Tell me Amanda Peet, not Jenny McCarthy, is hosting.

Is it just me, or is anyone else seeing this drivel all over their Facebook feed, too?

http://vactruth.com/2014/09/07/informed-parents-vaccine-exemption/

It's peddling the the "most people who get the diseases in an outbreak were already vaccinated, so vaccines don't work!" argument (which anyone who passed middle school math would be able to see is garbage).

... then again, most of the people sharing this on my FB feed are people I went to middle school with, so I'm not surprised they suck at math.

anyone who passed middle school math would be able to see is garbage

Ah, and suddenly the problem comes into focus. My old friend, innumeracy. What's next? are the anti-vaxer's[1] going to do a shaman dance to cure the ill?

[1] anti-vax as opposed to anti-VAX

I see so much crap on FB and parenting sites about all the horrible problems vaccines cause, that they are loaded with so many chemicals, etc. The newest one I see is that vaccines cause epilepsy apparently because some parent won a VAERS complaint. Too bad we can't round up all the anti-vaxxers into one concentrated area and start systematically infecting a few of them with various vaccine-preventable illnesses so they can see how fast they spread and how serious they can be. It would make a nice social experiment.

@I R A Darth Aggie I was looking for a good airplane book. So thank you for that!

I really really wanted to respond to one of the Facebook posts and explain why the entire argument was based upon a giant Math Fail.

... but then I worried this person would opt their kids out of math class, just as they opted them out of vaccination requirements. So I kept quiet.

The anti-vax comments on that Mother Jones article are a loony bin. This is my favorite:

Vaccines are Baal-shit. They are spiritual tools to corrupt mankind's DNA with other species so that people can be indwelt by demons. Baal is also known as Satan, the god of the mystery religions. "Science" is the whore in bed with these high priests of hell. There are millions of children whose injured or murdered bodies tell the truth. If you choose to believe the greedy snakes over their self-evident testimony, then as 2 Thes. 2:10-12 says, you are damned.

"Science" is the whore in bed with these high priests of hell.

Which they post to a website, over highspeed internet, from a computer, in an air conditioned house, with interior plumbing, clean water, electricity, paid for with a job they most likely commute to by car, powered by gasoline, all without the sightest trace of irony

They also don't know much about their own religion Lujlp. Satan is not a name, it is a title or adjective. It translates to enemy in english. Hence the US being called 'the great satan'. Baal is hebrew and translates into english as master. But you probably shouldn't call the guy who fixes your broken pipes a Ba'al plumber.

I just watched it. It was dumbed down for those with a 6th grade level will probably get it.

My sister isn't a full up anti-vaxer, but she found a doctor who will sign of on the annual flu shots. They are really a crap shoot anyway. The CDC (or whoever) picks the three most likely viruses they think will most likely be the worst hitting viruses of the 2014 flu season. So I understand the thinking behind it.

I generally will get it if I happen to run across a clinic doing it for free.

Luckily my nephews were old enough before the ant-vax movement started. So they should be good, or only need boosters.

A couple years ago my needle-phobic husband put off getting his flu shot (or in his case now, nasal spray) and caught the flu on a business trip to Las Vegas when they were in the midst of a bad outbreak. He ended up giving it to our 5-month-old son who was too young to get a flu shot yet. He spent two days in the hospital with a fever and decreased oxygen saturations. Hubby no longer skips his shots.

What do you expect when you take medical advice from actors? You pay them to pretend. You believe them?

Calling Jenny McCarthy an actor is a stretch.

Not at all.

She has appeared on stage, and fooled tens of thousands of people into believing she has medical expertise!

More people believe this than thought Dustin Hoffman was really Rain Man.

Facebook...I do not visit it anymore because it's embarrassing to see how gullible loved ones are. One of my family posted that the CDC and NIH are anti-breast feeding. Proof? Some "nature" blog who started the rumor as a way to get the "breast feeding" crowd to turn on science and then go anti-vax. They all fell for it because they are so emotionally invested in what they view as the miracle properties of breast milk.

I responded to all of them with links to CDC and NIH positive support of breast feeding and they should be skeptical of the modern day snake oil salesman. I am sure no one listened.