With Kennedy in charge I expect the situation to get vastly worse.
At least some folks are getting vaxxed.
I wonder how long before Texas starts sourcing vax from other countries?
Although I’m not an atheist, I sometimes listen to this YouTuber because he makes a lot of sense. Anyway, the Least Vaccinated School in Texas had the principal make a very boastful announcement about this. When I tried to contact the school, I found that it requires registration to access them that way. I did, however, find their snail-mail address and a letter is going out in tomorrow’s mail. TL : DW - it’s a K-12 Christian academy in Fort Worth, Texas and unfortunately, it also looks like a large, higher-end school.
When I went to YouTube to get the Hemant Mehta link, an ad hosted by Kirk Cameron, for some kind of super Frankenfood, popped up. Irony at its best.
More than $12,000/year in tuition and fees buys you a lot of stupid.
True. But all that stupid aligns very nicely with the beliefs of the parents. Beliefs, not knowledge or reasoning. Of which latter items they’re probably mostly bereft.
After the COVID vaccine was launched, there was some publicity about a private school in the Miami, FL region that was really New Age-y that PROHIBITED COVID vaccines for their students or staff. That school charged about 30K for tuition!
And there we have it.
The death of his daughter, Peter told me, was God’s will. God created measles. God allowed the disease to take his daughter’s life. “Everybody has to die,” he said. Peter’s eyes closed, and he struggled to continue talking. “It’s very hard, very hard,” he said at last. “It’s a big hole.”
Why did he bother to feed his daughter when she was an infant? it’s gods will that infants will starve unless a parent intervenes. They intervened and interfered with gods will? Why?
Somehow feeding is good but protecting from diseases is not. I will never understand the religious mind.
I’m with @LSLGuy, because all the other “inevitabilities” in life that don’t fit into their specific mindset are somehow “against” God’s will, which means that humans, or Saaaaaatan?! are obviously more powerful than the God he serves?
Because, well, for some similar cases, such as the recent-ish death of a young child from treatable diabetes, the parents/community feels wronged that they are held accountable by secular powers for doing God’s work. If measles or diabetes are God’s will, then so is the punishment by the courts.
Again:
I’ve heard the diabetes deaths of children in religious sects.
Makes me physically ill.
I’ve fought every day of my life to Live with diabetes.
How could someone sit and watch their kid die like that?
Dying of diabetes is not easy or painless.
Disgusting.
Possible nitpick: let’s don’t tar everyone with the same brush.
I would amend this to read "I will never understand the stupid, ignorant, ill-informed, closed, crap-filled mind that bases its beliefs on bullshit that it LABELS religion.
I consider myself to have a well-informed, broad, educated, open religious mind. So I know you two don’t mean ME and people like me. 
Of course not you.
But for some reason the real ignorants run to religion, in droves.
They wanna believe a cloud fairy is gonna shield them in crisis.
Smart faithful, spiritual people know religion does not equal “Magic”
I will accept the nitpick and implied (and justified) minor chastisement.
To be more clear, what boggles me the most is that a number of religious individuals will on one hand claim their god is all powerful, all loving, and all knowing, and that what happens (natural disasters, invasions by other powers, destruction of those they dislike, etc.) all happen by their God’s will, but if anything they don’t approve of, or has them or their allies forced to take responsibility, that all of a sudden it’s the work of infernal or ungodly forces.
The hypocrisy of such is the biggest issue.
And I’ve never seen you, or to be fair, a good number of other religious people fall into that specific hypocrisy. But it is growing ever more prevalent in the USA as a certain breed of militant Christianity (not that other religions aren’t easily able to fall into the same trap, see India, Turkey, The Middle East including Israel, etc.) becomes dominant with a desire to purge anyone else “in God’s name”.
Back to the thread though, it’s especially galling to me when those who have the least agency, often children, are harmed by the hypocrisy and ignorance of those who clad themselves in sanctity. Even more so when it harms those who they themselves claim to love.
What folks do in the name of religion has left many maimed and dead.
I don’t understand how prevention of horrible diseases can be a sin.
Agree completely.
Cf. The Inquisition and The Crusades, for openers.
Update. California Oklahoma Maryland New York …
I am open to the belief that there are some baseline cases that usually get missed that will now be identified as clinicians put measles on their diagnostic radar and test more. Maybe some of these few scattered ones are that. Still concerned.
I have some lab work due and I just asked my doc to add a measles titre level to my orders. I’m not sure of the status of my MMR. I definitely got it but not sure when, and if I have gotten it again.
SOME religious minds.
It was the Centner Academy that was refusing to hire Covid-vaccinated teachers, requiring teachers on staff who got vaccinated to stay away from students, and making vaccinated students stay home for a month to prevent “shedding”. 
More recently, the Centners got embroiled in an alleged bribery scheme involving a Miami city commissioner. The case had to do with a plan to let them develop a $10 million school sports complex on the site of a city park (they got immunity for testifying).*
They have been gloating over RFK Jr. being named to head HHS.
Such nice people.
*The city commissioner’s political career wound up taking a hit but the prosecution dropped its case, calling the evidence “circumstantial”.
There was some good news regarding vaccines: Anti-vaccine Dave Weldon’s nomination to head the CDC was withdrawn:
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5323926/cdc-weldon-withdrawn-vaccine