Measles Hits 25-Year High
MAGA
Remember the cable news freak out over Ebola? On Fox they actually conflated it with Isis “Ebola-Isis!” The federal governments response was excellent both here and overseas. Yet few Americans were impacted but the fear persisted and amplified to a point where an antivaxx narrative leads to this measles outbreak.
This is just in
Amazon investigates after anti-vaxxer leaflet found hidden in children’s book
Mother alarmed after anti-vaccination propaganda found inside book bought for son, who is about to receive the HPV jab
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/29/amazon-investigates-after-anti-vaxxer-leaflet-found-hidden-in-childrens-book
I am old enough to have actually had measles. It was horrible. There are also family stories of cousins from previous generations suffering hearing loss and brain damage from the disease. It’s difficult, decades after the event, to say that this was the disease that caused the complication—it could have been any number of things, but measles is the family story.
I can only assume that people who have decided to take chances with their children’s lives are too young to have had the disease. I hope that the children don’t have to pay too high a price for it.
This is really distressing, for multiple reasons. First, it’s the height of privilege to think that you can forgo vaccines and depend on others around you not to, or that the medical system will be able to save your kid from the illness. Second, it’s a sign of selfishness, and I guess not a surprise due to the way our society has moved away from the idea of helping others to only helping yourself and the ones you care about. And, it’s another rejection of science, one that will kill kids if it continues. As a scientist, the third really troubles me…you can ignore climate change pretty easily since it’s changing so slowly on human timescales, but ignoring all the kids getting sick is a lot harder, especially if it happens to you on ones you know.
This also is not just a Republican thing…remember that the anti-vax movement started in liberal circles, and with the publication of a fraudulent scientific paper by a guy looking for a profit who preyed on the fears of parents. Some people are still profiting over this, both by spreading the word and also doctors accepting money to write excuses for kids not to be vaccinated. All of that needs to stop…there really are kids who cannot take a vaccine, a proper medical examination by a specialist should be required to get them out of the shots. Beyond that, everyone should get a vaccine, period…the graveyards of 100 years ago are filled with children’s graves for a reason, and we don’t want to go back to that again.
Me too, I had the measles and remember being confined to a darkened room. Blindness is also a consequence of the disease. Antivaxxers put the lives of children too young for the vaccine and those unable to have it due to medical condition at risk… These are ignorant selfish people who refuse to believe actual science.
This is where we feel the lack of a Democratic master-narrative.
The Republicans are wrecking the country. We have domestic terrorism at a historic scale. We have cities drowning in floods. We have thousands dead from hurricane damage. We have children locked up and held in camps. We have record inequality. We have trillion-dollar deficits. We have Russia building nuclear with the assent of a weak and corrupt president. Half the country is on fire. We have collapsing health care and collapsing social security. Now we have a measles epidemic.
See how that works? If you have the narrative, anything bad that happens is simply absorbed into the narrative. You don’t reinvent the wheel every day. You make every thing that happens the next chapter.
Anti-vaxxers are putting infants and people with chronic illnesses at risk. There’s also evidence that the immune system is suppressed for months perhaps years after someone recovers from measles. What are they doing to us (and to themselves)?
NPR did an interview of a sociologist who researched anti-vaxxers, doing its usual infuriating job of failing to note with force why all the bullshit relayed was bullshit.
Her take is that the parents are mostly not anti-vaccine, but rather that they believe each and every one of their children is a precious little unique snowflake whose health needs are highly individualized and that the parents are equipped to understand and determine which vaccines they get and which ones they don’t and on what schedule they’ll get them. And they further believe themselves such superior parents that if their snowflakes do come down with a disease their parents chose not to vaccinate them for, they can successfully nurse them through it presumably with tea oil and organic food.
One thing that stood out glaringly was that they literally feel no sense of responsibility for other people’s kids or the health of the general public. You talk to them about things like “herd immunity” and they see your mouth moving and hear sounds being emitted but have no conception of how what you’re talking about has anything to do with them. Because this is all about their individual rights and government coercion.
Nearly projectile vomited on the windshield.
It’s sad to punish stupid and selfish Anti-VAXXer’s kids, but unvaccinated children should not be allowed to attend schools or participate in public organizations.
Depressing chart!
Lets look at a new chart from today’s poll that’s not so depressing
I think it’s one more outgrowth of historical amnesia. Mass contagions, the Great Depression, the rise of authoritarianism and WWII, the horrors of decades of blatant Jim Crow abuses, the waste and stupidity of the Vietnam war, all these and other awful things were dominant features in the lives of generations that are now passing away, so first-person awareness of the immensity of these issues dies with them. Newer generations lack that perspective so can callously downplay or ignore the importance of the things that were done in response to them, and greedy charlatans are always in the wings happy to exploit their ignorance.
Thanx anti-vaxxers. Your dumbfuckery got us here and now, just as predicted, we won’t get to see all your dumbass spokespeople on our local TV and cable channels being interviewed and held accountable for your idiotic views. It seems you’ve all run away and hid. Well, stay the fuck gone, shitheads. If only the media hadn’t given these people a soapbox and a platform to spew their anti-science, anti-medical bullshit, and pretending it had some kind of equally balanced legitimacy to it. This was an entirely predictable outcome of the anti-vaxxers selfish fearmongering nonsense.
I can already see when the last glacier falls into the sea, the anti-science climate deniers will take run and cover, too. And all the newsies that presented them as having a legitimate and equally relevant position will be no where to be found as well. We had 8 years of Obama when the news, both in print and on air, wouldn’t even run more than a 20 sec. spot, or was covered on the back pages when it came to climate change, and now they’ve realized (I hope) how absurd that was with every major storm intensifying and taking higher and higher mortality rates as its victims.
Its really no different than how the media has treated the anti-vaxxers up until very recently. Anti-science should be equated with being anti-American as far as I’m concerned. We should not let idiots with feelings and not facts force our knowledge of the real world to be diminished, denied or foisted upon us by fools…and especially if those fools are fucking politicians getting paid by those whose only interest is to profit from that denial.
I broke with a friend a few years ago after he kept repeating anti-vaxxer nonsense at me word-for-word. My last words to him as I left his house were, “you’ve really drunk the Koolaid.” This is one of the most essentially intelligent people I’ve ever known and has an advanced engineering degree.
It reminded me of something I’ve noticed before about the well-off and well-educated both: oftentimes that just means they can construct more elaborate ways of rationalising the bullshit they’ve chosen to believe.
Until anti-vaxxers are held accountable for their choices, nothing about this will change. I would favour that anyone who chooses not to vaccinate their children is subject to civil liabilities, i.e. being sued, and for all the costs of the hospitalization and health care they rely on for treatment of the preventable disease. Parties that can be potentially affected are other parents whose children are made ill, public spaces, parent’s lost income, child care if the school had to be closed, etc. That kind thing. I’m sure you can think of other areas of impact.
I can respect their right to choose but I think it’s only fair they’re held accountable for that choice.
I heard that interview too. Sickening.
I was working on a Dunning-Kruger vaccine until I realized nobody would take it.
Same as it ever was, methinks.
Wow, these people are assholes