Where the Anti-Vaccine Movement Leaves Us

Despite the fact that I look like a man who has a gingerbread house made out of Tylenol PM, I like children, and I’m not terrible with them.

Or to put it another way, I’m somewhere in the middle of “Are you prepared for me to talk about kids to Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights levels of uncomfortable?”, and George Carlin’s famous “Fuck the children” routine. I don’t have kids of my own, but I am the oldest of five, and I see my four godchildren whenever possible. People are a little weirded out by the fact that I’m reasonably good at treating children with a modicum of dignity, to the point where they actually like me, but I don’t let that bother me anymore. Some of the most engaging, insightful people I know are kids.

I’m mentioning all of this only in the interest of establishing a quick resume. When I suggest what I’m about to suggest, I want you to keep the above paragraph in mind. This is because I didn’t come to these feelings easily. It’s also because when it comes to the anti-vaccination movement, it’s a little unfair to paint the children with the same stupefied, enraged brush I’ve started painting the parents with.

It’s a little unfair, but so is the re-occurrence of measles, rubella (coming soon to a healthy body near you!), mumps, and smallpox in my fucking lifetime. There are a lot of things that terrify me, and leave me uncertain of whether or not humanity has any real right to strive to exist. Casual genocide, the hideous racist and classist undertones of the United States government, and rape statistics are all good examples of those things that scare me. Yet for whatever reason, the cartoonish horrors are what unnerve me most of all.

I’m talking about things that happen in life that make you swear they were already described in the heightened reality terms of something like The Simpsons. Those things scare me more, which I suppose comes out of the fact that I naively believe that as awful as things are, there are certain guarantees in life that I can cling to. Certain things in the world that will happen, because the alternative means we have embraced a level of insanity that I cannot comprehend, or find funny.

And humor has been saving my life for a very long time now.

The anti-vaccination crowd represents one of the most disquieting, depressing phenomena of my life. That’s painfully unfair to social and political events that cost more lives, cause greater damage, and have far more sinister implications, but it’s the truth. When I read about outbreaks of diseases in places that all but wiped them out in the previous decades, I feel sorrowful. When I consider that we are apparently giddy with impatience to reacquaint ourselves with diseases that obliterate countries unable to fight them off properly, owing to a lack of education and/or resources, I get angry.

I get angry, and I want to punch either the parents, or why the fuck not, the kids themselves.

Maybe, possibly, potentially, that’s just a tiny bit harsh.

But I don’t care. I think it’s time we find out how much these anti-vaxx parents really love their little miracles. This is the compromise I’ve worked out, because it’s ultimately unreasonable to punch a child in the face, particularly when it’s technically not their fault that their parents are thoughtless, selfish fucking assholes.

On the other hand, I don’t really see the point in taking something like a skateboard to the back of the head of a parent who feels that they really should have the freedom to not vaccinate each soft serve ice cream child in their little turnip brood of stupidity. It would be really satisfying, yeah, but ultimately, we don’t really want to make martyrs out of these shit mutants.

My level of unhappiness and desperation with people who are determined to keep humanity from ever moving forward is simple. I want a law in which it is legal for someone to punch the child of any adult who admits that they are against vaccinations.

Of course, there are extreme circumstances. But I can tell you right now, if you’re wondering if your child is one of those extreme circumstances, you’re probably not. Unless your doctor (and I mean a doctor who actually went to a fucking accredited medical school) specifically tells you that you are one of these extreme circumstances, you need to get your child these goddamned shots. Now.

Past those circumstances, I feel like we have no choice but to seriously suggest something that puts these parents on the defensive. What’s worse? Your child getting a preventable disease, combined with how your refusal to vaccinate has resulted in these diseases making a Rocky Balboa-level comeback (and we’ll say Rocky V, just to emphasize how shitty this is)? Or that same child getting punched in the face by random, gleeful strangers?

Choose carefully.

And let’s be fair with this. We’ll give each kid a punch card (get it? GET IT?). Each card will be good for twenty severe blows to the head in a given month. Weapons aren’t allowed. We’re not barbarians, after all.

Again, what are our options? We can’t force the vaccinations on them. We live in a free society, so I’ve been told.

Again, it’s worth repeating that we also don’t want to make the so-called parents martyrs. Even in the face of stupefying evidence on vaccines and autism, they believe their cause is just. In continuing to champion the kind of stupidity that as a younger man, I believed only existed on shows like South Park, they are making us sicker and sicker. Diseases that my sixty-year-old mother did not have to worry about to any significant degree in her lifetime are now a reality. Measles parties have become the norm. It’s not going to get any better, even if we did establish a national holiday to punch out the children of anti-vaxxers.

When I consider the potential of humanity, the idea found in movies and books that we can do more than just fuck, burn, and eat, I think about these people. I read about them, and I listen quietly and carefully to their arguments.

Then I come to the conclusion that in spite of how much I do genuinely like kids, my punch-the-child-of-a-goddamn-idiot idea is only marginally insane. It probably wouldn’t accomplish anything. I don’t think anything ultimately will. Education and evidence have failed to turn the tide against these commonsense zombies. What else is there?

Nothing. I’m not telling you to feel hopeless. If you find reasons to believe that people are basically decent, I won’t challenge those reasons. I’ll envy you, and I won’t argue with you.

I’m going to watch old episodes of House, spend as much time sleeping as possible, and pretend that Idiocracy is still a fictional story.