Heather Christena Schmidt

Dear B(itch)Log,

I am writing to you today as just one of the 10%.  No, I’m not talking about the Wall Street protestors, I’m talking about the 10%:  the parents that choose not to vaccinate their children.

What’s that?  Huh?  Oh, that’s just my sick child.  Don’t mind her.  She has something the doctor calls roo-bell-ah, but I don’t think he really knows what he’s talking about.  It’s just a cold – she’ll be going back to school tomorrow.

Anyway, what I was starting to say is that I am the 10%.  I choose not to vaccinate my children because I know that vaccinations cause autism.  Our doctor says that the studies have proven they, in fact, do not; but this is the same guy who just said my daughter has roobawhatever.  Clearly he got his medical degree in Guatemala.

So I am writing to you today in response to a letter I was just forwarded titled Dear Ignorant Parents That Refuse To Vaccinate Your Children.  I took great offense to this letter.  Not only am I not ignorant because I do not vaccinate my child, but I am not so ignorant that I do not understand the word usages you put forward about correlation not being the same thing as causation.

What do you mean you don’t understand what I’m saying?  I’m educated !  I’ll have you know that before baby #2 popped out, I received my certificate in homemaking from the Marge Thompson School of Home Economics.  Shows what you know about the English language.

As I was saying, I know what it means to be a correlation and a causation.  And they are basically the same.  For example, it seems like every time we have a bad morning with the kids and end up running late, we miss some tragic car accident or other delay on the road.  You know they say that everything happens for a reason.  Clearly the bad morning and us missing the tragic car accident were correlated, then, which must mean that some sort of divine, subconscious premonition that if we were on time we might be involved in that accident also caused us to have a bad morning and to run late.

Therefore, vaccines cause autism.  Follow?

You know, for someone who seems to think she’s so smart and witty, you sure don’t understand much.

There are a lot of things a parent can do besides vaccinate their kids to prevent illness.  With our first child, we had a chicken pox party where we got all of our kids together with one that had come down with the illness, so all of our kids got sick and voila! our first born was immune.  And all she had to do was a week in the hospital for the unexpected pneumonia that followed.  With our second and third children, though, we are thinking about doing this new thing parents are doing, which is ordering lollipops that a sick child has licked online and when they come in the mail, our kids will lick them until they get sick themselves.  This seems like a great, new alternative to the chicken pox parties, and it can be done at our convenience.

So for all that negativity you think is so funny and witty, you should consider all the poor children out there that have suffered at the hands of vaccinations.  I understand that polio, whooping cough, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, and a lot of other diseases are resurfacing, but don’t you think that’s the price to pay?  Maybe you should think about that.

Now if you don’t mind, I have to cut this short.  My child is having some sort of convulsions – must be a little reaction to her fever of 105 degrees.  I need to make a fruit salad for tomorrow anyway.  One of the parents asked if I’d have my daughter lick all the strawberries in case she does have that rubadub diease our Guatemalan doctor claims she has, so that all of their kids can get it too.  Who knows, if it works maybe we can market our own rubadub lollipops to sell on the Internet like those chicken pox people do.

Yours truly, the 10%