Katie Jennings was scrolling on her phone last April when a headline stopped her cold. A second unvaccinated child had died of measles in her home state of Texas.
It was a tipping point for the 40-year-old stay-at-home mom who had grown up in a staunchly anti-vaccine, fundamentalist Christian community. “What are we doing? Why are we doing this?” she remembers thinking. “I wanted to protect my kids.”
She took all six of them to get the measles, mumps and rubella shot. Then she posted an emotional TikTok aimed at the anti-vax crowd she used to be a part of: “You can change your mind,” she said in the video that’s been watched more than 422,000 times.
I went into that article assuming it would be a tragic ‘leopards eating faces’ scenario. But…
Katie Jennings was scrolling on her phone last April when a headline stopped her cold. A second unvaccinated child had died of measles in her home state of Texas.
It was a tipping point for the 40-year-old stay-at-home mom who had grown up in a staunchly anti-vaccine, fundamentalist Christian community. “What are we doing? Why are we doing this?” she remembers thinking. “I wanted to protect my kids.”
Good for her breaking free from a lifetime of antivax indoctrination and doing what’s right for her kids. It’s easy to mock antivaxers. But sometimes they are set up to fail by their parents/local community. And they deserve kudos when they succeed despite that.
And credit to get for speaking out and trying to change song minds with her action.
I have a 5month old with chickenpox due to some anti-vaxer. We were Lucky it was the tamer of the diseases these assholes are spreading around but it’s still dangerous at such a young age. If I knew who was responsible I’d beat the shit out of them
while beating them shitless
“A vaccine would have protected you from this too!”
Chicken pox remains in the body and can resurface later as shingles. For older adults it can be debilitating and cause permanent problems.
Shingles fucking sucks, hurts like hell, had it right along my left side under my belt line. Putting my pants on was like stabbing my side with knives every day, and I got mine treated as soon as the symptoms appeared before they got really bad. I grew up in the 80s where it was normal to get your kid exposed to chicken pox to protect them from small pox… Fuck that shit, glad my daughter was able to get the chicken pox vaccine.
Yeah so? According to the Dr he would have to have come in contact with the actual shingles sore to pick it up that way and we weren’t handing him over to any plague ridden strangers
I was just saying that getting infected by one means you can eventually develop the other . It really sucks that your kid got an entirely preventable disease because of shitty people. I hope you never have to deal with shingles. I got it as a young teen and it was truly awful.
That’s awesome!
“Wait, maybe the leopards will eat my kids’ faces!”
