Over the last seventeen years, the number of kids under two years old who have not received any vaccinations has quadrupled, according to federal health data released in October of 2018.
As a result, there’s real cause for concern regarding children who don’t have the proper protection against preventable diseases like whooping cough and measles.
In 2000, measles was declared eliminated but it has once again reared its head thanks to anti-vaxxers. As of August 2019, 124 people have been hospitalized with measles in 2019. The majority of these cases involve people who are not vaccinated.
It goes without saying that outbreaks of measles, and other preventable diseases, are more likely to occur in communities where groups of people are not vaccinated.
Despite all of the science backing up the need to vaccinate, as well as the safety of getting vaccinated, there are still plenty of anti-vaxxers out there putting themselves, and the rest of us, at risk.
So, you better believe when this young lady posted a photo of herself wearing a T-shirt that says: “Spoiler Alert… Jesus Wasn’t Vaccinated,” people had a lot to say about it.
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The jokes poured in after the Christian Nightmares Twitter account shared the photo. People were quick to note that the T-shirt slogan made no sense, and they did so in rather funny and witty ways. Here are some of our favorites.
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The anti-vaccination movement originated in France in 1763– yes, you heard that right.
Long ago, when vaccinations first hit the scene, they were introduced in Paris by an Italian Doctor who failed to properly quarantine people he inoculated. As a result, he put the health of other Parisians at risk.
This resulted in the French Parliament ordering no further inoculations take place in Paris. Regardless, vaccination of children across Europe increased to fight back against outbreaks of smallpox.
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By the year 1853, England instituted The Vaccination Act of 1853, which ordered mandatory vaccination for infants up to 3 months old, and there were penalties for those who refused.
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In 1879, anti-vaxxer William Tebb came to the US and spread his ideologies, causing several groups of anti-vaxxers to wage court battles against mandatory laws in their states.
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Between 1979 and 1996, Sweden suspended the vaccination for whooping cough. During this time, sixty perfect of children in Sweden contracted the disease before they turned ten.
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The Autism-vaccination controversy began in 1998 in England when a British doctor published research that investigated the relationship between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and the development of bowel disease and autism.
In 2011, the research was found to be fraudulent, but the damage had already been done – with many people believing to this day that vaccinations cause autism.
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Vaccinations have come a long way since the early days. Not only are they safer than ever but there are vaccines available for a variety of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, tetanus, smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid, influenza, whooping cough, and polio.
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It’s not just the kids who aren’t vaccinated that are at a greater risk. There are certain people who can’t get vaccinated for health reasons, or because they are not old enough yet, and this puts them at a hugely unfair risk.
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According to the World Health Organization, there’s a thirty percent increase in the number of people contracting measles worldwide because so many people are not getting vaccinated against the disease.
The worst part is that it is re-emerging in parts of the world where it was completely eliminated 2 decades ago.
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The risk is especially pressing in urban environments where diseases spread quicker than anywhere else.
“Plus, cities are transportation hubs providing truck, car, train and plane routes for infected people to spread disease worldwide. The more unvaccinated people there are, especially in cities, the easier the spread of disease,” explained Professor Arthur Caplan, a teacher of bioethics at New York University.
“Anti-vaxxers put their communities and others at risk. Many people and children and newborns can’t be vaccinated due to transplants, cancer treatments, immune diseases. You vaccinate to protect yourself and kids and neighbors who cannot.”
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Unfortunately, anti-vaxxers are something we have to deal with in our modern-day world. Not only are they putting entire communities at risk, but they are spreading misinformation.
While so many of us can see the truth and laugh off this young lady’s T-shirt, it still works to undermine a certain percentage of the public’s trust in shots.
h/t: twitter, Bored Panda
