I said a lot of things here, but sometimes even I run out of words when I read something like this.
The story:
“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 paralysed,” his devastated father, 41, told The Independent in a phone interview from his son’s hospital bedside.
Sadly, it’s not like anything could have stopped him from being affected in this way.
Well, apart from the measles vaccine, of course. That would have prevented all of this.
But:
Ethan’s parents decided not to immunise 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.”
Honestly, read that last line again and then read what happened in the hospital (after they opted to take him HOME(!) for 48 hours while his condition deteriorated further):
“They immediately started giving him fluids, taking blood again, doing all the tests again,” Kristina said, panicking as she watched her son being hooked up to machines.
Then Ethan’s heart rate started dropping.
“The machine started beeping,” she recalled. “And we were really concerned … doctors kept coming in and so then we asked, ‘What number do we need to be concerned?’ And [the doctor] said, ‘Anything that goes under 50.’
“And all of a sudden, his heart rate went under 50,” Kristina said.
The mom recalled that a nurse then shouted, “Ethan, you gotta wake up, you gotta wake up,” and started “pounding” on her son’s chest, before calling for more medics to help.
“It was just one of those moments you just think…no, no,” the mom said, through tears. “This can’t be.”
And then let me share her words one more time:
“And we wouldn’t change it any other way. If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn’t have given my son the vaccine.”
And there it is. If you ever needed any evidence that some people shouldn’t be allowed to become parents. Literally, those last lines are basically an admission of wilful child endangerment.
But these people have become emboldened by what they read on Facebook and by what their pseudoscientific, conspiracy theorist, absolute knob of a Secretary of Health is saying and doing.
“Why do we need to add so much to our children’s bodies?” Kristina asks.
Erm… because it would have prevented your 7-year-old son from having to be fed by a tube (ironically added to his body), from possibly not being able to walk again, and having brain damage for the rest of his life.
To the parents’ relief, doctors were able to stabilise Ethan’s heart rate and he was admitted to the intensive care unit, where his mom and dad sat by his bedside all night anxiously watching the heart rate monitor. The next morning, Ethan underwent another MRI and second spinal tap.
Weird how you suddenly start relying on modern medical science to save your kid’s life once your shitty decisions nearly ended it, hey?
What a horrible, stupid woman.
Good luck to Ethan. And good luck to the rest of her kids.
They’re going to need it.
