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Bloody hell, this is an easy and painfully ignorant take. Clearly @RichardDawkins has little clue about the facts on the ground there. Things are more complicated than just "religion poisoning everything." It's more like antivaxers poison everything. Here's what I mean. 1/
The Orthodox Jewish communities in Rockland County and Brooklyn have been targeted a long time by antivaxers. A shadowy group called PEACH has been showing antivax misinformation for at least 5 years, targeting this insular group. 2/ buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/claudi…
PEACH has been targeting Orthodox Jews with antivaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories using mass texts, conference calls with antivax "experts," and a slick glossy pamphlet. 3/ nytimes.com/2019/04/09/nyr…
It's a group that's been hard to track down. 4/ apple.news/AMmvVM2YRTUy2x…
It turns out that this shadowy group is run by an entrepreneur selling "holistic" health products to Orthodox Jews. 5/
Now, let's compare and contrast. Look at how the Orthodox Jewish community in the Detroit area reacted when a traveler inadvertently brought measles to southeast Michigan. 6/
Take a look, @RichardDawkins. The Michigan Orthodox Jewish community rallied behind health authorities. They IMMEDIATELY got the word out in the communities to get vaccinated. 7/ respectfulinsolence.com/2019/04/17/mea…
Members of the Orthodox Jewish Community turned out in droves to be vaccinated. In just three days, the health division administered 970 MMR vaccinations, and in one week the health department gave over 2,000 doses of MMR. 8/
That doesn’t even count the hundreds of doses administered in private doctors' offices and in pharmacies. 9/
Meanwhile, the Orthodox Jewish traveler who brought measles to Michigan, "patient zero," was devastated. 10/
freep.com/story/news/loc…
freep.com/story/news/loc…
“'There is only one disease, and you have it,' McGraw recalled saying... 'He put his head down and was very emotional. I could tell from the look on his face that he was devastated. He was doing the math in his head,' counting all the people he had been in contact with..." 11/
I also note that Hatzalah, the ultra-Orthodox community’s emergency medical response group, rapidly mobilized to track patient zero down. 12/
Meanwhile, The Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit issued a statement strongly urging vaccination and that Jews showing signs of illness stay home and contact their doctors. 13/ cordetroit.com/news/5059/
It's not just in Detroit, either. In Rockland County, Orthodox Jewish nurses are fighting the antivaccine misinformation. 14/ gothamist.com/2019/03/26/ort…
Now, @RichardDawkins should know that I'm a heathen too, or, as I like to describe myself, about as lapsed a Catholic as you can be. I'm not defending religion, particularly fundamentalist religion. I've been refuting religion-inspired antiscience since at least 2004. 15/
I am, however, telling him that his hot take doesn't just fail to tell the whole story. It leaves out so much that it does a disservice to so many Orthodox Jews whose prompt and enthusiastic cooperation with authorities in Michigan limited the spread of the measles outbreak. 16/
These Jews were motivated by their religion. So are the Orthodox Jewish nurses in Rockland County and Brooklyn on the ground fighting for the health of their communities. 17/
In other words, the situation is far more complicated than @RichardDawkins easy anti-religion sloganeering would lead you to believe. Unless we understand this, we can't make progress against his antivax misinformation spreads. 18/
In reality, the situation in NY is more akin to that of the Somali immigrant community. Antivaxers took advantage of them by peddling antivax misinformation, and the result was two large measles outbreaks. 19/ sciencebasedmedicine.org/outbreaks-amon…
Basically, I think what bugged me about @RichardDawkins hot take on this is that it isn't really so much religion that is the main contributor to this outbreak. It's an insular community that doesn't trust outsiders targeted by quacks. Religion was not necessary. 20/20
Against HOW antivax misinformation spreads. I didn't mean to imply that Dawkins spreads antivax misinformation.🤦♂️
One thing I forgot to mention. In the Detroit Orthodox Jewish community, measles didn't spread among unvaccinated children as much as it did among adults. Jews here vaccinate their children. However, many in their 50s thought they'd been vaccinated but hadn't been. 20a/20
There was an unexpectedly large pool of adults who were, through no fault of their own, susceptible to measles, either due to not knowing they hadn't been vaccinated or to waning immunity. 20b/20
