Another point is: vaccination is not only about the healthy kids (who btw can die from measles, even if it's less likely than with sick kids). It's about the sick kids who can't get the vaccine too. They die if people stop taking the vaccine.
You can get a serology test to see if you're immune. I'm immunosuppressed too and just got tested, and apparently my antibodies are still happy, even 30+ years after getting a childhood vaccine.
My husband just had a heart transplant and though everything that needed boosting was boosted before his surgery, he’s now immunocompromised and can’t get the MMR again, so we have to watch out for cases in our state and go into lock down if it shows up in our area. It’s maddening.
Don’t forget about SSPE which is almost always fatal, can show up years later, and the risk of it developing in unvaccinated infants who contract and recover from measles is thought to be as high as 1 in 600
Oh sweaty, those kids weren't healthy. Only unhealthy kids die from measles so if a kid dies from measles they're by definition unhealthy. How else could we keep this decision rolling?
I'm so sorry. That stuff is nasty. I can't believe people try to catch it. They didn't have the vaccine when you and I were kids (not that my parents would have gotten it for us unless the school made them). I got my shingles vaccines though, without a second thought.
You’re probably not a doctor but I might as well ask since you’ve gotten a shingles vax lol
I’m a little confused- I got vaccinated for chicken pox as a kid, never had it, I’m in my 30s now, so do I get a shingles vax or no? Or is it only if you have had chicken pox?
I am not a doctor. You pose a great question though.
My understanding is you can still get shingles, though, less likely, so you could get vaccinated (but again, I am not a doctor).
They advise people 50 years old and older or have a weakened immune system get the vaccines. I assume if you have had the CP vax, you are not 50 years old since it came out in 1995? If you have immune problems, speak with your GP is my advice.
NAD, but my brother got shingles when he was in high school. I was at college, but we are very close in age and had chicken pox at the same time. I asked about the vaccine and my doctor said that it wasn’t really effective in younger people? I’m not sure why, or if that’s even accurate, but it is interesting.
NAD but from my knowledge of shingles (I’ve had it 8 times hurrah)
if you had the chicken pox vaccine, you cannot get shingles because shingles is a reactivation of the chicken pox virus since it doesn’t disappear it just like hibernates in your spine like a gremlin. Shingles outbreaks happen when it reactivates along one of your nerve pathways, that’s why it’s localized and on one side of the body. If you never had chicken pox the virus is not inside you therefore you cannot get shingles.
You can check with a doctor but unless the chicken pox antibodies die off or something you do not need the shingles vaccine as you will never get shingles (another reason to vaccinate against chicken pox as shingles is fucking awful)
I've found that playing the sounds of a baby with pertussis for about 30 seconds is enough to give people a second thought about not vaccinating. I can't imagine listening to it for months and going back for more. My heart breaks every time I hear them gulping air between coughs.
There used to be a TV ad/PSA to get the pertussis vaccine and it was a white screen with text on it (“this is what pertussis sounds like” or something) and the sound of a baby with pertussis coughing. I can still hear it perfectly.
Why anyone would want their kid to break their ribs coughing and just be completely exhausted and unable to sleep is beyond me. Sounds like torture.
I mean, the logic fits. If you die of not cancer, you can’t die of cancer
So it’s kind of like how rabies protects humans from cancer without the vaccination. The rabies kills you so it’s literally saving your not life from death
Which is why I had chicken pox TWICE!!!!!! I wish these antivaxers could go through this, there's a reason most parents rushed to get their kids the vaccine when it first came out.
I swear you should not be able to decline vaccines UNLESS you can show sufficient proof that you can follow, understand, and properly interpret a scientific study. Then you must fully read one about the efficacy of each vaccine. After this, if you can present a sufficient rebuttal to the pediatrician against what these studies found, then you may choose to decline
Yep. Especially those people who were against mRNA vaccines without even being able to define RNA, much less why they're supposedly worse than other vaccines.
Right??? Here I am, cis-hetero, no autism, and I am not remotely magnetic, nor did I even die from getting the Covid vaccine. Like all promises were lies
Duh, it’s based on findings from well-designed longitudinal studies conducted by world-class researchers at Facebook University School of Medicine and TikTok University Medical School!
A friend of mine in her fifties found out the hard way that the pertussis vaccine wears off and needs to be topped up (along with others in the Tdap booster) every ten years.
She thought she was fully vaccinated.
She said it was a nightmare, and now every little cold or sniffle or flu turns into another painful chest-rattling coughing horror show.
I've kept up on my every-ten-year booster bc my ex-husband is a sculptor and a blacksmith, and he doesn't let anyone pick up a hammer in his shop without eye protection, ear protection, and up-to-date tetanus vaccine.
Rotten person to be married to, but excellent person to make stuff with...
I only recently learned that each of the diseases included in that booster have different periods of protection. Pertussis wears off far sooner than tetanus, unfortunately.
I mean, if you make it through measles, you do have immunity to measles, but you run the risk of wiping out your immunity to everything else you've built immunity to...
What if I told you you could get a less harmful version of measles that would make you less suseptible to it in the future. Something that could make your body recognise the infection without all the side effects and immune damage.
What if I told you that was easy to find, and you wouldn't have to tell anyone how you got it?
These folk love the idea that they're somehow more knowledgeable than actual experts because they watched a YouTube video from some chiropractor. It's really awesome to know that they get to control another humans health outcomes cause they think science is scary and they're too dumb to realize that they don't know shit.
I’ve seriously considered creating videos that are similar to the said chiropractor type, super conspiracy theory vibes, except with real facts and scientific truths. Maybe even use AI to create them. I am curious if they would help fight the misinformation campaigns that are everywhere.
“Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.
“I feel all sleepy,” she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.
On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.
It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion, parents who now refuse to have their children immunized are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunization is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.
Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunized, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.
LET THAT SINK IN.
Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.
So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunized?
They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunization! That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunization.
So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunized.
The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunization should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.
Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach‘. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG‘, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.”
Ugh, this is absolutely heartbreaking. He had no way to protect his daughter, and people who do nowadays would rather tempt fate than vaccinate their kids.
I'm in Utah as well. I just left Facebook recently. I couldn't take it anymore. Even the local pages were completely overrun with conspiracy bullshit. This should be considered child abuse
I agree, it's gotten really bad. And every suggested post is the same shit too. If I didn't get most of my business from Facebook groups, I'd delete the app in a heart beat!
I been thinking of making a post somewhere if it's just me. I don't use Facebook often so I don't know when it changed but here recently my feed has been filled with anti-vaxxers, some verified, some even monetized but also these random small accounts. I have never interacted with the post in anyway and yet still being flooded
last time I looked, out of the first 10 post only 2 were from people I follow and 4 were extreme anti-vaxxers
Anyone know who started the measles prevents cancer rumor? I keep seeing it come up but of course no source is listed. Whoever is responsible appears to be popular.
These people have altered the way I use this word. I will hardly use it anymore so as not to insult the general scientific community. Like for everything - "how did you pick this particular chef's knife?" I read up on knives as much as I could, did some comparisons and ultimately decided this one was a good fit for me. Previously ,I might have said "I did a ton of research..." Which is not inaccurate but differs tremendously from independent, verified, peer reviewed studies.
They also love "scientific studies" that back up what they believe. It's evidence then, but the second you show them a study that disputes it they say you can't trust it.
Edit to add: and often it's studies that manipulate the data to give a particular message.
Once had someone send me a link to a study that at first glance looked very reputable. But then ask you looked at the actual date, it didn't support the narrative at all.
The study itself covered decades of data demonstrating how there was a higher correlation between those who were diagnosed with autism and those who were vaccinated. However the only group that it was assessing were those diagnosed with autism and determining how many had been vaccinated, and how many had not. There was no control group.
For the study to actually work, they would've had to assign one group to receive vaccinations, and another to not receive the vaccinations. And THEN add the numbers up for autism diagnosis.
Because who is going to be taking their kids in to get diagnosed? People who trust medical experts. And people who trust medical experts, trust vaccines, so obviously there'd be a correlation.
I might be wrong, but aren't vaccines basically like a "safe" virus, which helps the body learn how to fight the real virus in the future? Then getting vaccinated as an infant is really like "catching [it] when young", but without the getting sick and dying part.
Fuck those people. Clearly they’ve never had measles and I’m almost 100% certain they are all vaccinated against it themselves. It is disgusting that they want their children to suffer, and for what? Bragging rights? They’re all terrible parents.
I contracted measles in the early 1980s after I had one MMR (before two shots were given), and I was miserable. I was only 3 but I have clear memories of how bad I felt, not to mention it attacked my eyes. I had to have horribly stinging eye drops to prevent me from losing my sight (which worked thankfully). And I did recover, but I could still end up with SSPE. Why would any truly loving parent want their kid to experience any of that?
ETA: My maternal grandmother’s older sister died at age 5 from measles in the 1930s. I don’t fuck around with measles.
Fuck this shit. Do they want polio to get out again?? Please vaccinate your kids and yourself.
If you live in a no vax area please get the pertussis/whooping cough vaccine yearly. It's only good for about 4 months, I had pertussis/whooping cough as an adult & don't ever want it again and I don't want anyone else to experience it, especially infants. MMR, polio, pertussis vaccines have been around for decades and should be mandatory for everyone except the ones that can't get it. Herd immunity works. We have to help each other...
It is good for 5 years minimum, up to 10 years once you have the base imnunity. Aquiring the base immunity takes however 3 shots (a 3, 5 and 12 months old usually, vaccination scheme varies from country to country).
This makes me so angry. They’re just spouting complete lies! The person who’s so happy their kids had pertussis because now they have “lifelong immunity”? What if I told you that there’s a way to get that lifetime immunity (or at least a decade’s worth) without the (luckily only) three-month illness? It’s horrific. I remember there was a time when FB was starting to crack down on anti-vaxxer BS. I guess they gave up. Ugh. Those poor kids.
"and gave us plants" = come to my Chiro office or MLM meet up to learn more about protecting your children and not feeding a greedy RX company, but instead a greedy supplement company that does nothing for the money.
Hear me out. Since they're getting rid of the CDC anyway, bribe someone for the smallpox sample, then start a mail order business so these ladies can order spores for their kids. The rest of us just stay indoors for a couple months. Everyone gets what they want, that's bi-partisanship! /s
This is like saying "Kids can recover from fractures a lot faster, don't worry" and letting your kid jump off of the roof
I MEAN SURE, THAT'S TRUE
BUT DO YOU NOT HEAR HOW INSANE YOU SOUND
Also what if your kid snaps their spine? (experiences a complication or has worse symptoms?)
Oh my god. I had a school friend who caught measles and went blind. I had red measles when I was six. I missed a year and had to start 1st grade a year late; then went on to sick over and over each year, missing weeks and weeks of school
For people when rely on hearsay, it is shocking how little they regard the experience and advice of their elders.
It's because there are elders who lived through it and DIDN'T get sick or they were one of the handful that did get it and didn't feel like it was so bad, so they reassure everyone in earshot that it's not that bad and anyone else who got sick is just blowing it out of proportion or were "weak."
So many people in the comments of this post were people saying how their grandparents said it's not bad at all, and just blindly trusting that.
I mean, if you want a brain-damaged kid, sure, go ahead and throw your little measles party...jesus christ, we're cooked. I cannot believe I survived almost 40 goddamn years just to wake up to this utter stupidity and nonsense, dude.
As a person literally disabled from a common childhood virus (mono), she can throughly go fuck herself. They're so anti vaxx until they have a disabled child to care for. If they survive.
Lady, Measles is NOT the same as chicken pox.
I wonder why, can't be because of the vaccine, that goes against what Facebook says.
Another point is: vaccination is not only about the healthy kids (who btw can die from measles, even if it's less likely than with sick kids). It's about the sick kids who can't get the vaccine too. They die if people stop taking the vaccine.
I’m almost 40 and measles would probably kill me with from being immunosuppressed.
You can get a serology test to see if you're immune. I'm immunosuppressed too and just got tested, and apparently my antibodies are still happy, even 30+ years after getting a childhood vaccine.
Oh, of course it's dangerous for adults too - I didn't want to downplay that, I am sorry if you felt like I did.
My husband just had a heart transplant and though everything that needed boosting was boosted before his surgery, he’s now immunocompromised and can’t get the MMR again, so we have to watch out for cases in our state and go into lock down if it shows up in our area. It’s maddening.
Also, it's a lie. Three kids have died from measles this year, out of ~1800 cases. 1 in 600 odds of fucking dying is pretty damn scary.
Three that we know about.
And even if it doesn't kill you, you can get brain damage or deafness.
Don’t forget about SSPE which is almost always fatal, can show up years later, and the risk of it developing in unvaccinated infants who contract and recover from measles is thought to be as high as 1 in 600
ew, TIL!
This is new information for me. Thanks.
Also blindness.
Oh sweaty, those kids weren't healthy. Only unhealthy kids die from measles so if a kid dies from measles they're by definition unhealthy. How else could we keep this decision rolling?
I mean to be fair idiots like this are working on increasing that number.
That is probably a true Scotsman fallacy at work. kid dies from measles? Can't have been a healthy kid after all
"And are all those immunocompromised kids really worth saving anyway? They're going to die sooner or later..."
- something I overheard during covid
Just don't abort a baby missing half of the skull! The baby must die painfully days after birth!
Hell, chickenpox almost took me out. I got it when I was 23 years old.
I had chicken pox when I was eight. I still have visual loss from scarring from it 40 years later.
I'm so sorry. That stuff is nasty. I can't believe people try to catch it. They didn't have the vaccine when you and I were kids (not that my parents would have gotten it for us unless the school made them). I got my shingles vaccines though, without a second thought.
Can’t wait until next year when I am eligible!
You’re probably not a doctor but I might as well ask since you’ve gotten a shingles vax lol
I’m a little confused- I got vaccinated for chicken pox as a kid, never had it, I’m in my 30s now, so do I get a shingles vax or no? Or is it only if you have had chicken pox?
I am not a doctor. You pose a great question though.
My understanding is you can still get shingles, though, less likely, so you could get vaccinated (but again, I am not a doctor).
They advise people 50 years old and older or have a weakened immune system get the vaccines. I assume if you have had the CP vax, you are not 50 years old since it came out in 1995? If you have immune problems, speak with your GP is my advice.
NAD, but my brother got shingles when he was in high school. I was at college, but we are very close in age and had chicken pox at the same time. I asked about the vaccine and my doctor said that it wasn’t really effective in younger people? I’m not sure why, or if that’s even accurate, but it is interesting.
NAD but from my knowledge of shingles (I’ve had it 8 times hurrah) if you had the chicken pox vaccine, you cannot get shingles because shingles is a reactivation of the chicken pox virus since it doesn’t disappear it just like hibernates in your spine like a gremlin. Shingles outbreaks happen when it reactivates along one of your nerve pathways, that’s why it’s localized and on one side of the body. If you never had chicken pox the virus is not inside you therefore you cannot get shingles.
You can check with a doctor but unless the chicken pox antibodies die off or something you do not need the shingles vaccine as you will never get shingles (another reason to vaccinate against chicken pox as shingles is fucking awful)
Well, if you got measles, you’re not healthy. So technically zero out of zero is still a zero.
You don't even want to get chicken pox anymore. And you don't have to. There's a vax for that too, and it helps prevent shingles later in life.
Also, a girl in Texas died of measles earlier this year. It's not zero.
Suffering through three months of illness is awful, especially when it could be so easily avoided. Poor kids.
They can also have pertussis a second (or more) time
Yep. My husband’s idiot anti vax friend’s entire family (including their infant and toddlers) just had it for the second time.
I've found that playing the sounds of a baby with pertussis for about 30 seconds is enough to give people a second thought about not vaccinating. I can't imagine listening to it for months and going back for more. My heart breaks every time I hear them gulping air between coughs.
There used to be a TV ad/PSA to get the pertussis vaccine and it was a white screen with text on it (“this is what pertussis sounds like” or something) and the sound of a baby with pertussis coughing. I can still hear it perfectly.
Why anyone would want their kid to break their ribs coughing and just be completely exhausted and unable to sleep is beyond me. Sounds like torture.
Especially if the kids catch measles and it wipes out their immune memory. Which is literally a thing.
It’s almost like these moms love their kids suffering so they can go brag on Facebook
Their lungs will never be the same.
Um……I want it explained to me like I’m 5 how exactly getting measles will eventually protect you against cancer
It's pretty simple, if you think about it.
It's because people who die of measles will never die of cancer.
Duh. /s
I mean, the logic fits. If you die of not cancer, you can’t die of cancer
So it’s kind of like how rabies protects humans from cancer without the vaccination. The rabies kills you so it’s literally saving your not life from death
Measles whacks your immune system https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/7353/
Yet these people say it’s better to get measles young so you’ll be immune. To get something that will destroy your immune system as a child is…..good?
Head start on the system wipe. Get restarted earlier? I dunno
I mean, sometimes you need to do the good old factory reset
Which is why I had chicken pox TWICE!!!!!! I wish these antivaxers could go through this, there's a reason most parents rushed to get their kids the vaccine when it first came out.
It’s a deliberate misinterpretation of a study done where a mutated measles virus was made to selectively infect and kill certain cancer cells.
The mutated virus did not cause measles. It was mutated to perform another function. This is experimental lab studies.
However, someone with no critical thinking skills read (using my above sentence):
a - measles virus - kill - cancer cells
Well duhhhhh, they “did their own research”. Like no Linda, you googled. And kept clicking until it told you something close to what you want to hear.
I swear you should not be able to decline vaccines UNLESS you can show sufficient proof that you can follow, understand, and properly interpret a scientific study. Then you must fully read one about the efficacy of each vaccine. After this, if you can present a sufficient rebuttal to the pediatrician against what these studies found, then you may choose to decline
Yep. Especially those people who were against mRNA vaccines without even being able to define RNA, much less why they're supposedly worse than other vaccines.
…but, it alters your DNA, and the 4G, you can’t forget the 4G!
Still annoyed that my Covid vaccine didn’t boost my phone’s signal.
I'm still waiting for my LGBT+ and Autism upgrades from my vaccines.
I wanted to be magnetic.
Right??? Here I am, cis-hetero, no autism, and I am not remotely magnetic, nor did I even die from getting the Covid vaccine. Like all promises were lies
Well when the only thing you read is the Bible you're not exactly gonna be pursuing a graduate degree in immunology.
Duh, it’s based on findings from well-designed longitudinal studies conducted by world-class researchers at Facebook University School of Medicine and TikTok University Medical School!
(/s just in case…)
Oh do not forget the piles and piles of internet doctors on X. Oh do they have a lot of really true and accurate knowledge to share lol
How could I forget those experts?! I must be a sheep in the pockets of big pharma.
You should instead be in the deep pockets of the people shilling vitamins and colloidal silver!
Well see, it's real time peer-review on X the everything app. Peers doesn't mean that any of them are smart.
Because reasons
Valid
You misunderstand, it just means their measles wont have cancer.
Stop it, I just literally snort laughed at that
Phase 1: Get measles
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Anti-cancerous
Thank you. That is shockingly accurate to their line of thinking
Sadly, yes it is. No need to explain things when you can just woo-woo your way to whatever you want to.
Well, people are dying of cancer but have mostly not been getting measles, that must be connected somehow!
There was some research involving using a modified measles VACCINE to fight a certain cancer and the antivax crowd read "measles fights cancer."
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A friend of mine in her fifties found out the hard way that the pertussis vaccine wears off and needs to be topped up (along with others in the Tdap booster) every ten years.
She thought she was fully vaccinated.
She said it was a nightmare, and now every little cold or sniffle or flu turns into another painful chest-rattling coughing horror show.
I've kept up on my every-ten-year booster bc my ex-husband is a sculptor and a blacksmith, and he doesn't let anyone pick up a hammer in his shop without eye protection, ear protection, and up-to-date tetanus vaccine.
Rotten person to be married to, but excellent person to make stuff with...
I don’t even wait the full ten years anymore. If my doctor offers Tdap and it’s been a few years, top me up!
I only recently learned that each of the diseases included in that booster have different periods of protection. Pertussis wears off far sooner than tetanus, unfortunately.
“God made our bodies to fight for survival”
My grandfather was the youngest of 14 kids and was born in 1916.
Only 4 of them made it into adulthood.
Cemeteries are full of dead children who didn’t make it to their 10th birthday because vaccines weren’t available.
I feel like she was making an argument for evolution and didn't know it.
Wow. Your poor great grandparents.
Cod liver oil? What kind of person thinks to themself "this child has measles, so what they really need is a case of galloping diarrhea"
The coughs are whoopin', the diarrhea be gallopin'
Coughing while shitting themselves.
That would lead to projectile poop...
I literally snorted. Thank you for this, I needed a good chuckle tonight.
Cod liver oil was EASILY the most commented treatment, it was weird.
Need to balance those humors.
I mean, if you make it through measles, you do have immunity to measles, but you run the risk of wiping out your immunity to everything else you've built immunity to...
...so they can have another 3 month bout of pertussis.
Like the pertussis that those poor kids suffered through for three months.
I had measles as a kid and didn’t know that for years, but thankfully going to boot camp got me re-vaccinated on everything.
Proof that we've lowered the education bar so low that a majority of the population is as dumb as a brick.
No Child Left Behind ironically left a LOT of people behind
Especially the smartest kids... Most likely to improve the world, cure disease, etc. but held back by NCLB nonsense
Measles is hard to find?
What if I told you you could get a less harmful version of measles that would make you less suseptible to it in the future. Something that could make your body recognise the infection without all the side effects and immune damage.
What if I told you that was easy to find, and you wouldn't have to tell anyone how you got it?
Maybe this will help end their dumbass bloodlines
It won’t because they’ve also decided that over-populating the world is also necessary. So, it’ll even out in the long run.
/s
These folk love the idea that they're somehow more knowledgeable than actual experts because they watched a YouTube video from some chiropractor. It's really awesome to know that they get to control another humans health outcomes cause they think science is scary and they're too dumb to realize that they don't know shit.
I’ve seriously considered creating videos that are similar to the said chiropractor type, super conspiracy theory vibes, except with real facts and scientific truths. Maybe even use AI to create them. I am curious if they would help fight the misinformation campaigns that are everywhere.
Tell that to Roald Dahl after his daughter, Olivia died at seven from measles.
Roald Dahl, the beloved author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The BFG, lost his eldest daughter, Olivia, to measles in 1962.
https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2025/03/05/roald-dahls-heartbreaking-letter-about-losing-his-daughter-in-1962/
“Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.
“I feel all sleepy,” she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.
On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.
It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion, parents who now refuse to have their children immunized are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunization is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.
Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunized, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.
LET THAT SINK IN.
Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.
So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunized?
They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunization! That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunization.
So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunized.
The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunization should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.
Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach‘. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG‘, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.”
Edit: removed obscenities against anti-vaxxers.
Ugh, this is absolutely heartbreaking. He had no way to protect his daughter, and people who do nowadays would rather tempt fate than vaccinate their kids.
We are going backwards because people have forgotten how frightening these diseases are and how deadly they can be to children.
My kids got pertussis and suffered for 3 months with hacking and being unable to breathe, it was tough, but I got my super mommy patch.
The sheer amount of just factually incorrect nonsense they're confidently stating is so enraging.
I'm in Utah as well. I just left Facebook recently. I couldn't take it anymore. Even the local pages were completely overrun with conspiracy bullshit. This should be considered child abuse
I agree, it's gotten really bad. And every suggested post is the same shit too. If I didn't get most of my business from Facebook groups, I'd delete the app in a heart beat!
I been thinking of making a post somewhere if it's just me. I don't use Facebook often so I don't know when it changed but here recently my feed has been filled with anti-vaxxers, some verified, some even monetized but also these random small accounts. I have never interacted with the post in anyway and yet still being flooded
last time I looked, out of the first 10 post only 2 were from people I follow and 4 were extreme anti-vaxxers
This should be child abuse. If I purposely gave my child something to make them sick, I'd be in jail
Anyone know who started the measles prevents cancer rumor? I keep seeing it come up but of course no source is listed. Whoever is responsible appears to be popular.
If they die from measles they're not dying from (or even getting) cancer... technically correct
Fucking idiots.
"Independent research"
Those words you are using... I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
These people have altered the way I use this word. I will hardly use it anymore so as not to insult the general scientific community. Like for everything - "how did you pick this particular chef's knife?" I read up on knives as much as I could, did some comparisons and ultimately decided this one was a good fit for me. Previously ,I might have said "I did a ton of research..." Which is not inaccurate but differs tremendously from independent, verified, peer reviewed studies.
They also love "scientific studies" that back up what they believe. It's evidence then, but the second you show them a study that disputes it they say you can't trust it.
Edit to add: and often it's studies that manipulate the data to give a particular message.
Once had someone send me a link to a study that at first glance looked very reputable. But then ask you looked at the actual date, it didn't support the narrative at all.
The study itself covered decades of data demonstrating how there was a higher correlation between those who were diagnosed with autism and those who were vaccinated. However the only group that it was assessing were those diagnosed with autism and determining how many had been vaccinated, and how many had not. There was no control group.
For the study to actually work, they would've had to assign one group to receive vaccinations, and another to not receive the vaccinations. And THEN add the numbers up for autism diagnosis.
Because who is going to be taking their kids in to get diagnosed? People who trust medical experts. And people who trust medical experts, trust vaccines, so obviously there'd be a correlation.
What doesn't kill you makes you easily killable by future enemies
Well, thank God she has her cod liver oil all lined up and ready to go. 🙄
The censoring you did on the OOP's user pic looks like an angel of death or something. I like it, very appropriate.
Vaccines cause adults
Next up: Polio! It makes your hair shiny and your legs take a nap!
Yall it's fine, worst is your child would just get deaf or worst die, what's the issue /s
I might be wrong, but aren't vaccines basically like a "safe" virus, which helps the body learn how to fight the real virus in the future? Then getting vaccinated as an infant is really like "catching [it] when young", but without the getting sick and dying part.
ding ding ding
Measles is not chicken locks, there’s no advantage t9 getting it younger, and this will kill children…
There’s no advantage to getting chicken pox younger either, now that there’s a vaccine.
Oh absolutely but that’s where this meme comes from.
Fuck those people. Clearly they’ve never had measles and I’m almost 100% certain they are all vaccinated against it themselves. It is disgusting that they want their children to suffer, and for what? Bragging rights? They’re all terrible parents.
I contracted measles in the early 1980s after I had one MMR (before two shots were given), and I was miserable. I was only 3 but I have clear memories of how bad I felt, not to mention it attacked my eyes. I had to have horribly stinging eye drops to prevent me from losing my sight (which worked thankfully). And I did recover, but I could still end up with SSPE. Why would any truly loving parent want their kid to experience any of that?
ETA: My maternal grandmother’s older sister died at age 5 from measles in the 1930s. I don’t fuck around with measles.
Fuck this shit. Do they want polio to get out again?? Please vaccinate your kids and yourself. If you live in a no vax area please get the pertussis/whooping cough vaccine yearly. It's only good for about 4 months, I had pertussis/whooping cough as an adult & don't ever want it again and I don't want anyone else to experience it, especially infants. MMR, polio, pertussis vaccines have been around for decades and should be mandatory for everyone except the ones that can't get it. Herd immunity works. We have to help each other...
"...please get the pertussis/whooping cough vaccine yearly. It's only good for about 4 months"
I've never heard that before! Will check with my doctor. Having asthma, I'm worried about anything that would further damage my lungs.
It is good for 5 years minimum, up to 10 years once you have the base imnunity. Aquiring the base immunity takes however 3 shots (a 3, 5 and 12 months old usually, vaccination scheme varies from country to country).
Investing in iron lungs might be a good use of money in 2026.
The day this shit finally gets classified as child abuse is the day I can finally rest.
Absolutely horrifying. Child abuse.
1 in 1000 kids dead - God's plan.
Tell me more about this "independent research..."
This makes me so angry. They’re just spouting complete lies! The person who’s so happy their kids had pertussis because now they have “lifelong immunity”? What if I told you that there’s a way to get that lifetime immunity (or at least a decade’s worth) without the (luckily only) three-month illness? It’s horrific. I remember there was a time when FB was starting to crack down on anti-vaxxer BS. I guess they gave up. Ugh. Those poor kids.
Don't worry, you might have it for a year, but vitamin c works!!
"and gave us plants" = come to my Chiro office or MLM meet up to learn more about protecting your children and not feeding a greedy RX company, but instead a greedy supplement company that does nothing for the money.
Utah is dumb
Somebody should invent a way to naturally build your immune system but have no risk of getting measles
Fucking demented.
Well they're definitely gonna love not being grandparents when they get older.
plants instead of plans,
this shill is using poor speech to text software and pumping out thousands of such responses that he doesn't even have time to grammar check
Hear me out. Since they're getting rid of the CDC anyway, bribe someone for the smallpox sample, then start a mail order business so these ladies can order spores for their kids. The rest of us just stay indoors for a couple months. Everyone gets what they want, that's bi-partisanship! /s
Lifetime immunity to pertussis? Eh..... No?
“My kids had whooping cough for a quarter of the year! I’m very intelligent!”
This is like saying "Kids can recover from fractures a lot faster, don't worry" and letting your kid jump off of the roof
I MEAN SURE, THAT'S TRUE BUT DO YOU NOT HEAR HOW INSANE YOU SOUND Also what if your kid snaps their spine? (experiences a complication or has worse symptoms?)
Ah yes, the experts who dont know the difference between measled and pox
Totally qualified.
Oh my god. I had a school friend who caught measles and went blind. I had red measles when I was six. I missed a year and had to start 1st grade a year late; then went on to sick over and over each year, missing weeks and weeks of school
For people when rely on hearsay, it is shocking how little they regard the experience and advice of their elders.
It's because there are elders who lived through it and DIDN'T get sick or they were one of the handful that did get it and didn't feel like it was so bad, so they reassure everyone in earshot that it's not that bad and anyone else who got sick is just blowing it out of proportion or were "weak."
So many people in the comments of this post were people saying how their grandparents said it's not bad at all, and just blindly trusting that.
The kicker is we lived just outside Corpus Christi in the late '60s, and remembering it that vividly at 6-7 years old means it really was *That Bad*
Purposely getting your child sick with something that can be permanently damaging or fatal should be considered child abuse everywhere.
I mean, if you want a brain-damaged kid, sure, go ahead and throw your little measles party...jesus christ, we're cooked. I cannot believe I survived almost 40 goddamn years just to wake up to this utter stupidity and nonsense, dude.
As a person literally disabled from a common childhood virus (mono), she can throughly go fuck herself. They're so anti vaxx until they have a disabled child to care for. If they survive.
My mom made me get chickenpox from my sister when I was 3 and now I realize how wrong it was (it was 2000)