Sign promoting the pneumonia vaccine Prevenar13 in Spanish on the side of the Hospital Metropolitano. Signs all over the hospital talk about being fully vaccinated right now.

For the last four days I’ve been hanging out in my husband’s hospital room in San Jose, at the Hospital Metropolitano. The same place I was taken after my stroke. My husband Jim fell off a short step ladder on Thursday at noon, and that small fall was enough to break his shoulder in two places. One chartered plane ride to San Jose later and surgery to fix it.

He is fine. We are home and he is recovering well now. But during his time in the hospital the photo above was what the view from his room looked like. An ad for the pneumonia vaccine Prevenar13. It was a good reminder for me, and I dutifully trooped downstairs to the clinic while Jim was in surgery to get my Prevenar13 and the latest flu shot.

The hospital was filled with posters reminding people to get flu shots, measles shots and every other vaccination you could think of. I’ve written before of the strict vaccinations laws here in Costa Rica. I get my shots, not because of any law, but for a two fold purpose. First, I do not wish to be the route of transmission for anyone else. Secondly, I have a type of mast cell disorder that drives my asthma and plays havoc with my immune system. I wish to stay as well as possible. Yep, I’ve had 3 different vaccines in less than a month. I will do what I will do to stay healthy.

We fly home late yesterday and lo and behold what is Lori Alexander writing about? Vaccinations. Lori posted a anti vax meme with not much of a basis in real science or facts, and became upset when people called her on the source of her information. She labeled her piece “The Hysteria Over Measles”. There’s really no excuse for this. Lori is nearly the same age as I, clearly old enough to remember before that vaccine was available, when measles was feared and treated seriously. I am betting she is vaccinated and so are her children. It’s only in old age she’s developed all these toxic ideas over food, vaccines, women’s roles, sex, and what have you.

This part of her rant made me laugh:

I encourage you to do your own research. (You may have to use Yahoo or some other search engine to find articles about this topic.) As believers in Jesus Christ, this issue ought not to divide us. We should be able to discuss it in a kindly manner; for they will know us by our love. There does seem to be something extremely dark and foreboding when big corporations and social media platforms are shutting down any discussion against vaccinations and mayors are insisting that their citizens be vaccinated against their will. Just how powerful is the pharmaceutical industry?

Do your own research? Yes, I agree with that. But when you’re a Googling make sure that the sources are from legitimate science-based agencies, not fear-mongering nothing to back them up pseudo science like Lori used in her meme. There’s a big deal of difference between actress Jenny McCarthy and the National Institute of Health.

Dear Lori, it’s not the “Big Pharma” like you keep fear-mongering so hard about. It’s about herd immunity, it’s about having love and care for your neighbors. It’s about not wanting to infect someone else. I think Jesus would probably approve of vaccinations are common sense because he did say we are to love our neighbors. Part of loving our neighbors as ourselves is protecting them from communicable diseases. Why else would quarantines be a thing?

At least this isn’t as nauseating as Ken’s screed this morning about teaching women to be submissive from the pulpit. As ever Ken’s writing is verbose and largely uninteresting, but he apparently must have the last word on every subject.

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