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The violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement intensifies

Violent rhetoric has always been part of the antivaccine movement.Leaders of the antivax movement, like Del Bigtree, use apocalyptic and violent rhetoric, and then deny that they’ve done so. Unfortunately, it seems to be getting worse, and I fear violence.

I’ve written about the violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement a number of times, up to and including concerns about attacks on journalists reporting on the movement from a science-based perspective. Of course, when antivaxers liken vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, rape, human trafficking, and all manner of other atrocities and crimes, it’s not surprising that what I’ve been warning about at least since 2015 might be on the verge of coming to pass, namely violence against doctors and others trying to protect public health:

As anti-vaccination groups fight back against public health campaigns to promote immunization in the face of measles outbreaks, some Canadian doctors say the battle has escalated beyond social media platforms to personal threats and attacks.

“The pitchforks are coming out,” said Dr. Anna Wolak, a family physician in Vancouver who has publicly spoken out on social media about the importance of vaccination — both as a doctor and the mother of three children.

Although most patients and many people in the community have been supportive, Wolak said she has also been subjected to furious comments — both in person and through social media.

“Patients have come in and told me that they can’t believe I would deliberately poison my children,” Wolak said in an email to CBC News.

“Some of those have threatened to report me to the [provincial regulatory] college because they consider me a threat to children.”

Harassment and violent rhetoric, it’s what’s for dinner. Indeed, it’s what antivaxers have been about for a very long time. Paul Offit, for example, knows. He reported harassment and death threats against him and his family in his book, Autism’s False Prophets. I’ve experienced it, albeit only with rare death threats, in the way that antivaxers have tried to get me fired from my job on more than one occasion and how Mike Adams went on a tear of defamation against me in 2016. I particularly remember the time when antivaxer Jake Crosby (then at that wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery, Age of Autism, orchestrated a campaign of complaints against me trying to get me fired based on a nonexistent undisclosed conflict of interest. The medical school dean at the time called me up and asked me if I felt threatened. I did, a little, but that’s only because the antivaxers coming after me didn’t live in southeast Michigan. Then there was the time an anonymous antivaxer complained to my boss over a post about Andrew Spourdalakis.

When I first noticed this uptick in violent rhetoric, which appeared to be associated with SB 277 and the elimination of nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates in California, I noted it primarily in the form of memes shared on Facebook, memes like these:

Violent rhetoric about vaccines
Violent rhetoric about vaccines
Violent rhetoric about vaccines
Violent rhetoric about vaccines

You get the idea. I have a lot more where these came from, like this one that’s so incredibly over-the-top racist that I can’t decide if it was a Poe or an incredibly stupid and racist white guy imagining what he thinks a black “gangsta” talks like, although looking at the gallery of the guy who created this meme, I strongly suspect it’s the latter:

Violent rhetoric about vaccines

I’ve been collecting antivaccine memes like this with violent rhetoric. The reason is that, when and if antivaxers resort to violence, I have a record of some of the things they’ve been saying on social media. In any event, recently, I’ve been discussing how antivaxers have been using social media to attack physicians who stand up for vaccines, with a distinct intent to silence them by making them fearful enough to conclude that standing up for science is just not worth the harassment. I’ve also been discussing what doctors have been trying to do to counter such harassment. Of course, I can’t help but note the paranoid ideation behind these memes, as if jackbooted vaccine thugs are on the way to knock down doors, hold children down and inject them with vaccines, and send the parents to the gulag, when in reality at most what we are seeing is a tightening of school vaccine mandates.

So, I wish I could say I was surprised by the story I quoted above, but I’m not. Indeed, as I read I expected to learn worse about antivaxers, and, sadly, I was not disappointed:

Although those interactions have been hurtful, Wolak said she has not received any “overt threats” of physical harm — something that has happened in recent months to at least two other Canadian doctors.

One of the recipients of the threats is in Toronto. The other is in Eastern Canada. They say they have both received a steady stream of emails ranging from harassment to threats — about 200 of which came from the same email address — since the fall.

CBC News has agreed to protect the identities of both doctors because they are afraid they will be the target of further threats.

One email sent to both of them said: “Come at my son with another vaccine and I WILL make sure you NEVER support vaccines EVER AGAIN! This email isn’t even CLOSE TO LISTENING TO ME IN PERSON!”

“Signed, A Momma With Claws OUT!”

Of course, the image of the “mama bear with her claws out,” ready to protect her cubs children is a favorite one among antivaxers, one that I’ve seen many times before. Here’s an example:

Violent rhetoric about vaccines

For example, here’s a pseudonymous antivaxer using just that analogy:

Towards my children, I am feeling extra protective. Towards my rights, I am like a mean mama bear who got poked during the middle of a nap. Towards the creators of the hysteria that all of a sudden, for the first time in history, deemed one child more important and makes my child a perceived threat to everyone else’s, I am angry.

And on Facebook, here’s another example:

I hope his spelling’s better than momma bear’s…

In any event, according to the news story, the emails with the violent rhetoric all came from the US, because of course they did, and Paul Offit is quoted pointing out:

The goal is to shut you up,” he said. “And it certainly works. There are a number of people who choose not to stand up in this arena because they know that it means that they’re going to be personally targeted.

Of course, in a story like this, the journalist feels obligated to find someone on the “other side” who can speak for antivaxers. To an increasing degree, these days it’s often our old friend Del Bigtree, producer of the antivaccine propaganda film disguised as a documentary, VAXXED, who is the go-to antivaccine spokesperson, having usurped the role from Jenny McCarthy, J. B. Handley, and Andrew Wakefield:

Del Bigtree, a prominent anti-vaccine activist in the U.S., told CBC News he would “absolutely … discourage any sort of aggressive talk or violence of any kind.”

Bigtree also said he didn’t believe the threats would have come from anyone who was affiliated with his movement. 

At this point, I almost spit up the water I was sipping as I typed. Del Bigtree, claiming that he would discourage any sort of aggressive talk or violence? For Del Bigtree to claim that he discourages violent rhetoric is disingenuous as hell, as I’ve catalogued examples of him doing exactly the opposite. For instance, when he was in Michigan in 2016, Bigtree’s rhetoric was anything but nonviolent. Here’s the situation. He was in our state visiting various antivaccine-sympathetic legislators in the run-up to the election and concluded his visit by appearing a fundraiser for the Michigan Vaccine Freedom PAC for $125 a head in Ferndale, a northern suburb of Detroit.

During his talk, Del Bigtree portrayed the issue of school vaccine mandates as our “freedom hanging in the balance,” falsely equating school vaccine mandates with fascism and finishing his talk comparing himself and his audience to our Founding Fathers and their fight against the British to achieve freedom and self-determination, saying:

If we do not fight now, then there will be nothing left to fight for. And I think that is where everyone in this room, I pray you realize how important you are in this historic moment. We will never be stronger than we are right now. We will never be healthier than we are right now. Our children are looking like this, a generation of children, as we’ve said on The Doctors television show this is the first generation of children that will not live to be as old as their parents. Are we going to stand…are we going to sit down and take it? Or are we going to stand up and say: This is a historic moment, that my forefathers, those from Jefferson all the way to Martin Luther King, the moments where people stood up and something inside of them said I’m going to stand for freedom and I’m going to stand for it now. That is in our DNA. It is pumping through me, and I pray that you feel it pumping through you, because we must look back. Our grandchildren will look back and thank us for having stood up one more time and been the generation that said, “We the People of the United States of America stood for freedom, stand for freedom. We will die for freedom today.

OK, this is definitely overwrought but not quite violent rhetoric yet. It skirts the edge of violence but maintains a bit of plausible deniability with respect to accusations of inciting violence. However, it’s easy to understand how this sort of rhetoric could get antivaxers worked up to the point where they might start threatening doctors and possibly even doing violence. However, he hasn’t always managed to keep himself under control. For instance, around the same time, he said, “Now’s the time” for guns:


The full video is here:

Here’s what Bigtree said:

…but now we’re watching the most powerful lobby in the country and in the world poisoning our children. And our government is helping them. What are we going to do about it? We have the power. But we have got to stop being afraid to talk about it. If you’re afraid to talk about it, your Twitters, your Facebooks, I don’t want to bring it up at my PTA meeting, I don’t want to at lunch or at Thanksgiving dinner, then I can imagine those same conversations were happening in Nazi Germany among the Jewish people. Let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to bring it into my reality. It’s still 20 miles away. I’m still allowed in this theater, not that one. All I have to get is this little star. All I have to do is to sign this little thing saying that I’m not going to vaccinate because I think they’re dangerous—and they are dangerous. I’m just going to sign this paper. I’m going to let them put me in a log. At some point, they have gone too far.

Do you think it’s a good idea to let the government own your baby’s body and right behind it your body? That is the end for me. Anyone who believes in the right to bear arms. To stand up against your government. I don’t know what you were saving that gun for then. I don’t know when you planned on using it if they were going to take control of your own body away.

It’s now. Now’s the time.

You heard that right. Right around the time SB 277, the law California passed in 2015 to eliminate nonmedical exemptions, was taking effect, Del Bigtree actually strongly implied that antivaccine activists opposed to SB 277 should consider taking up arms to resist. Did he really forget the red meat rhetoric he’s been feeding to his antivaccine base since VAXXED was released? As Matt Carey noted, there was nervous laughter after Bigtree’s remarks and in the Facebook post with this video, there were 1,500 responses, with not one of them rejecting a call to violence.

Del Bigtree is not the only person who uses apocalyptic language to describe school vaccine mandates. For example, the grande dame of the antivaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, has also invoked freedom and the Founding Fathers to attack vaccine mandates:

A constitutional democracy promotes fair and equal justice for all. So the authors of the Declaration of Independence rejected rule by an elitist ruling class of citizens who are considered to be more important and qualified to govern without the consent of those being governed. The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution makes it clear that respect for the natural rights of individuals limits the power of the state. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”

Why, then, are we allowing an elite aristocracy of doctors and professors to bully people who disagree with them about laws that disempower parents and place an unequal vaccine risk burden on vulnerable children in the name of the public health?

She’s also invoked Nazis and fascism, describing children as “human sacrifices” in the war against microbes:

Today the battlefield of the 200-year war on microbes is littered with human casualties far too numerous to count while, in a natural fight to survive, the microbes have evolved to evade the vaccines. And the scientists and physicians in leadership positions determined to win that war continue to fire away, stepping around the bodies of vaccine-damaged children lying on the ground.

Do I think that public health officials flying the science flag with a utilitarian star on it wake up every day and say to themselves, “I want to hurt a child today?” Of course not. Most doctors and scientists want to help, not harm people. Do I think they have lost their way, blinded by a utilitarian pseudo-ethic that makes it easy to ignore the bodies lying on the ground so they can allow themselves to believe that human sacrifice is ethical when it serves the greater good? Yes, I do.

It’s not directly violent rhetoric, but you can see how it might encourage violence.

Of course, the apocalyptic language used by the antivaccine movement, including Del Bigtree, is so inflammatory that it would not surprise me in the least if it inspired someone to do violence against pro-vaccine advocates or a doctor or nurse. After all, if vaccination is a Holocaust, isn’t violence justified to stop it? If vaccination is akin to rape or sexual assault, isn’t violence justified to stop it? If vaccination is human sacrifice, then isn’t violence justified to stop it? Seriously? It doesn’t take explicitly violent rhetoric to inspire violence. Hyperbole and massively over-the-top analogies likening vaccination to all sorts of horrific crimes and atrocities are enough, particularly when there are plenty of antivaxers like Kent Heckenlively, who envision themselves as heroic fighters against evil in defense of their children.

What do I mean? Here’s the aforementioned Kent Heckenlively, fantasizing himself Aragorn, son of Arathorn, charging the Black Gate of Mordor in a futile attack:

When I watch I imagine myself as Aragorn, taking the Dimholt Road under the mountain, clutching the sword, Anduril, Flame of the West, offering a deal to the souls of the dishonored dead if they would join me in battle. I picture myself as Aragon, astride my horse in front of the Black Gate, telling my troops, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! Then I jump off my horse, and with the setting sun behind me, a reckless, almost manic glint in my eye and a crooked grin, I am first to charge into the enemy army.

As I’ve noted before, this is, of course, one of my favorite scenes from both The Lord of the Rings books and movies. In it, the last heir of Isildur, Aragorn, brought his forces to the Black Gate of Mordor to challenge the Dark Lord Sauron to battle, not with any hope of victory, but as a diversion to distract him long enough to allow the hobbits Frodo and Sam to cross Mordor and reach Mount Doom, there to destroy the One Ring, the source of Sauron’s power, by throwing it into the Crack of Doom. Aragorn and his companions fully expected to die in the effort, and it looked as though they would do just that after hordes of orcs issued forth from the Black Gate and the battle was joined. They were saved because Sam and Frodo did reach Mount Doom and the ring was destroyed, thus destroying Sauron’s power and causing his armies to flee. The point, of course, was that Heckenlively fantasizes himself as a heroic figure from the world of epic fantasy like Aragorn fighting an epic battle against vaccine mandates, ready to die even as just a diversion.

Two months ago, Mike Adams published an article entitled A serious question: When will the first “vaccine enforcers” be shot by parents defending their children against the felony assault of forced immunizations? In it, his violent rhetoric asserts that “forced immunization with a potentially deadly substance is a felony assault,” stating:

The right of a parent to protect her child from a violent assault is inherently understood across America, and that right is enshrined both in common law and specific state law almost everywhere. If a unscrupulous person attempts to stab your child with a knife, or penetrate your child in an act of pedophilia rape, or harm your child by kidnapping or assaulting them, you as the parent have every right to deploy all means of self-defense, including, where legal, firearms.

This right to protect children from violent assaults is not nullified by the false authority of the vaccine deep state, which is steeped in felony crimes, scientific fraud, the abuse of children as human guinea pigs for medical experiments, and a long history of cover-ups to bury the truth about vaccine injuries. Regardless of the false claims of “safety” by the vaccine industry, such claims do not overrule the basic human right of self-defense. Even if vaccines had a perfect safety record and killed no children at all, no medical intervention is justified without informed consent.

Yes, Adams, like Bigtree, argues that parents have the right to defend their children against the “violent attack” of vaccination using any means necessary, including firearms.

Although sometimes the violent rhetoric slips through, basically leaders of the antivaccine movement fire up their followers with apocalyptic rhetoric that isn’t explicitly violent; the violence is implied. Then, when their followers start threatening doctors with violence, they’re shocked—shocked!—that their followers would do such a thing and deny encouraging them with “aggressive talk.” The problem is that some of them, like Del Bigtree, have foolishly left video and audio evidence of the violent rhetoric they routinely use to fire up their radical followers. When the first doctor is actually attacked or killed, the blood will also be on their hands.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

106 replies on “The violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement intensifies”

It’s not “who will rid me of this turbulent priest.” But it’s “this turbulent priest is coming to torture your children and steal your property! Protect your rights!” With the implied “do or die” behind it.

Yesterday, as founder of Vaccinate Washington, I sent a collection of screenshots from Facebook to legislative aids to several Washington senators and representatives. They all involved real threats. I also sent screenshots to Dr Richard Pan’s social media person with a real threat against him.

I have been advocating for vaccines for 16 years and chatting online for that duration. I have never seen so many threats. It is scary.

Thank you. Because I had a kid stalked through Facebook, including another one deleting their profile due to lack of security. Also neither would have “friended” me… I never joined. I very much appreciate your efforts.

Somebody enlighten me. The anti-reproductive freedom crowd/forced birthers believe that the government owns your body and that a woman should have no right to determine her own fertility. That uterus belongs to the gubbmint! Have that baby even if the forced-birther crowd won’t adopt it and don’t have a plan for how to care for it once it’s born. Who cares if it is an actual baby!?!

And now with the deranged anti-vax crowd….get the government out of my kid’s body. Screw public health. That kid is MY PROPERTY, and if you impose public health constraints on MY KID I will get out the guns.

Which is it, dumba**es? Does the gubbmint own your body or your kids’ bodies? Or not? How will your little pea brains reconcile this cognitive dissonance? Do you even remotely understand your hypocrisy?

As Orac says, it is all an excuse to justify future violence by people who are motivated by psychotic anger and who are not remotely capable of understanding this thing we call science. I really fear there will be violence over this if the measles outbreak spreads as projected.

Unfortunately, it’s very easy to have both these positions at once. After all, both can be summarized to “don’t hurt the child”.
And in both cases, it’s a imagined, perfect child, not the one which is actually here, in real life. Or not here, as in ectopic pregnancies.
I like to use the term “totemization” to describe the way the anti-abortion and the anti-vax crowds view children.

it’s also very easy to go along gov’ decisions you agree with and reject those you don’t. Especially when the former don’t concern you (if you claim you will never do X, then an anti-X law isn’t going to affect you – in theory), and the latter is going to impact you. Well, impact your children.Same thing, for them.
(the FSM knows a number of vocal anti-abortion people were proved not that adamant when their principles were tested, but I digress)

But yeah, given that a number of diseases can result, if caught by a pregnant woman, in fetus malformation or miscarriage, the association of these two crowds is… weird. Or it would be, if I was expecting anything remotely rational from either of them.

Congressman Barney Frank once said that anti-abortionists believe life ends at birth. At Earth Day was a small group with large photos of a fetus. I asked them a simple question: If you believe the fetus deserves to be born, do you also support a guarantee of quality prenatal care so that the fetus has a fighting chance to be born without disabilities? Nope, they don’t. So, Franks was wrong. Anti-abortionists believe life ends at conception, at least any chance at a quality of life. I also asked them, since they keep claiming life is sacred, if they opposed the death penalty. Nope, in fact they would want it for mothers who abort their fetus. Then one of them said: “Thou shall not kill.” So, I said isn’t executing someone killing them? The answer was I should repent or I will burn in hell.

In any case, excellent pointing out the hypocrisy of promoting government control over a woman’s body; but not vaccinating.

When I lived in Sweden, if a, say, young college student became pregnant, she had a real choice. It was her body and she could abort; but if she chose to go to term, she knew she would get excellent prenatal care and postnatal care, she would receive subsidies to get a larger apartment (probably living in a small one room student flat), she would be able to place the child in quality daycare, and she would receive a monthly child allowance (in US we get a tax deduction. Since based on income, higher incomes get larger percentage, and, those with very low incomes, get nothing. In many other countries, a monthly child allowance is paid, same amount to everyone). In fact, back in the 1970s, a friend of mine had a child with gluten intolerance (coeliac disease, long before recognized in US) and she received an additional monthly check to pay for the more expensive needed foods. We don’t really have choice in this country, not real choice. It is the woman’s body and she should decide; but the decision should not be based on, for instance, leaving school for a life of poverty and lack of decent healthcare.

While I support a woman’s right to choose, I want the choice to not be one of desperation. If a child comes into this world, he/she should have had quality prenatal care, postnatal care, safe living environment, adequate/healthy nutrition, and quality education. And we can easily afford it if we didn’t spend 100s of billions of dollars killing innocent people in the Third World (Trump just vetoed stopping our participation in the near genocide towards people in Yemen) or our mass incarceration, 5% of world’s population, almost 25% of imprisoned. Which, often for trivial offenses or an estimated minimum of 90,000 cases of innocence, deprives kids of a parent and provider.

In any case, you might want to read the following on the origins of the antiabortion movement, you might be surprised:

Randall Balmer (May 27, 2014). The Real Origins of the Religious Right. Politico. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133?paginate=false

Its more often the case that anti-vaxers will be anti-abortion. Quite how they compartmentalize these view is a mystery to me.

Especially for the rubella, varicella and one type of rabies vaccine. They are all grown in the fetal cell culture. Apparently they are more concerned with a couple of fetuses legally aborted fifty years ago than real live breathing children and future babies.

Say what you want about the Catholic Church, these days they are at least consistent in their pro-life views. They are virulently against abortion, but they will also be the last people to endorse execution for an abortionist, let alone condone the murder of one. They are, at least these days, pretty much against capital punishment for anything. Sure, they’ll excommunicate your ass if you perform or procure an abortion, but that just means they consider it a seriously grave sin you really need to atone for for and really shouldn’t do in the first place. In general the Church wholeheartedly encourages their faithful to vaccinate themselves and their children, and they even accepted use of that bugaboo of vaccines ultimately derived from cell lines of aborted fetuses.

It seems that at one time, Protestant denominations didn’t seem so obsessed with abortion, but now they seem to have gone way past the Catholics in that, without the same level of consistency. Pro-life should logically entail not only being against abortion, but also care for the mother and child after birth (something that even Catholicism mostly pays only lip service to, unfortunately), being against capital punishment, against war and violence, and for the strengthening of social justice (this has of late for some reason turned into a snarl word) in general. I’d even add endorsement of contraception and family planning in general to that list, though mainstream Catholicism would disagree. Take pro-life to its logical conclusion!

Fantastic comment, Joel.

What’s interesting to me is the fears from the original article have now come true. In Phoenix, a family was subjected to arrest and removal of their 3 unvaccinated children https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/armed-police-raid-unvaccinated-boy-fever-phoenix-arizona-a8847136.html%3famp .

I personally believe in vaccinating my children for all of the main diseases but I struggle with the gardasil and my doctor for 20 years won’t say hello to me because I didn’t give the gardasil to my daughters. It’s advertised to protect against cancer but it doesn’t actually protect against the strains that cause the most cancers. AND it seems to cause an unusual number of autoimmune type syndromes later.

I think the bottom line is a real lack of trust of the government. Like Trump or hate him, this goes back all the way to the Clinton’s and Bush’s and even as far back as Kennedy and Nixon. The government is not transparent and we continue to pay for ridiculous wars which, for some reason, we do not win. That just floors me. 9/11 really blew the lid off of the government and their hidden agendas. We pay for it but are not privy to the truth and people are just over it.

I think the anti vax people, in some ways, do it because it’s one of the only ways to assert control over a government that is increasingly not trusted. Take a look at 5G, when you have time. Look what they want to do to us now. It’s pretty outrageous and we have zero say about it. Fancy being in an airport scanner 24/7?

I have a sad because my thirty year old kid saw the very scary first picture. He has a very gentle vegetarian soul who wishes harm to no one. Even though he has been diagnosed with level 2 autism under DSM V.

I spent much of his youth explaining that while his speech was impaired he was not violent. Lack of speech was not automatically a cause of violence!

He knows he has autism.. stop making him out to be a monster!

From the perspective of these US Taliban, the religious gobshites murdering polio-vaccine providers in Pakistan are a role-model and an inspiration.

I would certainly believe they see them as kindred souls, despite their religious antagonism.

This overwrought language could certainly induce a vulnerable person to take “direct action”. I can’t dismiss Robert Kennedy Jr’s equating vaccination with the Holocaust as harmless rhetoric. Does he not consider what happened to his father and his uncle?

RE ” apocalyptic language” and self hero-worship

I’ve been following this trend amongst woo-meisters and anti-vaxxers for years and of course, it might be a way to rally the troops, get people to buy their books or products BUT also, very importantly, to boost their own self-esteem and measure of self-worth?

— First of all, they’re in over their heads- mostly arguing against experts whilst being self-taught internet browsers.
— Many of the women choose radical feminist imagery while defending themselves because they’re mothers– it doesn’t jive
— They become brave rebels, fighters, iconoclasts, mavericks all from the safety of their own Kaffeklatsch facebook groups
— Note how attractive they make the female gunslingers look in the memes above

I’m glad that Orac quoted/ explained Heckenlively at length for newer readers:
alright, this is a 50-odd year old (?) parent, lawyer, teacher miming a character from LOTR. Seriously. I wonder about that and doubt that it’s merely a rhetorical device, I think he’s honestly comparing himself to Aragorn. And Kim Rossi ( AoA) also 50+, is a black belt and has called herself a “weapon” or suchlike recently. What’s next? Being Arya Stark? Defending the disabled?

While Bigtree has started using violent memes recently, Mike Adams has been doing so for a long time and is, to top it off, a gun rights fanatic. ( Like Null, he sees gun violence by young men caused by meds, not guns).
I imagine a scenario wherein mixed up adults who want to be seen as heroes have easy access to guns and vaccine advocates.

And Mama Bear? Didn’t we first hear Grizzly mother from Palin?

Being a mother makes you not a feminist? THAT doesn’t JIBE. The rest of the comment I can agree with, but that really stuck out.

I could have said that in a better way but you know, shorthand Let me try ..

They continuously congratulate themselves about feminism ( AND yes, any choice a women makes is feminist in a way) but the role of mother is probably the most traditional, even the most mythic, one in the book ( outside of maybe vestal virgin) so I think that they have to ramp up the revolutionary/ badass/ rhetoric to compensate

No one really has to fight the establishment to take on a mother role, indeed it may be thrust upon many who do not want it. Of course mothers can be feminist ( or not) and non-mothers don’t have to be feminist.

I think that many of the leaders have divided souls ( for lack of better words) about women’s roles: perhaps being somewhat forced into protracted caretaker roles because of their children’s diagnoses makes them angrily role play being a revolutionary both socially or of science. They have to neglect career choices they would have liked to try. So they are simultaneously glorifying being a mother bear and griping about being stuck in the home.

We’ve often observed that movement AVs show narcissistic traits, and NPD typically masks a deep-seeded insecurity stemming from some form of trauma. I also,(of course) take a Jamesonian view that the root of much denialism/conspiracy-theory is the profound disorientation of experience in post-industrial society and hyper-mediated culture, and the insecurity that engenders. If its near-impossible to find any solid ground – maybe a crazy, irrational anchor is the only one that ‘works’, or makes ‘sense’. IOW, I don’t think it’s a matter of being “in over their heads” against real experts. It’s more of of ‘expertise’ flipping on it’s head and becoming negative due to the legitimation crisis of ‘reality’ itself.

I think they genuinely see them selves as martyrs, their sense of victimization appears deeply ingrained, yet if studies are to be believed something like 80% of the anti-vax cult are white middle class privileged white women. Hardly a suppressed minority. A lot are also stay at home mum’s, probably bored and spending way too much time in these closed groups on Facebook. I see comments posted by sock puppets from Whats the Harm and NOMAM and the like and its staggering how they gen each other up and try to out do each other with the stories and anecdotes.

Its another country, it really is.

Note how attractive they make the female gunslingers look

An advertisement/entertainment technique as old as humanity.
Sexualisation of weapons, mixing Eros & Thanatos, etc. Definite appeal to the male viewer for the usual reasons; I guess appeal to the female viewer for the hints of power. Eh, one can get pretty, a successful mother and a feared badass, all-in-one. A young mother, mind.
Not so different from all the male nerds worshiping Superman or Batman (I’m one, I should know). Or the Punisher, for the gun appeal. (not much me, I prefer my heroes to be humanists).
See also: Lara Croft, Wonder Woman, the goddess Athena, etc. In more modern media, about any Anime featuring young girls and weapons.

In a previous post by Orac on a similar topic, it turned out most of the sexy armed ladies’ pictures were stock pictures appropriated by the AVers. Likely to be the same here. From what I recall of the old ones, this current batch of pictures is palpably more violent, in the directness of the memes and the pose of the ladies and gentlemen (about to shoot you or already firing).
Umph. OK, Jenny’ picture may have been done with her permission, but the Photoshop job… Urgh. Medieval miniaturists had a better sense of scale and perspective.

What’s enlightening to me is how juvenile many of their role plays/ images appear for middle-aged/ older people.
Who are they trying to impress?
I would think that their peers ( parents) would prefer more sophisticated, well informed role models.

This is shoot-em-up, winner-takes-all, simpleton stuff.

One of the woo-meisters I survey tells us that his average audience member is college educated and AoA/ TMR continuously brag about how anti-vaxxers are better educated and more affluent. But then they go on and on about their revolution, super-hero status and suchlike,

alright, this is a 50-odd year old (?) parent, lawyer

California bar No. 148659, issued in 1990. I imagine that it would get right up his craw were his middle name to be routinely deployed.

What I don’t get about Kent is that he gave up a career as a lawyer to become a high school science teacher? Is that a good choice financially?

And from his writing we can see how great his grasp of science is. ( book with Mikovits, etc)
I’m not sure if he is still teaching or is just a writer, blogger, activist these days

What I don’t get about Kent is that he gave up a career as a lawyer to become a high school science teacher? Is that a good choice financially?

Maybe he was as good at lawyering as he is science and a teaching gig is at least a steady paycheck and bennies.

The pro disease people have their very own golden idol: Great Idea. Nothing else matters, because it’s all about them and their Great Idea. Their children do not matter, nor anyone else’s children (born or unborn). The young, the sick, the elderly, or simply humanity in general, are irrelevant. They, themselves, are the only thing that matters. Therefore, since life outside of themselves does not matter, it is no surprise that they are all jonesing to kill people…one way or another.

”I’m glad that Orac quoted/ explained Heckenlively at length for newer readers:
alright, this is a 50-odd year old (?) parent, lawyer, teacher miming a character from LOTR. Seriously. I wonder about that and doubt that it’s merely a rhetorical device, I think he’s honestly comparing himself to Aragorn.”

That’s quite a rich fantasy life.

Kent has a piece up on the Gazillions of Imaginary Health Freedom Fighters website in which he boasts of appearing on the Alex Jones show.

Beyond how pitiful it is for anyone to glory in being associated with Alex Jones, Kent wasn’t even a guest. As the piece explains, Jones was accepting listener phone calls, including one from Kent.

That’s on a par with suggesting the Washington Post published your op-ed, when it actually was a letter to the editor. Or announcing that Orac let you post a guest opinion when it was a routine comment on an article.*

*not to give anyone ideas.

Del: “We will never be stronger than we are right now.”

An admission that their time has passed. That’s a comforting thought. But also a recognition that they are wounded and have been cornered. So they make a desperate attack, believing this may be their last opportunity. What a sad lot. If not for the human wreckage they leave in their wake I could almost pity them.

I can’t decide if it was a Poe or an incredibly stupid and racist white guy imagining what he thinks a black “gangsta” talks like

Mah hass? Don’t nobody be fuckin’ with my hass, n-gger.* Now gimme yo damn chicken.

This graphic also seems to have been created by someone who doesn’t realize that it’s mothers who do the bulk of taking the kids to pediatrics. As I’ve noted, the low-cost clinic that I go to is always well filled with ladies doing well-baby visits and so on.

I ride buses through ghetto-type areas with some regularity. This word is quite common, although well beaten out by “motherfcker. Things are generally quite respectful, though. Young toughs give up their seats for their elders, etc. The worst I’ve seen is a lame street fight outside the place where I see my therapist. Yes, there have been a couple of street closings due to gang shootings, but that’s a separate issue.

I was curious what was shown in the pics upper right. It’s “The Georgia Guidestones” The principle circled is #1: “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.” About the Guidestones, from Wikipedia:

In June 1979, a man using the pseudonym Robert C. Christian approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Company on behalf of “a small group of loyal Americans”, and commissioned the structure. Christian explained that the stones would function as a compass, calendar and clock, and should be capable of withstanding catastrophic events. Joe Fendley of Elberton Granite assumed that Christian was “a nut” and attempted to discourage him by giving a quote several times higher than any project the company had taken, explaining that the guidestones would require additional tools and consultants. Christian accepted the quote.[2] When arranging payment, Christian explained that he represented a group which had been planning the guidestones for 20 years, and which intended to remain anonymous.

A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles is engraved on the Georgia Guidestones[8] in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones. Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

Yoko Ono praised the inscribed messages as “a stirring call to rational thinking”, while Wired stated that unspecified opponents have labeled them as the “Ten Commandments of the Antichrist”.[2]

The guidestones have become a subject of interest for conspiracy theorists. One of them, an activist named Mark Dice, demanded that the guidestones “be smashed into a million pieces, and then the rubble used for a construction project”, claiming that the guidestones are of “a deep Satanic origin”, and that R. C. Christian belongs to “a Luciferian secret society” related to the “New World Order”. At the unveiling of the monument, a local minister proclaimed that he believed the monument was “for sun worshipers, for cult worship and for devil worship”. Others have suggested that the stones were commissioned by the Rosicrucians, with conspiracy theorist Jay Weidner observing that the pseudonym of the man who commissioned the stones – “R. C. Christian” – resembles Rose Cross Christian, or Christian Rosenkreuz, the founder of the Rosicrucian Order. Alex Jones’s film Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement proposes that the guidestones are a harbinger of self-appointed elites who intend on exterminating most of the world’s population.

The most widely agreed-upon interpretation of the stones is that they describe the basic concepts required to rebuild a devastated civilization Author Brad Meltzer notes that the stones were built in 1979 at the height of the Cold War, and thus argues that they may have been intended as a message to the possible survivors of a nuclear World War III. The engraved suggestion to keep humanity’s population below 500 million could have been made under the assumption that war had already reduced humanity below this number.

My bet is the pics in the meme are references to the Alex Jones take. So not a Poe. And not so much “stuiped” as bat-sh!t crackers. I’ll bet there’s some at least semi-complex explanation for the ‘Black Badass’ image and faux-argot, relating to the Infowarian theme that’s obvious to the meme creator and inscrutable to anyone else.

Orac writes,

It doesn’t take explicitly violent rhetoric to inspire violence.

MJD says,

The power of suggestion is like the placebo effect, not easily explained or understood. In the RI post titled, “The violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement intensifies” Orac clearly shows that an infinitesimal number of individuals have placed such non-productive rhetoric in the public domain. Most important, Orac does a great public service showing us that respectful insolence, not violent rhetoric, is the preferred mode of communication in the vaccine debate.

@ Orac,

It is inspiring when all nuances of respectful insolence can be explicitly and freely expressed. Will you release everyone in auto-moderation?

It’s almost heartening to see the dochniak distim the doshes so persistently, and in much the same manner as the gostak.

Athaic: And in both cases, it’s a imagined, perfect child, not the one which is actually here, in real life.

Yup. I’ve noticed that in the case of the Age of Autism denizens and the (non) Thinking moms, most of them despise their kids. Quite a few don’t like other people’s kids either. A while ago, we even had an actual live rape apologist, who claims to have a daughter. (Shudder.) And every time someone kills their actual living autistic kid, no one on any of those boards says it’s wrong.

The thing that weirds me out is that Vancouver seems like a nice peaceful place. The US is very very violent right now, to the point where I get a little scared any time I go out to a concert or something, and we’re neck deep in Nazis.

The CBC article says the threats originated south of the boarder.

That being said we do have a fair amount of the AV cult up here as well, more so in Alberta though.

Maybe I just live in a communist utopia/ police state but:

see NYT, 12-27-2017: Crimes in NYC Drop to Levels Not Seen since 1950s ( all categories of serious crime)
NYC record breaking low levels 2018 ( pix 11.com/ tv news) also nyc.gov also Jersey City

Youngsters have money and phones I guess. Too busy for crime.
Don’t laugh, Also less teen pregnancy and STDs

I’m a bit concerned by the threat originating from the provinces east of Ontario as in that could be from my neck of the wood.

Alain

This violent rhetoric and action by anti-vaxxers seems to have increased as more are becoming aware and vocal about the harms anti-vaxxers and their activities are visiting upon the general public. Public sentiment is resoundingly against them, more physicians, politicians and the like are speaking out against them and they have become the brunt of late-night talk show hosts’ jokes. They have become “victims” of their own “success” and don’t like it.

I think in their victim role they are striking out in irrational ways. There’s an interestingly punitive bill just introduced by a Rep. Metcalfe in Pennsylvania to prohibit physicians from expelling electively non-vaccinating families:

The bill — House Bill 286, also known as the Informed Consent Protection Act — says a health provider could not “harass, coerce, scold or threaten” a patient or parent for refusing immunization. It would also forbid health insurers from penalizing doctors for low immunization rates. Doctors in turn could not accept bonuses or other incentives from insurance or drug companies for vaccinating patients.

(from https://tinyurl.com/yygbr3h6)

Man, someone is whizzin’ in AVers’ cheerios.

Isn’t it a little late to be talking about how fanatics might kill Doctors with whom they disagree?

Let’s have a moment of silence for
Dr. David Gunn (1993)
Dr. John Britton (1994)
Dr. Barnett Slepian (1998)
Dr. George Tiller (2009)
Numerous clinic workers and volunteers.

They were murdered because they were performing medical procedures some people don’t like, and the silence from the medical community was sad to behold.

Today we have the news that medical providers can decide they have moral objections, and refuse to provide the medical care their patients need. It seems to be getting worse every day.

”The US is very very violent right now, to the point where I get a little scared any time I go out to a concert or something, and we’re neck deep in Nazis.”

I hate Nazis.

That’s why I stopped going to Trans-Siberian Orchestra concerts. 🙁

Wait, what? Please not them too? It’s the one Christmas album I like!
Damnit.

More on Mikey:
Natural News, yesterday:
( long video I didn’t listen to it all- no need)

He doesn’t advocate violence…..but
In brief:
Tech giants ( apple, facebook, google, twitter, Wikipedia etc) are de-platforming/ insulting him, Alex Jones and anti-vaxxers ( i.e. Conservatives, Christians and white people)
There will be a false flag violent attack on said tech giants pinned on conservatives, Christians, Independent media ( him) et al.
shooting their execs, maybe even Trump ( why shoot their own? I ask politely)
These companies would like to exterminate most of mankind and merge the leftovers with machines .Funded by Soros.

Unlike Del and Andy, this guy has fans with lots of guns

That’s a level unhinged that appears to be becoming more and more prevalent, or is it just before the interweb it never saw the light of day that often I wonder.

We’ve all seen how violent these conspiracy mongers tend to be.

As health professions we live in dangerous times. Though working in palliative care I’m lucky I suppose.

That’s a level unhinged that appears to be becoming more and more prevalent, or is it just before the interweb it never saw the light of day that often I wonder.

I think there’s a combination of things here that goes with most Conspiracy Theories, mostly from observation so pinch of salt required;

The internet has allowed them to find like-minded people to share their ‘theories’ with, creating a self-reinforcing bubble
It’s easier to filter your information sources on the internet (admittedly I think we’re all guilty of this to some degree), now you don’t have to read\watch that CNN article when someone has done it for you.
Stupid edgelord behaviour goading people on and the teenage rebels just being contrarian.

Couple all this with a major political leader happy to lead with conspiracy theories as a first defence and you’ve got a nasty combination.

I think that the vast majority of these threats are from internet tough guys but all it takes is for them to egg on that one person who’s willing to put words into actions.

There has been quite a lot of dialogue in the organizing community about what they call stochastic terrorism. That is creating, as Orac describes, creating a climate of violence against an identifiable group through extreme rhetoric. The purpose is to encourage “lone wolf” type attacks on the desired target while keeping plausible deniability for the creators of the climate of violence. Whenever they are challenged on these grounds they cry “Freedom of Speech” with the ironic twist that they want to restrict the speech of others by killing them, or at least giving others reason to fear for their lives.

Can you say more on this? specifically, what is “the organizing community”, and I would love to read more in depth about this if there is anything.

The angle I never see considered is that not all the ones who act out violently for a cause are doing it not because they’re true believers, but adopt a belief that will give them a reason to commit violent acts.
The perfect storm was the Da’esh caliphate. Where else in the world could a psychopath murder, torture, rape, and steal not only with impunity but with societal approval? I’m sure it was the same kind of attraction that led many Germans to become brownshirts and SS; not only all the advantages of Da’esh but also sharp-looking uniforms with lots of leather.

Death threats against doctors and nurses…

I made death threats against two doctors. One of which I still haven’t rescinded due to safety concerns. It happily keeps this doctor at bay, since it’s been a year or so I haven’t heard from this punk.

Some doctors also are having some anger management issue. Doctors making death threats to another doctor. Over what? Transparency…

https://www.vox.com/health-care/2014/11/14/7216655/leana-wen-whos-doctor

Not an overly laid back bunch, these doctors.

On the science front, always these kind of studies. Sketchy case studies where the patient agressor is never asked to expose what led him to this act in his own words. Scientific naturalism? Or “false balance”? Anyhow: information concealment, which doesn’t really help understand these cases.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497004/

Oh. And one of my all time favourites:

@Narad: I’m done with the bitching part. Now back to your statement that I’m passive aggressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior

“Passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of indirect resistance to the demands or requests of others and an avoidance of direct confrontation.”

On the count of “indirect resistance to the demands or requests of others”, I believe that I more than willingly obliged to the manifestation your infantile annoyance. You wished you had a killfile again. I obliged and shut up. So I do not plead guilty here.

On the count of “avoidance of direct confrontation”, I plead fully guilty, and I have no qualms. For two reasons: 1. I do not see why I should sacrifice my goals for the petty pleasure of direct confrontation; and 2. I do not believe more direct confrontation would be welcome on this blog anyhow.

Told you: I do not care either way about passive aggressive “horseshit”. Live with it. And abandon mind reading games with me. Not worth it.

F68.10: Have you ever gone to work with the knowledge that someone you have never met, never interacted with even indirectly (friends or family) wants to kill you? That is the kind of threat we are talking about here.

For me, it was animal rights extremists.

For the doctors and nurses in this article it is anti-vaxxers.

And now you are here telling us that you have threatened to kill doctors? You know that’s a crime in a lot of countries, right?

I don’t understand or car whatever you an Narad are about, but taking pride in threats of violence and death aren’t acceptable. I tried to engage with you, but you are frankly scaring me.

” Have you ever gone to work with the knowledge that someone you have never met, never interacted with even indirectly (friends or family) wants to kill you?”
I’m an autistic bisexual Jewish liberal in an interracial marriage. So, yeah, pretty much every day, including days off.

I don’t understand or car whatever you an Narad are about

In the previous post, I told him that he had been getting on my nerves. Correlation is not causation, but the Derangometer seems to have been turned up to 11 here.

Back in the Ion Cleanse post, MJD says ” Carbon dioxide is colorless, tasteless, and considered an irritant…”.
In response, IUPAC has declared that the chemical symbol for carbon dioxide will henceforth no longer be CO2, but MJD.

From that same webpage: “It does not apply to the comparison and analysis of two similar issues in terms such as why some are given more social prominence than others.”

You’re therefore self-refuting. Don’t bug me with fallacious fallacies if it has the effect of inducing me to break the self-imposed “no more than 2 comments” rule that I’m trying to abide to. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Off topic:

F67.10 (aka F68.10) writes,

Don’t bug me with fallacious fallacies if it has the effect of inducing me to break the self-imposed “no more than 2 comments” rule that I’m trying to abide to.

MJD says,

I admire how you self regulate, F67.10. Therefore, you will be rewarded one (1) point and return to F68.10. Understand, it’s Alain not Narad who deserves respect in that when Orac’s gone -> -> -> Alain rules.

@ Alain,

Thanks for doing such a great job of handling RI in Orac’s absence! I’ll never forget how close you were to hitting the ban-button but you showed your quality, the very finest!

If this video really is what the title says then it is a SNUFF FILM. Please do not ask people to watch someone die! It is incredibly harmful, cruel, inappropriate, and just plain awful.

And let’s hide reality and stick our heads in the sand.

(Orac, if you think it’s too much, please take action and remove the video)

JustaTech, I take no pride in all I mentioned. And you have no reason to be scared of me. Perhaps more to be scared for me. And thanks for having tried to engage. I have trouble reciprocating. Sorry.

And yes, I’ve experienced going to work with permanents threats over me. Not death threats, but disturbing things enough.

All I wanted to say is that while antivaxxers are full of shit, and that they’re dangerously laying the ground for violence, they haven’t yet done such violent things as they’re portrayed to. And people on the side of medicine ought to reflect a bit more about what’s going on in hospitals before standing out all high and mighty.

So, ok, it’s a snuff movie (though I’m so used to violence in the context of healthcare that weirdly it elluded me that this kind of stuff was wrong to show to anyone in the general public). But the point is that horrendous and inexcusable things happen rather often in the healthcare system, and that it bothers almost no one. Whereas Del BigTree hasn’t killed anyone yet.

OK. I consumed my 2 comments. Finished for this post. I’ll try more indirect confrontation next time, if the snuff movie doesn’t get me banned.

Whereas Del BigTree hasn’t killed anyone yet.

Give him time.

@F68.10
In the Netherlands there was the case of a woman who tried to kill the pediatrician who had vaccinated her child.

These scum will mass attack anyone who pops up in the media as being pro child health or decrying the damage the AV cult is doing.

This poor mum’s kid , too young to be vaccinated, caught measles from some disease vector child, and now she’s a target for these hate mongers.

https://www.al.com/news/2019/05/mother-of-alabama-measles-patient-attacked-online-for-vaccination-comments.html?fbclid=IwAR1TL2SwUxKCGXPya5cV2143x99-V373Uee4wd1QbzgIITxWNPrL59w3ibU

VOR: The CBC article says the threats originated south of the boarder.

Cue me being completely unsurprised. I imagine the anti-vax citizens of Alberta are too busy working to make death threats.

DB: Theater and concerts are my two main social outlets. I’m into quite a few punk and metal acts, so yeah, running into nazis is a bit of a concern. Thankfully the local scene had a go-round with the Nazi problem in the ’80s, so that sort of stuff gets shut down quickly, for now. A year ago, a local club owner was outed as being a Nazi, his entire staff quit, and within a week, it was shuttered.

I’m sorry for your loss. I know Russia’s moved hard-right in recent years, but wow. That said, it’s been really weird to watch the current generation of Nazis profess affection for Russia, given that Russia was an ally during World War 2, and Slavs were high on the list of undesireables the 1940s Nazis wanted dead.

F68: though I’m so used to violence in the context of healthcare that weirdly it eluded me that this kind of stuff was wrong to show to anyone in the general public.

Um, wow. Unless you are either a medic in the armed forces in an active combat zone or a paramedic, that sentence is hugely problematic. It’s to the point where I’m wondering if you know that “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest” wasn’t a documentary.

the microbes have evolved to evade the vaccines

Is this true for anything but the swing to the (milder) B. parapertussis?

AFAIK, no. Well, it’s not vaccine-driven.
We may have selected strains of microbes which differ sufficiently from the vaccine strain, as to be not covered by the vaccine-induced immunity, but apart from this… That’s why there have been multiple generations of the anti-rotovirus or anti-HPV vaccines, to include more circulating strains in the vaccine.
Well, that’s the case with the flu vaccine; an extreme case, as each year different strains which show up. But this will happen naturally, whether there is a flu vaccine or not. So it’s not driven by the vaccine.
AFAIK again, vaccines manufacturer do update the strains they are using for vaccine production, from time to time.
In addition, as the strains selected for making vaccines are usually the most active/virulent floating around, that means the other strains which may come to “replace” them are less pathogen. “Replace” may be too strong a word, the milder strains were already around, it’s just that we don’t notice them when their more savage cousins are also infecting us. I don’t see any issue with focusing on highly pathogens strains and letting, for now, milder forms go around.
I would have thought that the advocates for natural immunity would actually like having these strains around…

More generally, I guess it’s possible that would happen. There is an evolution pressure on the pathogens to evade our immune system after all.
But, heck:
– that’s why synthetic/single-protein vaccines focus on making our immune system recognize specific parts of one protein, parts the pathogen cannot change because they are essential to the protein’s function
– this evolution pressure is put on by our immune systems, not the vaccine. Pathogens learning to evade our immune system will do so as well when confronted with naturally-acquired immunity.

IIRC, the last measles divergence was in the 1950s, so no, not vaccines.

From the studies I’ve seen, there’s no definitive evidence of HPV vaccination “selecting” for non-vaccine HPV types. For instance:

“Vaccination is expected to reduce the prevalence of HPV vaccine types, but there is a theoretical concern that vaccine introduction may affect the distribution of other oncogenic types and induce type-replacement [27]. Similar to other observational studies [20, 28–30], our data provide no evidence of type-replacement a few years after HPV vaccine introduction. In their meta-analysis. Drolet et al. [29] found no statistically significant difference in the prevalence of HR-non-vaccine types between pre- and post-vaccination periods in any of the age groups studied (13-19 years and 20-24 years). In women aged 20-24 years, a small, but not statistically significant, increase in non-vaccine HR-HPV types (relative risk: 1.09, 95% CI: 0.98-1.22) was found to be negatively associated with increasing vaccination coverage (P =0.03) [29]. A recent meta-analysis by Mesher et al. [31] shows a significant increase in some HR non-vaccine types (HPV 39, HPV 52) in the post-vaccine era. These results, as well as the HPV types found to be significantly increased, are inconsistent between age groups, vaccine type (bivalent vs quadrivalent), and according to the methodological quality of studies, suggests random fluctuation. When only studies with a low potential for bias were considered, no statistically significant difference was observed.”

http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5769466/

The addition of coverage against more HPV types in newer-generation HPV vaccines reflects improvements in those vaccines, not necessitated by replacement of vaccine strains by other oncogenic strains.

Denice Walter asked, “What I don’t get about Kent is that he gave up a career as a lawyer to become a high school science teacher? Is that a good choice financially?”

According to a “Agent Smith,” a lawyer who commented some years ago, Heckenlively “graduated from what essentially is now an unaccredited, unlicensed law school.” [FWIF, law graduates from Heckenlively’s Golden Gate University had [i]the lowest employment rate among the 196 law schools surveyed[/i] in 2014–almost ten points below the next-worst school.]

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2011/07/13/a-disturbing-post-on-an-anti-vaccine-blog/

That makes sense. I was guessing that he failed somehow as an attorney/ was tossed from employment etc.
But notice that he signs himself, adorned with the title JD ( Bolen Report)

I’m ashamed to say that here in the Netherlands, we already experienced an antivaccine-driven murder attempt.

Translation:
4-year jail sentence and psychiatric custody for stabbing pediatrician
A 37-year-old woman received a four-year jail sentence with mandatory psychiatric custody for stabbing a pediatrician in a pediatric health center in Zoetermeer. The court decided found the woman guilty of attempted homicide.
The pediatrician had been receiving threats from the woman for more than a year, as the woman held the pediatrician responsible for her son’s autism, according to a local news station. The woman claims that her son developed autism after a vaccination administered by the pediatrician.

Switchblade
Late August 2016, the woman succeeded in entering the secured health care center, made her way to the pediatrician’s office, and proceeded to stab the doctor in her head with a switchblade knife. Alarmed doctors managed to subdue the assailant and administered first aid to their colleague.

The court decided that the woman suffered from diminished capacity. Accordingly, the woman was sentenced to mandatory psychiatric custody after her jail time; she is also sentenced to pay the sum of 8000 euros to the pediatrician, who has not been able to resume her job since the attack; the question is if she can ever take up her work again.”

(and the answer to the latter question is no, at least up until now)

Oh, my apologies, I missed your remark on this.
Anyway, I find it rather strange that a rather serious incident like this goes totally unnoticed in the international press, whereas any (real) problem involving vaccines is covered globally, such as the incident where two Samoan kids died because of human error when preparing the vaccines.

Never mind, you gave a complete description of the case, while I didn’t.

Over the past several years, I’ve read quite a few letters “written” ( not sent AFAIK) to doctors who vaccinated and thus, “destroyed” anti-vaxxers’ children, “giving” them autism. Although I’ve searched at TMR and RI,, I haven’t been able to find one of the most memorable, Alison MacNeil’s** epistle to “Dr Asshat”- although I’m sure someone else at RI will recall it; there are also some at AoA although I can’t recall who wrote what.

Basically, they vent their anger and hatred for the “evil” doctors who “ruined” their children’s lives.

Material like this can stoke the fury of others who are similarly mis-informed about vaccines and possibly goad them on- hopefully never to action beyond attending rallies, writing incensed letters or e-mails. Similarly, outlets like prn.fm and Natural News spew more general anathema towards SBM, equating professionals with criminals, sociopaths and genocidal maniacs.
I hope that this remains in yhe realm of fantasy along with their “science” ***

** believe it or not, she teaches social work at reality-based universities according to her CV
*** sorry for all the scare quotes but it is what it is

“I haven’t been able to find one of the most memorable, Alison MacNeil’s** epistle to “Dr Asshat”- although I’m sure someone else at RI will recall it.”

Here you go:

https://therefusers.com/the-letter-i-wish-i-could-send-to-my-old-pediatrician-thinking-moms-revolution/

My favorite part:

“And the condescending CYA (cover your ass) note that you wrote in the chart about ‘mom not following your advice’ was a nice touch too. Following your advice not to try new bio medical interventions to heal my sick and injured baby would have had more toxic results than anything that we tried.” (That seems unlikely: MacNeil promoted the administration of industrial bleach to vulnerable children with ASD, and, as I recall, dosed her son several times each day—even waking him every night so he wouldn’t miss his bleach—for months or years.)

I looked up The Refusers. It’s kinda weird. Are they a band that’s vehemently anti vaccine or does the anti vaccine crowd have their very own band, and if so can we get a band too please?

They are a band made up of people associated with the anti-vaccine movement. The band leader is vehemently anti-vaccine. Don’t know the views of the other members.

I seem to remember there being a band somewhere that did some pro vaccine songs. Someone else will know. Just don’t ask me to be in a band as I am musically incompetent.

My musical activities are limited to composing. So don’t ask me to play in a band, unless you want some synthesizer-drones in the background.

Now it’s time to come with band names. The Germinal Centers? Nah.

Nice exposition, Sophy Cooper. I give the performance 7/10. Though, on the visual interpretation, all of the female vocalists were kinda thicc.

And once they convince themselves they ‘have to save the children,’ the mass murders begin. We’ve seen it countless times with crazy people in TV movies, film, and Planned Parenthood clinics.

Chris: Just don’t ask me to be in a band as I am musically incompetent.

So are they. A member of the refusers showed up on a different blog I follow, spammed the place with links to their soundcloud, and was driven out by the relentless snickering. I also notice they don’t seem to get any real professional gigs aside from anti-vax events.

my cytokine storm will fuck you up, antigen boy

you been served!

“My Cytokine Storm” – is that an anti-vax tribute band to My Chemical Romance?

“Cytokine Stormfront” would be perfect for a white nationalist antivax band.

“A member of the refusers showed up on a different blog I follow, spammed the place with links to their soundcloud, and was driven out by the relentless snickering. I also notice they don’t seem to get any real professional gigs aside from anti-vax events.”

They could have a niche doing weddings and bar mitzvahs. And I think I caught a glimpse of them playing at the opening of a new Chick-Fil-A in Waukegan.

In other anti-vax news…

Two well-known anti-vaxxers are disheartened when their heroes/ crushes voice support for vaccines:

— Jake Crosby ( Autism Investigated) is unhappy that the candidate he worked for in the 2016 election ( the Donald) who had previously expressed autism/ vaccine views is now telling people to be vaccinated. Jake presents an image of a burning MAGA hat. Relax, Jake, your family with benefit from his tax breaks for the wealthy.

— Kim Rossi ( @ KimRossi1111) is disappointed that Howard Stern, whom she quotes/ follows/ admires, supports vaccines.
She notes that his daughters are not “vaccine injured” whilst her own are.

Oh God, use your kids for mileage why don’t you. One person had the temerity to tell Rossi on Twitter that their child’s autism wasn’t due to vaccines; Rossi implied that, in that case, they were lying about having a child with autism! Such compassion.

She notes that his daughters are not “vaccine injured” whilst her own are.

Despite, of course, her youngest’s being unvaccinated.

Her youngest was not vaccinated but I think that Kim would still call her “vaccine injured” because the vaccines that Kim got more than 40 years ago caused her autism.
What is that: intergenerational osmosis? It’s probably even stronger than the usual scenario.

Denise Walker – of course what that means is that the anti vaccine crowd have the perfect argument. You don’t need to have been vaccinated to be “vaccine injured”. I would love to be able to use that argument at work – “I don’t have to actually do any work to “work” so just give me my pay and don’t disturb my nap till it’s knock off time.” Yeah we know how well those arguments work in the real world.

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