Allergic to Obliviocy

Today’s Randy’s Random Meme is My Take on recent headlines, like “Disregarding Health Warnings, Arizona Lawmakers Move Forward On Vaccine Exemptions For Kids” and “Texas Lawmaker Hays He’s Not Worried About Measles Outbreak Because of ‘Antibiotics’” and “Measles Returned To Costa Rica After Five Years By French Family Who Had Not Had Vaccinations” — which are all recent.

The meme is Choosy Mothers — which is accompanied by a fair amount of commentary (and links to all of the above articles). As I’m preparing this issue Friday afternoon, it has been shared more than 1,500 times (and counting).

The meme. Click the pic to go to the original post to see the commentary that’s published with it (opens in a new tab).

It always amazes me how there are always a few people who think something actually labeled as “Satire” consider such irony to be serious: so much so that the comments include “please don’t try to kill my kid…” to “It is true peanut butter can cause some Children to go into cartaratic arrest.Not to say that your child can’t have Penut Butter but we should be responsible and not give it to the ones that can’t have it.” to “THAY HAVE TO BE KILLED BECAUSE ARE NOT VACCINES, SHAME OF YOU ,MY CHILDREN IS MY NOT GOVERNMENT OT COMMUNITY NOT SCHOOL” (yes, those are all verbatim copy/paste — still trying to figure out what cartaratic arrest is, but it’s apparently caused by Penuts).

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It just goes to show why True makes such ample use of the term “obliviot” — fellow humans who are not just idiotic, but are totally oblivious as to why.

Of course, the vast majority understood the ironic message. Comments like the above contrast very well with “Sarcasm and humor cannot penetrate pinheaded dumbf*ckery.” (Full disclosure: I changed one character in that woman’s comment!)

One woman shared it with the comment, “I am now immunocompromised. I was lucky enough to get a flu shot prior to my cancer diagnosis. But what happens to the children and adults who are unable to get vaccinated when you deny scientific evidence and don’t vaccinate your owm children? I know this is a sensitive topic for a lot of people, but I don’t want to get sick because your children aren’t vaccinated. I didn’t choose cancer. You chose to skip vaccines.”

Most of the comments are on the Facebook post (RR’s are also auto-posted to Twitter), but of course you’re welcome to add your thoughtful comment below.

My own epinepherine “kit” that I carry in my medical bag. (Photo: Randy Cassingham)

As the original page notes, as a long-time medic who actually carries epinepherine — and have had to inject it into patients many times, including for severe reaction to accidental peanut ingestion — I understand how this is a sensitive topic. The entire idea is to be shocking to show how serious this whole idea is. And I’m gleeful that most readers understood that very, very well.

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18 Comments on “Allergic to Obliviocy

  1. It is a great comparison. Both are about parents intentionally making decisions about what their kids bring to school that can potentially kill other children. In both instances, the kids have no choice, but the parents do. What is the difference between the two? Is there an acceptable way to endanger kids? That is EXACTLY the point of the comparison.

    And either way, it’s a meme, a flipping joke. Take a breath, keep scrolling and get over it and move on with your weekend.

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  2. If vaccinations truly work… and if your kids are vaccinated, why are you scared of non-vaccinated kids? Oh, that is right… because vaccinations truly do not work. lol

    What an incredibly stupid comment. Hell, I don’t even have kids, but I actually CARE about children and don’t want to see them get potentially fatal or debilitating diseases that are so easily preventable. Not even your children or grandchildren, Joyce — if any, they are already too far behind their peers.

    There are many children that can’t take vaccines for medical reasons and absolutely depend on others getting them so they don’t get sick and infect them. Also, if a vaccine is (say) 98 percent effective, that’s great — but that means 2 percent will get the disease if exposed, and every person around them that’s not vaccinated is a risk to them. So screw those kids? Yeah, that’s a reasonable position — for a sociopath. -rc

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  3. How many of you Mandatory Vaccines types are also part of the Pro-Choice crowd….

    I ask because it literally impossible to be both part of the My Body, MyChoice crowd AND Mandatory Vaccines crowd at the same time without being a Major Hypocriticaly Asshole….

    Wrong, Duane: a woman choosing termination will never cause some other woman to either get pregnant or mysteriously lose her baby by being near her. Yet we have multiple outbreaks of measles right now because insanely stupid parents have no regard for their own children’s — or others’ — lives. That’s not conjecture, that’s fact. You are apparently “pro life” and an anti-vaxxer who doesn’t care that your stance causes death. So if your definition is that one can’t be “pro-life” regarding abortion AND “pro-death” regarding vaccination, or they’re a “Major Hypocriticaly Asshole”, well, then by your definition it’s clear what you are. -rc

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    • So, you’re one of them, figures… it’s termination, these days, late term abortions perfectly legal, it’s Out and Out Murder.

      Oh, and have you looked at how many illegal migrants have entered Our Country carrying every ailment known to mankind… That’s where your outbreaks are coming from… look it up, hell, they’re holding 200 with mumps right now.

      Yeah, Duane, I thought you wouldn’t grasp your own hypocrisy. No surprise at all. Thanks to having your full name (which I omitted here), I looked you up: “Not employed.” Living off the government in Alaska, then, eh? How come that you’re “one of them” doesn’t surprise me either? -rc

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    • If you’re so pro-life, then *YOU* find a loving home with financially stable parents for every single non-aborted baby, whether healthy or disabled, smart or mentally deficient, Caucasian or other. That’s my stance. And if you’re anti-vaccine, then you can also find loving homes for every single child (and adult!) who end up permanently disabled due to catching the disease. Oh, yes, and pay the funeral expenses of those who die.

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  4. For the record, I don’t believe for a minute that there is a link between vaccinations and autism (or any other bad disease or condition) as some claim. This is a link that many researchers are looking for, with no success. It’s not like such a link might be found sometime in the future unexpectedly. We are actually looking for it and not finding it. This tells me that such a link, if it were to exist at all, would have to be incredibly weak and tenuous, not like the incredibly strong evidence that vaccinations actually prevent untold suffering in the world. Am I willing to chance a vaccination and the incredibly small chance that it might do something bad (again, I don’t believe this is true, but just for the sake of discussion) for the obvious benefit of preventing some awful disease? Yes, please. Sign me up. Now!

    If vaccinations caused autism or any other serious problems, the very smart people looking for that link would have found it. Just my two cents worth….

    It’s because of the amazing success of vaccines that recent generations have no concept of the absolute horror of these diseases. Yet by shunning vaccines because of the imagined problems, we’re starting to see the diseases come back — and recent generations will get a concept of the horror of those diseases. It didn’t have to be that way. -rc

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    • Polio is a good example.

      Do a google images search for “iron lung”. They were finally retired *because* of the polio vaccine. However, there were still people who had to live their lives in them because the damage was so severe.

      I distinctly remember my mother taking me and my younger brother (I was 5) to a college gym for the sugar cube. She had seen the damage of polio.

      I sat with my grandmother going over a photo album of my father as a child. Every page she would point to a kid in one of the pictures and tell me what the kid had died of. Stuff that we just assume are not problems.

      The biggest problem is there is no good way to change the minds of the anti-vaxxers. The more facts you show them, the more they get entrenched in their beliefs. Not allowing unvaccinated kids (other than the medical cases) into *any* school is a start.

      Hear hear. And I was amazed to learn last year that there are still people who depend on the “iron lung” machines — they prefer them over the other alternatives that replaced them. The report was in the context of how hard it is to get parts anymore, because the company that made them won’t make them anymore, probably for liability reasons. -rc

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    • Oh Heck No!

      Flat earthers are fairly harmless suckers who’ll believe anything. The LAST thing we need is to give them a conspiracy theory to latch onto that actually HARMS people.

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  5. Not that I’m in any way anti vaccination, but isn’t it the case that even if vaccinated, one can still be a carrier?

    The measles vaccine (for instance) is about 97% effective, which means 1) those it doesn’t work for depend on “herd immunity” to protect themselves, and 2) since they can still get the disease even though they’ve received the vaccination, it is possible for them to spread the disease if they do. -rc

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  6. Autism is not a disease.

    No matter where on the autistic spectrum your diagnosis is, it is a condition, and you are born with it. It is — at least partially — hereditary, mainly carried via the mother and may have been latent for generations before showing itself.

    For reasons that should be obvious, it usually takes a few years before a diagnosis can be established, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there from the beginning — just like “lefthandedness” etc.

    Aspergers diagnosis wasn’t established, internationally recognized and accepted until the mid nineties — fifty years(!) after it was first described in Austria by Dr Hans Asperger. People have been born with Asperger’s syndrome through time, but it is only in later decades that they are recognized and accepted — thus the increased figures.

    No one was ever diagnosed with “Alzheimer’s disease” before the 20th century, but that doesn’t mean that “Alzheimer’s disease” had a connection to vaccine against rabies, developed by Pasteur in the late 19th century. How many human lives do you think were saved by the fact that this kind of debate did’t occur then?

    “Asperger people” do have their limitations, but also their strengths, if they learn to handle it — and the surroundings learn to appreciate it. One very clear proof of this is found in Denmark, but I’d rather you tried to find the facts yourself, so please visit this page and be amazed (don’t worry, it is in english): http://dk.specialisterne.com/en/

    An adult friend who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when he was nineteen illustrated one of his strengths when walking past a news stand. He picked up an issue of a major daily newspaper and said “That is unusually bad, even for them… two misspellings on the front page”. When questioned, he picked it up again and pointed them out. He is today happily married and has a son who has been vaccinated and is not autistic. His employer knows his personality and finds it, and him, a bonus at his place of work.

    Please visit the Danish site and read, learn, and find facts, instead of being afraid — and scaring others — from what you don’t understand.

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  7. Randy, I think you missed the salient point of Duane’s comment — should others, in the form of ‘government,’ be able to make choices regarding one’s body? Regardless of whether one believes so or not, from a legal standpoint, the government currently has no such delegated authority at either the state or federal levels.

    Most of our personal actions have the potential to harm others under the right circumstances, but we don’t outlaw or mandate things because they MIGHT hurt someone — that standard of harm would never stand up in a courtroom where a specific loss to an individual must be shown. We could eliminate most traffic deaths by banning cars, but few see that as a viable solution to a real problem.

    As is the case in most situations, the solution is education, not legislation. The two most useful things those who advocate for vaccines can do is to educate the public on their benefits and to encourage vaccine suppliers to reduce or eliminate unnecessary but potentially harmful ingredients, such as mercury. Convincing those who fear vaccines of their safety and value is a much better long term strategy than trying to force them to comply.

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    • Been there done that. Trying to educate a bunch of people who keep on citing Qur’an/Bible/whatever their holy book – is a giant Sysiphean task.

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  8. I cannot tell for sure if you are joking, but figured I would throw out that “cartaratic arrest” seems like a misspelling of “cardiac arrest”.

    I suppose it could also be a misspelling of “cataract arrest”, but that seems like a good, but not real, thing.

    Yes, I was joking, and I still enjoy the unintentionally creative wordsmithing. -rc

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  9. I take advantage of every vaccination I can, because I believe the benefits far outweigh the risks. That is a personal choice I have made for myself and my children. And it is a recommendation I make whenever vaccinations are discussed in my presence.

    HOWEVER, I personally know of two cases where perfectly (developmentally) normal children suddenly regressed to non-communicative states immediately following multi-dose vaccinations. Maybe these are anecdotes of coincidence, but try telling that to the mothers, because I will not. Either way, I am horrified by the number of Americans who support mandatory vaccination, which is, after all, an injection of foreign substances into the body.

    And I am equally horrified by the virulence of the Pro-vaxxers who claim that those of us opposed to mandatory vaccination are opposing science itself! Frequently, I find, people who claim to stand on science know precious little about the science itself. They only know that some scientist(s) made some claim, and if a scientist said it, or if some model predicts it, it must be true! In that sense (paraphrasing Samuel Johnson’s famous edict) “Science is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

    Please don’t misunderstand; I LOVE science almost as much as I love God, my wife, my children, my freedom, and my life (in that order). One thing I love about science is that every time a scientist lifts the rock to answer one question, she finds ever more questions waiting underneath. Science is about endless discovery, not about eternal immutable truth. A good scientist leaves eternal truth to God.

    The other thing a good scientist will tell you is that 96% of the universe is dark matter (23%) or dark energy (73%). That means, as far as we know, 96% or the universe is unknowable, undetectable. And the remaining 4% is only partially and imperfectly understood. We are after all on a very small planet in a very very very large universe.

    No matter how solid the science, it simply cannot, and must not, supplant the God-given inalienable right to govern our own bodies, and so I will never drink that kool aid. And it is a recommendation I make whenever that kool aid is served in my presence.

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