Successive governments have tried to boost immunisation rates by cutting childcare subsidies and family tax benefits to parents who refuse to vaccinate their children
Pauline Hanson was interviewed on Insiders by Barrie Cassidy and was asked about her previous assertion that vaccinations were linked to Autism ‘and possibly cancer’. She suggested that parents should go and do their own research, and Cassidy asked her how could they have anywhere near the expertise of medical professionals. She replied that parents should make an informed decision, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that most parents are not equipped to decide what is real information, and what is anti-vaccination drivel.
Hanson likened the government’s linking of childcare subsidies and family tax benefits to vaccination as blackmail, and stated “that’s a dictatorship”. Again Hanson’s complete lack of understanding of a topic on which she expresses an opinion, is mind-boggling. The reason the government has done this is based on advice from medical scientists and epidemiologists and is about community safety. If not enough people have their children vaccinated, these diseases will break out again, and kill people like they used to do. Does she think the fines imposed on people who break the 40kph zone around schools are blackmail? They are all about community safety too; particularly the safety of children.
Some of the vaccines that the anti-vaccination nutters disparage so rabidly, are those that protect us against insidious killers like measles and whooping cough.
As an example, most people think that measles is a childhood illness and in my day it was almost a rite of passage, along with mumps and chicken pox. However, of the people who contract measles, about 2% will require hospitalisation, but the most insidious complication is what is called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). It has symptoms like dementia and may occur up to 15 years after the measles infection. It cannot be cured. If not caught until its second stage, it is invariably fatal.
Pauline Hanson is so limited in her knowledge, and so devoid of understanding she will spout any drivel that the crazy-eyed conspiracy theorist Malcolm Roberts tells her. She is a gullible buffoon.
Sources
http://www.blotreport.com/uncategorized/vaccinate-or-die/
…and yet Australians vote for her. There are a lot of gullible buffoons out there.
It is disturbing, but it is not restricted to Australia. See: https://www.sott.net/article/313177-The-cult-of-ignorance-in-the-United-States-Anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-of-America
I read a comment from a claimed “leftie” on a Fairfax website which suggested that “if only Hanson would back away from her stance on immigration and climate change (with a few others thrown in), she’d likely get my vote.” My reply was along the lines that the primary reason for not supporting ON is surely their gross ignorance on virtually every issue. The conservatives have been an entitled, incoherent, divisive and hypocritical rabble under Abbott and Turnbull but compared with One Nation they are bastions of reason and “suppositories” of boundless knowledge – end of story.
In this case Hanson exposes her personal ignorance yet again with her dangerous promotion of yet more pseudo facts on immunisation. The move to tie immunisation to child payments and State governments allowing child care agencies to ban unimmunised kids in certain circumstances were long overdue initiatives.
A Nobel Prize awaits the person who produces a vaccine to limit the effects of the growing public stupidity epidemic which is becoming increasingly evident in both the USA and Australia..