Marjorie Taylor Greene, a prominent Republican congresswoman and a staunch ally of Trump, suggested a return to “measles parties” for children. She criticized contemporary attitudes towards vaccination, stating, “Now, they demonize parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids.”
I spent SO MUCH TIME during my pediatrics clinical rotation explaining vaccines to new parents. In some cases, I sat there for a literal hour and debunked myths and conspiracy theories in order to get the parents to consider maybe doing a delayed vaccination schedule. I’m a medical student, so my time is basically worthless and I viewed this as a good use of it, but it was so incredibly frustrating to have to do over and over.
For other folks who know anti-vax parents (new or not), here’s the best line of argument I came up with:
Vaccines have been around for a very long time now, and the only changes we’ve made to them recently is to make them better and safer. The preservatives in them like the mercury compound are perfectly safe, but we’ve still worked hard to improve the manufacturing process to minimize the need for those preservatives and make the vaccines as pure as possible.
Vaccines are made of little fragments of the virus or bacteria, or a modified, significantly weaker version of the pathogen to give your child’s immune system a chance to see it before the real thing shows up. It’s like giving your child’s immune system a wanted poster or a punching bag to practice on because it has to make special tools to fight each different pathogen.
The reason we load kids up with so many vaccines in the first year or two of life is because their immune systems are still growing and it’s an optimal time to introduce things for it to prepare for, and we want to give them some protection of their own before the antibodies from mom run out around 6 to 12 months of life.
We have decades of data showing that vaccines are safe and effective, and the complications and side effects are so minor compared to the problems that can come from the disease. And it’s usually around 1000:1 ratio of complications from the disease versus complications from the vaccine, and the vaccine complications are almost always less severe than the complications from the disease.
If you refuse vaccination for your child for reasons besides an anaphylactic allergy to the ingredients, you are gambling your child’s life with most of these diseases, and it would have been an entirely preventable death. Vaccines are very hard to make and we have prioritized making vaccines for the diseases that kill children. We don’t bother making vaccines for things that are just a nuisance, so the vaccines we have exist for very good reasons. For the most famous example, measles has about 5 different ways it can kill your child that are impossible to treat or prevent once they have it, and many ways to cause permanent damage. The known and most common side effects of the measles vaccine are pretty mild and can be easily treated with medications we have available.
Another worth noting is if an antivaxxer says “we don’t know what they put into vaccines”, respond with “we don’t know what they put in painkillers and yet you take them no problem”. Nine times out of ten, these antivaxxers would take painkillers willy nilly without question. Saying this makes them question their line of thought. Heck, the same could be said just about anything. We don’t know what cooks in restaurants put into the food we ordered, and yet there is no significant movement advocating to stop ordering takeaways or eating outside of home.
The sad thing about debunking is that you need to have direct contact with the person under a delusion to build rapport and need to be quite knowledgeable about the topic, but planting the the delusion can be done at a large scale by any eloquent doofus with time to spare. It’s so frustrating.
It is always harder to build than to destroy.
It’s definitely a starfish situation. You won’t be able to save all of them, but you can make a difference to each individual that you help. It’s my guiding principle in medicine for everything from preventative care to resuscitation. I can’t save every patient, but I can do my best to help the one in front of me, and previous failures do not prevent future successes.
Just adding this for completion : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
We had our cats in for their annual checkups a few years back, and the vet noted they were due for their vaccinations. The way she said it, we could hear she was bracing for an argument. I wonder if someone had laid into her about it earlier that day.
We, of course, had the vaccinations done, much to her relief.
I was a kid when they were first developing the vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (we called it German measles). So my brothers and I all got every one of them. I remember being sick with them, and with one of the measles types (don’t remember which) I was so sick I though I was gonna die. I’ll never forget lying there, even thinking of certain things made me puke (or dry heave) so I had to concentrate on not thinking of anything. I remember puking so hard it came out my nose. One of my brothers was so sick, his fever was so high, they took him to the hospital.
Do parents really want to put their children through this instead of a shot? WTF
should be child abuse
Just some of the ones that were vaccinated against measles.
Just had a thought. What if we took a insignificant amount of the virus and injected it into people. This would allow them to develop antibodies so that if they do become exposed they are ready to fight it.
Probably safer then just exposing people to the virus. Could also do it to enough people that it virtually eradicates the virus.
Just an idea. We would also have to do a bunch of testing and have a bunch of regulations around it. Just to prove there isn’t any unwarranted side effects.
If something like that worked, scientists would have done it by now.
Youre right. Sorry. I’m so dumb.
Ben Franklin was anti-vax, but came around. Also these fuckwits are so dumb that they don’t know vaccines have been around throughout when America was “great” and way beyond.
In his defense, in 1721 vaccines were really a new unproven technology. And if you don’t know it works, or even what causes diseases in the first place, it’s reasonable to be skeptical. It’s also reasonable to change your mind when you see it does really work.
I have a better idea. What if we take the genetic code of the virus, inject it into people and have their own bodies produce many more virus particles so they get a stronger and more targeted immune response? Who knows, someone could win an important prize for that.
I read this comment and became autistic. Becareful people science makes you spicy.
I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. What a timeline to be in right now.
This sounds like witchcraft. J/K
bet she won’t be censured for “decorum violations”.
“Now, they demonize parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids.”
It’s pretty normal to demonize parents who abuse children.
Jesus Christ she is a fucking moron
“I didn’t vaccinate my kids and the one that lived turned out fine!”
Survivorship bias at its finest
“The Shotgun Philosophy of Life”
…is that an actual quote from her? The world is getting so stupid that I genuinely could see this being legit from her.
I could also see it being a line on the simpsons, if the simpsons still had good writters.
She thinks the measles are like chicken pox, pretty much harmless to young ones. My parents tried to get me sick in the 70s, that’s just how it was done before we had a chicken pox vaccine. Finally got it at 16, still have the scars nearly 40-years later. But I got my shingles vax!
She’s literally this stupid. Some things we see these nuts try to pull off make sense, from an evil point of view. This move is plain stupid, and because we’ve forgotten what measles are people will listen.
BTW, I’m 54 and just now learning what measles are and how bad it can be. I had no clue, because I’ve never met anyone that had it.
no, it makes sense. devaluing human life, and spreading the idea that sometimes the weak just die, with nothing anyone can do about it, is very much something they want to do. plus, burying your children is one hell of a sunk cost.
that’s not to say she’s cognitively functional, but that’s why her masters won’t put their foot down.
i had chickenpox as a kid, i remember the aveeno baths for it, we were set in the same room to “inonculate” the rest of the siblings. as there was no vaccine at the time. Chickenpox is quite severe for adults though. i did get shingles around 20yo though. theres is shingles to potentially turn severe, but its rare. shingles can cause meningitis, and encephalitis, as well as spinal cord damage.
people who arnt sure about thier chickenpox immunity can ask thier doctors to do antibody titers(it doesnt detect dormant chickenpox in your ganglia though because theres no way to detect it outside of autopsy), your doctor maybe reluctant to administer the test though.
When my husband moved to Germany from Russia, he had no idea whether he was vaccinated as a child or not (he very likely was, but there weren’t records he was aware of and his mom died early). So he went to the doctor’s to ask for titers. They said they could test that but he would have to pay out of pocket, and offered to just vaccinate him again for free. He went through all the children’s vaccines - including chicken pox, which wasn’t around when we were kids (90s). It is the simpler, more accessible, and cheaper alternative to titers.
Thank you for sharing that — especially with it being personal information. Like your husband, I moved to Germany and cannot check my vaccination history — at least not easily, being estranged from my relatives. Coming from Spain and having been born in the late 90s, I very likely received all the usual vaccines. Still, I’ve been wondering what I could do about this for years. I will ask my Hausärztin sometime.
I got chickenpox before the vaccination was a thing. It sucked. Then I got shingles a few years ago. That really sucked.
Wait? I can get vaccinated for shingles after having chicken pox? Is that a thing?
Yeah, but insurance won’t cover it until like age 50.
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Measles isn’t fucking chicken pox…
Don’t even take chicken pox lightly. It gives you shingles later in life. I have epilepsy as a result of getting chicken pox.
I know, lots of my family members got shingles
Now, they demonize parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids
They should have their skulls kicked in before even thinking of having children
Lack of sex ed and no access to family planning services creates a whole bunch of idiots breeding more idiots
Thanks, conservative Christians, for decades of public instruction in abstinence only, for cultural supremacy of purity culture (I’m thinking specifically of the early 90s/00s where churches were all teaching the same curriculum and so many of the hottest celebrities all said they were waiting for marriage).
Knowing nothing about how relationships should work, how to navigate emotional problems effectively, or what red flags to look out for has sure made relationships and communities stronger, all across the country.
Margerine Taylor Greene can go fuck herself!
Excuse me, you misspelled Margarine Trailer Queen.
Traitor
FTFY. She’s shown more colors than trailer trash.
Good call.
Pro Life only until it’s born, then fuck that Life
They aren’t pro-life. They are forced birth. It isn’t about the baby, it’s about power over women.
Chuckles I’m in danger!
The future seems not that bad now that I know we won’t be seeing an entire generation of Republicans
We’ve been thinking that for three generations and somehow they’re still here
They are children! They are victims here.
Those kids are doomed anyway.
“Those kids” go to school with my kids, and my wife is allergic to the measles vaccination. Which means she is susceptible to it.
Please try to care.
I care about that. But what else can we do? I am just trying to find a silver lining in all this because I am going to lose people to. But at least the Republicans go extinct
Nurgle cultist. May measles spread and give new life from the dead and rotten.
