Yes, I know that Anabaptist types like Mennonites aren't Calvinist per se, but many of them hold to the same rigid determinism, as do the parents of the child who was the first measles death in West Texas a few weeks ago.
The child's parents make that clear.
The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense in a video released Monday that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.
“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”
The West Texas measles outbreak, the biggest in the state in 30 years, has infected more than 270 people and hospitalizing dozens of them. Public health officials have repeatedly told Texans that studies have time and time again shown that the safest and most effective way to avoid contracting the very infectious, life-threatening disease is to vaccinate with the measles-mumps-rubella shot.
The couple, members of a Mennonite community in Gaines County with traditionally low vaccination rates, spoke on camera in both English and Low German to CHD Executive Director Polly Tommey and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.
“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”
What do you say in response to that?
It's hard, but not THAT hard theologically, as I will address on my other blog site.
For here?
For the parents not keeping children home when unvaccinated, this is an infliction of their religious belief on others. Parents who don't believe their children are predestined to get measles, and have their kids vaccinated, shouldn't have to deal with a "breakthrough" case. Nor should they have to deal with more generalized school disruptions.
Nor, to be blunt, should they have to deal with, for the public eye, pretending sympathy for another family they may not feel in reality.
And, they shouldn't have to.
Especially when, reading between the lines of Covenant Hospital's statement, these parents are willing to lie for their religion.
And, with that sort of lying, they surely don't care about endangering others.
Which they are.
Health experts say it could take a full year to fully contain the West Texas measles outbreak:
“This demonstrates that this (vaccine exemption) policy puts the community, the county, and surrounding states at risk because of how contagious this disease is,” said Glenn Fennelly, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and assistant vice president of global health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso. “We are running the risk of threatening global stability.”
There you go.
That said, per that same piece, is this all about religion or not? One person says no:
Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments ... said efforts to increase the vaccination rates in Gaines County, which is about 70 miles from Lubbock, and the surrounding region have been slow as trust in the government has seemingly reached an all-time low.
“We are seeing, just like the rest of Americans, this community has seen a lot of stories about vaccines causing autism, and that is leading to a lot of this vaccine hesitancy, not religion,” she said.
But, putting the cloak of religion on non-religious beliefs is an all-American pastime.
Beyond religious issues, here in Tex-ass, as the piece notes, is state Republicans continuing to gut local control of local issues. Seminole ISD doesn't have the power to close local schools, for example.
On this and related issues, Texas gets unfavorably compared with New Mexico.
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