It’s that time of year again when some disease from days past roars back into existence and everyone who has access to a website starts writing letters to the anti-vaxers. They use crazy tools like logic and research to try and convince this largely delusional group of willingly ignorant individuals that it’s moronic to take advice about “natural living” from someone with silicone in her chest.
I used to be one of those writers. I’d spout out facts and figures and I’d think that if I could change just one person’s mind, I’d have done my job. But now I know better. Nothing will ever be enough to convince these crazy individuals that their choices are wrong and dangerous.
Let me tell you my story.
My sister had a baby. A beautiful little girl. She was quiet and sweet and slept so peacefully. We didn’t realize that the peace was masking a terrible danger until she got sick and died in the span of a few hours. It took us five months to get an answer to the terrible “WHY????” that kept us awake long into the night.
Baby girl was born with a spleen one-tenth the size it should have been. The spleen is a key organ in building up your immune system. Without one, you are destined to spend long hours in the emergency room getting antibiotics intravenously every time you get a little cold. You are dependent on the community at large to take care of themselves and to help protect you since you can’t protect yourself. Baby girl had no immunity, and her first major cold ravaged through her body and carried her away faster than the doctors could work. We had absolutely no idea.
Her death ripped a hole in our family, but probably not in the way that you would imagine.
My sister went on to have a second child, a darling little boy, and she decided to protect from being exposed to illness as much as she could. After all, she’d lost one baby to a preventable disease and was not going to lose another. She might have been a bit over the top, but really, can you blame her? Because of what had happened, she lived in fear that the same thing could happen to him.
And then, the problem: her husband’s family are anti-vaxers… by choice and with no rational reason why. None of the cousins were vaccinated, except by way of deliberate exposure to other sick kids. Do you remember those days? Hey, the neighbor’s kid has chicken pox! You kids go play.
The pediatrician advised my sister to keep the baby away from his Typhoid Mary cousins until he was six months old (3 rounds of booster shots)–or, crazy thought, to get the cousins vaccinated as well. But the husband’s family thought she was being overprotective and paranoid. They decided to ignore her concerns and the doctor’s advice, and worse, they began to employ their own brand of “preventative medicine” to her infant.
Living in the same town as her in-laws turned from a dream into a nightmare.
Six months is eternity when you’re dodging your relatives. Six months of missed family dinners, of running out of parties when the cousins show up, of crying in the driveway when the grandparents “forget” to mention that the others were already there. Six months of not one single reasonable person being willing (or in our case, close enough) to take those irresponsible and uncaring parents and grandparents outside and beat them over the head with some common sense.
That’s when I gave up on the anti-vaxers. If they can watch a mother–their own relative–cry over the dying child in her arms; and if they know–without a shadow of a doubt–that their choices could cause another mother to go through the same tragedy; and if they’re still willing to terrorize a mother who only wants to protect her child, then nothing I can say will ever change their minds.
Last year my sister’s sister-in-law got fake boobs. Her kids still aren’t vaccinated.
Is it any wonder that I gave up on the anti-vaxers?
7 Comments
Sadly, science is indicating that the more evidence you present to people set on an idea, the more they will dig in their heels, cover their ears and eyes, and shout lalalalalalla. (can provide actual link to study should anyone want it). Heartbreaking. That takes shite in-laws to a whole new level. Hope your sister’s babe is thriving.
Can all the Blunt Moms get mobilized to help her? Like a parade of arms for hugging and support? Man oh man.
For a brief time after my first son was born I started researching vaccinations and determining what my own impressions of the science were. I came dangerously close to being “anti-vax” until I realized one thing: I’m not just vaccinating my kids to prevent THEM from getting sick, I’m doing it to prevent all kids (and adults) from getting sick with a potentially life-threatening disease for NO reason.
Regardless of the potential risks involved in vaccinating for all-but-eradicated viruses and diseases, I honestly wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to a child of someone I know because MY child was carrying something that they got. The problem is that people are SO wrapped up in their own lives, families and children that they can’t see the damage they’re doing on a wider scale.
We live in generation I. “I need this.” “I want that.” “My children aren’t going to eat this.” “My children won’t do that.” Nobody is concerned with OTHER people anymore and it is BEYOND frustrating for me.
This type of story absolutely enrages me. My heart breaks for your sister, and for all the grieving parents of children who died unnecessarily. More stories like this need to come out.
I’m heartbroken for your sister. For the death of her child, obviously, but especially for the behaviour of her in-laws. Even if they didn’t agree to vaccinate (you’re right – I won’t even start), why they couldn’t at least leave her alone is beyond me.
I have no words only that I’m sorry for your sister. This is so serious and sad. I can’t even imagine.
Having recently witnessed a full on and very local measles epidemic in our community, I wonder what the hell people are thinking. They are so determined and invested in their beliefs that all evidence to the contrary is wasted words.
Polio is back, measles are killing infants before they can even get their shots because it is being carried by so many people. Frankly whooping cough is nasty too… never mind the potential for infertility when you get the mumps.
I shake my head and am just waiting for that news story where a leader in the anti vax crazy town world gets a snoot full of tragedy and changes their tune.