In an ideal world, government officials would have common sense and acknowledge some basic truths, including the idea that vaccines are good for children.

We don’t live in that world.

Instead, we live in a world where Texas State Rep. Jonathan Stickland (a man with zero medical qualifications, I might add) confronts vaccine advocate Dr. Peter Hotez to tell him that vaccines are “sorcery” and that he shouldn’t tell parents what to do with his “self enriching ‘science'” (Stickland literally put “science” in quotation marks).

Make the case for your sorcery to consumers on your own dime. Like every other business. Quit using the heavy hand of government to make your business profitable through mandates and immunity. It’s disgusting. — Jonathan Stickland (@RepStickland) May 7, 2019

When Hotez replied that he doesn’t take a dime from the vaccine industry and that as a Texas pediatrician-scientist who develops neglected disease vaccines for the world’s poorest people, it is “most certainly my business,” Stickland dug in even deeper. “Make the case for your sorcery to consumers on your own dime,” tweeted Stickland. “Like every other business. Quit using the heavy hand of government to make your business profitable through mandates and immunity. It’s disgusting.” … Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine professor of infectious disease, bowed out at that point. But Stickland continued the onslaught with others happy to engage the fight. In a span of an hour, he tweeted that vaccines are “dangerous,” that a doctor concerned about the child’s vulnerability to disease is a “brainwashed commie” and that a defender of science is a “typical leftist trying to take credit for something only The Lord God Almighty is in control of.”

Take a wild guess which party Stickland belongs to.

(Yes. That one.)

It’s hardly a coincidence that, once vaccines became normalized, measles all but disappeared. Now that people have decided to get their medical advice from Facebook and snake oil salesmen and ignorant celebrities, measles outbreaks are popping up all over the country. Imagine that. Stickland’s frustration began with a news story about the increase in vaccine exemptions in Texas for reasons of personal conscience.

If Hotez had kept tweeting, though, he could’ve made this abundantly clear: A parent’s right to forgo vaccines for his child doesn’t override another parent’s right to keep her medically vulnerable children safe. If only lawmakers knew this as well as doctors.

(Screenshot via YouTube)

