Summary
A father whose unvaccinated six-year-old daughter became the first U.S. measles death in 10 years remains steadfast in his anti-vaccine beliefs.
The Mennonite man from Seminole, Texas told The Atlantic, “The vaccination has stuff we don’t trust,” maintaining that measles is normal despite its near-eradication through vaccination.
His stance echoes claims by HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., who initially downplayed the current North American outbreak before changing his position under scrutiny.
Despite his daughter’s death, the father stated, “Everybody has to die.”
everybody has to die >
But not that young and not from a preventable disease.
If you can accept the will of God that your child dies without vaccination, you can accept the will of God that your child survived vaccination, even it it caused something unexpected.
Or accept that God sent the scientists that developed the vaccine. The whole “will of God” argument is always so full of holes - logic doesn’t come into it.
There are multiple books in the Bible praising knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom as gifts sent from God.
A storm descends on a small town, and the downpour soon turns into a flood. As the waters rise, the local preacher kneels in prayer on the church porch, surrounded by water. By and by, one of the townsfolk comes up the street in a canoe.
“Better get in, Preacher. The waters are rising fast."
“No,” says the preacher. “I have faith in the Lord. He will save me.”
Still the waters rise. Now the preacher is up on the balcony, wringing his hands in supplication, when another guy zips up in a motorboat.
“Come on, Preacher. We need to get you out of here. The levee’s gonna break any minute.”
Once again, the preacher is unmoved. “I shall remain. The Lord will see me through.”
After a while the levee breaks, and the flood rushes over the church until only the steeple remains above water. The preacher is up there, clinging to the cross, when a helicopter descends out of the clouds, and a state trooper calls down to him through a megaphone.
“Grab the ladder, Preacher. This is your last chance.”
Once again, the preacher insists the Lord will deliver him.
And, predictably, he drowns.
A pious man, the preacher goes to heaven. After a while he gets an interview with God, and he asks the Almighty, “Lord, I had unwavering faith in you. Why didn’t you deliver me from that flood?”
God shakes his head. “What did you want from me? I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
It takes a special kind of crazy to say vaccines have untrustworthy ingredients over the dead body of your unvaccinated child.
Mennonite man
Ah… right okay.
Untrustworthy ingredients:
The measles virus, but very slightly modified so it won’t kill you.
The uneducated will kill us all.
Don’t you know that vaccines are made out of mercury and dead babies? Wake up sheeple!
Ah yes, the Electric Amish.
That was funny. I’ll have to reuse that one 🙂
Haha, never heard that one, and I grew up in an area that had a lot of both. 🤣
I was always amused by some of the stuff that Amish would do - like buying a freezer for an “English” neighbor, as an example. Or sometimes borrowing/renting someone else’s tractor and then running them at night? Are you hiding these behaviors from your god, or just from other people?
Lots of crazy beliefs out there. Look into eruvs for Orthodox Jews or how they pay “gentiles” to do things for them on holy days, or the timers that are set up…I think Religulous showed this last one. Seems like if you are going to go to these lengths to supposedly stay within compliance on some arbitrarily-determined rules from centuries ago, you might consider just, uh, discarding and revising some of these things? Because an omniscient being is going to see right through these clever legalisms…
There’s an expression: “build a hedge around the Torah,” referring to the web of extra strictures beyond the basic Commandments, that exist solely because they know people will finagle ways around them. The idea being that by breaking those rules they’ll still be protected from breaking the big ones. Of course it just means that more obedient people live restricted lives, and holier-than-thou people smugly keep stupid rules while still being cruel and evil to the core. And cheaters gonna cheat.
Ha, I got interested in researching what exactly Mennonites are, and funnily, the German Wikipedia article has, in its very introduction, this disclaimer:
In den Medien gibt es immer wieder Berichte über Mennoniten in Nord- oder Südamerika, die einen sehr konservativen bis weltabgewandten Lebensstil pflegen und die in der Regel einen deutschen Hintergrund haben. Diese Gruppen stellen jedoch nur einen kleinen Ausschnitt aus dem mennonitischen Spektrum dar, in dem es auch viele modernere, angepasstere und liberalere Gemeinschaften sowie viele andere ethnische Zugehörigkeiten gibt.
Translation by me:
“In the media, there are regular reports about Mennonites in North- or South America, who have a very conservative or even withdrawn lifestyle, who usually have German ancestry. These groups are, however, only a small section of the whole Mennonite spectrum, in which there are also many more modern, more adjusted and more liberal communities, as well as many other ethnicities.”
Seems like your American Mennonite exiles are making the rest of the Mennonite world defensive.
I mean, that’s just the history of the US anyway. Remember, the puritans were “escaping” “persecution” for there religious beliefs from Europe. Those beliefs were so incredibly strict, conservative, and restrictive that no one wanted those nut jobs around. Oh, look, 250 years later and their descendants are still afraid of a nipple.
Makes sense, what if she took the vaccine and it killed her? Oh, wait…
These people should be in prison for murder and forcibly sterilized.
So basically, he’s saying he’d rather have a dead child than a child with autism or whatever malady he thinks vaccines cause. Holy hell.
Fucking deathcult of america.
So basically he’d rather they just die than live with “stuff we don’t trust”. If “everybody has to die”, then why care about what’s in a vaccine in the first place? Extreme cognitive dissonance to support an ideology.
I’m not entirely certain, but depending on which Mennonite community they belong to, they might believe that reaching their desired afterlife requires faithful adherence to their religious practices and commitments.
Made even more sad given that, as a child, he likely received the MMR vaccine.
These fools never seem to think about that part.
Maybe, depends if he was born and raised Mennonite then it’s possible he didn’t. But that also means he likely did nothing to comfort his daughter as she died or else he would have caught it too
It’s also possible he was very lucky and had a mild case of measles as a child. That’s often a reason people don’t take a dangerous disease seriously, especially when you add the religious factor. He’s an idiot who killed his child but we don’t know he didn’t care about her or try to comfort her.
I should feel sorry for this man because he’s obviously mentally ill. But I don’t.
Sounds like a negligent homicide charge.
In a logical world, but in a country that gives religious woo a lot of privilege, I somehow doubt it.
Well I guess he has to choose, trust a vaccine, or trust Trump. We should ask his daughter how his decision held up
Ah yes, the “everybody dies so who gives a shit” defense…
He says he doesn’t trust it, but he’s lying. If he actually cared about what’s in the vaccines, he would get educated on the ingredients, the process of manufacture, the data and studies that have been done, etc.
But he won’t do that, because he is a religious fundamentalist. He doesn’t care about being logical, or reasonable, or understanding anything. He heard a certain viewpoint that he vibes with and stubbornly and fanatically holds to it.
Same as radical Islamists, or the Crusaders, or conspiracy theory nuts. They didn’t reason themselves into their worldview. It wasn’t carefully and methodically researched, it isn’t something they are willing to change or adapt or be wrong on.
Crusaders
Wasn’t that more of a “make money fast” scheme though?
Sure, but for many of the participants, the actual ground troops, they were Christian fanatics that genuinely believed God was behind their cause.
Same story as today really, smart people at the top use religious fundies as useful idiots to help their cause.
I grew up in a Christian fundamentalist community. Most of the people in it genuinely believed all the propaganda and rhetoric. But the right-wing powers at the top usually don’t actually give a shit, a bunch of them don’t even believe in any of the fundie stuff like the imminent rapture, Revelation, Prophesy, etc. But they know they can use that fanaticism to their advantage to push their agenda forward.
“I don’t trust science so I will choose death instead”
Fucking brilliant people. No doubt they are Trump supporters.
… he’s a Mennonite, lot of them won’t even use the internal combustion engine. It’s one of those low-tech sects of Christianity like Amish.
That sounds worse. Good god.
Actually avoiding the internal combustion engine seems pretty environmentally friendly to me
Ehh, mennonites just want to keep to themselves and their communities. Obviously they’ve got some problematic beliefs, but they would never force them upon anyone or go out and try to be missionaries. Typically they don’t vote or participate in local government.
Found this interesting article about OH and PA mennonites and their opinions on the 2016 presidential election
Ya they all sound like selfish assholes who don’t want to contribute to society.
I say fuck em.
They’re anything but selfish lol. Firstly, there are sects of Mennonites that are integrated into modern society. Secondly, the communities they live in are founded on the idea of everyone helping each other. The extreme sects are allowed to waive their right to social security since their church already provides them a safety net. They don’t take gov benefits. Also, all of them have jobs, they’re not sealed off from the world. I live in Ohio and the Mennonites and Amish are frequently working on home repairs, building garages or barns, and sell a lot of goods from their little towns. These are honestly some of the nicest and hardest working people around.
American society is founded on the idea of religious freedom. If anything they’re contributing in a more positive way since they don’t seek to combine their religion and the wider world (as compared to a MAGA “Christian”)
You are religious aren’t you
Yeah… You totally can’t trust a vaccine with 97% efficacy and a negligible mortality rate that’s existed for over 80 years versus an extremely infectious virus with a 40% mortality rate and no effective treatment or cure… If only there were extensive scientific studies on these things that were easily and freely accessible to the public! Why do we have to live in such a dark and uninformed time!?
Because conservatives have been gutting education every chance they get throughout history. 🤷♂️
What better way to control the masses than have them all fat, exhausted, stupid, and sick?
Damn, I’m fat, exhausted, and sick right now because I’ve had bronchitis for the past 2 weeks.
Although I’m not a conservative and I’m arguably not stupid so I have that going for me at least lol
One small correction. 20-25% require hospitalization, In the third world 1% to 3% mortality rate, in the first world typically 1-in-1000, but note that at least two have died of that initial group that was infected (125?).
Go get vaxxed, dammit.
This is just so horrifying. Don’t trust? Holy shit, his child is dead!
And what is this “stuff” that he’s talking about? Midi-chlorians?
Of course he’s not changing his stance. Doing so would be admitting that his child died as a direct consequence of his own actions. Ha will forever be anti-vax from now on, even if his life depends on it.
