“Vaccines lead to shark attacks.” I said it, it must be true.

“Vaccines lead to shark attacks.” I said it, it must be true. Scientists and the government say it is not true, therefore it must be true.

The anti-vaccine crowd are killing and maiming other people’s helpless children who can’t get the measles vaccine because of *real* medical conditions. They are also victimizing their own defenseless children as surely as anyone who beats their kids with switch. The notion that vaccines cause autism has no scientific foundation. It makes as much sense as the fear that vaccines lead to shark attacks. I worry that our habit of tolerating people’s sincerely held, but utterly fantastical, religious beliefs has made us defenseless as a society to this secular lunacy. We have slipped from the admirable stance that everyone is entitled to their own opinion to a popular culture where people think they are entitled to their own facts.

We have no herd immunity to bullshit, and now in California we have no herd immunity to Measles. A disease we thought we had defeated for good in 2000, or so we thought.