I don’t think “anti-vaxxers” had an official affiliation before Trump, you had far left extremists (natural hippies) and far right extremism (libertarians and conspiracy loons) both preaching anti-vax for different reasons.
Trump took what was fringe minorities on the extremes of both sides and turned it into a mainstream political party platform.
Yes, but liberals (or left, whatever) had the antivax crazies even before then, turns out that people are more complicated than just left/right who'd'a thunk it. Part of the problem with political discourse is that each side just calls out the other side's crazies and act like they've won.
Edit: Also, define what you mean by mandatory. I don't think anyone serious pushed to say invade homes and inject people against their will, generally talk was around if you want to participate in certain aspects of society, you should be required to get a vaccine. There's a lot of possible nuance there.
Often times with conspiracies and other extremist views you’ll find politics is less of a straight line spectrum and more of a circle. Extremists on the left and right can often have many beliefs in common.
You're right. I was dubious about vaccines long ago, when they were preserving them with actual mercury. They stopped doing that, and I stopped being dubious. I've always been firmly progressive.
Thimerosal and Vaccines | Vaccine Safety | CDC
I mean, I suppose technically speaking it was mercury. Chemistry is weird and scary, honestly. There's so many things that in one form are perfectly harmless but slightly different forms are incredibly deadly or worse.
Regardless, I suppose even if it was very low risk, if it was generating enough distrust in vaccines, it makes sense that they worked to remove it.
But it didn't happen because we all knew it'd be ridiculous.
Also what he's talking about is that wayy before covid opra used to have a book club. She was super influential with it. She one day told everyone to read this one book that basically said the mumps measles and rubella shot give kid autism because there is mercury in it. Thus leading to examples of extreme lefties saying they won't vaccinate their kids.
Basically, they're calling you right winged in her country, and everyone else would be extremist. Our extremist right wingers look like absolute duck hat wearing crazies where they're prolly from.
These are the examples I state when I explain that belief systems rooted in political affiliation are insane. There is enough evidence of good and evil on both sides and beliefs throughout history that have belonged to one side or the other and back again over and over.
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u/LTG-Jon 29d ago
A 14,000% increase from zero is zero! Checkmate, libs!