American - Writer | 1977 -
I talked to lots of people who are vaccine-hesitant, and I actually was one myself until I got further into this project, and most of them actually are in my demographic: so well-educated people with advanced degrees who are upper middle-class and have read quite a bit on the subject.
Eula Biss
MyselfPeopleProjectGotWhoMost
Herd immunity is, it turns out, not incredibly easy to understand. It took me quite a bit of reading before I fully grasped it. But understanding herd immunity is essential to understanding why we vaccinate the way we do.
MeReadingUnderstandingEasyWhy
There's this tendency to think of the individual and the collective are somehow at odds or separate. But I think that's really false. We're all both. And when the individual suffers, the collective suffers, and vice versa.
ThinkOddsViceIndividualFalse
There's a cultural expectation that everyone will be immunized, in part to protect the entire population. When people refuse that expectation, they're indulging in a certain kind of political or social immunity.
PeoplePoliticalKindWillProtect
In some areas, immunity has been eroded so much that the child who's not vaccinated is now actually more vulnerable to the complications of infectious diseases.
ChildNowMoreBeenSomeMuch
In the case of Pakistan, the CIA actually used a fake vaccination campaign to try to locate Osama bin Laden, so now vaccination is associated with espionage.
FakeNowTryUsedCIAPakistan
One of the shortcomings of our medical system is that doctors have very little time with their patients.
TimeMedicalLittleSystemOurVery
I think there's a temptation to try to think of people who don't vaccinate as a homogenous community, but I'm not convinced that's true. I'm not even sure that the word 'community' is totally accurate there, you know.
CommunityPeopleThinkYouKnowTry
Some of the most interesting research that I did was about risk assessment and how ordinary citizens like me handle risk assessment and how irregular our risk assessments are.
MeResearchInterestingAssessment
If your child's going to ride in a car or go swimming or play soccer, all of those things involve risk. And if your child doesn't do any of those things, then they're probably sitting too much, and that involves risk, too.
CarRideChildSwimmingSoccerPlay
My mother wrote poetry when I was young - I have an early memory of the sound of her typewriter - and my father told me inventive bedtime stories.
FatherMotherPoetryMemoryMeHer
Art-making was part of my daily life from a very young age, and I still love that kind of everyday art-making.
LifeLoveDailyAgeDaily LifeKind
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Eula Biss quotes