SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A small but increasing number of children in the United States are not getting some or all of their recommended vaccinations. The percentage of children under 2 years old who haven't received any vaccinations has quadrupled in the last 17 years, according to federal health data released Thursday.
Overall, immunization rates remain high and haven't changed much at the national level. But a pair of reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about immunizations for preschoolers and kindergartners highlights a growing concern among health officials and clinicians about children who aren't getting the necessary protection against vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, whooping cough and other pediatric infectious diseases.
The vast majority of parents across the country vaccinate their children and follow recommended schedules for this basic preventive practice. But the recent upswing in vaccine skepticism and outright refusal to vaccinate has spawned communities of undervaccinated children who are more susceptible to disease and pose health risks to the broader public.
[...] The data underlying the latest reports do not explain the reason for the increase in unvaccinated children. In some cases, parents hesitate or refuse to immunize, officials and experts said. Insurance coverage and an urban-rural disparity are likely other reasons for the troubling rise.
Among children aged 19 months to 35 months in rural areas, about 2 percent received no vaccinations in 2017. That is double the number of unvaccinated children living in urban areas.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @02:28PM (8 children)
You must not have read the study.
The researchers knew that some people were duped into believing a fabricated study linking the MMR vaccine to autism and the researchers thought that if they corrected that misconception then those people would be more likely to vaccinate. The sad thing was that they were successful in correcting the misconception, but it either didn't affect the intent to vaccinate or it made them less likely to vaccinate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:05PM (7 children)
Here is the purpose of the study:
Ie, they are studying how to manipulate people into doing stuff. Whether that is via sharing (their version of the) truth or not is irrelevant in the end to them.
These people are already beyond using the CDC as an authority for the argument from authority heuristic. If they havent yet been exposed to this info (doubtful) they are going to look it up later or ask someone they do consider to be an authority for how to interpret it.
Like I said, the mental model these academics have of the people they are attempting to manipulate is so wrong it is hilarious.
Also this study is the usual worthless NHST trash wherein they think "not significant difference" means "no difference" and "significant difference" means their favorite explanation is correct:
No, all you can say is the people shown the cdc info responded slightly different on the likert scale survey. Eg, they answered somewhat agree rather than strongly agree because the information made them uncertain and they planned to go look it up later. It may have nothing to do with actual lasting agreement.
This is all wild speculation, they make no effort to distinguish between different explanations for their results:
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:21PM (6 children)
Oh no! Those public health epidemiologists are trying to manipulate people by showing them evidence that their unhealthy beliefs are based on "misconceptions".
How dare they assume that they actually know more than the common person does when they have merely studied the subject for years.
Nothing is truly knowable; therefore, objective reality does not exist and my truth could never be false.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @04:41PM (2 children)
Its interesting how the same people who trust and perform NHST (where you test a strawman null hypothesis instead of your hypothesis, then draw conclusions about your hypothesis) also tend to come up with strawman arguments in general. Its like a personality type, or mental state. Maybe I should email someone who studies the minds of NHST users, eg Gerd Gigerenzer [mpib-berlin.mpg.de], about this phenomenon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:13PM (1 child)
It's interesting how some people employ motivated skepticism to deny any evidence that goes against their preconceptions.
It sure seems convenient to always maintain your initial belief because you can find a reason why counter evidence isn't perfect and, therefore, inconsequential.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:39PM
Nope, I looked at the study and it was crappy in the same way as thousands (tens of thousands by now?) of other studies I have looked at and dismissed for the exact same reasons. Then on top of that they have this ridiculous conception of how their target audience thinks because they think in terms of populations instead of individual people. Those results are uninterpretable, one would hope they learned from that wasted opportunity and improve their methods but I doubt it from what I read in there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:42PM
the cdc are just lying whores pushing whatever soft kill weapons the completely unaccountable fucks at big Pharma and tax payer funded black ops want to inject into the slave children. the slaves are noticing their kids are now completely disabled so the sum doubles down along with their army of sycophantic brainwashed/brain damaged mob of zombies. keep it up and see what happens.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @07:31PM (1 child)
Indeed. It is rather astounding that the anti-vaxxers would trust the word of a former Playboy playmate touting a now discredited study over the considered opinion of the world's most renowned doctors and epedemiologists. *Shrug*
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday October 13 2018, @03:34AM
Some people are just too stupid to live. Maybe we should let natural selection do its job... behind a suitable quarantine wall, where they won't endanger the rest of us.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.