A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about an El Al flight attendant who became comatose after contracting measles. After sharing it on Twitter, an anti-vaxxer woman responded by saying that I had no right to tell her what to do with her body and that I should enjoy getting cancer from vaccinations.
I have had similar encounters with the anti-vaccination crowd in the past. They’re filled with ignorant self-righteousness and insistently share their fact-free opinions with anyone who happens to be passing by.
Just a few years ago, the anti-vax people were a fringe curiosity. They were mostly rich hippies living in predominantly liberal enclaves and it seemed as if they might be able to keep their lunacy contained.
Now they have become a public health problem.
I somewhat agree with Random Twitter Woman who wants me to get cancer — I don’t have a right to tell her what to do with her body.
Unless it affects my body, of course.
Then I’m a real big mouth.
The case of the El Al flight attendant highlighted the need for people to receive two vaccinations. The real problem with the outbreak in the United States, however, is that too many people are now not vaccinated at all:
As of April 26, more than 70% of the 704 people with confirmed measles since January 1 were unvaccinated. On-time vaccination with two doses of MMR vaccine is the most effective way to limit the spread of measles virus. Read the recent @CDCMMWR: https://t.co/9yjDuB4lrB pic.twitter.com/lJmrQDBk33
— CDC (@CDCgov) April 29, 2019
In my earlier post, one expert said that once we hit a few thousand cases here in the U.S. then children will die. As we have already exceeded our worst year since the disease was “eradicated” and it is only April, it isn’t far-fetched to think that we may be approaching very dangerous numbers.
In the spirit of “live and let live,” I propose that we let the anti-vaxxers and their disease-spreading spawn do as they please, as long as they don’t do it around sane people who are trying to avoid diseases that were once eradicated.
It is time to bring back leper colonies — we can call them Anti-Vaxxer Villages now — and populate them with those who fervently believe that the vaccines that get rid of diseases are actually causing other diseases.
They can happily spend their days with like-minded people having barbecues, chanting in drum circles, and watching those closest to them become deathly ill because junk science won.
Those of us who prefer not to die from easily preventable diseases can enjoy our lives and let whatever else was going to kill us eventually win the day. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of other illnesses that are lurking out there, we just prefer to nuke the diseases that we can.
So go be free, anti-vaxxers, but do it in quarantined places like Measles Manor or Polio Park. Have all kinds of fun naming your villages for diseases you work to resurrect. Maybe each village should have a bigger-than-life statue of Jenny McCarthy in its center.
Live how you want to live, as long as you do it where you can’t kill the rest of us.
Namaste, villagers.
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