You should’ve starved these babies is quite a line to be going out with. https://t.co/6rpCbHJtU9
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) May 12, 2022
Only the ‘illegal’ brown ones, of course! The one that are in the government’s custody, because pro-life!, I guess…
— Congressman Troy Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) May 12, 2022
Today’s GOP Death Cult talking point, promoted by the Washington Examiner, sparked by a GOP rep in — you guessed it — Florida. Always remember: For the GOP, the cruelty is the point.
"We're going to import more" baby formula, @PressSec Jen Psaki says. White House is seeing "people hoarding because they're fearful — that is one element of it — and people hoarding because they are trying to profit off of fearful parents."
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) May 12, 2022
Pretty good explainer, set in — surprise! — Texas:
Across the U.S., parents say they are rationing food for their babies as they search for more formula. Some are driving hours, only to find empty shelves. Online, private sellers are gouging prices, marketing cans for double or triple their normal price. https://t.co/V5d68nEqbR
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 12, 2022
Abbott (no relation) Labs had to shut down their Michigan factory because it was the source of a bacterial outbreak that sickened a bunch of newborns and killed at least two. The company chose to put its pandemic profits into stock buybacks, rather than replacing worn-out equipment.
A fwiw #Cronobacter bacteria can cause severe, life-threatening infections (#sepsis) meningitis (inflammation of membranes that protect??/spine)… infections rare but high risk for #newborns
— Hope E Ransom (HopeERinFL) (@SoulFlyTry) May 12, 2022
Democratic solutions versus GOP ‘solutions’:
We discussed tariff relief, initiating new and immediate imports, and the possibility of using the DPA.
Quick action is needed, and the White House must take decisive action.
In the longer term, I am pursuing legislation to ensure we do not ever face this challenge again. 2/2
— Rep. Abigail Spanberger (@RepSpanberger) May 12, 2022
It should not be said at all. Why is one three month old child worth more or less than another? Not what Jesus taught so pretty sure He is appalled by your statement.
— Bob Royce?? (@BobR1951) May 12, 2022
Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)
Baud
Let them eat breast milk!
Alison Rose ???
Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…so we can starve them into oblivion. MURICA!!!!
Fuck Abbott.
JPL
Infants in American custody get fed in our country. That’s not always true in MAGA world. Since there are more than 3 million infants born in the USA, how many on the border are being fed. Maybe they want you to show your ID while shopping at Target.
who knows
Let em die is not a winning strategy imo.
Spanky
@Baud: I think this whole shortage has been staged to get wimmins back in the kitchen, barefoot and
pregnantnursing.JPL
@Spanky: It isn’t. Abbott knew there was a problem in 2019 and did nothing. It was more important to give stock holders a bonus by buying back 6 billion in stock. Abbott produces 40 percent of formula in the country including one for infants that can’t digest others
I really think they need to be burnt to the ground.
At this point the news media is causing parents to hoard.
JWR
Wow. From over at Digby’s place:
JPL
@JWR: Didn’t we all hatch from eggs, only to be abandoned?
Baud
@JWR:
That’s not new. They’ve been comparing abortion to environmental protection of endangered animal eggs for decades.
Baud
@JPL:
That’s a deep thought.
Scout211
Washington Examiner:
What a sexist load of crap. All the other linked articles talk about parents, but the Examiner apparently only sees mothers as tending to the babies . . . and shopping for formula.
Kay
@JPL:
Food Safety News has the scoop.
Not since 2019. Since 2012.
ant
I’m an OTR truck driver, and a while back, I picked up a load of formula from that outfit in MI.
There was some weird requirements there (fuel levels iirc) in order to be eligible to pick up the load, and reason why was because the product was so valuable at the retail level.
I cannot remember how many millions, but I DO remember $70 per pound.
This baby formula situation is a failure of our capitalist system of epic proportions, and this was true before the dead babies, the shortage, and now the shameful scapegoating of helpless immigrant babies.
this story makes my blood boil.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: Maybe Baud.
dc
Why isn’t it against the law to price gouge with a product like this?
JPL
@Kay: Maybe someday there will be a book on home many died because of Reagan’s policies. Let them regulate themselves.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Do you have some articles about the stock buyback? The FTF NY Times did not mention that, at all.
Spanky
@dc: Because capitalism is king.
@Kay: Thanks for the link!
Kay
@JPL:
Its hard to be a whistleblower
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Remember: In MAGA land, life begins when the parents are introduced, and ends with the child’s birth
JPL
@Elizabelle: I think it was in the Post, but I’ll try to find it
google led to this one
Abbott Laboratories Gets OK for Added $3 Billion of Stock Buybacks – TheStreet
Kay
@Spanky:
I knew there would be a long paper trail of noncompliance. Might have been cheaper to modernize the plant, huh?
JWR
@Baud: Okay, so he’s just rerunning an old bit. I’ve probably heard the egg bit before and was just feeling overwhelmed by the Stupid today. I also listened to Cruz the Ooze over at Digby’s place. (Did you guys know that leftists are “pretty ignorant” about how this abortion prohibition thing works?)
trollhattan
@Baud: I want to abort the eggs of all mosquitoes, slugs, starlings, rats, don’t get me started.
JPL
@Kay: No kidding. Abbott should never be allowed to produce formula for infants again, never mind specific formula for infants with special dietary needs.
Kay
She’s a woman so no one listened to her.
Origuy
I haven’t seen this mentioned here.
dmsilev
I’m sure Rep. Nehls has A Modest Proposal for how to deal with those infants.
NotMax
@JWR
That’s the new mendacious messaging being expounded re: Roe. “Nothing the see here, move on. The SCOTUS decision as outlined in the draft will not affect anything.”
Ancient Atheist
In a time, long, long ago before “baby food”. How did they survive?
Spanky
Whenever I read someone blaming Abbott for the shortage, I assumed the Texas governor. I’m mildly annoyed to find that this is not the case.
Mustang Bobby
So instead of “all life is sacred,” it’s “all white Murican life is sacred.” Gotcha.
Kay
@Spanky:
I love the absolute wacky thinking that blames Joe Biden for the baby formula shortage rather than the company that makes the formula. Not even an effort to look at the company.
Can all companies do this now? They probably all will, right?
Anne Laurie
Many of them didn’t! Especially the ones with rare allergies and special nutritional needs, who are most at risk from these spot shortages!
(Fifty-plus years ago, when my youngest sibs came home after first five weeks in an incubator, Similac was a ‘new’ blessing. My mother was a champion breast-feeder — she was feeding their triplet sister — but the boys were still too small & weak to nurse properly, or to absorb enough nutrition from breast milk.)
NotMax
@Ancient Atheist
Wet nurses* and preparing the mashed goo at home.
*TV pitch which never made it to the pilot stage: “Have Mammaries, Will Travel.”
eddie blake
@Kay: the gop will. they already are.
Leto
@Ancient Atheist: you’re “ancient”. You fucking tell us.
debbie
@Ancient Atheist:
The mothers chewed the food, then fed it to the babies. That work for you?
JPL
@debbie: I don’t have the numbers, but I would be willing to bet that most infants didn’t survive. What an asshole to believe this shit.
JPL
@Ancient Atheist: They didn’t .
satby
@Ancient Atheist: There’s a 1960 recipe for baby formula being shared on Twitter and it’s pretty accurate. The base is evaporated milk (because it’s been canned, so high heat processed) with boiled (and cooled) water added, some Karo syrup for taste. Or people would use boiled and cooled cow or goat milk.
Josie
@satby: That’s what I gave my first son, born in 1976. He thrived on it, but some babies are allergic and need special formulas. Goat’s milk was an answer for some.
prostratedragon
@satby: I was on goat’s milk for a few months in the early 50s. Had been in some trouble before then, as neither breast nor cow milk was doing the job. But things did get better.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Probably accounts for the whole pantless thing.
Brachiator
I have not been online much and don’t quite understand why there is an infant formula shortage at all. Still it is not surprising and entirely typical that some GOP asswipe would try to turn this into an Us vs Them thing. The notion that children under the care and protection of the government should be denied food is beyond disgusting.
But this is not just a Republican thing. There is something about the mindset of some conservatives that leads them to disdain the people “below” them. In the UK, Conservative Party MP Lee Anderson stood up in Parliament and suggested that the poor might not be in so much need of food banks if they had lessons in cooking and budgeting. He noted with pride that enrolling in these classes is a condition of getting food packets at a food bank in his constituency.
Another MP made the obvious point that it was a shame that food banks should even be necessary, but the Tories just see undeserving wretches looking for a handout and wasting what little is given to them.
columbusqueen
Republican men make pond scum look wonderful. May a new strain of covid wipe them all out.
satby
Most infants who survived birth died from infection and communicable disease, because back then most women did nurse. Those who didn’t fed boiled milk (of whatever animal). My own dad in the early 1930s almost died because someone fed him raw milk, which they still commonly drink on farms, instead of the boiled milk; and he got deathly ill. My uncle told me the story of how my dad was so wasted away they carried him on a pillow and assumed he wouldn’t make it. They found someone to wet nurse him, and he (obviously) survived.
Starfish
@Ancient Atheist: They had wet nurses. My grandmother had 9 children. My mom was nursed by a woman who had lost her own child.
Starfish
@Kay: Jen Psaki did one of those things where she looks like an out of touch rich white lady today. She was dismissively telling folks to call their pediatricians if they had concerns.
Starfish
@Brachiator: The special formula for infants with allergies is made by one or two companies. One of these companies, Abbott, has had its factory shut down because they are running a germ factory that has already killed a couple of babies and made others sick.
That is leaving shelves bare when it comes to the special formula for kids that have food allergies, under developed GI systems, etc.
Brachiator
@Starfish:
Thanks very much for the background on this.
Ladyracterinok
@satby:
As I recall from things I heard as a kid it was pretty common to use canned milk.
debbie
@Starfish:
Also, Abbott chose to focus on stock buybacks rather than purchasing new equipment and getting reopened quickly.
TheflipPsyd
Our wonderful media continues to inform. Every news story I heard today, including MSNBC, framed the situation implying the FDA was the problem. Kept hearing, ‘If the FDA allows the factory to open” it will take two weeks to get it up and running and six weeks for formula to get on shelves. lt should be framed as if the company has fixed the problems and can make formula that won’t make infants sick or kill them. I had to use alimentun, which is the allergy formula for one of my children, it was the most expensive formula back then and was the only formula my son could have without being in great discomfort.
Gretchen
@Starfish: what should she have told them? Sure, some people don’t have a private doc, but many docs have samples available.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Ancient Atheist: some did not survive. My great grandmother died at 18 after giving birth to her second child. The baby died two month later from infant malaise ie; failure to thrive\ malnutrition. Probably fed a mix of canned milk,sugar water and goats milk when they could get it. Not all women can or want to breastfeed. Not all babies thrive on breast milk. Some mothers and fathers adopt their babies. Before there was formula there were still substitutes for breast milk. Going back for centuties.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@TheflipPsyd: my new grand daughter has a cow’s milk allergy. She’s on Nutrmigen. It has been extremely hard to find…
Capri
My father, who was born in Ukraine in 1920, was given potato water to supplementwhat his mother produced. She developed a post-partum uterine infection and almost died, so wasn’t producing much milk.
TheflipPsyd
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I hope there’s some pressure to expedite getting it on the shelves. My son ended up with just a peanut allergy after all the infant and toddler troubles. Hopefully, your granddaughter will grow out of the allergy. That’s a tough one with our food supplies — milk is in so many things and often seems like it shouldn’t need to be in certain things
Mai Naem mobile
I am just wondering if there’s a severe shortage or is this just the RW just hyping a shortage? I know this isn’t the same thing but there was a thread on NextDoor earlier this year that came across as GOP astroturfing about how grocery shelves were empty. I don’t do a ton of grocery shopping but the stores I shop at were ok. There were a few items missing but nothing awful. I sure as heck didn’t see empty shelves.
RaflW
I know, I know: abortion.
But I just cannot fathom how things from Abbott (and at least one R member of Congress) like this don’t open a fracture with, say, Catholics. And maybe that type of crackup is coming, but will take longer than my impatient mind can grasp. But it should be making real waves. It’s just grotesque.
Anne Laurie
From what I can find, there’s spot shortages in some areas / at particular retailers… and *also* there’s genuine, specific shortages of ‘niche’ formulas for babies with special needs.
Parents whose infants depend on those specialized formulas are predictably going a little crazy (not as if they didn’t have enough to worry about already). News media looking for clicks are hyping OMG BARE SHELVES UR BABY WILL STAAAARVE!!!, because it’s profitable for them. Opportunists are buying up as much formula as they can to re-sell for double or triple what they paid, which increases the spot shortages while providing further ‘proof’ that every newborn’s parent should panic, right this minute.
This is for a product with a ‘base’ price of around $100 a pound, so even a slight percentage increase in cost has a real influence on a parent’s budget.
It’s the end-stage-capitalism version of the Perfect Storm!
Dopey-o
Most infants didn’t survive. A large proportion of children died before age 5. Hence the need for large families in under-developed regions.
DIY Social Security, said an old girlfriend who worked on nutrition issues in Africa.
Suzanne
@Anne Laurie: So with Spawn the Youngest, I gained a lot of water weight in my last trimester. A lot. Like, I had been slowly and steadily gaining weight, one pound every appointment…..and then all of a sudden, I shot up ten pounds. All water. Had to have additional scans because I had almost too much amniotic fluid, and I actually fell and racked up my knee a couple of weeks before she was born because I was so off-balance. Had to remove my rings, horrible swelling in feet, the whole deal. Anyway, after she was born and I lost the weight, the water weight didn’t all go away. And I was having a lot of pain in my right hand, and it was weirdly, like, half-numb. My OB sent me to a hand doc, who did a bunch of tests and was about to do surgery. I was wearing a wrist brace all the time, which sucked. Then he asked me if I was still nursing, and I said yes. He said that nursing promotes fluid retention, and that he thought from looking at my arms and hands that I still had edema and that it was compressing the nerve in my arm to my hand. He actually advised that I stop nursing. So I did, and he was right. I now weigh ten pounds less than I did when I got pregnant, and my hands are actually still slightly more swollen and I had my rings resized. But no more carpal tunnel pain, for the most part.
I am so sick of the guilt-tripping on moms for not nursing. It is a really big demand. It doesn’t always work out, and I don’t know if everyone realizes just how much of a physical demand it is. It’s brutal. And I can fuckin’ make so much milk that I literally sprayed it like a lawn sprinkler.
Original Lee
@Ancient Atheist: They died if the parents couldn’t find a wet nurse.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@TheflipPsyd: thank you. I hope she out grows it but as my daughter has the same issue I don’t know if she will
i am hoping as her digestive system matures she will be able to tolerate solids like rice or oat baby cereal a bit younger than the normal recommendations so as to have an additional source of calories.