I've been seeing some anguished deliberating from people in Gaza about the polio vaccine campaign and immediately thought of Naomi Klein's formulation about getting the facts wrong, but the feelings right.
I'm seeing very muddled anti-vaxx talking points from Westerners who are completely missing the point about why parents in Gaza might …
I've been seeing some anguished deliberating from people in Gaza about the polio vaccine campaign and immediately thought of Naomi Klein's formulation about getting the facts wrong, but the feelings right.
I'm seeing very muddled anti-vaxx talking points from Westerners who are completely missing the point about why parents in Gaza might have rational fears about the execution of this vaccine campaign and also have very real concerns about polio infection! On the other hand, I'm also seeing some very condescending and aggressive pushback that suggests that any hesitation or questions are simply irrational quackery. The CIA used fake vaccine campaigns (including for the bin Laden operation) until 2014. People in Gaza are experiencing a genocide and they have every reason to be concerned.
It's really upsetting to see discussion of the specifics of this mid-genocide vaccine campaign being drowned out by the same old conspiracies about vaccines.
The alarm about Polio has come from Palestinian Doctors working in Gaza, so it doesn’t seem to be part of an operation where intelligence agents use a vaccination initiative as cover like what happened in Afghanistan. For myself I have been outraged that some anti-vaxxers have jumped in claiming this is part of the genocidal assault against Palestinians. The Polio vaccine has saved millions of children from death and life altering disability for decades, and to exploit a human tragedy like Gaza to recommend putting an extremely vulnerable population in even more danger is absolutely unconscionable.
I've been seeing some anguished deliberating from people in Gaza about the polio vaccine campaign and immediately thought of Naomi Klein's formulation about getting the facts wrong, but the feelings right.
I'm seeing very muddled anti-vaxx talking points from Westerners who are completely missing the point about why parents in Gaza might have rational fears about the execution of this vaccine campaign and also have very real concerns about polio infection! On the other hand, I'm also seeing some very condescending and aggressive pushback that suggests that any hesitation or questions are simply irrational quackery. The CIA used fake vaccine campaigns (including for the bin Laden operation) until 2014. People in Gaza are experiencing a genocide and they have every reason to be concerned.
It's really upsetting to see discussion of the specifics of this mid-genocide vaccine campaign being drowned out by the same old conspiracies about vaccines.
The alarm about Polio has come from Palestinian Doctors working in Gaza, so it doesn’t seem to be part of an operation where intelligence agents use a vaccination initiative as cover like what happened in Afghanistan. For myself I have been outraged that some anti-vaxxers have jumped in claiming this is part of the genocidal assault against Palestinians. The Polio vaccine has saved millions of children from death and life altering disability for decades, and to exploit a human tragedy like Gaza to recommend putting an extremely vulnerable population in even more danger is absolutely unconscionable.