@floramcg7:
A sick & DYING population is easier to control.
@BryanDawsonUSA:
The more sick, poor, and elderly they can cull saves money to transfer to the 1%
Art Tavana@arttavana 2024:
Make Polio Great Again?
Jonathan Reiner@JReinerMD:
SV-40 was a contaminant of early polio vaccines and hasn’t been present in any of the vaccines since 1963. There’s no epidemiological evidence to support a link between the vaccine and cancer.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump Dec 16, 2024:
RFK Jr.,Trump’s nominee to lead the HHS, suggested that the Polio vaccine “killed many, many more people” than polio ever did.
RFK Jr. is a cruel liar; cruel because he rakes in mega dollars lying to kill kids and cause unbearable suffering.
Eric@EricsElectrons:
And he says he’s not an anti-vaxxer LOL
Tweetledumb @xueshang:
RFK says the vaccine killed more people because of SV40 and then says I don’t know because we dont have the data on that. (So I’ll claim it anyway, without data?)
Comment from an old ARS Technica article that I kept because it ran do damn true.
Planting the idea that vaccinations are dangerous is one of the most effective acts of sabotage against the US that Russia has ever managed.
… Measles is one of the most contagious viruses known. It spreads via respiratory and airborne transmission. The virus can linger in air space for up to two hours after an infected person has been in an area. People who are not vaccinated or have compromised immune systems are susceptible, and up to 90 percent of susceptible people exposed to the virus will become infected. Measles symptoms typically begin around eight to 14 days after exposure, but the disease can incubate for up to 21 days. The symptoms begin as a high fever, runny nose, red and watery eyes, and a cough before the telltale rash develops. Infected people can be contagious from four days before the rash develops through four days after the rash appears, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people with measles are hospitalized, the CDC adds, while 1 in 20 infected children develop pneumonia and up to 3 in 1,000 children die of the infection. …
Deleted member 441963 Guest 2024:
…
2018: Mind games: Russia updates an old tactic
adamsc 2024:
Yes, the Russian trolls picked it up but they’re just a small boost to the Republican Party. The state actor most to blame is DeSantis, his [barber-]surgeon general (Dr. Ladapo), and the entire cadre of domestic propagandists. They took the existing antivax movement, which was never Russian, embraced it as a way to welcome the previously-leftist nut jobs (e.g. Naomi Wolf) to their ranks, and grew it enormously. 10 years ago, the staunchest Republican doctors would have said you should get vaccinated – now many are committing malpractice for political reasons.
This is a domestic problem, and we have to stand up for science here rather than blaming foreigners. It’s like when people say “Christian Taliban” as if our country didn’t have multiple centuries of experience with bitter religious extremists prior to the founding of the ground being referenced.
Snark218 Ars Legatus Legionis 2024:
“Barber-surgeon general” is absolutely incredible shade; it gets my vote for best insult, historical deep cuts category.
rbryanh Ars Tribunus Militum 2024:
I tend to regard nationalism and religion as related forms of mental illness, but I nonetheless feel a kind of national shame. This is what happens to a society that fails to educate its children: ignorant kids become ignorant adults, who among other horrors, kill their own children.
Allowing people to go unvaccinated for no good reason is the public health equivalent of permitting open sewers, with equally predictable results. I’m not looking forward to rubella related birth defects. When their children are born deaf, blind, intellectually disabled, and with defective hearts, spleens, and livers, Florida and other ethical and intellectual cesspits will no doubt blame coastal elites, God, or the secret biological warfare lab Hillary is running in a pizza parlor basement.
So much of the human condition is inevitably tragic, but this is entirely optional. This is child abuse.
sjl Ars Tribunus Militum 2024:
570rmy said:
People forgot how horrible these diseases are since we did a great job of vaccinating people a long time ago and the memory of them was apparently short.I mean, hell, just look at the various countries in Africa. Parents walk for literally days to get their kids vaccinated. They’ve seen these diseases. They know the consequences. They will go literally miles out of their way to protect their kids.
Vaccination is a victim of its own success, in so many ways. …
Bryan Dawson @BryanDawsonUSA:
Polio is an incurable, infectious disease. Each year, tens of thousands — mainly children — were afflicted by polio and treated in “iron lungs” to help them breathe. After the vaccine, the disease was considered eradicated in the US.
Then came RFK, Jr. >
Chris Hayes Can’t Believe RFK Jr.’s Bonkers Vaccine Theories, ‘IT’S ALL OF THEM!’ The MSNBC host was left aghast to hear how the Kennedy scion believes polio was eradicated by “better sewerage [and] refrigeration.” by Will Neal , Dec. 15 2024
A closer look at what exactly it is the incoming health secretary believes about the polio vaccine left one MSNBC host struggling to pick his jaw off the floor on Friday night.
The network’s Chris Hayes recently sat down with NBC reporter Brandy Zadrozny to discuss Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s notoriously bonkers views on modern medicine and how they appear to oppose all contemporary scientific consensus.
Their sit-down followed news that the Kennedy scion is working with attorney Aaron Siri to petition the FDA to revoke approval for the jab that helped eradicate polio in the United States and to stop 13 other vaccines from being distributed across the country.
Zadrozny underscored just how far Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines extends, telling Hayes,
“It’s all of the vaccines. There is not a vaccine that Kennedy thinks is safe or effective.”
She continued, “These folks don’t believe the polio vaccine actually stopped polio,” adding, “it’s true!”
Hayes was looking on in growing disbelief as Zadrozny clarified, “They think it [was] a combination of better sewerage, of refrigeration… They’re polio truthers, that is what they believe.”
She went on to explain that RFK Jr. told her this personally and that both he and his supporters have long couched their opposition to vaccination by suggesting “we don’t want to get rid of any vaccines, we just want to test them.”
Hayes later took up her point, noting that all vaccines are extensively researched and usually over a period of several years, concluding that, “I think we’ve studied [them] pretty damn well.”
tern@1goodtern:
“RFK Jr. has bragged that he’d tell researchers at the National Institutes of Health to give “infectious disease a break for about eight years.””
I tried to warn you.
I tried and I tried.
This is going to go so badly.
malor Ars Legatus Legionis 2024:
Trump is a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin, Inc.
America’s Public Health Breakdown Is Just Getting Started, Why Canada should prepare for an influx of scientists, educators and more by Crawford Kilian, Dec 19, 2024, The Tyee
The United States has a health-care system that is terrible and getting worse. It also has a health science system that is the best in the world and about to be dismantled.
The impending return of Donald Trump to the White House seems likely to collapse American health science, with consequences as disastrous for the rest of the world as for the approximately 340 million Americans in the U.S. Canada may be able to soften the impact here, but it will not be easy.
An alarm went out early in December from The Lancet, probably the best medical journal in the world. In a special issue dedicated to U.S. public health under the second Trump administration, one journal article described the impact of American expertise on the rest of the world.
It’s an impressive achievement: victories against yellow fever and polio, HIV-AIDS and malaria, maternal and infant mortality, tuberculosis — not eradicated like smallpox, but greatly reduced.
And American health spending has saved countless lives around the world.
“The U.S.A.’s commitments and leadership have resulted in US$278.1 billion provided by the U.S. government to lower- and middle-income countries for health since 2000,” the report reads. “These investments, which were only 0.3 per cent of U.S. government spending in 2023, were 29.1 per cent of the total development assistance for health provided by all donor countries.”
The article cited a study that found “$1 billion in health aid could be associated with as many as 364,000 fewer child deaths.”
But funding for such projects is likely to shrink dramatically under Trump. And American health care at home — already bad — is likely to get much worse.
One Lancet article illustrated the disparity in health equity across the United States through its lens of “10 Americas,” or 10 mutually exclusive Americas comprising the entire U.S. population.
Through this framework, each of the 10 Americas has its own health traits and life expectancy. The group called “America 10,” which includes “American Indians and Alaska Natives,” has life expectancies over 20 years shorter than the 83 years for “America One,” composed of Asian Americans since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other Lancet articles dealt with the burden on the U.S. health-care workforce, the growing threat of opioids called nitazenes (“even worse than fentanyls”), and the burden of diseases in each state, both in the recent past and the near future.
With Trump’s inauguration, a grim shift
Taken together, The Lancet articles present a discouraging future, especially since drug use, obesity, air pollution and smoking are expected to persist. Eliminating them, one article argues, could prevent as many as 12 million premature American deaths between 2022 and 2050.
The journal also offered a “roadmap” for the incoming Trump administration, offering five priority areas for U.S. health strategy: “Improve public health and address health and social inequities; catalyse transformation towards a more effective, equitable health system; address crucial health issues such as climate change; advance artificial intelligence for health and health care; and strengthen responsible science and innovation.”
Given Trump’s statements and recent appointments to health-leadership positions, however, few if any of these subjects will get serious attention. Health equity and climate change will assuredly be non-starters in Trump’s administration.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, is a famous advocate against vaccines. He has said that on Jan. 20, 2025, the day of Trump’s inauguration, he will fire 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health, and replace them the next day with 600 new MAGA anti science, anti health, anti medicine people who will shift NIH’s focus from infectious diseases to diseases like obesity.
“We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years,” Kennedy reportedly told an anti-vaccine group.
Vaccine skeptics in public health leadership
The lawyer helping Kennedy with other Health and Human Services nominations is Aaron Siri, who has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval for the polio vaccine and stop distributing 13 other vaccines for diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria and hepatitis A.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, named by Trump to lead the National Institutes of Health, signed the Great Barrington Declaration early in the pandemic; the declaration called for protecting only the old and vulnerable, on the assumption that everyone else could catch COVID-19, acquire lifelong immunity, and go right back to work.
Even at the start of the pandemic, most health experts rejected this “let ’er rip” approach, and events have proven them right.
As well, Trump has nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Oz has shifted sharply from “moderate Republican” positions on issues like public health and abortion to reliably Trumpist positions.
Such persons are unlikely even to be aware of the articles in The Lancet, much less eager to implement their recommendations.
Trump’s health nominations triggered a strong negative response among U.S. public health experts and scientists.
…
Not just a bureaucratic disaster
The disaster would not just be in federal health agencies. In 2021 alone the NIH spent $32.3 billion on medical research carried out in American universities and medical schools in every American state, plus Canadian and other foreign institutions.
Diverting NIH funds from infectious disease research looks especially foolhardy, given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing likelihood that H5N1 avian influenza will learn how to jump efficiently from birds or dairy cattle to humans while keeping its 52 per cent case fatality rate.
Now imagine the consequences when not 600 but scores of thousands of health scientists find their research at the mercy of Trump’s nominees. Think of the graduate students, many from overseas, who will be unable to continue their studies as research funds vanish or move to other fields. What will they do, and where will they go?
Many will start looking to the Government of Canada’s website on how to immigrate, hoping to find jobs in universities or provincial or federal public health. They would be an astounding windfall of talent, with a precedent.It would be, if not for Steve Harper/IDU/India/ China/ Putin/Adolf Trump’s puppet – Pierre Picklehead, and the extreme stupidity (brain rot by pollution and repeat COVID-19 infections eating brains of the masses), greed, and selfishness of Canadian voters, notably rural and those propagandized by Putin/Trump/Dark Money’s Fucker Trucker Destroy Democracy Brigade
In 1957, the University of British Columbia welcomed the Hungarian Sopron Division of Forestry — 14 faculty members and 200 students, refugees from the 1956 Soviet crackdown on Hungary. We paid their travel costs and provided accommodation, English lessons and financial aid to students and faculty alike, for five years. Many stayed and built careers here.
That kind of ambitious acquisition is likely beyond any modern Canadian university’s (or government’s) ability. But by recruiting individuals and laboratories, universities and health agencies could greatly strengthen their research capabilities, attract new students and research funding, and thereby improve the health of Canadians and other people around the world.Will never happen with Harper at Picklehead’s helm, destroying what he failed to destroy when he was PM, starting with Canada’s Public Health care system – his con provincial puppets, Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, Doug Ford, François Legault and John Rustad (if Harper’s goons succeed in winning some byelections in BC or breaking the very weak NDP-Green pact), are busy preparing the destruction for him.
Such recruitment would likely be rejected by Conservative-led governments, because such scientists would be “tainted” in the eyes of anti-vaccine and “medical freedom” groups. They would also arrive amid a flood of disinformation from Trump supporters, plus threats of still more tariffs.
But we could at best help only a fraction of some of the best health scientists in the world, and we would likely be competing for them with nations like Australia, France and the Nordic countries.
Still, some provincial governments might welcome a few top scientists and their students, if only until the 2028 U.S. presidential election (if there is one).I bet Trump and the MAGAs will never relinquish power. Trump will pull the Orban-Putin trick.
Manitoba is already advertising for U.S. physicians with a tempting invitation: “Practice medicine with stability, predictability, and zero political interference between you and your patients.”
We should also plan for the return of Canadian experts who find it difficult to continue work in the U.S. As the American poet Robert Frost once put it, “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”
For the next few years, Canada should be home to as many American scientists and educators as we can squeeze in.
Sub-Boreal:
This is a great story – with a huge flaw.
It overlooks the likelihood that once PP gets his chance to become Trump’s lapdog, Canada will become just as hostile and toxic a place for public health and science as the U.S. Have we already forgotten the Harper years?
Steve Cumming to Sub-Boreal:
Have we forgotten the pandemic, and the furious confusion of “the Truckers”? And PP’s courtship thereof? And how that group of fascists seem to control the government of Alberta, and probably SK if anyone were noticing, and came within a hairsbreadth of doing the same in BC?
I think you are spot on.
Anne__Ominous to Sub-Boreal:
Our only hope is that, when voters here begin to see the results of the second Trump presidency they will have second thoughts about voting for Poillievre.
Steve Cumming Anne__Ominous:
I don’t think they will see the results. Who exactly will show them?There are hate-filled, misogynistic and wanna rape and own women/girls as property, racist, bigoted, anti science, anti health, anti environment, wanna-open-carry-assault-rifle Canadian MAGAs too that I think will LOVE watching Putin and Trump destroy the USA. It’ll turn them on. They do not think much beyond their hate and that of their pals; their demands to control the bodies and lives of women and girls, and get rid of immigrants (conveniently forgetting they too are immigrants) and all and anyone not their version of acceptable (Heil Hitler!); and demands for lifelong cheap doughnuts and beer (best if free but no free lunches for the kids of others). The pandemic showed us who Canada’s MAGAs are and how selfish ugly cruel violent and law-violating they are.
Elliott Lusztig@elliottlusztig.bsky.social:
This is the real story of the destruction of American democracy.
Nina Turner @ninaturner.bsky.social:
Musk’s wealth in 2012: $2 Billion
Musk’s wealth in 2024: $447 Billion
Bezos’s wealth in 2012: $18 Billion
Bezos’s wealth in 2024: $249 Billion
Zuckerberg’s wealth in 2012: $44 Billion
Zuckerberg’s wealth in 2024: $224 Billion
Minimum wage in 2012: $7.25
Minimum wage in 2024: $7.25
Refer also to: