Message to all Fellow NYC Parents

There's an outbreak of measles in Brooklyn right now and this is scary -- it's the worst outbreak in this city in decades.

Can you believe this? Measles! A disease that we once thought was totally eradicated has made a comeback in 2019!

Specifically, it's hitting the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community where, if the reports are true, "anti-vax" ideology is taking hold. The MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is one of the great life saving medicines of all time and now the "anti-vax" are targeting its usage.

Let's be clear: the anti-vax "movement" goes far beyond NYC and the Orthodox community, it crosses geographic, gender, racial, and socioeconomic lines. Fortunately, at least in Brooklyn, other leaders of the Jewish community are doing their best to educate the Orthodox community about the benefits of MMR. Thank God for that!

The "anti-vax" thing is one of the scariest, most awful retrograde things to come along recently -- along with Trumpism, white nationalism, Brexit, etc. It's an attempt to annihilate progress, to wreck the future, to make the world a scarier, more dangerous place. 

Why is this insanity going on? Why are people actively trying to hurt other people and their communities?

Part of it is racism, part of it is understandable if ill-informed fear of the future, and part of it is a desire to sow chaos in service of established power -- if we can keep people poor, sick, uneducated (or mis-educated), and divided, they won't challenge our authority. It's hard to believe but social as well as economic regression are the same thing -- they're all about keeping the underclass in their place.

After my first kid was born, we got all her vaccinations done. I casually asked her doctor if he had encountered any parents who refused to vaccinate their kids. I was horrified when he said, "Oh yes, this happens all the time." He said that he had "fired" some parents as patients the day before because they refused to vaccinate their baby and he refused to commit malpractice. I was glad that we had such a good doctor -- and scared that this kind of thing is going on.

So please, please, I beg my fellow NYC parents -- vaccinate your kids!