Vaccine News Ledger; First Edition (Opinion Study) December 31st, 2017

International Business Times:
Women More Active In Online Anti-Vaxxers’ Groups: Study

Right off the bat, it's interesting that this was written for IBT, as it is a business media site. They have no health section, as you can see when you check their menu. This leans towards the implication that vaccines are not so much about health, but business. I won't go down that long, dark rabbit hole right now, that's an entirely different story. For now, let's just let that little seed germinate.

This article talks about a 2 year study done on public opinions. They focused on public "anti-vaccine" Facebook groups.

They made the groundbreaking conclusion that most "anti-vaxxers" are women. Shocking, right? I'm sure that study will open the doors to better and safer vaccines!

This "study" was an incredible waste of time and effort.

For starters, they looked through public Facebook groups. That's an instant fail. While there are some very knowledgeable people in them, there's also a lot of outlandish, eccentric people and behaviors in those groups. A lot of people go over the top, or just don't know much about it, but continue on to repost memes and articles to public groups where they will not be ridiculed or called out by their friends/family. If they get called out and don't know in detail about the topic in question, they have little to no backup on their own page, so those groups are a perfect venue for that. Public groups can actually get annoying to some of the more knowledgeable people, and at times can even make the cause look bad. Many of those who have thoroughly researched and know exactly what they're talking about, seem to gravitate to secret or closed groups, where detailed information and sources can be organized and discussed in a civilized and safe environment.

So they've researched in the wrong place...I highly doubt that they spent the time and effort just to see if men or women were more against vaccines. After a lot of digging, I finally found the study. It costs $42.50 to view the entire study for just the day, so unfortunately, I haven't gained access to it for more knowledge on the study itself. I'm guessing, though, that the research was to see how to change our opinion of vaccines... Which is still a waste of time. Our opinion is based on facts and statistics. No amount of talk or brainwashing attempts will change that. Doing studies on making vaccines safer might. Being open and honest might. Not bullying or forcing us to take them might. Psychological warfare will not. Ever. What's said on the forefront doesn't change what's done behind the scenes, and we know this.

So there we go, I just saved them years of wasted time and effort!

This is hilarious. They did come to another "conclusion". That public Facebook groups are active and negative. You could spend just a few minutes on one group to figure that out... Most people in public groups, like I said earlier, post there because they are ridiculed elsewhere. They're frustrated that people with differing opinions come to those groups and become rude to them because "they know better", and won't look at any information given to them. Valid points get ignored, they get called names, they get attacked... It's hard to keep composure when you are passed off and not taken seriously. But that's also another reason serious researchers move on to private groups. We don't like the drama and frustration.

The writer's idea of the information being of a "small world" is laughable, (and not to mention parroted-see the study abstract and similar articles that I'll post at the end,) considering that the information stems from the leading health authorities, manufacturers and peer reviewed research journals themselves. The same ones that show the dumbed down rainbows butterflies version of the real information to the press. Yes, the "ideas" are being spread on social media on a global scale... But perhaps the real question should be where those "ideas" come from?

"Anti-vaccination beliefs" are not persistent and durable because of social media. They've been persistent and durable before social media even existed, because they have a strong foundation of truth. Truth will always come to the light, no matter how much effort is spent (like years of opinion studies) on keeping it quiet. We didn't have social media back in the 80s, yet a massive "anti-vaccine" movement of parents almost put the entire industry out of business from lawsuits proven to severely injure their children. But sure, it's all just because of social media. Right.

They do have one thing right, you need to be careful before posting about vaccines. Check all sources, research the evidence, make sure it's true. Whether it claims to make people sick, or save lives. That is true critical thinking. We can't have a conclusion first, and then research to find evidence supporting that premature conclusion. We need to be open to take in and examine all information thoroughly, and then come to a conclusion. Be wary of falling down traps rather than rabbit holes.

"In the United States alone, vaccines helped save the lives of 732,000 children and prevented more than 300 million children from getting sick in the last two decades,"

Gee, I wonder why the writer didn't post a link to that study?

Oh, I think I know! Maybe because the writer was in such a rush to get the propaganda out there, that they didn't even bother to properly take in and understand what they read. That, or they purposely changed what it actually said in order to emphasize their bias for vaccination to sway their reader's opinions.

After a little digging, I found the 2014 CDC press release. This press release gave the name of the 2014 report. It seems to be the one, because the dates and numbers match.

It doesn't say that vaccines helped save the lives of 732,000 children and prevented more than 300 million children from getting sick in the last two decades. It actually says that the CDC estimates that of the kids born between 1994 and 2013, it might prevent 732,000 deaths and 322 million illnesses over their lifetimes, and the oldest of that group would not even be 18 yet, so this data is nowhere near even coming to a close.

"vaccines helped save the lives of 732,000 children and prevented more than 300 million children from getting sick in the last two decades,"

The report is guessing what might happen in the future.
This writer, however, told all their readers that a study proves that vaccines have saved so many lives...

"Despite this, opposition to vaccines continues even today,"

OK then...

The article moves on to talk about social media behavior and how more research is needed to understand the mindsets. If they spent the time really researching and understanding what these major organisations like the CDC already have out there, they would more than understand the "mindset".

To polish the article off, they leave a nice memorandum with the readers;

"In a generation that has rarely seen these diseases first hand, the risk of adverse reaction seems more immediate and pressing than disease prevention."

It doesn't seem more immediate and pressing. It is. Researchers need to get off Facebook and into the CDC, the manufacturers, and the medical studies. They might actually learn something!

Before I wrap this up, I came across some more articles from different news outlets, on the same subject. Take a look, and notice how media is basically just parrots these days. They can't even come up with their own original insults or gaslighting. They even got things wrong in the same way....Seems like being a journalist these days is mainly a job of "copy and paste":

Live Science

Science Alert

News Week

And here's a bonus article I found in the process... From October 2016. Zuckerberg made a post simply saying it's time for vaccines. Then he ran the comments through a language analytic program and made it a study to find out how people talk about vaccines. It's kind of funny actually, it says that anti vaxxers use scientific terms, biology, studies, and links to CDC and WHO, while using happy and gentle words and terms... Then states that we need to use more anxiety when talking about diseases so that people don't sway to the anti vaccine side. They don't even see what they're saying.... Check it out!
Comments on viral Facebook post shed light on pro- and anti-vaccination beliefs

I really wish they wouldn't waste time trying to change our opinions, and spend time researching how to make things better and safer. They think it's a psychology thing... But it's really based on fact. So unless they change the facts, they will accomplish nothing.