This would just seem to further reinforce how much our current iteration of media is letting us down. Decades of underfunding, defunding and consolidated by billionaires has led us to this. It's...
This would just seem to further reinforce how much our current iteration of media is letting us down. Decades of underfunding, defunding and consolidated by billionaires has led us to this. It's no wonder the local Waterloo paper is the only one interested in doing actual reporting. The Waterloo area is probably just on the edge of being large enough for a news organization to still be able to do real local reporting.
That all said, I actually grew up around Amish, Mennonites and Anabaptists. While not all, they are largely insular communities by design. I am more familiar with Ohio groups, as that is where my mother was born, and there were no language barriers there. So I wonder if this is a recent issue for Waterloo or if that community has always been so isolated.
Regardless, this would all be solved super fast if we did the smart thing and required all kids to get proper vaccines with no religious exemptions, but then we can't even stop publicly funding Catholic schools in Ontario so I won't hold my breath.
None of the above texts seemed to me to be focused on the actual thing that caused Canada to lose its measles elimination status, which is the rampant spread of measles among old-order religious communities, particularly the Mennonites. (Mennonites are basically, like, Amish-lite. Amish people can marry into Mennonite communities if they want a more laid-back lifestyle, but the reverse is not allowed. Similarly, old-order Mennonites can marry into less traditionally-minded Mennonite communities, but the reverse is not allowed.)
...
When the Mennonites are brought up as a cause for the outbreak, it really puts a damper on the mood. The general sentiment both in the reddit comments and in the papers seems to be something like "oh, they're weird religious people, and therefore immune to logic about vaccines", but also "well you can't say mean things about religious people", so your only choice is to like, seethe in a corner?
But in reality, Mennonite parents do not want their children to die of measles, and they do not want to contract measles themselves. It seems to me like the largest barrier for them getting medical care and vaccination is that they are not fluent in English, they speak Low German.
....
If your measles outbreak comes from this sort of community, the solution isn't to fearmonger about anti-vaxxers. It is to train up and hire health care workers who can speak Low German. (To be clear, I think the PHUs are doing this, or at least the Ontario ones are. It's just the media industry that is kind of cluelessly fearmongering.)
In Alberta (another Mennonite population centre, and not coincidentally the other large site of the outbreak), there has been a 25% increase in demand for medical care in Low-German, and service has expanded from five to seven days a week.
In Ontario, three quarters(!!!!!!) of the 700 Mennonite community clients helped by a Low German-speaking personal support worker have agreed to be vaccinated.
And, like, yeah, to be clear, there are loads of Mennonites who are actually anti-vaccine. I am not disputing the obvious fact that, in religious communities, many people are against vaccinations. And 75% falls short of the 92-94% vaccination rate needed for herd immunity. But a 75% vaccination rate is much, much higher than I'd have hoped for?
This seems to go a bit deeper than “giving up on religious people cause we’re tired of them” and more “yet another government continues to only be one step above actively committing genocide...
This seems to go a bit deeper than “giving up on religious people cause we’re tired of them” and more “yet another government continues to only be one step above actively committing genocide against minority communities”
And like, I know thats hyperbolic, but come on, reaching out to a known at risk community only took literally speaking the language they speak. Such a low bar.
I really don't think there's nearly as much malice involved as you imply. Based on my (admittedly brief) research, Low German is a variant that differs from the standard High German taught in...
I really don't think there's nearly as much malice involved as you imply.
As a native Low German speaker, I would like to add that even with some informal education in High German, I have a hard time following it. My parents were of Mennonite descent, started a family in Canada, and primarily spoke Low German at home until my siblings and I began schooling in English. Had I not taken an interest in learning "regular German", or High German, as we called it, I would have been unable to comprehend even the simplest phrases. Growing up with Low German, I always considered it to be simple, funny language, practically synonymous with a lack of education. However, as I advanced in school and went on to college, I began to value the language and see it as a rare heritage. So, is it a language? Maybe not by the standard of a trained linguist, but I will always consider it to be one. As to the analogy about BBC English vs daily English, I think it is pretty far off. There is a great deal more difference between Low German and any other language than an accent. Probably a better analogy would be North American English vs. Some of the Creole variants spoken in Belize.
Another crucial detail not mentioned in that reply: Mennonite communities seem to speak a particular variant called Plautdietsch, which evolved to be even more different from other Low German variants since... Well, it developed outside Germany. And that means it'll have more regional slang and influences depending om where they settled. Also it doesn't have a written form, which makes it even harder to teach as a second language.
There don't seem to be many resources for Plautdietsch outside of engaging with native speakers, so that limits people's ability to learn it. Seems like the primary places that formally teach/study it are college classes as parts of linguistics or German studies programs, which aren't the kind of elective a regular student would choose for learning a second language. Theoretically, native speakers can probably still understand other Low German variants, but it still diverged enough to create some potential barriers and cause communication struggles so the translator would still need some time to learn those differences.
My point: the lack of language support doesn't seem like some malicious or deliberate slight against a minority by the government. It's more likely they just don't have many people with medical training who can speak it. From what I can find there are estimated to be about 70,000-80,000 people who speak Low German/Plautdietsch in Canada (out of a total population of over 40 million), and I assume most of them are Mennonites. So... Not a very big pool to draw from overall, though it helps that the languages tend to be clustered in specific regions around those communities.
It seems like their best bet is to recruit bilingual people from the Mennonite communities and train them in medicine, or at least teach them enough to serve as effective translators. It's vital that medical staff can explain what they're doing to patients and why, and breaking it down into something they can understand requires you yourself understanding what the procedure is. Like, the blog post mentions one instance of being unable to communicate to a mother "that she should wait in the car while they prepared a negative-pressure room." I for one am a layperson who has never heard of a negative-pressure room, so I'd need to know what that is first before explaining it to a very frantic parent or patient.
I don’t think engaging in that sort of hyperbole is at all helpful in understanding what’s going on. From the article: Maybe there’s better information somewhere else, though.
I don’t think engaging in that sort of hyperbole is at all helpful in understanding what’s going on.
From the article:
To be clear, I think the PHUs are doing this, or at least the Ontario ones are. It's just the media industry that is kind of cluelessly fearmongering.
Maybe there’s better information somewhere else, though.
Yeah, came here to comment... is the Amishy-Mennonite community that prevalent to interrupt vaccinations? I'm in the US, and I'm not anti-vax, but I'm definitely selective on what I feel should be...
Yeah, came here to comment... is the Amishy-Mennonite community that prevalent to interrupt vaccinations?
I'm in the US, and I'm not anti-vax, but I'm definitely selective on what I feel should be administered. That being said, I have made efforts not to have kids so I do not have that influence (though if I did, I would assure they would have the necessary basics: MMR and a few others).
I'm just a little shocked that Canada (which to me, with the health care system in place that ... while it's not the best at least there's regulation?) has this issue.
Ontario has religious exemptions. It has nothing to do with the quality of the health care system and entirely to do with the quality of the policies. As to your question about how disruptive the...
I'm just a little shocked that Canada (which to me, with the health care system in place that ... while it's not the best at least there's regulation?) has this issue.
Ontario has religious exemptions. It has nothing to do with the quality of the health care system and entirely to do with the quality of the policies.
As to your question about how disruptive the community is, I suppose it is all relative. It is a small community. We are talking about cases in the 100s for Waterloo and about 2400 in total for Ontario for 2025. Enough for us to officially lose our status of eliminating measles but also not big enough for us to be too worried, although it is worth watching. One advantage to the insular nature of the community is that they are unlikely to go to larger population centres. So they mainly infect themselves. At least for now.
I am sorry, but this is a type of anti-vax. And it's extremely harmful. What makes you qualified to say that the official medical recommendations are incorrect?
I'm not anti-vax, but I'm definitely selective on what I feel should be administered.
I am sorry, but this is a type of anti-vax. And it's extremely harmful. What makes you qualified to say that the official medical recommendations are incorrect?
This would just seem to further reinforce how much our current iteration of media is letting us down. Decades of underfunding, defunding and consolidated by billionaires has led us to this. It's no wonder the local Waterloo paper is the only one interested in doing actual reporting. The Waterloo area is probably just on the edge of being large enough for a news organization to still be able to do real local reporting.
That all said, I actually grew up around Amish, Mennonites and Anabaptists. While not all, they are largely insular communities by design. I am more familiar with Ohio groups, as that is where my mother was born, and there were no language barriers there. So I wonder if this is a recent issue for Waterloo or if that community has always been so isolated.
Regardless, this would all be solved super fast if we did the smart thing and required all kids to get proper vaccines with no religious exemptions, but then we can't even stop publicly funding Catholic schools in Ontario so I won't hold my breath.
From the blog posts:
...
....
This seems to go a bit deeper than “giving up on religious people cause we’re tired of them” and more “yet another government continues to only be one step above actively committing genocide against minority communities”
And like, I know thats hyperbolic, but come on, reaching out to a known at risk community only took literally speaking the language they speak. Such a low bar.
I really don't think there's nearly as much malice involved as you imply.
Based on my (admittedly brief) research, Low German is a variant that differs from the standard High German taught in schools. This reddit post on r/AskAGerman indicates it's radically different from standard German, to the point that native standard speakers would struggle to understand it. Made more complicated by how it can further vary by region, so even if you understand one region's variant, you may not understand another. It's to the point I see multiple people say they're essentially different languages.
And that led me to this Stack Exchange post about Low vs High German with a reply by someone who grew up in a Canadian Mennonite household:
Another crucial detail not mentioned in that reply: Mennonite communities seem to speak a particular variant called Plautdietsch, which evolved to be even more different from other Low German variants since... Well, it developed outside Germany. And that means it'll have more regional slang and influences depending om where they settled. Also it doesn't have a written form, which makes it even harder to teach as a second language.
There don't seem to be many resources for Plautdietsch outside of engaging with native speakers, so that limits people's ability to learn it. Seems like the primary places that formally teach/study it are college classes as parts of linguistics or German studies programs, which aren't the kind of elective a regular student would choose for learning a second language. Theoretically, native speakers can probably still understand other Low German variants, but it still diverged enough to create some potential barriers and cause communication struggles so the translator would still need some time to learn those differences.
My point: the lack of language support doesn't seem like some malicious or deliberate slight against a minority by the government. It's more likely they just don't have many people with medical training who can speak it. From what I can find there are estimated to be about 70,000-80,000 people who speak Low German/Plautdietsch in Canada (out of a total population of over 40 million), and I assume most of them are Mennonites. So... Not a very big pool to draw from overall, though it helps that the languages tend to be clustered in specific regions around those communities.
It seems like their best bet is to recruit bilingual people from the Mennonite communities and train them in medicine, or at least teach them enough to serve as effective translators. It's vital that medical staff can explain what they're doing to patients and why, and breaking it down into something they can understand requires you yourself understanding what the procedure is. Like, the blog post mentions one instance of being unable to communicate to a mother "that she should wait in the car while they prepared a negative-pressure room." I for one am a layperson who has never heard of a negative-pressure room, so I'd need to know what that is first before explaining it to a very frantic parent or patient.
I don’t think engaging in that sort of hyperbole is at all helpful in understanding what’s going on.
From the article:
Maybe there’s better information somewhere else, though.
As someone from a minority group, I think it’s fair to expect minority groups to be able to communicate in at least English or French.
Yeah, came here to comment... is the Amishy-Mennonite community that prevalent to interrupt vaccinations?
I'm in the US, and I'm not anti-vax, but I'm definitely selective on what I feel should be administered. That being said, I have made efforts not to have kids so I do not have that influence (though if I did, I would assure they would have the necessary basics: MMR and a few others).
I'm just a little shocked that Canada (which to me, with the health care system in place that ... while it's not the best at least there's regulation?) has this issue.
Ontario has religious exemptions. It has nothing to do with the quality of the health care system and entirely to do with the quality of the policies.
As to your question about how disruptive the community is, I suppose it is all relative. It is a small community. We are talking about cases in the 100s for Waterloo and about 2400 in total for Ontario for 2025. Enough for us to officially lose our status of eliminating measles but also not big enough for us to be too worried, although it is worth watching. One advantage to the insular nature of the community is that they are unlikely to go to larger population centres. So they mainly infect themselves. At least for now.
I am sorry, but this is a type of anti-vax. And it's extremely harmful. What makes you qualified to say that the official medical recommendations are incorrect?