What people might not know was that, at the time, smallpox was a horrific plague brought to these shores by Europeans, and responsible, along with yellow fever and other viral cousins, for the death of the majority of Native Americans, who had no immunity to it. Not to mention many, many immigrant Americans. The discovery of a way to make people immune to such diseases was a watershed moment in the history of humanity. Vaccines are a godsend.
My grandmother caught smallpox in a 1917 outbreak in Redkey, IN which killed nearly half the town’s residents.A boy in my kindergarten class died of post-measles pneumonia. I almost died of mumps encephalitis. The 2 men who lived in the houses across from us both were partially paralyzed by polio. People have forgotten and are propagandized. We have an epidemic of delusional thinking in this Country and we may lose all the gains of the 20th century because of it.
My grandfather was the oldest son of Irish immigrants. In the late 1800s he lost the youngest 5 of his 11 siblings in a diptheria epidemic in NYC. (They were Bradys too. )
I am surprised that there is no mention of the British doctor Andrew Wakefield who published the research that “proved” the measles vaccine caused autism. In 1998 the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published his research which understandably started an international panic. Turned out Wakefield was a fraud who not only had faked his data but was also working on his own measles vax. He lost his medical license and left the UK in disgrace. He moved to Texas where he has continued spreading anti-vax propaganda. He has been embraced by Trump — Surprise, surprise!
When American celebrities like Jenny McCarthy started voicing their concerns about the measles vaccines the American television media gave them a lot of attention. While they did have scientists on to talk data the shows I saw never mentioned Wakefield or brought on guests who still suffer from damage from measles (blindness for example) or who lost loved ones to that extremely contagious disease.
History will make clear that the media has been no friend to science in the last 30+ years.
Talk radio, reality television, and the 24 hour news cycle’s constant breaking news started it, and the internet, social media, and smartphones sealed the deal.
If it doesn’t fit on a phone screen, or isn’t notification worthy, it’s not simple or entertaining enough for our attention. Anything too complex or boring is suspect.
The Wakefield reference reminds me: W's account was some crackpot thing about (iirc) digestive problems; a lot of people in that anti-vax set believed this. But there was another story, very popular among anti-vaxxers, that it was the thimerosol, included in the vaccine when it was supplied in multi-dose bottles, that was the real villain. At that time, the thimerosol distributed in the vaccine was being reduced, on general precautionary principles. Guess what happened to the autism rate when the stuff was entirely eliminated. (Hint: nothing at all)
This was in the early 2000s. Only recently did I learn that an avid anti-vaxxer of that time was the son of the famous Robert F Kennedy.
Sorry, we're probably going to go back more centuries than that, at least as a nation. And once the infrastructure, including research, is gone, it will simply be back to natural selection.
People of very weak faith like myself would thank God for inspiring those scientists to work hard, whether those scientists knew it or not. So thank God and thank the hardworking scientists.
It is probably the Antonine Plague - the disease that shattered the Roman Empire. The Crisis of the Third Century is partly (mostly) caused by it. By the time the plague and the wars of the Crisis had receded and Diocletian was putting the remnants back together, there were perhaps ten million dead, and an Empire on the verge of bankruptcy - an Empire that, for all of Diocletian and Constantine's rebuilding, still couldn't hold against the next wave of "barbarians" when Attila turned up.
Christians comforting the diseased and dying at great risk to their own lives were a major factor in the conversion of the Roman Empire. There's a long list of bishops and other senior clerics who died doing exactly this, and plenty of people converted after they were nursed back to health, or a beloved or relative was.
Smallpox has been shaping and reshaping the world in the strangest and most profound ways for two millennia.
Europeans? Well... probably "europeans" convicts / migrants who fled to colonise America (or were deported to australia too) to get rid of so many native indians. Incredible. Yes. Humankind is the worst enemy of ... mmhh... humankind.
Actually most who went to America were well read religious dissenters. You are thinking of Australia although, that turned out okay, except for Murdoch
“American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard is a good resource for understanding European migration and our present situation. Well read religious dissenters may have made up the majority of colonial immigrants to New England, but that isn’t true for every North American colony. Oh, and whether settlement by convicts or other European migrants turned out okay depends on how much indigenous ancestry one has.
Really was just a flip response to someone suggesting America was settled by convicts. I don’t think Australia was settled exclusively or even predominantly by convicts, and I certainly didn’t intend to downplay the damage to indigenous people; however I stand by judgement of Murdoch.
Yep. In part, it was the result of a massive smallpox outbreak that prevented Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold's troops from taking Quebec from the British during the Rev War. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Our misfortunes in Canada are enough to melt the heart of stone. … The smallpox is ten times more terrible than the British, Canadians, and Indians together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from Quebec. And, it has been claimed, the main cause of the preservation of Canada for the British Empire.”
States with low educated Republicans did the worst…if the state had a Democratic governor they did better because the governors were a little quicker to implement mitigation measures and kept them longer than the red states with Republican governors. Vermont probably had a Covid death rate lower than Canada and it’s probably the state most like Canada.
Not only does Canada whup our butts in being kind (not to mention relatively sane), they use their brains! check this out:
Literacy Rate
Canada 99%
USA. 86%
The adult literacy rate represents the percentage of population aged 25 or over in a country who possess basic literacy skills, enabling them to read, write, and comprehend information effectively. It serves as a key indicator of educational attainment and the level of literacy within a population. Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2025
That's true. They took pus from the scabs of a person infected with smallpox and placed it into a small scratch. It conferred protection at a pretty high level but there was a danger because the inoculated person usually developed a mild case of smallpox (much less lethal and not as severe) and had the potential to pass the infection to those not inoculated or not previously infected. (It was normally done in an isolated location/ small building where people would remain until the infection cleared to prevent contagion.) So, initially Washington was afraid that an inoculation campaign could trigger a widespread outbreak among the troops and he withheld the mandate until the mass infections in Quebec (see my comment above) made him reconsider.
And what prompted George to be so astute, as is often the case with, personal experience: Early Exposure to Smallpox:
In 1751, Washington contracted smallpox while visiting Barbados. He recovered but was left with permanent scars. This experience made him acutely aware of the devastating effects of the disease.
Nonsense. I tuned in to that, and she made clear that people with a breakout case had to be especially careful not to transmit it to other people, such as any unavxxed people --even though the breakout cases of COVID are usually a lot *less harmful* to the sick person than unvaxxed cases.
I had measles, chickenpox and even German measles as a kid. I told my kids that I didn’t want them to suffer like I did because I loved them. Seemed simple to me!
There is a third option of got sick, suffered, sorta recovered but continued to suffer life long impacts. Very few biological processes at these scales are binary.
Measles, mumps, and chicken pox for this senior as a tot in the 1940s...still remember the misery, drawn shades, pustules...feh! And Ratfuck, Jr wants to revive the spectre again?
Actually, the first commercial shingles vaccine has been around for at least 40 years. I remember getting it years ago. There are now newer ones, of course.
I also had chickenpox. I had a mild case of shingles years later. My doctors says that neither of these cases prevents me from coming down with shingles again. Unfortunately, I had a reaction to the first Shingrix shot, so the pharmacist refused to give me the second one.
Just to note, that MMR vaccine--measles, mumps, rubella--protects very young children (birth-5 years) who are most vulnerable; but adults who lack vaccination against mumps are at much higher risk of severe illness as adults, with some risk also of the inflammatory condition it causes (orchitis) creating sterility in men. So, the vaccine is not just about protecting children--it provides adult protections in the long term as well.
My husband got mumps at the same time his tonsils were removed when he was a kid. That remains his most scalding memory to this day, even though he’s been wounded in action in Vietnam.
That’s exactly why they are willing to listen to the current antivax movement. I grew up in the post polio and measles vaccine years but had grandparents and parents who talked about what it was like before the vaccines, and especially how terrified they were that my mother wouldn’t survive her bout with measles at age 19. It made a lasting impression on me. I suspect too many of us who benefited from those vaccines didn’t pass those stories on to our own kids and grandkids.
It’s very similar to fascism making a comeback as soon as the WW2 generation started dying off in significant numbers, or communism being notably more popular with people too young to remember the USSR.
"How did this happen? The answer, of course, is politics, specifically Republican politics." Seems like we're going to be saying this a lot about a lot of things in the next few years.
We are responsible, via our tolerance of their garbage, our passivity (we don't vote, we don't speak out, we buy stuff from bad actors). It might not have started with us, but it can be ended by us.
There are so many examples of false science too…Americans largely invented the ‘science’ of Eugenics, funded in large part by Carnegie, by the way, that was science behind the Nazi’s final solution! America! Of course the untold story of WWII is that many in the United States still ply this science…Stephen Miller, the ‘Wormtongue’ of Donny-John, who plays on Donny’s very real racist history! And if don’t think the PayPals have a racist gene from the origins in South Africa, both sketchy immigrants as well.
And fire suppression has caused a great deal of harm on our Federal lands…so science and policymakers are better, healthier, for all of us!
That’s why Mr. Collay was using them as examples. He’s saying the same thing as you; you two are on the side. Read these comments a little more carefully.
CJ false science is messing with evidence to fit your needed outcomes, vaccines cause autism so you cherry-pick discredited science. Eugenics is also false science based on racism…yes, science is a process, evidence that supports a reasonable hypothesis is ideal…then there are pseudoscience’s adherents. RFK is something less, more snake-oil science…’take this, it will make you happy’, and it makes you to take the snake oil and you feel happy, so he’s right, sort of…not reasonable theory, politics works this way too. Another version is old-d hook conservation science that believed that holding things static was the best outcome, till more research added in dynamism, disturbance, floods, landslides, and fires as all part of a healthy ecosystem. Still hard for some to see…industrial forestry has a strong bias and tries to say that clear-cuts are like windstorm and fires…they are not. Overgrown bush in California chaparral needs fire, low intensity for sure if you won a house nearby and the smoke is an issues but still, the evidence is clear.
Fanatics exists in both extremes, the right just tends to be violently wrong whereas the left are sort of wimpy wrong. Sorry! Progressives are really centrists, they just don’t want to be, yet they are more grounded in practice. It’s why Iowa founded the Progressives! Farmers were once smart Christians!
I keep saying the Dems oughta get Luigi Mangione to do a few PSA/social media spots. 15 seconds each with some message about the billionaires and their evil plot.
I’m sort of serious; I absolutely despise what Luigi did, it was totally wrong, and he’s probably suffering mental illness, but…..
….Luigi would be one hell of a show-stealer! if the Dems want to own news cycles and headlines and cause a really big ruckus (and eclipse Trump and piss off MAGA royally) enlist a few very choice words from Mr. Mangione.
If MAGA can put a felon in the White House, why not utilize an innocent until proven guilty man who is awaiting his day in court?
I still remember—it was 1952 when I was 8 years old—when my mother and I met a new neighbor and her daughter who was about my age. She was retarded, according to the popular language back then. I listened as her mother explained that her daughter was normal until she caught the measles, and had a very high fever with convulsions that damaged her brain. The idea that a kid like me could be “normal” and then not, scared me a lot. Measles is no joke.
When my siblings and I came down with measles, prior to the existence of the vaccine, all of our friends at school were sick as well. For the record, not of our classmates had any disabilities but all of us were crammed into classrooms of 50-70 students or the equivalent of a petri dish. That is how epidemics occur, in my experience.
happened to my step-sister. it produced a very strange kind of disabling, almost like autism in its "savant" exception to general social and intellectual disability. She couldn't reason, couldn't control impulses, I'm not sure she ever learned to read, but she could pick up languages easily and so was able to speak utter nonsense in perfect French, for example.
The statistics show the number of deaths from diseases, but they don’t indicate long-term disabilities, and, of course, the collateral heartbreak to families.
Everything, and I mean absolutely everything, about what one expects a government to protect its citizenry from has been broken and all of the safeguards removed. What's worse, no thanks to last night's White House statement, we are now in truly insane territory, with DOGE and Musk's standing within it, having been declared a mirage. According to Trump's people, Musk isn't in charge of DOGE. Say what?
The implications of this could either be to give Musk cover from all the legal liabilities he is now under or... it could be Trump's way to get rid of the oligarch who is taking too much limelight. Either way, it changes nothing about what's already been broken.
Health system? Broken, from those who monitor, test, and those who warn.
Food System? Same.
Transportation system? Same.
Intelligence system? Same
Foreign affairs? Same.
Trade? Same
Legal system (DOJ, civil rights, etc.)? Same.
Military? Same
And on down the line.
Those states that have the budget reserves to hang on for the next two years in the hope that Democrats will retake the House, at least, will fare better. The rest of us? We will have to live in fear of the next outbreak, pandemic, worsening of food, drug, and medical device recall, not to mention chaos.
The other thing... is the unreliability of mainstream media. Did you know there were protests everywhere yesterday? Do you know what EU countries and Canada are doing to protect themselves? What else don't you know?
That's where we are now.
---
My news roundup daily post, updated all day and night:
Things Musk (and Trump) Did('nt?)... Day 29 | Blog#42
The AP does a decent job. They reported on most of the protests late yesterday.
BBC news posts a lot to YouTube. Not sure about broadcasting live. That said, BBC isn't as good as it used to be.
France 24 in English does an excellent job of reporting from all around the world and they broadcast live on YouTube as well as on their app. It's free. You can also install their service on Apple TV and Sling.
Searching YouTube for events and specifying Today as the timeframe generally yields good results.
The protests were heavily promoted on Facebook and, I assume, other social media. Friends who attended our local protest estimated that 300-500 people attended. We are a relatively small town.
How do you propose we counter them? There are lawsuits, protests, resignations, and career staff speaking out, plus Dr. Krugman and others in the papers. Democrats are working behind the scenes on a strategy.
I was born in 1959, and I most certainly had measles. And chicken pox and mumps. I missed on Rubella. But I’m grateful I never once had to contemplate polio. My dad grew up living through the yearly outbreaks in American cities. He—and now I—cherished them for relieving a scourge.
So an extra benefit of vaccination is not just to stave off serious disease and prevent transmission to the neighbors but to repel creeps? That’s swell!
My brother had the measles (before a vaccine was available) and a great fuss was made to keep me away from him and not get it too. Fortunately he. recovered without. any damaging side effects. I also remember seeing large signs on the door of a classmate's home when they had measles - not allowing any visitors. My brother and I spent hot summers not allowed to go to a nearby pool t o swim because of polio. Vaccines save lives and allow people to have normall lives because they have been vaccinated. Covid has killed many - unfortunately there is no vaccine to save people from stupidity.
What used to be a "normal life" was having half of your siblings die before the age of 10 and some of your contemporaries die later of tetanus, rabies and other treatable or preventable bacterial or viral infections. Back to the future!
I was born in 1941. I remember clearly measles, chicken pox, and yes, polio running up and down the block like wildfire. There was no protection . Kids were horribly sick. Kids died. Parents were helpless. I’ve had measles and chicken pox and lived to tell the tale - Parents, you don’t want your kid to have these diseases. They are not minor!
I worked with a man who had polio. He could hardly walk with his crutches. I remember having German measles while living in an orphanage (parents divorcing) and remember looking out the window watching other kids play. I was left alone for over a week or so. Me vaxed? You bet your ass. Oh yeah, trad-girlfriends/wives, be careful what you wish for cuz if it goes bad, you are screwed.
I'm old. I remember being terrified by the images of kids in iron lungs. We contributed to the "March of Dimes" fund to develop a vaccine. It arrived too late to save one of my friends, who died of polio.
My older brother got polio of the throat, suffered his entire life from side effects. The March of Dimes paid all of his expenses, including 6 months in hospital in Spokane. Absolutely one of the most wonderful charities.
My Mom was one of those kids. She spent six months in a Shriner's Hospital. Growing up I walked through the neighborhood every year with her to collect March of Dimes donations.
I was born in 1954. When I was four years old, I had the Measles, Mumps, and Chickenpox. My poor Mom . . . With the measles, I became delirious. I remember telling my Mom that my bed was floating in the air. Then I remember being in the hospital with what must have been IV's taped to my thighs, and the Nurse saying that the Light Bulb was magic and that all children went to sleep when it was turned off. Hopefully, people's attitudes will change back to wanting to have their children vaccinated.
My sister was so sick with mumps a Catholic neighbor of ours sent her priest to give my sister last rites. My sister survived. I'll never forget it. My sister (I had a milder case)) and I were so frightened by this tall man in black. And, my mother was "not happy" with this man either.
I still cannot get over no one calling out Sen Tuberville when he said his granddaughter “would not be a pin cushion” because his son had listened to RFK. This was during the hearing and no one pointed out that this is exactly what they feared.
The former Norwegian PM Erna Solberg had measles when she was ca 9 months old back in 1961 and had to be hospitalized. Her opinion on the pros of vaccines is set in stone.
I had a friend who, under the spell of the Christian Science Church, said, casually, to me, "we all had measles. No big deal. We all made it." I made it only because streptomycin, a new antibiotic in the early 1950s in a Communist country, was available. I was four when I got the measles, and I developed pulmonary complications resulting pleurisy, which, the lung specialist said, would make me vulnerable to tuberculosis. TB would have killed me. Forward to 1970, when, as a graduate student at University of Michigan, I came down with walking pneumonia. The doctor who looked at my x-rays said, "You've had trouble with your lungs before." The scarring from pleurisy remained with me, but the antibiotic injections saved me from greater harm. Would I have wanted to put my children and my grandchild through such peril? I would regard it as child abuse of the worst kind, and so it should be treated legally.
Wow. I had pleurisy when I was 18 - and pericarditis at the same time. It was scary. I spent a week in the hospital and given massive doses of Indocin. Not fun.
General George Washington required his troops to be vaccinated against smallpox.
What people might not know was that, at the time, smallpox was a horrific plague brought to these shores by Europeans, and responsible, along with yellow fever and other viral cousins, for the death of the majority of Native Americans, who had no immunity to it. Not to mention many, many immigrant Americans. The discovery of a way to make people immune to such diseases was a watershed moment in the history of humanity. Vaccines are a godsend.
My grandmother caught smallpox in a 1917 outbreak in Redkey, IN which killed nearly half the town’s residents.A boy in my kindergarten class died of post-measles pneumonia. I almost died of mumps encephalitis. The 2 men who lived in the houses across from us both were partially paralyzed by polio. People have forgotten and are propagandized. We have an epidemic of delusional thinking in this Country and we may lose all the gains of the 20th century because of it.
My grandfather was the oldest son of Irish immigrants. In the late 1800s he lost the youngest 5 of his 11 siblings in a diptheria epidemic in NYC. (They were Bradys too. )
I am surprised that there is no mention of the British doctor Andrew Wakefield who published the research that “proved” the measles vaccine caused autism. In 1998 the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published his research which understandably started an international panic. Turned out Wakefield was a fraud who not only had faked his data but was also working on his own measles vax. He lost his medical license and left the UK in disgrace. He moved to Texas where he has continued spreading anti-vax propaganda. He has been embraced by Trump — Surprise, surprise!
“ The Doctor Who Fooled the World”
Brian Deer
https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12139/doctor-who-fooled-world?srsltid=AfmBOoq-MiWzc8K3oFLulMktKas1Xgs3W_L2aHgB43BKLVVn9WIFM7zJ
When American celebrities like Jenny McCarthy started voicing their concerns about the measles vaccines the American television media gave them a lot of attention. While they did have scientists on to talk data the shows I saw never mentioned Wakefield or brought on guests who still suffer from damage from measles (blindness for example) or who lost loved ones to that extremely contagious disease.
History will make clear that the media has been no friend to science in the last 30+ years.
Talk radio, reality television, and the 24 hour news cycle’s constant breaking news started it, and the internet, social media, and smartphones sealed the deal.
If it doesn’t fit on a phone screen, or isn’t notification worthy, it’s not simple or entertaining enough for our attention. Anything too complex or boring is suspect.
The Wakefield reference reminds me: W's account was some crackpot thing about (iirc) digestive problems; a lot of people in that anti-vax set believed this. But there was another story, very popular among anti-vaxxers, that it was the thimerosol, included in the vaccine when it was supplied in multi-dose bottles, that was the real villain. At that time, the thimerosol distributed in the vaccine was being reduced, on general precautionary principles. Guess what happened to the autism rate when the stuff was entirely eliminated. (Hint: nothing at all)
This was in the early 2000s. Only recently did I learn that an avid anti-vaxxer of that time was the son of the famous Robert F Kennedy.
I have commented on that many times. Wakefield was a public health disaster. I am of the Scottish Bradys.
Sorry, we're probably going to go back more centuries than that, at least as a nation. And once the infrastructure, including research, is gone, it will simply be back to natural selection.
They're a science-sent, but of course your point is valid.
But not a godsend. It was a result of many years of hard work by scientists.
People of very weak faith like myself would thank God for inspiring those scientists to work hard, whether those scientists knew it or not. So thank God and thank the hardworking scientists.
It is probably the Antonine Plague - the disease that shattered the Roman Empire. The Crisis of the Third Century is partly (mostly) caused by it. By the time the plague and the wars of the Crisis had receded and Diocletian was putting the remnants back together, there were perhaps ten million dead, and an Empire on the verge of bankruptcy - an Empire that, for all of Diocletian and Constantine's rebuilding, still couldn't hold against the next wave of "barbarians" when Attila turned up.
Christians comforting the diseased and dying at great risk to their own lives were a major factor in the conversion of the Roman Empire. There's a long list of bishops and other senior clerics who died doing exactly this, and plenty of people converted after they were nursed back to health, or a beloved or relative was.
Smallpox has been shaping and reshaping the world in the strangest and most profound ways for two millennia.
There is a fantastic book, one of my faves entitled, The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox.
Thanks for the book tip. Ordered it.
Europeans? Well... probably "europeans" convicts / migrants who fled to colonise America (or were deported to australia too) to get rid of so many native indians. Incredible. Yes. Humankind is the worst enemy of ... mmhh... humankind.
Actually most who went to America were well read religious dissenters. You are thinking of Australia although, that turned out okay, except for Murdoch
“American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard is a good resource for understanding European migration and our present situation. Well read religious dissenters may have made up the majority of colonial immigrants to New England, but that isn’t true for every North American colony. Oh, and whether settlement by convicts or other European migrants turned out okay depends on how much indigenous ancestry one has.
Really was just a flip response to someone suggesting America was settled by convicts. I don’t think Australia was settled exclusively or even predominantly by convicts, and I certainly didn’t intend to downplay the damage to indigenous people; however I stand by judgement of Murdoch.
Smallpox did not discriminate between "convicts/migrants/ and Princes and Lords!
Man is a wolf to man.
Yep. In part, it was the result of a massive smallpox outbreak that prevented Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold's troops from taking Quebec from the British during the Rev War. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Our misfortunes in Canada are enough to melt the heart of stone. … The smallpox is ten times more terrible than the British, Canadians, and Indians together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from Quebec. And, it has been claimed, the main cause of the preservation of Canada for the British Empire.”
More here: https://troytassier.substack.com/p/the-history-of-vaccines-and-the-importance-bd8
I always love it when historians pop in to give us an accurate view of what happened.
Thanks!
Perhaps we’ll see a repeat and Canada will survive as an independent nation due to rampant illness among Americans.
We lost 55,000 to COVID compared to the USA's roughly 1,500,000. Considering our population is about 1/9, we lost less than HALF the rate of people.
Our vaccination rates were above 80%, IIRC the USA's were around 65%.
States with low educated Republicans did the worst…if the state had a Democratic governor they did better because the governors were a little quicker to implement mitigation measures and kept them longer than the red states with Republican governors. Vermont probably had a Covid death rate lower than Canada and it’s probably the state most like Canada.
Not only does Canada whup our butts in being kind (not to mention relatively sane), they use their brains! check this out:
Literacy Rate
Canada 99%
USA. 86%
The adult literacy rate represents the percentage of population aged 25 or over in a country who possess basic literacy skills, enabling them to read, write, and comprehend information effectively. It serves as a key indicator of educational attainment and the level of literacy within a population. Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2025
That would be ironic!
Kind of ironic that lack of attention or disbelief in vaccination kept Canada from being our 51st state....
Hadn't thought of it in those terms but, ya, good point.
Actually, I believe they were inoculated, a much less effective procedure. The smallpox vaccine was not developed until 1796..
That's true. They took pus from the scabs of a person infected with smallpox and placed it into a small scratch. It conferred protection at a pretty high level but there was a danger because the inoculated person usually developed a mild case of smallpox (much less lethal and not as severe) and had the potential to pass the infection to those not inoculated or not previously infected. (It was normally done in an isolated location/ small building where people would remain until the infection cleared to prevent contagion.) So, initially Washington was afraid that an inoculation campaign could trigger a widespread outbreak among the troops and he withheld the mandate until the mass infections in Quebec (see my comment above) made him reconsider.
And what prompted George to be so astute, as is often the case with, personal experience: Early Exposure to Smallpox:
In 1751, Washington contracted smallpox while visiting Barbados. He recovered but was left with permanent scars. This experience made him acutely aware of the devastating effects of the disease.
There is some belief that is caused his apparent inability to sire children.
True. Historians have long speculated that Washington's illness may have contributed to his infertility.
Donald Trump is no George Washington!
Massive understatement!
"Donald Trump is no George Washington!"
Agree, but neither is Joe Biden, despite the lavish praise from the likes of Nancy Pelosi:
"Pelosi claims Biden’s face should be added to Mount Rushmore"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pelosi-claims-biden-s-face-should-be-added-to-mount-rushmore/ar-AA1oe03y
Your whataboutism is cute, but totally irrelevant to the conversation. Biden backed vaccine distribution; Trump did not.
"Biden backed vaccine distribution; Trump did not."
Biden backed mandatory vaccinations; Trump did not:
"Biden tasks OSHA with vaccine mandate"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-tasks-osha-with-vaccine-mandate
Mind you, this was a month after CDC head Dr. Rochelle Walinsky finally admitted that the Covid shots would not prevent transmission:
"CDC Director Rochelle Walensky tells Wolf Blitzer that COVID Vaccines won't prevent transmission"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKFWGvvlVLI
Nonsense. I tuned in to that, and she made clear that people with a breakout case had to be especially careful not to transmit it to other people, such as any unavxxed people --even though the breakout cases of COVID are usually a lot *less harmful* to the sick person than unvaxxed cases.
OK, let's start with the CDC changing the definitions of "vaccine" and "vaccination" in 2021:
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html
The Covid "vaccine" was not performing to the standard of the previous definition, so the definition changed from "immunity" to "protection".
Then please read through this Australian article from late 2022 and click on the numerous links provided:
"Yes, they claimed the vaccines would prevent transmission"
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/yes-they-claimed-the-vaccines-would-prevent-transmission/news-story/a176eb002c29e603fc29ef9fe0b33b18
The goal posts were constantly being moved.
I had measles, chickenpox and even German measles as a kid. I told my kids that I didn’t want them to suffer like I did because I loved them. Seemed simple to me!
Some got sick, suffered, and recovered. Some didn’t recover and died.
There is a third option of got sick, suffered, sorta recovered but continued to suffer life long impacts. Very few biological processes at these scales are binary.
Measles, mumps, and chicken pox for this senior as a tot in the 1940s...still remember the misery, drawn shades, pustules...feh! And Ratfuck, Jr wants to revive the spectre again?
I had chickenpox, for which there's been a vaccine since 1981. So I have had active shingles once.
So sorry to hear that. My shingles vaccines are working so far, but they’re not perfect and they haven’t been around all that long.
Actually, the first commercial shingles vaccine has been around for at least 40 years. I remember getting it years ago. There are now newer ones, of course.
I also had chickenpox. I had a mild case of shingles years later. My doctors says that neither of these cases prevents me from coming down with shingles again. Unfortunately, I had a reaction to the first Shingrix shot, so the pharmacist refused to give me the second one.
Lance Ditto Born 1933: measles, mumps, and chicken pox.
Me, too, and mumps as well as a child. Tell the men what mumps can do to adult men who catch it.
And MAGA already is neurotic about dealing sperm counts. Seems like an opportunity to mess with their heads.
Declining, not dealing.
Bitch, protest, vote (if there is another election)
Is it true that 85 million Americans didn't vote last November?
Yes. I often wonder how many regret staying home now.
Just to note, that MMR vaccine--measles, mumps, rubella--protects very young children (birth-5 years) who are most vulnerable; but adults who lack vaccination against mumps are at much higher risk of severe illness as adults, with some risk also of the inflammatory condition it causes (orchitis) creating sterility in men. So, the vaccine is not just about protecting children--it provides adult protections in the long term as well.
My husband got mumps at the same time his tonsils were removed when he was a kid. That remains his most scalding memory to this day, even though he’s been wounded in action in Vietnam.
I honor his service and his honesty about his experiences.
FTR most of the antivax parents are vaccinated themselves, because they went to school at a time of vaccine mandates.
That’s exactly why they are willing to listen to the current antivax movement. I grew up in the post polio and measles vaccine years but had grandparents and parents who talked about what it was like before the vaccines, and especially how terrified they were that my mother wouldn’t survive her bout with measles at age 19. It made a lasting impression on me. I suspect too many of us who benefited from those vaccines didn’t pass those stories on to our own kids and grandkids.
It’s very similar to fascism making a comeback as soon as the WW2 generation started dying off in significant numbers, or communism being notably more popular with people too young to remember the USSR.
I’ve noticed that too.
And JFK Jr. said his own children are vaccinated. “Good for me but not for thee” he oozes.
Let’s put some that mumps virus in maga water bottles under the trump brand
"How did this happen? The answer, of course, is politics, specifically Republican politics." Seems like we're going to be saying this a lot about a lot of things in the next few years.
We are responsible, via our tolerance of their garbage, our passivity (we don't vote, we don't speak out, we buy stuff from bad actors). It might not have started with us, but it can be ended by us.
💯
Speak for yourself.
There are so many examples of false science too…Americans largely invented the ‘science’ of Eugenics, funded in large part by Carnegie, by the way, that was science behind the Nazi’s final solution! America! Of course the untold story of WWII is that many in the United States still ply this science…Stephen Miller, the ‘Wormtongue’ of Donny-John, who plays on Donny’s very real racist history! And if don’t think the PayPals have a racist gene from the origins in South Africa, both sketchy immigrants as well.
And fire suppression has caused a great deal of harm on our Federal lands…so science and policymakers are better, healthier, for all of us!
That’s why Mr. Collay was using them as examples. He’s saying the same thing as you; you two are on the side. Read these comments a little more carefully.
CJ false science is messing with evidence to fit your needed outcomes, vaccines cause autism so you cherry-pick discredited science. Eugenics is also false science based on racism…yes, science is a process, evidence that supports a reasonable hypothesis is ideal…then there are pseudoscience’s adherents. RFK is something less, more snake-oil science…’take this, it will make you happy’, and it makes you to take the snake oil and you feel happy, so he’s right, sort of…not reasonable theory, politics works this way too. Another version is old-d hook conservation science that believed that holding things static was the best outcome, till more research added in dynamism, disturbance, floods, landslides, and fires as all part of a healthy ecosystem. Still hard for some to see…industrial forestry has a strong bias and tries to say that clear-cuts are like windstorm and fires…they are not. Overgrown bush in California chaparral needs fire, low intensity for sure if you won a house nearby and the smoke is an issues but still, the evidence is clear.
though I'd bet that the Austin Waldorf School in Austin, TX, which has an exceptionally low rate of vaccination is crunchy left.
Yeah the anti-vax movement to me is a classic case of horseshoe politics.
Fanatics exists in both extremes, the right just tends to be violently wrong whereas the left are sort of wimpy wrong. Sorry! Progressives are really centrists, they just don’t want to be, yet they are more grounded in practice. It’s why Iowa founded the Progressives! Farmers were once smart Christians!
I keep saying the Dems oughta get Luigi Mangione to do a few PSA/social media spots. 15 seconds each with some message about the billionaires and their evil plot.
I’m sort of serious; I absolutely despise what Luigi did, it was totally wrong, and he’s probably suffering mental illness, but…..
….Luigi would be one hell of a show-stealer! if the Dems want to own news cycles and headlines and cause a really big ruckus (and eclipse Trump and piss off MAGA royally) enlist a few very choice words from Mr. Mangione.
If MAGA can put a felon in the White House, why not utilize an innocent until proven guilty man who is awaiting his day in court?
;-)
I still remember—it was 1952 when I was 8 years old—when my mother and I met a new neighbor and her daughter who was about my age. She was retarded, according to the popular language back then. I listened as her mother explained that her daughter was normal until she caught the measles, and had a very high fever with convulsions that damaged her brain. The idea that a kid like me could be “normal” and then not, scared me a lot. Measles is no joke.
My wife was a special ed teacher. Measles infections were often the cause of severe disabilities.
When my siblings and I came down with measles, prior to the existence of the vaccine, all of our friends at school were sick as well. For the record, not of our classmates had any disabilities but all of us were crammed into classrooms of 50-70 students or the equivalent of a petri dish. That is how epidemics occur, in my experience.
happened to my step-sister. it produced a very strange kind of disabling, almost like autism in its "savant" exception to general social and intellectual disability. She couldn't reason, couldn't control impulses, I'm not sure she ever learned to read, but she could pick up languages easily and so was able to speak utter nonsense in perfect French, for example.
The statistics show the number of deaths from diseases, but they don’t indicate long-term disabilities, and, of course, the collateral heartbreak to families.
I suspect there ARE statistics on that, now being wiped from the CDC website or no longer being generated at all.
Everything, and I mean absolutely everything, about what one expects a government to protect its citizenry from has been broken and all of the safeguards removed. What's worse, no thanks to last night's White House statement, we are now in truly insane territory, with DOGE and Musk's standing within it, having been declared a mirage. According to Trump's people, Musk isn't in charge of DOGE. Say what?
The implications of this could either be to give Musk cover from all the legal liabilities he is now under or... it could be Trump's way to get rid of the oligarch who is taking too much limelight. Either way, it changes nothing about what's already been broken.
Health system? Broken, from those who monitor, test, and those who warn.
Food System? Same.
Transportation system? Same.
Intelligence system? Same
Foreign affairs? Same.
Trade? Same
Legal system (DOJ, civil rights, etc.)? Same.
Military? Same
And on down the line.
Those states that have the budget reserves to hang on for the next two years in the hope that Democrats will retake the House, at least, will fare better. The rest of us? We will have to live in fear of the next outbreak, pandemic, worsening of food, drug, and medical device recall, not to mention chaos.
The other thing... is the unreliability of mainstream media. Did you know there were protests everywhere yesterday? Do you know what EU countries and Canada are doing to protect themselves? What else don't you know?
That's where we are now.
---
My news roundup daily post, updated all day and night:
Things Musk (and Trump) Did('nt?)... Day 29 | Blog#42
DOGE, like it never was...
https://rimaregasblog42.substack.com/p/things-musk-and-trump-didnt-day-29
Excellent summary, to which, alas, we add more horrors every single day under the muskdrumpf regime.
My wife notes, “They are taking a giant shit on our country!” We should care more! And do more!
And the other is the great bumper sticker WTFGOP …get gone little DOG’E’s
The Guardian is good, also. They are horrified at Trump.
The AP does a decent job. They reported on most of the protests late yesterday.
BBC news posts a lot to YouTube. Not sure about broadcasting live. That said, BBC isn't as good as it used to be.
France 24 in English does an excellent job of reporting from all around the world and they broadcast live on YouTube as well as on their app. It's free. You can also install their service on Apple TV and Sling.
Searching YouTube for events and specifying Today as the timeframe generally yields good results.
There is also my daily news post...
The protests were heavily promoted on Facebook and, I assume, other social media. Friends who attended our local protest estimated that 300-500 people attended. We are a relatively small town.
https://www.bbc.com/
BBC News is available on YouTubeTV streaming service.
How do you propose we counter them? There are lawsuits, protests, resignations, and career staff speaking out, plus Dr. Krugman and others in the papers. Democrats are working behind the scenes on a strategy.
I was born in 1959, and I most certainly had measles. And chicken pox and mumps. I missed on Rubella. But I’m grateful I never once had to contemplate polio. My dad grew up living through the yearly outbreaks in American cities. He—and now I—cherished them for relieving a scourge.
So an extra benefit of vaccination is not just to stave off serious disease and prevent transmission to the neighbors but to repel creeps? That’s swell!
My brother had the measles (before a vaccine was available) and a great fuss was made to keep me away from him and not get it too. Fortunately he. recovered without. any damaging side effects. I also remember seeing large signs on the door of a classmate's home when they had measles - not allowing any visitors. My brother and I spent hot summers not allowed to go to a nearby pool t o swim because of polio. Vaccines save lives and allow people to have normall lives because they have been vaccinated. Covid has killed many - unfortunately there is no vaccine to save people from stupidity.
What used to be a "normal life" was having half of your siblings die before the age of 10 and some of your contemporaries die later of tetanus, rabies and other treatable or preventable bacterial or viral infections. Back to the future!
I was born in 1941. I remember clearly measles, chicken pox, and yes, polio running up and down the block like wildfire. There was no protection . Kids were horribly sick. Kids died. Parents were helpless. I’ve had measles and chicken pox and lived to tell the tale - Parents, you don’t want your kid to have these diseases. They are not minor!
I worked with a man who had polio. He could hardly walk with his crutches. I remember having German measles while living in an orphanage (parents divorcing) and remember looking out the window watching other kids play. I was left alone for over a week or so. Me vaxed? You bet your ass. Oh yeah, trad-girlfriends/wives, be careful what you wish for cuz if it goes bad, you are screwed.
I suspect many will rethink the anti-Vax stance once these diseases return in force.
I'm old. I remember being terrified by the images of kids in iron lungs. We contributed to the "March of Dimes" fund to develop a vaccine. It arrived too late to save one of my friends, who died of polio.
Same here.
My older brother got polio of the throat, suffered his entire life from side effects. The March of Dimes paid all of his expenses, including 6 months in hospital in Spokane. Absolutely one of the most wonderful charities.
My Mom was one of those kids. She spent six months in a Shriner's Hospital. Growing up I walked through the neighborhood every year with her to collect March of Dimes donations.
I was born in 1954. When I was four years old, I had the Measles, Mumps, and Chickenpox. My poor Mom . . . With the measles, I became delirious. I remember telling my Mom that my bed was floating in the air. Then I remember being in the hospital with what must have been IV's taped to my thighs, and the Nurse saying that the Light Bulb was magic and that all children went to sleep when it was turned off. Hopefully, people's attitudes will change back to wanting to have their children vaccinated.
My sister was so sick with mumps a Catholic neighbor of ours sent her priest to give my sister last rites. My sister survived. I'll never forget it. My sister (I had a milder case)) and I were so frightened by this tall man in black. And, my mother was "not happy" with this man either.
I still cannot get over no one calling out Sen Tuberville when he said his granddaughter “would not be a pin cushion” because his son had listened to RFK. This was during the hearing and no one pointed out that this is exactly what they feared.
Well, we have become far too tolerant, or afraid, of offending fools. If
Tuberville 's adult children don't use common sense and have their child vaccinated, they will be responsible for the outcome.
I would use “science sense” since Trump is running on “common sense “ and isolating/blowing up our country.
Tuberville is a moron, and the voters who voted for him are also morons.
Yes- it was eye opening to watch these hearings.
There are two Substacks here who are helpful with advice:
https://longcovidjourney2wellness.substack.com/account
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/account
Also Dr. Michael Osterholm's poscast, The Osterholm update.
You don't have to listen to the entire hour. You can read the transcript.
When you travel abroad you need a passport. Should other countries now require us to show our vaccination records?
Another good one (free):
https://pauloffit.substack.com/
I’m checking out your suggestions.
The former Norwegian PM Erna Solberg had measles when she was ca 9 months old back in 1961 and had to be hospitalized. Her opinion on the pros of vaccines is set in stone.
I had a friend who, under the spell of the Christian Science Church, said, casually, to me, "we all had measles. No big deal. We all made it." I made it only because streptomycin, a new antibiotic in the early 1950s in a Communist country, was available. I was four when I got the measles, and I developed pulmonary complications resulting pleurisy, which, the lung specialist said, would make me vulnerable to tuberculosis. TB would have killed me. Forward to 1970, when, as a graduate student at University of Michigan, I came down with walking pneumonia. The doctor who looked at my x-rays said, "You've had trouble with your lungs before." The scarring from pleurisy remained with me, but the antibiotic injections saved me from greater harm. Would I have wanted to put my children and my grandchild through such peril? I would regard it as child abuse of the worst kind, and so it should be treated legally.
Wow. I had pleurisy when I was 18 - and pericarditis at the same time. It was scary. I spent a week in the hospital and given massive doses of Indocin. Not fun.