Johns Hopkins University Press

Nestled near a university student housing area was this small oasis of forested tranquility—a small private elementary school that I had decided to send my children to. It was [End Page 163] an idyllic place, which assuaged all the concerns many modern parents have; the school was focused on outdoor play and physical activity, with a ‘no homework’ policy in the early grades, all of which appealed to my parental sensibilities at the time.

Populated by students from diverse backgrounds, a grouping of parents could involve artists, blue–collars, hipsters, militant vegans, the unemployed, a university Dean or two, as well as physicians. The teachers were excellent, the environment seemed to be densely enriched, and my children enjoyed their first two months there.

Two months into school, the contentment and growth in my children assured me that I had made a very good decision. I was just allowing myself to dip my toes into a pond of self–congratulations when the first email arrived.

“We have received confirmation that 6 students in the preschool programs and 1 teacher in the school have tested positive for pertussis (also called “whooping cough”). The students have left the school and we don’t anticipate any major outbreak. All the same, please monitor yourself and your children for symptoms.”

While this kind of announcement at an elementary school is not surprising, the closing statement in the email sat me straighter in my chair: “It should be noted that all the affected students and staff were immunized against pertussis prior to their contracting the illness.”

In my region of Canada, pertussis is part of the publicly–funded immunization schedule for children between four and six years of age, so it was conceivable that some of the youngest children could not yet be vaccinated, but to have all of them vaccinated and still have an outbreak seemed questionable.

The month continued on with more email announcements of students and staff joining the ranks of the ill and homebound. My children, both vaccinated within the timeframe, continued attending the school, which was becoming more and more abandoned with each passing week. I closely monitored my daughters, one of whom was classmates with a number of students who had disappeared during this outbreak, leaving me with the impression that they were among the afflicted.

During one end–of–school pick up, which allowed me a moment to speak with my youngest daughter’s teacher. She was more exhausted than usual, and was taking my chance encounter as an opportunity to unpack her emotions about the outbreak. She expressed concerns about the upcoming Christmas concert and the meeting between parents and school administration that would precede the concert. While she spoke, I was overwhelmed by the sense that there were problems afoot that were greater than an outbreak of whooping cough. One could not avoid the sense that much was going unspoken.

I did my awkward best to offer comfort, but my mind was increasingly uneasy about the unfolding of the outbreak. Why underpublicized meetings? Why had my vaccinated daughters not become sick as well? What was the truth?

I hadn’t heard about this meeting, and took the opportunity to attend. We all gathered in a makeshift boardroom of sorts, the room was greatly undersized for the group who gathered. In there, I saw a number of familiar faces who had long disappeared, looking grim and somber, while the mood in the room was some heady combination of intensity, confusion and concern. Finally, the school Head took her seat at the front of the room and called the meeting to order. She was an older woman, very squared off in appearance, with a short, tight haircut and small round spectacles which she perched on her nose as she fixed us all with a tired, exasperated look. Then, as if she would rather do anything else at that moment, she spoke, “Welcome everyone. We’re here to discuss the problem within our school and how we can best help our students during this time.”

The meeting followed the rather predictable order of things. There were many attempts to build consensus and to focus on our communitarian features, but division appeared quickly and cut deeply when the issue of vaccines emerged.

One woman, clearly pacing her tone and volume as strongly as she could interjected when her patience ran out: “We were told that all those kids were vaccinated, but that wasn’t the truth, Molly’s mother told me that she hadn’t been vaccinated, but in your email, you said all of them were!” More [End Page 164] parents told of similar confessions shared with them, until it soon became evident that ‘vaccine objectors’ were a significant presence in the room, and ostensibly, the school also.

This was the moment when everything fell apart. The Head placed her forehead in her open palm as she tried to rescue the civility that had barely reigned before that moment, but the emotion on display was too primitive to be dissuaded. Accusations were brandished like clubs, thrown like right hooks, and gave hints to previous, unrelated grievances between parents. All the negative emotion that one carries on with from day to day in order to function within a community with some people you simply tolerate pushed past the dam of decorum and flooded the room with ugliness.

Several families, who self–identified as “Anti–vax,” spoke to their rights to not vaccinate, as a defense to what had become a mob mentality amongst those whose children had become sick. While many referred to the “Anti–vaxxers” as negligent, the dynamic in the room was veering towards intentionality on the part of those families—they had to know their children would infect others! It was aggression towards families of vaccinated children!

Exasperated, the Head called for an end to the meeting due to the impending Christmas concert—less to do with the Yuletide spirit and more to do with the extraordinary overcrowding in the room, the crowd spilled out of the boardroom. Amidst glares and heated comments, the parents filed into the gymnasium where their young children waited in all their red and white splendor.

The concert began with the usual seasonal favorites. “Let it Snow” was moving along smoothly and beginning to sooth the feelings of aggravation in the room when one singer began coughing, with that telltale heaving and wheezing sound in –between coughs. The poor kid coughed and coughed until she couldn’t stand up anymore and was whisked away by a concerned staffer. Glimmers of goodwill and forgiveness evaporated instantly, and discontent and intolerance grew stronger at the end of the carol when the audible sound of other coughing children in the audience rose about the music. Parents looked around, straining to see who was coughing, while other parents feigned nonchalance to hide the fact that it was their children. I imagined that a similar feeling was experienced by campers who could hear coyotes howling in the night air. My oldest daughter leaned into my ear and asked, “Why is everyone coughing that way?” I motioned for her to be quiet—as if the innocent and expected curiosity of a small child would be sufficient to launch tumult.

The concert mercifully ended, and families filed out into a nighttime snow flurry. I happened to meet up with the mother of a friend to my oldest daughter. She was overwrought with emotion, and sharing her feelings of betrayal that the school had suddenly become unsupportive of her objection to vaccines, and was now taking official stances in favor of vaccination and taking stands against “Anti–vax” parents. Overhearing her complaints was Dr. Goldberg, who was a well–known physician and researcher in our town, who zeroed in on us and intervened. The discussion never had a chance for civility; it was a fight from the start to the end. The mother had evidence, so did the doctor. The mother accused the doctor of concealed agendas, and the doctor reciprocated. Like heavyweight fighters, they traded logical fallacies and conceits back and forth until others intervened to stop the figurative bloodshed. Finally, one bystander took the final step, offering the unspoken belief that was driving all of this; “You were wrong to expose all of our children to pertussis because of your own selfish belief!”

There it was. The allegation of moral failure we were all talking about, but couldn’t articulate. A failure to consider the greater good was the straw that stirred the moral cocktail for many, even as they unreflectively embraced it. This was not simply the natural progression of infection in a small school with ideal environmental factors for contagion; this was an issue wherein blame was necessary, with no regard for the scale of the problem. No one died. No one was tremendously sick. Everyone was inconvenienced, and most consequently, the parents were challenged on their hidden beliefs and suppositions. Blind and total faith in an evidence base came into conflict with blind and total faith in the deficiencies of that same evidence base. Everything was division [End Page 165] when in reality; all the parents were united in fear. They all shared fear, driven by their dedication to be good parents and to care and protect their children. These fears and virtues thrust people to oppose each other when what they really had was an uncanny likeness to each other. But they never knew that . . .

Footnotes

All identifiers have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved in this story.

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