VACCINATION IS A SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

As a courtesy informational PSA, I am re-posting a letter from Neal Cohen, lifted from Facebook. It's worth reading, and worth forwarding.

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A message to all anti-vaxxers:

Well, today we found out that my 5 month old daughter has the measles. Think about that for a second...my infant child contracted a disease that until recently had been virtually eradicated from our society. She is too young to be vaccinated (they get the MMR vaccine at 12 months) and so she is entirely reliant on the people around her to have the good sense to get theirs. It's called herd immunity.

Here's the thing about herd immunity; it only works if you have an overwhelming number of intelligent people surrounding idiots such as yourself. In other words, your justification of an irresponsible decision is that there are enough people around you being smart that you can afford to be stupid. Unfortunately, your "movement" has given other stupid people the impression that they should have a choice whether or not to vaccinate their children.

Vaccination is not a choice; it is a social responsibility. If everyone were to treat this social responsibility with the same disregard that you have, thousands and perhaps millions of children would be exposed to diseases that cause blindness, meningitis, encephalitis, croup, and other preventable complications. Your selfishness (or perhaps more accurately, the fact that you are a fucking moron) has put an entire new generation of children at risk to contract diseases that had been a non-issue for more than 100 years.

92% of doctors in North America are in agreement that the recent "anti-vax" movement is to blame for the resurgence of diseases like whooping cough and the measles. Nearly 100% of doctors agree that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh any risks associated with administration of the vaccines. Unfortunately, we have an outbreak of physicians who recently graduated from the University of Google that have outsmarted western medicine. Therefore I'd like to THANK YOU, in the most sarcastic tone possible, for the risk you've reintroduced to society's most at-risk, susceptible citizens. If your school age child contracts the measles, and your child infects others, you should be charged with criminal negligence. Of course that won't happen, but a guy can dream, can't he?

So thanks, "anti-vaxxers". I hope you get polio.

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Yes, there is some harsh language there. You don't like it? Shut the hell up.


Oh, and by the way, someone should tell Robert De Niro that he's a dipshit. Along with all the other celebrity cottonwools who have jumped on that bandwagon.




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