this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Marjorie Taylor Greene, a prominent Republican congresswoman and a staunch ally of Trump, suggested a return to "measles parties" for children. She criticized contemporary attitudes towards vaccination, stating, "Now, they demonize parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids."

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 22 points 5 hours ago

Psychotic Bitch Promotes Child Murder

FTFY

[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 11 points 5 hours ago

She is one sick POS. Hopefully the measles will party with her one on one.

[–] themaninblack@lemmy.world 25 points 14 hours ago

So arrest and jail her

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 37 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Measles parties will kill kids.

MTG is a psychopath.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 hours ago

Thanks to the magic of internet brain …

Her initials being MTG I always think of the MTG ass crack meme and so she is forever defaulted as a hairy ass rack in my brain.

That’s the image of her I have.

Thank you.

[–] dwzap@lemmy.world 19 points 16 hours ago

This is a death cult.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 30 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Arrest her for attempted homicide

[–] protonslive@lemm.ee 14 points 16 hours ago

Laws are not made for the rich and in line. Its made for us. We can complain all we want but we should be able to all see this pattern by now

[–] TylerBourbon@lemmy.world 25 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

She is massively psycho. She's the same shit stain that harassed teenage survivors of school shootings. Clearly she doesn't give a shit about kids.

[–] tenton01@lemm.ee 5 points 4 hours ago

I don't think anyone that subscribes to right wing policies gives a shit about kids. It's just an excuse. If they really cared about kids, they'd figure out a way to stop them from being victims of school shootings.

[–] Zexks@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They’re not going to learn until they’re charged and convicted of homicide.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 15 points 17 hours ago

The courts are corrupted. It's up to us to hold them accountable.

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[–] Kalysta@lemm.ee 22 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Thought the bitch was pro life? This seems quite anti-life to me.

[–] varyingExpertise@feddit.org 6 points 8 hours ago

Pro-life is just an euphemism for "control over women". Nothing more, and that resolves that weird contradiction.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 12 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Pro-fetus. Anti-life after birth.

[–] dust4ngel@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

pro-fetus would entail free health care, housing and food assistance to pregnant mothers. the right opposes all of these things, ergo they are not pro-fetus

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[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 76 points 1 day ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (11 children)

I spent SO MUCH TIME during my pediatrics clinical rotation explaining vaccines to new parents. In some cases, I sat there for a literal hour and debunked myths and conspiracy theories in order to get the parents to consider maybe doing a delayed vaccination schedule. I'm a medical student, so my time is basically worthless and I viewed this as a good use of it, but it was so incredibly frustrating to have to do over and over.

For other folks who know anti-vax parents (new or not), here's the best line of argument I came up with:

Vaccines have been around for a very long time now, and the only changes we've made to them recently is to make them better and safer. The preservatives in them like the mercury compound are perfectly safe, but we've still worked hard to improve the manufacturing process to minimize the need for those preservatives and make the vaccines as pure as possible.

Vaccines are made of little fragments of the virus or bacteria, or a modified, significantly weaker version of the pathogen to give your child's immune system a chance to see it before the real thing shows up. It's like giving your child's immune system a wanted poster or a punching bag to practice on because it has to make special tools to fight each different pathogen.

The reason we load kids up with so many vaccines in the first year or two of life is because their immune systems are still growing and it's an optimal time to introduce things for it to prepare for, and we want to give them some protection of their own before the antibodies from mom run out around 6 to 12 months of life.

We have decades of data showing that vaccines are safe and effective, and the complications and side effects are so minor compared to the problems that can come from the disease. And it's usually around 1000:1 ratio of complications from the disease versus complications from the vaccine, and the vaccine complications are almost always less severe than the complications from the disease.

If you refuse vaccination for your child for reasons besides an anaphylactic allergy to the ingredients, you are gambling your child's life with most of these diseases, and it would have been an entirely preventable death. Vaccines are very hard to make and we have prioritized making vaccines for the diseases that kill children. We don't bother making vaccines for things that are just a nuisance, so the vaccines we have exist for very good reasons. For the most famous example, measles has about 5 different ways it can kill your child that are impossible to treat or prevent once they have it, and many ways to cause permanent damage. The known and most common side effects of the measles vaccine are pretty mild and can be easily treated with medications we have available.

Edit: Fuck it. I've decided that I'm going to use some of my copious (/s) free time writing a children's and parents' book about vaccine safety with this argument. I will self publish if I have to and give it out in family medicine and pediatric clinics if it kills me.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 hour ago
[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 hours ago

Doing the good fight

[–] SabinStargem@lemmings.world 9 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

My explanation is simpler: "The body learns how to fight diseases by eating killed viruses. A vaccine gives you dead viruses, so your body can learn without having to get hurt first. A measles party uses living viruses, so your kid might suffer death or worse."

Then show them the results.

Probably not accurate in detail, but hopefully good enough. If not, then the brevity will let you move onto someone who hasn't abandoned their brain.

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 10 points 14 hours ago

They see that rash as not that scary, and the rash is honestly the mildest part of the disease. Measles can cause encephalitis (brain swelling) and kill the child, it can cause pneumonia and kill the child, they can recover from the illness and be completely fine for a few years until the virus reactivates and their entire central nervous system becomes intractably inflamed and they seize until they die. And there's nothing we can do about any of those complications besides things like IV fluids or ventilatory support because there are no antiviral medications effective against measles, so we just have to hope the child's immune system wins.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Anti-vax parents should have their kids taken away.

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 6 points 14 hours ago

The problem with that is that there are already too many children in need of good homes and some of these parents are very good in every other respect. The people who push anti-vax stuff need to be made into public examples, but the rank-and-file believers are usually just well-meaning dupes.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Another worth noting is if an antivaxxer says "we don't know what they put into vaccines", respond with "we don't know what they put in painkillers and yet you take them no problem". Nine times out of ten, these antivaxxers would take painkillers willy nilly without question. Saying this makes them question their line of thought. Heck, the same could be said just about anything. We don't know what cooks in restaurants put into the food we ordered, and yet there is no significant movement advocating to stop ordering takeaways or eating outside of home.

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 5 points 14 hours ago

....except that we do know what gets put in every medication. Every ingredient has to be registered and tested, and if they change the formulation at all, they have to test it again to make sure it's safe.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 6 points 16 hours ago

respond with “we don’t know what they put in painkillers and yet you take them no problem”

But we do know exactly what goes into both.

Saying this makes them question their line of thought.

They don't think. There is no line of thought. They just react to memes with brainless conformity.

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[–] leadore@lemmy.world 59 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

I was a kid when they were first developing the vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (we called it German measles). So my brothers and I all got every one of them. I remember being sick with them, and with one of the measles types (don't remember which) I was so sick I though I was gonna die. I'll never forget lying there, even thinking of certain things made me puke (or dry heave) so I had to concentrate on not thinking of anything. I remember puking so hard it came out my nose. One of my brothers was so sick, his fever was so high, they took him to the hospital.

Do parents really want to put their children through this instead of a shot? WTF

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 hours ago

I think the problem is fear. Parents are genuinely scared of vaccines because of the misinformation that's been spread around.

[–] varyingExpertise@feddit.org 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I assume it's more about the parents high-fiving each other over really sticking it to the man or something. It's just one of the results of rampant anti-intellectualism. The kids are just a random collateral in that circlejerk of those brake pads of evolution.

[–] leadore@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think it's that. I think they've been brainwashed by anit-vax propaganda into truly being afraid of vaccines, combined with not understanding how severe these diseases are and how serious the consequences of not vaccinating can be.

We need to make it a priority to teach critical thinking skills in schools.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

The scary thing is that it is hard to put the lid back on the bottle. If you try to tell them the facts they will see it as just more government brain washing.

I don't really have much of an answer

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 10 points 16 hours ago

Long before there was a vaccine, I developed meningitis from a measles infection. Luckily my parents weren't idiots and took me to the hospital. I ran a high fever, had febrile convulsions and hallucinated. Afterwards, I was over-sensitive to light for at least a week. Anyone who would inflict that on a kid belongs in prison or worse.

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[–] GladiusB@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago

Jesus Christ she is a fucking moron

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