this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Just a reminder that this is bad for everyone, not just the unvaccinated. Every transmission represents millions of replications of the virus, and every replication is an opportunity for mutation. Every mutation has the potential to make the virus more infectious, vaccine resistant, drug resistant, or otherwise deadlier. This is not a darwin award thing, or an opportunity for schadenfreude. Anti-vaxxers pose a very real and violent threat to humanity.
Apparently 42/48 of the cases are in children. I just.. ugh. In no particular order, I wish parents were smarter, I wish the government had the power to force kids to get vaccinated no matter how braindead their parents are, I wish kids had more ability to get vaccinated without their parents permission (it's limited by age & by vaccine, even in supposedly liberal states like California), I wish there was less braindead fearmongering propaganda about vaccines, I wish people would recognize the importance of vaccines before the issue starts to affect them personally, etc
An article I read earlier on this included a quote from a (I think) public health official in the area, who said that it's not the church to blame for the low vaccination rates, but that many of these people don't regularly access healthcare. Knowing what I do about rural access to healthcare, it seems plausible that this isn't attributable to anti-vax sentiment (though regular access to routine healthcare is a big help towards "innoculating" people against anti-vax ideas).
If you're not familiar with the cultural context of healthcare in rural America, a friend who is/was a rural doctor says that Dr Glaucomflecken's short, humorous videos captures her experience remarkably well.
Dr Glaucomflecken's content is classic! But yeah I have to say it's frustrating how many problems in the US just expound on themselves in a vicious cycle. People fear the healthcare system due to a lack of familiarity with it, which causes their communities to not produce doctors/not give enough patronage to primary care practices to thrive there, so instead healthcare practioners go to the cities where they're wanted and educated, then because of all the brain drain to the city rural areas start voting against their interests, making healthcare more expensive and imposing restrictions on doctors, which only makes healthcare even more inaccessible..
I'm not sure what to say. Conservatism is societal cancer. It's easy to want to throw up my hands and go 'oh well, natural selection' until I remember it's often children, the disabled, and the immunocompromised that are first to suffer..