ie. alternate/natural medicine, crystal healing mom-type people)..
Yep. When my eldest was nearing school age we lived in a pretty bad district so we went to a private school open house. Total yoga crowd. Checked the vaccination release data that night and less than half the students were up to date.
Now the thing is, this was 9 years ago. So while it is technically true and for a brief period of time places like Mississippi could brag of a higher vaccination rate than San Francisco it was 9 years ago. It is no longer the case.
Freedom for everything also includes freedom to be stupid. And some are taking that seriously.
A few years ago the UK let their population vote to secede from the EU. The vote was barely 50/50 and the government changed everything based on a single vote. They are now measurably worse off than before, while still continuing on their path even though nobody wants to. Literally no one even wants it anymore and they can't go back. That's stupid.
Americans vote for guns and against vaccines all the time. They get what they want. The people are stupid but the system accurately reflects what people vote for.
“The system accurately reflects what people vote for.” …Boy I have this fun American institution called the electoral college that begs to differ. Trump lost the popular vote but he sure did become president. Further examples? Majority support for the right to abortion in poll after poll but guess what? SCOTIS repudiated decades of precedent and decided it doesn’t exist as a constitutional right, at which point multiple states severely limited the right, often against clearly expressed public sentiment. America is not a democracy and it’s national politics so not serve its people.
Sort of. It really depends on where we're talking.
If we're talking about the national government, then no, it actually doesn't. The president is not elected by popular vote, and the Senate is a deliberately anti-democratic body that does not represent the people proportionately. The Republican party controls nearly half the Senate despite Republican senators representing far fewer Americans than the Democratic senators, and moreover, the Senate doesn't pass most things with a simple 50/50 majority.
We have an archaic system that's based too much on geographical lines drawn up centuries ago and not enough on what the citizens of the country actually want.
So yes, in a very loose sense, a great deal of Americans want these things and that's why we have them, but it's definitely not a majority.
Should probably add gerrymandering to the list because that's a fucking HUGE problem.
Hey, it was a Brit, Andrew Wakefield, that started it.
Gullible idiots + Internet
Here in Germany it is usually well educated upper middle class people that are anti vaxxers. Meanwhile supposedely poor and unedcuated people have the highest vaccination rates. It is not an issue of access to education.
As a US citizen from New Jersey... we're not really sure. I think our southern states were left in the sun too long, and our western states went insane from isolation. Northeastern states are fine, we're not in denial. Housing is too expensive to need therapy.
New Jersey? I have two words for you:
Chris Christie
By the way, I forgot his name so I just searched for "fat Republican". Lol.
Because the vaccine has microchips so Bill Gates can track you. No, this is not true but it is believed by some. Some people will believe anything, except scientists,and these people have very loud voices even though they are about 30% of the population. Fox news and now FB and other platforms just amplify their nonsense and hate. Not an excuse but an explanation of what we are dealing with.
We don't understand it, either. - most, but sadly too few, Americans
We understand it fine, republicans slashed education and dems didnt bother to fight it.
A stupid populus is more easily manipulated, and they wanted votes.
Maybe you think you understand it fine, but your comment shows you don't actually.
It's a complex mix of wealth concentration,.historical racism, hollowing institutions, disintegrating trust between urban and rural populations, religious organizations watching their followers leave... the list goes on.
America is civics on insanity mode, we are a huge country made up of a wildly diverse set of people and we are obsessed with consumption.
But .. yeah, help us all out by telling us it's all someone else's fault, not something you collectively share in. (assuming you're a US citizen here based on your comment structure.)
You said the exact same thing I said, but more verbose.
But nice job wacking yourself off about it while you did, shame you didnt cum.
Oh, it's not just us, haha. It's spreading everywhere. The same shit that happened in the 20th century us repeating itself, and so far, no country appears to be immune.