Measles.
An old world disease, vanquished in this part of the globe since 1996, yet coming back like gangbusters.
And all of it thanks to our recalcitrant couldn’t-give-a-hoot about anybody other than themselves anti-vaxxers.
You know the type. The type where nobody tells them what to do. The type that doubles down on their ignorance rather than accept the facts of medicine and medical science.
The type that would rather bring harm to the rest of us than to grow up and maybe crawl out of their self-imposed ignorance. The type who would willingly place their own children in harm’s way to make a really bad and uninformed choice.
You now the type. Sadly, you don’t have to travel too far to find them. Because they’re everywhere. Perhaps even at your dinner table every night. Maybe even looking back at you in the mirror, assuming mirrors aren’t the work of the devil in this hellscape of modern life.
They’ve become emboldened over the past several years, thanks mostly to the efforts of far-right propagandists who seek to bring much of what’s commonly accepted into disrepute, when it’s actually they themselves who are disreputable. Poor behaviour begets poor behaviour, and disrespect breeds additional disrespect. They are the way they are because the rest of us allow it.
They fly the Canadian flag as if it’s some old forgotten dish rag, on purpose, denigrating the very nation where they live. They insist upon their God-given rights, although most of them have no observable relationship with any God that I’d want to be part of, but it’s convenient for them to have The Big Fella on their side because, well, why not? It’s a pretty good cover for boorish ignorance.
Some of them are church-goers, self-certain that they speak for God himself, attending their church regularly but apparently missing out on what it means to be truly a Christian, if that’s what they purport to be. The hypocrites who cloak themselves in God and flag while going about their personal business as if they’ve never heard of the guy. Or know anything about the country.
They’re the ones who proclaim their Second Amendment rights, completely unaware that those are an American thing, but that’s okay, because these folks would fit right in south of the border with the Red Hat crowd currently in charge. I’d be more than happy to initiate a Go Fund Me effort to raise the money to cover their moving expenses to the great republic to the south, so that they could cavort with their own, and we could be rid of them. But the Americans might not take them, since they’re all uppity about folks crossing the border these days. Imagine being suddenly fussy about the type of human you let in when a good chunk of the ones you already have are equally abhorrent, perhaps even more so.
It’s like people with no standards having standards.
They talk about freedom as if they’re experts on the subject, because they are, because they heard all about it on Rebel News. Yet they know sweet-fuck about the concept of freedom and how it fits into a functional and healthy democracy, two things they’re dead-set against.
They’re likely to be supporters of the Perpetually Protesting Truckers, or the so-called Freedom Convoy crowd, a coming-together of all those who just never fit in anywhere else after they left high school. It seems life has passed them by and they didn’t even care to take notice. And now they’re angry at the rest of us for their own shortcomings.
Their version of life in the rear-view mirror. Except, unfortunately for the rest of us, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
Anyways, these types, the types that give all other types a bad name, are now back in full strength to help spread measles around.
In the year 2025 no less.
I had measles when I was a kid, and it was no fun as I recall. I don’t think I was ever at Death’s Door or anything, but it sure felt like it. Plus, I actually had it at Christmas which kind of intruded upon that whole Joy To The World thing. My main take-away was that I’d never wish such a thing on my worst enemy, but I was like nine years old, so the enemy list wasn’t as robust as it is today.
Later on in childhood, at school, we were given mandatory inoculations, including booster shots, both proven to be effective at keeping things like measles, mumps, chickenpox, and the like at bay. Nobody liked needles, shots, and boosters. But we hated measles, mumps, and chickenpox even more, so we did it. We may have been kids, but we saw things a lot more clearly than many so-called adults do today.
Both my children are fully up-to-date with every preventative measure we could have stuck in their arms, despite God being offended by the whole thing, which he wasn’t, because nobody asked him and nobody can speak for him. Mind you, that doesn’t stop a lot of folks who figure they’re seated at the left hand of the Father, where there’s obviously not a chair but a couch to accommodate all the sillies and abject fools who think they occupy such a lofty spot.
Long gone are the days, thankfully, where mothers would bring their perfectly healthy child over to play with some other kid with measles so that their kid would catch it and, with full scientific knowledge top-of-mind, just get it over with. Like, as if.
Remember when it was customary to “bleed” patients by sucking blood out of them to bring their “humours” into balance? Medical science has banished such practices to the dust heap of history. Do vaxxers still prefer to bleed themselves, or are they willing to accept that science got that one right?
Do anti-vaxxers drive cars? Own toasters? Listen to music on their phones/. Own phones?
What about all these abominations of modern life that God would be apoplectic about if anyone asked? Where did God say that he was good with all of this stuff yet dead-set against vaccination? I’ve read the bible. I don’t recall it coming up. In fact, none of it.
They say that the vaccinations themselves are dangerous and cause death, which to an infinitesimal degree, they might be correct. If you jab a needle into 30 million arms, and six people get funky side-effects, or even die, then that math adds up to vaccines being bad and evil in their minds. Yet they’ll gladly take their life into their own hands every time they get into their car or beat-up rust stain of a pickup truck, even though the odds of death and serious injury are astronomically higher. And that doesn’t even factor in the times they drive after drinking themselves senseless. Luckily for them, apparently, God has no policy on this, other than to love children, drunks, and fools, which means they’ve got at least two-thirds of that requirement covered, with the third not completely out of sight.
Perhaps they’re perfectly content to cheat on their taxes, their wives or husbands, and lie when it suits them, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe they hate immigrants, which seems to be the latest style option. They tend to hate a lot of other people too who are different from them, the differences being skin colour, language, faith, sexual inclinations, and educational achievement. Yet a lot of them will say God is on their side, as if God loves this kind of stuff.
But that would be their God, not mine. Mine makes sense. Mine loves, and from my understanding, doesn’t spend a lot of his time going around hating anyone for the way they look, speak, or pray. And I don’t wave him in the air or throw him in anybody’s face to make an egregiously uninformed , often intentionally misinformed point to someone/anyone willing to give me a nano-second of their attention.
Their God is cover for their poor behaviour and negligent ignorance with decision-making. In a very non-Christian viewpoint, I would personally have no problem with these types getting sick themselves, but draw the line at innocent children becoming ill, which even for me is a bridge way too far.
For viewpoints like that, I’m accountable to my God. The real one, and not some angry vengeful entity taken from the the Old Testament that most of us have never read. The God that loves all his people and would prefer to see them treated the same way as all his other people.
But willfully putting your children in harm’s way? Because the adults in the room have had the cheese slip off the cracker?
There’s no God worth knowing that would provide cover for that kind of thing.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 