Beyond the antivaxx stuff MAHA is either banal or fake
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Anti-Vax Cartoon from 1892.
Curious, I looked up which vaccine was available in 1892. The only widespread vaccine at that time was for smallpox, first developed by Edward Jenner in 1796 using cowpox virus as protection against the deadlier disease.
Before vaccination, smallpox was one of humanity’s most feared and devastating diseases. It had a mortality rate of about 30% on average (though some outbreaks were far worse), and those who survived were often left with severe scarring or blindness.
Historians and epidemiologists can’t calculate an exact total, but estimates show that hundreds of millions, likely well over half a billion people, perished from smallpox across recorded history.
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A 22-year-old would have concocted a far more plausible story. "I hit a bear cub upstate, put it in my trunk then drove to a dinner party in Manhattan. At the party I realized I had to catch a flight and did not have time to dispose of it properly, so I dumped it in the park and blamed it on bicyclists."
When our daughter was approaching teen years we told her, "You and your friends are going to want to do something outside the rules so you will come up with what you think is a foolproof story. We will look at you and say, nah. we don't buy it. You know why? Because we told that same story long before you did.".
At 14 I would never have been stupid enough to float a story like RFK's.
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There are numerous states where writing a letter of objection is sufficient to get you out of the vax mandate. Hell, Florida might have been one already. But it seems that would have sufficed for any liberty concerns while keeping herd immunity relatively intact.
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Florida Man is making the "if they don't want to wear a helmet or seatbelt, they shouldn't be forced to" argument, which I can understand (but don't agree with in this case). The whooping cough vaccine, for example, doesn't have an impact on transmission of the sickness to others, but it does substantially reduce the severity if someone is exposed to the virus. Anyway, Florida Man is so focused on that "freedom/right" he doesn't realize how foolish and myopic his argument is.
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Who skip childhood vaccination?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/09/15/childhood-vaccines-parents-post-kff-poll/
The American parents who are choosing to skip or delay vaccines for their children are more likely to home-school their children, be White and very religious, identify as Republican or be under 35, ...
The CDC says 92.5 percent of kindergartners received their MMR vaccines last school year. But those rates are lower in parts of the country, ...
... but you need 95%+ vaccination rate for herd immunity for MMR to be effective.
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Think of how different that would have been 10 years ago.
4 years ago I was met with contempt here for merely asking the question whether MAGA’s anti-covid vax stance would generalize into Marin-county granola-chick style antivaxx sentiment.
