Texas Republican promotes idea that measles can be treated by ‘antibiotics and that kind of stuff'

Bill Zedler and Gov. Greg Abbott at Christmastime, bringing unnecessary pain to the world.

Republican state Rep. Bill Zedler of Texas wants you to know that he isn’t a bright man. He’s such a stupid man, with such bad ideas, that he wants you to know he’s actually a dangerous person. The Texas Observer reports that, while there are a series of anti-vax bills being put forward in Texas that would allow parents not to get their children vaccinated, Zedler has a bill “explicitly preventing the state health department from tracking the number of exemptions.” Why would someone do such a thing? Zedler believes wrongly that although the exemption data collected by Texas doesn’t contain any identifying information, somehow parents will be “hunted down” and bullied by all of us health science nuts.

While states like Washington are dealing with record-high outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles, the direct result of anti-vaxxer sentiments, Rep. Zedler believes that it’s not a big deal, because “with antibiotics and that kind of stuff, they’re not dying in America.” Of course, “antibiotics and that kind of stuff” CANNOT treat measles. You can only treat symptoms after the virus has been contracted. If you develop something like (some kinds of) pneumonia, you may treat that with antibiotics.

This isn’t Zedler’s first crazy-person rodeo. He began his career pushing racist birther conspiracy theories before realizing that vaccines would be around longer than Barack Obama was president. Since then, he’s moved the conspiracy theory focus over to medicine.