Of course not…I don’t think buynholdisdead actually implied that…but the anti-vaxx movement, outbreaks of Measles, Whooping Cough, and I’ll wager it won’t be too long before German Measles is up there…pre-date recent events. And this is just the generally, and incorrectly, considered “harmless” childhood diseases. The potential for this, as I mentioned upstream, has been building since the early aughts. I first got a heads-up around 2004…and even that was a bit late to the party as the height of the media love-fest with Andrew Wakefield was starting to cool a little from the initial frenzy. RFK has been a hanger-on rather than a spearhead for any of this.
It’s a shame the old boards are history…it’d be quite an education to go back and look at the timeline of discovery and denialism WRT the unveiling of how this demonization of the MMR vaccine and how, by association flu, Covid, HPV, and even polio have been caught in the crossfire.
This is the guy who initially clued me in all those years ago (not the fist but one of the many from The Grauniad that I posted on the H&N board back in the day)
The MMR sceptic who just doesn’t understand science | Ben Goldacre | The Guardian The MMR sceptic who just doesn't understand science | Ben Goldacre | The Guardian
Here’s one a few years later that accompanied the kerfuffle after Wakefield lost his license. Note the date…and ponder the reality that this zombie-science has not stayed dead.
Expert view: The media are equally guilty over the MMR vaccine scare | Ben Goldacre | The Guardian Expert view: The media are equally guilty over the MMR vaccine scare | Ben Goldacre | The Guardian
And a full coverage with facts that’d escaped my attention can be found in Brian Deer’s generally excellent book on the topic…The Doctor Who Fooled The World.