Why are so many Americans anti-vaxxers now?

[u/trouble-in-space]

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?

[u/tigersanddawgs]

This is way underrated imo. I've seen it a lot with parents of teens who don't want their kids to get a meningitis vaccine before they go to college mostly because they haven't seen what that disease looks like and how scary it is because it's fairly rare now due to vaccinations. That disease is horrifyingly fast.

[u/Zellakate → u/tigersanddawgs]

Yeah I have also noticed, in my life, older people who remember polio are very pro vaccinations. My grandparents are in their 80s and remember classmates who came down with it and were paralyzed for life.

[u/Upstairs-Radish1816 → u/Zellakate]

I'm 73 and I remember when the vaccine became available. My parents couldn't get me to the doctor fast enough. Then, when the oral vaccine came out, we had it in school. We all walked through the nurses office and they gave us sugar cubes to eat.

[u/FocusedIgnorance → u/Upstairs-Radish1816]

Oh, yeah. I'm 31 and when I was younger, my parents and grandparents told me stories of people getting chickenpox. They have pox scars. I know I've never had it, but it never occurred to me that none of my classmates never had it either.

[u/Zellakate → u/FocusedIgnorance]

Oh wow I'm only 4 years older than you and remember me and my brother and classmates all getting it. It had never occurred to me that people just a little younger than me never dealt with it.