Oh, the irony!
Kate Tietje, Modern Alternative Mama, is furious that parents are sharing scary stories about their children injured by and dying from whooping cough, measles and chickenpox. How dare suffering parents spread fear of vaccine preventable diseases while Tietje is trying to spread fear of vaccines?
Her post, Dear Parents, Please Stop Sharing Scary Disease Stories, would be a hilarious example of cluelessness were it not about dead babies.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]How dare suffering parents spread fear of vaccine preventable diseases while Tietje is trying to spread fear of vaccines?[/pullquote]
Tietje writes:
These stories are popping up almost weekly on social media. (I guess that isn’t that much, since we’re talking hundreds of millions of people in several different countries — something to keep in mind.) Whenever they do, tens of thousands will share them, and warn people. The media will pick them up, and plaster them all over the place, with dire warnings to “anti-vaxxers” to see what lies ahead of them if they don’t smarten up and vaccinate.
Weekly stories of children hospitalized for vaccine preventable diseases “isn’t that much”?
Wrong! When vaccine rate are high, those stories are virtually non-existent. During my entire 4 years of medical school and 4 years of residency, I never heard a single story about a young child with whooping cough. It became so rare that doctors had trouble diagnosing it at first because they had never seen it.
But now, in response to the fear mongering of Kate Tietje and her anti-vax compatriots those diseases have made a deadly comeback.
It feels like a “trump card” when your child has unfortunately been ‘the one’ to experience the illness or the complications. The proof that you were really right all along, and that people really must vaccinate. You hope that your story will reach the people who need to read it, and that you’ll convince more people to see things your way…and vaccinate their babies.
But you won’t.
It’s so predictable, every time. A mother (or father) shares her/his story, earnestly hoping that s/he will change peoples’ minds. Several friends and family members encourage her and tell her how brave she is and how sorry they are that her baby is sick. They tell her how needed her message is, and how people just don’t get how serious this stuff is, and how her story will make a difference. She feels justified in having shared it.
Sort of like the way Tietje shares stories of the “vaccine injured”:
I want to help you, mama. I want to give you and your child a voice. Your story deserves to be recognized. Other people need to know that vaccine injury isn’t silent, it isn’t pretend. It isn’t so rare that you’ll never know anyone who struggles with it. It’s real, and it’s a daily part of life.
If you have your story written up, mama, please share a link to it in the comments. I’ll add them throughout the day, so that we have a long list of stories that people can read. So that they can know the truth.
Tietje must be suffering from hyp-lash, an injury caused by hypocritically bouncing back and forth two utterly incompatible positions. Watching Tietje, who runs a business based on fear mongering, counsel others that fear mongering is ineffective would be very amusing if it weren’t literally a matter of life and death.
So please, please. Stop sharing these big, scary stories and these angry pronouncements. It only divides people, when we are all just trying to keep our kids healthy and safe.
Tietje obviously has no problem sharing big, scary stories about vaccines; she actually solicits them. So what’s the problem with sharing big, scary stories about vaccine preventable diseases? As far as I can determine, the problem is that the stories of vaccine preventable injuries and deaths make Tietje look like an unethical liar and interfere with her business model.
Anti-vaxxers like Tietje are cheats. They rely heavily on the fact that vaccines work in order to claim that they don’t. If children died of vaccine preventable illnesses at the same rate they died before vaccines, anti-vaxxers would be universally derided as fools. They can only operate their fear mongering businesses as long as vaccine preventable illnesses appear to be gone. Those big, scary stories of infants dying from whooping cough are bad for business since they demonstrate beyond a doubt that vaccine preventable illnesses are not gone.
Anti-vaxxers are liars. They claimed that it is merely coincidence that vaccine preventable diseases disappeared after the introduction of vaccines and therefore they insisted that vaccine preventable illnesses would not return if children weren’t vaccinated. Those big, scary stories of children injured or dying from vaccine preventable illness are bad for business since they demonstrate that the illnesses return and children die when we stop vaccinating,
Anti-vaxxers are unethical because rely on herd immunity to keep their own children safe. They ostentatiously refuse the burdens of vaccination while implicitly relying on its effectiveness. If everyone did what they did, people like Tietje would be out of business and some of her children might be dead. How many books and supplements would Tietje be able to sell on the backs of her unvaccinated children if those children die appalling deaths? Very, very few.
Tietje insists:
People who are already suspect of vaccines do not read these stories — especially if shared angrily, with name-calling directed towards “anti-vaxxers” (as is often the case) and say “You know what, I was clearly wrong.” No, it only makes them frustrated.
If no one reads the stories of small children suffering and dying from vaccine preventable diseases, why is Tietje railing against them? How does she even know about them if no one reads them?
Tietje is railing against these stories precisely because people DO read them and they ARE effective in debunking the lies that Tietje purveys, damaging her business and her credibility.
Tietje’s hypocrical post should offer comfort to the parents who have publicly shared their anguish when their babies are injured or die from vaccine preventable diseases. You might have wondered if you were making a difference, but when Tietje begs you to stop, you can be sure that you are.
