Pox-pops explode irony meters world-wide

Posted by ERV on November 9, 2011
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Im sure you all have heard this story–

Chickenpox parties–just a Facebook friend away

“Pox packages,” child abuse, and the violation of federal law

I dont have much to add other than a question for the parents doing this:

I mean, lets ignore the ethical and legal implications of what they are doing. Lets just focus on the ‘logic’ behind what they are doing.


They do not want to vaccinate their children, because they are worried about their children becoming ‘contaminated’ from ‘chemicals’ or ‘toxins’ or ‘voodoo spirits’ or whatever and get sick.

Vaccines were developed by hundreds of scientists with advanced degrees, and have gone through extensive pre-clinical and clinical testing, as well as ongoing safety monitoring. There are extensive quality control standards, and a threat of severe legal and financial damages if manufacturers do *anything* out of line.

The vaccines themselves prevent disease and the suffering said diseases cause, and are available at a low cost/free at a county heath clinic.

But INSTEAD of getting a vaccine…

These parents are choosing to pay a stranger they have never met who has zero scientific/medical training to send them a biological agent in the mail for their child to consume in order to make the child sick.

Halloween was a week ago. When I was a kid, my parents made me throw out any candy that looked like it might be maybe could be tampered with.

Apparently, unlike the parents in this pox-pop scandal, my parents actually love me.

Even assuming the people sending these pox-pops are not homicidal maniacs lacing the pops with arsenic (a very real possibility, there are psychos out there), there are any number of pathogens that could be on those pops– from norovirus to some hepatitis to EBV or cytomegalovirus or any number of herpes viruses to hand, foot, and mouth disease to a whole host of bacteria.

You dunno what you are going to get on those pops because you are buying them from some anonymous asshole on the internet. “OH THEYRE NOT ANON THIS IS JANE, MOTHER OF TWO BOYS FROM VERMONT!”

“OH LOOK! HI GUYS! IM NOT REALLY ABBIE FROM OKLAHOMA! MY NAME IS JANE AND IM THE MOTHER OF TWO BOYS FROM VERMONT! IM SAYING IT ON THE INTERNET, SO IT MUST BE TRUE! LOOK, HERE IS A PICTURE OF ME AND MY FAMILY!!”
“AFTER YOU PAY ME MONEY IM GOING TO SEND YOU THIS SALIVA AND YOU SHOULD MAKE YOUR KID DRINK IT, K?”

I mean for FUCKS SAKE.

This doesnt have anything to do with being anti-vax, really– I would have thought even an anti-vaxer wouldnt be DUMB ENOUGH to participate in a stunt like this.

I mean SHIT.

How can humans this stupid even figure out how to reproduce in the first place?

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Comments

  1. #1 Mu
    November 9, 2011

    You misunderstand, it’s our advanced degrees that make us incapable of understanding the evidence. We just refuse to see that when someone who was abused by Gardasil dies two years later in a car crash that that is still a clear vaccine injury. And no “true mother” would ever send a lollipop that carried anything but pure chicken pox, because they made sure their kids had no strep throat, herpes blister or diarrhea before they put it in the incubator mail.

  2. #2 Prometheus
    November 9, 2011

    They had a pediatrician on “All Things Considered” talking about this stupid crap and he gave out a laundry list of horrible deadly secondary infections kids can develop from contracting chicken pox “natures way”…you know ..cause nature mails spit to the house all the time.

    He then, explained all of the diseases you might get from spit or used lollipops and that before you pay $50.00 you might note one of the least likely of the pathogens they will transmit is varicella zoster.

  3. #3 Justicar
    November 9, 2011

    Fuck. I’m going to stop taking out the trash. Who knew that my garbage bin could be a second career worth of income selling it piecemeal on the fucking internet?

    As I wrote in the other thread: I just know that a lot of people out there wear velcro shoes. And not because they make cool noises.

    Hey, KIDS! Special offer! ACT fast! Supplies limited! I have one tootsie pop I just pulled out of my asshole – 20 bucks and it could be yours!

  4. #4 Justicar
    November 9, 2011

    (for clarification, yes, my asshole is anonymous)

  5. #5 Sulaco
    November 9, 2011

    Actually, a study by the CDC, WHO and Dr. Paul Offit came out saying that this is the best way to prevent illnesses. Merck and other pharmaceutical conglomerates will be coming out with their own infected candy to prevent disease. These new products should be out within the next week.

    Sick Kids here in Toronto will be launching a program to deliver these morsels to all the wee ones in the GTA.

    There, now that this has been approved by an authority I am pretty sure sure this insanity will end pretty quick.

  6. #6 Justicar
    November 9, 2011

    Sulaco: I see. Cure the disease by . . . dash cunning.

  7. #7 Kemanorel
    November 9, 2011

    I don’t want to live on this planet anymore…

  8. #8 ShavenYak
    November 9, 2011

    I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant number of the loonies purchasing pox pops actually didn’t let their children trick-or-treat for fear that they might be poisoned, get sick, or catch a nasty case of demonic possession.

  9. #9 John C. Welch
    November 9, 2011

    To wax carlin, the descriptive for these idiots:

    “Here’s a group who should be paralyzed from the neck down and left on the hillside for wolves”

  10. #10 Spence
    November 9, 2011

    How can humans this stupid even figure out how to reproduce in the first place?

    Sadly, reproduction and stupidity appear to be largely uncorrelated.

    Also, what species is that baby you’re holding there, Jane?

  11. #11 Paul Browne
    November 9, 2011

    WTF!! Even knowing that the Darwin Awards exist I still find it hard to believe that any parent would do this to their kids.

    What is wrong with these people?

  12. #12 Justicar
    November 9, 2011

    Not to disagree, Spence, but I’d argue they are inextricably linked, and positively correlated. More so than is good for the species.

  13. #13 Mary
    November 9, 2011

    See, I took this another way: how smart is this virus to figure out how to use Facebook and UPS??!1!

    Really–give the virus some credit plz.

  14. #14 Justicar
    November 9, 2011

    lol@Mary. Now that’s one hell of an adaptation I must confess.

    /bow

  15. #15 ERV
    November 9, 2011

    NOTE– ‘Jane’ is a random image I pulled from a Google Image search for ‘mother of two boys’. The woman and her children in that image have nothing to do with this issue, I just wanted to illustrate how easy it is to pull a photo off the internet for an imaginary back story. If you were a psycho who wanted to kill some kids, making up an imaginary back story and sending these kinds of parents poisoned candy is a great way to wreak havoc. DO NOT order this kind of crap off the internet, people.

  16. #16 Justicar
    November 9, 2011

    That’s right, children. You heard it here first: get your potentially fatal diseases from known, reputable sources like close friends, relatives and sexual partners. DO NOT. I SAY AGAIN: DO NOT get them from strangers on the internet! It’s just not safe!

  17. #17 Stephen Bahl
    November 9, 2011

    So hypothetically, what horrible, terrible things would we find in a vaccine that we could totally never find in a biohazard package from some crazy person?

  18. #18 Just Sayin'
    November 9, 2011

    These parents are choosing to pay a stranger they have never met who has zero scientific/medical training to send them a biological agent in the mail for their child to consume in order to make the child sick.

    They’re ordering a box of pox and not from dox?

    That makes them dumb as rox (or even Kwokx)!

    On all their houses, I say A POX!!!

  19. #19 Lesley
    November 9, 2011

    Back before the chickenpox vaccine was a thing, my parents exposed me to infected kids so I’d not get chickenpox as an adult. That was legit because there wasn’t a vaccine. But now there is and OMG WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

  20. #20 Just Sayin'
    November 9, 2011

    How can humans this stupid even figure out how to reproduce in the first place?

    Musta bin dat abstinence-only sex-ed. Works every time.

  21. #21 Petercx
    November 9, 2011

    My head is going to explode.

  22. #22 petercx
    November 9, 2011

    I was actually being serious.

  23. #23 Narad
    November 9, 2011

    There are extensive quality control standards, and a threat of severe legal and financial damages if manufacturers do *anything* out of line.

    You realize that manufacturing, design, and warning defects are just an amorphous mass to these people, right?

  24. #24 William Wallace
    November 10, 2011

    I have to agree.

    On a slightly different note, what do you think about toys in daycares?

  25. #25 Justicar
    November 10, 2011

    William Wallace, do be sure to read my admonishment earlier: get your potentially fatal disease from known, reputable sources like friends (daycare playmates included!) Or, if it’s a Catholic one, then I suppose sexual partners might fit in there too.

    Either that, or you’re going to bring up pthalates, in which case I’m just going to stare.

    My kids had to have vaccination records for admittance practically anywhere. Unvaccinated children weren’t allowed where I had my kids in daycare.

  26. #26 mo
    November 10, 2011

    It should be mentioned here that the danger of strangers willingly poisoning random kids is generally overstated:

    http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp

  27. #27 David
    November 10, 2011

    This behaviour seems awful to me, but don’t you agree with the rubella vaccine being given to children. I haven’t see any evidence that it effects children badly. This seems to go against normal human ethical behaviour, as it seems to risk the health of children to protect other unborn children.

  28. #28 David
    November 10, 2011

    WARNING : STUPIDITY DENSITY = BLACK HOLE

    http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheVaccineMachine

    The onus is now on intelligent people to protect thier offspring. You know how I calm down, by realising nature will do its bit for the others.

  29. #29 Spence
    November 10, 2011

    Justicar, I did consider suggesting an inverse relationship between intelligence and breeding but I kinda figured I’d already hit my quota for offensiveness in my last comment :)

    Oh, and talking of offensiveness, I did realise that “Jane” was a random picture from the internet. I was just a bit surprised you google indexed it under “mother of two boys” instead of “mother of one boy and… what is that?”

    David, that is a pretty impressive bag of stupid you’ve stumbled across there. They seem to be channeling Linus Pauling as well, although unfortunately it seems to be the crazy Pauling rather than the brilliant Pauling.

  30. #30 David
    November 10, 2011

    (Note : That picture of a mother is in fact Rowan Pelling, a face perhaps more familiar to us in the UK as a journalist – certainly known to those who read the Erotic Review.)

  31. #31 William Wallace
    November 10, 2011

    Are you folks supposed to be down at the local parks with your flea party friends?

  32. #32 Spence
    November 11, 2011

    Is that Rowan Pelling? (Checks) Oh yeah!

    Oh well, if there was any tiny bit of me that felt guilty for being mean about her kid, that has fully gone now I know she was a journalist for Private Eye. If she can dish it out, I figure she should be able to take it as well.

    In fact, might be time to take the gloves off ;)

  33. #33 cynical1
    November 11, 2011

    I would hazard a guess that the likelihood of any herpetic virus surviving a day in the mail at ambient temperature is probably nil. But I’m sure anyone stupid enough to not vaccinate their kids won’t realize that so I’m curious what they conclude when little Johnny doesn’t break out with chicken pox after getting his prize in the mail? Do they assume that he’s protected now? Little Johnny may have a rude awakening one day as an adult.

    As an aside, post adolescent exposure to EBV is strongly linked to multiple sclerosis. (See work from Ascherio from Harvard and many others.) In fact, 100% of MS patients are infected vs. 90% age/sex-matched controls. When you have a big enough ‘n’, then you get a pretty impressive odds ratio (~13) which is on par with cigarettes and lung cancer. One could argue that exposure to EBV at an early age might be prophylactic for MS. But it doesn’t really do anything for your risk for the EBV-related cancers and SLE, where EBV is also a prerequisite for developing the disease but, unlike MS, can be diagnosed in all age ranges. It’s a shame that the company developing the EBV vaccine abandoned it even after showing phase II efficacy. See, pharmaceutical companies are stupid too.

  34. #34 Broken Link
    November 11, 2011

    “I mean for FUCKS SAKE.

    This doesnt have anything to do with being anti-vax, really– I would have thought even an anti-vaxer wouldnt be DUMB ENOUGH to participate in a stunt like this.

    I mean SHIT.”

    I love you ERV!

  35. #35 Emerson White
    November 20, 2011

    I preferred you as a brunette Abbie/Jane.

  36. #36 Calli Arcale
    November 22, 2011

    David:

    This behaviour seems awful to me, but don’t you agree with the rubella vaccine being given to children. I haven’t see any evidence that it effects children badly. This seems to go against normal human ethical behaviour, as it seems to risk the health of children to protect other unborn children.

    I definitely agree with the rubella vaccine being given to children. One of the main reasons why I think people should be in favor of it is because the unborn babies being protected are not just some random stranger’s unborn babies. They are the child’s own siblings, cousins, and, eventually, the child’s own children years later. Give rubella vaccine to your children if you want your children to get married and give you grandchildren someday. ;-)