Most people don’t understand vaccines and being afraid of what you don’t understand is completely reasonable.
When you have influencers feeding on that fear and making it grow then it becomes an issue.
this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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Add to that we’re constantly being lied to it’s hard to know what the truth is and what isn’t unless you deeply research a topic, and honestly:
Most vaccine hesitant people use Facebook or YouTube to research which compounds the problem.
"Being afraid of what you don't understand is completely reasonable"
No it isn't... It's common, but not reasonable, and it's a big factor in so much bad about humanity. We need to teach people to specifically NOT be afraid of stuff they don't understand and instead learn more about that those things, and to never have strong opinions (which includes fear) about things they know nothing or little about.
Being afraid of what you dont understand is instilled to us by our own evolution. We lived tens of thousands of years in a state where unfamiliar berry or strange animal could mean death.
But you are right. School system svould be better in explaining what vaccines do and how they work and society should be better shooting misinformation down.
Also instead of ridiculing the antivacciners people should try to be polite and try to help them understand what vaccines are. Being hostile or condesending just makes people to withdraw in to their own safe belives
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What do you think the mask hating whiners are? They're toddlers with voting rights.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study#Public_trust
There's been a systematic undermining of public trust in health and safety instructions going on for decades.
Some of this distrust is earned as with Tuskegee, the bungled Anthrax vaccine, the Reagan Era response to the AIDS epidemic, scandals with weight loss drugs like Fen-phen and Redux, Oxycodone, etc.
Some of it is purely manufactured, with the CIA-sponsored agitation against the Chinese COVID vaccine being a major font of modern day anti-vax Truther Lore.
But to no-sell skepticism as just "you're a little baby who is scared of needles" really under plays the shift in attitude nationally. We used to be a country that whole heartedly embraced a preventative for small pox, polio, and influenza. Now we're more terrified of kids getting the shot that gives you bad grades in school than getting measels.
There’s been a systematic undermining of public trust in health and safety instructions going on for decades.
A lot of it perpetrated by those very industries themselves. It's the natural consequence of letting every facet of societal motivation be dictated by profit maximization.
Like I said in another comment, I think what the antivaxers are incapable of understanding and expressing is that they are not actually questioning the science, they are questioning the health care industry and the systems meant to keep them honest. And in that I would agree with them, if only they were able to articulate it.
I think what the antivaxers are incapable of understanding and expressing is that they are not actually questioning the science, they are questioning the health care industry and the systems meant to keep them honest.
A lot of the opposition to vaccination reads like fad diets and self-help trends from 20 or 30 years ago. You can prevent autism by fumbles around playing Motzart to your baby in utero? Meditating during Yoga? Eating chocolate? Pick your Oprah-sponsored poison.
But, like, why are we seeing a fixation on a proven medical treatment and not some generic "don't let your kids eat jelly beans" or "do headstands to get the blood flowing to the brain" hookum?
I think that's where you get to people really running afoul of an increasingly dysfunctional health media ecosystem. One whose reputation is bloated with empty promises about The Perfect Cancer / Alzheimer's Cure or Living Forever With Blood Transfusions. And then it's colliding with an actual system that just seems to throw enormous bills at you for pain killers and palliative care.
On the one end, there's supposed to be a recipe for perfect health if you have enough money. On the other, I can get a flu shot and still get the flu? How unfair.
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What I really dislike is the parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, because big pharma/nature best/other insane arguments, but then take them to an ER when they inevitably get that preventable disease. For fuck's sake, stay consistent. If you don't vaccinate, do not go to the hospital later.
Devil's Advocate: Being sick is an immediately visible problem; vaccinations... viruses are invisible and you don't see symtoms till its too late
Which is why we have decades of medical science that has gone to great lengths to discover these things. They can't be seen by the naked eye but they can be seen with a strong enough microscope. We know they exist and we know what they cause. We know how to prevent that from happening.
Yet these mouth breathing troglodytes have been conned into distrusting science on a fundamental level.
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once they get diptheria, wooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, as adults they will be even more scared. also you dont want chickenpox as an adult either.
I'm still pissed my insurance won't cover the shingles vax. Took over my right side and hurt like hell for, uh, six years now.
we've been begging for the shingles vaccine for years now. they won't even let us pay out-of-pocket. we're five years "too young" despite both my wife and i having already had shingles.
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Will they, though? I mean, the people who directly contract it might realize some regret and the error of their choices, some will be like smokers dying of emphysema that just keep smoking. Nothing will change them. The worst will be the kids that die, they never had a say in their medical treatment. There should be a lot of regret from the parents, but as we’ve seen, there’s plenty of stubbornness and mental gymnastics even then.
What I think antivaxers can't articulate is that what they don't actually trust is the health care industry, not the science behind vaccines themselves.
Which would be a valid concern, but that is not what they are saying.
You can trust medical science yet don't trust the providers, history is rife with examples of big business endangering the public for higher profit margins.
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If you're an American, having deep seated mistrust and skepticism of the medical establishment, pharma, and government is 1000% justifiable. Every one of these institutions has exploited, abused, abandoned, and murdered people, all in the name of public health.
As a person who grew up in poverty, the idea of trusting doctors and medical authorities is just as ridiculous as trusting the police.
Assuming that social problems are the sum of individuals making dumb choices is an easy shortcut that not only eliminates the discomfort of thinking about the issue, but has the added benefit to implying that you're superior.
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Being afraid of needles is fine though, right?
My mother has become, in her later years, a "well idk if they definitely cause autism but I did vaccinate all of you and I do have a kid with autism..." which like. whatever. I've been over talking to them for a while now anyway.
But when I was younger and getting vaccinated she always said,"you're gonna look at the wall in the other direction, it's gonna hurt for a few seconds then it'll be over and there's an ice cream place next door." And I have almost 0 medical anxiety, like I'll let new grads I'm precepting practice on me before I let them stick a real patient.
vs I remember when I was a swimming instructor in my early 20s sometimes a kid would start crying and their parent would come over to scream at them to behave and then it would take waaay longer to get their body to relax enough to float.
So while I'm sure it doesn't make or break every fear of needles or medical anxiety, I do think a LOT of it comes down to how the parent handles and ideally normalizes routine medical care.
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I hope so. Irrational fears are really hard to control.
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my brother is a 45 , socially he acts like a 8 year old all the time. Of course he worships trumps and refuses to get vaccinated ( even telling my elderly mom to not get the flu and covid shot) . This is why I only see him one day out of the year, and that will turn to Zero days of any time when my mom dies and he has no reason to come over for one day a year.
I'm only scared of vaccines because they're delivered via a needle. At this point I really shouldn't be acted of needles any more after injecting myself every week for ages, but for some reason I am 🤷♀️
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i dont have a problem with vaccines, theyre great and im glad they help people
but, recieving one is absolutely terrifying to be, due to some needle related trauma, and generally causes me to pass out or vomit :/
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I think the correct term for adults who are afraid of them is 'bitch baby'
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