The Thamesmead Grump

We lived depravity and called it truth

(John Daniel Thieme)

On the 14 December 2014 a 20 year old man walked into the Sandy Hook primary school in Newtown Connecticut and using the gun belonging to his mother shot dead 20 children aged between six and seven plus 6 adult staff members.

For the families of these people, the nightmare was just beginning. Psychopathic lunatics, afraid that the incident might eventually provoke their government into introducing a modicum of gun control, decided that the whole incident was faked for just that purpose and started a terror campaign against those families, claiming they were all acting and that their dead children didn't exist. 

They call themselves "Truthers" and belong to the same group of lunatics that believe that climate change is  a hoax, vaccines cause autism, GMOs are dangerous, cancer can be cured by lemon juice and weed, Prince Philip is a 12 foot tall shape changing reptilian alien who drinks human blood, homoeopathy works, and that the Earth is going to be plunged into 15 days of darkness in November (again). More on this later.

We, on this side of the pond could at least comfort ourselves with the thought that we wouldn't attack grieving parents and the hospital staff looking after their child with obscene abuse and death threats but unfortunately, we would be wrong.

The parents of Charlie Gard and the medical staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital will know from bitter experience the sickening depravity of some people. Over the past few weeks, they have been bombarded with threats and abuse. Parents visiting their own sick children have had to run a gauntlet of perverts demonstrating outside the hospital.

I'm trying to imagine what goes on in the mind of someone who thinks that sending death threats to medical staff is a good idea or who posts obscene messages on Facebook about parents who are going through the nightmare of seeing their child dying. If anyone reading this has the answer, perhaps they would like to share.

ON A SIMILAR THEME.

There are many people who might otherwise seem quite normal but have been convinced by the aforementioned "Truthers" that tens of millions of doctors, nurses, health care workers, medical researchers and government agencies have all been conspiring together for the last 200 years to cover up "the truth" about vaccines. This "truth" is that vaccines are unsafe and your children would be better off risking catching easily preventable diseases rather than risk the uncertain effects of being vaccinated.

The consequences of that idiotic behaviour are now coming home to roost with a dramatic increase in the number of children dying unnecessarily from diseases that should be more or less extinct by now.

An epidemic of measles in Romania has already claimed the lives of 17 children with over 3,400 cases being reported. In the UK in a one year period up to February 2017, 575 cases of measles were reported.

There really isn't any excuse for this and there is a good argument for the authorities to step in and make vaccination compulsory as has been the case in countries like Italy which is one of the worst affected by the current measles outbreak.

"Should parents have the right to choose?", I hear you cry. No, they bloody well shouldn't. Children have the right to be protected from harm and the things that can cause them harm and if the parents are not willing to do it, then society has to. It isn't a parents right to decide whether to strap their child into a car seat. (Nearly all children diagnosed with autism have, at some time, been strapped into a child seat). So why should vaccination be any different?

Only two things are infinite, 

the universe and human stupidity,

and I'm not sure about the former.

(Albert Einstein)

It's that time of year when we have the annual "15 days of darkness in November" hoax post doing the rounds on Facebook. You would think considering the predicted 15 days of darkness never happened in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012, people would now be wise to the hoax, but no. 

Round it comes again with depressing regularity. If only reality was so reliable.

I am so looking forward to the next "type  "Amen"" to save this sick child.

A LITTLE RAY OF SUNSHINE

On a brighter note, the BBC is reporting that the little 5 year old business entrepreneur who was fined £150 by Tower Hamlets Trading Standards for selling lemonade without a permit has been flooded with offers to set up her stall at other events. 

It almost restores my faith in human kindness. Almost.