Stupid, stupid parents

This item from my hometown paper just infuriates me.

The school system reported 13 cases of chicken pox among students since mid-November. According to the Elkhart County Health Department, in consultation with the Indiana State Department of Health, that qualifies as an outbreak. The county health department instructed the school system that unvaccinated students may not attend school until three weeks after the last reported case.

…
Conner said he knows several parents are frustrated with the health department’s response, calling it an act of “Big Brother.”
…
Mike Boval, who said his children are not vaccinated because of religious beliefs, said he’s concerned that some students might miss so much school that they can’t proceed to the next grade. Andrea Boval said she wants her children to contract chicken pox when they’re young so they don’t get it when they’re adults. “I wanted to expose them to it the natural way,” she said.
…
Brian Stutzman, founder of Abundant Life Ministries, said he has four children in Middlebury schools, and the two youngest have chicken pox now. He said that it’s not right for governmental units to take decisions away from parents. “These decisions are highly important and do affect many lives,” he said. Link

First off, big kudos for the Health Department for doing the right thing and keeping the unvaccinated away from school. That’s the right thing to do.
 

Second, exposing your children to a potentially fatal disease that they will have to suffer through rather than giving them a perfectly safe, side-effect free vaccination which will prevent their suffering, makes you not only a very bad parent and a heartless git, but a total idiot. Chicken pox is completely avoidable. No good comes of forcing your children to suffer in this way.

What’s more, you’re not just making your own kids suffer, you’re ENDANGERING other kids at the school. There is a chance that even vaccinated kids could come down with the disease if exposed to the live virus. “These decisions are highly important and do affect many lives,” says Mike Boval. Exactly. They affect the lives of other children, not just your own. Arguably, you may have the right to risk the lives of your own children, but you don’t have the right to endanger mine.

Get over your stupid selves, get over your stupid selfish beliefs, take your head out of your butt and do the right thing. If not for your own kids, then for the other kids who do have smart parents that get them vaccinated.

Dumbasses.