Elvira, a moist dingus, and anti-vaxxers...in other words, a typical Monday
Who wants to play "Clothe the Leper??"
So, there were a few things you might have missed over the past few days:
Elvira made a comeback, and Joe Biden is wearing orthopedic shoes. Also, check out what happens when a Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foe © decides to do his own research.
A proud defender of Christianity draws the line at allowing a Satanic invocation at the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners…’cuz it would ruin “the unique character and appeal of our community.” Yeah, bigots would have to go somewhere else, eh?
The “Liberal Media” proved once again that there’s nothing Liberal about it.
Jared Kushner is a moist dingus…and that’s as far as I care to take that.
Always assume the worst when it comes to Donald Trump. You’ll never be far wrong.
And, because America in the Trump Era has become a profoundly dumbed-down nation, here comes the story of how measles cases are up sharply this year. Cases are up so sharply, in fact, that the US has already, before the end of March, equaled the number of measles cases for all of 2023.
How is that possible, you might reasonably ask? There’s the obvious answer, which is that America is now a nation of fucking morons. Yes, we’re willing to ignore more than a century of vaccine research because a Karen with way too much time on her hands has her panties in a wad that measles vaccines aren’t 125% safe.
Thanks to a rise in people not getting their kids recommended childhood vaccines, the US has, by the middle of March (sounds like a book!), already surpassed the number of cases of measles recorded in all of 2023. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tallied at least 64 confirmed or suspected cases reported by health authorities in 17 states, topping 2023’s 58 cases. And as CBS News reports, the news comes as
health officials are grappling with multiple major outbreaks of the highly contagious virus around the world.
Now with spring break travel picking up, health officials have ramped up pleas and updated their guidance for Americans to make sure they are up to date on the highly effective vaccines used to protect against measles.
Every vaccine known to humankind has associated risks, but what in this life is risk-free? Ask yourself this question- would you rather take an exceedingly small chance that you’ll have a mild reaction to an MMR vaccine…or do you want to play Russian Roulette with measles, mumps, and/or rubella?
Worse, would you subject your child to that risk? That parents are choosing to do that today is utterly irresponsible. When I was in school, if my parents couldn’t demonstrate that I had the required vaccinations, including MMR, I couldn’t attend school. Period. That was it. No questions allowed. And no one thought twice about it.
More importantly, no one considered playing the “religious exemption” card. Nor did anyone flog the “vaccines aren’t safe” or the “vaccines cause autism” arguments…because they’re both high-grade bullshit.
As with other outbreaks in recent years, measles is mostly spreading in communities with low vaccination rates after someone from those communities travels to countries that are having outbreaks, the CDC said in a March 18 alert:
Declines in measles vaccination rates globally have increased the risk of measles outbreaks worldwide, including in the United States. Measles cases continue to be brought into the United States by travelers who are infected while in other countries. […] Most importations come from unvaccinated U.S. residents.
And let’s just stress that in 2000, measles in the US was declared to have been eliminated by widespread vaccination. That’s defined by the World Health Organization as “the absence of endemic measles virus transmission in a defined geographical area (e.g. region or country) for at least 12 months in the presence of a surveillance system that has been verified to be performing well.”
And while Florida’s quack “Surgeon General” Joseph Ladapo certainly hasn’t been helping, US measles outbreaks aren’t just a Florida problem, because anti-vaccine madness predated MAGA — it’s just become a part of that subculture, too. So far in 2024, there have been at least one case of measles reported in 17 states (take a breath if you’re reading this in horror to someone else): Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington. (How is Idaho not on that list yet? We have so many anti-health crazies here!)
That’s right; measles was ELIMINATED 24 years ago…and now it’s back for a nostalgia tour- all because of the arrogance and ignorance of the anti-vaccine brigades. Despite having no evidence to support their case, anti-vaxxers do have money and political clout on their side. They’ve used those advantages to push for changes in laws that allow for more exemptions to vaccine requirements.
Parents have used those loopholes to keep increasing numbers of children from being vaccinated, in some cases claiming “religious exemptions,” and in others that they don’t believe in vaccines. Unfortunately, their children, who bear the risks, don’t have a voice in the decision.
The February outbreak in Broward County, Florida — 10 infections, nine of them at a single elementary school — is now the nation’s second-largest, after a measles outbreak in the Chicago area, with 17 infections. Most of the Illinois infections occurred at a migrant shelter in Pilsen, where authorities have been taking measures to control the outbreak including providing vaccines, quarantine, and relocating people who can’t be vaccinated, like pregnant women, to hotels.
Measles is extremely infectious, and people with the virus can spread it to others up to four days before they have any symptoms themselves. It can take up to two weeks for symptoms to appear after infection. And as Scientific American reminds us,
Anyone can catch measles, but children—particularly those two years old or younger with a still-developing immune system—are the most susceptible. There is no specific treatment for measles, and in some cases the disease can cause ear infections, diarrhea, pneumonia and encephalitis (swelling of the brain that can lead to a permanent disability); occasionally it can result in death
If you ask the measles virus if it’s better off today than it was four years ago, it would readily agree; in the pandemic year, with schools mostly closed, there were only 13 cases in the US. But we’ve also had far worse years for measles recently, with 1,274 cases in 2019, mostly in communities with large groups of unvaccinated people.
The worst part is that there’s only one reason for the increase in reported measles cases:
[T]he return of measles in the US is due entirely to people choosing not to get themselves or their kids vaccinated, even though the recommended two-dose vaccine is safe and highly effective, preventing infection 93 percent of the time after one shot, 97 percent after two.
Outside the US, by contrast, CBS News reports the current wave of outbreaks appears to have resulted from a “wide gap in immunity in many countries resulting from missed vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Here, it’s by choice. Christ wept.
In addition to the cases that are linked to foreign travel, CBS News notes, three states tracked cases back to people who had traveled to Florida. Congratulations to Ron DeSantis, whose help to spread infectious diseases may end up having a national impact greater than his failed presidential campaign.
Here, it’s by choice.
Jesus Christ, are we really that stupid? And I’m using the royal “we” but I’m not about to include myself in a conglomeration of people too stupid to recognize that medical science might have an idea of what it’s talking about.
We live in a world where a significant number of people believe they’re as intelligent and capable as (or perhaps even more so) than medical professionals because they’ve “done their research.” Sure, they’ve watched a few YouTube videos, bounced around Google, and read a few articles, so they feel ready to take on immunology or neurosurgery.
Unfortunately for these keyboard warriors, that’s not how any of this works. You don’t get a doctorate in Immunology from the University of Google in an afternoon. And you won’t defeat over a century’s worth of vaccine research because of a couple of YouTube videos.
Doctors go through years of schooling for an excellent reason. Because of that, they obtain knowledge and experience that the rest of us mere mortals don’t possess. So when a doctor tells me that vaccines are effective and backs it up with a scientifically sound argument, I believe them. All of us should believe them because that’s what doctors are trained to do.
Sometimes, I wonder if we’ll make it to our next election- not because of authoritarianism, but because by 2028, America will have become the set from Idiocracy.
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