One of the things that really makes me furious is when adults make decisions that endanger the lives of their children. Adults who decide to not take vaccines or other precautions that might save their lives are still behaving irresponsibly because they are posing a risk to others by being possible transmitters and lowering the heard immunity for a disease, but at least they are also risking their own lives for their beliefs, however misguided they may be.
But what is unconscionable is when they risk the health and lives of the children in their care, such as this family.
Six weeks ago, Ethan was like most 7-year-olds — spending the weekend riding his new bike or playing Minecraft on his iPad on a rainy day.
“He just learned how to ride, he got the hang of it right away,” Ethan’s dad, Luis, said proudly. “He wanted to go outside because he wanted to jump on his bike…it was an amazing thing for him.”
Instead, since late January, the schoolboy has been confined to a hospital bed with measles encephalitis, a complication that causes swelling and inflammation in the brain. “He’s pretty much as if he was paralyzed,” his devastated father, 41, told The Independent in a phone interview from his son’s hospital bedside.
Ethan’s parents decided not to immunize him against measles as they did with his three brothers. Three out of four of them contracted measles. Still, despite Ethan’s ordeal, his mom stands by their decision. “We’re not blaming God for this,” said 35-year-old Kristina. “Yes, it hurts, of course, it hurts. But God has chosen Ethan for a reason. God is doing something, and we’re gonna glorify his name regardless.
“And we wouldn’t change it any other way,” the mom continued. “If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn’t have given my son the vaccine.”
“Our biggest reason why we didn’t do it is just with all the unnecessary stuff they add into it,” Kristina added, referring to her beliefs about the vaccine.
“With my own eyes, I have seen the damage it does to kids who are perfectly normal, and then once they get it, they’re not the same anymore,” she claimed.
Even after witnessing the devastating effect on her child of the disease, she says she has no regrets and would have made the same decision and not given the vaccine even if she knew this could happen. She thinks that her god has some wonderful plan for Ethan that requires him to suffer for the rest of his life. It is so mind-bogglingly callous that the only way that I can explain it is that she is forcing herself to believe this nonsense because the alternative, that she, not her god, is responsible for Ethan’s suffering because she could have saved him this agony by simply giving him the vaccine, is too horrible for her to contemplate.
About 1 child out of every 1,000 who get measles, which has no cure, will go on to develop encephalitis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The condition can result in permanent brain damage and is fatal in 10 to 15 percent of those cases.
…Dr. Linda Bell, South Carolina’s state epidemiologist, said the MMR shot is one of the safest and most well-studied for safety concerns of any modern vaccine.
“The MMR vaccine itself contains a weakened measles virus that stimulates the immune response but does not cause disease, as well as stabilizers like sugar, amino acids and gelatin, and small amounts of protein and antibiotic,” Bell told The Independent.
“It does not contain mRNA, aluminum, preservatives like thimerosal, or fetal tissue. The ingredients contained in the MMR vaccine are only there to promote a robust immune response and provide lifelong immunity from the potentially devastating effects of measles infection,” Bell continued.
“Measles encephalitis is a well understood, well documented outcome of measles infection which can be fatal or lead to lifelong complications from brain injury; complications which may require lifelong care and treatment,” Bell said. “By contrast, the MMR vaccine does not cause this same outcome.”
While I have sympathy for the grief that any parent would feel when their children suffers from a devastating medical condition, I also feel a sense of rage against them on Ethan’s behalf, who has been deprived of his childhood and possibly his life because they would not give him one of the safest vaccines known that would have prevented it because of who knows what ridiculous thing they heard from who knows who on the internet. His mother objected to the “stuff” they put into vaccines but as a result, now her child is having vast amounts of other “stuff” put into him by doctors trying to rescue him from the encephalitis.
I also feel rage against RFK Jr and Trump and all the other vaccines skeptics that have been elevated to high positions in the public health community who have done so much to feed the anti-vaccine sentiment that has put so many people at risk, with measles cases surging. Thanks to them, vaccine misinformation is proliferating, and social media influencers (I am starting to really hate that class of people) are able to mislead countless numbers of people.
I know the term vaccine skeptic is widely used in the media and even by the WHO. I suggest we remember Orwell and do not also succumb to this propagandistic language. Let’s properly call them deniers, not skeptics.
…and the leaders who promote this attitude to others, especially those in a position of authority need to be called vaccine liars.
Since, as Mano says, there is no reasoning with beliefs not arrived at by reason, I have a lot of rage about how this is going to play out: only *great enough* death and suffering and tragedy will change people’s minds. At first, as with these parents, people will brush off a serious illness or death, and only when the tragedies have piled up high enough will their views change. They’ll then want to get their children protected, but the governmental knowledge and distribution-system wll be gone. We’ll have to re-learn the best immunization schedules, etc., during which time more children will die and suffer.
I’ll have to point out that, since this is America, the suffering will be even greater: Ethan’s family will have to declare bankruptcy over his medical bills, will lose their house or savings or other assets, etc. It’s so American to make the occasion of a child’s death or serious illness also a financial disaster for the entire family: I recall an 8-year-old in Oregon who hadn’t been vaccinated for tetanus, who spent a month in the ICU with it, but who survived. The hospital bill was $800,000, and the child was discharged to a rehabilitation facility for a stay of undetermined length at an as-yet-undetermined cost. In America nothing is free, we make you pay for your illnesses and death, too.
garnetstar while the distribution system may be gone if vaccines are actually made illegal, rather than simply not recommended I don’t see why you’d need to re-learn the vaccination schedule? I mean it still exists, doctors and their organisations still recommend it. In the USA, as elsewhere the schedule is partly based on science, and partly based on when a particular society schedules it’s childhood check-ups, are you suggesting that even basic childhood check-ups will disappear?
Mano, please stop calling these people “vaccine SKEPTICS”. A skeptic has a valid reason for suspicion; these people are vaccine DENIERS.
I firmly believe that allowing a child to die from a preventable disease by choosing not to vaccinate them is infanticide, and should be prosecuted as manslaughter.
In most European countries it is mercifully possible to prosecute parents who endanger their children. In USA the far right (they are no longer “conservatives”) promote any beliefs they think can help them in elections.
Ultimately, it is not a “vaccine denier” problem. It is a “get rid of populists and charlatan politicians” problem.
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Going off on a tangent: it will get worse.
Mary Trump: “This Is Where Trump’s Entire Life Has Been Trending”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ECjrE5ia3w
She and her late father seem to be the only reasonably kind people in an awful clan.
@1, 2, 5, Also a long series of unprintable names, as well.
These folks are part of a suffering-worshiping death cult.
Jazzlet, I was thinking about the vaccines based on science, for which the recommended optimum time to give them, and the number of doses, and what else to give or not give at the same time, etc., change as more is learned. And the new vaccines that other countries may develop, in the US we’ll have to learn all of those. Sort of the infrastructure of keeping the population vaccinated.
In my area a child actually died from measles a few years ago.
He came down with one of the late outcomes, Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a progressive brain disease that is fatal.
Ironically, his parents weren’t antivaxxers and he was vaccinated in a third world country. Not sure what happened here but there might have been a cold chain failure or some other problem with the vaccine.
I don’t believe that.
Even the article is skeptical about that claim.
Chances are she has no idea whatsoever what is in the MMR vaccine. The composition is available online with a few seconds with Google.
Nothing particularly toxic or exotic here. Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol commonly found in foods. Gelatin is a food you can by at the store. Neomycin is an antibiotic.
God guided those scientists and doctors to develop the MMR vaccine for a reason.
The vaccine saves lives and keeps children healthy.
The gang in charge of the party formerly known as GOP are like the piper of Hameln.
Trump is the worst but he could not do the full volume of harm without deplorable flunkies like RFK Jr. He attracts awful people like that stinky tropical flower that attacts flies by smelling like carrion.
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And American state television (owned by Rupert Murdoch) have already supported so many awful things, a bunch of dead children will not make them bat an eyelid.
(By contrast, when they tell elderly Republicans to use horse paste instead of vaccines they are self-diminishing)
No, you can’t reason with such people. All you can do is rage, weep, or take the piss.
I kind of assumed someone else would say this but it looks like I was wrong. So… Read skeptically as I may be off my rocker but I don’t think I am.
The problem when it comes to “reasoning with these people” is generally it’s refering to the wrong people and the wrong reasons.
Let’s start with the reasons first. If anyone involved in this had reasonably functional morals, the cost of having that child suffer would not be worth investing in that woo. And let’s not pretend any of them are unaware that it’s woo. No one says driving through an intersection when the light turns green is a mysterious part of some divine plan. This? They try to deflect a bit by mentioning some bizarre talking points but they shield themselves with “God’s plan” nonsense in the end because they’re quite well aware it’s all bullshit.
So arguing morals and ethics or even something like doing good for the culture or species overall is simply not going to land. Every single person involved in this has made the choice that this child’s health and life are less important to them than the woo is. And while we could be kind and wonder if they simply hadn’t really come to terms with this end of the possible outcomes, now that it’s happened the mother at least has now made that a conscious choice to value the woo more than her child. What moral argument could anyone make that would land harder than watching her child suffer needlessly?
The second part that’s wrong is the people we’d be trying to reason with. It’s hard enough altering the trajectory of one sheep. And even if that’s successful it doesn’t stop the shepherd from leading the rest of the flock into the abattoir. Just as with the mother, you can’t make moral arguments with whoever’s been stuffing that family’s heads with malignant woo. That person most definitely doesn’t care about the child.
So what arguments might actually be effective? I think it comes down to just one kind: money. People peddle woo for money. So the only convincing arguments are going to be callous points about money.
-- A couple crippled children might be useful for con games but the anti-vaxx woo is becoming a victim of its own success. There will be a LOT of people harmed.
-- Sheep that have to care for sick children and adults are not productive sheep. They’re not making your money as readily and worse, they might ask for real help instead of a token gesture or “thoughts and prayers.”
-- RFK Jr. is screwing up your con game. He’s taking it mainstream so your con doesn’t stand out anymore.
These sorts of arguments, that this con is the less profitable option for them, are the only ones that I think might work in the end. It’s very likely they’ll call you a terrible person who cares about money more than the suffering of a child if you make these arguments but you can safely ignore that. It’s just projection and you should probably expect it. It’s not like they were allowing better arguments than these to work.
And that, I think, is going to be the only way to “reason with these people.” I feel a little slimy having said all that so please do feel free to poke holes in it. I’d kind of prefer to be wrong, I just… don’t think I am.
@lanir #14
I agree with Mano’s premise that reason alone does not cause behaviour change (see especially his next post), but although some people cannot be reasoned with, they can still be influenced away from unreasonable behaviour.
Money is a great influencer as you pointed out, and its upside is that it does the influencing all by itself. Unfortunately though, it also works against reason because cult leaders find it profitable to invest in followers’ insane behaviour if it keeps them in the cult. Trying to reason cult leaders away from this is doomed to fail. I suggest not wasting your efforts there.
There are other ways, such as lobbying for laws that hurt cult profitability. I want to sing out a word for satire. The best satire takes on a life of its own, ala Jonathan Swift, and it stings to be the butt of it. My comment #13 is sharp, unsympathetic, cruel even, and, worst of all, humorous. People don’t want to be the target of that kind of nasty joke, and even though such a thing will never change behaviour on its own, it provides another straw on the back of shoddy belief: the more it irks, the harder it is to dismiss. You can’t unread what you’ve read.
Unfortunately I am no Jonathan Swift and it is beyond unlikely that anything I write will be clever enough to go viral. And comments on this blog are largely preaching to the converted anyway, so if that is my aim I’m posting in the wrong place. But if nothing else, my dark humour costs me nothing, slakes my futile rage, and amuses my own self.