On last night's
Daily Show, Jon Stewart ripped into Rand Paul, Chris Christie and the anti-vaxxers—and presented a fantastic allegory. Featuring zombies! Here's the transcript.
You may ask, why is measles—a disease that had effectively been eradicated through vaccination—suddenly back? Well, like most things, you can blame it on science-denying affluent California liberals. […] This is Marin County, They’re not rednecks. They’re not ignorant. They practice a mindful stupidity. […] Look, California—if your crazy wellness ideas only affected you, I’d be fine with that. Have all the fair-trade organic espresso enemas you want. That’s just something between you and what I assume is your incredibly awake and rearing-to-go rectum. But your choice puts other people in jeopardy. Just ask a doctor about how necessary vaccines are.
(Cuts to Rand Paul)
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Perhaps we should not have asked Dr. Rand Paul, who’s heard things. He’s star of the hit medical drama Dr. Paul, Anecdote Man. “I’ve heard of typhoid cases cured by shitting in the water we drink, so, you know.” But you know what?
But you know what? This is very interesting. Vaccine ignorance seems to have created strange hospital bedfellows, uniting the fringe of left and right. You know, it makes me realize there’s no red America, there’s not blue America, there’s just a needlessly sick America. Which reminds me—what does Barack Obama think about this?
“You should get your kids vaccinated.”
Oh no! You can’t say that! […] “Obama can pry measles from my cold, dead hands.”
[...]
This is a tough thing. Many years ago we had a guy on the show who was talking about vaccines and all that and it’s easy to get swept up in the passion of it but I did research and I made a choice for my kids. You vaccinate. The science is clear on it. And the only reason we’re having this discussion is because of how well vaccines have worked. And they only work when we all do them.
Let me see if I can put this in terms a cable TV audience might appreciate. It’s like America is in an isolated farmhouse, and the measles are zombies. And for some inexplicable reason, they’ve risen from the dead and are looking for—oh, I don’t know—brains. So everybody in the farmhouse has been given the task of boarding up windows and doors in their areas to keep out the zombies, because it’s well established science that zombies have a difficult time with wood. […] And you trust everybody’s going to do their job. And then you wake up and it’s two in the morning and THERE’S A FUCKING ZOMBIE GNAWING ON YOUR BRAIN AND YOU’RE LIKE WHAT THE FUCK, WHO DIDN’T FUCKING BOARD UP THEIR WINDOW? And that’s when some lady from Marin County who you let into your farmhouse goes, “Oh, I read an article on a wellness forum that says we shouldn’t sleep in boarded up rooms because they fuck you all up.” And you know what you say back to them? “BRAAAAINS.”
Full video below the fold.