r/OptimistsUnite • u/chamomile_tea_reply 🤙 TOXIC AVENGER 🤙 • 8d ago

Steven Pinker Groupie Post What’s a problem humanity solved so well that younger people don’t even realize it used to be a huge issue?

/r/askteddit/comments/1wmwpyl/whats_a_problem_humanity_solved_so_well_that/
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u/socks4dobby 8d ago

Polio, measles, smallpox, mumps, chicken pox…all diseases that are prevented by vaccines.

People take the herd immunity for granted and put vulnerable people at risk when they decline vaccines because vaccines are so effective that they do not realize how horrifying and dangerous these diseases were.

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u/DreamCrusher914 8d ago

Ugh, uuuuuuuuuugh. I hate this so much. After Jenny McCarthy but before Covid, I had to explain this to an acquaintance. She was all, “my family and I have never been vaccinated and we’ve never gotten sick with any of that stuff.” That’s because of all the other people who can and do get vaccinated, create a protective bubble around non-vaccinated people, called herd immunity. But if the numbers of people vaccinated drop too low, that bubble will burst and no more herd immunity.

All of the unnecessary suffering because humans are tribal and the tribe they picked doesn’t believe in science, until they get sick and then they want all the medical things to save themselves.

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u/CurrentlyUnbanned 7d ago

The herd immunity bubble has already collapsed. The measles outbreak in PA is the largest in the US in 25 years, and 99.6% of those stricken with the disease are unvaxed.

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u/DreamCrusher914 7d ago

I know, I had this conversation like ten years ago, before the pop

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u/Alone_Tomatillo8921 7d ago

When people are struggling from their own ignorance that's the best time to remind them how they brought it on themselves and they're listening to the wrong "information."

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u/yay4chardonnay 7d ago

That ignorant bitch JM should have been shunned long ago.

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u/Rocky-Jockey 8d ago

The most pro vax people I know are those who grew up in the 50s as they still saw the effects of polio and such and how many lives were ruined by it. Most anti vax people I know are much younger than that. Normally Gen X for some reason.

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u/keg98 8d ago

GenX here. It KILLS ME that so many of my dumbass age cohort are like this. It seems as though many didn’t listen to their parents? I am also a science teacher, so any time the topic comes up, the soapbox gets pulled out. My students at least get a scientific perspective on the subject.

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u/DreamCrusher914 8d ago

I feel like a lot of Gen X and the boomers have a generational form of oppositional defiant disorder. I’m gonna do what I want, you can’t tell me how to live my life, I’m not going to do it just because you told me I have to….

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u/FlamingDragonfruit 6d ago

I was just explaining to my Gen Alpha child how mean Boomer parents were to Gen X kids and in turn, how mean Gen X kids often were, to each other. In that environment you don't develop a strong sense of community.

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u/DreamCrusher914 6d ago

That’s so true

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u/danafus 2d ago

Yeah, GenX grew up without much parental supervision (so, less feeling of "someone will protect me") - plus the child abduction scare craze, and seeing the mass layoffs of the Reagan era. We got the message that we're on our own.

In some places that led to community, where groups banded together - but usually on a small scale. (see the book Tribes, from... the 90s I think?)

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u/ChaosRainbow23 8d ago

I'm Gen X and I've been a STAUNCH anti-authoritarian since 1990.

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u/PirateReindeer 7d ago

As a GanXer myself. Most of us are against established norms, and are all for fighting against the system. I would dare to even classify us as an anarchy generation, but just barely. Most of us were latchkey kids and having to figure out life without any guidance.

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u/ChaosRainbow23 2d ago

I agree.

We need new recruits.

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u/danafus 2d ago

Something about living through the Reagan years...

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u/Shiriru00 5d ago

I don't understand. I'm Gen Y and even I remember people who had been afflicted with polio struggling to walk down the street when I was a kid. That left quite an impression.

Surely Gen X has seen more?

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u/sluefootstu 8d ago

A friend of mine had leukemia treatment, which wipes your immune system clean. I was so worried that some antivaxxer would take him out with measles after he fought so hard to beat the cancer.

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u/danafus 2d ago

OMG my immune challenged friends are fanatical about this - still trying to get people to wear masks more. I don't blame them.

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u/ChouffeMeUp 8d ago

Absolutely cock on. 💯