Source
https://medium.com/@gautamtejasganes...n-52c530b1d518
"I am not an “anti-vaxxer”. This is *not* my pet issue.
I am not against the promotion of vaccination as one element of a good overall public health policy. I am not against their sensible use, especially considering the variety of circumstances people find themselves in worldwide. I do not think that they “don’t work.”
Do pesticides “work”? Sure — they do what they say they’re gonna do, more or less. Does that, in itself, justify using them? Maybe. It’s a matter of tradeoffs, priorities, and context.
I’m seeing a *lot* of *anti* “anti-vaxx” sentiment lately — particularly online.
I also noticed that recently, in short succession, all of the following prominent online entities publicly changed their policies on “anti-vaxx” content: Pinterest, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, GoFundMe.
They claimed to be “cracking-down” on the spread of harmful misinformation — all within a few weeks of each other, as I recall. What they did was remove, downregulate, or demonetize content; “blacklist” search terms (i.e. block *any* results for such terms as “vaccine”); and even ban books (!). Online opinion on this — and even reporting — tended to be laudatory and untroubled, as far as I could tell, conveying a sense of “Finally…”, and downplaying accusations of censorship or bias.
In trying to figure out what’s going on in all this, I’m struck by certain important angles on the topic that deserve more sober attention than they are getting. So I thought I’d add a few pieces to the puzzle here.
Caustic criticism of the “anti-vaxx” position is usually of a straw man — i.e. an artificially weak version, easy to ridicule, that doesn’t capture what’s really going on.
My sense is that this is either out of unfamiliarity — i.e. ignorance that there even *is* (or *could be*) an intelligible, articulable position (instead of just “misinformation”); or else the vehemence is a deliberate rhetorical move, justified by self-assurance of having the moral high ground. In some cases the result is that folks apparently feel just fine laying down highly mean-spirited comments.
Whereas the presence of vitriol in a discussion does not serve any public health need that I can see…
Are we strong enough to “steel-man” the “anti-vaxx” position, and see what it says at its best, before dismissing it?
Let’s see.
(Note: The first four points here are discussions of principle, roughly speaking, and thereafter the paper switches gears and drills down to consider things in detail.)
1. Even if you’d prefer there weren’t, or are sure that there *shouldn’t be*, there nonetheless *is* some kind of continuously unfolding public debate here.
Vaccination is in the news because of a seemingly intractable minority of folks who for their own reasons — some spurious & insupportable, others worth understanding — bunk what is widely taken to be the given knowledge of mainstream science and public health policy.
Lately there have been measles outbreaks in the USA, resulting in alarm, widespread censure of what has lately been labeled “vaccine hesitancy” by the WHO, and — perhaps most consequentially — highly contested legislation.
In the signing statement of former California governor Jerry Brown for bill SB 277, which ended personal belief exemptions in that state and was enacted into law in 2015, he writes that the law:
“…has occasioned widespread interest and controversy — with both proponents and opponents expressing their positions with eloquence and sincerity.”
“Eloquence and sincerity”?
Is that true, in your experience?"
Continued
https://medium.com/@gautamtejasganes...n-52c530b1d518