AntibodiesVille
Over the weekend, you might have heard about this:
EDMONTON—Health officials in Edmonton are warning passengers who arrived in the city on a flight from Vancouver earlier this month that they may have been exposed to measles.
The warning further extends to anyone who was in Edmonton International Airport during the hours immediately after the Air Canada plane landed on April 9....
And, especially if you like to read stuff (rather than just listen to soundbites), you may have seen this:
EDMONTON—Health officials in Edmonton are warning passengers who arrived in the city on a flight from Vancouver earlier this month that they may have been exposed to measles.
The warning further extends to anyone who was in Edmonton International Airport during the hours immediately after the Air Canada plane landed on April 9....
And, especially if you like to read stuff (rather than just listen to soundbites), you may have seen this:
...British Columbia is currently in the grips of a large outbreak, with at least 375 cases so far...
However.
What you very likely didn't see, read or hear is why this outbreak first erupted out in the Valley:
...The pastor for the community at the centre of the Fraser Valley measles outbreak says he sees vaccines as an interference with God’s providential care.
Rev. Adriaan Geuze says his 1,200-strong Reformed Congregation of North America in Chilliwack mostly shares that view, which is why vaccination rates in the community are “very low.”
“We leave it in (God’s) hands. If it is in his will that somehow we get a contagious disease, like in this case the measles, there are other ways, of course, to avoid this. If (we get sick), he can also heal us from it,” he said in an interview Friday...
...The pastor for the community at the centre of the Fraser Valley measles outbreak says he sees vaccines as an interference with God’s providential care.
Rev. Adriaan Geuze says his 1,200-strong Reformed Congregation of North America in Chilliwack mostly shares that view, which is why vaccination rates in the community are “very low.”
“We leave it in (God’s) hands. If it is in his will that somehow we get a contagious disease, like in this case the measles, there are other ways, of course, to avoid this. If (we get sick), he can also heal us from it,” he said in an interview Friday...
****
So there you have it...
Just like with the law, the superstitionists really do appear to be winning.
Because, you know, if you insist on a separation of church and state and if you rely on evidence instead of superstition and prejudice?
Well...
You must be a bigoted secular-socialist-marxist-atheist zealot.
Oh, that and up-is-down and two-plus-two-equals-five.
(and antibodies are conceived of immaculately and expanded without exposure to foreign antigen)
_____
The Onion pretty much gets it right on this one....
So....Why the huge drop in measles cases in the early 60's on the graph above?...You got it.
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5 comments:
Oh boy! Vaccination is one of those topics like politics or religion that you're not supposed to bring up at the dinner table. I've noticed otherwise educated, intelligent people get all weird about vaccinations---noticed the same thing with circumcision and funerary ashes; must be a religio-political link there somewhere.
My late father-in-law and I were both vaccinated against 23 strains of pneumonia about the same time, both of us developing a pneumonia shortly after. Now, I've heard the "Gotcha" reactions but dear old 'Dad' and I agreed we must've gotten "strain number 24", heh, heh,...as I understand it, there are over 150 kinds of pneumonia, the 23 in the vaccine being simply the worst ones. Why is this so hard to explain to otherwise intelligent people?
Another persistent canard is the notion that taking antibiotics "wears your immune system down", making you more susceptible, rather than the fact that pathogens themselves become inured to antibiotics no matter how many times one is exposed to either.
And how can supposedly thinking people not have faith in the science of vaccination but then subscribe to homeopathic vaccines (which I really don't get)?
I can understand how religious fanatics can be misled, especially if they're fanatical enough to make religion their politics and then make their schools political. But why are otherwise intelligent people so mystified? Would five minutes at the microscope remediate?
Please help! I don't wanna catch what ever it is they got.
There has been a heated debate in my small town about the pros and cons of vaccinations. It is the fundamentalists that are completely against vaccinations, they believe that everything should be left in "gods" hands, they think that the word of a few Hollywood celebrities claiming that vaccinations cause autism is all the proof they need that "god" doesn't want us to vaccinate. When I point out to my fine fundamentalist friends and neighbours that when they break a leg or need a root canal or a triple bypass they suddenly don't have a problem resorting to scientific or medical research to get better, they reply that that is different......
So the Pastor thinks it should be left in God's hands. Question for the Pastor:
-how many have had heart surgery and pace makers.
-do they go to the dentist when they have an infected tooth or do they leave it it "God's hands".
-do any of the congregation take an aspirin when the are in pain.
The Pastor may want to leave it up to his God, but my God, she is all for vaccines. She gave people the brains to invent them. My Mom told me, God helps those who help themselves.
The Pastor is not God and he has no right to place the rest of us in danger, with this disease.
Time for a Darwin Award nomination?
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