A few weeks ago I decided to travel back home
to surprise my mom.
The last time we met things didn’t go so
well, so I figured I could make up with her
by returning back to the place of my childhood
and handing her an unexpected birthday gift.
Her car was in the driveway so I knew she
was home.
As soon as I walked through the door, gift
in hand, I shouted, “GUESS WHOOO?”
No reply was forthcoming, which I thought
was a bit strange, so I walked into the kitchen.
To my utter astonishment my co-creator was
slumped in front of a laptop with her head
in her hands, her mascara running down her
cheeks in the style of a Rorschach test.
“What’s up mother dearest,” I asked,
after which she looked up and tearfully replied,
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“For what?”
I asked, feeling slightly concerned that she
wasn’t my biological mother.
Swallowing painfully, her voice breaking,
she cried, “I…I…I VACCINATED you.”
I stood there for a few seconds and made no
effort to console her.
I’m generally a loving, hands-on, type of
son, but I dreaded the thought of the discussion
to come.
Memories of our Flat Earth debate echoed around
my head and I didn’t want to go through
that kind of ordeal again.
The gift that I’d brought her was a book
called, “The Short History of Nearly Everything”,
which is sort of a science 101 for curious
dummies.
I quickly abandoned that by the trash can.
Walking around to where my mom was again slouched,
I bent down to see what she’d been consuming
on the Internet.
The page was difficult to read seeing as there
were so many pop-up ads, but I managed to
see a piece of writing entitled, “Everything
the Government Has Told You Is Wrong.”
“Ok, mom,” I said, “We need to talk…I’ll
make some coffee and you go wash that mascara
off your face.”
What scared me was that when she reappeared
from the bathroom there was a determined,
dare I say it, ferocious look painted across
her face.
The woman had come to do battle, and I guessed
my olive branch of a hot cup of coffee wasn’t
going to be enough to dampen her enthusiasm.
“So mom, what’s the big problem?“
I asked, and now feeling a bit reluctant,
handed over that coffee.
“The problem,“ she replied emphatically,
“is that I had you vaccinated when you were
just a small child…an innocent, unknowing
child whose blood I defiled and corrupted.”
“Ah, ok, can you expand?”
She went over to a drawer and pulled out a
binder from which she took some official-looking
medical papers.
She showed me those papers and I quickly went
through them.
“So, I see I have been vaccinated against
smallpox…”
“Among other things,” she said.
“And that’s a problem?”
She picked the worst one first of course and
talked about how she’d given me the smallpox
vaccine when there wasn’t really any need.
“The Most Dangerous Vaccine in the World!”
she shouted, “And I put that filth into
you...My only son...Oh God, please forgive
me.”
“Ok mom,” I said, “Listen to this.
You’re right about the smallpox vaccine
being one of the worst out there and I admit
that out of around every one million people
who got vaccinated maybe one would die and
70-something others would get seriously sick,
but from 1880 to 1980 about half a billion
people died from smallpox.
I’m glad you gave me the vaccine, even though
I was one of the last people in the U.S. to
have it done mandatorily.”
“I could have killed you,” she intoned
quietly.
“Yep, and you could have dropped me on my
head…smothered me in your armpit…or given
me free reign to explore the basement so I
ended up eating rat poison or drinking Drano,
but you took good care of me, and that included
adhering to medical science facts when it
came to vaccines.”
“Ok, humor me and tell me what good they’ve
done,” she said.
I picked up that book I had bought her and
since I’d read it I knew where to find the
chapter on vaccines.
I showed her the bit about the Spanish Flu
and how it killed something like 50 to 100
million people at the start of the 20th century.
There were no flu vaccines back then, I told
her, and dramatically lifting my arms in the
air I shouted, “Praise the lord we have
them now.”
She wasn’t impressed with my theatrics.
This flu had a massive impact on life expectancy
just in the U.S., I said, and pointing to
some lines in the book I showed her that during
World War One about 80 percent of U.S. military
deaths were not from bullet holes or bomb
blasts or bayonets, but from flu.
I told her that since we now have vaccines
to prevent certain kinds of contagions from
happening again, we can probably on average
look forward to hitting 80 in the good ole
USA….well, late 70s I said, depending on
how we deal with opiods and obesity.
“You’re so brainwashed,” she said, “Just
like the rest of them.
I hate to say it, but I gave birth to an idiot.”
Ouch!
“If my answers frighten you then you should
cease asking scary questions,” I told her
smiling because I’d stolen that line from
a Quentin Tarantino movie.
She then got up and frantically ran around
the kitchen opening cupboard doors and swiping
her finger on surfaces.
With a huge grin on her face she pointed at
each heavily stocked level of the refrigerator.
“What do you see?” she asked without waiting
for an answer.
“You see clean, nutritious food.
You see surfaces wiped with cleaning agents.
You see everything that tells you that the
reason so many people died of diseases back
then was NOT vaccines, but the fact a lot
of people had poor living standards.
The world has changed, and that’s why there
will be no repeat of the Spanish Flu pandemic.”
I told her that there was a lot of truth in
that, but vaccines have also helped.
A case in point is the fact the number of
measles victims was profoundly reduced after
the first measles vaccine of 1963.
I told her that if you have that vaccine now
the chance of dying from measles is 0.01 percent.
“This has been proven to be an incredibly
safe vaccine,” I said, now feeling annoyed
since she was sitting across from me with
her arms folded, smirking.
“In the 1960s about 3,000 Americans died
from measles and now the number is pretty
much negligible to none.
It used to kill millions around the world,
and in fact, if you go back to 1980 over four
million people died worldwide from measles.
In 2018, the number was about 140,000.
And you know why my dear life-giver, BECAUSE…OF…VACCINES.”
She then picked up a piece of paper she had
printed out and on it was a photo of a young
man with his doting mother.
The word printed above the pair in bold was,
“VACCINE APOCALYPSE.”
“See that,” she said, “That woman claims
that the measles vaccine gave her son autism,
and you know what, she’s not alone.
And before you get smart, articles have been
published in scientific literature about this
FACT…
What do you have to say to that?”
I could see the woman grinding her teeth,
which was worrying to say the least.
This issue was so important to her that I
imagined the stress related to her impregnable
conviction would get her before any disease
would.
“Have you taken your anti-psychotic medicine,”
I asked.
“What medicine?”
“The stuff you obviously need to be taking…”
She just glared at me.
“Sorry, I said, just kidding…Ok, let me
inform you that the article you’re referring
to was later retracted.
I’m not saying that this kid you are showing
me doesn’t have autism, but the condition
is neurodevelopmental and its generally influenced
by genetics.
Since that paper came out, anti-vaxxers have
been waving it around like a flag at the Disease
Olympics, but numerous, and I mean numerous,
studies have shown the connection to be indubitably,
incontestably, unchangeably WRONG.”
She told me about Big Pharma and its many
lies and corruptions, about its nefarious
shareholders and malignant band of diabolical
lobbyists.
She told me about the conspiracy to dumb down
the populace and make us sick; how we are
manipulated like marionettes by the dirty
invisible hands of the unfeeing elite.
“Mom,” I said in a low tone, feeling worn-out
already.
“I share your fear that Big Pharma with
its many billions in profits can sometimes
be unscrupulous in its business practices.
I am aware that greed plagues our planet,
but I also know that there are hardworking
researchers all over the world that are developing
vaccines to help mankind.”
I picked up the piece of paper she had shown
me.
“You see this kid…Well, he and others
now have more chance of getting measles because
of the anti-vaxxer junk you are all swallowing.
There have been recent outbreaks because of
this nonsense and there is data that you can
easily find about that.”
She then told me that lots of vaccinated kids
still get measles and other diseases.
At that moment I knew I needed something she
could relate to, so I pulled out that huge
jar of M&Ms we have.
I emptied the thing on the table.
From the whole I separated about five pieces.
“Ok ma, so these five candies represent
unvaccinated kids in a school and the rest
of the bunch are vaccinated.
Let’s say there is a huge outbreak and everyone
is susceptible.
Now, those five kids without the vaccine got
infected, but since not every kid responds
to the vaccine, about 12 vaccinated kids got
it.
Anti-vaxxers might say, well, that just proves
that more kids can get it even when vaccinated,
but that’s fuzzy logic, because A LOT more
kids would have got it if they hadn’t been
vaccinated.
Now consider a world of billions of M&Ms.”
I just knew by the expression on her face
that she wasn’t getting that at all.
“Look mom, sometimes you just have to go
with the literature.
Come with me…”
I take her out to the garden and give a cliched
lecture which I hope will allay her anger
and fear.
“The sun is shining; the grass is green…look
around you and take in this thing we call
nature.
You have to get out of your head and enjoy
life.
Sure it’s alluring to think a Bad Big Brother
is pulling strings and is warring against
the common man, but this line of thinking
is going to drive you crazy.”
I thought that might have done the trick,
but then she surprised me and pulled out a
picture of a baby and shoved it in my face…this
blocked the sun for a second, giving my metaphor
some amount of credence.
“That’s baby Gregory,” she said, “He
died an infant soon after being vaccinated
for Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
How do you explain that oh-so-smart son of
mine.?”
For a moment I felt like pushing her in the
fish pond that my dad built before he took
off.
“Mom, correlation does not imply causation.
Of course a bunch of kids are going to die
in their infancy, but that just happens regardless
of if they’ve been vaccinated.
Deaths that can be linked directly to vaccination
are so rare there isn’t even any data.
Sure, a kid might get sick after a vaccination,
but he might have gotten sick anyway.
“You think you know everything!” she shouted.
“No,” I replied coolly, “I am not young
enough to know everything.”
I could see she thought that sounded clever,
but she was unaware of the fact I was quoting
Oscar Wilde again.
We went back indoors since her world I now
understood was not a world of nature and laws
and reason and facts, but an underworld of
cynicism and paranoia, a world inhabited by
ghosts and ghouls, superstition and evil overlords.
“Have you ever actually been to a lab,”
I told her, “because I have.
I have friends who work ungodly hours trying
to understand viruses.
They have no stake in Big Pharma and they
aren’t purposefully trying to handicap innocent
kids.
These researchers are everywhere, if you ever
cared to leave the house and talk to them.”
She suddenly looked at me meaningfully, lovingly, like the mom I used to know before she spent all day
clicking refresh on dubious health blogs and social media pages
She stared into my eyes, and I was just about
to walk forward and embrace her
when she murmured,
“I could have killed you.”
Mom, you gave me life and you protected me and I am
grateful for that.
You vaccinated me and cared for me and I am
also grateful for that.
Thank you.
I love you.”
Things calmed down after this confession and
as a kind of peace offering I told her I’d
cook her favorite meal for both of us, a delicacy
for which I’d picked up the ingredients
at the city’s new International Imported
Food Market.
I then got to work on her beloved duck
soup.
Later that evening we were both watching the
latest on climate change on TV news and with
a feather sticking out her mouth she shook
her head from side to side, growling.
“What’s wrong,” I said, “did I not
make it right this time?”
She spit that feather back into the dish.
“No,” she replied, “the soup’s great
but this climate change hoax gets right under
my skin.”
Just in case any of you missed our first show
about the time this guy had to argue with
his mother over a conspiracy theory, have
a look at this, “Why Flat Earthers Are Dead
Wrong”, or if you are ready for something
similar, take a look at this, “What Happens
At & What Do We Know About Area 51?”
