Yes that headline is real, but before we get into it, I first have a few thoughts.
In normal times you might occasionally come across something that motivates you to go WTF! or similar. These days are not normal times, and so such encounters are sadly becoming not just daily but almost hourly now. I do wonder if it was always like this and I simply never noticed because I was not paying attention, or have I become less tolerant and more easily triggered?
So anyway, buckle up and get ready for today’s WTF! moment. Having found it, I feel compelled to share it, not because I wish to inflict some trauma upon you, but perhaps more as a form of therapy for myself. Writing about it enables me to express my utter frustration and also enables me to feel a little less alone.
It concerns vaccines, or to be a tad more precise, a decision to reject them for very bad reasons.
But wait, I’m making an assumption here. I assume that the word “vaccine” is embraced by you as something deeply positive, and that you do indeed regard it as one of the most impactful medical interventions ever discovered by humans.
My belief is that you are with me on this.
In the not too distant past a fundamental aspect of family life was the shadow of tragedy, a darkness and shadow that constantly hovered and threatened to pluck away forever those who were cherished and held close. With the rise of vaccines we had banished many of those fears, and some have even forgotten what once was.
Even in my own family there are pictures of two beautiful girls that my great-grandparents lost to the ravages of a disease that had no cure. Below is Jane on the left and Sara on the right. Both sisters died in the 1890s within a few years of each other from what is now very preventable …
I don’t think we truly grasp the raw anguish of such loss happening on a very large scale. I can look upon my own children and perhaps in some small way begin to understand the depths of sorrow inflicted by such loss.
What is utterly mind blowing is that this once banished dark shadow of preventable disease has been welcomed back by some. They have chosen it …
A measles outbreak in the American southwest has killed a second person, an unvaccinated adult, New Mexico health officials have said.
The fatality comes roughly a week after measles took the life of an unvaccinated child in nearby Texas, the first US death from the disease since 2015.
Measles, which was considered “eliminated” in the US in 2000, is spreading quickly in Texas, with the state identifying 198 cases as of Friday, nearly 30 more since the state’s last report on Tuesday. In the same span the number of cases in neighbouring New Mexico tripled, to 30.
The disease has also been reported in other states and across Canada, as well.
...One in every five measles cases requires hospitalisation and about three in every 1,000 cases results in death, the New Mexico health department said on Thursday.
The current outbreak killed a healthy but unvaccinated six-year-old in Texas, state officials said on 27 Feb.
OK, so let’s move on to the news item that triggered me.
The No.1 Least Vaccinated School in Texas
This came up via a tweet from Texas State Rep. Nate Schatzline who is also a pastor. He apparently sends his kids to MC Prep and so he was thrilled to boast about how excellent the school was like this …
He is upset … that they did not celebrate their gross stupidity earlier.
His tweet quite rightly motivated a few media outlets to go “He said what!”, and so reporters from the Dallas Morning News reached out seeking clarification, then reported on that interaction. It was everything you might expect to trigger your WTF meter …
…State Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, who represents a district that includes the Mercy Culture Church, shared his perspective Thursday in a post on X.
“I’ve gotten word that my children’s school has been ranked the #1 most unvaccinated school in Texas & I’m upset… …that we haven’t celebrated sooner!” Schatzline wrote.
Schatzline told The News on Thursday that he is a pastor at Mercy Culture. He shared his X post in response to a request for further comment.
On Thursday morning, Schott posted to X: “Don’t let spiritually unhealthy people tell you how to be healthy!”
Later in the day, Schott reposted a post from another account praising Mercy Culture Preparatory’s low vaccination rate.
“Why is it important? Because traditional thought is averse to this kind of freedom,” the other account stated on X. “[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] is showing us the truth about many vaccines.”
Kennedy, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has been criticized for falsely stating vaccines can cause autism. …
No vaccines do not cause autism. That old canard has been very robustly debunked.
Joining up the dots is really not challenging
The facts are the facts …
… and so now because stupidity has become so contagious we end up with a body count where there should be none … by choice … willingly.
Playing the “Natural Immunity” card: What does not kill you will make you stronger
There is for some an embrace of what is called “Natural Immunity”, hence letting such illnesses run rampant is believed to be best. For some, this is not just a passive philosophy but one where parents throw pox parties or flu parties so that all their kids can be exposed and get that good “natural immunity”.
What happens when you ask a subject matter expert about this?
Oh come now, you know the right answer. Via here …
Parents who expose their children to varicella zoster virus in this manner often do so out of the belief that acquiring immunity to chickenpox via infection is safer and more effective than receiving a vaccination.[11] Similar ideas have been applied to other diseases such as measles. Pediatricians have warned against holding pox parties, however, citing dangers arising from possible complications associated with chickenpox, such as encephalitis, chickenpox-associated pneumonia, and invasive group A strep.[12][13] These serious complications (e.g., brain damage or death) are vastly more likely than vaccine adverse events.
Measles is even worse. Beyond the rolling of the dice and hoping it does not land on the 1 in 500 chance of death, the impact of measles on all who get it is deeply significant.
When we started vaccinating for measles back in the 1960s it had the intended effect; the decline and obliteration of Measles. We might think of it as a harmless childhood illness, but its eradication is truly a big deal. The prognosis for measles is that complications such as bronchitis, sensorineural hearing loss, and panencephalitis (which is fatal), can occur, so eradicating it was a huge leap forward for healthcare.
Something deeply weird also happened once we started vaccinating for measles – deaths from all infectious diseases also plummeted.
Why was established by a 2015 paper published in Science entitled “Long-term measles-induced immunomodulation increases overall childhood infectious disease mortality“.
When you get measles, what actually happens is that your immune system is suppressed, and that makes you more susceptible to any and every infection. This is well understood and documented. What was odd is that long after the immune system has recovered and the measles is gone, a period of roughly 5 weeks to a couple of months, patients appear to be still far more susceptible to other infections.
The lead author of the paper, Michael Mina, explains …
“We found measles predisposes children to all other infectious diseases for up to a few years,”
What they discovered is that Measles does is not simply to make you ill for a few weeks, it also wipes your immune system memory of the resistance you have already acquired in life up to that point. In other words, it gives your immune system amnesia on how to fight against previous infections it had already previously learned how to cope with.
“The immune system kind of comes back. The only problem is that it has forgotten what it once knew,” – Mina
Bottom Line: “Natural” immunity really is not your best choice.
Utter Frustration
Boasting that your school has the lowest vaccination rates might indeed score political points with some deeply gullible people, but it also confirms that this rather famous quotation was on the mark …
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
― Isaac Asimov
Rep. (and also Pastor) Nate Schatzline may indeed be proud because the students his kids attend are far more likely to … ‘go home to Jesus‘ … than others. For people like him, science is clearly too hard and so they have embraced a much simpler but very wrong answer.
His posturing speaks directly to how far removed from reason he is. Fanatics like him would be only too happy to make themselves masters of us all.
In other words, Ignore religion at your leisure, Ignore science at your peril.