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Vaccine DA — Culture of Rights Uniqueness
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Vaccine DA — Culture of Rights UniquenessNon-unique – Culture of privacy/rights nowIncreasing numbers of young people think parental choice outweighs mandatory vaccination – age is the most influential factor – it comparatively outweighs other variables like class, race, gender, and political affiliations.Anderson 15 – Monica Anderson, Research Analyst at Pew Research Center, holds a Master’s degree in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University and a BA in Political Science and Feminist Studies from Southwestern University, 2015 (“Young adults more likely to say vaccinating kids should be a parental choice”, Pew Research Center, February 2, Available Online at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/02/young-adults-more-likely-to-say-vaccinating-kids-should-be-a-parental-choice/, accessed 7/14/15, KM) As the number of measles cases linked to the California outbreak climbs to over 100, health officials are urging parents to properly immunize their children, citing unvaccinated individuals as a main contributor to the disease’s spread. Some have linked the outbreak to the anti-vaccination movement – a group whose members claim vaccinations are unsafe and ineffective. A Pew Research Center report released last week shows that a majority of Americans say children should be required to get vaccinated. Further analysis of the survey data reveals significant age differences in views about vaccines. In 2009, by contrast, opinions about vaccines were roughly the same across age groups. Also, some modest partisan divisions have emerged since 2009, when Pew Research last polled on the issue. Overall, 68% of U.S. adults say childhood vaccinations should be required, while 30% say parents should be able to decide. Among all age groups, young adults are more likely to say vaccinating children should be a parental choice. Some 41% of 18- to 29-year-olds say parents should be able to decide whether or not their child gets vaccinated; only 20% of adults 65 or older echo this opinion. Measles Cases fall with vaccine Older Americans are strong supporters of requiring childhood vaccinations – 79% say they hold that view, compared with 59% of those under 30. One possible reason that older groups might be more supportive of mandatory vaccinations is that many among them remember when diseases like measles were common. Prior to the first licensed measles vaccine in 1963, hundreds of thousands of measles cases were reported annually in the U.S. In 1958 alone, there were more than 750,000 cases. A decade later, in 1968, that number fell to about 22,000, according to an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, measles cases are extremely rare, but the CDC reported a spike in 2014, with more than 600 measles cases, the first such jump in more than a decade. The CDC attributed the increase to an outbreak among unvaccinated Ohio Amish communities and cases related to an outbreak in the Philippines. Although some have linked the anti-vaccination movement to more-affluent, highly educated parents, Pew Research data show little difference in people’s views based on income or education. Vaccines Public Opinion About 30% of adults living in households earning $75,000 or more a year say parents should decide whether or not their child gets vaccinated. This holds true even among the highest of earners (those in households making $100,000 or more). These opinions are on par with people living in lower- and middle-income households. Men and women share similar views on whether vaccines should be required or not and opinions on this issue vary little by race. At the same time, slightly more parents of minor children than those without children believe vaccinating children is a parental choice. There are slight differences in views about vaccines along political lines. A majority of Democrats (76%), Republicans (65%) and independents (65%) say that vaccines should be required. But Republicans and independents are somewhat more inclined than are Democrats to say that parents should be able to decide. In 2009, there was no difference in views on vaccinations along party lines. Non-unique – No pro-vax influenceInfluencing anti-vaccination proponents is impossible – a consensus of studies agree.Marcotte 14 – Amanda Marcotte, American blogger who writes on feminism and politics, 2014 (“According to a New Study, Nothing Can Change an Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind”, Slate, March 3, Available Online at http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/03/03/effective_messages_in_vaccine_promotion_when_it_comes_to_anti_vaxxers_there.html, accessed 7/22/15, KM) While some false beliefs, such as astrology, are fairly harmless, parents who believe falsely that vaccination is dangerous or unnecessary for children present a real public health hazard. That's why researchers, publishing in Pediatrics, decided to test four different pro-vaccination messages on a group of parents with children under 18 and with a variety of attitudes about vaccination to see which one was most persuasive in persuading them to vaccinate. As Chris Mooney reports for Mother Jones, the results are utterly demoralizing: Nothing made anti-vaccination parents more amendable to vaccinating their kids. At best, the messages didn't move the needle one way or another, but it seems the harder you try to persuade a vaccination denialist to see the light, the more stubborn they get about not vaccinating their kids. Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and his colleagues tested four different messages on parents. Mooney describes them: The first message, dubbed "Autism correction," was a factual, science-heavy correction of false claims that the MMR vaccine causes autism, assuring parents that the vaccine is "safe and effective" and citing multiple studies that disprove claims of an autism link. The second message, dubbed "Disease risks," simply listed the many risks of contracting the measles, the mumps, or rubella, describing the nasty complications that can come with these diseases. The third message, dubbed "Disease narrative," told a "true story" about a 10-month-old whose temperature shot up to a terrifying 106 degrees after he contracted measles from another child in a pediatrician's waiting room. The fourth message was to show parents pictures of children afflicted with the diseases they could get without vaccination. Both the pictures and the horrible story about measles increased parental fears about vaccinations. Researchers don't know why but theorize that the problem might be that invoking fears of sick children just makes parents more fearful in general of all risks, whether real or imagined. The cooler, more distant "disease risks" message didn't change parents' minds either way, but what was most startling was what happened with the message correcting misinformation on autism: As for "Autism correction," it actually worked, among survey respondents as a whole, to somewhat reduce belief in the falsehood that vaccines cause autism. But at the same time, the message had an unexpected negative effect, decreasing the percentage of parents saying that they would be likely to vaccinate their children. In other words, learning that they were wrong to believe that vaccines were dangerous to their kids made vaccine-hostile parents more, not less likely to reject vaccination. Mooney calls this the "backfire effect," but feel free to regard it as stubborn, childish defensiveness, if you'd rather. If you produce evidence that vaccination fears about autism are misplaced, anti-vaccination parents don't apologize and slink off to get their kids vaccinated. No, according to this study, they tend to double down. This reaction, where people become more assured of their stupid opinions when confronted with factual or scientific evidence proving them wrong, has been demonstrated in similar studies time and time again. (This is why arguing with your Facebook friends who watch Fox News will only bring you migraines.) Mooney suggests that state governments should respond by making it harder to opt out of vaccinations. That would be helpful, but there's also some preliminary research from the James Randi Educational Foundation and Women Thinking Inc. that shows that reframing the argument in positive terms can help. When parents were prompted to think of vaccination as one of the steps you take to protect a child, like buckling a seat belt, they were more invested in doing it than if they were reminded that vaccine denialists are spouting misinformation. Hopefully, future research into pro-vaccination messaging, as opposed to just anti-anti-vaccination messaging, will provide further insight. The influence of the pro-vaccination movement is irrelevant – studies say there’s only a risk that pro-vax messages make it worse – anti-vaccination parents are too suspicious of the science.Alter 14 – Charlotte Alter, covers women, culture, politics and breaking news for TIME, 2014 (“Nothing, Not Even Hard Facts, Can Make Anti-Vaxxers Change Their Minds”, Times, March 4, Available Online at http://healthland.time.com/2014/03/04/nothing-not-even-hard-facts-can-make-anti-vaxxers-change-their-minds/, accessed 7/22/15, KM) Maybe there should be a vaccine for stubbornness, because it sure seems tough to cure. A new study shows that when presented with four different scientifically proven arguments that vaccinations are safe, some anti-vaccination parents seemed even less inclined to innoculate their kids against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) once they saw the evidence. “We shouldn’t overestimate how effective facts and evidence are in convincing people to accept a claim and change their behavior,” said Brendan Nyhan, who authored the study published in Pediatrics, “but throwing facts and evidence at them isn’t likely to be the most effective approach.” Nyhan and his colleagues surveyed almost 1,800 parents of young children after seeing one of four vaccination messages similar to those provided by the CDC. The first messages were focused on conveying the dangers of measles, mumps, and rubella: the “Disease Risk” message detailed the medical risk of contracting MMR, the “Danger Narrative” told the story of a woman whose son contracted the measles from another child and got a 106-degree fever, and the “Disease Images” showed disturbing pictures of infected children. A fourth message, “Autism Correction,” provided heavy scientific evidence that disproved the link between vaccinations and autism. All that sounds convincing, but none of it really works. The researchers found that none of the four messages significantly increased rates of intended vaccination (they only measured whether parents intended to vaccinate, not whether they actually did) and some even provoked an anti-vaccination backlash. The least successful messages were “Disease Narrative” and “Disease Images,” which actually increased the misconception that vaccinations will have negative side effects by 6%, and looking at the photos of the sick kids increased the subjects’ perception that vaccines cause autism. Nyhan said that he thought this was because when people saw children in distress, they became preoccupied with other dangers their child could encounter. “Disease Risks” and “Autism Correction” had slightly better results, but neither seemed to convince parents. And while “Autism Correction” proved to some parents that there’s no link between vaccines and autism, it produced a strong backlash in others that just reinforced their sense that vaccinations are a conspiracy theory. Only 45% of the already anti-vaccine parents said they would vaccinate after they saw the “Autism Correction” message, compared to 70% of the control group. Nyhan thinks that these parents are suspicious of the scientists and that the pro-vaccine movement is trying to pull a fast one on them. “People think, ‘what are they trying to convince me?'” he explained. “The ‘don’t worry, don’t worry, everything is safe’ approach is not often effective, because they think ‘why are they trying so hard to reassure me that everything is safe?'” The fact that none of these messages were particularly effective is a little disconcerting considering that vaccinations only work if a majority of the population is vaccinated. And Nyhan also pointed out that these diseases are more dangerous than ever, because MMR is so rare that we almost never encounter them. Regardless, it seems that the CDC has a serious PR problem, since none of their pro-vaccination messages seem to actually convince people. “We need to test the messages we use in public health the way we test other kinds of inventions,” Nyhan said. “There isn’t a crisis now, but this is about making sure we don’t have one.” Pro-vaccination has zero influence – there’s too much skepticism in its benefits and acceptance of the vaccine-autism link. Our evidence assumes events like the Disneyland outbreak, or as anti-vaxxers like to say, “hype”.Haberman 15 – Clyde Haberman, American journalist who was a longtime columnist and correspondent for The New York Times, 2015 (“A Discredited Vaccine Study’s Continuing Impact on Public Health”, New York Times, February 1, Available Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/us/a-discredited-vaccine-studys-continuing-impact-on-public-health.html?_r=0, accessed 7/22/15, KM) In the churning over the refusal of some parents to immunize their children against certain diseases, a venerable Latin phrase may prove useful: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It means, “After this, therefore because of this.” In plainer language: Event B follows Event A, so B must be the direct result of A. It is a classic fallacy in logic. An outbreak of measles several weeks ago at Disneyland in Southern California focused minds and deepened concerns. It was as if the amusement park had become the tragic kingdom. Dozens of measles cases have spread across California. Arizona and other nearby states reported their own eruptions of this nasty illness, which officialdom had pronounced essentially eradicated in this country as recently as 2000. But it is back. In 2014, there were 644 cases in 27 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Should the pace set in January continue, the numbers could go still higher in 2015. While no one is known to have died in the new outbreaks, the lethal possibilities cannot be shrugged off. If the past is a guide, one or two of every 1,000 infected people will not survive. To explore how matters reached this pass, Retro Report, a series of video documentaries studying major news stories of the past and their consequences, offers this special episode. It turns on a seminal moment in anti-vaccination resistance. This was an announcement in 1998 by a British doctor who said he had found a relationship between the M.M.R. vaccine — measles, mumps, rubella — and the onset of autism. Typically, the M.M.R. shot is given to infants at about 12 months and again at age 5 or 6. This doctor, Andrew Wakefield, wrote that his study of 12 children showed that the three vaccines taken together could alter immune systems, causing intestinal woes that then reach, and damage, the brain. In fairly short order, his findings were widely rejected as — not to put too fine a point on it — bunk. Dozens of epidemiological studies found no merit to his work, which was based on a tiny sample. The British Medical Journal went so far as to call his research “fraudulent.” The British journal Lancet, which originally published Dr. Wakefield’s paper, retracted it. The British medical authorities stripped him of his license. Nonetheless, despite his being held in disgrace, the vaccine-autism link has continued to be accepted on faith by some. Among the more prominently outspoken is Jenny McCarthy, a former television host and Playboy Playmate, who has linked her son’s autism to his vaccination: He got the shot, and then he was not O.K. Post hoc, etc. Steadily, as time passed, clusters of resistance to inoculation bubbled up. While the nationwide rate of vaccination against childhood diseases has stayed at 90 percent or higher, the percentage in some parts of the country has fallen well below that mark. Often enough, these are places whose residents tend to be well off and well educated, with parents seeking exemptions from vaccinations for religious or other personal reasons. At the heart of the matter is a concept known as herd immunity. It means that the overall national rate of vaccination is not the only significant gauge. The rate in each community must also be kept high to ensure that pretty much everyone will be protected against sudden disease, including those who have not been immunized. A solid display of herd immunity reduces the likelihood in a given city or town that an infected person will even brush up against, let alone endanger, someone who could be vulnerable, like a 9-year-old whose parents rejected inoculations, or a baby too young for the M.M.R. shot. Health professionals say that a vaccination rate of about 95 percent is needed to effectively protect a community. Fall much below that level and trouble can begin. Mass vaccinations have been described by the C.D.C. as among the “10 great public health achievements” of the 20th century, one that had prevented tens of thousands of deaths in the United States. Yet diseases once presumed to have been kept reasonably in check are bouncing back. Whooping cough is one example. Measles draws especially close attention because it is highly infectious. Someone who has it can sneeze in a room, and the virus will linger in the air for two hours. Any unvaccinated person who enters that room risks becoming infected and, of course, can then spread it further. Disneyland proved a case in point. The measles outbreak there showed that it is indeed a small world, after all. What motivates vaccine-averse parents? One factor may be the very success of the vaccines. Several generations of Americans lack their parents’ and grandparents’ visceral fear of polio, for example. For those people, “you might as well be protecting against aliens — these are things they’ve never seen,” said Seth Mnookin, who teaches science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the author of “The Panic Virus,” a 2011 book on vaccinations and their opponents. Mr. Mnookin, interviewed by Retro Report, said skepticism about inoculations is “one of those issues that seem to grab people across the political spectrum.” It goes arm in arm with a pervasive mistrust of many national institutions: the government that says vaccinations are essential, news organizations that echo the point, pharmaceutical companies that make money on vaccines, scientists who have hardly been shown to be error-free. Then, too, Mr. Mnookin said, scientists don’t always do themselves favors in their choice of language. They tend to shun absolutes, and lean more toward constructions on the order of: There is no vaccine-autism link “to the best of our knowledge” or “as far as we know.” Those sorts of qualifiers leave room for doubters to question how much the lab guys do, in fact, know. Thus far, the Disneyland measles outbreak has failed to deter the more fervent anti-vaccine skeptics. “Hype.” That is how the flurry of concern in California and elsewhere was described by Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, an organization that takes a dim view of vaccinations. The hype, Ms. Fisher said in a Jan. 28 post on her group’s website, “has more to do with covering up vaccine failures and propping up the dissolving myth of vaccine acquired herd immunity than it does about protecting the public health.” Clearly, she remained untroubled that most health professionals regard her views as belonging somewhere in Fantasyland. Anti-vaxxers are winning the propaganda fight – they are dominating sites like Twitter and using social media to collectively harass pro-vaccination individuals.DiResta and Lotan 15 – Renee DiResta, Principal of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Gilad Lotan, Chief data scientist at betaworks, 2015 (“Anti-Vaxxers Are Using Twitter to Manipulate a Vaccine Bill”, Wired, June 8, Available Online at http://www.wired.com/2015/06/antivaxxers-influencing-legislation/, accessed 7/22/15, KM) To take a closer look at how anti-vax Twitter organizes its attacks, specifically against the California legislation, we analyzed the hashtags used by people in the network. In network graphs like the one above, circular nodes are Twitter handles; larger nodes indicate accounts with more followers within the network, making their tweets more likely to be seen and acted upon. That’s called “high centrality.” The lines between the nodes represent follower relationships. Different colors represent communities of people who are sharing a similar message, and the distance between regions is based on common ties—the closer a colored group is to another, the more shared connections its members have, and the more likely information is to spread amongst the groups. Much like any other group with a message, anti-vaxxers have leveraged Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for quite some time. In the early days, the majority of their activism focused on propagating the myth of the autism-vaccination connection. In August of 2014, anti-vax activity began to coalesce into one primary hashtag: #cdcwhistleblower, a reference to an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory that claims the CDC is concealing information that proves a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African American children. Within two days, autism-vaccine proponents had looped in celebrity sympathizers such as Donald Trump and Rob Schneider to amplify their message. Andrew Wakefield, author of the original fraudulent study linking MMR and autism, got involved. CDC scientists responded, but the idea of the conspiracy—and the hashtag—continued to grow in popularity. There were 250,000 #cdcwhistleblower tweets between August 18 and December 1 of 2014. A whopping 63,555 of these came from 10 prominent anti-vax accounts. In terms of massive events and national conversations, 250,000 tweets is rather small (there were 19.1 million tweets sent in a 12 hour period about the Oscars). But it became apparent to anti-vax leaders that this Twitter hashtag had attracted a loyal following among true believers. And so, in December 2014, “hashtag organizers” began to publish nightly “Trends and Tips” (TaTips) instruction videos on YouTube, containing instructions on what to tweet to advance the cause, and to improve the SEO of “vaccine questioning” websites. There are over 150 of these videos now—a testament to how much the anti-vax movement prioritizes Twitter. Like any good brand, that messaging has evolved to tie to current events—including legislation to increase vaccination rates. As the California personal exemption bill progressed, tweets with the #cdcwhistleblower hashtag started to shift to include #sb277, the number of the bill. When we dig into the activity in the #sb277 hashtag over time, trends and ties emerge. If you look at the first network graph, several distinct clusters emerge based on the hashtags and topics tweeted by each account. In other words, we didn’t search for the group labels deliberately; they revealed themselves. Pink is tweeters focused on anti-vax content; orange is the autism community. These groups tweet about many of the same topics, but don’t share the exact same material or use the same hashtags. Blue are social conservatives, many of whom use popular Tea Party hashtags. The long strands between the blue groups and the anti-vaxxer group indicates minimal overlap among accounts following each other; the networks are not tightly connected. But as you look at this second network graph, you can see how antivax political strategy has shifted. A new group emerges in the space between “Antivax Twitter” and “Conservative Twitter”—we call it “vaccine choice” Twitter. The tweeters are the same individuals who have long been active in the autism-vaccine #cdcwhistleblower network. And originally, much of the content shared in #sb277 focused on the same anti-vax pseudoscience underlying #cdcwhistleblower. However, as bad science and conspiracies repeatedly lost in legislative votes, anti-vaxxers updated their marketing: They are now “pro-SAFE vaccine” parental rights advocates. Instructions to the group now focus on hammering home traditionally conservative “parental choice” and “health freedom” messaging rather than tweeting about autism and toxins. Twitter activity around #sb277 is part of a multipronged strategy that takes place alongside phone, email, and fax campaigns, coordinated by well-funded groups including the Canary Party and the NVIC. The net effect is that legislators and staffers feel besieged on all fronts. In one unfortunate video, a movement leader encouraged supporters to use Twitter to harass and stalk a lobbyist, who has since filed police reports. In a very recent creation, that same leader excoriates her “Twitter army” for diluting the power of the #cdcwhistleblower movement by creating their own hashtags rather than using the ones they’ve been assigned. She also requests that the entire network tweet at Assembly representatives to inform them that their political careers will be over if they vote in favor of SB277. Much like Food Babe leverages her #foodbabearmy to flood corporations with demands for change, the goal of anti-vax twitter is to dominate the conversation and make it look as if all parents are vehemently opposed to the legislation. The other finding from observing anti-vax network graphs is that despite the vast majority vaccinating—national vaccination rates remain above 90 percent—there is no offsetting pro-vaccine Twitter machine; most parents simply vaccinate and move on with their lives. People don’t organize in groups around everyday life-saving measures; there is no pro-seatbelt activist community on Twitter. The recent emergence, lack of central coordination, and weak connections seen among pro-vaccine Twitter users, who often use the hashtag #vaccineswork, means that the pro-vax message (in green) is not amplified to the same degree. “Tweetiatrician” doctors, lawyers, and pro-vaccine parents often do attempt to join the conversation around the antivax hashtags. Unfortunately, many of the most active accounts experience the same attention received by the legislators: They become the target of harassment that includes phone calls to their places of employment, tweets posting identifying information or photos of their children, or warnings that they are being watched. Pro-vaccine activists and legislators alike often encounter paranoia when they attempt to engage the anti-vax community. They face accusations of being shills paid by Big Pharma to sway the narrative and keep “vaccine choice” activists from spreading The Truth. Like many fringe communities, while the group is extremely well-organized and passionate they are largely tweeting into an echo chamber. Twitter users who don’t look for these hashtags would likely not know that they exist. Besides occasional celebrity amplification, very little percolates out to a mainstream audience or trends at a meaningful level. And even theoretically-sympathetic affinity groups that they occasionally reach out to, such as anti-GMO, conservative, and autism groups, are not amplifying their hashtags. However, the broader public health implications of propagating these memes and articles make anti-vax activities more than a bizarre online curiosity. Most of the material that the #cdcwhistleblower accounts tweet are designed to erode confidence in vaccination. The goal is to make new parents question everything, says anti-vax leader Dana Gorman in one of her instructional videos. Public health officials are concerned. “It is important to remember that today, the vast majority of people follow the recommended vaccine schedule—they take the advice of their doctors, supported by professional medical bodies and the WHO,” says Gary Finnegan, editor of Vaccines Today. “However, it is essential that when people go online for information they are left with the clear impression that vaccines are safe and effective.” If that’s going to change, the people fighting misinformation need to understand how it gets spread in the first place. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.51 Mb. Share with your friends:
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