Anti-Vaxxers Take Online Harassments To Real World
Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2019 3:57 pmIn October, Dr. Eve Krief watched from the window of her Long Island, New York, pediatrics practice, as around 20 women gathered on the lawn.
Armed with signs and banners with messages like, “We spread truth not disease,” the women — a group of anti-vaccine activists from New York and California — had come to protest Krief over her recent support for the 2019 state law that removed religious exemptions for vaccines.
Some of the protesters sat with signs, while others stuck anti-vaccine propaganda under car windshield wipers in the parking lot. Several approached parents entering the building with their infants, asking, "Are you vaccinating your baby?"
Krief had experience with these particular women. She recognized the group's leader, a local mother who had followed her to her car after a community meeting about proposed vaccine legislation a few weeks earlier. Krief said the bill's passage led to more intense protest from people who had been using the religious exemption to mask their personal preference not to vaccinate. They had also infiltrated her Yelp and Health Grades accounts, posting negative reviews, although they weren't patients at her practice.
But the in-person protests and the interaction with patients was another level.
"It's unsettling," Krief said, adding that her office is beefing up security measures in response.
For the anti-vaccination organizers, Krief’s unease was an indicator of their success.
“Needless to say,” one wrote on her Facebook page, “we rattled her cage just a bit yesterday with our presence.”
Opposition to immunizations was once largely limited to online bullying, but now opponents are increasingly taking their harassment tactics into the real world: aggressively following legislators and doctors and, in some cases, using physical violence.
But as opposition to vaccination has risen in recent years, so have cases of measles. Major outbreaks occurred in California and New York have spurred lawmakers in those states to strengthen vaccine mandates for school children. Reaction from anti-vaccine groups was swift and violent.
Online conspiracy theorist Austin Bennett livestreamed himself physically shoving the author of California's law, state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan. Bennett was later charged with a misdemeanor. The next month, Rebecca Dalelio, a participant at a protest at the California state Capitol, was charged with assault and vandalism when police say she threw a menstrual cup full of blood on lawmakers in the gallery.
Source for more information: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnew ... cna1096461
I have to say I am surprised that the Anti-Vaxxers decided to sink this low in order to stop vaccinations, I mean come on pushing a Senator? And then dumping blood on lawmakers is just silly, vaccines help prevent diseases and it also creates a herd immunity for people that can't get them.
And there shouldn't be religious exemptions to avoid having your child get vaccines, because nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about not taking vaccines. Though I imagine the anti-vax groups will continue to grow in numbers, and we'll see more of these harassments in the real world.
What do you say NSG? Has the Anti-Vax Movement gone too far with these harassments or no?
What's next? You don't care?