81 Comments
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Jack Pearson's avatar

When I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, I knew people who got polio and measles. Parents were terrified and helpless. When vaccines became available, everyone got vaccinated. Nobody was stupid enough to tell them not to.

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Helen's avatar

I grew up in the 50s. I remember what a godsend the Salk vaccine was. People rushed to get it for their children. The MMR came along after my childhood. I got sick with all those childhood diseases and fortunately survived but some didn't.

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Katie's avatar

Our grandmothers stood in lines to get their children vaccinated! My father and his siblings receivedtheir vaccinations at school! And my grandmother was grateful her children were protected from diseases that killed her friends.

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David J. Sharp's avatar

The misguided beliefs of the anti-vaxxers may be why Trump so dislikes formal education—dumb dasn’t object to dumber.

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Sophie Nusslé's avatar

And yet there are doctors (!) amongst anti-vaxxers. So education can be wasted by some.

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Pam Birkenfeld's avatar

And nurses! I know one and I can’t even believe it!

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Sophie Nusslé's avatar

I know. I know one too. It's scarcely believable.

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Carrie's avatar

that is truly scary

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David J. Sharp's avatar

Or simply ignore that education for MAGA recognition?

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Linda Weide's avatar

And med schools and the professional board can be remiss in enforcing their standards too.

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Molly Piscitello's avatar

I think Trump has dyslexia, and reading disability. He literally can only read bullet points. Paragraphs are all confused to him.

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David J. Sharp's avatar

Agreed. Watch him stumble through a Teleprompter speech. Also, I seem to remember that Kayleigh McEnany stating in a press conference that our president could indeed read … nothing was said about comprehension.

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Mary Kaiser's avatar

Where did these doctors go to school. Oral Roberts had an accredited medical school in Tulsa.

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David J. Sharp's avatar

Bible college, probably.

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Linda Weide's avatar

Trump was also an original spreader of the anti vaccine disinformation, before we all heard that Kennedy was doing it.

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David J. Sharp's avatar

Yes! Then vaccines saved his life, then the doctor who did that, was fired.

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Linda Weide's avatar

Yes. Nothing but hypocrisy.

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David J. Sharp's avatar

Which is two syllables too many for Trump and/or MAGA.

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Sophie Nusslé's avatar

Dyslexia doesn’t explain ignorance, stupidity and stubbornness. Plenty of extremely talented and knowledgeable dyslexic people around.

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David J. Sharp's avatar

Very true … but I wasn’t talking about dyslexia but willful ignorance.

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adevrx's avatar

No wonder people can't stand politicians. Few have any integrity and stick to one story. Kennedy is a prime example of a narcissist who seems to be working hard to twist minds and sow confusion. Does he believe a word he says or say a word of what he believes. Heroine and other things seem to have take a toll on his brain. Yet here he is at the head of one the the country's more critical departments thanks to the stable genius.

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Maya Ram's avatar

And to think I used to believe he was just a misguided privileged hippy rich kid spouting nonsense. Like Gwyneth Paltrow.

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Jennifer Phillips's avatar

Scientific American reports that whooping cough (pertussis) is on the rise across the US and two unvaccinated infants died of it this month! I wonder whether the antivaxxers are also eschewing rabies vaccines when bitten by infected animals - universally fatal when one is unvaccinated and infected? Seems the US is having to learn all over again about how terribly dangerous these infectious diseases are.

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Karen Healy's avatar

The pertussis vaccine does not confer lifelong immunity, it can fade significantly over time. If you are in an area where pertussis is on the rise there is a risk even for vaccinated people. I would get re-vaccinated or at least get a blood titer done. Also ANYONE who is going to be around babies too young for vaccines (new grandparents for example) should get the DPT shot.

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Caroline (OR)'s avatar

You should be getting a booster every ten years anyway. Tetanus, or lockjaw, sounds excruciating and diphtheria doesn't sound like a picnic either.

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Dudley Albrecht's avatar

I am waiting for the Bubonic Plague to make a comeback....

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Joannie Reeves's avatar

The Plague(Y-pestis) is endemic in the Southwest and every year there are a few cases.

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Phyllis Logan's avatar

RFK, being the medical arsonist he is, firing highly skilled talent and researchers, hired David Geier, who has no medical degree, was sanctioned for practicing without a license, has no training, expertise or experience, and a judge called him "intellectually dishonest." His only usefulness to RFK is he's a disseminator of misinformation of a vaccine/autism link.

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marie wiggins's avatar

And perhaps stands guard over roadkill until er-a-RFKJr meets his social commitments.

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W Harris's avatar

"He said in a video recently released by his Children’s Health Defense group that it’s possible the measles vaccine is causing more deaths than measles itself."

If you're doing it right, this will literally be true. People can die from a vaccine reaction. It's incredibly rare, and the risk is many orders of magnitude less than dying of Measles, but it does happen. Since we eradicated it in the early 2000s, I have little doubt there have been more deaths from the vaccine (likely no more than the single to low double digits) than Measles itself. That's actually good news that gets spun into scandal by the likes of RFK Jr.

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Marcia's avatar

Although there was a goal to make measles vanishingly rare and even achieve worldwide eradication of the disease, that goal seems less attainable now.

Globally, measles was deadly in 2023 to 107,500 people, mostly children under 5. RFK’s statement is despicable nonsense.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p1114-measles-cases.html

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Robyn Tonkin's avatar

I am elderly (71) and grew up in a small, close knit community centered on heavy industrial employment. My family went to a pleasant, middle of the road church where you knew everyone, and where I knew Dorothy. Dorothy was profoundly developmentally challenged, what was unkindly referred to in that day as "retarded". Dorothy was not born this way, her brain was damaged because of the high fevers she experienced when she had measles as a child. Sometimes people who survived measles were like Dorothy, and sometimes they had what people called "a hole in their heart"--their vascular system had suffered irreparable damage. If children do not get medical care, if their families are truly isolated, then these conditions will occur, along with deaths, again. A vaccine will not always prevent illness, but if it does not, it will almost surely lessen the severity of the disease. Why are we having to discover these things all over again.

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The Coke Brothers's avatar

Winsome will hopefully become Losesome.

having said that, i'm so glad that she abhors DEI but wholeheartedly embraces HIPOCRISY

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This Woman Votes's avatar

So Robert “MMR Is Mind Control” Kennedy Jr. muttered a single semi-coherent truth about vaccines after a child died, and now his cult is coming for blood because... he admitted measles is real? The anti-vax crusaders are learning what every authoritarian movement eventually discovers: Heresy is inevitable when your entire ideology is built on unprovable purity tests and rage-click dopamine.

RFK’s whole brand was a symphony of pseudoscience conducted for the approval of the chronically online. Now that he's lightly tapped the brakes, his followers are calling for his excommunication because he dared acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, children dying from preventable diseases is bad.

This isn’t just irony. It’s a predictable outcome of an epistemic movement that feeds on unreality. The second you acknowledge a fact, you’ve broken the spell. And the faithful want blood.

You can’t be “based” and also bound to facts. That’s the core tension of MAHA and why every conspiracy movement eventually eats its own.

RFK sold them snake oil, and now they’re mad the bottle has an FDA label.

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Light Warder's avatar

Speaking as a trained & licensed allopath, it was apparent in medschool, residency and more apparent in clinical practice that quacks, money-grabbers and behaviorally disturbed individuals made it through the physician selection and training process in this country.

Just like any bad-apple spoiling the whole barrel, all it takes is one.

It should be fairly easy to identify most them flocking to JFKJr like iron filings to a magnet, now that he sits at the head of HHS. But like a magnet, if it's heated or dropped too many times, the magnetism is lost...His double-speak must be making him quite warm these days.

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Joan Peters's avatar

GOP never met a stance that couldn't be upended when the crowd (or the powers that be) howls. I find the Lt Gov interesting. Methinks she is a DEI hire so it is hilarious she is now anti-DEI. Thanks for a great article.

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marie wiggins's avatar

Love it! DEI hire/facilitation recipient? It IS ole Virginny after all. And I KNOW - I grew up there.

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jpg's avatar

I don’t know which fight to watch, RFKJr vs MAHA anti vaxxers, or billionaire vs billionaire over tariffs. Could be a good new business for Dana White 🤣.

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Dudley Albrecht's avatar

Poor RFK jr. He is finding out his followers are even nuttier then he is.

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Kenneth Hines's avatar

The unnecessary deaths (all of them) need to be hung around his neck forever. All the rest of the anti-vaxxers should also bear the shame. Their cocked-up and flimsy ‘conspiracy theories’ should be debunked for the contrivances they are. Autism is a serious concern and the totally MAGA-driven BS shouldn’t interfere with further research and study.

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J AZ's avatar

We have always been at war with vaccines.

We have never been at war with vaccines.

Rinse & repeat.

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M. Trosino's avatar

Earl-Sears's new take on DEI is based on its new meaning within the GOP:

*Defend Every Idiocy* it and its owner proposes and tries to implement and...

*Defend Every Idiot* within its ranks or who has Trump's ear and favor, regardless the planet they come from. Bar none.

Lookin' at you, RFK.

And ditto you, Elon. Though you may have upped your prospects for being deported to Mars sooner rather than later by criticizing your boss's tariffs on the E.U. and actually endorsing a European / U.S. free trade zone to a bunch of right-wing Italians.

And then, just for fun I guess, trashing Trump darling and nouveau econo-genius Peter Navarro along with his protectionist-cum-isolationist tariff idiocy, saying of Navarro's background, "A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing."

"Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem," he added.

Plus, "He ain’t built shit."

That last just for good measure, I suppose, indicating Navarro doesn't know shit about manufacturing anything in the 21st century.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/he-aint-built-st-elon-musk-takes-a-shot-at-peter-navarro-over-defense-of-trump-tariffs/

And I really hate to say this, but as far as idiots go, no matter what else you may think of the world's richest fool, he ain't wrong about Navarro, or Trump's bending over Europe out behind the wood pile as if it were his 2nd cousin down on Tobacco Road and letting 'em have it good and hard.

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