I cannot pass up the opportunity to point out this wonderful quote by Ginia Ballafante in her NY Times piece, Fear of Vaccines Goes Viral. The article starts by noting an article on plummeting vaccination rates in Los Angeles:
The piece had the virtue of offering New Yorkers yet another opportunity to feel smugly superior to their counterparts in L.A., because of course here on the East Coast we like our science to come from scientists, not from former Playboy models and people who feel entitled to pontificate about public health because they drink kefir.
As a scientist who works in New York, I can’t help but think that this is not entirely true. This idea is supported by a quote in the article from a New York City pediatrician, who says that 10 percent of parents in his practice express opposition to vaccination. If they oppose vaccination, they can’t be getting their information from scientists.
Here is the second best quote from the article, which comes from another New York City pediatrician after a discussion of current Ebola virus and enterovirus D68 outbreaks:
My feeling is that it will take something like that on a very large scale to get upper-middle-class people to realize that this is serious stuff…most of the deaths in the world are from contagious diseases. Not ISIS.