RO: Antivaxxers harass family after baby dies of whooping cough

[Grumman]

@Ferret_Herder

My WAG is because many anti-vaxxers are trying to claim that measles, whooping cough, etc., aren’t that big of a deal, a dead unvaccinated kid is bad for that message.

If only they’d blame the whooping cough for killing a baby and screwing up their PR.

[The_Hamster_King]

@Ferret_Herder

My WAG is because many anti-vaxxers are trying to claim that measles, whooping cough, etc., aren’t that big of a deal, a dead unvaccinated kid is bad for that message.

My wife and I had whooping cough three years ago. (Our recently-vaccinated children were fortunately unaffected.) I was never in danger of dying, but it was a brutal disease. I could easily imagine it being lethal to a small child or an elderly person.

[WhyNot]

@bobkitty

Wait, I’m confused. Wouldn’t anti-vaxxers be.. Well, glad isn’t the word, but at least unsurprised that this happens? Wouldn’t they assume that the kids hadn’t been vaccinated, and thus the parents are on “their” side? What purpose does this behavior serve??

And yes, I realize I’m trying to ascribe logic to the indefensible, but I’m just damned curious.

@Cat_Whisperer

That’s what I’m getting stuck on, too. I guess if they admit that their lunacy will result in dead kids, then they might have to adjust their lunacy, and that ain’t gonna happen.

@lieu

You ain’t the only one, sister. This has me scratchin’ my noggin too. If they think the parents did not vaccinate and that the death(s) were natural selection, why harass the grieving? It serves no purpose other than making them look like an asshole.

The parents have become vaccination proponents and advocates, educating the public about the importance of vaccination so other babies don’t have to die like theirs did.

So then an asshole writes the bit about “weakness” as if their baby was a culled calf. :mad:

The implication being that normal healthy meant-to-live babies won’t die of whooping cough, even without vaccines. :rolleyes:

[WhyNot]

Oh, and babies in Australia aren’t vaccinated against whooping cough until 2 months, with the first of three doses. Full immunity isn’t seen until after 6 months of age and 2 more shots.

So vaxxer or antivaxxer parents, this particular baby wouldn’t have been immunized yet. Which is why it’s so important to immunize babies and kids who can be, so they don’t catch whooping cough and give it to the little babies.

[Maiira]

Not sure if this is a direct quote or a paraphrase, but I think Carl Sagan said it best:

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

Pretty sure he wrote that, what, 16 years ago? It’s a goddamn shame that it’s still relevant today.

[jayjay]

@Maiira

Not sure if this is a direct quote or a paraphrase, but I think Carl Sagan said it best:

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

Pretty sure he wrote that, what, 16 years ago? It’s a goddamn shame that it’s still relevant today.

23 years, actually. It was in his essay in the Spring 1990 Skeptical Enquirer called “Why We Need To Understand Science”.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Maiira

Not sure if this is a direct quote or a paraphrase, but I think Carl Sagan said it best:

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

Pretty sure he wrote that, what, 16 years ago? It’s a goddamn shame that it’s still relevant today.

Not only do we not know about science and technology, but we’ve reached a point where people (like antivaxxers) are actively antagonistic to it. If only there was some way to make them understand just how shitty their lives would be if all the science and technology just went away.

[sisu]

@The_Hamster_King

My wife and I had whooping cough three years ago. (Our recently-vaccinated children were fortunately unaffected.) I was never in danger of dying, but it was a brutal disease. I could easily imagine it being lethal to a small child or an elderly person.

My friends 13 year old son had and he was really crook for about 4 weeks and yes he had been vaccinated.

Anti-vaxxers are beyond comprehension, I just don’t get them at all…

[Lynn_Bodoni]

I did not think that anything could lower my opinion of anti vaxxers. I was wrong.

I’m not sentimental about babies or kids. I am not a nice person. But even I have some limits, and I certainly would not harass a grieving family, no matter what I believed in.

[Maiira]

@jayjay

23 years, actually. It was in his essay in the Spring 1990 Skeptical Enquirer called “Why We Need To Understand Science”.

D’oh! I thought that was a Demon Haunted World quote.

Although I guess he did reiterate that point in DHW, he just didn’t use those words exactly.

[Inigo_Montoya]

@Amateur_Barbarian

I’m not.

Is … is that The One Wrecking Bar? Forged in the fires of Mt. Doom and wrenched from the hands of Sauron Himself? Because I wants it.

I find it interesting dickheads can send harassing and straight up mean writings to grieving parents with impunity. Freedom of speech at work, I guess. I wonder if the non-crazytown people could hire a few noncrazy writers, the sort of razor-witted but furiously toxic sort that can be found in fora like this, to gather the email sources of the dickheads and fire a relentless return volley accusing them of the indirect murder of the dead kids. Basically a nonprofit “Hannibal-Lecter-get-you-to-choke-yourself-on-your-own-tongue-for-shame” level of harassment organization. Publish the names and addresses of the targets and their real actions and copies of their messages, suggest how tragic it would be if someone were to randomly attack them with a wrecking bar the way nature attacks little unvaccinated kids with dread diseases. I’d do it but I lack the appropriate capacity for subtlety and would be arrested within days.

[Marley23]

@Leaper

Compare to some of the (there’s no other word) nutty reaction to the Sandy Hook parents. They’re EXPLOITING their TRAGEDY to KILL other kids and TAKE AWAY OUR FREEDOM! At least the anti-vaccine crowd aren’t saying these parents are “crisis actors.”

Some of them are probably doing that. It’s all the same type of behavior.

[LavenderBlue]

Really good piece by Kolga explaining the real risks of a vaccine reaction:

http://www.doublexscience.org/calculating-vaccine-risk/

It is far lower than the crazies would have you believe.

[WhyNot]

Thanks for sharing that, LavenderBlue. It should be making the Facebook rounds shortly.

On Previewing my Facebook feed: LOL! I see you started the rounds almost an hour ago! I just gave it another shove.

[Harvey_The_Heavy]

@The Great Sun Jester

I wonder if the non-crazytown people could hire a few noncrazy writers, the sort of razor-witted but furiously toxic sort that can be found in fora like this, to gather the email sources of the dickheads and fire a relentless return volley accusing them of the indirect murder of the dead kids. Basically a nonprofit “Hannibal-Lecter-get-you-to-choke-yourself-on-your-own-tongue-for-shame” level of harassment organization. Publish the names and addresses of the targets and their real actions and copies of their messages, suggest how tragic it would be if someone were to randomly attack them with a wrecking bar the way nature attacks little unvaccinated kids with dread diseases. I’d do it but I lack the appropriate capacity for subtlety and would be arrested within days.

It’s called 4chan.

[Slypork]

My son got pertussis (whooping cough) about one week before he was old enough to get the vaccine. That year one of the talk shows (I think it was Geraldo but might have been Donahue) did a show about the dangers of of the DPT vaccines causing autism and killing kids. So my son wound up in the hospital for two weeks hooked to an apnea monitor and now has asthma and is prone to bronchitis. There were a good number of kids in there also suffering through this: coughing until they turned blue, their chests straining to breath. A huge FU to the irresponsible slime spewers who don’t see the end results of their asinine verbal defecation. And doubly so for TV producers who give these morons the time of day to spout this sensationalistic shite all in the name of ratings.

[Bricker]

An update on the subject of anti-vaxxers and whopping cough:

In the ongoing skirmishes between public health officials and vaccine skeptics, I’m scoring this one for the pro-immunization forces. A Canadian woman who had declined to have her children immunized against pertussis, better known as whooping cough, has changed her position now that all seven of her children have come down with the disease.
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“I set out to prove that we were right,” Hills said in an interview with the Washington Post, “and in the process found out how wrong we were.”

(emphasis in original)

What frustrates me is this commentary:

“Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear,” Hills wrote. “I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyone’s sake, by getting them up to date.”

The only silver lining about learning the hard way is the knowledge that minds can be changed on this subject, she said.

“People like me who were hesitant, who were confused, who froze, we can be reached if people use the right approach,” she told the Post.

I certainly appreciate the fact that she now understands her error.

But I don’t agree that she “tried [her] best,” earlier. As she explains:

“We stopped because we were scared and didn’t know who to trust,” she wrote. “Was the medical community just paid off puppets of a Big Pharma-Government-Media conspiracy? Were these vaccines even necessary in this day and age? Were we unwittingly doing greater harm than help to our beloved children? So much smoke must mean a fire, so we defaulted to the ‘do nothing and hope nothing bad happens’ position.”

But when a small measles outbreak hit nearby, Hills was terrified. “I looked again at the science and evidence for community immunity and found myself gripped with a very real sense of personal and social responsibility before God and man. The time had come to make a more fully informed decision than we did 6 years ago. I sat down with our family doctor and we put together a catch-up vaccination schedule for our children,” she wrote.

In my view, doing your best should mean looking at the science and evidence for community immunity in the first place. I laud her current position; I don’t agree that she can dodge previous responsibility to even the slightest degree by claiming she tried her best.

[johnpost]

maybe her best was shutting her brain off. maybe her best if she wanted to give up on the work of thinking and learning. life does get in the way of being sensible and responsible.

[Little_Nemo]

@Bricker

In my view, doing your best should mean looking at the science and evidence for community immunity in the first place. I laud her current position; I don’t agree that she can dodge previous responsibility to even the slightest degree by claiming she tried her best.

But she did try her best - she didn’t just watch one or two talk shows; she watched dozens of them.

Seriously, I feel sympathy for people like this. They’re not intentionally making bad choices. They just don’t know how to make good choices. You and I could figure out you should seek out doctors and scientists and listen to what they’re saying. But some people aren’t intelligent enough to realize this. To them, a celebrity on a talk show or a neighbour down the street is a credible source for information and is a lot more accessible than some professional.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

Very well said Bricker. I also chafe a bit at her assertion that people like her need to be approached in the right way. First, I would be curious about what the “right way” and the wrong way are, in her opinion. Secondly, it feels like she is continuing to blame other people for her prior poorly informed approach to these issues.

For the vast majority of people, the “right” way is that someone tells them vaccination is a good and important thing to do and they do it. Some people need to see more evidence, and then they act accordingly.

If you’re skeptical about science and medicine and reality, presenting you with evidence from those domains doesn’t seem like a productive strategy.