This mother’s angry letter to vaccine deniers is going viral

A mother in Australia posted a heartbreaking message to anti-vaccine advocates on Facebook that is now going viral. Rebecca Harreman posted a video on Facebook showing her infant son Austin suffering from a serious coughing fit.

Although he had been vaccinated, 4-month-old Austin Harreman contracted whooping cough, a serious and potentially deadly disease. Austin caught the rare disease from someone who was not vaccinated.

According to Harreman, the scary coughing fit her son suffered on video was a relatively “good” attack,  since he quickly regained the ability to breathe. Harreman posted the video on her Facebook wall, and included a lengthy letter to anti-vaccination advocates, calling them out on their irresponsibility. She writes:

Okay so I know I said I’d let the hate go. But I’m tired. Damn tired. I’ve been on duty for over 3 weeks having to wake every single time my baby boy coughs for fear he will stop breathing. Every. Single. Time. I cannot and will not pass that duty to anyone else, because I just can’t sleep.

So for those of you sitting on the fence on whether to vaccinate yourself and your kids or not… maybe this video will convince you.

This is a GOOD coughing fit in a 4 month old with Pertussis, or Whooping Cough – 23 days after his cough started which is when it’s supposed to be getting past the bad stage. It lasts for up to 100 days, but a simple cold I passed onto him that I caught from being with him in hospital is making him relapse again. [frown emoticon]

Now when I say this is good… I mean that’s absolutely nothing. Not even long enough to be called a coughing fit. Nothing compared to watching him turn blue from coughing for so long and so much he can’t take a single breath…

Imagine that in a tiny newborn baby. Can you imagine?! The doctors said he has his age and size and his first vaccination on his side to be able to fight this because there is no real way to treat it – you can only try and get some oxygen in them – that is if they breathe it in… and they have to do that all on their own.

I don’t care whether you want to try and prove to me that vaccinations and herd immunities don’t work. I don’t care that vaccinations have side effects, because every person in this world reacts differently to all types of food, products and medicines. I could not care less, even if it is ever proven one day that they don’t work.

You know why? Because at least at the end of the day I tried to do something to prevent this and not sit there and say “oh well, vaccinations don’t work so I’ll just sit here and do nothing”… because doing nothing goes against every cell in my body as a mother. Doing nothing is just wrong.

So please share this and spread some awareness… not nonsense. This is getting worse because people are not vaccinating!

Oh, and no matter what you believe – if you have a cough while out in public – cover your damn effing mouth!!!

~End Rant~

Harreman’s emotional online rant angered anti-vaxxers, who bombarded Harreman’s inbox with vicious hate mail. Anti-vaccine advocates ignored the fact that her son was seriously ill and harassed Harreman on her multiple social media accounts.

Okay so I know I said I’d let the hate go. But I’m tired. Damn tired. I’ve been on duty for over 3 weeks having to wake…

Posted by Rebecca Harreman on Friday, November 13, 2015

 

Harreman posted two updates, where she asked anti-vaxxers to stop their online harassment.

Although Harreman also received supportive messages on Facebook, she could not even begin to describe the messages that anti-vaxxers sent her. Many people falsely reported that her Facebook pictures contained nudity. Eventually, Harreman was forced to make her Facebook profile private.

Sadly, Austin was once again admitted to the hospital for his coughing fits, after contracting a cold on top of the whooping cough infection.

[BuzzFeed] Featured image via Facebook

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *