Listen now (55 min) | The one where we talk with Neurologist Dr. Jonathan Howard about the recent harassment of Dr. Peter Hotez, as well as the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the antivax hysteria gripping the world.
Brilliant conversation. Three years ago, a friend and I sat down and wrote everything we had heard about covid/vaccines. It was 3 pages, single-spaced, 12 font. Nothing in my 78 years had garnered so much yak.
I worked in pregnancy/birth for 50 years. In the early 1970s families I worked with fell into two groups: very, very religious and hippies/alternative.
Both groups were anti-government, anti-medical and prone to conspiracies. I knew that when these two groups got together, we'd be in for a whole lot of problems. They did over covid.
I believe people would have responded very differently if covid had mostly impacted children under 15. I grew up in the polio era and families were terrified. I also 'caught' polio from the first round of polio vaccines, so you'd think I'd be anti-vaccine. I'm not either/or because ... in reality, there are so many other things polluting us!
I would have liked the first global response to plastics. What about the fact that humans are peeing all their medicines into our water supplies? What about all the additives in beauty products, shampoos etc that are absorbed in our skin. The 'what about?' is such a long list of how we are damaging ourselves and our planet.
Why this? Personally, I just think it has to do with social media and the global ability to say anything and have it spread like wildfire. I watched a lovely UK Doctor Campbell on YouTube. He was quite reasonable, however, he refused to talk about long-covid and that sort of showed that he was very much into 'herd immunity'.
Sorry for the rant. Herd immunity assumes that if you catch X and recover that you'll be stronger. That assumes 1. you don't die 2. there are no long term problems. Families in the 1950s were not interested in their children catching polio to build herd immunity because they knew that post-polio problems were real.
And then consider when Europeans first came to the Americans in the 1600 and then returned 150 years later and approximately 70-90% of all the peoples in the Americas had been wiped out due to diseases.
Brilliant conversation. Three years ago, a friend and I sat down and wrote everything we had heard about covid/vaccines. It was 3 pages, single-spaced, 12 font. Nothing in my 78 years had garnered so much yak.
I worked in pregnancy/birth for 50 years. In the early 1970s families I worked with fell into two groups: very, very religious and hippies/alternative.
Both groups were anti-government, anti-medical and prone to conspiracies. I knew that when these two groups got together, we'd be in for a whole lot of problems. They did over covid.
I believe people would have responded very differently if covid had mostly impacted children under 15. I grew up in the polio era and families were terrified. I also 'caught' polio from the first round of polio vaccines, so you'd think I'd be anti-vaccine. I'm not either/or because ... in reality, there are so many other things polluting us!
I would have liked the first global response to plastics. What about the fact that humans are peeing all their medicines into our water supplies? What about all the additives in beauty products, shampoos etc that are absorbed in our skin. The 'what about?' is such a long list of how we are damaging ourselves and our planet.
Why this? Personally, I just think it has to do with social media and the global ability to say anything and have it spread like wildfire. I watched a lovely UK Doctor Campbell on YouTube. He was quite reasonable, however, he refused to talk about long-covid and that sort of showed that he was very much into 'herd immunity'.
Sorry for the rant. Herd immunity assumes that if you catch X and recover that you'll be stronger. That assumes 1. you don't die 2. there are no long term problems. Families in the 1950s were not interested in their children catching polio to build herd immunity because they knew that post-polio problems were real.
And then consider when Europeans first came to the Americans in the 1600 and then returned 150 years later and approximately 70-90% of all the peoples in the Americas had been wiped out due to diseases.
Do I like vaccines? I choose which ones and why.