Monday, March 04, 2024

Base-Based Public Health Bashing.



NegativePressure
VentilationVille



The presumptive Republican nominee for US'ian president went to Richmond Virginia this past Saturday and bashed public health over the head with a bushel of, as reader GarFish has noted, faith-based anti-vaccination codswallop.

The following is from a piece by Elizabeth Beyer in the Gannett-owned Staunton News Leader:

""Macho Man" played between show-tunes from Phantom of the Opera as Trump rally attendees made their way through security just inside the doors of the Greater Richmond Convention Center on Saturday...

{snip}

...(Mr. Trump) sprinkled in rhetoric steeped in election denialism between jabs at President Joe Biden’s border and economic policy. He promised, if elected, to implement "MAGAnomics" complete with tax cuts. He sowed doubt in this country's democratic process. He vowed to "not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or mask mandate."

"2024 is our final battle," he said. "We will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all."...


It's important to understand that Mr. Trump is not just talking about COVID here.

He's also talking about long-standing school mandates for vaccination against childhood diseases like mumps, measles and whooping cough. Such mandates are critical to keep jab rates high to ensure population-wide immunity.

And then, as reader EE reminds us, there is polio.

****

So.

How long before a certain candidate for high office north of the 49th parallel starts to spout such dangerous rhetoric?

Oh, wait...

The following is from Bob Hepburn, writing in the Star last fall:

...You may have missed it, but Poilievre was at it again last week, stirring up the hardcore anti-vaxxers who play a major role in the Conservative leaders’ strategy to win the next election.

In a 10-minute speech in the House of Commons, Poilievre championed a private member’s bill that would have prevented the federal government from imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates on federal employees or restricting unvaccinated travellers from boarding planes and trains.

Poilievre said he supports “bodily autonomy,” adding that everyone should have the right to decide what they put in their own bodies and have the right to refuse vaccines.

I guess Poilievre’s “bodily autonomy” belief also means he opposes Ontario’s law requiring children attending school to be vaccinated against polio, measles, mumps, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and other diseases...


Given how incredibly effective vaccination mandates have been in essentially eliminating many childhood diseases, none of this is a good thing.

OK?


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16 comments:

Danneau said...

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
Frank Zappa

Graham said...

I’d be more than willing to ship all BC coal from now to forever to keep that hottest of horrible places at a temperature such that it sears for an eternity the carcass of a pp or a trump or anyone else who spews such hyperbolic rhetoric meant to disinform and inflame all for their personal benefit.
When is media and good people going to start calling out this bunk?
That you Ross for doing your bit, always appreciated.

Graham said...

Oh, by the way, I see the supremes have sided with trump and not the people and have decided not to honour Colorado’s move to remove trump’s name from the ballot. Another road sign on the highway to disfunction and fascism that someday we will wonder how we missed it as we sped on by.

Evil Eye said...

Echoes from a l'il corporal with a funny mustache and that did not go well in the end.

The excited states of America is on a precipice, acknowledge science and reality or dive into fear, loathing and ignorance.

From all accounts, Trump is slowly sinking into that dark void of dementia; he speaks in tongues and cannot offer a coherent thought but hate.

Hate always wins out with those afflicted with dementia, except those where hate was an alien thought.

We now see the GOP, in thrall with there presumptive candidate because they think they can control him. Sadly history proves otherwise as he is Putin boy.

As children in those backward states that are not giving vaccines, now make the GOP the party of mass murder, child killers, and worse.

Empires come and go, some with a bang, others with a whimper, but the USA, the empire from 1945 to present will go out with the moniker, the country that condemned their children to death.

The country that brought us James Webb, will also be the country of squalor and child killers.

A sad epitaph for a country growing sadder by the day!

GarFish said...

"bodily autonomy"doesn't this also apply to any and all reproductive rights, including abortion? (lol)

Evil Eye said...

Gar - on the ball again!

e.a.f. said...

GarFish: good line! I see a bumper sticker coming and some signs. It is funny.

I'm waiting for some kid who is being sent to their room tell their parental units, "you're violating my bodily autonomy".

People seem to think measles is a childhood disease without ramifications. Nigeria has 19K cases of measles. Death from measles has been climbing since 2016.

In a report the WHO wrote, "The death toll in 2019 was 50% higher than a historic low reached on 2016, and all WHO regions saw an increase in cases, adding to a global total of 869,770.

So far the countries with the highest number of cases are second and third world countries, but trust me, its coming here. Its sort of like when we heard about AIDs--only a gay disease, it won't come to us. We know how that turned out. COVID, well that was in China and many refused the vaccines and we know how that turned out. The medical community world wide is still recovering. If measles climbs to its old rates, prior to vaccines, our medical system will be over whelmed and a lot of people will die.

PP will say anything to be elected. He is not a doctor or any sort of medical professional. He hasn't even had a real job outside of politics. Oh, well you can't cure stupid and that disease is what gets most people killed.

Perhaps some accountant can inform people how much money COVID caused businesses to loose and how much it cost the health care systems around the world. If they don't care about people, most do care about money.

Trailblazer said...


We are quickly moving backward to the days of superstition and witchcraft.

https://www.google.com/search?q=monty+python+is+she+witch&rlz=1C1CHZN_enCA962CA962&oq=monty+python+is+she++witch&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMggIAxAAGBYYHjIICAQQABgWGB4yCAgFEAAYFhgeMggIBhAAGBYYHjINCAcQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAgQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAkQABiGAxiABBiKBdIBCTEwNTY4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:1f72e624,vid:zrzMhU_4m-g,st:0

TB

Evil Eye said...

A memo to Ross K.

The reson I keep mentioning polio, I was on the cusp for vaccinations and just few years earlier, I may hve been struck with this hideous disease.

I remember the school I went to in Richmond, Sidaway Elementary, had four child victims of polio, though about 4 or more years older than myself. Three had leg braces and walked with an awkward gait but one boy was pushed to school in a wheelchair. This was 1960, but in 2024 as ati-vaxers spew their collective garbage, I think back to those "good old days", with boys and girls in iron leg braces and wheelchairs and thank god for vaccines!

RossK said...

Very similar situation for me EE--

I have a good friend a few years older who wasn't so lucky although he did get away with mild paralysis that still gives him trouble 60+ years later.


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Trailblazer said...

I have a friend working for the UN fighting polio.
Rest assure , when inoculations go down the numbers of the afflicted go up.
Many years of progress towards eliminating Polio were eradicated when the USA used phoney medics in their search for Bin Laden.
When that was revealed the trust in the UN was broken and polio gained a grip!

TB

RossK said...

TB--

Jeebuz!

It's a terrible story/situation in Afghanistan.

And, writ large(r), the mass prevention of childhood vaccination for ideologic/religious reasons is, essentially, what is starting to happen here.



.

e.a.f. said...

Evil Eye, Sidaway Elementary, OMG, you grew up in Richmond???

When I started grade one, at Cook Elementary and then Blundell Elementary the first day your Mom goes with you. There was one girl, her Mom was in a wheel chair and I heard the Moms say her Dad had died. Polio. I always get my shots. I've never forgotten that.

Its like these people think they or their children won't get some of these diseases. Wonder how they'd feel if their child died or needed an iron lung.

There are those who look after their animals better than some do their children. Every one I know makes sure their pets have their shots, etc.
It has always been beyond me why people try to harm their children in this manner.

Evil Eye said...

Yup, spent my first 8 years in Richmond, in a house (still standing sort of!!) on Number 5 Road.

We called our house "Saggy manor, due to the tilt in the peat and my dad called it DP or displaced persons land, as many of our neighbours were displaced after the war.

On one side we had the Petroffs, who lived Russian style in a two story house with the people upstairs and the farm animals downstairs. Our other neighbour was Latvian and we had ethic battles in our back yard as the two fought over land that was actually part of our 2.5 acre plot.

Across #5 was a mink farm and lots of blueberries.

Strangely enough I later met in grade 12 another Sidaway boy, who moved to Ladner and he has kept updated on out contemporaries. Those who had polio have long passed.

You know where a lot of the last Polio outbreak was centred in Richmond? The then new cement wade pool at Mitchell Park, no one emptied the water and it became a fetid ground of disease transmission!

Don't you just love the good old days everyone yearns for!

Keith said...

I strongly recall as child in the 1950s in England the constant worry of polio and the associated horrors and visuals subsequently mostly eradicated with a vaccine, my immediate neighbour considers himself lucky to have survived polio with a withered but usable leg.

As a very young child I was vaccinated against diphtheria and small pox and other diseases I now can’t recall, but here I am in my 70s. fitter and healthier than most of my age touting the benefits of getting a jab now and then, not just for me but for everyone else around me.

All the anti vaxer crowd have to do is a simple search online of the history of diphtheria and small pox for pre and post vaccine comparisons and the benefit of vaccination, which could be a futile ask but thems the facts.

http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/diphtheria

https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/science-technology/a-pox-on-our-nation

Recent history; the number of deaths in republican and democrat states and it’s not a link to MSNBC.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617

Trailblazer said...

Anonymous Keith said...
I strongly recall as child in the 1950s in England the constant worry of polio

What!! and I thought I was the last remaining Brit of those ages LOL.
Your words are true and I believe were it not for the Socialist government of those days it would have turned out much worse.

FWIW,
US president Bush put lots of money into Africa to fight aids.
Other governments put monies into fighting many other diseases and not because of altruistic motivations but because these diseases destroy economies!
You cannot send your troops to defend foreign oil exporting nations if they will be exposed to life threatening or debilitating diseases.

TB