Using your religion to not get vaccines? What?!. h/t: @theeternal
Brooklyn, New York is suffering a large outbreak of mumps right now. There have been 600 cases either confirmed or suspected in the past few months. Compare that to the fewer than 300 cases total on average in the entire United States over the course of a whole year and you’ll see that this is clearly a major outbreak.
Interestingly, the population affected is overwhelmingly comprised of orthodox Jews. That surprised me; I didn’t know of any prohibitions against vaccinations in Jewish culture, and after some research have determined that there is none — in fact, vaccinations appear to be taken very seriously in Jewish teachings, and there have been times that rabbis have allowed people to get vaccinated even on the Sabbath! However, the report linked above indicates vaccination rates in that area of NYC are lower than the national average, about 80%. It’s not clear why.
[UPDATE: I have been informed of an article online that indicates that many of the parents did not vaccinate their children...
...because of their religious beliefs. But local religious leaders said there is nothing in Jewish law that prohibits vaccination. "That's ridiculous," said Rabbi David Eidensohn, a frequent Orthodox Jewish commentator on family issues. "Any parent who doesn't get their child vaccinated is being foolish and endangering the entire community."
Swell.]
This is doubly offensive to me - not only is it people using their religious beliefs to somehow excuse not preventing their children from getting easily-preventable diseases, but it's also misapplication of their own religious beliefs! I DON'T GET IT! I also somehow fail to understand why a loving god would tell you to not keep your children healthy? Even when I was religious, it never made sense.
It's not that I don't think religion has value, or that I think that all religious people are stupid - I do not at all. It's when religion makes people act intolerant and idiotic for otherwise idiotic reasons. It's times like this when people need to ask themselves, "Wait, why am I doing this exactly? How does this make sense?" There's nothing wrong with questioning your beliefs, if you find a good answer to it. Beliefs are much better when they are rationally held - we may disagree on the rationality, but if you can honestly believe what you believe, then I respect that and don't want to do anything to stop that - unless it's something truly intolerant or dangerous.
THIS falls under dangerous. And I can not respect, nor do I want to tolerate that.
