My Governor Is A Child-Abusing Anti-Vax Terrorist

Because refusing to vaccinate your children then sending them out into the community to infect defenseless infants, and cancer patients is terrorism.

From the Herald:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview that he deliberately exposed his children to chickenpox so they would catch the highly contagious disease and become immune.

During a Tuesday interview on Bowling Green radio station WKCT, Bevin said his children were "miserable for a few days" after contracting chickenpox but said "they all turned out fine."

"Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," Bevin said in the interview. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children."

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article228187849.html#storylink=cpy

Bevin and his wife, Glenna, have nine children, four adopted.

Public health authorities strongly discourage the practice of deliberately exposing children to chickenpox, a medical expert said Wednesday.

"It's unfortunate and not an example for any of us," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

"We should vaccinate all our children. It's a great triumph of public health in the United States. Let's not take a step backward," he added in a phone interview.

SNIP

Kentucky requires that children entering kindergarten be vaccinated for chickenpox, but parents may seek religious exemptions or provide proof that a child already had the disease.

Bevin's comments followed reports this week of a chickenpox outbreak at a Kentucky Catholic school.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children, adolescents and adults who have never had chickenpox and were never vaccinated, according to its website. Children are routinely recommended to receive the first dose at 12 through 15 months old and a second dose at 4 to 6 years old, it said.

"What the governor and other like-minded folks are unaware of is that there are potentially serious complications of chickenpox," Schaffner said.

Complications from chickenpox can include bacterial infections, pneumonia and encephalitis — inflammation of the brain, according to the CDC. Complications aren't common in healthy people with the disease, it says, but high risk groups for complications due to a serious case of chickenpox can include infants, adolescents, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.

You read that right.  Governor "I fight for life (of tumors, not adult women)" is deliberately and with malice aforethought attempting to severely injure or kill pregnant women.

He's up for reelection THIS November. In 2019.  Donate to Democratic candidate Attorney General Andy Beshear here.

You Don't Get to Have Religious Freedom That Kills Children

Is it obvious yet that the original source of all the lethal stupidity in this county is religion?  Specifically white xian fundamentalist freakazoids. On everything from global warming to gay rights to public education to racial justice, they are quite simply a clear and present danger to the nation.

Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette:

Aside from abortion, the number one issue for people who don't know what the hell they are talking about is vaccines. People who don't know anything about vaccines feel very confident that they are the ones who should be going around enacting legislation based on shit they have made up themselves, which is rather inconvenient for the rest of us! Especially those who have immuno-compromised children who need to rely on herd immunity to stay alive. The entire gist of the anti-vaccine movement is "Other people need to die to protect my right to be stupid." 

SNIP

 You don't get to have a religious belief that kills people. Human sacrifices are against the law. I can't just go and start a religion that demands I rob banks. So either vaccinate your kids or keep them the hell away from other children. 

Frankly, not giving kids vaccines ought to be considered child abuse. It should not be allowed, period. If parents refuse to vaccinate their kid and that child or someone else's dies because they refused vaccinations, parents should be charged with manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide just as they would if their stupidity caused that child's death in some other way. I mean, if someone left the gas on their stove, lit a cigarette and blew up the house and killed their kids, "I thought scientists were lying to me about gas being flammable, so I made up my own science" would not be a valid excuse in a court of law. 

People can personally believe any stupid thing they want, up to and until it affects other people. That is where the line needs to be drawn. If Bill Zedler wants to believe that antibiotics cure measles, that's fine. If someone else wants to believe in werewolves? Go right ahead! But no one should be able to push or draft legislation, or put other children in danger, just because they believe their own pipe dreams over actual science.

Ayn Randy Is Aiding And Abetting Terrorists

Oh, yes he is.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Monday said that most vaccinations ought to be voluntary, a stance that goes beyond his old rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's (R) view on parental choice in immunizations.

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham asked Paul whether vaccines should be mandatory after Christie's office tried to walk back the governor's remarks on allowing parents to have "some measure of choice" in vaccinating their children. Paul went a step further than his potential 2016 presidential opponent in his response.

"I'm not anti-vaccine at all, but particularly, most of them ought to be voluntary," Paul said. "What happens if you have somebody not want to take the smallpox vaccine and it ruins it for everybody else? I think there are times in which there can be some rules, but for the most part it ought to be voluntary."

The Kentucky senator then brought up the failed 2011 push by another potential 2016 rival, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), to require sixth-grade girls be vaccinated with Gardasil, which protects against HPV, as an example of an unnecessary mandate.

"While I think it's a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that's a personal decision for individuals to take and when they take it," he said.

No, motherfucker, it is NOT a personal decision.  If you'd been smart enough to pass the board exams for opthamalogy, you might have learned in medical school about something called herd immunity.  Herd immunity means that it's not enough to get vaccinated yourself.  To be safe, you have to be surrounded by millions of other people who are also vaccinated.

Vaccination is not choosing organic veggies.  Vaccination is a duty, even more important than voting.  Not even serving in the military is as patriotic, as nation-serving, as society-protecting as getting vaccinated and making sure everyone you love, like, work with and run into on the street is also vaccinated.

People who do not vaccinate their children are terrorists. Period.

And Rand Paul is aiding and abetting them from the platform of the U.S. Senate. Throw him in Guantanamo.  Do it now.

QOTD: The Enstupiding

The Rude Pundit:

- 21% of 18-29 year-old Americans think that vaccines might or does cause autism, proving that all those education budget cuts across the country have worked as intended in stupiding people.

As someone who is so old I have a smallpox vaccination, and who would not have been allowed by the government to set foot in my public school without that and all my other vaccinations, let me just say that people who do not vaccinate their children are terrorists. Period.