If only there were an inoculation against stupid people, I’d be the first in line screaming shoot me up doc.
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Dark humor is like antivaxxers kids. Never gets old.
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We need to get rid of personal exemptions and religious exemptions.
And medical exemptions need to go through independent review.
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The sad thing is that even if anti-vax parents lost their children to their own stupidity, it’s very likely their views wouldn’t change. For some folks, everything is a conspiracy. It couldn’t be that they were wrong- the government must have poisoned their kids to intimidate them, or chemtrails were the real cause, or measles comes in waves throughout history and its decline had nothing to do with vaccines. It’s the same sort of completely unverifiable conspiracy-mongering you see in flat-earthers, young earth creationists, climate change deniers, and other people with utterly insane views that they refuse to let go of in spite of overwhelming evidence. I’d really like to know what it is that causes so many people, regardless of political affiliation, to believe so strongly and stubbornly in things that most people identify within seconds as obviously false and wrong.
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It’s worse than just King County:
Edit because the headline is ambiguous: the kids were unvaccinated and exposed in Clark County, then flew to Hawaii where they developed symptoms.
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If we can’t require all children who are able to be vaccinated to be vaccinated, then maybe we can require anyone who chooses not to vaccinate (as opposed to can’t vaccinate for medical reasons) to purchase insurance coverage that compensates children/families affected by diseases that are preventable by vaccines (only for children who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, of course). Having to pay, let’s say $5,000, for the privilege of choosing not to vaccinate will sober people up real quick, and probably get us back up to the 95% vaccinated herd immunity rate.
So everyone on the plane, at the airport, whoever they interacted with in Hawaii now needs to think about the fact that even though they were vaccinated it may not be effective any more or it didn’t take for them. Joy.
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Already happened.
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This is exactly how it happens.
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While this is funny, and I appreciate dark humor, I am bound to be that spoilsport to point out that the antivaxxer’s kids quite probably survive, and might not even get serious ill.
The elderly lady next door, the immune-supressed transplant recipients in da hood or the kid recovering from can leukemia chemotherapy are, very probably, more severely affected.
Edited for clarity.
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My sister-in-law and brother live with their 3 unvaccinated children in a rural part of Washington state. Their eldest has autism, which I think she feels might have been caused by his vaccines because she bought into the bullshit. It even extends to the flu shot: my pregnant sister’s first son got sick because they didn’t mention their kids were sick until my sister was already there (and this isn’t a place you can simply turn around and go home from without putting the other half of the day into the effort). My sister also ended up sick and ruptured two days later while in labor. Fortunately she and my new nephew survived but it dimmed the chance of her having any more kids.
I understand the trauma of living with an autistic child to some degree having worked with them in an elementary and devoting a good portion of my MA work in technology rich projects that connected autistic children to their peers. I cannot understand willing to risk further trauma when your child or children die from something preventable.
I’m not allowed to engage my sister-in-law on this topic, so sorry about venting here…
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And so it goes…
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And yet people who use “impact” as a verb get to walk around free, go figure.
I vaccinated my kids for the same reason I eat a plant based diet, put solar panels on my house, bought an EV and electric assist bikes for my wife and my daily commutes, and support nuclear power as likely the only way to slow climate change in a timely manner. Because science.
But I hear a lot of patronizing by people who wouldn’t give up steak and egg breakfasts every day if it doubled their life expectancy, which for some it might. And before you reply that it doesn’t hurt anyone but you, e. coli doesn’t breed on spinach, lettuce, or actually any plant. It’s passed from improperly handled rotting carcasses to plant foods that wouldn’t make us sick sans infected corpse juice, and then sickens or even kills several dozen people a year. Vehicle exhaust is directly responible for a whole lot of lead exposure in the past, but it also still significantly (I use this word to mean “measurably, in scientific studies”) reduces the overall health of our country and especially of people who live in dense urban areas. Solar panels are effective enough even in Seattle (not known for its sun) to offset most of a house’s power without even full roof coverage on a three floor with an EV charging regularly and some trees regularly shading some panels. Nuclear is… well, it’s just math. Sorry Greenpeace, but I am with Gates on this one. Or, given my physics degree and training and experience handling radio sources, you could say Gates is with me.
Antivaxors are dangerous morons to be sure, but it’s not just flat earth level conspiracy freaks who deny science when it’s convenient or when accepting it is hard to adjust to. We should take the opportunity to be a bit more introspective with our own beliefs and habits.
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First, thanks for signalling your great virtue and providing all us benighted sinners with your example. It’s difficult to do all those things when you live in a tiny house, commute for 2+ hours each way to and from a low-paying job, and grow your own food. I am concerned that you bought your EV and electric assist bikes instead of making them from scratch, but hey, no-one’s perfect.
Seriously, while you’re not wrong on those issues, there’s a lot of difference between people who aren’t vegans and anti-vaxxers. And welcome to BoingBoing, where the “peanut gallery” is very introspective about the other issues whether or not they have advanced degrees.
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Yeah. There are networks of pedophiles anti-vax doctors that need to be found and their licenses yanked for false medical exemptions. Start by checking ones with “natural” or “healing” in the business name.
Australia, but I’m sure that there are others everywhere:
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Sometimes they make clusters.
And then when their kids get measles, alt-right xenophobes use it to claim that immigrants bring diseases. /facepalm. (I presume that those people are “just” anti-vaxxers and not something worse. I’m thinking small pox blankets…)
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