- cross-posted to:
- health@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- health@lemmy.world
Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
For more than 40 years, Mississippi had one of the strictest school vaccination requirements in the nation, and its high childhood immunization rates have been a source of pride. But in July, the state began excusing children from vaccination if their parents cited religious objections, after a federal judge sided with a “medical freedom” group.
Today, 2,100 Mississippi schoolchildren are officially exempt from vaccination on religious grounds. Five hundred more are exempt because their health precludes vaccination. Dr. Daniel P. Edney, the state health officer, warns that if the total number of exemptions climbs above 3,000, Mississippi will once again face the risk of deadly diseases that are now just a memory.
“For the last 40 years, our main goal has been to protect those children at highest risk of measles, mumps, rubella, polio,” Dr. Edney said in an interview, “and that’s those children that have chronic illnesses that make them more vulnerable.” He called the ruling “a very bitter pill for me to swallow.”
Mississippi is not an isolated case. Buoyed by their success at overturning coronavirus mandates, medical and religious freedom groups are taking aim at a new target: childhood school vaccine mandates, long considered the foundation of the nation’s defense against infectious disease.
You two are argueing the semantics of ‘well-educated’, the one version meaning to have any higher education, the other to also have a well rounded, universal education. Both are valid definitions.
Actually we’re not. I’m arguing against blaming this by framing it as a problem of the well educated. Someone can be well educated yet poorly learned. It’s not their education that’s causing them to make bad decisions. It’s just really disingenuous and misleading to claim then that it is caused largely by well-educated people. Especially when there are others differing levels of education claiming other absurdities like microchips in vaccines. It isn’t unique or special to well educated people on the whole. In fact, well educated well learned, people defer to the experts on the matter and don’t run with the anti-vaccine stance.
The problem is our increasingly profit driven, sensationalist, yellow journalism over the last half century. The seed of this whole anti-vax movement was placed by a crackpot quickly debunked researcher. Then seeking views/clicks untold outlets started publishing it as if it were some sort of confirmed verified truth. Remember when eggs were bad? MSG? Etc etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc etc ad nauseam. They never were. It was simply gross misrepresentation of actual research. It was either later proven false speculation or inaccurate.
There’s been a concerted movement over the last half century plus to vilify the educated. We shouldn’t play into it. If you wanna blame people who should know better. I’m down. But only after we enact some small consequence for our widespread yellow journalism problem. Preying upon people’s ignorance and fear to make a buck.
Nobody has a fully well rounded education. You can’t live that long. We all have gaps.
Otherwise you are correct , different semantics.