Anti-vaccine activists spark a state's worst measles outbreak in decades

[LeftyMom]

8. I doubt that. It was long established and organized when my kid was small 16 years ago.

The history of the organizations promoting it is pretty easy to find (most of them date from the 80s and real problems with the DTP vaccine, which is why there's a different version now with a safer pertussis component,) and how it all shifted to autism panic post-Wakefield. Probably at least partly because their original raison d'etre was no longer a concern and a lot of the leaders were making a damn fine living on their anti-vax activism.

And then it blew the fuck up on mommyblogs and babycenter due date boards and all that kind of crap as soon as it became a thing. A big part of that subculture is that any parenting practice seen as conventional or easy is suspect. People will literally tell you you're a bad mom and going to ruin your kid forever if you put them in a bouncy seat or a stroller instead of carrying them every waking minute, and lord help you if they don't sleep next to you too. Admitting to formula feeding without some sob story about how your tits were ripped off by farming equipment will get randos calling CPS on you. They're big into any kind of "alternative" health stuff. Nobody will bat an eye if you take a baby for chiropractic adjustments but they say all kinds of crazy shit about vaccines.

But there were riots opposing smallpox vaccination in colonial New England. And Putin didn't get in a time machine and cause those. Or tell people in Sudan that the polio vaccine is a plot to sterilize them. There's nothing new under the sun.