A Tale of Two Americas
By Kim Stagliano
It was the best of times. It was the weirdest of times. Written with apologies to Mr. Dickens at a time when I feel a great kinship with Madame Defarge, the character from A Tale of Two Cities who knitted names of her oppressors into her handwork during the French revolution.
ATOTC is my favorite Dickens novel. Who doesn’t swoon a bit when Sydney Carton says, “"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known," as he sacrifices himself for his love, Lucy?
This weekend I was in South Texas - McAllen to be exact - for the first (and I sure hope the first of many) S. Texas Special Needs Conference. I had the honor of being keynote speaker. The audience was primarily first generation Mexican, McAllen is mere miles from the border. The Moms are getting younger by the minute or maybe I’m just getting older. I’m pretty sure that’s the case. But no matter where I travel or who I meet, our stories are woven together like Madame Defarge’s knitting. We knit one and pearl two as mothers sharing the intense emotions of having children with special needs, especially autism. Our language does not matter. All differences fall away like a head from the guillotine.
Here at AofA we've been taking note of a scary movement in our nation. It seems to me that in a time when the rights of all Americans are at the forefront - one group is being thrown to the wolves.
MY GROUP.
For those us who advocate for the right to say NO to vaccination or to say, "I'll decide when and how much" we are being cast back to some very dark times.
Yesterday, Cathy Jameson wrote about comments from Google that went something like this:
The Unvaccinated should be corralled into their own society. With the hopes that child protective services would soon pay a visit. And maybe the sheriff, too. To take unvaccinated children away and to arrest The Unvaccinated’s uneducated parents who willingly choose to expose the public to disease. Because it’s unfair for vaccinated people to be subjected to The Unvaccinated, that’s why!
Wow, take healthy children away from their parents.
Segregation. Corralling. How about just tossing us into railroad cars and calling us the VAX/CSX crowd?
America is not a nation that takes its freedom lightly. The current tone and tenor toward vaccination and medical rights is becoming severe and old fashioned. It smacks of Jim Crow laws.
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965.
Sanctioned segregation.
It feels like the same argument used by anti-abortion advocates, "punish the doctors!" Just ask our friend Dr. Sears. Except today it's the the very same people who have fought for so many civil liberties and rights who are leading the charge against vaccination rights. Can I have a WTF?
The language we are seeing is frightening. People think "Build the wall" is bad? (So do I, to be on record.) How is "Keep the unvaccinated but healthy out of school and segregate them" any better? Take a look at the mumps outbreak in Arkansas. Zero cases among the unvaccinated (those with exemptions.)
Vaccine profiling is what's happening.
Demonize those who are not 100% vaccinated per the pharma-driven CDC schedule. Harangue the parents of the children. Threaten loss of career for the doctors who thoughtfully write exemptions. None of this is remotely American. Or French, for that matter. Or Earthling.This reminds me of another favorite story. The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson. This is a short story that was scandalous when published in The New Yorker in 1948. It's the story of herd mentality gone very wrong. About how blind acceptance of how things have always been done, even when they are deadly is anathema to us. Or should be. Here's a plot summary if you're unfamiliar with the story.
Details of contemporary small-town American life are embroidered upon a description of an annual
The lottery preparations start the night before with Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves making the paper slips and the list of all the families. Once the slips are finished, they are put into a black box, which is stored overnight in a safe at the coal company. The story briefly mentions how the ballot box has been stored other years in various places in the town.
On the morning of the lottery, the townspeople start close to 10 a.m. in order to have everything done in time for lunch. First, the heads of the households draw slips until every head of the household has a slip (for the first round, the men have to be over sixteen years of age). Bill Hutchinson gets the one slip with a black spot, meaning that his family has been chosen. The second round is for the individual family members to draw, no matter their age. Bill's wife Tessie gets the marked slip. After the drawing is over and Tessie is picked, the slips are allowed to fly off into the wind. In keeping with tradition, each villager obtains a stone and begins to surround Tessie. The story ends as Tessie is stoned to death while she bemoans the unfairness of the situation.
Tessie's friends and neighbors stone her to death because that's how the lottery works.
It was the best of times. It is a frightening time. 2016.
Kim Stagliano is Managing Editor for Age of Autism.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2016/09/vaccination-segregation.html
Thank you, Kim. You've written the truth -- I guess we, who have been researching, and studying, and looking into this whole vaccine thing for a LONG TIME now -- well, we , I guess are considered so tin foil hat "out there" that perhaps we should be confined to a separate basket: the unmentionable deplorables. Our rights as a free people, our constitution itself, are in terrible danger these days. The problem is that once someone has put in 10 or 15 years studying an issue, and coming to the conclusion that there has been not just unfairness, not just sketchy science, but actual corruption and malfeasance in high government places in one area (vaccines and autism) it is not as hard to look at other areas of what's happening and see the lying, the propaganda, and the corruption -- a lot faster.
Posted by: Denise Anderstrom Douglass | September 20, 2016 at 10:14 PM
Pam I think you just summed up the reality of the way it works. Very sad but I believe people are waking up.
Posted by: Reader | September 20, 2016 at 11:37 AM
Pam;
I know I have whined about this excessively over the last few months. But, I am going to whine some more.
I took my 30 year old son in for his yearly appointment with his neurologist to get his prescription for epilepsy renewed. He has not had one in 10 years.
The doctor said an over night EEG was needed.
I asked him, I asked his nurse, I recalled his nurse, I called the hospital, I delayed the test several times. It took me five whole months to get the price and during that time I was manipulated with false promises. Promises like: Once you make this appointment we will call you in a week and tell you the price, We will tell you a week before the procedure, we will tell you as soon as we get your insurance back, we will tell you - you will let you know.
Meanwhile My insurance Anthem, Blueshield and BlueCross says that on their website www.anthem.com for me to go there and find the estimated price. You have to register there - so get out your insurance card; type in the number, password - no numbers in the first part of that - user name - no numbers or this or that - get through all of that - and nope something is wrong. After fooling with that for several days , I went to the expert in computers - my husband and he informs me that the site is down. It is then down for a week and still down when I tried it 10 months later.
But I finally get some one from St Joseph hospital that says it is 300 or 400 dollars for us to use the room for an over night EEG. Oh silly me for believing that. But 300 for the computerized EEG machine from the medical equipment place, 400 or 500 hundred for the hospital room and 200 for the doctor -- we are talking around 1000 dollars.
Oh there is a site on the internet; cost estimates on medical procedures or something like that . It says if you are uninsured - in one place - it is just 200 dollars. But most cost around 700, and other places it can go up to 2000, and in other places they will cost 3,000 but other places could be higher.
So Kentucky being hardly the economical hot spot of the world - 1000 dollars was probably going to be my price.
In comes the bill 10,000 dollars followed by my insurance company - that says it was 10,000 dollars but with my discount and them negotiating they got it down to 5,000. My deductible by the way-- I pay that in before they kick in.
So another five months went by - of me calling and writing and on and on - until for an itemized bill.
So at the end of August the itemized bill arrived. It seems that the 10,000 was for two days - and we were only there for 24 hours. So my discount was from a whole day we were not even there - not present.
In addition - that computerized video EEG that I rented for 300 dollars from the medical equipment place - the hospital charged additionally almost 3000 for.
I will have to look at the bill to see.
I was charged for seizure medicine 500mg -- we brought our own -- which is 750 mg.
I was charged for the room 2,100 dollars. This is a non profit hospital , LOL. In the same city- another hospital, a FOR Profit hospital charges 1,700 dollars 400 dollars less.
Now you tell me if there is not a bunch of kick backs going on.
I go nothing out of the EEG - and my doctor acted sneaky, nervous, guilty = that I was there . I think he was pressured into getting a patient in - and I just happened along.
My insurance I am sure is going to get a kick back from the hospital - that has to be the way they are working --- they are working together.
Posted by: Benedetta | September 20, 2016 at 10:02 AM
Times is hard,is it to be the old dog for the hard road and the pups for the pavement all over again.
Aye Kim,yes indeed all good stuff.
I remember,Iremember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
came peeping in at morn. Thomas Hood 1799- 1845
A conscientious ,compassionate ,observer
In the field there was a coo it's no there noo it must've shifted William Mcgonagall 1825-1902
funny as anything.
Cina's gone for a wander ,she's in calf, and here it comes with the latest roundup of inocculations on the mandatory schedule.
Posted by: Morag MacDonald Lyons | September 20, 2016 at 05:08 AM
So I went to CVS today to pick up some medication. I was reminded while I'm there, that since I have Aetna as my insurance, my flu vaccine, and the flu vaccine for anyone in my family over the age of 9, is free, (why 9, I wonder...)
So here is my question. IF insurance companies make every decision based on actuarial tables of what their profits will be in the long run, AND IF, they always choose the option that will make them the most money over time...
WHY WOULD THEY OFFER MY FAMILY FREE FLU SHOTS UNLESS IT WAS GOING TO HELP THEM IN THE LONG RUN?
The simple answer would be that 'if we're healthier, then we will make fewer claims'. HOWEVER, another answer could be that they do not operate independently from the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors offices. They scratch each others backs. When we're sick, they all make money.
If that's true, then they are collaborating to make us ill, provide us poor healthcare that only treats symptoms with drugs, and make drugs that only create more symptoms.
These aren't independent, bad actors. This is a conspiracy with deep roots and far reaching tentacles. Their weakness lies in the fact that they believe themselves to be untouchable.
Posted by: Pam | September 19, 2016 at 11:51 PM
Posted by: Narad | September 19, 2016 at 09:23 PM
Simple Simon Says , brings home the Pharma looking glass world, where were expecting health and our babies receive ill.
Simple Simon poem
Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair;
Said Simple Simon to the pieman "Let me taste your ware"
Said the pieman to Simple Simon "Show me first your penny"
Said Simple Simon to the pieman "Sir, I have not any!"
Simple Simon went a-fishing for to catch a whale;
All the water he had got was in his mother's pail.
Simple Simon went to look if plums grew on a thistle;
He pricked his fingers very much which made poor Simon whistle.
He went for water in a sieve but soon it all fell through;
And now poor Simple Simon bids you all "Adieu"
Never mind "Adieu" as always from me.
MMR RIP
Posted by: angus files | September 19, 2016 at 04:12 PM
This is horrible, so don't activate the link if you are liable to find this factual description of a black mother and son getting lynched too upsetting. What I found particularly shocking were the close up photos of the onlookers, including children, gathered to watch this atrocity. Apparently this was considered entertainment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Laura_and_L._D._Nelson
Extract:-
"Sightseers gathered on the bridge in the morning. George Henry Farnum, the owner of Okemah's only photography studio, took photographs, which were distributed as postcards, a common practice at the time."
Posted by: Jenny Allan | September 19, 2016 at 03:49 PM
No, I'm saying threatening the living of doctors who provide a medical procedure OR a vaccine exemption are two sides of the same coin. The anti-abortion and pro-vaccine groups are quite similar in their vociferous approaches to limiting choice.
Posted by: StagMom | September 19, 2016 at 02:31 PM
Very insightful piece, Kim. We do live in an age where we’ve convinced ourselves that our health (especially our children’s health) depends on being up-to-date on our vaccines. Infectious diseases, not chronic health conditions, are the true enemy that can be prevented, if only everyone will get onboard and vax, vax, vax.
This is the mindset of Americans. Vaccines can do no wrong. These miraculous vials turn our kids’ bodies into fortresses against disease.
Most parents have no clue what’s in a vaccine, the sloppy oversight they’re given, or the protection doctors and manufacturers enjoy. And they’re sure not aware of what can happen when vaccination goes wrong.
The deep dark secret that vaccines come with risks is something carefully hidden from public view. Parents happily bringing in their children for the pharm-friendly vaccine schedule blindly trust that there is no chance that something bad can happen. All the experts with PhDs and MDs after their names from big name institutes must know what they’re talking about. The media gives us a steady diet of them.
Until people understand that vaccines can be like Vioxx for some kids, the parents opting out will continue to be demonized as selfish and wrong.
NO ONE ASKS QUESTIONS TO CHALLENGE THE CURRENT MINDSET. No mainstream news story ever asks if vaccines carry any real threat to children’s health. The countless thousands of parents of vaccine-injured children (and I’m not just talking about autism) are an ostracized group quietly living with pharm’s mistakes. Their situations can’t be talked about; parents might stop vaccinating. It’s all for the greater good.
This might work if serious reactions were really one in a million, but that’s not what’s happening. Our schools are filled with the chronically ill and learning disabled. They are the most vaccinated individuals in human history, but they’re also the sickest.
We now expect our children not to be healthy, not because of contagious diseases, but with allergies, asthma, learning problems, bowel disease, diabetes, arthritis, and more.
Until the truth that vaccines are not some panacea that can do no wrong is understood, the nightmare will continue. I have a feeling it will all change when the cost of all these sick kids reaches a breaking point. What nation can prosper if more and more of its citizens aren’t healthy? Right now doctors and drug companies are making lots of money because of what’s happening to our children. (And I speak from experience after countless trips to the doctor for ear and upper respiratory infections.)
If half of our children today have at least one chronic health issue, something is very wrong. Try putting together an army with this group. Troops would have to march with inhalers, epi pens, special diets, insulin, behavior meds, and allergy pills.
What kind of workforce will this make? They’ll have to have lots of sick days.
How high will they score on ACT tests? Who will be making the great scientific discoveries and advancements when more and more of our kids have to have an IEP and a modified curriculum just to get through high school?
It’s a scary world out there. And as I say often enough, no foreign enemy has ever done to us what we’re doing to ourselves.
Posted by: Anne McElroy Dachel | September 19, 2016 at 01:59 PM
Medical treatment without consent is against the Geneva Convention, so the first question to ask the pro-vaxx lobby is whether or not they support the Convention. That should put some of them in a tizzy, especially if you ask them what else they want to enforce. The US also has a long history of unsavory medical experiments. Those institutionalized were often primary targets. The autism crisis is just more people with better ways to hide the carnage, but sooner or later truth does come out.
Posted by: Margaret | September 19, 2016 at 01:44 PM
The message I hope young parents today -- those who are grappling with the choice of whether or not to vaccinate their infants/children -- realize is that choosing to fully or even partially vaccinate your child will NOT protect them from future segregation. Honestly, I am hard-pressed to come up with a group of Americans who are more prone to segregation than our current vaccine-injured children.
Separate schools? Check.
Separate transportation to those schools? Check.
Forbidden to attend peer activities such as sports, camp or other social programs? Check.
Being turned away from medical practices? Check.
Unable to seek and work at a regular job? Check.
Unable to live independently within typical housing/community? Check.
The list could go on and on. I am too tired and depressed to even continue it, but one thing I know for sure: I would so much rather have an unvaccinated, neurologically intact child who might be subject to segregation than to have a profoundly impaired, brain-damaged, nonverbal child who is most definitely subject to lifelong segregation. Because at least with a neurologically healthy child, you could explain - and he would understand! - that those doing the segregating are ignorant, mean, and just plain wrong. But how on earth do you explain to your autistic child that they are - and will most likely always be - excluded from normal, everyday places and activities because of the neurological damage they received as a direct result of your decision to have them partially or fully vaccinated.
"...should be corralled into their own society"? Hell, we have been for decades now.
Posted by: Catch-22 | September 19, 2016 at 12:36 PM
On the Anne Frank Memorial in the city that (Boise) I live there are many moving quotes carved into a stone wall. Among the inspirations from the likes of Gandhi, Robert F Kennedy, Dr King, Eleanor Roosevelt is this selection from Mrs Daisy Gabriella:
"I have been boycotted, followed to my house by a mob of mothers who used obscene language with threats of beating if I did not take my child out of school. Let it be said that I feel nothing but compassion toward these women who in fear and hatred forget so easily what America stands for: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action. It is these qualities, divine in essence, that are the core of civilization. Tyranny and suppression can only thwart their own purposes in the end. For the sake of out beloved children, may every American mother remember in time. "
Posted by: annie | September 19, 2016 at 12:10 PM
Benedetta,
Your comment: The older you get - the more madder you get, about vaccine injuries. Struck a note.
I have been waiting for the sleeping giant to awake and lend their hearts and minds to this cause:
The 70 million strong BABY BOOMER GENERATION. They are the first generation to remember growing up at a time when America was at its greatest and when they were young, they thought they could change the world and they did! They can do it again now.
They are the generation of grandmothers and grandfathers that are seeing the struggle of their children and grandchildren concerning this insane vaccine schedule and the poison pushers that promote it. They are seeing their friends succumb to Alzheimer's from aluminum laden vaccines and other illnesses after having a flu shot. They are seeing their sons and daughters who were in the Military dealing with gulf war syndrome and various other aliments due to vaccines and chemicals.
They are the generation that had measles, mumps and chicken pox and are wondering why that is being made into such an issue when one in six school age children are having very serious health problems that are not even being addressed.
They are the generation that is the most healthy, most educated, most experienced, and has more money and collective power then any other over 60 age group that ever lived on the face of this earth.
I have been waiting for the sleeping giant to awake.
Posted by: Autism Mom | September 19, 2016 at 11:37 AM
That's awful Bill. I guess Shirley Jackson's story was designed to show how easily ordinary people (with ordinary names) could be made to behave horrifically. It is of course also just like the Milgram experiment.
Another story which came to mind reproduced in the first edition of Vaccine Epidemic was Ursula LeGuin's 'The ones who walk away from Omelas'. What is going on is of course a blueprint for how not to conduct human affairs. According to Wiki Le Guin cited as inspiration a comment of William James:
"Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a sceptical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?"
Of course, we have got well beyond a single lost soul but such a bargain was always the premise of a vaccine program: it might happen to somebody but it was not going to be you or your child (until it was). You could get round this by the proposition that the threat to individual was always less from the vaccine than from the disease.
Medicine was never run like this before, even in eras when the threat from infectious disease was much greater. There is, and this is basic, no proportion.
Posted by: John Stone | September 19, 2016 at 11:16 AM
Are You saying abortion is a good thing?
Posted by: Sun~Rose | September 19, 2016 at 10:51 AM
Regarding Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" - they showed us the short film version in Middle School.
The victim is Bill Hutchinson's wife, "Tessie". "Bill Hutchinson" really is my Dad's name. Seeing my Mother selected for being murdered, twisted my young head around, and traumatized me. I understood that we were supposed to get some kind of lesson from the movie, but I was too scared and shocked and hurt to understand. I think Shirley Jackson, or her estate, owes me compensation....
Their is a SICKNESS in society, which medicine refuses to acknowledge, despite all the chatter around so-called "mental health issues".....
Posted by: Bill | September 19, 2016 at 10:28 AM
Kim;
The older you get - the more madder you get, about vaccine injuries. .
I have watched "Vaxxed" twice now. "The older they get the further that dream of a happy man with a family of his own gets".
I have tried to imagine if those responsible where all in one room what I would do. My imagination just never has been able to get very far at all. To get justice I feel like I would have to kill them, bring them back to life and kill them again and that still would not be enough. I can not imagine that I could hurt them as bad as they have hurt me or my family. As time passes, and the older I get - I cannot imagine a way of hurting them as LONG, LONG, LONG as they have hurt my family and me. I don't want a guillotine quick death. I want some thing longer and that would be prison.
So, I have decided that a long prison sentence is a really good idea for them. I pray each night for a large group of these guys to end up in prison.
I think it is too late for Dr. James Cherry and a whole bunch of others - after all they were old even back in 1980s and that lead to the culture that exist today in the CDC and the world.
I guess we will just have to let God deal with them after death. I am sure he will.
Meanwhile - physical activity of hitting a punching bags is a stage of grief. I went through that stage when my sister was killed in a boating accident in Sept of 1976. It is a very long stage of grief that also has gone on with me for years, and I still have a touch of it.
I think that I have put both of my sources of grief together in one basket, now. Looking back I see that my sister born in 1948 had symptoms of vaccine injuries as well as her three friends she use to run around with in highschool and college, and even her husband had asthma! So, what medical researcher got "bought" back in the 40s and for how much. Did Harvard researchers get 6,000 dollars like they did in the 60s to protect sugar?
Yeah, God will have to take care of most of this.
. .
Posted by: Benedetta | September 19, 2016 at 10:11 AM
Hit 'em with the Hein!
Posted by: Heidi Roger | September 19, 2016 at 10:06 AM
Kim: The numbers from Arkansas clearly show that having a higher exemption rate is protective against mumps outbreaks in schools. The chart I made in pages didn't paste, so here are the numbers:
Springdale: % exempt 0.009; % of schools with cases: 0.0009
Rogers: % exempt 0.017; % of schools with cases: 0.0003
Huntsville % exempt 0.02; % of schools with cases: 0.0004
The district with the lowest exemption rate (Springdale) has the highest percent of affected schools. The two districts with double this exemption rate had a much lower percent of affected schools. In the case of Huntsville, it is too small to have much usefulness in comparison, but there it is. Would've been better to see the actual number of cases per district. These exemption rates appear at first glance to be very low.
Posted by: Gary Ogden | September 19, 2016 at 08:56 AM