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Kennedy’s Kidz
Feb. 22nd, 2026 10:43 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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The fact that an anti-vaxx lunatic has been put in charge of the country’s public health is both a horrifying and contingent fact about American politics. But there’s also a complex cause and effect relationship between his rise and people who think like this, some ex ante and some ex post:
Six weeks ago, Ethan was like most 7-year-olds — spending the weekend riding his new bike or playing Minecraft on his iPad on a rainy day.
“He just learned how to ride, he got the hang of it right away,” Ethan’s dad, Luis, said proudly. “He wanted to go outside because he wanted to jump on his bike…it was an amazing thing for him.”
Instead, since late January, the schoolboy has been confined to a hospital bed with measles encephalitis, a complication that causes swelling and inflammation in the brain. “He’s pretty much as if he was paralyzed,” his devastated father, 41, told The Independent in a phone interview from his son’s hospital bedside.
Ethan’s parents decided not to immunize him against measles as they did with his three brothers. Three out of four of them contracted measles. Still, despite Ethan’s ordeal, his mom stands by their decision. “We’re not blaming God for this,” said 35-year-old Kristina. “Yes, it hurts, of course, it hurts. But God has chosen Ethan for a reason. God is doing something, and we’re gonna glorify his name regardless.
“And we wouldn’t change it any other way,” the mom continued. “If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn’t have given my son the vaccine.”
“Our biggest reason why we didn’t do it is just with all the unnecessary stuff they add into it,” Kristina added, referring to her beliefs about the vaccine.
“With my own eyes, I have seen the damage it does to kids who are perfectly normal, and then once they get it, they’re not the same anymore,” she claimed.
I literally cannot imagine being able to vividly compare the actual horrible damage of not being vaccinated and the completely imaginary negative effects of getting vaccinated among my own children (or, for that matter, anybody’s children) and still believing that the latter should take precedence. And one impact of Trump’s second election win will be to manufacture many more people who think this way.
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