RFK Jr and Robert De Niro offer $100,000 to anyone who can prove vaccines are safe https://t.co/reG2pGjAbf pic.twitter.com/kRndZGO37i
— deathandtaxes (@DeathAndTaxes) February 16, 2017
It's actually not that much money when you split it between 7 billion people who don't have polio https://t.co/Y3sUFyioie
— Jordan Ellenberg (@JSEllenberg) February 16, 2017
They’re not rejecting science — they’re just raising questions! Because terrible tragedies — like having an autistic child — shouldn’t happen to nice people! In our complicated world, how can we know what’s true, and what’s spin?
I’m old enough to remember when the Romanovs were regarded as a couple of under-educated inbreds for letting a plainly demented charlatan take effective control over their government, not that one would expect any better from a regime where a tiny group of oligarchs ruled the teeming mass of serfs via a combination of hereditary religious bigotry and a militarized state police…
I ran int'l disaster response under Obama, incl the Ebola reponse. Trump is undermining every crisis mgmt tool USG has in its arsenal. 2/
— Jeremy Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 17, 2017
…scientific expertise, strong multilat partnerships, all feeding a coherent strategy. Trump weakening EVERY SINGLE ONE of these tools. 7/
— Jeremy Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 17, 2017
On past outbreaks, POTUS' personal involvement could spur global action. US credibility was a given. But would the world believe Trump? 13/
— Jeremy Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 17, 2017
This matters ENORMOUSLY. Outbreak control rests on understanding the disease; misunderstand the science and you'll use the wrong tools. 15/
— Jeremy Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 17, 2017
So as an emergency manager, welcome to my nightmare. Politics aside, I sincerely hope next Natl Security Advisor empowered to fix it. /end
— Jeremy Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 17, 2017
Another Scott
Yup. Scary stuff.
South Korea culled 22.5 M chickens in December to combat the spread of bird flu.
These problems haven’t gone away. Trump has no people in place to handle these issues, let alone people with actual experience in disaster management.
Scary days ahead… :-(
We must fight them every single day.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
THIS, and a million other bad scenarios. Just think of how susceptible these hair-trigger low/no-info morons would be to a multitude of provocations (including the ever-popular ‘false flag’ operations)
Only thing worse than someone blowing themselves up in the lobby of one of his hotels would be someone doing it with a fake Iranian passport in his back pocket.
Anyway, hey GOP – epidemics won’t care which party you vote for or how many tax cuts you managed to pass!
Mnemosyne
Sorry, when did RFK Jr and Robert DeNiro earn PhDs in microbiology? I must have missed that news.
One of our cats is limping, and we’re not sure why. Of course this happened over a holiday weekend. She doesn’t seem to be in major distress — in fact, she’s napping in my lap right now — but we may have to see whether our regular vet is open tomorrow or if we have to take her to the emergency vet instead.
Adam L Silverman
Just did a reschedule on mine for 8 PM EST. Off to dinner.
Felonius Monk
How about we stuff both RFKjr and BobDeniro right up Trump’s ass. Sorta like a political pseudo-science turducken.
A Ghost to Most
As the parent of an Aspergers kid about to graduate from college, can I just say:
Fuck all those fucking anti-vax assholes, including De Niro, who has lost all respect from me.
SiubhanDuinne
I luvs ya, Anne Laurie, but I’ve met you, and no, you’re not.
XTPD
The anti-vaxxers deserve to all get rabies and die.
Also, anybody notice how diphtheria seems to have fallen down the pop cultural memory hole? People still make references to tetanus shots and the like, but probably the most any random schmuck remembers about diphtheria is something something Balto. Maybe it’s too transparently awful even for the other vaccinable illnesses?
Mary G
I wish I could go to the March for Science. We need to keep fighting even though it may be futile. I read Adam’s post before he took it down and am reading Tom Nicol’s “The Death of Expertise” and am depressed as hell. Bread and circuses indeed.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Hardly anybody but libraries, banks, and govt will be closed tomorrow. Good luck to you and your cat.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’m sorry to see De Niro falling for this horseshit. I never knew he was a conspiracy nut. That’s too bad. These people need to shut the fuck up.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Good luck! Poor kitty.
I would think that having the doctor who wrote the original paper having his license lifted and the article itself debunked and the studies since would make a dent.
But that’s how it is with conspiracy theorists.
Pogonip
@XTPD: My father had diphtheria in 1929 at age 2. He didn’t remember it but was told he was lucky to survive. I think the vaccine existed back then, but it was not wasted on the poor.
schrodingers_cat
Smug stupidity is going to be the death of us all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): my understanding is he always been rather…. eccentric
He made the Intern, after all, and that movie with Zack Efron.
Pogonip
@XTPD: Do you know how much the Milwaukee Protocol costs? Find a cheaper disease for DeNiro to catch.
mouse tolliver
Watching Roger Stone right now on MSNBC trying to weasel out of accusations he had contacts with Russia. Trying to play innocent. Then they show the video of him admitting he communicated with Russian asset Julian Assange. Sort of reminds me of the video of Trump on David Letterman in 2013 talking about his numerous business deals with Russia and how he knows Vladimir Putin after Trump denied having any business dealing in Russia.
Going out on a limb here, but I’m betting a whole lot of shoes are going to drop.
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
I feel that old sometimes.
And I am old enough, and so are you and AL, to remember stories about the poor people who spent their lives in iron lungs because of polio, and how we all got Salk vaccine shots in school in whatever year it was – ’55 or ’56 – and Sabin oral vaccine after that. And I knew people who did have polio as kids (mild cases), and were partially crippled for life, and the stories from mrs efg’s family, who were all kids in the last big outbreak in Massachusetts, living in constant fear.
Fuck all the anti-vaxxers sideways with Corner Stone’s flaming rusty chainsaw.
A Ghost to Most
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
De Niro has a child that is autistic, so he is vulnerable to quacks,
Pogonip
Re the previous Star Trek topic–Andrew Robinson’s book in the Kindle version is full of typos. Grrrr. This is not only unfair to customers, it’s unfair to authors who lose a sale through no fault of their own. Amazon’s making a killing off those e-books, they should hire some proofreaders!
Pogonip
@A Ghost to Most: So do I. It’s no excuse.
XTPD
A somewhat relevant reminder that even by altie standards, William Maher SUPERGENIUS is an incomprehensibly awful crank. His sexism/antitheism/anti-PC shtick had always been off-putting — and his Orientalism has gradually bee getting worse — but it was his anti-vac idiocy that finally made me stop watching.
jharp
I feel the choices are does something really bad happen right away or is it going to take some time.
Mnemosyne
@A Ghost to Most:
I’m mildly interested in following autism research since I have a niece and nephew who are on the spectrum. AFAICT, the most reliable research shows that Autism Spectrum Disorder has genetic links, and also links to paternal age — older fathers are more likely to have children on the spectrum.
There’s also the complicating factor of misdiagnosis. She doesn’t emphasize it much, but it turns out that Jenny McCarthy’s son was misdiagnosed and doesn’t have ASD at all, but another disorder with similar symptoms.
ETA: I don’t think that DeNiro fathered any children until he was well into his 40s at least, and the incidence starts rising at age 35, so ….
Suzanne
@XTPD:
My grandfather grew up in Alaska, and lost his mother and sister in that outbreak. Let’s suffice it to say that everyone in my family was vaccinated against every damn thing possible.
I have been really despondent this weekend. I just feel like the world is utterly going to hell in a hand basket and I’m powerless to prevent. I need to shake this shit.
In better news, a Methodist church in our neighborhood that we attend sometimes held a Syrian Sweets bake sale this morning. All foods made by refugees and immigrants. The sale was supposed to go from 10 am to noon. We got there just after 11 am and they were completely sold out. Sometimes, the resistance is delicious.
Another Scott
The CDC has a good 2 page PDF on thimerosal and vaccines which debunks a whole host of rumors and scare-mongering. E.g. lots of vaccines never had any mercury, and thimerosal has been phased out of multi-dose vaccine packages with no drop in autism rates.
If people would just accept that life is complex, and human development even moreso, and correlation does not demonstrate causation, and people in government who spend their lives studying microbiology and human development and statistics aren’t trying to poison everyone’s kids to somehow make some outside corporation rich, and that maybe what seems to be going on isn’t what’s actually going on when their child doesn’t develop normally, well, maybe we’d be on the way to turning off our lizard brains and making some sensible progress.
Kennedy and DeNiro and all the rest of the celebrities who are pushing this autism stuff really should stop. They’re wrong and they’re endangering everyone with this nonsense.
Also too, IEEE Spectrum covers some relevant news this week:
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who has an autistic older brother.)
PK
I had an older cousin who got polio. She recovered but had a limp for the rest of her life. I also knew a kid who got diphtheria because the mother did not believe in vaccinating any of her kids. My neighbor did not vaccinate her kids during the H1N1 outbreak and never vaccinates them against the flu. She just believes in massive doses of Vit D. At this point the country is full of proudly ignorant people. I really think we should just divide up into 3-4 different countries and say a cordial goodbye to each other. I’ve reached a stage where I don’t want to talk to republicans anymore, nor do I want to deal with idiot leftists.
Jeffro
@Mary G:
sounds like a good time to recommend Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death…
XTPD
@Pogonip: There aren’t much worse that are vaccine-preventable. Even tetanus isn’t ~100% (or even 50%) fatal if untreated; the only nonlethal such case on record for rabies is the Texas Wild Child.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, Mnem, I hope it’s a fleeting and insignificant ailment. Is it Charlotte?
Do most vets close up shop on Presidents’ Day? Some others of the Monday holidays I can see, but this one almost from jump was only about no mail delivery and department store sales.
ArchTeryx
And yet, here I sit – as an ACTUAL PhD in microbiology and virology – unemployed for 3.5 years running, wondering if my last lifeline gets pulled by anti-science Republicans.
Good times, good times.
It’s made me nihilistic enough to *almost* say “Bring on the pandemic!” If I don’t survive it, I don’t need to worry about being unemployed anymore. If I *do* survive it, my expertise guarantees me a job for the rest of my life. Either way, my problem is solved.
I’m not inclined to give much of the rest of humanity the benefit of that doubt, considering how much value they’ve attached to my life.
Anne Laurie
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, but during my childhood history classes in the 1960s, the common theory was that the Romanovs were taken in by Rasputin because they’d inherited a powerful office they were blatantly incapable of responsibly fulfilling. Which could never happen in our own U.S. of A, because democracy meant “we” could reject bad leaders in favor of competent ones…
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
DeNiro came out in support of anti-vaxxerism at the same time he started telling reporters one of his kids had been diagnosed with autism. There seem to be a lot of such parents, at the upper end of the income / education spectrum, who are desperate to find some outside force “responsible” for their child’s condition. Which is understandable, if tragic — but because of their bias, these are not the people the rest of us want writing medical policy for everyone.
WereBear
@ArchTeryx: Yeah, irony sucks when it’s YOU.
XTPD
@PK: The diphtheria patient didn’t die, did they? (also, when was this?)@
Mnemosyne: I’ve also read that having older fathers is a risk factor for schizophrenia (and that schizophrenic disorders may be directly related to ASD).
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
An excellent book! It’s time for me to re-read it. Even though, from a purely technological viewpoint, it is probably wildly dated, I suspect the larger themes will be more resonant than ever. Thanks for the reminder.
Spanky
@Mnemosyne: Check for ingrown claws, especially the dew claw. Same thing happened to our Max.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne:
Which of course makes some parents upset, but it’s true. Easy to blame vaccines, though.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: I remember the vaccine on sugar cubes, when I was in kindergarten I think (1958/59). I’m also from the last generation that have smallpox vaccination scars on our upper arms.
A Ghost to Most
@Mnemosyne:
There has been speculation that I was an Aspergers kid who grew up in an environment completely oblivious to that concept. It would explain a lot. The fact that we had an Aspergers son only confirmed the suspicions.
We have been lucky that our son is at CSU, which may be the best university in the country for an Autistic student.
Mart
The Autism uptick is not from thermisol or bundling of vacs at a young age. It’s clearly Polytetrafluoroethylene – TEFLON. Fucking DuPont.
Above intended as a joke, but I bet there could be good money mining that theme.
Gian
@efgoldman:
heard an interview with one of the songwriters for Disney’s version of Mary Poppins. the “spoonful of sugar” was inspired by his kid getting the polio vaccine at school, provided on a sugar cube.
your trivia for today
Pogonip
@Suzanne: What you need, my friend, is a history book. Since the beginning of recorded history, and probably before that, people have felt, often with good reason, that things are going to hell in a handbasket, and yet mankind muddles on. Find a huge disaster, such as the Black Plague, and read about it. It’ll add perspective and you’ll feel much better.
(I suggest avoiding the Gilded Age since we’re in the rerun of same. If you’re like me, you’ll just get annoyed that we’re all letting it happen again.)
TriassicSands
I’ll give Kennedy and DeNiro a billion dollars if they can prove to me that any child became autistic as a result of a vaccine or combination of vaccines. No, not that B followed A, but that A caused B. I’m waiting. Still waiting.
Heck, make it a trillion dollars.
WereBear
@XTPD: For that matter, Queen Victoria’s father was over fifty when she was conceived; one of those “Hurry up we need an heir” kind of things. I’ve read speculation that this led to the hemophilia gene appearing in her bloodline… and then on to all the crowned heads of Europe.
Including the Romanovs; where it became a crucial turning point in history.
scav
There are a certain class of rich white fucks who are always in favor of watching other peoples children die for their crackpot ideas. And grab the spotlight while doing it.
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: It seems to be enjoying a bit of a resurgence…not sure if that’s due to his son’s recent essay, or just these “fake news”, reality-show-president times.
Postman’s The End of Education made a huge impression on me early in my career.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yep, it’s Charlotte. We suspect she may have sprained her ankle (or the cat equivalent thereof) somehow, so we’re trying to keep her calm and napping.
ArchTeryx
@WereBear: Yep. I’m basically the ironic cosmic joke, I and most every younger bioscientist like me.
sukabi
@mouse tolliver: let’s hope it’s Emelda Marcos’ shoe closet that drops…and clubs every one of the ??’s enablers, co-conspirators as well as ??? himself…?????
Eta, would also explain the lot of them calling news outlets enemies of America…trying to delegitimize everything except favorable coverage.
Mnemosyne
@Spanky:
Hmm — she did miss her last grooming appointment. I’ll take a look.
SiubhanDuinne
@mouse tolliver:
I suspect it’s going to be an entire Bata Shoe Museum’s worth of shoes dropping.
http://www.batashoemuseum.ca
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
FWIW, I was born in 1969 and I have a smallpox scar. I can’t remember if G has one — he was born in 1971.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Sorry folks here’s the link to Postman’s son’s essay…“Brave New World”, not “1984”
Pogonip
@Anne Laurie: I am glad you mentioned Rasputin. This gives me the opportunity to note that my brother is probably the only person on earth with the ability (or desire) to burp out “Rasputin!”
I do know a lady who claims she can burp the alphabet, but she has not proved it yet. Whereas I can testify that when my brother gives out a good solud “Rasputin,” he can be heard out in the yard.
And now you know why our white ancestors were expelled from the old country and the Indians expelled from the tribe.
A Ghost to Most
@Pogonip: agree.
Suzanne
@Pogonip: I am aware. I am just having an emotional reaction. I realize that things have been far, far worse at countless times in human history.
It just feels like more than I can handle over the last few days. I am completely overworked and my house is a mess, and I am someone deeply influenced by the state of my spatial environment.
HinTN
@schrodingers_cat: THIS
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Can you put on an infant-size ace bandage and an Elizabethan collar? Or if you’re sure there’s no fracture or foreign body you might just let her hop around on 3 legs till it feels better. She’d probably prefer that to the vet!
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
“Our ancestors were thrown out of every decent country in Europe!”
Still one of the all-time great movie monologues.
Suzanne
@Pogonip: My cousin Dave can indeed burp the entire alphabet. I have witnessed it. Multiple times. It is fairly awe-inspiring.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
Mine was on the leg, not the arm. I still, nearly 75 years later, have an unsightly and be-pocked scar the size of a Kennedy half dollar on my right thigh.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: ’59, I have one too. Your immunity has faded, as has mine and G’s. Boosters are needed every 15 years or so.
WereBear
Which would be almost anyone born before 1981, when the concept became available to those who didn’t speak German. And it took even longer for anyone to really understand it.
From my reading on the subject, there’s still a lot of misconceptions and there’s also the stark under-diagnosis of women on the spectrum, especially the higher functioning ones.
Neurotribes is on my reading list; it is a work that is helping popularize the concept of neurodiversity. My own view is that supporting anyone’s strengths instead of trying to make us all the same is not only humane; it benefits everyone.
Pogonip
@Suzanne: I believe in Dave, but I gotta see the other lady perform before I believe her!
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Can you get a cleaning person to stop by? If it stresses you out and you don’t have the time to do it yourself right now, hire a professional to do it.
Spanky
@Anne Laurie: Yep, I’m a year ahead of ya. And Jonas Salk was a BFD around our city, since he was at Univ of Pgh.
Gin & Tonic
@mouse tolliver: Tying two threads together, I’d spring for a pay-per-view of Roger Stone being injected with some incurable (and un-vaccinatable) disease.
Does anyone remember a Firesign routine called “Beat the Reaper”? One of my favorites.
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly. I love Bobby D as a great Oscar winning actor but that’s about it. He can keep his opinions on vaccines to himself and his inner circle. It’s scary to think what would happen if large swaths of parents stopped vaccinating their children based on the ruminations of non-scientists/non-doctors like RFK Jr and Deniro.
Mnemosyne
@Gian:
Imma brag now that I actually got to meet Richard Sherman and have my picture taken with him. (He and his brother Robert were the songwriting team — IIRC, it was Robert’s kid who got the vaccine sugar cube.) Richard Sherman was seriously one of the nicest and sweetest people I’ve ever met.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: The problem isn’t the actual cleanliness. It’s the fact that some of my family members do not put things away. COUGH COUGH MY MOTHER. For example, she’ll do a load of laundry, then leave it unfolded in a heap on a chair. I put out a decorative basket in the entryway, she leaves her hairbrush in it. Clean dishes? Let’s put them all on the counter rather than putting them away! There is moisturizer on my coffee table, dirty socks on the lid of the clothes hamper, clothes hangers with no clothes on them on the dining room table. Her version of taking the trash out is putting trash in a box, then putting the box in the hallway. She took my laundry basket, filled it with more clothes hangers, and left it in the hallway outside the laundry room. WHAT THE FUCK.
Pogonip
@Suzanne: You could try making a virtue of necessity and give up cleaning for Lent.?
Also, every now and then people will complain that such-and-such religion, or all of them, should be “brought into the 21st century.” Which is turning out to be a bit of a fustercluck, so I am not sure why anyone would want to bring anything else into it, however, if anyone reading this feels this way, you will be happy to hear that I, at least, am bringing religion into the 21st century. I am giving up smartphoning for Lent.
(So I sure hope any Walter pupdates, and any Cole accident stories, occur on Sunday, else I’ll probably miss them.)
Felonius Monk
@Gin & Tonic: I thought it was “Beat the Reaper”, but I won’t quibble. And yes, I not only remember it, I have a recording somewhere in my files.
Anne Laurie
@A Ghost to Most:
It wouldn’t surprise me if some of us here would be diagnosed ‘on the spectrum’ if we were 20/40/50 years younger… if only because so many BJ regulars are in the high-IQ / math&engineering self-selecting groups.
People forget (never learn) that ‘autism’ wasn’t a diagnosable disease until the 1940s, and it wouldn’t be much discussed outside of the medical community until the 1960s. Even then, the milder forms weren’t considered ‘real’ autism for another couple decades. So for most of us, our worst-off siblings and neighbors would’ve been called ‘childhood schizophrenics’ or ‘retarded’ or just ‘crippled’ — and probably shunted off to an institution, if their families couldn’t/didn’t keep them at home (mostly isolated, because there was no place for them in public places or public schools).
Milder cases just got subjected to… well, physical forms of behavioral modification that are no longer considered acceptable in open educational institutions. (Hitting doesn’t ‘cure’, but as some of us can attest, it’s a powerful method of changing behavior, not always for the better.) At best, if their parents were rich enough or lucky enough, they grew up to be like Temple Grandin — “oddballs” who used their intelligence and obsessions to make happy lives, and even careers, for themselves.
Suzanne
@Suzanne: And no, this isn’t a sign of mental decline or anything. This is just who she is and always has been…..a total pack-rat-borderline-hoarder with no mental discipline, no eye for any sort of detail, and no consideration for other people who may, you know, ALSO LIVE THERE.
I get along with her much better when she doesn’t live in my house.
No Drought No More
“We’ve all got an idiot in us somewhere”. Terry Bradshaw once said that, and who among us can argue the point?
Anyone who despises Trump as much as DeNiro is still OK with me.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Yes, if she can afford it, it would probably be money well spent.
Felonius Monk
@Gin & Tonic: Beat the Reaper.
Gin & Tonic
@Felonius Monk: I corrected myself.
Anne Laurie
@Mart:
No, no, if you read the ‘deep science’ sites, you’d know that teflon causes Alzheimers, not autism. NOT a joke, tragically; I know otherwise intelligent people, including the odd engineer, who avoid non-stick cookware and waterproofed raingear because “you never know, but it’s been suggested”.
Pogonip
@Suzanne: My son does things like that too. He washes towels but hates folding for some reason. So now I just get one out of the Clean Towel Basket.
He’s autistic, too, but as far as housework is concerned it only shows with the trash. He measures to make sure the cans are equally spaced on the curb.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Has your mom ever been screened for ADHD? Because, seriously, that’s the kind of stuff I do, especially without medication.
Suzanne
@Pogonip: I do occasionally have a team come out and clean. But like I said, the crux of the problem is someone in my household who has a disorganized mind and just leaves shit all over the place.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Or autism?
Eric S.
@Mary G: I will have to work that weekend but we are putting together shirts for that weekend. An electric resistor across the chest and a V [undersocre] I on the back.
Felonius Monk
@Anne Laurie:
And here I’ve been under the impression that it is cheap aluminum cookware that causes Alzheimers. Now, after I’ve replaced all that cheap aluminum with expensive non-stick cookware, you tell me I’m still going to develop it. I think this is a conspiracy by the makers of pots and pans.
gene108
@Anne Laurie:
Depends what country you are from.
Kids born in the 1970’s in some countries were vaccinated.
I don’t think small pox was finally wiped out until 1980 or so.
Pogonip
@Suzanne: Wouldn’t hurt to have Mom screened, as Mnenosyne suggested.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think so. She has plenty of attention to give to things she likes to do. She also is a bit of a retail therapy person…..loves to go to Target and the craft store and the dollar store and buy cheap Chinese-made crap and then have nowhere to put it, so it ends up in piles all over the place. I seriously can’t deal.
It makes me crazy, and I’m sure it surprises no one that architects are very particular about their space.
Pogonip
@gene108: I believe Russia and the U.S. still have stores of the virus.
Pray their governments hold together.
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne:
My spouse and I are almost certainly on the spectrum and our kid is autistic. While that study showing linkage between vaccines and autism in The Lancet was still out there, we were in a panic that we may have inadvertently harmed our child. Yes, I got called a lot of anti-vaccer names, yet a (supposedly) peer reviewed study was still out there to point to. I was determined to wait until more proof came down on one side or the other before getting more vaccinations (and my kid had already had almost the entire series and far more than what I ever had as a school kid)
When the study was withdrawn and the linkage to genetics was firmly established, there was simply no tenable reason to hold on to an anti-vaccination or vaccine skeptical position. Science has spoken and I believe in science.
All you have in the anti vaccination side are conspiracy theories and woo.
Pogonip
@gene108: I tried to get mine [late 70’s, U.S.] vaccinated. No go.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
That’s called “hyperfocus.” Or, as some doctors have started saying, people with ADHD have an interest-based nervous system — it’s genuinely difficult for them to do things that they aren’t interested in. And the impulsive buying of shiny objects is pretty typical, too — just ask my husband.
It might help to read one of the general interest books on ADHD like “Driven To Distraction.” Since you’re insanely busy, you may be able to get the audiobook version from the library and listen to it during your commute or while exercising. It might give you some ideas and new coping strategies.
ETA: Even if she can’t or won’t get help, I really think that researching strategies for dealing with ADHD people will lower your stress level.
WereBear
The connection between cowpox and smallpox lives on in the phrase “milkmaid’s complexion.” They were unscarred since they caught cowpox; and then didn’t catch smallpox.
Mart
@Felonius Monk: I have migrated to cast iron. Teflon never lasted more than a year before going to shit, maybe got five years out of ceramic. Cast iron lasts a lifetime. Caring for cast iron is a bit of a PITA, but when seasoned, it is as non sticky as it gets.
Anne Laurie
@Suzanne: Given what you’ve said about your mom in the past, she’s probably physically incapable of organizational planning more than two, sometimes three, steps at a time. (It’s tragically common with ADD as well as OCD people — one reason those of us with OCD turn into hoarders is that we really can’t keep in mind whether we’ve actually bought enough supplies or done those essential little tasks like turning off the lights or locking the doors.) If you investigate (in your vast amount of spare time /sarcasm) there are ways of dealing with this by breaking projects like ‘doing the laundry’ into manageable chunks. I personally don’t ‘do laundry’; I sort out / pretreat my dirty clothes; fill the hamper(s); get the hampers from the bedroom to the laundry room in the basement; get the clothes into the washer & the washer running; switch the finished load into the dryer; get the dry clothes out of the dryer, into the hamper; get the hamper back up to the bedroom… “normal” people can treat this as one big project, but I need to break it down into seperate projects or it just doesn’t get finished.
Also, some people with ADD (my Spousal Unit, for instance) cannot live in the same house with ‘decorative baskets’ or even ‘flat surfaces’. While your mom is living with you, you may have to settle for ‘decorative display cases’ and ‘dining tables that get cleared off at the end of every week, no matter *how* important the project or the other stuff you’d rather be doing’. Or just confine the Forbidden Clutter Temptations to areas (your bedroom, say) that your mom can’t wander past & mess up.
If it helps, the gene set that glitches out and produces non-neurotypicals who fail Laundry and Clutter seem to be the same gene set responsible for the kind of spatial-orientation excellence that makes good engineers and… architects. Not kidding!
Villago Delenda Est
Bobby and Bobby are both fucktards.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
When he was at his most prolific, I pretty much gobbled up everything he wrote (that I was aware of). Will be interesting to go back and reread him.
Ksmiami
@PK: I’ll join!!! sign me up but let’s take their Advil and military bases first
Dave
@Mary G: It’s not futile. I’m actually somewhat optimistic hopeful that this turns into the beginning of reawakened civic engagement and is the high water mark for many of the ugly trends we’ve seen. Obviously I’m not totally complacent about this but I think odds actually favor improvement over the mid and long term. And we really need it because there are huge challenges and opportunities on the horizon.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
My niece and nephew have a father who’s over 40 and an uncle on their mother’s side with Asperger’s, so their diagnosis was pretty much the least surprising one ever.
My niece just turned 17 and is saying she wants to become a special ed teacher specializing in deaf students and ASL. It took me a minute, but that actually makes sense for someone with ASD, because ASL is a very expressive language, so it might reduce the number of potential miscommunications that can happen by not correctly interpreting someone’s body language.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
That would explain why every time I go to the grocery store I think I need to buy vanilla extract just in case and usually end up finding myself with a dozen or so bottles on hand.
My late father was that way with pimientos, of all things. Vanilla seems, at least, somewhat more useful.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
What’s a “flat surface”?
Dave
@Mnemosyne: Regarding hyper-focus it’s probably the hardest thing for people that don’t have it to grok. I can easily lose entire days in certain activities if I’m not extremely careful and this is usually to the detriment of my functioning (it also creates huge amounts of anxiety not helped by PTSD) and this is the part people have trouble with. They think but you can read a book all day for several days, or online, or play a game, or run and assume laziness lack of willpower for why I don’t get bills paid or registered in time which causes me huge angst. It’s frustrating and something public education hasn’t really done much for yet. Even I’m still uncomfortable with it because it sounds like excuse making.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
When I filled out my screening form as part of the initial ADHD diagnosis, I made it very clear that I had a completely rational fear that I might have accidentally left the stove or the iron on, because I’d done it before. They told me that true OCD-related checking is usually based in an irrational fear, and it’s common for adults with ADHD to be misdiagnosed because their completely rational rechecks of themselves look crazy to people who don’t have ADHD.
And then there are the oh-so-lucky people who have OCD that is comorbid with ADHD…
amk
rich peeps+mikes = a bad combo.
Gvg
@Felonius Monk: Teflon fumes if the pot is left unattended just a bit, kill birds. I am a busy can’t sit still cook and have over cooked a few which makes them unusable for food after. I got rid of mine and switched to high quality stainless steel coating with rubber handles. I find they clean up just as well for me.
Mnemosyne
@Dave:
Honestly, my smartphone is the best tool EVER for dealing with stuff like bill payments. I’ll still forget things sometimes even with reminders, but I can set up calendar alerts that will remind me every month forever.
And online bill pay has saved my ass more times than I’d like to admit.
Worst question ever for someone with ADHD: “Why can’t you just concentrate harder and do it?” UGH!
efgoldman
@Suzanne:
Here you go.
Just One More Canuck
@Pogonip: That’s awesome – I’m sure your mom must have been proud
Dave
@Mnemosyne: I’ve automated almost all. Smart phone is double edged for me though too easy to lose time on. I resisted getting one until this year.
Percysowner
@Anne Laurie:
Sabin Oral Sunday! My entire family went and stood in line one of the weeks they were doing that and all got out vaccine. I’m pretty sure I got the Salk vaccine before that as well. In the 50s they didn’t fool around with Polio.
I too am vaccinated against smallpox. At least we wiped that out before the anti-vaxxers got so vocal.
Funny think is a year ago my daughter got married and invited some kids to her wedding, so a month before I went to my Doctor and got boosters on every vaccine there is. I didn’t want to risk anyone’s health by not being protected. I’m good for another 10 years.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
As someone in that category, I’ve been told it’s hard even for experts to separate the two disorders sometimes. From the inside, I’ll say there’s a fine-yet-perceptible distinction between ‘totally rational if-aggravating-for-normal-associates fear that I may have left the stove on, again‘ and ‘irrational fear that if I don’t check the stove x number of times, I haven’t really checked at all.’
gene108
@celticdragonchick:
If it was not vaccines, anti-vacxers would have found something else to fall for.
They are utterly irrational, with regards to this topic.
Maybe they would have gone towards faith healing or something else.
They just have a need to disbelieve experts and evidence and a cause to channel that into.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: Chemtrails!
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Like saying to someone who is anorectic/bulimic “But this hamburger is delicious, HERE HAVE A BITE.”
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: Pimiento cheese for days?
gene108
@Villago Delenda Est:
Pizzagate and John Podesta’s “Pool Party”*
A Ghost to Most
@Anne Laurie:
Yep. I made a 42+ year career as a techie, and never even considered going into mgmt. I would have really sucked at it. I worked with several people who were the same way
Watching my son work through this has been great, but a lot of painful memories as well.
Lizzy L
@efgoldman: The Salk vaccine Field Trial was in 1954. I was part of it. The folks who set it up came to our school and told all the parents what they were doing, and why. Parents had the right to pull their kids out of it, but no one in my class was pulled. We all knew someone with polio — the boy who lived next door to me had polio, and came to school in a wheelchair. We had all been through the summer scares. We were PROUD to be part of the field trial. We kids lined up to get our shots, and then 6-8 months later we lined up again, since the first shot might have been water, no one ever knew whether they got the real thing or not. The Sabin sugar cubes came later, in the 1960s.
One of my classmates in 2nd grade died from measles encephalitis. I have a few pock marks from chicken pox. I can still locate the site of my smallpox vaccination. I had mumps, too. Both my parents, as they aged, had shingles, and you can bet I’ve had the shingles vaccine.
I am sympathetic to those people who deeply, genuinely believe that their kid is autistic because she or he received a vaccine — I know an otherwise sane woman whose son is severely autistic, and she believes this. But I have NO fucks to give when the professional anti-vaxxers show up.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Spawn the Elder was diagnosed with ADHD last year, and she is doing SO MUCH BETTER since starting Ritalin last year. Oddly, when we had her tested, she tested as totally typical, within normal ranges, but the psychiatrist said that the testing is not always accurate, and gave her the diagnosis anyway.
I don’t know if I could ever convince my mother to get tested. She doesn’t distrust mental health care, exactly…..after all, I committed her against her will to a County institution after she said to me and a cop that she was going to kill herself. At the time, she was not happy with me. Now she recognizes that she needed “a reset”, as she calls it. And her mother was both legitimately mentally ill (institutionalized multiple times) and one of those prescription-drug-abusing Angry Moms of that generation. But she also has that Protestant work ethic and pride that keeps her from admitting she needs help until everything is on the brink of disaster.
And I will readily admit that I am probably not easy to live with. I am very particular. I like order and calm and I am an introvert, so my home is very important to me. I get very frustrated when I am cramped and crowded, and as a clutter bug, she sees an empty space and fills it with MORE STUFF. She sees a flat surface and thinks a THING needs to go on it. She will nudge me aside to get by or reach over me when I’m at the counter to get into a cabinet, rather than ask me to pardon her to get by. And I will admit that I am not interested in adapting. This is my house, and she lives here, and she needs to adapt. Not me.
J R in WV
@WereBear:
As adults in our 30s we kept a milk cow, who got cowpox not long after coming fresh. Then I got some “pox” places on my forearms, which got against her udder while working with her. So my big old smallpox vaccination when I was a little boy in the early 1950s had given up the ghost by the 1980s.
I remember getting polio shots at the family business, they had nurses in for all the employees AND all their families in the mid 1950s. My brother was about 2, and it took three big pressmen and mom and dad to hold him still for the nurse to do her thing. Then I got more shots at school a week or two later.
Then we all had Sabin vaccine on the sugar cubes as a family outing to another school out the road. So I got vaccinated for polio repeatedly. Probably again in the Navy boot camp shot row. Dawg only knows what all those shots were for…
I’ve never minded needles, they don’t hurt that much… but the jet injections with no needle, more like a knife wound than an injection with a needle. Uck. Bloody mess on most guys arms.
Anne Laurie
@Suzanne:
Family history, quite probably. As with many other disorders, ‘just a phase’ is taken much more seriously when the patient’s got relatives who’ve been diagnosed with more severe manifestations. Especially since so many disorders get worse if they’re not treated early, before the body/mind are permanently compromised. So, yay you for not letting it slide!
SWMBO
@SiubhanDuinne: I believe that someone one this blog is prone to buying mustard. More than once.
joel hanes
@Gin & Tonic:
Beat the Reaper
Yes, I remember.
“According to my official prosthesis, this man has …
the plague.”
SWMBO
As I’ve said before, I have an adult son with autism. I can sympathize with those who think that vaccines cause autism. My kids had more intense reactions to vaccines. Fever and headaches and so on. The allergist and I discussed many probable causes. Hereditary, vaccines could be a trip switch, and possibly poison. We grew up in an era with DDT (causing soft egg shells, birth defects and other noticeable side effects). We have pesticides, herbicides and other cides permeating food, water and entire ecosystems. Flint anyone? We grew up with lead paint too. It may not be one thing that caused a gradual breakdown in biology. And the overall result is just a compilation of bad shit adding up. It is what it is.
Suzanne
@Anne Laurie: Not really based on family history. Spawn is the typical really smart student with no focus, and her teachers repeatedly told us that she was one of the smartest and funniest kids in her class, but her grades never reflected it. And she was clumsy as hell. I never thought she had ADHD because she always had the ability to focus on things she was interested in, though. The psychiatrist was absolutely convinced that she has ADHD after Spawn spilled her drink in the psych’s office. Apparently the clumsiness was the big tell.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I did a half-day of testing and the psychologist showed me the ADHD “tell” on my IQ test: I tested above average in all of the sections except memory, where I was average. Normally, if you have a high IQ, it’s high across the board, so if there’s a marked deficiency in one area, that can point to some kind of learning disability.
And, as I think AL mentioned, ADHD has a very strong genetic component, so that would be another reason to suspect your mom might have it. Even if you don’t think she would seek treatment, the kind of strategies they tell you to use for your ADHD kid would also work on your mom.
PK
@XTPD:
No he did not die. Luckily it was caught in time. Apparently you have to catch it within 24 hours and give some kind of antitoxin which is what happened with him. This was around 30 years ago. The mom used to believe in only homeopathic treatment.
Jeffro
@No Drought No More:
Yeah, but single-issue voters (or public figures) can always be bought or otherwise betray their “sensible ways”
I think this is part of how Cambridge Analytica wormed its way into enough hearts to tip the election…that and fraudulent rural votes from occasional voters that never actually showed up…
Jeffro
I’m trying to think of how “single-issue voter = easy to manipulate” can be shrunk to a bumper-sticker comment…
J R in WV
Well, it’s late, and all. But this is an important subject, so I’m going to go with it. Robert F Kennedy, Jr. I was a freshman in college when Bobby Kennedy was shot after winning the California primary. History turned on that shooting in the kitchen of the hotel where he spoke.
It is a shame that RFK Jr is no Bobby Kennedy. For he betrays his father’s legacy by denying the truth of vaccinations saving millions of lives every year. A shame. I have relatives with various spectrum issues, including my wife, who is ADHD and bi-polar. We both sign up for every vaccination that we learn might help us.
I did a DTP (diptheria, tetanus, pertussus, right?) and a pneumonia whatever-13 and a shingles last year, all at once, had no side effects, no sore arm, or butt. Health Department, very professional. I do wonder how they would handle a real outbreak, but their facility was top notch. Largest county in the state.
My local health dept is in an old small house next to the court house. When there was a flu scare a couple of years ago, they were set up at the high school, and ran an assembly line. Sit and wait, do the paperwork, sit back down, get up get your shot(s) and finally hit the road.
So I guess that’s how all the counties would be handling a major outbreak with the whole population to inoculate. In schools, churches, anywhere with sanitary facilities, fridges, that nurses could set up. Shame RFK Jr isn’t working to make that a better process, develop additional important vaccines, like Jimmy Carter and Bil Gates are working on.
Jimmy Carter may have eliminated more human misery by fighting the guinea worm than any other living human being! So anyone who wants to put him down can take it up the with millions of people who won’t suffer horrible agony.
The Lodger
@Anne Laurie: That would be a great smart home device: something to turn off the stove remotely. (I don’t know how you’d do it for gas stoves though.)
No One You Know
@A Ghost to Most: Congratulations!
Aspie, myself. And I want to shake people who say that either Aspergers or autism is “tragedy”–what they really mean is that it’s inconvenient to have someone not exactly like themselves. Stifling myself, now, so I don’t go on a soapbox…
Seeing the movie Hidden Figures got me to thinking more about that.
Notwithstanding all that, congrats to you and kid, both.
John
Somebody probably already said this, but you can’t “prove” that a vaccine or any other drug or substance (including foods) are “safe”. There is no absolute proof in science, and the fact that they are asking for proof suggests that they don’t even understand basic science and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
The fact of the matter is that the epidemiologic data suggest that vaccines are extraordinarily safe. Does that mean that they won’t harm a tiny percentage of the population? No…but almost anything that can be taken inside the body has the potential to harm someone. Nut allergies or bee stings, anyone? That cheeseburger you ate? The traces of pesticides on your fruit?