Wingnut KY Gov. Matt Belvin Says He Exposed His 9 Kids To Chickenpox Instead Of Vaccinating Them

[TheBlackAdder]

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Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) intentionally exposed his nine children to chickenpox instead of vaccinating them against the disease, he said in a radio interview on Tuesday.

“Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox,” Bevin told WKCT, a Bowling Green talk radio station, according to The Louisville Courier-Journal. “They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children. They were miserable for a few days, and they all turned out fine.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly warns against exposing children to chickenpox as a way of immunizing them.
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Some parents have also abstained from immunizing their children against measles based on the conspiracy theory that the MMR vaccine has been linked to autism. (That theory stems from a debunked 1998 study based on just 12 patients and conducted by a doctor later found to have falsified data. It has exhaustively been proven false.)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kentucky-governor-matt-bevin-chickenpox_n_5c92861be4b08c4fec33a18f


"Hi Kids, As my gift to you when I'm gone, shingles in 30 years! Why, because 'Merica!"


Because some people are just fucking stoopid!

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[50 Shades Of Blue]

1. That is child abuse.

[d_r]

35. back in the day

that was arguably a good thing to do, because it is much easier to get through chicken pox as a child than as an adult. So if you got them when you were a child you wouldn't have them as an adult (but yes, you could get shingles from the virus later in life). With the vaccine that is just stupid to do.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

40. Back in the day you could beat the shit out of your kids and get away with it too.

Deliberately exposing your own children to a misery-causing virus instead of preventing it with an easily obtained vaccination, a virus that can lead to shingles for them down the road, merely to make a political point, is such an evil, obsessive act that I can't even wrap my mind around it. I mean, chicken pox can kill. I hope this monster's children shun him as soon as they can.

[d_r]

41. Yeah you could get away with it

but that doesn't mean it was the most sensible thing to do. Before the vaccines, exposing children to chicken pox was the most sensible thing to do it. As I said, it is just stupid now that we have the vaccine.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

44. I don't see what difference it makes that exposing children to chicken pox once made sense, when

it no longer does, and I don't see how that is even relevant. A vaccination exists now, and this asshole deliberately chose not to use it. He deliberately exposed his kids to a nasty virus not for their welfare but to make a fucking political point. He deliberately chose to put harmful politics above his children's well-being. That's horrifying.

[d_r]

65. It's Just talking

Not trying to make a difference

[The Genealogist]

52. My father did this with me

My half sister had chicken pox when she was a baby, and told me I'd had it instead of keeping me away from her. I was in 8th grade. I can hardly wait for shingles now.

[ck4829]

69. Yep

[Mme. Defarge]

2. Great!

Now they can all look forward to getting shingles which comes with debilitating, excruciating pain, and perhaps looking like a World War III survivor. If it attacks the ophthalmic nerve, as in my case (in my ‘30’s), there’s the chance of losing vision in the compromised eye, or if you’re lucky like Moi, only corneal scarring.

[Bayard]

3. 9 kids?

First time I've heard that. And all with chickenpox at once. What a good time for his poor wife, no doubt.

[pstokely]

13. did they have a chickenpox party?

like that South Park episode, but that was from 1998

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/150646/sleepover-at-kennys

[TheBlackAdder]

20. No doubt, he's working late hours.

[IluvPitties]

4. Sick bastard.

[ck4829]

72. +1

[radical noodle]

5. I was born before 1950

and my mom was a nurse. There were no vaccinations for childhood diseases then (I was much older when there was finally a polio vaccine) and my mother always took me around kids who had childhood diseases so I'd get them when I was young. It's so much worse if one has them as an adult. I had them all, both types of measles, mumps, and chickenpox. My mother would have sold her soul to be able to get me immunized if it had been available.

I just don't understand how anyone can take such risks with their children.

[marybourg]

7. Yup. I sent my you g daughter to sleep

with her teen-aged babysitter who had c.p. That’s how we “vaccinated “ in those days.

[radical noodle]

8. German measles

were known, even then, to cause birth defects in babies whose mothers had the disease while pregnant. There are so many reasons to vaccinate children. My mother-in-law's little sister died from measles (although I don't know which kind).

[marybourg]

12. I had measles at 2 weeks. I

apparently caught it in the hospital nursery ( they kept mother and baby for 10 days then). I was not expected to live. It was a terrible scourge. How any sane person could deprive a child of vaccination is beyond me.

[csziggy]

33. My Mom was also a nurse

I was born in 1952, my sisters in '46, '48, and '57. We all had measles (maybe both kinds), I had chicken pox and whooping cough as an infant. In the late '50s and early '60s Mom went back to work and became head nurse in the pediatric ward. The nurses were given vaccines to take home and vaccinate their kids, though I also remember getting the polio vaccine in school and going to the health department to get others.

A boy down the street was mentally challenged due to damage to his heart while in utero because his mother got measles. Another boy had lasting effects after getting measles as a teen. The girl who was valedictorian of my graduating class missed the first four grades and had to wear braces on her legs into adulthood due to contracting polio as a child.

As kids we were all happy to get vaccinated - it meant fewer illnesses and less chance of serious complications. We would have thought parents were nuts to not protect their children from the diseases we had suffered from and which effects we saw in our neighborhood.

[radical noodle]

56. I can't say I was *happy* to be vaccinated

but my mother was certainly happy when the polio vaccine came along. The other vaccines came too late for me, and chickenpox was even too late for my daughter.

We also had kids in our school who'd had polio and needed braces. I think there are still a few people in the US who are still living in the old iron lungs. The anti-vax parents should look at some Google images of the consequences of polio.

[csziggy]

57. I hated getting shots but Mom sat me down and explained WHY

She also told me I'd have to get shots for various things throughout my life and might as well get used to it. After that, I just look away, relax, and ignore the process.

I know my parents were extremely happy when the polio vaccine came out. It had gone through our neighborhood - the girl I knew lived down the street - but Mom kept us isolated as did all the parents.

With a nurse for a Mom and an engineer for my Dad, we had a lot of science education in our house, more than at school. We knew WHY vaccines were important and how they worked. That's why I simply cannot understand the anti-vaccine people. How can they be this ignorant 60 years after I knew what was going on?

[radical noodle]

58. I was needle phobic even

though I knew perfectly well why I needed to be immunized.

I wonder if these parents just have no clue how bad these diseases can be. Most have never seen them up close and personal.

[csziggy]

59. Mom talked sense to me after I locked myself in the bathroom and climbed out the window!

Since the window was about fifteen feet off the ground, I'm lucky I didn't break something on the way down. I was never really needlephobic, I just needed a good reason to let adults stick things in my arm.

I suspect many of today's parents have never seen a bad childhood illness or how it can run through a town. I fear they will learn.

[radical noodle]

60. I never went that far

You must have been a handful when you were a kid. I never had the imagination to try to escape!

[csziggy]

62. All us kids were sort of feral

We spent most summers barefoot playing in the jungle around the lake next door and staying out of the way of the alligators and water moccasins. My sisters were just as wild as I was. One time my oldest sister found a newly hatched brood of ring neck snakes and brought them home. We planned to keep them until she found out she'd have to catch crickets to feed them - this was long before you could buy live crickets at a pet store, in fact long before I'd heard of a pet store. So we let the little snakes loose back into the jungle where she'd found them.

[radical noodle]

63. It sounds like a wonderful childhood

I was a bookworm. My mother begged me to go outside and play but I usually found an excuse to stay inside and read. I think I missed a lot, but I was an only child in a rural area and outside wasn't much fun for me without at least one other kid. Also, no alligators in the midwest!

[csziggy]

64. Oh, I was a bookworm, too

But over the summer Mom threw us out of the house in the mornings and we pretty much didn't go back in except for lunch and bathroom breaks all day. I got a LOT of reading in evenings and over the winter. Mom & Dad took us to the public library every Saturday and I pretty much read everything in it by the time I got into high school - it was a small town and small library.

I lived in a nice little subdivision with a lot of Baby Boomer kids ranging from being born in 1946 through the early 60s. And most of the parents were like mine - they sent us out to play outside most of the summer. There wasn't much TV and few of the houses were air conditioned so it was actually more comfortable outside than in.

We had forts we built and Dad had built a playhouse behind our garage so those were where we spent a lot of time when we were not being little hellions running around in the jungle. The "jungle" was the overgrowth around the lake in the city park next to our house where the alligators lived. Back then the city only mowed about once a year so by the end of summer it was very overgrown.

[myohmy2]

6. they...

...used to do that when I was a kid but that was before vaccines...

...today, I would categorize this as child abuse...

"...we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. "

...now that's some serious MAGA...

...

[SoCalDem]

14. We had a "pox-party" when our son was exposed to the neighbor girl..

we thought she had mosquito bites at first...We did not want the "epidemic" to drag out kid by kid all summer long.. This was before the vaccine..and all the kids were otherwise healthy..Luckily, my son caught a light case and had a few here and there..

There were about 10 kids at the party..6 got it..4 did not

[AZ Jim]

9. I am 82

When I was a kid in Los Angeles, I got measles, chicken pox and mumps. When one kid got one of those diseases the other moms in the neighborhood exposed their kids to it to "get it over with". It was a common practice and not viewed negatively. Of course there were no preventatives in those days either. Anyhow people were tougher then.

[Mariana]

16. "Anyhow people were tougher then."

While I'm sure it makes you feel good to gratuitously put down people who are younger than you, I don't understand how you figure that "anyhow people were tougher then" in this particular context. It's not as if people weren't killed or permanently disabled by these diseases in your day. They were. Improved medical practices and treatments caused the death rates from these diseases to drop quite a bit in the 20th century before the vaccines were available, but it has never been zero.

[radical noodle]

18. I'm not sure people were actually tougher

it's possible they were just resigned to reality. For sure, people weren't as obsessed with dirt and germs as they are now... something I think is actually harmful as we do need to build up immunities.

[csziggy]

34. The people who survived were tougher

Otherwise they died or suffered horrible consequences.

[NewJeffCT]

43. considering that both men and women

live about 8 years longer, on average, than they did in 1950, I would say that people are doing okay with their toughness nowadays.

[csziggy]

46. True - tho the life expentancy back then was shortened by infant mortality and childhood illnesses

I had lots of ancestors who lived into their 80s and 90s - even a step great grandmother who lived to 106! But I also have lots of great ?x aunts and uncles who died in childhood, some so young they were never named.

The great grandmother who was supplanted by the step great grandmother died in her 40s of tuberculosis, as did two of her children. Her children who survived lived long lives, but average out their life spans and you get a much lower number of years than today's lives.

[Mariana]

54. Were they?

Whether one develops dangerous complications from a particular disease can be due to any number of factors, few of which have anything to do with how "tough" that person is.

[ck4829]

70. No they weren't. We just don't want to talk about the dead kids.

[comradebillyboy]

10. My opinion of Kentucky continues to go down.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. Bevin is running for re-election this fall

Help us get rid of him.

[maxsolomon]

23. Who's running against him?

Has a Beshear announced?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

42. yes, Andy Beshear is a Democratic candidate

Primary is May 21.

https://ballotpedia.org/Kentucky_elections,_2019

https://ballotpedia.org/Kentucky_gubernatorial_and_lieutenant_gubernatorial_election,_2019

[ck4829]

71. Good to know

[Hugin]

15. With any luck, Bevin hasn't had the mumps yet.

These are the same kind of people who were sending blankets infected with small pox to the natives 150 years ago.

I really don't understand humans anymore. They'll spend millions to get their darlings into a certain school, but, will not get them free vaccines to save their lives. What's next, TB?

:sigh: SMDH.

[SweetieD]

17. When I was a child everyone got chicken pox. It wasn't a big deal. I think

it is dangerous if you catch it as an adult. I didn't even know they had a vaccine for it until last year.

[radical noodle]

19. Chickenpox can be serious in some children

I was sick for weeks with it (I was in the third grade). I'm scared to death I'll get shingles even though I've had the shot. My daughter is not yet 50, but she's had shingles multiple times.

[kcr]

66. Yes.

My sister and I both had severe cases as children, and both of us are under 50. She's already had shingles as well. Not sure if there's a link between severity and getting shingles, but I still think can't help think it's only a matter of time for me.

[radical noodle]

67. Stress can be a big factor

but not the only one. If you see any signs that you might have it, run... don't walk... to the doctor for anti-viral meds. My daughter's doctor has her keep them at home because she gets shingles so often.

[unitedwethrive]

22. My seven year old niece died of complications from chicken pox.

It was in 1995, the same year the vaccine was released. She developed an overwhelming sepsis from a staph infection that started in one of the lesions and was resistant to antibiotics.

I few years earlier I knew a teenager who was immune suppressed due to treatment of lymphoma. He contracted chicken pox that caused lesions in his lungs and he died from respiratory failure. Even today, he would not be able to be immunized because of his immune status.

In rare cases, chicken pox can be severe or even kill.

[Mariana]

48. When my sister was a child

she had a condition that would have made chicken pox very dangerous for her. When I caught chicken pox, she was given serum, I think it was, to prevent her from getting sick. It was flown in, I remember that, and my father had to go pick it up at the airport in Boston. Much better to have vaccination.

My family always had the weirdest health stuff going on.

[procon]

39. Baby Boomers caught all the infectious childhood diseases because.

there were no vaccines. It's not just a simple childhood disease, but chicken pox goes on to affect adults, too. Besides being painful, my sister had chicken pox in her ears and her eyes that left her with permanent hearing and vision problems. As an adult, one brother still has the pox scars on his neck and he can't tolerate any necklace or shirt with a collar because his scars are still painfully sensitive to any irritation... 50 years after he had chicken pox as a child.

Before the vaccine was available, my other brother and I had chicken pox and then we suffered shingles as adults that left us scared and ultra sensitive where the blisters were. I also had the misfortune of getting a complication of shingles, postherpetic neuralgia, that affects nerve fibers and skin, causing debilitating, nonstop, burning pain that lasted for months after the rash and blisters of shingles disappeared.

Little kids don't deserve being tortured by a preventable disease, and neither should adults suffer in later life because of the bad decisions their parents make in not getting them properly vaccinated.

[BlueFlorida]

21. He also exposed them

to get shingles. The same virus causes shingles in adulthood.

[maxsolomon]

24. Shingles sufferer here.

Well, no more. I got the Vaccination as soon as I turned 55.

[BlueFlorida]

47. Good job

Always best to prevent

[maxsolomon]

49. Except i had it twice between Chicken Pox and 55.

Never again.

[BlueFlorida]

50. The vaccine against shingles

came out just 6 years ago. It is good that you got the vaccine now!

[NightWatcher]

25. When you have nine, I'm sure at least three or four will survive.

[durablend]

27. Plus his wife can pop a few more out

Since that's pretty much what she's there for...

[ck4829]

73. That's the thinking

[handmade34]

26. and these

are the people in charge and making our laws... may the gods deliver us from the evils of the likes of them soon

[Socal31]

28. Was born in mid-80s and this was common around me in 90s.

But once there is a widely available and effective vaccine.....wtf are they thinking?

[procon]

29. That's child abuse. Did he also infect them with other diseases, too?

Who the hell does that! Nazis? Mad scientists on cartoon movies? Child abuse is torture and I'm pretty sure that's a crime, so why aren't all these antivax nuts in jail?

[fescuerescue]

30. That used to be very common.

Was even considered to be good parenting.

25 years ago.

Now we have a vaccine.

[Gothmog]

31. This repug is an idiot

[ck4829]

74. He is

[Sophiegirl]

32. Question about adults getting vaccination

I never got Chicken Pox as a kid. Should I still get the vaccine?

[TheBlackAdder]

37. Adults are 25x more likely to die from chickenpox than kids. Might prevent shingles later on.

.

https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/varicella/public/index.html

http://www.nfid.org/publications/factsheets/varicellaadult.pdf

.

[Sophiegirl]

61. Yikes!

Thanks for the info.

[Zorro]

36. Wonkette has Bevin's picture at the radio interview

[edhopper]

38. Well he has 9

so if he lost one or two he would still be good with God.

[Baltimike]

45. WTF does he think a vaccine *IS*????

Holy fucking stupid.

[ck4829]

75. LOL

[TygrBright]

51. Sure, because risking encephalitis, toxic shock or bone infection is the LOVING thing to do. n/t

[struggle4progress]

53. Monitoring the Impact of Varicella Vaccination

Chickenpox used to be very common in the United States. In the early 1990s, an average of 4 million people got varicella, 10,500 to 13,000 were hospitalized (range, 8,000 to 18,000), and 100 to 150 died each year. In the 1990s, the highest rate of varicella was reported in preschool-aged children.

Chickenpox vaccine became available in the United States in 1995. In 2014, 91% of children 19 to 35 months old in the United States had received one dose of varicella vaccine, varying from 83% to 95% by state. Among adolescents 13 to 17 years of age without a prior history of disease, 95% had received 1 dose of varicella vaccine, and 81% had received 2 doses of the vaccine. Eighty-five percent of adolescents had either a history of varicella disease or received 2 doses of varicella vaccine.

Each year, more than 3.5 million cases of varicella, 9,000 hospitalizations, and 100 deaths are prevented by varicella vaccination in the United States ...

https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/surveillance/monitoring-varicella.html

[sdfernando]

55. Well, why stop there???

Shouldn't he also have exposed his children to Measles, Mumps, Polio...and whatever else. I mean following his logic that's what should have happened.

[ck4829]

68. What a loon

[beachbum bob]

76. what would happen if one of the kids either has complication from chicken pox and dies or

exposed some other kid with same result, Would Bevin be charged with 2nd degree murder?

[Opel_Justwax]

77. These occurred when I was a kid in the 70's

My mom did not participate in them, but all of us five kids did get the Chicken pox.