A political cartoon from 1802 makes fun of the anti-cowpox vaccine movement — some things don't change. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
I have to think this is a good sign. Could it be that fact is finally making inroads on emotion in the anti-vaccine movement? Maybe, as yesterday’s protest against Bill Gates for his remarks on the movement drew only one twenty-fifth of a percent of the number the organizers hoped for.
Yesterday I wrote about Gates’s remarks about how the anti-vaccine proponents “kill children,” and explained how this statement, while inflammatory, is nonetheless accurate. I had been alerted to the existence of the CNN interview in which Gates said this by a press release that was, ironically, trying to convince me to write about how horrible Gates was for saying this and about a planned “50,000-Parent” protest yesterday in New York City.
Of those 50,000 people the organizers had expected, witnesses report that 18 showed up. Not 18,000, mind you: just 18 people.
I can only speculate, of course, on why the turnout was so low. Perhaps it was that the high temperature in NYC yesterday was only 44 degrees Fahrenheit, and people didn’t want to be chilly. Perhaps people who would otherwise have attended the protest realized that protesting Gates’s remarks at a Microsoft building in New York was a bit like protesting against President Obama at your local IRS office. Or could it be that the light has finally dawned on enough people that the anti-vaccine movement is dying?
A guy can hope, can’t he?
[Author’s Note: I realize that my source for the protest attendance figure is from a biased website. I searched extensively to find an unbiased source, but wasn’t able to. If you know of one, please email me or leave a comment.]