tallguywrites

The MMR panic was, as far as I know, the biggest in the UK, so if you're not from the UK, chances are big you completely missed it. And yeah, there is some anti-vaccination movement in the US, but I think it's smaller than in the UK with less of the mass media attention.

I'm from the Netherlands and I only heard about the MMR panic in 2007, because I happened to be watching some British documentary. The entire panic passed my country by. I'd say that's also proof the theory is bogus - if there WAS an actual link between autism and MMR, it would've spread around the world like wildfire, but for the first few years, it was just the UK who was worried.

Canada here. And yeah, I've heard of people going bugfuck over vaccines for some reason or another but I never really knew why or if it was anything more than just stupid sensationalism. Which I guess it was.

In that case, what Darryl says on pg 4 needs a bit more qualification, surely? or a bit more explanation. If it wasn't such a media scare in other countries, how is the comic to explain the measles outbreaks?

Well, just because I didn't hear about it doesn't mean it didn't happen. I don't really pay a lot of attention to the news.

I'm not meaning to argue against what you or dracothelizard said, more thinking that there might be a need for a bit of nuance in what Darryl has written here.

I don't know about other countries, but over here (Netherlands) there are areas where certain groups of Christians live who don't vaccinate their children due to their religious beliefs. Those areas have occasional measle outbreaks as well, it could be that other countries have the same thing, where people who don't vaccinate because of religion live in the same area.

U.S. newsmedia were all over it, too.

Also Canadian and just found out fairly recently that a not inconsiderable percentage of young people I know haven't vaccinated their kids. As somebody who has known polio survivors, this initially struck me as completely incomprehensible. The comic actually explains a lot.

It's been big in the US. The anti-vax, anti-science crowd is, if anything, stronger here. We've started to see herd immunity to preventable diseases like mumps and measles break down because of parents who don't want their kids vaccinated. Some of them are religious whack-jobs. Many are convinced that vaccines don't work and cause autism. Wakefield. Jenny McCarthy (the most prominent anti-vaccer) and her husband Jim Carrey have blood on their hands.

Hmm, I guess it sort of started as being big in the UK, and then spread the US where it's been gaining momentum? I actually mind the religious whackjobs than the autism-crowd, because the religious whackjobs are less vocal about their beliefs than the autism-crowd.