No Coddling Zone

A note: I came across some information that needed to be shared, merged it with slight outrage, and the result is below. Next week for the holiday weekend I'll release part two of If Steve, Then Steph, concluding with Steve Jobs' producer Steph Adams' remembrances of his most memorable show, and his toughest.
And now, into the No Coddling Zone.
MWH

Hi Covid, allow me to introduce you to Stupid

My first few drafts of this piece were a little harsh as I worked through my frustration at some of the moronic beliefs shared by seemingly normal people. I still continually find myself surprised at their (occasionally hateful) nonsense.

Some of that nonsense over the last +2 years contributed directly and indirectly to people dying. Not in every Covid-related death, certainly, but for those easily led by a trusted voice or an example followed, yes, promoting outlandish theories and supporting them with unfounded ‘facts’ or ‘news’ from a non-news source didn't do anyone any good, and doesn’t do anyone any good now. Especially now, because it's worse than ever.

Worse, even though I'll point out that no one’s last words on their ICU deathbed in the Covid ward has ever been, “Sure am glad I didn’t get that shot.”

Amidst the ‘how dare you order me to do something so important’ protest signs I’ve seen, I noticed one in particular that stated, “natural immunity is the best immunity.” I did a quick search and found this :

“…there is no country on the globe in which natural infection and natural immunity has brought the [Covid] pandemic under control.”
Nebraska Medicine, comprising Nebraska Medical Center, Bellevue Medical Center, and, research and education partner the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC)

And across my digital transom recently came this, and I thought, wow, how is this going to be twisted around by…oh, you know:

“A study published Wednesday in medical journal the Lancet found that the HPV vaccine cut cervical cancer rates by 87 percent.”
Washington Post

The current guidance to those of us perplexed or angered by the views of anti-vaccine proponents is to engage those proponents in a dialog; to ask, listen, and attempt to understand the anti position; respond with respect for that person’s opinions, while providing facts and examples of the how and what of vaccines.

Oh, for the love of god ladies and gentleman.

While I will accept that kind of guidance as being apropos to diplomats from opposing nations who must discuss everything from global conflict to trade issues, ‘beliefs’ as inane as that the Covid vaccine can be used to track your movements, the vaccine changes your DNA, or that the cells of aborted fetuses are used to make the Covid vaccines, would try the patience of a monk.

Wrong-headed beliefs in what a vaccine ‘does’ are not confined to the current state of the pandemic. Consider the latest Lancet study on vaccinating for HPV, for example. In the UK, a vaccine decreased a specific cancer incidence by almost 90%, a cancer disease which in 2018 ranked as the third most common cancer (and third in mortality) in women worldwide.

It’s a vaccine that prevents a cancer that kills women. That’s what it is, and that’s how it’s described.

Well, that’s how it’s described in the UK. Here, in the great United States, it is still perceived by suspicious people as more government intrusion and/or a nefarious liberal plot that encourages teens to have sex.

Even though what it is, IS A VACCINE THAT PREVENTS CANCER.

Meanwhile…

Last week, at the northbound Golden Gate toll plaza, a protest against vaccine mandates not only backed up commute traffic into the city for miles, it contributed to the injuries of two people.

Good gawd.

Okay, I understand that:

• a ‘law’ requiring us to receive a vaccine so we can remain gainfully employed is something ‘new’ for most of us (yep, there are jobs that have always required certain vaccinations), and in that is a level of emotional discomfort. That, even though children are required to have certain vaccinations before they can attend public schools;
• the whole damn pandemic and everything that goes with it is a pain in the ass, and we’re all tired of it;
• and that we’re all pretty much used to having our own way about, well, everything, because we’re pretty spoiled, because ‘this is the land of the free, like it says in the Constitution.’

If you’re under the age of, oh, let’s say late-70s or early-80s, let me point out just a few relevant things…

Before the measles’ vaccine, measles killed significant percentages of those infected, and left those who recovered with a lifetime of health issues. Yeah, measles IS DEADLY. It’s almost an afterthought now, yet in the ‘60s measles KILLED 8,000,000 CHILDREN IN THE WORLD EVERY YEAR.

The madness of the growing anti-vaccine movement not only isn’t ebbing, it is rising to insidious levels, as you’ll read in another few paragraphs, and I’m going to stick with the measles thread to set up what’s coming. There will be some readers who stress that the measles and other well known vaccines have been proven over decades of use, and Covid vaccines are too new to trust. And there’s that changing a person’s DNA thing.

Well, yep, the measles and chicken pox and mumps vaccines were indeed tested; creating a safe vaccine took about a year before it was made available in 1953. A year. Everything in our lives moves much, much faster than almost 70 years ago, and that includes vaccine development, how it’s made, tested, and delivered.

That a Covid vaccine was developed as the world was enveloped by a virulent virus to which none of us is immune, is a triumph of modern science and medicine, not a plot to make us all zombies.

As to ‘the vaccine changes your DNA’ claim. Nope; what does happen is messenger RNA — mRNA — delivers information to the outer layer of a cell (not to the core of the cell where your DNA lives) that says, ‘yo, there’s this funky stuff on the way and it’s going to try and glom onto you, so now you know what’s coming and how to stop it from doing that.’

Yes, that’s really, really simplified, but the details are easily found if you’d like to do the deep dive. The details I’m referring to, BTW, are not those found on websites that already say the goofy things that may ‘support’ what’s said by the dangerous misinformers.

To those in the ‘don’t tread on my right to be stupid about Covid and not trust the vaccine’ crowd, there’s this lesson from the not-too distant past:

In 1991 in the Philadelphia region, thousands of children were sick with measles. The center of this outbreak was traced to the Faith Tabernacle Congregation, a Faith Healing church that actively discouraged parishioners from vaccinating their children. A judge issued a Court Order to forcibly treat children whose parents refused to seek medical care, and nine children were forcibly vaccinated. Nine children eventually died as a result of this outbreak.

There are real dangers in coddling the anti-vax, anti-vaccine mandate proponents, and to those who may believe I’m being a bit harsh, I give you this final extract of a story from STAT, and encourage you to read and share it, because these dopey, stridently partisan plans echo some other decisions in history that didn’t go well for anyone:

In Idaho, a lawmaker introduced a bill that would define vaccine mandates — of any kind — as a form of assault. In Florida, a prominent state senator has called for a review of all vaccine requirements, including those for immunizations that have enjoyed wide public acceptance for decades, like polio and the measles, mumps, and rubella shot. And in Montana, the Republican governor recently signed into law a new bill that forbids businesses, including hospitals, from enforcing any vaccination requirements as a condition of employment.

The bills represent the latest wave of resistance to the Biden administration’s push to impose Covid-19 vaccine mandates for nearly all Americans. But the new, across-the-board revolt against vaccine requirements of any kind, experts told STAT, could begin to reverse a century of progress against diseases that, thanks to vaccines, are afterthoughts to most Americans.

We’re going to reach at least 800,000 Covid-related deaths before this is all over. I predict we’ll hit a million, unless more of us fight the groundswell of idiocy.

If you’re looking for some coddling as you share your nonsense with me, you ain’t going to find it here.

MWH