For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better.
She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.
Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”
She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there.
You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.
this is gonna be an extremely unpopular opinion so bare with me, but i don’t think children should be vaccinated unless they really absolutely want to be and if they grow up into adults who still don’t want to be vaccinated then so be it.
kids are too young to fully grasp what vaccination does to you, and i don’t mean that in a “they’ll make you autistic and die” way. i mean they don’t understand what they’re setting themselves up for in the future. (shots are pretty traumatic for children too, but that’s for another day.) if a child is too young to consent to sex or medical transition if they’re trans, they’re definitely too young to consent to a vax.
i haven’t had any contact with my family for quite some time now, so i have a hard time knowing my medical history, especially with my lack of health insurance and a move to a different country.
because of that, i live with the constant fear that i might have been vaccinated against rabies. my family was extremely poor and had spotty health insurance but its hard to say. but its fucking heartbreaking to know i might never be fully rabid because my parent might have vaccinated me as a child, when i was too young to know, too young to have a say in it.
how many other kids are there, just like me? how many adults have grown up miserable because they’ve been vaccinated against their genetic disposition for a certain disease? its practically eugenics and it makes me fuckin sick to my stomach. there are babies RIGHT NOW getting vaxxed bc “thats what’s healthy for them” and their parents have no idea how much grief they’re causing right now.
so yea, maybe stop vaxxing your kids??
at first i was like “yeah okay this a dumb but manageable take” and then op went for the rabies thing and my soul left my body
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