I think we have age bias -- it was the story of our time so we as more weight to it. There are so many true and false stories of vaccines for centuries.

I think a better analogy is you're trying to say without Bill Gates, personal computing wouldn't exist, when it was already moving in that direction, and Hell, I'm pretty sure apple and Microsoft build their idea on an operating system that was created by xerox first.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Great points.

Didn't Jenny McCarthy leverage Andrew Wakefield's research for her position, though? Because I feel like that's when it started becoming "mainstream".

I'd say it was during the pandemic that it went crazy though. Actually mainstream, where parents stopped asking each other "Where do you take your baby for their boosters?", and started asking "So are you choosing to vaccine your baby?"...

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

She absolutely did, but she isn't even a footnote. People having kids today might not even know who she is.

If you look at data, vaccination support was lower in 2008 than it got in 2014 when it dipped again due to Wakefield. He is blamed for specific incidences, like measles outbreaks at the time. But a bigger dip happened in 2019 with the bullshit nationalism messaging (don't let the government tell you what to do)

https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-health/immunization/