A mother whose child died aged six from a brain inflammation caused by measles hopes sharing her story will encourage parents to “vaccinate more”.
It comes as the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warned of measles outbreaks in parts of London.
Gemma Larkman-Jones wants more parents to consider having their children vaccinated sooner.
…
Prof Dame Jenny Harries, UKHSA chief executive, warned that measles is spreading among unvaccinated communities, and added that a “national call to action” is needed across the country.
Vaccination rates across the UK have been dropping, but there are particular concerns in parts of the capital as well as in some areas of the West Midlands.
Sometimes I think about how years ago parents would lie over their children’s beds crying. Praying for a miracle because that is all that can save their child now is the work of God. They have see this before, heard the stories. Seen the other children die just recently. They know the pain, they know what is coming. They have done all they can. They sent for the doctor who said he won’t be coming back as he has other patients to attend to, ones that might live. Yes they do what they can but it is all for nothing. They bury their child and go back home.
They sit there unable to cry anymore, the silence is broken from a cough in the younger child’s room. They then pray to God that this is just a cold. God doesn’t listen, God doesn’t bring miracles. But man does. One day the work of God comes in the hands of the many and changes the suffering forever.
Sometimes I wonder what those people would say to us. I bet they would hate us for not taking something they would give their lives for.
You would be surprised to know that some people today unironically believe that the germ theory is a hoax, and yes it’s the demographic you are suspecting.
People back in the day were scared of inoculation/vaccination as well. See the following comic about a cow pox inoculation turning people into cows: https://www.themorgan.org/sites/default/files/images/blog/gillray_277009v_0001.jpg
It’s not just a modern phenomena.
“I honestly think that if people knew that this was a possibility they would vaccinate more,”
There isn’t a doctor on Earth who doesn’t tell mothers not to vaccinate their children. Look at this woman’s face. You know she shared every single anti-vax post since 2020.
She has to live with that every day of her life and is now doing what she can to save others that trauma, despite knowing that there will be dickheads who just want to pile on anyway. Have some humanity.
“Samuel didn’t need to die and that’s the guilt I carry every day with me,” she said.
That’s fair, she seemingly learned her lesson at the cost of her son’s life, so people shouldn’t pile on. But she is not getting an ounce of sympathy from me.
Nah, fuck that kid killing idiot.
Look at this woman’s face. You know she shared every single anti-vax post since 2020.
You got all that from her physical appearance, huh? I actually agree with your stance on vaccines, but fuck you anyway and fuck the people who upvoted this
Yay bodyshaming, huh?
I don’t think it will change a lot of peoples minds. For most people, truth is social and they look to their in-group more than raw facts. Group membership is really important to the brain, and it reacts to threats to group membership similarly to how it reacts to a physical threat.
Related to the above, frankly a lot of people are too cowardly and fragile to admit fault. You’ve probably seen low stakes versions of this in real life. You’re arguing with someone about what year a movie came out. You say it was 1990, they say 1989. You look it up and find it was in fact released March, 1990. Instead of them saying “Shit, you got me,” they’ll pull some bullshit like “Oh but march is still basically the previous year so i’m still basically right”. Cowards. It doesn’t matter much when it’s about trivia, but when it’s about shit like vaccines people die.
Remember when humanity solved this issue and children didn’t have to die? Those were good times.
“Samuel didn’t need to die and that’s the guilt I carry every day with me,” she said.
It was the anti-vaxxers fault, not hers. I hope one day she’s able to accept that.
She was an anti-vaxxer. She made choices that led to her son’s death.
The article doesn’t make that clear, so I don’t want to accuse her unfairly.
But you want to actively not-accuse her…
Benefit of the doubt
I mean, you can move around the blame all you want, it’s more important to work on fixing the problem.
For example:
It’s not the anti-vaxxers’ fault, it’s the schools’ fault for not educating them well about vaccines and immunity
-> it’s not the schools’ fault, it’s the government’s fault for not funding the educational sector enough
-> it’s not the government’s fault, it’s x party’s fault for cutting taxes
-> it’s not x party’s fault, it’s the voters’ fault for voting them in to the government
etc etc.
Do you suppose finding “blame” is the key component to finding the “fix”?
eh sure ig, but the issue is not the cause of one singular party so it’s kinda bad if just one party is listed as the blame.
I don’t like anti-vaxxers but they’re not just the cause, they’re a result of a society that fails to educate about medicine.
It’s not the anti-vaxxers’ fault, it’s the schools’ fault for not educating
Is what you just laid out as an example of the wrong way to approach this. It’s OK if you replace “school” with “society”, then we have the correct answer?
My point was, you cannot meaningfully “fix” the problem unless you correctly identify the cause (“blame” in this case). Agreed, in a complex system, the likelihood that one action, person, or group is fully to blame is unlikely.
But your comment reads as “don’t identify the cause, get to the fix” and that’s gibberish.
No. They literally said finding the blame doesn’t fix the problem, then they illustrated how assigning blame is unproductive.
…she said he had been put on a delayed vaccination programme.
I’m not familiar with this. Can any English readers enlighten me? Why was it delayed?
Means fuck around and found out.
The way it’s written implies the kid was placed in some sort of DHS “program” (?) maybe a scheduling thing (?), not that the mother was an anti-vax idiot, although it’s entirely possible she was. Either way the poor kid died of a preventable disease. Terrible.
Usually it means the parents opted for this. Not that anyone deserved this, I’m just clarifying what it likely means.
The ‘soft’ antivax stance is getting vaccinated for more than one thing at a time it too hard on young bodies.
It’s bullshit on the spectrum of antivax.
It actually has some interesting history as this was the claim of Andrew Wakefield, one of the guys who threw gas on the antivax fire linking MMR to autism (he had a patent on a Measles vaccine, separate from the MMR). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_MMR_autism_fraud
So it does sound like something she chose because…autism or whatever else these types pull out of their ass. It’s heartbreaking for those kids
At least she is facing reality and trying to warn others. It seems to me to be more common to double down and blame any other cockamamie idea rather than accept that she made the wrong choice.
Yes, absolutely. But it’s still total garbage that the revelation comes only after her poor son is effected personally. People need to realise and care their shit takes have devastating real world consequences not only for themselves but others around them.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A mother whose child died aged six from a brain inflammation caused by measles hopes sharing her story will encourage parents to “vaccinate more”.
It comes as the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warned of measles outbreaks in parts of London.
Her son, Samuel, developed a rare form of brain inflammation after catching measles, and died in 2019.
“I honestly think that if people knew that this was a possibility they would vaccinate more,” Ms Larkman-Jones, 45, of Brixton, south London, told the PA Media news agency.
Prof Dame Jenny Harries, UKHSA chief executive, warned that measles is spreading among unvaccinated communities, and added that a “national call to action” is needed across the country.
In February 2019 Samuel was transferred to St Thomas’ Hospital where a lumbar puncture and an MRI test found he had the neurological disorder subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE).
The original article contains 393 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
if ooonly someone had told her… are you kidding me.
