How anti-vaxxers target grieving moms and turn them into crusaders

[Coventina]

Fifteen miles west of Minneapolis, a billboard looms over a field of tall grass beside Highway 55. The sign features a photo of Evee Clobes, a baby girl with sparkling eyes, flushed cheeks and an expression frozen in wonder. Next to her face are the words, "HEALTHY BABIES DON'T JUST DIE." The web address of a group opposed to mandatory vaccinations is at the bottom.

Since her death in March, Evee has served as a literal poster child for the anti-vaccination movement. Her face and chunky legs — adorned with Band-Aids from her shots — are featured on anti-vaccination websites and billboards. The story of her death is told at protests, read aloud at statehouses, and offered up by her mother and other activists as proof of the horror vaccines can bring.

Evee's story, as her mother Catelin Clobes tells it, is of a healthy 6-month-old who died 36 hours after a checkup where she got several vaccinations. Clobes and an army of online activists now say the vaccines caused Evee's death. That belief, and Clobes' willingness to make Evee part of a national media campaign, have turned the grieving mom into a rising star in the anti-vaccination world. Her Facebook posts draw hundreds of thousands of views, and multiple fundraisers set up by anti-vaccination activists on her behalf have raised tens of thousands of dollars. She has become a champion of other anti-vaccination parents around the country.

But there's a problem with the story at the heart of this crusade, and with Clobes' new role as an anti-vaccine heroine. Her local medical examiner has ruled that the evidence — collected in an autopsy and by first responders — shows Evee accidentally suffocated while co-sleeping with her mother.

Read more:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/how-anti-vaxxers-target-grieving-moms-turn-them-crusaders-n1057566

[Bluepinky]

1. Yikes. It's understandable that Evee's mom would prefer to blame her baby's death

on the vaccinations rather than an accidental suffocation while sleeping in the same bed. How tragic.

The anti-vaccination movement has exploited this grieving mom for their own gain.

[Archae]

2. Quacks and con artists always target the most vulnerable.

My Mom, (who has bad arthritis in her shoulder,) is constantly badgered on the phone by supplement salesmen.

She'll only answer the phone if she recognizes out phone numbers.

[Coventina]

3. kicking....

[Coventina]

4. kicking for afternoon crowd.....

[Johnny2X2X]

5. Disgusting

What kind of monsters would exploit a grieving mother who accidentally killed their own baby?

[Mariana]

6. "Healthy babies don't just die."

Clobes then had a whiskey cocktail, watched some basketball and, a few hours later, lay down beside Evee...

The story doesn't say if they tested the mother's blood alcohol level. Maybe she really did only have one ordinary sized drink, hours before she went to bed. Maybe not.

[Wounded Bear]

7. It's the same way terrorists recruit from relatives of terror victims...

Basic manipulative psychology. Get someone in the midst of emotional stress and mold their reactions to your own desires.

[New Breed Leader]

8. They're a cult and should be locked up.

sick of these people.

[Hekate]

9. My 6-month old granddaughter died of SIDS 10 years ago. The trauma was unspeakable...

But my daughter has been hooked into the anti-vaxxer movement and is now a crusader whose devotion to this cause is, sadly, fanatic. She is a local spokeswoman for the cause. The things she states as fact about California's efforts to vaccinate kids would curl your hair.

There is nothing I can do -- nothing. I try to talk about our family medical history -- which I can recite back for a century, before routine childhood vaccinations. No, no -- it's all due to vaccinations. (Part of that history involves one of my grandmother's sisters, who tragically never raised a living child. All her babies were born live, apparently healthy, and all died in infancy. There were no vaccines involved -- her generation was born in the 1880s for gods' sake.) The latest thing she threw at me, two days ago, was that she thinks I blame her for her child's death.

Grieving mothers are being victimized, and in their pain they go to war against science and against others.

[Coventina]

10. I am so very sorry for your loss and the reverberating pain and grief.

There are no words for it, but I hurt for you and your daughter.

[Cha]

11. ..

So sorry, Hekate