I’ve been reading a lot lately about the measles outbreak in California and how high the rate of unvaccinated children is there.

It’s one thing to say “I don’t believe in vaccines” (albeit a very stupid and selfish thing), but it’s another thing entirely when the willful ignorance and the fear mongering of one small group is jeopardizing the lives of small children too young to be vaccinated and people with medical conditions who cannot be vaccinated.  We live in a community and these vulnerable members of our community rely on us – it’s called the herd immunity.  We have a responsibility to the people around us.

I don’t curse often.  But fuck the people who refuse to vaccinate their children for no good reason.  And if you’re one of them, fuck you too.

They don’t believe in vaccines, or they think vaccines cause autism.  Well, medical fact tells us that (A) vaccines prevent life-threatening illnesses, and (B) they do not cause autism.  “Belief” is irrelevant.  We’re talking about facts here.  Facts are true whether you believe in them or not.

Voluntarily unvaccinated children should not be in schools.  They should not be playing sports.  They should not be at the mall or grocery store.  They should not be at Disneyland.

Just keep your voluntarily unvaccinated children away from my kid.  He’s too young for me to vaccinate him and it should NEVER be left to the discretion of random strangers whether my kid gets the measles and suffers brain damage, or, worse, dies.

The measles are highly contagious and preventable.  One infected person went to Disneyland and now there are 89 cases linked to that one person – the number grows every single day.

I read an article on NPR.org, I believe, about a father in California who, with his family, lives in the U.S. county with the highest voluntarily unvaccinated rate in the country.  This guy’s son has been fighting leukemia for 4 1/2 years and his immune system is too weak for him to receive vaccinations.  It’s the same medical condition that would make a disease like measles catastrophic to this kid’s health.  It could kill him.  When the father asked the superintendent of the kid’s school to ban voluntarily unvaccinated children, he was told the school would look into it.  Contrast this to a parent meeting the same father attended at the beginning of the school year where a school employee implored, nay BEGGED, the parents to not allow peanuts into the school because a child could die.  Really?  Why is that community valuing the lives of peanut allergy kids above the lives of leukemia kids?  The leukemia kid is going to school in the middle of a measles outbreak with kids who aren’t vaccinated.  That superintendent and every single anti-vaccine parent in that school may as well be playing roulette with this kid’s life.  Fuck them.

I read on CNN.com about a 6 month old baby in Oakland, California who was quarantined in her home for 28 days because some asshat parent who visited the same pediatrician’s office refused to vaccinate their kid, who then showed up at the doctor’s office with measles.  This is not a mere inconvenience to this family.  The parents had to miss work and then pay to bring a family member in from out-of-state to care for the quarantined baby while they waited to see if the baby would get the measles and potentially die.  Shame on that pediatrician for allowing unvaccinated children  to co-mingle with infants while at his or her office DURING A MEASLES OUTBREAK – that is clearly malpractice.  And a big fuck you to those parents for making a stupid decision and putting the life of a baby they never met in danger.

This issue is completely and wholly unbelievable.