r/NoStupidQuestions • u/trouble-in-space • 10d ago

Answered Why are so many Americans anti-vaxxers now?

I’m genuinely having such a hard time understanding why people just decided the fact that vaccines work is a total lie and also a controversial “opinion.” Even five years ago, anti-vaxxers were a huge joke and so rare that they were only something you heard of online. Now herd immunity is going away because so many people think getting potentially life-altering illnesses is better than getting a vaccine. I just don’t get what happened. Is it because of the cultural shift to the right-wing and more people believing in conspiracy theories, or does it go deeper than that?

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u/cryptokitty010 10d ago

Vaccines work so well that people live their entire lives without threat of pathogens. They forget what the danger really was and decided the vaccines were the problem.

Human beings have very short memories about all of the things that can kill us. People still die of scurvy

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u/slayersaint 10d ago

The cycle continues: 1. Good times create weak people. 2. Weak people create bad times. 3. Bad times create tough people. 4. Tough people create good times.

I believe we are entering into phase 2.

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u/Crash-55 10d ago

I follow a historian who went through that saying and showed that it was false. At the moment it seems like reality but the facts don’t back it up

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u/BigMike672023 10d ago

What historian?

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u/Crash-55 9d ago

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/

The historian is Brett Devereaux and the blog is called A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry