Anti-Vaxx isn’t just for measles:
A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.
Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.
Here’s the interesting / terrible thing about polio: everyone focuses on the aftermath (paralysis), but acute polio is often an extreme medical emergency. Before vaccines, rural states would have special polio hospitals where sick kids would be transported because the local hospitals didn’t have the facilities or expertise to basically run a pediatric ICU. Here’s a 7 minute film about the West River Crippled Children’s Hospital and Polio Center, Hot Springs, SD if you’d like to be transported to a time where polio vaccine didn’t exist.
Because we’ve essentially eradicated polio, we also aren’t sure about the longevity of the immunity provided by polio vaccination. So imagine a disease as serious, or more serious, as COVID in its acute phase, unleashed on a population that may or may not have herd immunity.
Oh, also, looks like Kash Patel is going to make it through his confirmation hearings. It’s becoming ever more clear that the reason the Gaetz nom tanked had little to do with principle, and a lot to do with a bunch of Republican Senators hating Matt Gaetz.
Hegseth is probably the one question mark, considering that the hits just keep on coming for that dude, including his view that out gay military personnel are part of the Marxist agenda.
Omnes Omnibus
It’s a 53-47 Senate. Of course a bunch of assholes are going to get through.
Old Man Shadow
Time to invest in the stock of any company that still makes iron lungs.
sab
I am seventy years old and apparently the last generation of those who experienced the usual childhood illnesses that we all got and that killed some of us. I had measles. I had full blown mumps and I hate orange juice and strawberries to this day (misplaced comfort food from my mom.) I still have scars from chicken pox.
I never had polio but classmates had older siblings who did. The lucky ones who survived are still battling with the late term aftermath. My husband has classmates who did. When you claw your way back to health you have a normal life until old age when things slide downhill faster than is normal. Witness Senator McConnell.
badpenny1967
I’m going to make a very bold prediction (not really): Hegseth gets 100% support from Republicans and nabs at least 1-2 Democrats (I’m looking at you, Fettermen).
twbrandt
At a recent church officers retreat, one man in his 70s told us his father was a doctor at the University of Michigan medical center. The hospital had a unit for children in iron lungs, just like the one m2 describes above. When the man was young, his father would take him and his brothers and sisters to talk to the kids in iron lungs so they had someone to talk to besides the staff, and who were their own age. It was an incredibly sad story.
Harrison Wesley
@sab: I wonder if Turtle will have anything to say about this. Neil Young probably will.
different-church-lady
Hey America: vote for idiots, win idiot diseases!
different-church-lady
@Harrison Wesley: As I said on an earlier thread: The Turtle doesn’t have a soul.
sab
@sab: I had friends whose siblings used walkers and had leg braces from polio.
RFK Jr is an attention hog who wants to be as famous as his father without doing the work. I hope he is the first spectacular death in the next pandemic when he has broken our longstanding healthcare response.
different-church-lady
@sab:
We killed all the banking regulations about 70 years after the Great Depression, and we got 2008 as a result. The takeaway is that once living memory of a calamity dies everyone thinks the safety nets and guardrails are stupid.
different-church-lady
@sab: The fuckin’ brain worm didn’t kill him, so I’m resigned to it being just him and the cockroaches at the end.
prostratedragon
@sab: Kennedy is our age (1952 here), and should have some of the same memories we do. I had friends who had polio, lost a couple of classmates to meningitis and TB, and was nearly done in myself by measles. This is some evil stuff we have here.
narya
@sab: I’m four years younger than you are. I had chicken pox, rubella, and mumps, but am juuuust enough younger that polio vaccination had taken hold.
narya
@sab: preferably BEFORE he breaks it . . .
sab
@different-church-lady: Neil Young. Joni Mitchell. Itzak Perlman. Lots of polio survivors who have struggled since. Joni Mitchell plays weird chords and tuning because it is easier for her.
different-church-lady
@sab: ”Meh. They’re old.”
Old School
I see the complaint is that proper clinical trials weren’t conducted on the polio vaccine. That’s why they think it should be pulled.
prostratedragon
@narya: I well remember my folks and other nearby adults practically doing the joy dance when the Salk vaccine became widely available.
Harrison Wesley
Why bother with vaccination when you can have a healthy cold bear cub and raw milk soup?
cmorenc
Among the longer-range (or maybe not-so-long range) effects of Trump II is how the events around January 6, 2020 get presented in future history books – specifically those approved for use in high schools and colleges, especially in places like Texas. Will the rioters be written up as heroes up there with the brave continentals who stood up to the Brits in Lexington and Concord?
sab
@Harrison Wesley: Your bear cub might be killed by a car driven by a sociopath
ETA On the other hand, Mama bears don’t/can’t vote so who cares?
kitfoxer
As a Rotarian, I am incensed that these idiots are pushing withdrawal of the vaccine. Rotary has spent decades trying to eradicate polio through worldwide vaccination efforts and these assholes want to let it come back!?
Harrison Wesley
@sab: Hot ‘n tender, right off the fender.
sab
@Harrison Wesley: Don’t drive (badly) if you have a plane to catch. Waste of a bear cub.
satby
@different-church-lady: And Nazis are making a comeback pretty much right on schedule too (80 years). We refuse to learn from history.
khead
The last guy living in an iron lung from polio died earlier THIS YEAR. Back in March.
Who manufactures iron lungs these days?
Jeffg166
I guess parents will have to take their kids to Canada or Mexico to get vaccinated.
Josie
My best friend in third grade died from measles. These people are a deadly combination of evil and stupid.
TBone
Polio is personal to me. Beloved grandmother was saved in an iron lung, and had an under-armpit scar from some kind of invasive tube placement (possibly lung drainage, I dunno). As a result, she could only swim sidestroke, which she taught me. Many lovely childhood days memories of swimming facing each other in Tripp Lake.
Nurse Kenny went through some shit for her unorthodox at the time methods of treating polio. I salute her and also Rosalind Russell who portrayed her in a classic movie about her life (highly recommend).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Kenny
Womens’ work!
I can’t say more today about these developments or I might spontaneously combust.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Kenny
Rosalind Russell was no stranger to pain herself and did so much to promote feminism.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
My mentor had polio as a child in Germany in the 1930s. He came out of it with a hunchback, a club foot and one leg shorter than the other. Even though he seldom talked about it I think he had some chronic pain his whole life. In spite of this he became one of the preeminent bookbinders and calligraphers of the 20th Century (http://www.germandesigners.net/designers/fritz_eberhardt is a good place to start if you’re interested). So whenever I hear this sort of shit I get…irked. I hope I never meet any of these people face to face.
khead
@different-church-lady:
My old-school, small-town, banker father is certainly spinning in his grave from the mere mention of messing with the FDIC. He had a front row seat for the Keystone Bank collapse in southern WV back in 1999. Dad was already freaked out when Citi and Travelers merged to form Citigroup back in the early 90’s and he knew what was eventually coming with the banks. Only took 15 years.
Steve LaBonne
At least eggs are getting cheap again oh wait.
TBone
@Subcommandante Yakbreath: hugs and thanks for sharing a survivor’s story.
Josie
@Josie: This information about Kennedy and his advisor should be in big headlines of every major news source. Our media continues to fail us.
Quiltingfool
@sab: I knew a woman who had polio as a child; it affected the mobility of one of her legs. She recovered the mobility (she walked around just fine when I knew her).
Anyway, she told me that there were no doctors left who had treated polio patients; new doctors had never seen the disease! More interesting was that if you had polio eventually you would experience the weakness from it when you aged. She referred to that phenomenon as a ticking time bomb. She was starting to experience weakness in the leg affected by polio, and she thought that eventually she would lose functionality in that leg.
McConnell may be experiencing the same thing.
David Collier-Brown
@Jeffg166: seek advice from your own doctor, but in principle
Kay
My daughter thinks the first real harm we’ll see from anti vaxx belief in media/MAGAS is pertussis – whooping cough. They’re already seeing a ton more of it in unvaxxed kids and vulnerable people/elderly.
It can kill babies and (very) old people. For adults its just months of horrifying coughing to the extent your ribs break.
different-church-lady
*ZOT!* Here’s the line: “He wants to get rid of everything that keeps you safe and healthy.”
David Collier-Brown
There is a rich tradition of sending your kids to Canada, often to live with relatives or at a school that offers room and board to attendees. A friend was sent from (warm) Hong Kong to (cold) North Bay for high school. Not only did he do well in school, he got really good a driving on snow and ice.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
@TBone: Thanks; I appreciate it. He and his wife Trudi were an immense influence and became good friends.
Kay
I just looked. Cases up 3x compared with 2023.
Isn’t RFK Jr. FUN? Such an exciting maverick! They said, between coughing fits, gasping for air.
rikyrah
These people are so phucking dangerous it makes my blood boil.
My eldest sister is considerably older than I am.
She was born before the measles vaccine.
She nearly died from German measles when she was 5. And was always sickly child even after she recovered.
My mother was a traditionally stoic woman, but, she got visibly upset just recounting, years later, how close my sister came to death…..
My mother never played about me getting my vaccinations.
Chief Oshkosh
This is what Republicans voted for – for a long, long time. As with every facet of life in these United States, the outcomes will work out better for some, worse for others. As we saw with Covid, on balance, they managed to kill more of themselves than others. It’s weak sauce, but I rejoice in that finding. Going forward, on balance, they will impoverish, sicken, and otherwise immiserate more of themselves than they will others. I hope that that is the outcome; I wish it were more accelerated and specific to the guilty. I have nothing but loathing for these people. I actively wish them ill as they have very actively and in reality made my life worse, and the lives of many, many others. Unlike some folks here, I have no guilt about these wishes and feelings, (which is all they are).
Harrison Wesley
@Kay: That’s probably why CVS recommended I get DTAP along with flu and COVID shots.
sab
@Quiltingfool: That is what I thought. I just missed polio, but my husband (three years older) has friends and classmates who survived it. Tickng timebomb it is.
Hildebrand
@Kay: My nephew contracted pertussis before Thanksgiving. He is vaccinated and it still kept him out of school for over a week.
There is a growing number of anti-vaxxers on the west side of Michigan – so this won’t be a rare occurrence.
Quiltingfool
@Old School: At the time the polio vaccine was tested, well, let’s just say there is no way in hell that would be allowed today.
When I taught, I did a unit on infectious diseases (8th graders, so very, very basic). PBS had a video about polio, so we watched it as an intro to the unit. Testing the vaccine was discussed in the program; they tested children in orphanages. I remember stopping the video and explained to my students that would NEVER be acceptable today.
Also, a batch of live virus vaccines was sent to a region in California (huge mixup) and of course, lots of kids got polio from that vaccine batch.
People at the time were terrified their children would get polio. They stood in line for the vaccine. If a very small number of Americans got polio from the vaccine, but millions did not, that was an acceptable risk. It was a better bet than doing nothing.
Americans today have zero clue of how vaccines have changed lives. They have no memory of the trauma childhood disease inflicted on families. My grandparents and my parents knew.
If these vaccines are banned, we’re going to be in a huge world of hurt, far worse than the economy.
TBone
@Subcommandante Yakbreath:
I’m so glad!
Think what we would have lost if not for survivors (FDR)! I wouldn’t be here at all if my grandmother’s dad wasn’t a “wealthy, dapper man” who could afford to get the best medical care for his stepdaughter. He was the owner of Evans Soap Co. and related somehow to the Palmolive empire people before he lost everything in the Depression.
Luck of the draw 🎶 Bonnie
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QiTmgxT1wUU
trollhattan
Try as I might It’s just not funny, these people are retrograde monsters who will take others down with them because of their moronic “beliefs.” Or I suppose more accurately, watch others suffer while they continue living atop their gilded cushions, to which one becomes accustomed.
sab
@Quiltingfool: I have read about grandparents getting polio from their grandchildren’s live vaccine. Nothing against the vaccine. Just do it safely.
If I had to die to keep my granddaughter safe I would do it gladly. I have had a long life. She has not.
rikyrah
The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) posted at 2:07 PM on Thu, Dec 12, 2024:
![]()
Trump Signals Openness to Discredited Claims Linking Vaccines to Autism
In this video, we cover Trump’s recent TIME interview after being named ‘Person of the Year,’ where he signaled openness to debunked claims linking vaccines to autism.
https://t.co/0mMczuapdN
(https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1867300166677795150?t=yi00nTr1NZu84eMobpZ0qg&s=03)
Quiltingfool
My husband’s parents were deaf; his mother was born deaf, but his father became deaf from contracting measles.
His dad was removed from school because he was deaf. He never learned to read or write (his wife taught him how to sign his name) and my husband said his dad didn’t know a thing about basic arithmetic. He worked, though, on the family farm and other menial jobs.
What might his life been like had there been a vaccine and he never had measles? Is that what parents want for their kids, to contract a disease that has life altering consequences?
stinger
What’s likely next, and I’m surprised not to have heard anything about it yet, is the return of cigarette advertising and a ban on smoking bans in public spaces. Freedom, baby! Also, lung cancer and emphysema, baby!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Chief Oshkosh:
Yup, all of that.
Like many others, I had chicken pox and the mumps. I remember vividly why vaccines were so important. The public health messaging was very real when you could look around you and see the tragic health outcomes from things like the measles, polio, etc.
I often say I never thought I’d live to see the day that >insert never thought you’d live to see the day positive thing<. I also never thought I’d live to see the day that, well, all the other bad crap ranging from electing Hair Furor a *second* time, to ignoring a century of health progress, etc., etc.
Kay
@Hildebrand:
The MI increase is sky high – its up by almost 10x. I feel so bad for kids. The adults they’re surrounded by are morons. What happened to common sense?
I got my school age vaccinations IN a public school. They set up a room. I vividly remember the line snaking out to the corridor. We sort of loved it – the shared anxiety then comparing experiences.
Harrison Wesley
If RFK and his crew are in, which is likely, I’m probably out as soon as bird flu gets revved up. 73 yo plus COPD is going to yield suboptimal results. Oh well, shit happens. As America’s greatest philosopher of eschatology summarized, “Eh-de-eh-de-eh-de, dat’s all, folks!”
Kay
@stinger:
RFK Jr saying heroin made him a better student may be the most privileged thing I have ever heard. I loathe him.
The Pale Scot
I Remember iron lungs…….. Bastards! (Sean Bean)
Quiltingfool
@Kay: When I got my Covid and flu vaccinations, I requested the DTAP and measles upgrade. 4 in one day!
I don’t get the anti-vaccine nonsense. Who in their right goddamned mind WANTS to be sick? Worse yet, who in their right goddamned mind are okay with their child suffering needlessly? Really? What the hell is wrong with these simple minded fools…wait, I’ll come in again.
Kay, you said that we are a nation of spoiled brats, and you are spot on. I hope this anti vaccination crap is soundly squashed, if only for the sake of children. They should not be allowed to suffer from the ignorance of adults.
Gin & Tonic
@prostratedragon:
Meningitis is still around. My son, high school class of 2004, had a classmate die of it.
Suzanne
My grandfather’s sister died of diphtheria in the Alaskan epidemic that became the genesis for the Iditarod race. Spawn the Youngest is named for her.
And I think of her every time I get my kids vaccinated against pretty much everything.
Rose Judson
I was unlucky enough to get pertussis in my early 30s. I coughed for three weeks and tore cartilage in my ribcage. I shudder to think what that would do to an infant’s body. (The Child, then a toddler, was vaccinated when I fell ill, thank god.)
Harrison Wesley
@Kay: I never heard that. Truly vile.
delphinium
@Harrison Wesley: @Kay: Just got the Tdap vaccine a couple weeks ago since was overdue for tetanus anyway. And have been encouraging friends & family to make sure they are up to date on their vaccines as well.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
@TBone:
Truth.
hrprogressive
The rich and powerful are fine rolling back as many protections for the plebes as they can because (1) whatever it is won’t affect them, and (2) if it does, they have the resources to address it.
If a bunch of Olds die from preventable diseases, no worries about Social Security!
If a bunch of Youngs die from preventable diseases, no worries about childhood education or anything like that!
This shit is pretty close to passive eugenics, and no, I do not think that’s hyperbole.
Kay
@Quiltingfool:
Well, the spoiled brats are about to get a hard lesson, which is the only way anyone can ever teach spoiled brats. The chicken pox vaccine came out between my first two children and my third. I was thrilled, but then I’m not a fan of needless suffering.
Kristine
I think it was someone here who said that measles immunity could wane over time and that folks should get their measles titer measured.
Welp, I asked my doctor about it, and she ordered it. I did have measles and rubella as a kid, but never had mumps and I honestly don’t recall being vaccinated for it*. Anyway, I’m still showing immunity to measles and rubella, but not for mumps. So I got the booster yesterday along with the Hep A vax.
Next up, Covid booster sometime in March assuming it’s still available.
Many thanks to whoever mentioned titers.
*my mom worked in a hospital at the time. I’m sure I got every vax; I just don’t remember.
Harrison Wesley
@hrprogressive: I see it as the rich versus everyone else. The challenge is in getting everyone else organized to fight back.
catclub
@different-church-lady:
you get polio! and You! get polio.
I guess I got the oral polio vaccine. I never did get a smallpox vaccine.– too young
TBone
@The Pale Scot: thank you, that strangely and somehow made me feel a bit better. Bastidges!
I really want to scream it out today but a nice yute is here doing yard work and I don’t want to frighten him away from coming back next year.
Harrison Wesley
@Kristine: Thanks for the reminder. Hopefully I’ll get an MMR shot this coming week.
TKH
Polio has definitely not been eradicated and if one believes Vincent Raccaniello from “This week in Virology” it never will be. There are countries where wild-type polio still has outbreaks.
Most current cases are vaccine-derived polio cases of type 2 resulting from rearrangement in the genome of the virus that restores virulence to the oral polio vaccine strain. This could only be avoided by giving everyone the injectable form of the vaccine which is way more costly and logistically more difficult.
For those interested what this placebo claim is all about there is an episode of “Beyond the noise” on Microbe TV where Raccaniello interviews Paul Offit.
Steve LaBonne
@Harrison Wesley: FDR was rich. That didn’t protect him from polio.
FDRLincoln
I got my MMR updated (I’m 56) a couple of years ago. Not sure why I did it, just seemed like a good idea.
I’m wondering if it is possible to get a polio update.
Kay
@Rose Judson:
I read an essay once written by a sufferer. She had to eventually go back to work and she wrote about working in an open office with a months-long uncontrolled cough, taking phone calls, how all her co-workers avoided her. Nightmarish. Of course, most people would just get fired.
HeleninEire
When he got elected I started getting every immunization known to man. A few weeks ago I got an MMR which I first got 58 years ago so they would let me in school. They told us then that it would last forever, but apparently not. I was scheduled for Hep A and B but had to cancel because of my trip to Dublin. I’ll reschedule when I get back to NY. After that all I need is a Tdap and I’ll be soooo fucking immunized.
TBone
@catclub: I remember being in first grade and they got the whole school, a grade at a time, into the cafeteria and pricked our arms with the tine test:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tine_test
Apparently, a smallpox vaccine scar is now used by the yutes to spot cougars. I never got that one so I wasn’t pegged hahaha.
https://whyy.org/segments/how-to-spot-a-cougar-at-the-bar-the-vaccine-that-left-a-scar/
Harrison Wesley
@Steve LaBonne: There wasn’t a vaccine then, though.
HeleninEire
@HeleninEire: Also I tried to get the RSV but they said I’m not old enough!
stinger
@Kay: Good lord, I hadn’t heard that. What is happening in our country??? This guy will be in charge of the nation’s health??
VFX Lurker
What a horrifying ordeal for your mom and your sister. I am sorry they went through that.
-+-
My father was born before the mumps vaccine. Mumps left my dad permanently deaf in one ear.
He made sure my brother and I got all our shots.
TONYG
To state the obvious: More than 77 million Americans voted for the return or Polio, whether or not they were too goddamn stupid to understand that.
TONYG
@stinger: His greedy Hollywood wife — Cheryl Hines — is, of course, part of the problem. “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) merchandise! Another way to make money.
Steve LaBonne
@Harrison Wesley: And soon there won’t be again. History rhymes!
Jeffro
Vote for magically lower grocery prices; get polio for your kids and grandkids.
Seems like a fair trade, eh MAGAts?
Kay
@stinger:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/did-rfk-jr-claim-heroin-made-him-a-class-topper-heres-the-actual-fact/articleshow/115739250.cms
Geo Wilcox
@Quiltingfool: “If these vaccines are banned, we’re going to be in a huge world of hurt, far worse than the economy.”
That’s the point. The billionaires want to thin the herd and have only the most productive of us left to serve them. Think Elysium, the movie. The homeless, kids, elderly, and anyone who cannot work is worth nothing to the billionaires so they need to be gone.
Kay
@stinger:
I would actually require evidence for the “top of class” too. He lies constantly, like all of these people. He was blathering on and on and on, like he does, on some dumb shit podcast and maybe 50% of it was true.
Miss Bianca
@different-church-lady:
QFT
Likewise, someone made the analogy between the Biden Administration just quietly plugging away at the job of governance to the Y2K situation – the fact that we were all able to go, “oh, is that what we were worried about? No biggie!” was due to the fact that there were literally thousands of people all over the globe working to make sure it was, in fact, no biggie.
I don’t see any sort of similarly massive global effort to deal with, say, climate change happening soon, alas. Maybe Y2K was the last instance of it I will see in my lifetime.
TONYG
Just my opinion, but … I think that a model of what’s likely to happen will be Fox News in the early months of 2021 (when the covid vaccine had recently become available). Tucker Carlson and the other Fox News “personalities” were “just asking questions” and, in effect, urging the Fox News audience to reject the covid vaccine. (I have two dumb members of my extended family who adhered to that advice.) Then it came out that Fox News was REQUIRING all of its staff (including those same talking heads) to be vaccinated against covid. The Fox News “personalities” continued with their ant-vixx propaganda assuming (correctly) that the average Fox News viewer had the intelligence of a fruit fly. So … with RFK Junior in charge, the rich and powerful — probably including RFK Junior himself — will get all of the vaccines and all of the modern medical care that they need. It’s the rest of us who will be deprived and will suffer and die accordingly.
Kay
@Geo Wilcox:
A lot of these diseases in adults will just make them ill for some period or be low level chronic. Lost work hours and productivity. So if this is the billionaire plan the billionaires are dumb shits. I mean, they ARE so it might still be the plan.
TONYG
@Miss Bianca: That’s a good analogy. I was one of the hundreds of thousands of nerds who worked to solve that problem during the years leading up to 01/01/2000. We knew that if we were successful that nobody would notice — and we succeeded in not being noticed.
TONYG
@Kay: That’s true. But in the “gig economy” that has proliferated in the past 20 years, if I’m out sick then I don’t get paid. I’m expendable and will be replaced.
TBone
@TBone: btw, Nurse Kenny is the Mother of Physical Therapy as we now know it. She developed it to fight for the childhood polio cases that her male doctor cohorts had abandoned as incurable.
Kay
@Geo Wilcox:
Too, you can’t take a sick child to day care so every one of these poor kids with whooping cough will require an adult home with them for a week or more. Antivaxx is already costing them, now, this year, just with the threefold increase in one disease.
JKC
At this point my work will be to fight to keep my patients as safe and healthy as possible, and to make sure my kids and my granddaughter are vaccinated.
My big bag of f*cks to give for Red America is pretty much empty now. Let them suffer the consequences of their own abject stupidity.
Ohio Mom
@khead: Nobody makes iron lungs anymore.
I read an article a few years back about that last man living in an iron lung and one of his challenges was finding repair people who could MacGyver spare parts as needed.
Imagine knowing your life depended on a machine that you weren’t sure would keep working.
TBone
@Ohio Mom: methinks the
respiratorsventilators that Covid made necessary are manufactured by the very same people who think iron lungs are obsolete. Coincidentally, of course.When the time is right, they will cash back in.
Ruckus
@sab:
I’m 75 yrs old and knew people then and know someone my age now that had polio. I knew a number of kids with iron lungs in their front room for the family member that had polio and it had affected their breathing. What young kids knew about it was that it killed people. And disabled a lot that it didn’t kill. At my 10 yr HS reunion dinner we talked about it. At another HS reunion a number of years later the woman classmate who’d been basically shunned, walked into the facility we were at with no crutches and I was amazed that she didn’t flip off everyone in the room. The concept of dissemination of the kind of information that may have helped many people, and like what we are doing right now of course didn’t exist back then. The difference in so many things from then and now is stunning. How many people still have a land line telephone? I haven’t had one for over 20 yrs and got my first cell phone 30 yrs ago when I traveled 8 months a year for work.
TBone
@Ruckus: I have landline phones that will be pried from my cold, dead hands someday. One is so old, it requires no electricity or battery to operate. Just plug it into a phone jack and you’re off to the races.
Steve LaBonne
@TONYG: The vast majority of people have no clue about all that’s required to keep a complex technology-dependent civilization going. Which is OK right up until they decide that the people who keep it running are elites who need to be put in their place.
Lobo
My new permanent tag: The eight most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m a billionaire, and I’m here to help.”
TBone
@TONYG: I hope she chokes and no one in her vicinity remembers how to Heimlich.
Old School
@TBone:
Or in the next five years.
trollhattan
Friends live in the Sierra foothills next to a former tuberculosis sanitarium, now a university and retreat-conference center on perhaps five-hundred wooded acres. It’s a nice place to hike and on one such trip we came across the cemetery, overgrown with manzanita.
Rows and rows of wood pegs, numbering in the hundreds. Each bears a small metal plate stamped with a number. Scattered among them are personalized markers likely provided by the family. Dates range back to the 1920s. Some fraction of the residents were successfully treated and released while another fraction remain on the grounds in perpetuity. We were well into the 20th century before we had the tools to successfully treat TB and still, it takes months if not years to do so. How many classic novels feature characters suffering romantically with consumption?
By all means, bring it back, bring it all back. We got this!
TBone
@Old School: my brother works as a lineman for Verizon. He was pissed when I switched to another provider one year over a billing SNAFU. I later switched back because family (and Verizon somehow forgot they were pissed about their fantasy balance due) and I got a good deal. They don’t service my current locale, but if phone lines are going bye bye I will know in advance. My brother makes a lot of union money doing fiber optic cable replacement of copper lines, and was deemed “essential” during Covid much to my worry for his safety (“stay in your truck with the windows closed!”).
karen gail
I remember polio, all too well; I was one of those who just got “summer cold” from it but my knees hurt at the same time and doctors still don’t believe that the two are related. I remember weeks in dark room while have measles, not being able to swallow with mumps but no memory of chicken pox. Was later told mother took me to a chicken pox party when I was months old; but what I do know is that when shingles hits you get all kinds of fun things happen and few doctors really know how to deal with if you don’t have obvious outward signs. It has been 20 some years since shingles appeared and there are still days when my balance is affected.
My cousin was lucky, he got polio and his doctor removed him from iron lung when it appeared that it was causing damage to his breathing. He had one of the doctors that believed that iron lung should be used for short periods of time so that body would be able to breathe on own. Now we have venerators so people aren’t stuck inside tube of iron. One other thing that had big impact was the use of DDT, we know what it did to wildlife but the studies about what it did to humans weren’t made into documentaries.
trollhattan
@Old School: Ours piggybacks on the fiber-optic ISP service and just emulates the old Ma Bell analog system. The modem has a battery backup so when everything else is down in a power failure, the wired phones still work, as does the fire alarm.
Hunch is we’ll dump this for another at some point and the house phone will no longer be a thing. As it is, we virtually never answer it.
TBone
@trollhattan: GAH!
stinger
@Kay: I had the same thought when reading the article at your link. Would his instructors agree?
it’s actually a fairly common fantasy among drug users of various kinds that when they are using, no one else knows. They think they are hiding it.
sab
@TBone: We have had Verizon as our cellphone for decades. Glad to hear they pay their people well.
TBone
@karen gail: some kids in my neighborhood (not me!) used to run behind the DDT trucks and get soaked! JFC. Parenting in the 60s and 70s was different.
TBone
@sab: as well, he gets paid family leave and is wealthy because he invested early as a result of his job. He was set to retire at age 55 and planned for that for years.
Then he met my evil SIL, married, and now he’ll have to work until at least 65 to keep her standard of living where she likes it, even despite his huge inheritance.
Betty
@badpenny1967: Fetterman should be getting some serious blowback. I am doing my part on his social media.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TBone:
Heh heh, I call that “I was raised by a lone, female wolf that had two jobs”, ie, we roamed.
TBone
@karen gail: so glad you (and everyone else who did) survived it.
I’m so glad I survived Covid, most of the time.
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: perzackly!
I was a precocious problem child for that very reason.
WTFGhost
I had a friend with post-polio syndrome. Think Long Covid, and like Long Covid, Republicans probably don’t believe in it. She eventually died when her lungs gave out, which isn’t the iron lung nightmare you might be imagining, but isn’t *entirely* far from it – she died when a home respirator couldn’t provide enough oxygenation, many years after being infected.
And she mentioned it was like Covid-19 insofar as, it might be mild in most people, but for some, it was horrible, and sometimes fatal.
The one part of making a liberal Fox that wouldn’t be *too* hard is constantly exposing the horrors of Republicans. You’d probably want rotating hosts who watch 30 days of Fox and OAN to remind themselves why they fight, and then go back to the battle.
Another Scott
@Quiltingfool:
Understanding your questions are rhetorical, this paper from August 2020 seems to be relevant:
tl;dr – They don’t care about actual public health. They use diseases to ramp up anger in the population for things they do care about – nativism, beating up “others”, concentrating power in their hands, etc.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
rikyrah
@HeleninEire:
Yep. Not old enough for RSV…I was denied too
Nettoyeur
90 years after America First and appeasement allowed Hitler to conquer Europe, leading to WWII, here we are again.
TBone
@Subcommandante Yakbreath: now that bio of your friend made me remember I was born with one leg longer than the other. Also my femur would just fall out of my too large for it hip socket. I was kept in a brace from my chest to my knees for the first 18 months of my life, in a sitting position. Once they took the brace off, my mom left me in the chain link fenced yard, barefoot one day, dressed only in a diaper. When she went to retrieve me, I was gone! They found me blocks away, knocking on a neighbor’s door. I had climbed that chain link fence barefoot and got away!
Leto
@TBone: the voltage required to operate the landline is sent… via the line. Otherwise it wouldn’t operate.
For my Constitution and Revolution history class, we read Elizabeth Fenton’s Pox Americana. Basically the history of smallpox here in America, but specifically focusing on 1775-1782. It killed more people than the Revolution, and it had a major influence on the shaping of events here on the continent. From Mexico City into northern Canada, and from the east coast to the islands off Alaska. Utterly fascinating read. Even though it was supposed to be eradicated from the face of the earth, both the US and Russia kept samples. We still use it to test out other -pox vaccines, as the broader part of biological emergency response. One of the newest vaccines for it was developed in 2021?
Waiting to see how they fuck with military readiness with this. Should be fun!
TBone
@WTFGhost: dear lort. Thank you for sharing that.
Crooksandliars is my Fux antidote, but they can’t do it alone. The revolution must be televised somehow.
TBone
@Leto: thank you for that new to me knowledge of how stuff works!
When I had to make phone calls to instruct the investment people to distribute my Required Minimum Distributions this week, the batteries on my two landline handsets (extension in different room) both died simultaneously but the answering system still works. Gah! Then, I left a message for vet to call cell phone instead. Of course, vet called landline and left a message while we were out getting new batteries for landline. The whole week went like that, until today.
Betty
Does anyone remember when German measles caused serious birth defects? That’s okay with these clowns now?
cain
No country is going to allow Americans to travel to theirs if those vaccines are removed. Some countries require that you have vaccines to visit. You think the global south countries who struggle with this kind of stuff like polio is going to allow Americans to show up?
I suspect that the death rate in this country is going to go sky high and we can thank these people in doing it. I thought Brexit was a shit show, but this is way worse.
The irony with birth rates plunging because of no women’s care, death after wards for diseases – they’ll need immigrants to replenish the population and it ain’t gonna be white.
cain
@Betty:
Nothing is worse than autism! It is the scourge of our times!
TBone
@Betty: Rubella was my very first vaccination. I already had a birth defect though, but it was not too serious. I grew the femur to fit the hip socket.
prostratedragon
@sab:
Polio vaccine safety:
Rusty
@Old School: Utter bullshit. They want double blind studies, whereby some children are given a placebo and allowed to contract polio, or whatever other disease the vaccine prevents. That unethical and stupid. We have lots of other ethical ways to prove efficacy and safety. We have and these are good vaccines. They are liars and killers.
TBone
@Leto: your last sentences are still ringing in my ears…
Leto
@TBone: that was part of my job in the military, telephone systems. It’s also why in the cases of natural disasters, or 911 calls, landlines are the best forms of communications: all the lines are buried and the power is generated at the central hub. I don’t like the idea of going completely wireless, but it also isn’t my call. (Badum-tsk!)
Shana
Gee wouldn’t it be nice if someone in a position of power who had actual experience with polio could be found to weigh in on this. Cough Mitch McConnell cough
artem1s
The DoD is nuts if they don’t start pressuring Congress critters to oppose vaccine deniers just because of national security. These asshats are setting the US up for bio attack. They may as well paint a target on the 9/11 Memorial. Letting kids skip polio is small potatoes compared to something with a R factor of 4-5 and mortality rate similar to small pox and that’s the apocalypse the fundies have all been praying for. It will be over before anyone has a chance to run out of PPE or the Dow hits zero.
Leto
@artem1s: this is how the DoD, under a Trumpov appointee, will handle it: Navy upholds firing of carrier captain who warned of coronavirus
I’m sure you remember this. He and crew were non-mission ready. What happened? They fired him, and kept that judgement. They’re not going to give a shit about us. Never have, never will.
Kayla Rudbek
@artem1s: I would dearly love to wargame out this scenario and hit the Southern Baptist and nondenominational mega churches first.
artem1s
@kitfoxer: Wasn’t March of Dimes founded to help Polio victims? A lot people donated to the vaccine effort and to provide care for this disease and others. This is why it’s not a great idea to hand over the reins of government exclusively to ‘younger’ politicians. especially those who have no respect for institutional memory.
Omnes Omnibus
@Leto: Field telephones.
Ohio Mom
@artem1s: Yes, and when the polio vaccine was developed, the March of Dimes had to re-evaluate their mission. It seemed wasteful to abandon the huge infrastructure and what we would call branding, so they switched their focus to birth defects. They will never see the end of those.
karen gail
I am for vaccines but I wish they wouldn’t do so many at one time; my children reacted (ended up in hospital) when given multiple vaccines during one doctor visit. Then the doctors had to figure out which vaccine they were reacting to. In the end the family doctor got single vaccine shots and started with smallest dose to check for reactions; this was back in 70’s, in the 90’s my nieces had same problem but it was harder for their doctor to track down which vaccine they were reacting to since the doses were all preset and premeasured. The doctor couldn’t find just shot that contained only one vaccine for one disease that was available through their health care plan.
TBone
@Leto: do we rely too much on satellites for our comms as well? Like Elno is capable of WAY too much fuckery already and could decide to screw certain comms if he feels like it again?
Soprano2
I don’t know if anyone has shared this yet, but I saw a WaPo article with an unsurprising finding; fewer and fewer of TCFG’s supporters are bothered by the idea that he will suspend or break the law in order to prosecute his enemies. https://wapo.st/4feU53B That’s a gift link, if anyone wants to read it.
Soprano2
@sab: I never had measles, but I had mumps and chicken pox. They weren’t pleasant. This anger against all vaccines is mysterious to me.
Soprano2
I think this is correct. Every time people have to re-learn the same lessons, because most of them cannot seem to learn from others.
TBone
@artem1s: yes on March of Dimes. I had a little box to collect dimes as a small child. Then we went to UNICEF donation collection (every Halloween door knocked was asked for a donation in addition to candy when I was wee).
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
My computer/the web/something- something decided to have my comment for breakfast so I have to do another.
I grew up with a girl schoolmate that had polio. She really didn’t have friends because all we as grade school students knew was that polio was contagious. In my neighborhood I knew of several friends that had an iron lung in their front rooms (only place it would fit) for the family member that had polio. We had a girl in my class that had suffered from polio and she had to use elbow crutches to get around. She walked into our HS reunion without crutches, first time I’d ever seen her without them. She also had very few friends as none of us knew if she was contagious or not. This was in the 1950s so communication was minimal other than face to face or over the telephone, which of course was a landline and actually cost a bit to use. (Life has changed just a tad in the last 60-70 yrs….) The search for knowledge was – the city library, which of course was a tad behind the times, where a child reading adult books – with all their discussion of male/female (public) interactions (of course NONE of their private interactions! The part every single child wanted to know about!) being completely our of line!
Let’s just say that over the last few decades, life, information, has changed rather significantly. Like we are doing here, now. And yet it’s still boy/girl, man/woman. Well, maybe not just those. So much of life does not fit within a narrow definition of male/female. Ever met or known a gay person? I’ve known quite a few on both sides of the aisle, had a sibling that was. Ever know someone with polio, I have and do to this day.
TBone
@Soprano2: I had to explain Typhoid Mary to the rumpy neighbors during Covid, they’d never heard of her.
Timill
@Soprano2: Because the vaccines are widespread and effective, all they ever see are the downsides of vaccinations and not the downsides of infections. So they think abolishing vaccinations will remove all downsides.
Really, anti-vaxxers should be given a course of live viruses – that’d fix the problem…
[No, not really, as others would catch infections from them.]
JaneE
You have to be in your 70’s to remember the days before vaccines for “childhood diseases”. People my age knew kids who survived polio and a few who didn’t. We went to school with them, and if not the polio survivors, with their siblings. The baby sister of a girl in my Scout troop was one of the lucky survivors. She learned to walk wearing a brace. I remember an absolutely beautiful toddler, wearing a brace that looked like it weighed more than she did herself.
JaneE
Polio does have vaccine induced outbreaks where the community has very low levels of immunity and the community in general has poor sanitation. The weakened virus circulates and may mutate to regain virulence. One example is the case in Gaza, polio free for 25 years prior to the new confirmed case. Massive vaccination campaigns can generally stop the outbreaks if you can manage to implement one, but they do keep popping up. The ongoing outbreaks are mostly in areas with ongoing civil strife if not civil war.
Ruckus
@JKC:
Let them suffer the consequences of their own abject stupidity.
Unfortunately they won’t be the only one’s to suffer. People that can’t take the vaccine – there are some that likely cannot.
And there is a reason it’s called abject stupidity. But then it’s also humanity. And some look for any reason to justify their abject stupidity. It’s been said that it takes all kinds. I’m not sure it actually does, but then if one is most any level observant one will notice that abject stupidity often strikes those that actually want to be that way, because most people, even if they lack much skill at living, want to be better. Better does seem to make life a bit less short.
WTFGhost
@Soprano2: I’ve heard it said that there are more vaccines given, more quickly, to children, and that some parents are worried, and, of course, their children come home with sore arms and a lot of tears, and if someone tells them, “that was just ELITES trying to SCAM you but YOU KNEW from the crying of your children that it was bad… DIDN’T YOU?”
Vulnerable parents, scared by confusing information, and unprotected by a deep understanding of biology/medicine, and what vaccinations *do*, could freak.
It’s great for Republicans, because it’s a sound bite, while explaining vaccination isn’t. If you have to explain (in politics), you’ve already lost (in general).
wenchacha
@Rose Judson: Mom’s brother got pertussis as an infant. Between fever, coughing, and struggling for oxygen, he suffered brain damage that was life-altering.
His family didn’t send him to an institution. They cared for him at home. After my grandfather died, my aunt cared for him at her home, then several sisters shared the care for time.
It’s a lot for a family to do; it wasn’t always easy. He could be cantankerous! But we all loved him, and he loved us right back. 💓
Nancy
@sab:
My mother got polio as an adult shortly after my brother was born. A few months later the vaccine was available. We had so many shots as kids but it was too late for her and kids just a year or two older than me.
She died of cancer in part because she believed all of her symptoms were from post-polio syndrome. They want to bring all that misery and fear back.
LAC
Gonna make travel interesting…from wikipedia:
“Travellers who wish to enter or leave certain countries must be vaccinated against polio, usually at most 12 months and at least 4 weeks before crossing the border, and be able to present a vaccination record/certificate at the border checks. Most requirements apply only to travel to or from so-called ‘polio-endemic’, ‘polio-affected’, ‘polio-exporting’, ‘polio-transmission’, or ‘high-risk’ countries. As of August 2020, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only polio-endemic countries in the world. “
Ruckus
@TBone:
I get this but. I have a top of the line cell phone and have for a long time, I just don’t see the point of a land line, and haven’t for a number of years. I only need one phone number and when I got my first one I was traveling 8 months a year, so the phone in my house did me no good whatsoever. But I could be reached where ever I was. Or make phone calls. Looking for working pay phones is an absolute waste of time and is likely worse 30 yrs later. And cell service is just a tad bit better now. That word tad is doing a lot of work. To me, sure you want a landline phone at work, just because then it’s one number and an extension (if necessary). So I don’t see them going away but all those lines to and from have to be serviced and replaced when some idiot runs into a telephone/electric pole. All that wire not needed, in a world that now uses a lot more wire than it did quite a few decades ago might even be an advantage. I just don’t see the point of a land line if you have a cell phone. Now if you have a crappy cell phone, and yes they do exist that may make a difference. Go with major manufacturers, not the cheapest. I have a neighbor that buys the cheap ones but she is disabled and can’t afford expensive. Which the latest name brands are.
Ruckus
@Lobo:
They are there to help.
THEMSELVES.
Kosh III
@Old School:The telecom company has said its copper wire infrastructure is antiquated, maintaining it is costly and better service is available through fiber and wireless broadband networks.
Until, as a few years ago, someone set off a bomb in downtown Nashville taking out AT&T service for several days.