CNN has run an expose that reveals the depths that the movement of anti-vaxers can sink to. It is quite frankly jaw dropping stuff. Here is the opener …
Her son died. And then anti-vaxers attacked her
Not long ago, a 4-year-old boy died of the flu. His mother, under doctor’s orders, watched his two little brothers like a hawk, terrified they might get sick and die, too.
Why does this happen?
What is going on here, why do people go out of their way to seek out the parents of children who have tragically died to simply mock and harass them on social media?
The issue is this – not vaccinating has consequences. If a parent, who has not vaccinated their kid, ends up suffering a tragic bereavement because of the ill-informed choice they have made, this then becomes yet another in-your-face example that conflicts with the sincerely held belief that vaccines are evil incarnate, don’t do anything, and that avoiding them is the best possible choice you can make. The tragic death of a child motivates the true believer is push back and start harassing these people. Claims that come via social media to the parents can consists of bizarre assertions such as being told that they are evil obnoxious bastards who murdered their child and are simply covering that up by claiming something else.
Are they really sinking this low and being this stupid?
Indeed yes they are, the article CNN has specific examples …
Jill Promoli, who lives outside Toronto, lost her son to flu. She believes the anti-vaxers are trying to silence the very people who can make the strongest argument for vaccinations: those whose children died of vaccine-preventable illnesses.
Flu took the life of Promoli’s 2-year-old son, Jude McGee, three years ago. She’s since started a campaign in his name for flu prevention, including vaccination.
“I know that these people are really trying to hurt me, and I understand that the reason they’re doing it is because they want me to stop,” she said.
It gets worse …
Some anti-vaxers told her she’d murdered Jude and made up a story about the flu to cover up her crime. Others said vaccines had killed her son. Some called her the c-word.
The worst ones — the ones that would sometimes make her cry — were the posts that said she was advocating for flu shots so that other children would die from the shots and their parents would be miserable like she was.
“The first time it made me feel really sick because I couldn’t fathom how anybody could even come up with such a terrible claim,” Promoli said. “It caught me off guard in its cruelty. What kind of a person does this?”
Here is the son that she tragically lost …
Are some people really doing this?
Yes very much so. Humans can and do passionately embrace many weird ideas that conflict with all the available evidence and then run with them. It is not just “them”, we are all prone to this and will most probably at some time during our lives sincerely believe something that is simply not true at all.
What can happen is that if people latch on to an idea at a deep emotional level, then they can be “inspired” to do some truly obnoxious things, and yet still think that they hold the high moral ground.
Here are a few well-known examples …
- Members of the Westboro Baptist Church sincerely believe that they have a moral duty and obligation to promote their intolerance and bigotry so they picket funerals
- In response to the Sandy Hook shooting, Alex Jones popularised the idea that it was a false flag operation and that the children who died never actually exists. Some, such as Lucy Richards, were stupid enough to believe his BS, and soended up going to jail after she reached out to the parents with threats. Alex Jones is now also being sued.
The depths of the Anti-Vaxers Stupidity knows no bounds
The information is all out there and very easily available. Robust fact-based debunking of the myths they promote are also very well documented and easily discovered, yet some still opt to declare fact is fiction and that fiction is fact.
So much so in fact that some can end up with a huge disconnect from reality.
We are in the grip of a measles outbreak because of the anti-vax movement. This has motivated some to now ask questions because they are concerned for their children. One mom reached out online to a Natural Health Anti-Vaxx Community for some words of wisdom. The responses are perhaps best described as internet gold …
I don’t need to leave it up to your imagination, here are some of the replies …
Some just got angry and went with this …