Mom Unapologetically Revokes Birthday Invite To Unvaccinated Kid
This mom wasn’t being mean when she barred an unvaccinated child from her daughter’s party, she was protecting a kid’s life
When a Redditor asked a forum of medical professionals to share their worst experience with anti-vaxxers, a physician’s assistant powerfully and clearly explained how unvaccinated people hurt herd immunity and put the lives of other kids into danger –and her response went viral.
The mom of a seven-year-old girl wrote about how she uninvited a little girl from her daughter’s birthday party after she found out she wasn’t vaccinated. The parent was being far from petty — her daughter’s best friend is in remission after having leukemia and is immunocompromised, which means she can’t receive vaccines.
She went on to explain her decision: “I uninvited the dance kid and very nicely explained the situation. Her mother loses her shit and tries to get us kicked out of the dance school they attend. The dance school owner is an older lady and had no idea there were idiots these days that didn’t vax so she implemented a new rule that students had to be up to date and the unvaxxed kid had to find a new dance school. I felt bad for the kid but her mother is a sociopath. Herd immunity saves lives when it comes to kids fighting cancer.”
Herd immunity, also known as community immunity, refers to the concept that when you get vaccines, you aren’t just protecting yourself from dangerous diseases, you’re also protecting the medically weakest members of the community as a whole: infants and kids, the elderly, the sick, and those who might be allergic to components of the shots. In other words, when a parent doesn’t get their kids vaccinated, it’s not just a choice that affects their family, it affects everyone.
Most everyone on the thread backed up the mom’s decision to bar the girl from the birthday party to protect a cancer survivor with immunity issues. And many added other important points related to vaccines, disease, and herd immunity.
Another responder explained the specific importance of pregnant women getting vaccinated for whooping cough — a disease that all but disappeared until the anti-vax trend appeared.
Another poster stressed that those with severe egg allergies rely on the bulk of the population to get vaccinated.
And this person brilliantly explained what it means to be immunocompromised — and why it’s so crucial that those who are able to be vaccinated do so.
Finally, this dad summed up why not vaccinating your kid is everyone’s business, not just your own: because it affects others in the community — including that kid in your child’s dance class.
It can be hard for some to remember or understand what the world was like before we had vaccines, such as when you could just die from the measles. But now that outbreaks are happening again, it’s more important than ever that we make sure that we stay up-to-date on our shots, and that our kids get them, too. A few schools are requiring them now for anyone without a medical reason, and this mom’s post helps us understand why that’s the reasonable thing to do: so that kids who can’t protect themselves are protected by their classmates.
