Anti-vaxx is a classic upper-class luxury belief.
You reject vaccines, not because you’ve studied the science, but because your zip code has a 97% vaccination rate.
Anti-vaxx is a classic upper-class luxury belief.
You reject vaccines, not because you’ve studied the science, but because your zip code has a 97% vaccination rate.
Thank you for an excellent article.
A parallel feels like it might be made to the Year 2000 bug. Those of us who were around (and sophonts) back then remember it pretty clearly, the various different ways in which the banks and other financial institutions, retailers everywhere, software developers, everyone was scrambling to ensure that the rollover from 99 to 00 didn't cause massive disruption across the board.
These days, in the cultural milieu, it's regarded as a bit of a joke, a potential explosion which turned out to be a fart. But that's because the preparations worked. People, seeing the world work the day after December 31, 1999, shrugged and smiled and figured it wasn't that big a deal after all, the systems managed to hold together.
And that was entirely the wrong lesson to learn. Come January 19, 2038, we're going to be having the exact sort of thing occur again, this time with the UNIX Epoch, and it's going to require even more effort and work to get over the edge of the hurdle.
Of course, it's not a perfect analogy by any stretch. Vaccination is a matter of making sure that the public are protecting one another, that we all take our part in signing the social contract seriously. Financial institutions and similar groups did work together to preserve the public interest, but more in service to themselves surviving another day. (Though that loops back around.)
In either case, though, what we need to see is that disaster is not optional: it's inevitable. Things will go wrong, and we rely upon one another to help minimize the harms, to limit the extent of the damage, and to rebuild afterwards. We can't kick that responsibility down the road, not truly, without increasing everyone's suffering a hundredfold, including quite probably our own. And externalizing the cost of survival is absolutely kicking the can down the road.
Howard Tayler expressed it more pithily in this Schlock Mercenary comic, though. https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-04-17
@theogrin @Daojoan I worked for a bank in the late 1990’s. Our Y2K efforts were massive and all encompassing and planned years in advance.
We had over 1200 apps in the bank pre-Y2K. Every single one either had to be updated and certified
Or we offered rhe leader in charge of that app a chance to sign a document stating that the app wasn’t critical to the bank’s operations - and they could then get an exception.
We had no takers.
We culled 600+ apps and upgraded and tested all the others
@Daojoan Upper-class anti-vaxx is slightly different: accept vaccines privately, reject vaccines publicly.
The lessers reject the vaccine, then get intubated.
@Daojoan "Anti-Vaxx is a Luxury Belief!"
I like it, 'a view wallowing in privilege', these creepy rich fucks need to be exposed for what they are.
@Daojoan Same with being anti-fluoridation.
“…opposition to fluoride in the U.S. is often strongest in well-resourced communities — where alternative dental services are abundant, fluoride toothpaste is affordable, and public skepticism, political mistrust, or misinformation can take hold. For many of these people, unfluoridated water may not pose an immediate risk — they have the means to compensate through private care.”
https://www.statnews.com/2025/05/24/fluoride-ban-florida-dentist-public-health-cavities/