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I reconnected with an old friend I hadn't seen in years. He was a bit of a conspiracy nut and was telling me about a new crazy one he had just heard about. I ended up jokingly asking him if he thought vaccines caused autism too. He just kind of deflated and walked away. We haven't spoken since. I later learned that his son had just been diagnosed as severely autistic. Oops.
Sooo ... did they think it was the vaccines do you think? Obviously a touch situation for a parent, depending on the severity of the autism though, and a sensitive topic ... but it seems like they may actually have thought their vaccines did it to their child, felt a lot of pain over it, and figured you'd not be able to understand ...?
That's one of the more insidious parts of that whole "conspiracy" (more like grift, but that's splitting hairs...)
It's got to be hard enough raising a severely autistic kid without piling on the guilt that you may have caused it through well-intentioned actions. Even if you don't really believe it, it's pretty fucked to have to live with a shred of "what if...?" all because of one lying asshole and a bunch of easily-manipulated idiots.
Yea ... I hadn't thought about that aspect of the conspiracy theory before (which in hindsight feels dumb). Thanks!
Just to be clear, I wasn't implying you were in the wrong necessarily, so hopefully it didn't come across that way!
Not at all! No worries!
Yeah, I'm sure of it.
He 100% believes his kid is autistic because of the government vaccines.