'Measles Are Good For You' Say Parents Whose Kid Died Because Of Measles
They claim it prevents cancer, which it very much does not.
People often don’t like to admit that they’ve made bad decisions or had bad ideas. In some cases, the more obviously incorrect that idea is, the more they will double down on defending it, even if it means going all the way around the bend to claim even more ridiculous things. I know, because I’ve been there — though I believe at the time I was a 13-year-old girl trying to explain that she didn’t need to do her algebra homework because she was going to be a folk singer and live in a VW bus anyway. (This is also the story of how my mom made me read Unsafe at Any Speed.)
We’ve seen this a lot in recent years. People who wanted to hold the moral high ground while voting for Trump in 2016, despite his “grab them by the pussy” comments, started to claim that, actually, he was running a whole operation to free all of the children from Satanic sex traffickers. People who were mad about COVID restrictions claimed it wasn’t that bad and glommed onto increasingly ridiculous explanations for why people were “actually” dying (or weren’t dying at all). Then they opposed the vaccine and came up with increasingly outlandish theories about why the vaccine was bad and Bill Gates was using it to implant microchips into people. They wanted to use horse dewormer to treat it instead, and now they claim Ivermectin cures every disease on earth.
This is also often the case with those who oppose other vaccines. Those opposed to the MMR vaccine are no longer just anti-vaccine because they think it causes autism, but because they are now pro-measles, often citing an episode of the Brady Bunch to prove how innocuous it is.
After all, their boyfriend — George Glass — told them so.
We’re going to pause here to highlight this fact from a very interesting but paywalled Bulwark post about RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again”:
How about infectious diseases? In 1900 half of all deaths in America were from communicable diseases. Through medical advances—especially vaccines—we got that number down to about 5 percent—until COVID. All by itself COVID accounted for 12 percent of all deaths in the United States in 2021.
So again: If you want America to be healthy you’d do exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration is doing and urge everyone to get vaccinated.
And here is a fact sheet about measles that is still, for now, up at the CDC:
In 1912, measles became a nationally notifiable disease in the United States, requiring U.S. healthcare providers and laboratories to report all diagnosed cases. In the first decade of reporting, an average of 6,000 measles-related deaths were reported each year.
A vaccine became available in 1963. In the decade before, nearly all children got measles by the time they were 15 years old. It is estimated 3 to 4 million people in the United States were infected each year. Among reported measles cases each year [before the vaccine was created], an estimated:
400 to 500 people died
48,000 were hospitalized
1,000 suffered encephalitis (swelling of the brain)
Now, faced with at least 309 cases of measles reported in Texas (more than in the whole of the United States last year), 40 hospitalizations and one death so far (in Texas, there was another in New Mexico), you might think this would be a difficult position to maintain, especially for the parents of the child who died.
You would be wrong.
In fact, the Mennonite parents of the six-year-old girl who died did an interview with Children’s Health Defense (RFK Jr.’s wackadoo anti-vaxx group) this week in which they said they stood by their decision and discouraged other parents from “rushing out, panicking,” and getting their kids vaccinated.
The girl in question did not specifically die of measles, but due to pneumonia induced by measles, which many (stupid) people believe does not count as dying from measles, but dying with measles. Like how if I died I’d be dying with brown hair, but no one would suggest that as the cause of death.
“We spent the morning at Dr. Ben Edwards’ clinic,” said interviewer Polly Tomney of Children’s Health Defense, referring to a doctor recently praised by RFK Jr. for treating measles patients with vitamins and cod liver oil, “and the parents are all still sitting there saying they would rather have this than the MMR vaccination because they’ve seen so much injury, which we have as well.”
Narrator: They had not “seen so much injury.”
“Do you still feel the same way about the MMR vaccine versus measles and the proper treatment with Dr. Ben Edwards?” she asked the couple.
“Absolutely not take the MMR,” the mother said. “The measles wasn’t that bad as they’re making it out to be. [The other children] got over it pretty quickly. And Dr. Edwards was there for us.”
Yes, but the one other child literally died. Four out of five is a reasonable enough percentage when we are talking about dentists recommending a particular chewing gum brand, but not so much when we’re talking about a communicable disease that kills people.
The couple helpfully explained that the child’s death was actually the will of God, who they believe wanted to spare her from this terrible world. To be fair, I suppose he would not have had that opportunity had the girl been vaccinated, but if he were really committed to killing a six-year-old child, I’m sure he’d find a way.
Speaking through an interpreter of Low German, the father explained that “the measles are good for the body” — that they build up the immune system (they actually weaken it … a lot) and “prevent cancer.”
The parents also intimated that the hospital did not treat their daughter correctly in some capacity, though a spokesperson explained that they did.
Via NBC:
Ainsley Nelson, a spokesperson for Covenant Children’s Hospital, which treated the child, said in a statement that the hospital could not comment on the case because of patient confidentiality laws but that “misleading and inaccurate claims” were circulating online. “What we can say is that our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient’s evolving condition, diagnostic findings, and the best available medical knowledge,” Nelson said.
In this case, I’m gonna believe the hospital.
These people are so committed to their beliefs that they literally lost their daughter and are still convinced that, somehow, the vaccine is worse. What is it that they think is worse than death? I get that they don’t want to feel responsible for their daughter’s death (which, let’s be clear — they absolutely are), but if that doesn’t convince them they are wrong, I’m not certain anything will.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Plague rats. They hate being called that, so I use it, but it is also the truth. These people murdered their kid and belong in prison.
OT
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This literally has to be one of things they make you read when you end up in hell.