Reminder that in the UK in 1900, before mass vaccination for childhood diseases began, 20% of all babies died before their fifth birthday (from diseases we currently vaccinate them against).

geraint

@cstross My stepfather had polio. As a child he spent a year in isolation, thinking he would die. For the rest of his life he has had a hunched back and almost no use of his left arm and hand. He would tell you he was one of the lucky ones.

Timo

@cstross callous and selfish people like the MAHA folks need callus and selfish responses. Its all they understand. One such response in the 'my tax dollars range' : It is my tax dollars they are wasting. Why should my tax dollars pay to treat you when you could have been vaccinated? My tax dollars paid for that vaccine, why are you wasting it. Its not the government, it's my tax dollars. Etc blah blah.

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈

@cstross

The lifelong effects of polio on survivors are particularly awful. One wouldn't want to inflict it on a worst enemy, let alone your own kids.

webhat

@cstross I wonder when the rest of the world will start requiring USians to have proof of vaccination before entering the country

🍂mastodonphan🍁

@cstross RFucK Jr is a pedophile-protecting infanticider.

Graydon

@cstross If you want to reverse the demographic transition, you have to kill a lot of infants.

If you don't reverse the demographic transition, patriarchy goes away.

("The environment produces the organism" is always the case; other things are the case, too, but what you can have is constrained by the environment which exists, not which could exist. And for humans, cites are an environment and culture is an environment.)

Anti-vax is a "kill babies, keep patriarchy" movement.

Charlie Stross

@graydon So, a death cult.

Graydon

@cstross Not precisely; they're not about generalized dying, they're willing to kill a lot of kids to maintain their status.

Can't enjoy that status if they're dead.

(Real death cults tend to be powerless people who want everyone to die as a means of escaping their circumstances. There's certainly some death cult members getting sucked into the grift but even those are mostly built on histrionics about a lack of white supremacy rather than material misery as such.)

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫

@graydon @cstross

They're aligned with all the other anti-human movements on the right (anti immigration, forced birth, fuck everything to fulfil the prophesies in Revelations, cops do murders whenever they like, healthcare for profit, prisons for profit) so death cult is a convenient shorthand.

Whenever a new policy question comes up that hasn't been assigned to Woke or MAGA yet, MAGA will pick the option with more death a statistically significant amount of the time.

Boerps ☑️

@cstross

#Polio:

Graydon

@petealexharris A death cult is about everybody dying, usually because $DIETY has become disgusted with mankind and will slaughter everybody and the goal of the cult is to bring about that end of the world.

The Right contains some death cultists (Premillennial dispensationalism is extremely death cult) but most of what we're seeing is eliminationist; they want to extirpate everyone else and dwell alone in the earth. They themselves don't want to die or the world to end.

@cstross

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫

@graydon @cstross

A thoughtful distinction, and I'm not rejecting it out of hand, but for the 99% of the world who aren't them, it's a distinction without a difference.

OvertonDoors

@bart @cstross it's not a reasoned ideology. It's core ideas are anti-reason, that's why it's called reactionary. This is what a will to power looks like from ignorant people. They start from the supposition that the world can be carved into their image of how it should be.

Graydon

@petealexharris It is, alas, nowhere near 99%.

The distinction may have operational utility in opposing their policies; for example, the "all these babies will die! look at the tombstones in old graveyards!" response to anti-vax policies functions to confirm the objectives and purposes of the anti-vax movement. It's about killing babies; that's what it wants. Telling its members that babies will die is not an effective means of dissuasion.

@cstross

A Sweet Gentleman

@Infoseepage @cstross Unfortunately, at least in America, anti-vax parents are so brainwashed that if they lose a child they either say "it's God's will, there's nothing we could have done anyway" or "they died of something else that doctors say, essential oils totally work."
By definition these people ignore facts and reality.

Edelruth In The Wrong Timeline

@sdarlington @cstross

That's been true since always. I arrived mid-eighties, and it was a topic in nursing school then.

Edelruth In The Wrong Timeline

@MyrddinEmerys @cstross

The vaccine arrived when I was in elementary school. My parents no longer sent us to the country for the summer to protect us.

Every grade had a child in calipers when I was growing up.

The vaccine is a secular miracle.

Infoseepage

@aSweetGentleman @cstross My aunt convinced my diabetic uncle that what he needed was a series of wacky diets and to make sure to wear his magnetic bead bracelet instead of regular glucose monitoring and insulin. He died by inches having bits cut off him regularly. If he'd listened to normal doctors instead of engaged with quackery, it is likely he'd still be alive now. Worst decline and death I've personally witnessed. I have a raging hate for snake oil peddlers.

A Sweet Gentleman

@Infoseepage @cstross Same.
And I've 0 tolerance for parents who literally abuse their children just to prove something: "I do my own research" "It's a government conspiracy" "It's MY child I do whatever I want with it"...

🔏 Matthias Wiesmann

@cstross Well, one way to improve the GDP per capita…

Wandering Adventure Party

Reminder that in the UK in 1900, before mass vaccination for childhood diseases began, 20% of all babies died before their fifth birthday (from diseases we currently vaccinate them against).