The Washington Post has published a column titled “Should I get my anti-vax friends’ baby vaccinated without telling them?” 

A Washington Post reader wrote to the publication’s advice columnist saying they have a best friend who is an “antivaxxer” and opposes all vaccines. 

“They have a 9-month-old baby and they haven’t vaccinated him,” the query goes.

“I babysit for them every other weekend. Should I take the baby to get his shots without telling them?”

The Post published the column despite the query likely suggesting illegal activity. Forty-three states require a parent’s permission to vaccinate a child in America.

The advice columnist Damon responds by saying he favours vaccination. Damon agrees the reader’s friends “are acting dangerously.”

“I trust that the PhDs and MDs who’ve spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn about it, and whose livelihoods are predicated on the retention and application of that knowledge, know much more about it than I’d ever know,” Damon wrote.

The columnist, fortunately, advises the reader not to get the baby vaccinated against the parents’ will.

“What you’re suggesting is reckless, egregious and possibly even criminal,” Damon responds, noting the criminal element in 43 states.

He instead suggests giving the parents “an ultimatum where you tell them you don’t feel safe around them anymore.”

“You’d risk ending that relationship, sure,” Damon writes. 

“But I’d rather lose friends than commit a crime and lose my freedom.”

The columnist also says persuasion is likely not a worthwhile tactic because “if an active pandemic that has killed millions of people — plus all of the social restrictions of being unvaccinated — hasn’t convinced them yet, I’m not sure what else would.”

Damon fails to mention that countries worldwide are taking steps to limit COVID-19 vaccination for children and young people.

The UK is no longer offering the COVID-19 vaccine to children under 12, saying kids don’t need it and likely already have natural immunity. It also released a report stating that pregnant and breastfeeding women should under no circumstance get the Pfizer COVID vaccine due to a lack of trial data on the vaccine’s effect on reproductive health.

Meanwhile, Denmark has ended the COVID-19 vaccine for most people under 50.

The Post’s willingness to publish and headline the query follows a disturbing trend of mainstream media treating the unvaccinated like second-class citizens. 

Last year, The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest online site, published a cover of hateful tweets toward the unvaccinated. The sentiments ranged from a tweet saying the unvaccinated don’t deserve ICU beds to a tweet saying the unvaccinated deserve to die. 

“Let them die,” read one tweet, highlighted in bold across the newspaper’s cover.

The Star was forced to admit the cover was a mistake following outrage from thousands of readers.