I read a news story about a guy who died from rabies after receiving a kidney transplant. Although nobody was aware when he died, the donor of the kidney had contracted rabies after being scratched by a skunk several weeks before he died and his organs were harvested.
I got curious about how the donor got scratched by the skunk, but instead only found this article from August, which informed me that the U.S. has a rabies outbreak, and has more deaths from rabies in the last year than several previous years…
Not sure if people were already talking about this outbreak, and I just missed it? It’s been a bit of a weird year, and there’s been a lot of crazy shit to keep up with.
Anyway, this is also how I ended up reading the sentence informing me some people are worried dogs are getting autism from vaccines.
Outbreaks of rabies seem to be rising across the U.S., CDC surveillance shows
People are far more scared of inconvenience than death.
Most people would rather put their pet down than have to care for them in some new way that requires money and attention, and this is what people who don’t understand autism think it is, like they will have to strap their dogs into a special chair and spoon-feed them.
Same with people. Most ignorant anti-vaxxers are far more terrified of being locked into caring for a disabled child than having a child die from a “natural” disease. And while they don’t consciously think this way, some layer of their brain has indeed weighed this out and formed their opinions.
I do genuinely wonder if some amount of vaccine skepticism comes from a place of just not wanting to get a shot.