The Anti-Vacs

When I was a wee lad I got the measles and I’ll never forgive tWhe damn virus. As a result I didn’t get to the Saturday matinee that week. Never mind the movie. It was the serial I missed. The Lone Ranger was going to take off his mask. For my remaining days I’ve had to live with the uncertainty if he had a nose in the middle of his face like the rest of us.

Thirty years later my children were vaccinated assuring them all of seeing the Lone Ranger’s nose. We now have a loud group of parents who don’t care about their kids or other people’s kids missing such seminal moments.  

All you guys in favor of measles get over there.

I’m trying hard to hold my tongue. I really don’t want to call these folks misguided morons because many of them are university graduates and otherwise enlightened. Some are even friends of mine. But something has gone wrong with their brains.

There are among us those who conflate big pharma with science and government with conspiracy. These are otherwise rational thinkers who don’t know the difference between causation and correlation. If someone gets hit by a run-a-way trolley car while taking a medication their unfortunate demise is not a side-effect of the drug.

The case for autism caused by the MMR vaccine quickly fell into disrepute. It was shown to be an elaborate fraud but that has not deterred a large number of alarmed parents. When Mama and Papa get their hackles raised they lose their smarts and regress to some reptilian mind state. A perceived threat to the child makes some folks act as if possessed by the Furies causing a temporary loss of good sense.

Many thoughtful people cannot live with unanswered questions. Progressives join with trailer-trash smelling collusion among politicians, corporations and science as if they’ve gotten together to produce a vaccine heedless of consequences.

Let Nature take its course, they proclaim. Natural does not confer harmlessness nor should the spread of microbes be left as is. Three million is the estimated number of measles-deaths before the vaccine was instituted in the late 60s. Natural products abound on store shelves gobbled up by gullible consumers…as if opium, lead and arsenic were not also natural.

To the anti-vacs I say, get a grip. The world is not flat even if Science says it is round, nor is climate change some government hoax. Give your kids protection against the dreaded measles and consider the threat you pose to the community. Both Tonto and the Lone Ranger, I’m sure, would agree.