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The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach – not just for coronavirus, but all diseases – amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers
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- Title
- Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to minors - not just for COVID-19
- Word count
- 1528 words
'I never said I want that. I said I want that as an option.'
That's some next-gen doublespeak.
What the actual fuck? Are we sliding back into the Middle Ages here?
Polio bout to make a huge comeback.
Another example of the continued march of anti-intellectualism. It's always been a thing, but it was never digitally powered before.
Side note: Frustrating as it is, when engaging with this and other conspiracy fueled craziness in the public square, the sentiment: "what the fuck you fucking fucks?!" feels right.
But that's exactly what anti-intellectualism is: feeling over reason. Emotion only fuels the fire.
The voting base behind these kinds of politicians aren't malicious, they're ignorant, afraid and, largely, poor. They're victims of recent trends in far right rhetoric.
I fully share your frustrations, but I think this is actually a misdiagnosis. I think it’s actually prejudice that fuels the fire. Emotion gets scapegoated because we think it’s the opposite of reason, but it’s primarily prejudice that keeps people in these loops. That’s the hook by which their fears are activated, and it’s also one of the factors that keeps them from processing contrary information. Prejudice has an isolating effect, and it’s one that can be preyed upon easily.
Antivax information doesn’t just land because people are scared; it lands because they see scientists/medical experts/the left as an “other” who they are willing to discard wholesale. This is what allows the misinformation to gain such a stronghold in the first place, as well as allowing it to go unchecked and uncorrected for so long. Just look at how COVID became and remains a polarized political issue in the United States instead of a common human crisis. The emotional component here is more a side-effect of the situation rather than its driving force.
I think it’s perfectly okay for you to feel your “what the fuck you fucking fucks?!” feeling. I feel the same way, and have felt a great many things throughout this whole COVID crisis. The fear I felt helped me take precautions that kept me and others safe, and the despair I felt helped me understand the gravity of the situation and the depth of the loss the world has faced as a result of this disease. Denying these for a lens of cold rationality sanitizes our situation and saps it of its resonance, which I think is its own sort of separate problem. But in this context, I don’t think the emotions are the problem — they only become the problem when they become entrenched to the point of immutability — when they’re unable to be the subjects of self-reflection or respond to new inputs. That toxic calcification, I believe, comes primarily from the rigidity of deeply entrenched prejudices rather than the properties of emotion itself.
Also, sorry if this comes across like a pedantic correction to you. I wasn’t trying to shoot your post down. More than anything else, I share your feelings on this. I too, am frustrated and feel powerless. I also, like you, think much of the voting base is a victim of right-wing media tactics, which work tirelessly to inflame prejudice as a control tactic.
You are completely right. I have been desperately trying to understand why these people think the way they do and at the core this is exactly the problem. They believe in “alternative facts”. You cannot convince them of things contrary to their beliefs because those beliefs are core to their personality and worldview. It’s why you see them constantly looking for external validation for them, why you constantly see them parroting talking points among themselves.
That’s why you should always stand your ground against them whenever they try to use intellectualism against you. They say that they are being censored, that their viewpoints are becoming a social liability. That’s because their ideas have already been through the so-called “marketplace of ideas” and we already know those ideas are junk. Many of them have not only been entertained, but have been made into the law of the land, and we have seen firsthand how disastrous the results have been.
Our government is in shambles because our society allows people to never need to critically examine their beliefs, and that pisses me off.
Perhaps the worst idea the right has is this extreme view on individualism. That’s the primary reason why they hate every piece of progressive legislature to be proposed. If something bad happens to you, it’s always your own fault. Are you homeless? Just get a job, freeloader! And of course they accomplished everything they have in this life without anyone else’s help. If we’re lucky they might give some credit to their parents for raising them. It is the reason why they refuse to take social programs seriously; if they really work, then a core idea that they base their sense of self on is no longer true. It would damage their ego and force them to realize all the people that they have both directly and indirectly hurt.
This sounds like semantics to me. Prejudice is emotional. The process you describe, whereby fear (and friends) makes people vulnerable to misinformation and resistant to entertaining contrary information once the propaganda has been associated with their identity... that's an emotional process.
One that has been well studied and quantified. If you can get the amygdala involved, you can convince people to believe anything you want.
Predjudice is a symptom rather than a cause.
One of the causes is conspiracy theories. The reason a lot of these people see relevant experts as other is because they have been led to believe that it's all a hoax. They believe COVID is a tool of the controlling elite to do X. There are a few competing values for X.
Their susceptibility to those conspiracy theories is at least partly the result of too little blood in their forebrains as a result of fear, and the anger that goes with it.
Whether we call it prejudice or emotion, my point was that responding to it with more base emotion won't get us anywhere productive. Compassion and empathy would be useful though.
I think for me it's about distinguishing between emotions in general and prejudice as a subset of that. I know lots of emotional people but few of them are anti-vaxxers or COVID deniers. I also know some very intelligent, rational people who are. The common denominator for the people I know who still think COVID and vaccines are politicized fictions/weapons are those who hold a deep-seated contempt for large swaths of society, which is why I see prejudice as the root rather than emotion itself.
But ultimately I'm sorry, as I wasn't trying to nitpick your post and definitely think I came across that way. I agree with far more in your post than I disagree with but I didn't convey that well at all. Above all else I'm with you on the idea that we need more compassion and empathy across the board, including and maybe even especially for those that fail to return that in kind.
Thanks for clarifying. For me, empathy has the side benefit of making it a little easier to accept the insanity that is our current social and political landscape.
An actual disaster waiting to happen as pediatric vaccinations were already significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic:
Not surprising. I haven't been to the doctors since August 2019.
I should really schedule my yearly physical....
The top vaccine official in Tennessee was fired as part of this. She published a statement in The Tennessean: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2021/07/12/covid-19-tennessee-fired-vaccine-official-michelle-fiscus-fears-state/7945291002/
We've already had measles outbreaks in California in late 2014/early 2015, and that was before things got this intense (I think it originated in California, spread at Disneyland, and spread around California from there, but luckily stayed in the state). With an entire state government on board with this, with a political motive behind it, I think we, at least in the US, should be braced and ready for a nationwide uptick in many of these diseases because of how interconnected the states are.
This isn't even about COVID, this is about measles, chicken pox, even polio.
Man this is absolutely insane.
If something isn't done (and honestly I have no idea what can even be done) this is going to get so much worse. State to State inequality is going to get so much worse as people see policies like this being enacted and decide not to move there (or moving out after they pass.)