The first email I opened this morning was from someone wanting me to check out a new post on their website—aimed at parents seeking child care—all about 30 pro- and anti-vaccine blogs. I did look at it. The ostensibly impartial presentation of arguments, given some of the anti-vaccine posts, amounts to outright disinformation like that of the climate-change deniers. (In this connection, see Paul Krugman's blog post this morning on affinity fraud: The tendency to believe claptrap if it comes from somene who seems to be "our kind of guy.")
Then came a post on The Daily Beast, "Flu Shots Are Damn Dangerous," which drew immediate fire from the twitterverse and Salon. And before the morning was over, the Journal of the American Medical Association lowered the boom with a timely article, Examining Common Arguments Against Influenza Vaccination.
For a good account of what the other grownups are saying, Mike Coston has a post on the CDC's media briefing this morning about influenza in week 2.
