Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
DC Health announced Sunday that confirmed measles-positive individuals attended the late January March for Life rally, transforming thousands of demonstrators into potential vectors for a disease that was all but eliminated two decades ago. The pro-life movement, committed to the proposition that all life is sacred, appears to have unwittingly made no exception for Morbillivirus.
The March for Measles. (White House/Wikimedia)
Potential exposure sites read like a transit planner’s nightmare: Reagan National Airport, Union Station, an Amtrak Northeast Regional train, the D.C. Metro, Catholic University, and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The Basilica, which seats 10,000, is believed to be the largest Catholic church in North America and is now doubling as an epidemiological case study in why ventilation matters.
The incident also raises some questions about what kind of message God is trying to send March for Life attendees, specifically whether God was asleep at the wheel and the whole thing is just bad luck, or God meant this to be taken as a badly-needed wake-up call for idiots confusing science with politics because they’re selfish cowards when it comes to needles.
The U.S. is experiencing its largest measles outbreak in decades. According to the CDC, 95% of those infected were either unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, a demographic Venn diagram that officials describe as “not quite a circle, but close.” Health officials also note that the correlation between vaccine refusal and measles infection has remained remarkably consistent, almost as if vaccines work.
In an interview Sunday, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator and Sometimes Television Doctor Mehmet Oz urged Americans to receive measles vaccinations. The Trump administration has rolled back immunization recommendations for several diseases but left measles guidance intact, a decision officials describe as “evidence-based” without apparent irony. Dr. Oz did not address his previous contradictory negative statements about vaccines, which are dumb and wrong.
The World Health Organization has invited the U.S. to review its measles elimination status. The Trump administration responded by pointing out that it completed its withdrawal from the WHO, leaving America’s standing as a disease-free nation to be determined by an organization it no longer recognizes. Viruses, for their part, have not withdrawn from the United States and appear to have no plans to do so.
DC Health advises anyone who may have been exposed to contact their health care provider, especially those who are unvaccinated or immunocompromised. The department declined to comment on the irony of a pro-life event spreading a disease in God’s house that killed millions of children before vaccines were available. Great job, everyone.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
