NYC. I knew one guy who wouldn’t get vaccinated. I told him we wouldn’t hang out anymore until he did. He never did, we’ve never hung out since.

I live in a liberal area in Texas (a state where 45% of voters reliably vote blue, I’d like to add). As my friends and I all started to have children, some of them chose not to vaccinate their kids. Rationales given related to a lack of understanding of the severity of a disease like measles, a general distrust of the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry, and a belief in “natural” remedies. This was a point of contention in our friendship and we had to just drop the conversation entirely. We basically kept our son away from them until he was 6 months and got his MMR, then started hanging out again.

Here we are, 6-7 years later, and with everything happening in the news and the outbreak in West Texas, they’ve all decided to vaccinate their children over the past 3 weeks. I was proud of them, it can be hard to admit to making a mistake like this.

I’m sure it exists but I haven’t met any. So either I’m lucky or it’s pretty small.