Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s harmful anti-vaxx nonprofit, Youngsters Well being Protection, has two new star spokespeople: the mother and father of the 6-year-old Texas woman who died of measles in February.
The mother and father—who’re Mennonites—appeared in an on-line interview with Youngsters’s Well being Protection on Monday, throughout which the younger mother and father stifled sobs, detailing how their unvaccinated daughter acquired sick from measles after which pneumonia, finally resulting in her dying.
In a traditional world, this could be a cautionary story of the risks of the anti-vaxx motion and the significance of vaccinating kids. Ideally, one thing good would come out of this tragedy.
However that is Donald Trump’s America.
The interviewer requested the mother and father what they might inform different mother and father about vaccinating their kids towards measles.
“Don’t do the shots. Measles [is] not as bad as they’re making it out to be,” the mom stated.
She additionally famous that her 4 different kids recovered from measles after receiving various therapies from an anti-vaccine physician, together with cod liver oil—a supply of vitamin A—and budesonide—a steroid that’s often used to deal with bronchial asthma.
How far gone do it’s a must to be to say that the illness that killed your daughter is “not as bad as they’re making it out to be?” You see, measles solely killed 20% of their kids—now they’ve proof that vitamin A is simpler than the vaccine.
The daddy didn’t need to be omitted of the Worst Mum or dad Ever competitors, which he gained by flying colours.
“Also, the measles are good for the body,” he stated.
Based on NBC, influencers at Youngsters’s Well being Protection and past have reframed the woman’s dying as proof—with out proof—of the efficacy of unproven cures like vitamin A, maltreatment by hospital employees, and even a plot to undermine Kennedy.
And this isn’t the primary time these mother and father have stated wild-ass shit.
Quickly after the woman’s dying, her father spoke with Tom Bartlett of The Atlantic.
The dying of his daughter, Peter informed me, was God’s will. God created measles. God allowed the illness to take his daughter’s life. “Everybody has to die,” he stated.
God created measles? Then God created the vaccine and different medical breakthroughs, as a result of possibly God didn’t need the median age of people to be 23 years previous. Maybe it was a good factor when people improved their odds of constructing it to maturity.
Sure, everybody has to die. However usually talking, later is healthier than sooner. Is that really controversial?
Kennedy himself—doubtless by way of gritted teet—penned an op-ed for Fox Information urging conservatives to get the measles vaccine, a reversal of his unique (and incorrect) knee-jerk response claiming that it was “malnutrition” that prompted her dying.
However given his incapacity to remain on a constant vaccine message, this feels extra like a wink to the anti-vaxx group, and I actually count on them to deal with it as such. In spite of everything, they know he’s one among them, and his group continues to advertise anti-vaxx lies.
It truly is superb how, dealing with the calamitous outcomes of their actions, anti-vaxxers dig in and try to rationalize their actions quite than be taught from the tragedy and attempt to forestall others from making the identical mistake.
Fundamentalist faith and warped ideology are harmful medicine.