Katie Jennings was scrolling on her phone last April when a headline stopped her cold. A second unvaccinated child had died of measles in her home state of Texas.
It was a tipping point for the 40-year-old stay-at-home mom who had grown up in a staunchly anti-vaccine, fundamentalist Christian community. “What are we doing? Why are we doing this?” she remembers thinking. “I wanted to protect my kids.”
She took all six of them to get the measles, mumps and rubella shot. Then she posted an emotional TikTok aimed at the anti-vax crowd she used to be a part of: “You can change your mind,” she said in the video that’s been watched more than 422,000 times.
Shingles fucking sucks, hurts like hell, had it right along my left side under my belt line. Putting my pants on was like stabbing my side with knives every day, and I got mine treated as soon as the symptoms appeared before they got really bad. I grew up in the 80s where it was normal to get your kid exposed to chicken pox to protect them from small pox… Fuck that shit, glad my daughter was able to get the chicken pox vaccine.