A visit with a family in mourning
March 16, 2025 1:50 PM Subscribe
His daughter was America's first measles death in a decade An outbreak—even one this big—should not have come as a surprise. Vaccination rates have dipped in many states, including Texas, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In Gaines County, where Seminole is located, the measles-vaccination rate among kindergartners is just 82 percent, well short of the estimated 95 percent threshold for maintaining herd immunity. Even that alarming figure would appear to undersell the local problem. Many children from the county’s Mennonite community, which numbers in the thousands, are unvaccinated, but they won’t get picked up in state tallies, because they are either homeschooled or enrolled in nonaccredited private schools, which are not required to collect such data.
Honestly, I feel like all of this "stuff" recently *waves hands around the whole of the US* is by and large because people have been too comfortable. Vaccines were a godsend because things killed their loved ones. Globalism was seen as a good because it really did bring to bear the idea that we were too closely tied economically for people to risk another globe spanning conflict after two that crushed so many lives.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:33 PM on March 16 [21 favorites]
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:33 PM on March 16 [21 favorites]
Honestly, I feel like all of this "stuff" recently *waves hands around the whole of the US* is by and large because people have been too comfortable.
Agreed – we have had decades now of what felt like absolutely frictionless, zero consequences belief. You could embrace the stupidest and most dangerous shit, and the system would just keep on ticking and protecting you from yourself, by and large. I think collectively as Americans we are squarely in the find out phase of this now - it’s hard to know what will come after all of that collective suffering.
posted by reedbird_hill at 3:04 PM on March 16 [71 favorites]
Agreed – we have had decades now of what felt like absolutely frictionless, zero consequences belief. You could embrace the stupidest and most dangerous shit, and the system would just keep on ticking and protecting you from yourself, by and large. I think collectively as Americans we are squarely in the find out phase of this now - it’s hard to know what will come after all of that collective suffering.
posted by reedbird_hill at 3:04 PM on March 16 [71 favorites]
Does anyone have a non-paywalled link?
posted by eviemath at 3:15 PM on March 16 [7 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 3:15 PM on March 16 [7 favorites]
My father is in his 80s, and grew up in post-war Wales in the UK. He talks of the almost routine occurrence of seeing children in leg-braces and crutches due to polio, or having class-mates die of diphtheria. "They would go home sick on a Friday and we wouldn't see them for a week or two, only to be told that they had died'. For his generation the very concept of being 'anti-vax' is utterly bewildering. They lived with the ever-present fear of death by illness and then over the course of a generation that threat completely vanished. For his generation it's a more significant scientific milestone than putting a man on the moon. The sense of complacency that people seem to have, and the willingness to rely on everyone else to maintain herd immunity so that they can benefit is a blight on us all.
posted by tim_in_oz at 3:20 PM on March 16 [75 favorites]
posted by tim_in_oz at 3:20 PM on March 16 [75 favorites]
We need to figure out how to get these churches to tell their congregants that vaccines are a Gift from God, not that their child's measles death was "what God intended". FFS.
posted by mcstayinskool at 3:20 PM on March 16 [15 favorites]
posted by mcstayinskool at 3:20 PM on March 16 [15 favorites]
My heart goes out, because the loss of a child is unimaginably horrible to me.
But, as the parable goes... God sent you a rowboat, sir.
I'd hope this would be instructive for some folks, but we are neck-deep in an era during which people steadfastly refuse to learn anything advance. It's FAFO or nothing these days.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:31 PM on March 16 [15 favorites]
But, as the parable goes... God sent you a rowboat, sir.
I'd hope this would be instructive for some folks, but we are neck-deep in an era during which people steadfastly refuse to learn anything advance. It's FAFO or nothing these days.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:31 PM on March 16 [15 favorites]
→
That's not exactly how many of these church communities work. Coming from outside yelling is something they're very good at ignoring. The community, with their pastor, decides what technology is useful for their society and what isn't. So — somehow — it's got to come from within if it's going to work at all.
But a heartbreaking interview either way.
posted by scruss at 3:56 PM on March 16 [7 favorites]
We need to figure out how to get these churches to tell their congregants …
That's not exactly how many of these church communities work. Coming from outside yelling is something they're very good at ignoring. The community, with their pastor, decides what technology is useful for their society and what isn't. So — somehow — it's got to come from within if it's going to work at all.
But a heartbreaking interview either way.
posted by scruss at 3:56 PM on March 16 [7 favorites]
One of my childhood memories was of all the pulpy child adventure novels I'd read, including the Famous Five and Secret Seven novels by Enid Blyton. (In the original Hebrew, naturlich.) All of them would start with a pretext to get the parents out of the story so the kids could demostrate their pluck, and I recall one of them started with an 11 year old coming home from school to discover that the parents had caught measles from elsewhere, that her house is under quarantine and that she was locked out of her own house for the duration and would have to go sleep over with a classmate.
I also certainly remember adults putting on a brave face when a kid caught a childhood illness, because it's just common sense to do so. And now we have these antivax types making hay out of an episode of the Brady Bunch where they brave out a bout of the measles, which yes, was something people did. But they would also kick a kid out of her own house to keep her from catching it if they could.
posted by ocschwar at 3:57 PM on March 16 [8 favorites]
I also certainly remember adults putting on a brave face when a kid caught a childhood illness, because it's just common sense to do so. And now we have these antivax types making hay out of an episode of the Brady Bunch where they brave out a bout of the measles, which yes, was something people did. But they would also kick a kid out of her own house to keep her from catching it if they could.
posted by ocschwar at 3:57 PM on March 16 [8 favorites]
Not vaccinating your children (assuming no legitimate medical reason not to vaccinate, like certain immune system conditions or certain allergies) should be illegal. Because
a) you're placing your child at risk of serious illness, serious health complications, and death;
b) you are placing the children of other people, who are too young to get vaccinated yet, at risk of serious illness, serious health complications, and death if they catch something from your child.
In Australia, the first dose of measles vaccine is at 12 months of age - which means that any child who gets taken to the supermarket by a parent before that; or goes to daycare before that; or is on a bus before that; or is in a doctor's waiting room before that; is at risk of serious illness or death from other people's unvaccinated children.
Childhood vaccination schedule.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:15 PM on March 16 [19 favorites]
a) you're placing your child at risk of serious illness, serious health complications, and death;
b) you are placing the children of other people, who are too young to get vaccinated yet, at risk of serious illness, serious health complications, and death if they catch something from your child.
In Australia, the first dose of measles vaccine is at 12 months of age - which means that any child who gets taken to the supermarket by a parent before that; or goes to daycare before that; or is on a bus before that; or is in a doctor's waiting room before that; is at risk of serious illness or death from other people's unvaccinated children.
Childhood vaccination schedule.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:15 PM on March 16 [19 favorites]
the almost routine occurrence of seeing children in leg-braces and crutches due to polio
It was not that uncommon in the USA, for that matter; one of my father's first cousins had polio as a child and post-polio syndrome as an adult (she needed supplemental oxygen because of reduced respiratory function). Even if a vaccine-preventable illness doesn't kill you it can lead to lifelong consequences.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 4:18 PM on March 16 [9 favorites]
It was not that uncommon in the USA, for that matter; one of my father's first cousins had polio as a child and post-polio syndrome as an adult (she needed supplemental oxygen because of reduced respiratory function). Even if a vaccine-preventable illness doesn't kill you it can lead to lifelong consequences.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 4:18 PM on March 16 [9 favorites]
When this crossed my Blue Sky feed, I thought, "You chose your religion over your child. How can you reconcile that, especially since your child didn't have to die."
posted by Kitteh at 4:23 PM on March 16 [12 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 4:23 PM on March 16 [12 favorites]
scruss Well. Up to a point. At a certain point it is valid to have the state step in and prevent child abuse/neglect. I think refusing vaccines for non-medical reasons falls into neglect.
THEY can believe anything they want to. But their right to believe stupid shit ends where their child's welfare begins. Or it should.
We do that, sort of, with various religions that forbid surgery or blood transfusion. They can commit suicide by refusing medical treatment, they can't make that decision for their kid. The same logic should apply to vaccination.
And, frankly, kids raised in compounds need to be out among non-cultists on the regular so that any signs of abuse can be spotted and looked into. It's one of those things about schooling that's not often talked about much, but teachers are (theoretically) supposed to be on the lookout for abuse and report any suspicions of abuse.
And there's good reason to worry about abuse (other than, you know, the girl murdered by religious abuse): the rate of sexual abuse and physical abuse in compounded religions is truly horrifying. Amish, Mennonite, Jewish, FLDS, whatever, if it's a religion in a compound you are right to worry what they're covering up. It was only in the late 1980's or early 1990's that Texas completely abandoned children to homeschooling and let the cultists keep their kids locked away forever without anyone on the outside knowing if they're being abused and working in a sweatshop (looking at you Amish Furniture) or even alive or not so it's not like this some weird modern woke DEI cultural Marxist idea.
It's LONG past time that we closed the religious exemptions bullshit about vaccines.
posted by sotonohito at 4:32 PM on March 16 [26 favorites]
THEY can believe anything they want to. But their right to believe stupid shit ends where their child's welfare begins. Or it should.
We do that, sort of, with various religions that forbid surgery or blood transfusion. They can commit suicide by refusing medical treatment, they can't make that decision for their kid. The same logic should apply to vaccination.
And, frankly, kids raised in compounds need to be out among non-cultists on the regular so that any signs of abuse can be spotted and looked into. It's one of those things about schooling that's not often talked about much, but teachers are (theoretically) supposed to be on the lookout for abuse and report any suspicions of abuse.
And there's good reason to worry about abuse (other than, you know, the girl murdered by religious abuse): the rate of sexual abuse and physical abuse in compounded religions is truly horrifying. Amish, Mennonite, Jewish, FLDS, whatever, if it's a religion in a compound you are right to worry what they're covering up. It was only in the late 1980's or early 1990's that Texas completely abandoned children to homeschooling and let the cultists keep their kids locked away forever without anyone on the outside knowing if they're being abused and working in a sweatshop (looking at you Amish Furniture) or even alive or not so it's not like this some weird modern woke DEI cultural Marxist idea.
It's LONG past time that we closed the religious exemptions bullshit about vaccines.
posted by sotonohito at 4:32 PM on March 16 [26 favorites]
Measles incubation is about two weeks, so keep your ear out for the followup to this:
Newborn babies exposed to measles in Texas hospital
Title kind of says it all.
What the article didn't say is why they weren't testing patients and/or visitors of unvaccinated newborns for measles, amidst an outbreak. But maybe they're Mr. Bullyian: if you don't test for it, cases are lower!
posted by Dashy at 4:46 PM on March 16 [6 favorites]
Newborn babies exposed to measles in Texas hospital
Title kind of says it all.
What the article didn't say is why they weren't testing patients and/or visitors of unvaccinated newborns for measles, amidst an outbreak. But maybe they're Mr. Bullyian: if you don't test for it, cases are lower!
posted by Dashy at 4:46 PM on March 16 [6 favorites]
My father is in his 80s, and grew up in post-war Wales in the UK
My father is almost eighty, and he has told me about how worried his mother was when he and his brother were little before the polio vaccine, and how they were among the first to get it in their town because she made sure to get them there right away. I just think about how hard it must have been to be a parent and to need to worry about your kids getting polio, and now no one has to worry about that.
He was just telling me the other day how awful measles was - of course they all had it, and he and his brother were fine, but man were they sick. I had chicken pox myself and I was pretty sick for about a week, and he said that measles was much worse.
It is so grim to see us as a society throwing things away with both hands - all the things that people fought for, vaccines and social security and the cure for AIDS, and we're just throwing them away out of some kind of weird death wish. I sometimes think we know we're doomed because of climate change and so we're just racing toward death even though we don't admit it to ourselves.
posted by Frowner at 4:49 PM on March 16 [29 favorites]
My father is almost eighty, and he has told me about how worried his mother was when he and his brother were little before the polio vaccine, and how they were among the first to get it in their town because she made sure to get them there right away. I just think about how hard it must have been to be a parent and to need to worry about your kids getting polio, and now no one has to worry about that.
He was just telling me the other day how awful measles was - of course they all had it, and he and his brother were fine, but man were they sick. I had chicken pox myself and I was pretty sick for about a week, and he said that measles was much worse.
It is so grim to see us as a society throwing things away with both hands - all the things that people fought for, vaccines and social security and the cure for AIDS, and we're just throwing them away out of some kind of weird death wish. I sometimes think we know we're doomed because of climate change and so we're just racing toward death even though we don't admit it to ourselves.
posted by Frowner at 4:49 PM on March 16 [29 favorites]
There are two things about measles that are unlike other serious childhood illnesses:
1. measles erases your immune system memory, which means you lose immunity to OTHER illnesses that you had previously been exposed to. When measles vaccination was introduced, deaths from non-measles diseases dropped as well due to the lack of measles erasing people's immune system memories.
2. A child that has seemingly recovered from measles can have measles come back from dormancy and cause a brain infection that can kill them up to FIVE YEARS after the initial measles infection.
A deadly measles complication that kills kids years after they seemingly recover may not be as rare as doctors thought, researchers said.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:01 PM on March 16 [35 favorites]
1. measles erases your immune system memory, which means you lose immunity to OTHER illnesses that you had previously been exposed to. When measles vaccination was introduced, deaths from non-measles diseases dropped as well due to the lack of measles erasing people's immune system memories.
2. A child that has seemingly recovered from measles can have measles come back from dormancy and cause a brain infection that can kill them up to FIVE YEARS after the initial measles infection.
A deadly measles complication that kills kids years after they seemingly recover may not be as rare as doctors thought, researchers said.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:01 PM on March 16 [35 favorites]
Measles may weaken immune system up to three years. The measles virus can cause serious disease in children by temporarily suppressing their immune systems. This vulnerability was previously thought to last a month or two; however, a new study shows that children may in fact live in the immunological shadow of measles for up to three years, leaving them highly susceptible to a host of other deadly diseases.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:04 PM on March 16 [14 favorites]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:04 PM on March 16 [14 favorites]
we have had decades now of what felt like absolutely frictionless, zero consequences belief. You could embrace the stupidest and most dangerous shit, and the system would just keep on ticking and protecting you from yourself, by and large
I'd come to the same conclusion trying to puzzle out why the bougies of my society suddenly got taken in by antivax clean living ideologues, from the West, when I'm talking about (currently) well-off people who'd had immediate family history of polio and measles and suchlike. That was why I knew as a global civilization we were screwed the moment COVID "landed" in the West, because for too long westerners blithely and unknowingly depended on public health responses of other (poorer) governments to keep them safe.
posted by cendawanita at 5:10 PM on March 16 [21 favorites]
I'd come to the same conclusion trying to puzzle out why the bougies of my society suddenly got taken in by antivax clean living ideologues, from the West, when I'm talking about (currently) well-off people who'd had immediate family history of polio and measles and suchlike. That was why I knew as a global civilization we were screwed the moment COVID "landed" in the West, because for too long westerners blithely and unknowingly depended on public health responses of other (poorer) governments to keep them safe.
posted by cendawanita at 5:10 PM on March 16 [21 favorites]
It's LONG past time that we closed the religious exemptions bullshit about vaccines.
Especially because I believe that a lot of people invented post hoc religious justifications for not getting vaccines after it became a partisan issue. Has anybody looked into this? There's got to be spikes in people looking for religious justifications for vaccine exemptions, especially among branches of Christianity that weren't anti-vax before. It's not like the Bible or the theology really changed. It was the GOP platform and its leadership that changed.
posted by jonp72 at 5:10 PM on March 16 [21 favorites]
Especially because I believe that a lot of people invented post hoc religious justifications for not getting vaccines after it became a partisan issue. Has anybody looked into this? There's got to be spikes in people looking for religious justifications for vaccine exemptions, especially among branches of Christianity that weren't anti-vax before. It's not like the Bible or the theology really changed. It was the GOP platform and its leadership that changed.
posted by jonp72 at 5:10 PM on March 16 [21 favorites]
I was born well before the measles vaccine existed, and my parents, at the behest of my doctor, embarked on a long and apparently futile campaign to make sure I got them.
But I remember sitting on an examination table in his office one day when I was six or seven, the doctor behind me magnifying glass in hand, my parents in front, and seeing them break out in smiles when he confirmed that the single lesion in the middle of my back was in fact a measle.
That was the only one I ever got, and a similar campaign to give me the mumps did not bear fruit, so I had to get vaccinated as an adult.
posted by jamjam at 5:21 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]
But I remember sitting on an examination table in his office one day when I was six or seven, the doctor behind me magnifying glass in hand, my parents in front, and seeing them break out in smiles when he confirmed that the single lesion in the middle of my back was in fact a measle.
That was the only one I ever got, and a similar campaign to give me the mumps did not bear fruit, so I had to get vaccinated as an adult.
posted by jamjam at 5:21 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]
I'm 58 and when i was a kid in Massachusetts they literally lined us up in elementary school and gave us the vaccines. On a yearly basis, as needed. No one got asked about it. We were given a vaccine card to take home, and that was that. It was just done.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:25 PM on March 16 [24 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:25 PM on March 16 [24 favorites]
People talk about having a time machine and going back and giving The Hitlers birth control. I'd give to the parents of Andrew Wakefield. It's entirely possible his pursuit of money ends up killing more people than the Nazis, just less directly.
posted by Mitheral at 5:44 PM on March 16 [27 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 5:44 PM on March 16 [27 favorites]
This is a hard gap to address, but if you’re one of the people that health policy or labor policy generally serves well, it’s easy to understand why you’d just indigent personal religious choice in this child’s death. That is, if you have continuous health insurance, paid sick days, had remote work during the pandemic, etc, centralized policy is generally working for you and I get why you’re not skeptical. Wearing a mask everywhere and not having family gatherings during the pandemic was a bummer, but eventually it was gonna end and you’d be together again.
If you’re not one of those people: eg non negotiable in person work (cleaning, counter service, health care), inconsistent health care access, no paid sick days, etc, you’re gonna have some skepticism about health policy. I’m kind of taking the long way to my point, but lots of families of people like that just went on hanging out during the pandemic bc most everyone had jobs like that. Exposure was inevitable and they figured lots of them would die. You can’t postpone togetherness under those conditions.
Then the vaccine came and even everyone who was nominally able to do remote work but lacked the social power to resist RTO orders was basically expected to get vaxed and get back to public work. All the in person “front line” workers had pretty much all gotten covid and depending on their outcomes, felt pretty sacrificed. Ppl had questions about the new vaccines, esp the appearance of over-rapid development, testing, and approval, but those people were bullied into silence and their concerns hand waved away “for the greater good.”
In that context, ppl who were always skeptical about the government’s role in their lives felt their skepticism harden. It wasn’t hard to weaponize that into a more pervasive, broadly appealing narrative. There was already a pretty good base of people who felt like a lot of social policy was invasive or coercive, and to the extent their concerns were valid, they continued to not be taken seriously. You can’t call people stupid indefinitely and not have there be consequences.
posted by toodleydoodley at 5:50 PM on March 16 [10 favorites]
If you’re not one of those people: eg non negotiable in person work (cleaning, counter service, health care), inconsistent health care access, no paid sick days, etc, you’re gonna have some skepticism about health policy. I’m kind of taking the long way to my point, but lots of families of people like that just went on hanging out during the pandemic bc most everyone had jobs like that. Exposure was inevitable and they figured lots of them would die. You can’t postpone togetherness under those conditions.
Then the vaccine came and even everyone who was nominally able to do remote work but lacked the social power to resist RTO orders was basically expected to get vaxed and get back to public work. All the in person “front line” workers had pretty much all gotten covid and depending on their outcomes, felt pretty sacrificed. Ppl had questions about the new vaccines, esp the appearance of over-rapid development, testing, and approval, but those people were bullied into silence and their concerns hand waved away “for the greater good.”
In that context, ppl who were always skeptical about the government’s role in their lives felt their skepticism harden. It wasn’t hard to weaponize that into a more pervasive, broadly appealing narrative. There was already a pretty good base of people who felt like a lot of social policy was invasive or coercive, and to the extent their concerns were valid, they continued to not be taken seriously. You can’t call people stupid indefinitely and not have there be consequences.
posted by toodleydoodley at 5:50 PM on March 16 [10 favorites]
Don’t wanna get immunized for measles? FAFO.
As for Kennedy, he is not a credible source of knowledge or a suitable authority when it comes to vaccines or whale disposal. So, again: FAFO.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 6:16 PM on March 16
As for Kennedy, he is not a credible source of knowledge or a suitable authority when it comes to vaccines or whale disposal. So, again: FAFO.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 6:16 PM on March 16
→
True, but it's not going to be easy. Especially since the province I live in has stepped in to give legal exemption from education standards and child labour laws to certain religious communities. Most people here don't have family doctors, so there's probably little medical record of those religious communities. And this goes back before Wakefield and his odious ideas.
Maybe having talks with the leaders, if you can get in somehow.
posted by scruss at 6:21 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]
At a certain point it is valid to have the state step in and prevent child abuse/neglect
True, but it's not going to be easy. Especially since the province I live in has stepped in to give legal exemption from education standards and child labour laws to certain religious communities. Most people here don't have family doctors, so there's probably little medical record of those religious communities. And this goes back before Wakefield and his odious ideas.
Maybe having talks with the leaders, if you can get in somehow.
posted by scruss at 6:21 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]
Not vaccinating your children (assuming no legitimate medical reason not to vaccinate, like certain immune system conditions or certain allergies) should be illegal. Because
a) you're placing your child at risk of serious illness, serious health complications, and death;
In theory abortion causes the death of a child, not just an embryo or a fetus, and that's wrong and bad and women should go to jail and then go to hell, but if you kill a child by denying them a vaccine, that's so-sad, too-bad, but it's your god-given right as a crisshun 'merikan. Amirite?
Windopaene, you are a better human being than I am. My empathizer is all broken when it comes to people who chose to play games with their children's lives and put other people's children at risk. What I think of is the agony of a parent who loses a child they wanted to vaccinate but couldn't because of health reasons, or a parent who thought they did everything right to no avail.
For many reasons I think this is going to go down in history as the FAFO Era.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:04 PM on March 16 [11 favorites]
a) you're placing your child at risk of serious illness, serious health complications, and death;
In theory abortion causes the death of a child, not just an embryo or a fetus, and that's wrong and bad and women should go to jail and then go to hell, but if you kill a child by denying them a vaccine, that's so-sad, too-bad, but it's your god-given right as a crisshun 'merikan. Amirite?
Windopaene, you are a better human being than I am. My empathizer is all broken when it comes to people who chose to play games with their children's lives and put other people's children at risk. What I think of is the agony of a parent who loses a child they wanted to vaccinate but couldn't because of health reasons, or a parent who thought they did everything right to no avail.
For many reasons I think this is going to go down in history as the FAFO Era.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:04 PM on March 16 [11 favorites]
No, I was just moderating my thoughts.
Our second child died the day before he was to be born, And that was incredibly hard to deal with.
But these people, for whatever their reasons, who don't vaccinate make we want to punch them, and things.
So I can empathize, because I know what that loss feels like. And if your nonsense "beliefs" led to that, I'm not sure how one could continue after that.
So I can empathize to some extent, but I cannot forgive those choices.
posted by Windopaene at 7:16 PM on March 16 [14 favorites]
Our second child died the day before he was to be born, And that was incredibly hard to deal with.
But these people, for whatever their reasons, who don't vaccinate make we want to punch them, and things.
So I can empathize, because I know what that loss feels like. And if your nonsense "beliefs" led to that, I'm not sure how one could continue after that.
So I can empathize to some extent, but I cannot forgive those choices.
posted by Windopaene at 7:16 PM on March 16 [14 favorites]
In Minnesota, there was an outbreak of measles a few years ago, and our public health guidance was to consider vaccination for infants below one year if their parent felt that they were at risk of being exposed to measles. I’m not sure if this is true in Texas, but anybody with an infant might at least want to check into it.
posted by Emmy Noether at 7:37 PM on March 16
posted by Emmy Noether at 7:37 PM on March 16
The whole anti-vaccine movement is such a clusterfuck of lack of trust in institutions, deliberately stirred up disinformation, anti-autistic bias, right-wing body purity culture, and straight up eugenicist bullshit that it's going to be almost impossible to fully untangle. As Mitheral mentioned upthread, Andrew Wakefield holds a great deal of blame and in any competent society, he'd have been tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity, but he merely got the ball rolling. It's far deeper than that.
I do think we understate the dangers of the whole right-wing body purity culture aspect to the anti-vaccine movement. So much of contemporary neo-fascist thought is around the idea of the body as something that exists as a vector for shame and needs to be purified. It's the mindset behind carnivore diets and behind being against seed oils. It's the mindset that led to white supremacists chugging gallons of milk to prove their genetic superiority, and the mindset that leads to chugging raw milk because pasteurization is for the weak. It leads to being against vaccines because if you're healthy and pure, your own natural immune system will take care of everything.
And, of course, this is where body-purity culture runs straight into eugenics: if you die from a disease, you were clearly weak and impure, and your death will strengthen the species by taking out your DNA. What better way to cleanse the species of the weak and impure than by making sure diseases takes out those weak people.
posted by SansPoint at 7:51 PM on March 16 [20 favorites]
I do think we understate the dangers of the whole right-wing body purity culture aspect to the anti-vaccine movement. So much of contemporary neo-fascist thought is around the idea of the body as something that exists as a vector for shame and needs to be purified. It's the mindset behind carnivore diets and behind being against seed oils. It's the mindset that led to white supremacists chugging gallons of milk to prove their genetic superiority, and the mindset that leads to chugging raw milk because pasteurization is for the weak. It leads to being against vaccines because if you're healthy and pure, your own natural immune system will take care of everything.
And, of course, this is where body-purity culture runs straight into eugenics: if you die from a disease, you were clearly weak and impure, and your death will strengthen the species by taking out your DNA. What better way to cleanse the species of the weak and impure than by making sure diseases takes out those weak people.
posted by SansPoint at 7:51 PM on March 16 [20 favorites]
So, just a few months before the covid lockdowns began, a friend of mine started a Discord server aimed at people from my era who frequented my college's computer club. It was fortunate because the server became a lifeline for a lot of us as the everything escalated. The college is a certain northeastern polytechnic that functions as an ASD asylum. So as we stayed home and huddled around screens, I had a tab open to a clique that's best characterized as people with high levels of general clue, a large number of people with jobs with high levels of responsibility and low levels of authority. And this was the tail end of the first Trump term, where the country was run by people with high levels of authority and no sense of responsibility.
Several people on the server were in biotech, others were in medicine or married to doctors, et cetera, but really for almost any technical topic there was someone on the server with pertinent experience. I was the renewables & power grid guy. So now we're still huddling there, and prepping for yet another period of lockdowns, and watching the Age of American Unreason intensify, and I just have to admit that this particular article is on epistemic learned helplessness point. If you don't have the time and background to "do your own research" for real, then you don't. You'll defer to the people you know who seem to have pertinent knowledge.
And if you don't have the right people in your circle, you're screwed.
This family lost their child because they are in a community where the local consensus view of vaccines is fucked up. They deferred to others for their decisions on the MMR vaccine, and they deferred to the wrong people, because the right people are not even in their circle of acquaintances. As awful as this is, I can't say for sure that I'd have acted differently if this child's father and I had been swapped at birth.
posted by ocschwar at 8:19 PM on March 16 [26 favorites]
Several people on the server were in biotech, others were in medicine or married to doctors, et cetera, but really for almost any technical topic there was someone on the server with pertinent experience. I was the renewables & power grid guy. So now we're still huddling there, and prepping for yet another period of lockdowns, and watching the Age of American Unreason intensify, and I just have to admit that this particular article is on epistemic learned helplessness point. If you don't have the time and background to "do your own research" for real, then you don't. You'll defer to the people you know who seem to have pertinent knowledge.
And if you don't have the right people in your circle, you're screwed.
This family lost their child because they are in a community where the local consensus view of vaccines is fucked up. They deferred to others for their decisions on the MMR vaccine, and they deferred to the wrong people, because the right people are not even in their circle of acquaintances. As awful as this is, I can't say for sure that I'd have acted differently if this child's father and I had been swapped at birth.
posted by ocschwar at 8:19 PM on March 16 [26 favorites]
So it bears thinking about before wanting to vent rage at this girl's family.
The desire to grab her dad by the shoulders and yell that her death is his fault is understandable, but counterproductive, and at least to some degree wrong.
What's far more outrageous, however, is RFK publicly speculating that she died because she wasn't fed health food. NO, asshole. She died because you started a grift and some people fell for it.
posted by ocschwar at 8:22 PM on March 16 [18 favorites]
The desire to grab her dad by the shoulders and yell that her death is his fault is understandable, but counterproductive, and at least to some degree wrong.
What's far more outrageous, however, is RFK publicly speculating that she died because she wasn't fed health food. NO, asshole. She died because you started a grift and some people fell for it.
posted by ocschwar at 8:22 PM on March 16 [18 favorites]
That's not exactly how many of these church communities work.
I read this the other day and one of my main takeaways was that I don't think the person writing this fully understood Old Order Mennonites. I have a nurse friend who works with these groups locally. When they were trying to get them vaccinated during the pandemic know how my friend did it? They spoke to them in Low German and explained it to them within their cultural understanding. As a result the local old order Mennonites they worked with had higher rates of COVID vaccination then more mainstream Protestant groups in the neighbouring communities.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:17 PM on March 16 [16 favorites]
I read this the other day and one of my main takeaways was that I don't think the person writing this fully understood Old Order Mennonites. I have a nurse friend who works with these groups locally. When they were trying to get them vaccinated during the pandemic know how my friend did it? They spoke to them in Low German and explained it to them within their cultural understanding. As a result the local old order Mennonites they worked with had higher rates of COVID vaccination then more mainstream Protestant groups in the neighbouring communities.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:17 PM on March 16 [16 favorites]
I'm highly pro vaccine, but let's not pretend that there are never risks. A cousin of my wife had polio before the vaccines were available. So once they were, she and all the rest of her cousins got them in early 1955. Then news reports began of the Cutter incident, and the families were terrified for a while. But she says they still were hearty vaccine supporters, because they had seen their cousin go from a strong active boy to a thin kid who struggled to walk with crutches and leg braces, after spending months in an iron lung.
And even being immunized isn't 100%.
I had the MMR shot when I was four years old, and ended up contracting mumps when I was 11. Best guess was from some kids who attended my school for all of a week, then their families withdrew them right when I got sick. Mine was the only reported case in the area, so it's only a guess.
I was just in a couple of rooms with them, and add my crappy immune system, and I had mumps. I'm grateful it was only mumps, uncomfortable as it was.
I don't know if that can happen with measles, but I worry about it. Not for myself - I've re-upped my MMR a few times on doctors advice. But I worry for those who have done all the right things and might still get hit because... Well, because grifters and a perfect environment for grift to thrive.
I live in a pretty poor area and between my early training as a first responder and my broken body, I'm a pretty decent scratch medic. So many of my friends and neighbors use me as triage - do they really need to go to the doctor?
I've been able to persuade many to vaccinate because they trust ME with medical stuff. They know I do the reading, and can then explain in plain English what has been distorted through several layers of political misinformation and monetized grift.
There's not always a class element involved, but in my area there certainly is. They tolerate my ability to understand technical language because I speak to them in their form of speech. They see that I'm just as poor or poorer than they are, so I don't seem "elite" to them.
I don't know how we shore up trust in expertise. As long as it's profitable for the true elites to keep confusing every fucking issue, I don't know how to fix it.
I do know that people like that young father rarely can look their complicity in their tragedy head on. Most people simply cannot live with truths like that, so their minds reconstruct events into something survivable. And so the next generation of vaccine deniers comes from families like his, that NEED vaccines to be bad in order to be good themselves.
How the hell do you fix that?
posted by Vigilant at 10:17 PM on March 16 [10 favorites]
And even being immunized isn't 100%.
I had the MMR shot when I was four years old, and ended up contracting mumps when I was 11. Best guess was from some kids who attended my school for all of a week, then their families withdrew them right when I got sick. Mine was the only reported case in the area, so it's only a guess.
I was just in a couple of rooms with them, and add my crappy immune system, and I had mumps. I'm grateful it was only mumps, uncomfortable as it was.
I don't know if that can happen with measles, but I worry about it. Not for myself - I've re-upped my MMR a few times on doctors advice. But I worry for those who have done all the right things and might still get hit because... Well, because grifters and a perfect environment for grift to thrive.
I live in a pretty poor area and between my early training as a first responder and my broken body, I'm a pretty decent scratch medic. So many of my friends and neighbors use me as triage - do they really need to go to the doctor?
I've been able to persuade many to vaccinate because they trust ME with medical stuff. They know I do the reading, and can then explain in plain English what has been distorted through several layers of political misinformation and monetized grift.
There's not always a class element involved, but in my area there certainly is. They tolerate my ability to understand technical language because I speak to them in their form of speech. They see that I'm just as poor or poorer than they are, so I don't seem "elite" to them.
I don't know how we shore up trust in expertise. As long as it's profitable for the true elites to keep confusing every fucking issue, I don't know how to fix it.
I do know that people like that young father rarely can look their complicity in their tragedy head on. Most people simply cannot live with truths like that, so their minds reconstruct events into something survivable. And so the next generation of vaccine deniers comes from families like his, that NEED vaccines to be bad in order to be good themselves.
How the hell do you fix that?
posted by Vigilant at 10:17 PM on March 16 [10 favorites]
I read the article, and I felt terrible for the dad, but it's hard for me not to contextualize it based on local events in the Metroplex. There's a big church in Fort Worth called Mercy Culture that throws its weight around (e.g., they just bullied the mayor and council into letting them set up a "trafficking shelter" despite neighborhood opposition by threatening to sue--and their pockets are probably deeper than the city's). One of the pastors at the church is a state representative.
Unsurprisingly this church also has a school, and it came out recently that the school has the lowest vaccination rate of any school in Texas (I think this was MMR specific but could be all of them). This school had just under 15% of its students vaccinated. So the head pastor and the State Rep pastor were on Xitter BRAGGING and CELEBRATING that the parents were using their FREEDUMB to not vaccinate. They had made t-shirts to brag about it!
A lot of the coverage of the outbreak in west Texas does seem to emphasize the Mennonites are weird/strange/cultish/backward/doing it wrong/whatever but it's really hard for me to see that as a factor when the big mainline evangelical churches in our cities are bragging that their kids are going unvaccinated. What that man did to his child and himself and his family is awful. It's not as awful as what's going on at Mercy Culture and nobody's died there yet.
And yes, I had to get my titer checked and update my MMR earlier this month. I'm not formally immune-compromised but I have autoimmune problems and getting measles would be terrible for me even without the possibility of immune reset.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 12:13 AM on March 17 [14 favorites]
Unsurprisingly this church also has a school, and it came out recently that the school has the lowest vaccination rate of any school in Texas (I think this was MMR specific but could be all of them). This school had just under 15% of its students vaccinated. So the head pastor and the State Rep pastor were on Xitter BRAGGING and CELEBRATING that the parents were using their FREEDUMB to not vaccinate. They had made t-shirts to brag about it!
A lot of the coverage of the outbreak in west Texas does seem to emphasize the Mennonites are weird/strange/cultish/backward/doing it wrong/whatever but it's really hard for me to see that as a factor when the big mainline evangelical churches in our cities are bragging that their kids are going unvaccinated. What that man did to his child and himself and his family is awful. It's not as awful as what's going on at Mercy Culture and nobody's died there yet.
And yes, I had to get my titer checked and update my MMR earlier this month. I'm not formally immune-compromised but I have autoimmune problems and getting measles would be terrible for me even without the possibility of immune reset.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 12:13 AM on March 17 [14 favorites]
> get these churches to tell their congregants that vaccines are a Gift from God
This is probably not going to be as easy as we would like it to be.
The church I grew up in usually thinks they are in some kind of a competition to embrace the worst of fundamentalist/right-wing type positions. All while claiming they are "always neutral on political issues" etc etc etc, of course.
Just so happened their top leader at the time Covid came along was a doctor. So in general they followed standard medical advice throughout the pandemic, including closing services and recommending that people get the vaccine.
So what happens is, now there is a large and vocal faction (of the church's previously most rabid supporters) maintaining that "church leadership has fallen away" and other such things.
So don't get me wrong, I'm 100% in agreement that church's ought to be doing everything they can to encourage their members to follow actual science-backed medical practices and avoid wacky ones.
But there is a very complicated feedback loop going on there and it's not going to be all that simple to just fix it.
posted by flug at 12:14 AM on March 17 [3 favorites]
This is probably not going to be as easy as we would like it to be.
The church I grew up in usually thinks they are in some kind of a competition to embrace the worst of fundamentalist/right-wing type positions. All while claiming they are "always neutral on political issues" etc etc etc, of course.
Just so happened their top leader at the time Covid came along was a doctor. So in general they followed standard medical advice throughout the pandemic, including closing services and recommending that people get the vaccine.
So what happens is, now there is a large and vocal faction (of the church's previously most rabid supporters) maintaining that "church leadership has fallen away" and other such things.
So don't get me wrong, I'm 100% in agreement that church's ought to be doing everything they can to encourage their members to follow actual science-backed medical practices and avoid wacky ones.
But there is a very complicated feedback loop going on there and it's not going to be all that simple to just fix it.
posted by flug at 12:14 AM on March 17 [3 favorites]
After my stem cell transplant, I had no immunity to any of the standard childhood diseases. I've since been immunized for most things -- thirteen kinds of pneumonia, three kinds of hepatitis, tetanus, covid, diptheria, polio, and probably some others I'm forgetting. I've had a lot of jabs, spread out over the last eighteen months. I'm almost done after May 5, except for chicken pox and measles. The measles and chicken pox vaccines are 'live' vaccines and I can't receive them until two years after my transplant. I'm very much aware of measles outbreaks and the risks of catching measles as an adult with a reduced immune system. I stay as far away as possible from children these days. I will not, for instance, share a grocery store aisle with small children or stand in a lineup with little kids. I had measles as a child and it was terrible then; I don't want to go through that (and it would probably be much worse as an adult). I had chicken pox at age 15 and it was also terrible. People who refuse to immunize their children do not understand how dangerous it could be for someone with impaired immune responses to catch these diseases. I masked for COVID, then I masked for RSV, now I'm masking for measles.
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 12:57 AM on March 17 [20 favorites]
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 12:57 AM on March 17 [20 favorites]
This is so sad.
But also, if the Democrats ever get into power again, they should build universal healthcare and educational standards. The level of ignorance in the US is clearly a public health and security issue, as well as all the other stuff, and I feel it should be treated as such.
posted by mumimor at 3:32 AM on March 17 [7 favorites]
But also, if the Democrats ever get into power again, they should build universal healthcare and educational standards. The level of ignorance in the US is clearly a public health and security issue, as well as all the other stuff, and I feel it should be treated as such.
posted by mumimor at 3:32 AM on March 17 [7 favorites]
So, here’s something I’d like to know: what vaccines should middle-aged people definitely be getting? I can think of a few obvious ones:
- COVID boosters
- annual flu
- chickenpox/shingles
What about:
- MMR?
- DPT?
- pneumococcal?
- hepatitis B?
- others?
posted by slkinsey at 4:18 AM on March 17 [3 favorites]
- COVID boosters
- annual flu
- chickenpox/shingles
What about:
- MMR?
- DPT?
- pneumococcal?
- hepatitis B?
- others?
posted by slkinsey at 4:18 AM on March 17 [3 favorites]
I have booked an appointment with my family doctor in early April (soonest I could get in) to check my MMR status. I was born in 1976 and was obv vaccinated throughout childhood, but I am reading that I should get make sure I have those antibodies (correct?) anyway. I didn't think I'd need to check my fucking childhood vaccines at 48 but with measles even popping up here in Ontario, better safe than sorry.
posted by Kitteh at 4:52 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 4:52 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
Agreed. I need to get the shingles vax and when I am visiting my doctor for that and my meds check I'll ask about the MMR thing. I got monkeypox vaxxed a couple years ago, so that's good.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:23 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:23 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
I work in a pediatric ICU, so I’ve seen the range of sick/injured children that ranges from true accidents and freak occurrences all the way up to willful harm - children beaten or starved to death by their caregivers. Illness from vaccine preventable infections is just shy of the latter for me. I had a patient years ago come in with tetanus - needed to be ventilated and have a tracheostomy, fortunately did survive. This was not their first vaccine-preventable illness, but the pertussis infection did not change the family’s practice. I was just SO ANGRY every day on rounds, so many resources used and so much trauma over something that was so easily prevented. I have also seen a patient with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis from a measles infection years prior. The child was vaccinated per the US schedule but should have been on an accelerated schedule because of the family’s travel. The kid walked into the hospital just a little off, but declined rapidly and was never the same again. Never spoke, walked, breathed, or ate independently - it’s been several years since discharge, I assume by now the family has let them go. I cannot fucking imagine choosing that for your child.
posted by obfuscation at 5:53 AM on March 17 [16 favorites]
posted by obfuscation at 5:53 AM on March 17 [16 favorites]
But there is a very complicated feedback loop going on there and it's not going to be all that simple to just fix it.
A knock on the door at 2 AM at the home of a pastor could fix a congregation.
posted by ocschwar at 6:43 AM on March 17
A knock on the door at 2 AM at the home of a pastor could fix a congregation.
posted by ocschwar at 6:43 AM on March 17
If there is a God, She gave us John Franklin Enders. That's the helicopter.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:10 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:10 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
So, here’s something I’d like to know: what vaccines should middle-aged people definitely be getting?
I'm following advice I probably saw here and other places - I have a physical this week and I'm asking about my "titers." Also, when I got my most recent flu shot a few months ago the person giving it handed me a printout and said that I need to get an updated TDAP. I'm glad the reported side effects seem to be few, because I still have the memory of the 2nd Shingles vax and whoooo it kicked my ass.
(I will get all recommended shots and boosters, I am happy when they don't put me out of commission for any length of time. If they do, they do and most side effects for me more than beat the alternative.)
posted by 41swans at 7:59 AM on March 17
I'm following advice I probably saw here and other places - I have a physical this week and I'm asking about my "titers." Also, when I got my most recent flu shot a few months ago the person giving it handed me a printout and said that I need to get an updated TDAP. I'm glad the reported side effects seem to be few, because I still have the memory of the 2nd Shingles vax and whoooo it kicked my ass.
(I will get all recommended shots and boosters, I am happy when they don't put me out of commission for any length of time. If they do, they do and most side effects for me more than beat the alternative.)
posted by 41swans at 7:59 AM on March 17
You may note, if you evade the paywall on the article, that the murderer here and his murderous community show no remorese, nor any interest at all in ending their criminal neglect of their children. They have been indoctornated by their cult to believe that infectuous disease is inevitable and unavoidable.
They deliberatley, maliciously, keep themselves ignorant, unable to communicate with outsiders, and in their compounds they beat, rape, and murder children while raising the survivors to do the same.
I have no sympathy at all for the so-called "parents" who murered their daughter.
And as much as I'd love to blame their cult and its compound, the horrible truth is that the only real difference between them and the average Trump voter is that they speak Low German instead of English. They echoed all the MAGA anti-vaccine talking points, and like all good cultists they refuse to allow mere facts to change their minds.
I am increasingly unsure if the American approach to free speech is compatible with the survival of humanity. I have no idea how to implement a fix without letting Trump types silence all dissent, but clearly letting people spread lies about vaccines is an exestential threat to the survival of humanity.
posted by sotonohito at 8:33 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]
They deliberatley, maliciously, keep themselves ignorant, unable to communicate with outsiders, and in their compounds they beat, rape, and murder children while raising the survivors to do the same.
I have no sympathy at all for the so-called "parents" who murered their daughter.
And as much as I'd love to blame their cult and its compound, the horrible truth is that the only real difference between them and the average Trump voter is that they speak Low German instead of English. They echoed all the MAGA anti-vaccine talking points, and like all good cultists they refuse to allow mere facts to change their minds.
I am increasingly unsure if the American approach to free speech is compatible with the survival of humanity. I have no idea how to implement a fix without letting Trump types silence all dissent, but clearly letting people spread lies about vaccines is an exestential threat to the survival of humanity.
posted by sotonohito at 8:33 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]
They spoke to them in Low German and explained it to them within their cultural understanding.
Thank you. This is good phrasing and helpful.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:14 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]
Thank you. This is good phrasing and helpful.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:14 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]
One of my childhood memories was of all the pulpy child adventure novels I'd read, including the Famous Five and Secret Seven novels by Enid Blyton.
I loved those books! Jo was my first crush.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:33 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
I loved those books! Jo was my first crush.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:33 AM on March 17 [2 favorites]
So the story of the kid cast out of her own home on account of the measles is not a Blyton one, the Internet tells me. Now I have such an urge to find which one it is.
posted by ocschwar at 10:55 AM on March 17
posted by ocschwar at 10:55 AM on March 17
« Older IF THIS IS IT | Half humble servants of the state, half scheming... Newer »
Losing a child is really hard...
But when it was your choices, (regardless of the religion aspect), that resulted in that death?
Ouch.
And putting so many others at risk? Not sure how your God would feel about that. God should have protected that child, for having believing parents...
posted by Windopaene at 2:07 PM on March 16 [4 favorites]