Tuesday 2 April 2019

It Really Looks as though Stupidity is Incurable.

It really looks as though stupidity can't be cured!
The Anti-vaxxers are at it again. They have an incurable disease - stupidity. As the punchline of the joke my father told me a hundred years ago went, the Village Idiot, (yes, long ago villages used to have idiots before all the idiots went to university and became really dangerous) said:
"People think I know Fuck Nothing, well, I''m telling them, I went to University I know Fuck all!"
The joke is not a joke anymore. People who know nothing about health care, often semi-literate, now think that they know more than professionals who have dedicated a significant part of their lives studying and delivering health care to the population, often at great cost to themselves and for the most part with amazing success. The greatest advance in modern medicine has been the prevention of disastrous, often crippling sometimes fatal disease through immunization, not the glamorous procedures that make such good television.. Many of the life-threatening diseases I used to see no longer exist, thanks to immunization. There are many other infectious diseases that were on the brink of elimination that are gaining momentum such as measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis and others.
And what do the Snowflakes think?  
They, in their ignorance, think immunization causes autism, despite extensive hard science investigation that proves it doesn't 
"We really know more that this quack," they say of gifted scientists who have spent their lives studying these issues, " we feel it, yes we feel it in our hearts."  
They never saw smallpox, a disease that no longer exists. They have never seen or even know about poliomyelitis, that left children in 'the iron lung' because they couldn't breath or, if they recovered paralyzed with withered limbs. They never saw people with rheumatic fever who sustained heart damage that left them crippled for life. I could go on at length.
They know little about medicine yet they inject doubt into the minds of others. Unfortunately, some of these ignoramuses (OK ignorami ) are influential. Not only do they do immeasurable damage to their own children and grandchildren they do it to yours and mine.
Attempts to educate the Ignorami have been in vain and although the province of Ontario has spent significant money on educational programs, less than 1% change their view.
Read Roald Dahl (of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame) who lost a seven year old daughter to measles. His published letter titled “Measles: A Dangerous Illness,” was re-published by The Encephalitis Society Fact Sheet
to remind the public of the dangers they are subjecting their children to based on false science.
The anti-vaccination movement was initiated by a British Physician called Andrew Wakefield.
In 1998, a British physician and twelve of his colleagues published a small case series in the Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal that suggested MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine may be related to autism. MMR vaccination rates began to drop almost immediately as a result of that. Subsequent studies did not confirm any such relationship and ten of the twelve authors refuted the interpretation of the data on the basis of insufficient evidence. Further, it emerged that Wakefield et al had failed to disclose that they had been funded by lawyers who were engaged by the parents in legal suits against vaccine producing companies. Ultimately, Wakefield et al were found guilty of deliberate fraud and fabrication of facts apparently for personal gain. Wakefield was removed from the General Medical Council of Britain's register and was no longer permitted to practice medicine, emigrated to America where he became an instant hero, to lead and encourage the development of the 'Anti-Vaxxer' movement which would lead a significant group, many of whom should have known better, back into the dark ages.
So how is it that so many allegedly educated elitists buy into this absurd theory that measures which have done more to promote health and eliminate horrible disease are not healthy, are not natural and therefore should be avoided. How is it that these allegedly educated dopes cannot understand that what is natural is for people to die of infection, of pneumonia and indeed even of sepsis from an infected finger? Can they not understand that it is natural for one in five children to die in childbirth along with a goodly number of mothers? Can they not understand that pain and suffering is natural and that it is quite unnatural to remove those natural warnings? Do they not take antibiotics when infected or painkillers when in pain? You bet they do! Can they not understand that freezing to death is natural and that central heating and burning of fossil fuels is unnatural? Can they not understand heat and humidity are natural and that air conditioning is horribly unnatural? Those poor feckless milksops are to first to cry out for those unnatural balms that they so despised, as soon as they perceive it will spare THEM a little pain and suffering.  
Of course some really do understand what it is all about. They want to parade their ignorance as though it were knowledge. Many believe that their unscientific and uneducated views are "equal" to those of scholars and scientists who have spent their lives studying those topics. They are not, but unfortunately they can still do immense damage and inappropriately enjoy considerable credibility, while the herd immunity that the last generation acquired and offers them protection. Fortunately, most sensible folks protect their children, but we are going to see more outbreaks of these once well controlled diseases as immunity wanes.
Meanwhile, the pseudo scientific simpletons will continue to consider themselves as a elite group entitled to mislead their fellow beings.
Dr. Wakefield and his ilk will thrive as long as they can recruit the self righteous and the gullible!
The anti-vaxxers are subjecting their children to unacceptable hazard that borders on abuse. They are also subjecting the community as a whole to hazard as the herd immunity wanes.
It is time for the Government to show some leadership and make immunization mandatory as is done in many other countries.


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