The anti-vaccination movement represents a genuine health threat to people all over the country, with many parents opting not to give their children harmless vaccinations which would protect both them and the public at large from dangerous diseases.
This past Tuesday, January 29, ABC News published a report revealing that there's a certain demographic of people most consistently falling for disinformation about vaccines and leaving their kids without.
Daniel Salmon, who serves as director of the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, described the type of person who tends not to vaccinate their children, according to their studies:
"[They] tend to be better educated. They tend to be white, and they tend to be higher income."
"They tend to have larger families and they tend to use complementary and alternative medicine like chiropractors and naturopaths."
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, agreed with Salmon's assessment, telling ABC anti-vaxxers "tend to be affluent and educated."
Studies have shown that being very wealthy tends to make people less concerned about the well-being of strangers, which could have an impact on wealthy children receiving vaccinations which are as important for the community as a whole as they are for the individual child receiving it.
Hotez also described the disinformation campaigns that are causing people to throw away their own safety and the lives of others:
"Compounding this is the fact that there's not been a commensurate pro-vaccine advocacy response."
"We're not hearing from the federal agencies, we're not hearing from all the usual pro-health advocates to counter the anti-vaccine lobby, so what's happened is the defense of vaccines have fallen to a handful of academics, including myself."
"The decision to fly in the face of near universal scientific opinion doesn't come as a result of a lack of intellect...as expert who have studied vaccines and immunology acknowledge that many parent who don't vaccinate their children are well-educated."
Twitter was less than surprised at the news that rich, white people were most likely to avoid vaccinations or to care about anyone else.
Twitter felt anti-vaxxers had something else in common.
Let's settle this once and for all: everyone who can should vaccinate their children.
The only people who should not vaccinate are those with legitimate medical reasons why they cannot. And those children's lives depend on people who can vaccinate doing so.
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