vaccine vax

SEE TWO TO FOUR

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promote primary 4/20 on covid pandemic danger/  proto-qanon

perhaps neglected aha pioneer tag on early soc med viral

capt 818

long jbs history, revived? drs for dis prep

bak/capt 420 html ugly cause autism?

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an 7 25

One prominent far-right social media personality sometimes seen in President Donald Trump's orbit has carved out a niche for herself as the president's "loyalty enforcer," according to the New York Times. But one attorney representing administration officials who have been fired is publicly condemning her influence.

The Times reported Wednesday on the growing power MAGA activist Laura Loomer has over personnel decisions in the executive branch. Loomer has already gotten Trump to fire several officials who were deemed insufficiently loyal over past social media posts criticizing the president and his base. However, Kevin Carroll — a former CIA official and lawyer who has been retained as counsel by some of those former employees — said that Loomer's attempts to ferret out anyone who has ever spoken negatively about the president could have significant blowback.

"You have a person, from outside of the government of no national security experience and with extreme views, having de facto hire and fire authority over some of the most senior and important positions in the United States government," Carroll told the Times.

READ MORE:(Opinion) Trump has only one way out of this mess

"Eventually, when all of the qualified people are driven out and only the people acceptable to Laura Loomer remain, there could be an extremely bad result for the United States in some international crisis," he continued.

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Loomer has already claimed responsibility for driving out the top two officials at the National Security Agency (NSA) — former director Timothy Haugh (a four-star general), deputy director Wendy Noble and chief counsel April Falcon Doss — along with several others. This week, Dr. Vinay Prasad, who was the top vaccine official at the Food & Drug Administration, also resigned after Loomer discovered that he joked about using Trump as a voodoo doll in a 2020 podcast.

The Times reported that despite her devotion to Trump, Loomer wasn't given a job either in Trump's 2024 campaign or in the White House. But the social media personality indicated that she aimed to continue screening administration officials to ensure they were staunch Trump loyalists.

"I was raised to dress for the job you want, and even if you don’t have the job, pretend that you do,” Loomer said. “I want to do vetting, so I’m going to do the job I want.”

READ MORE:'Look stupid': Attorney reveals key sign that shows Trump nervous about Epstein questions

Click here to read the full Times report (subscription required).

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 8 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/moderna-sues-two-competitors-vaccine/

aha-let: i started gubmint for sovereignty wackos, but // koch libtard gang of 5 BS

ORIGIN OF GUBMINT?: KOCH, FOX, NORQUIST?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/koch/

no lnx

Koch keeps doing business in Russia as top journalist says family fortune came from Hitler: report

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement March 14, 2022

Award-winning journalist Jane Mayer, who literally wrote the book on the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries, pointed to a report published Monday stating, “Koch Industries continues doing business in Russia.” Despite major U.S. corporations shutting down operations after Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine, major U.S.-based multinational corporations, from Apple to Disney to McDonald’s, have responded by pulling out of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money” focuses on Charles Koch and (the now late) David Koch, the powerful conservative billionaire Koch Brothers.

Monday morning is his widely-read newsletter Popular Information Judd Legum reported Koch Industries doesn’t seem to be joining the American movement to isolate Putin and Russia – even after his forces have slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians in Ukraine.

“Guardian Industries,” writes Legum, “is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, acquired in 2017. Guardian, a manufacturer of industrial glass and other products, is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan but has production facilities around the world.”

Guardian has two glass production plants that operate in Russia. One facility is in Ryazan, Russia, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow. The company added “a new jumbo laminated glass production line” to that facility in August 2021. Another facility is located in Rostov, Russia, near the border with Ukraine. The Rostov plant, which began operations about a decade ago, cost $220 million to build and produces “Guardian’s high-performance, energy-efficient ClimaGuard(R) (residential) and SunGuard(R) (commercial) glass products for construction of homes, offices, retail, health-care and other facilities.” It is capable of producing “900 tons of glass per day.”

Mayer, an investigative journalist who is a staff writer for The New Yorker, also wrote an article about the Koch Brothers, in 2010: “The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.”

Mayer’s piece suggests the Koch Brothers had funded and fueled the Tea Party almost since its inception.

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

And it paid off.

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“The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to ‘educate,’ fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.”

So where did the Koch money originally come from?

Mayer on Monday reminded America:

For those who would like more information, here’s The New York Times on Mayer’s 2016 book:

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families.

Mayer’s “book is largely focused on the Koch family, stretching back to its involvement in the far-right John Birch Society and the political and business activities of the father, Fred C. Koch, who found some of his earliest business success overseas in the years leading up to World War II. One venture was a partnership with the American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis, who, according to Ms. Mayer, hired Mr. Koch to help build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ron-johnson-vaccines/

no lnx

"Go get vaccinated, America," the president urged the nation last Wednesday in his State of the Union address. Joe Biden had a lot of good news to report to the US Congress on the COVID vaccination effort: 220 million shots have been administered in his first 100 days in office, everyone over 16 is eligible and 90 percent of Americans now live within five miles of a vaccination site. Vaccine manufacturing is booming. Supply will soon no longer be a limiting factor. Yet even as eligibility has expanded, demand has plateaued across the country and vaccination rates have dipped from their peak.

Time is of the essence. More transmissible variants of the virus mean a higher percentage of the population must be immunized to reach herd immunity. We're in a race between the finest that human civilization has to offer and venal dumbassery.

In one corner is science, bolstered by billions in public investment. Eighteen months ago, there were no vaccines for human coronaviruses. Today, there are multiple safe, highly-effective COVID shots. Better yet, thanks to wise public policy and all-hands-on-deck roll-out, they're available for free to any American adult. The president even announced tax credits to reimburse small- and mid-sized businesses that give their employees paid time off to get vaccinated and to recover from vaccine side effects.

In the opposite corner are demagogues, clout-chasers and magical thinkers. These operators think they can gain political power, attention and, in some cases, money by undermining vaccinations against a disease that has killed more than 588,000 people.

Power-hungry Republicans like United States Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin are positioning themselves as heirs to Donald Trump by opposing vaccinations. Johnson recently told a conservative radio host that distribution should have been limited to the truly vulnerable and he questioned the need for broad-based vaccination.

Johnson also attacked the civic-minded values behind the push for herd immunity. "What is it to you? You have got a vaccine and science is telling you it's very, very effective," Johnson asked, "So, why is this big push to make sure everybody gets a vaccine?" The answer is obviously herd immunity, which offers protection for those who can't get vaccinated or whose immune systems can't respond to the vaccine.

It's a shrewd bet. Forty-two percent of Republicans say they probably or definitely wouldn't get a shot, even if it's shown to be safe. The "even if shown to be safe" proviso speaks volumes. Some Republicans claim to be against vaccination as a matter of personal liberty, but nobody's forcing them to get vaccinated. It's all rationalization.

Vaccine refusal is a tribal touchstone, even as vaccine hesitancy ebbs generally. Indeed, last summer's heavily armed anti-lockdown sieges of state legislatures were the dress rehearsals for the January 6 insurgency. Rejecting vaccines is about values, not facts. These right-wingers reject vaccines because vaccines represent science, the welfare state and the common good, which are antithetical to everything they hold dear.

Johnson isn't the only Republican riding anti-vaccine paranoia. Perhaps the perfect example of how vaccine denialism furthers extreme right-wing political ambition is Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano, who freely mixes anti-government and anti-vaccine sentiment. Mastriano beat the rush and came out against the COVID vaccine before it existed. He was also a central player in the bid to steal the election for Trump. (He actually had to be pulled out of a meeting with then-president Trump because he was found to be suffering from COVID.) But he recovered enough to organize bus transportation for the January 6 insurrection. Mastriano's antics have transformed him from an obscure legislator to a gubernatorial hopeful.

State legislators in 40 states have introduced bills that would undermine vaccine mandates. These bills are to legislating what vaccine denialism is to science. Few will become law, but they are potent messaging designed to further politicize vaccination.

Some entertainers are also milking COVID denialism for ratings and notoriety. Podcaster Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator better known for his takes on elk meat and DMT, and his willingness to host conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, opined that, "If you're, like, 21 years old, and you say to me, 'Should I get vaccinated?' I'll go no."

Rogan has 11 million listeners, many of them young. Predictably, Fox host Tucker Carlson defended Rogan's attempt to poison public understanding of vaccinations. Even Sean Hannity, who claims he's not anti-vaxx, flirted with vaccine denialism Tuesday, falsely suggesting there might not be any science behind the vaccine.

In a desperate bid to become Twitter's main character, a D-list Republican pundit gave the game away: "My primary reason for refusing the vaccine is much simpler: I dislike the people who want me to take it, and it makes them mad when they hear about my refusal. That, in turn, makes me happy." He's a troll, but he speaks the truth.

We're not just dealing with garden-variety vaccine hesitancy anymore. We're up against a cynical campaign to turn vaccination into a referendum on science, the welfare state and social solidarity. If that's how they want to play it, fine.

Vaccines are the greatest triumph of medicine. Public health is a crowning achievement of the welfare state. What we have done together to battle COVID is a testament to our love for ourselves, our neighbors and our country. Those are our values. The Republicans have called the question. Which side are you on?

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jeez note date 521

https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-doubles-down-vaccine-efficacy-conspiracy-theory-citing-masks-and-social

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4/21 relax mask b/c, enough for all over 16, west va pays 100$; within 5 miles of all

2nd am gtness

no lnx

I Won’t Take the Vaccine Because It Makes Liberals Mad

My newly formed and well-developed opinion on vaccines is this: If those bastards want me to get the jab, I’m not going to do it, because it annoys them.

By Peter D'Abrosca

April 26, 2021

I will never allow myself to be injected with Big Pharma’s mass-produced mystery juice, in part because it was rushed out of the lab and into the manufacturing line like a replacement for a Honda Civic’s recalled airbags.

It just wouldn’t be prudent.

As a healthy 29-year-old, my likelihood of dying from the virus is practically nil, so why risk the blood clots?And before anyone accuses me of trying to murder granny, shouldn’t she be immune to the virus if she gets the vaccine? Whether that’s actually true seems to be the topic of some debate. We’ll have to followThe Science™, then parse through its legitimacy relative to its political value for Democrats (that’s a new step in the scientific method) before we can know for sure.

If it turns out that the vaccine doesn’t prevent infection,[NOT IN DISPUTE]  then there’s no point in getting it in the first place, and I suppose we’ll have to sew our masks to our faces for the rest of our natural lives.

Maybe It’s Petty

But in truth, I’m not really avoiding the vaccine due to potential medical complications, or because of the speed with which it was produced.

Personal liberty is not the reason I’m avoiding it, either. I’m not a member of the “don’t tread on me” club. Though I don’t think mandated “vaccine passports” are a brilliant idea, my refusal to take the vaccine is not related to some perceived or real government overreach. I’m not here to take a principled stand against the federal or state governments on this issue. In fact, I’m saving my principled stands against the federal or state governments for issues that really matter, like strengthening libel laws so that lying journalists can finally be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where they belong.

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My primary reason for refusing the vaccine is much simpler: I dislike the people who want me to take it, and it makes them mad when they hear about my refusal. That, in turn, makes me happy. 

Maybe it’s petty, but the thought of the worst people on planet earth, those whom I like to call the Branch Covidians, literally shaking as I stroll into Target vaccine-free, makes me smile.

Allow me to emphasize my point.

Before this pandemic, I had a grand total of zero opinions on the issue of vaccines. I’ve never met an “anti-vaxxer” in my entire life, despite working in conservative politics, where, from my understanding, they can generally be found. Frankly, I don’t know a thing about their movement. I thought vaccines were what kids took periodically to eliminate the risk of ancient diseases like the mumps, which can only be found today in the illegal aliens we’re importing, and what people of a certain age took during autumn to avoid contracting the flu. 

In fact, before the COVID-19 craze swept this nation, I devoted more attention to the liberal cause of preserving the Sea Turtle population than I did to thinking about vaccines. I like nature. (Tangentially related, an estimated 1.56 billion plastic masks ended up in the ocean in 2020 alone. Good work, liberals!)

Ain’t Nobody’s Business

It wasn’t until the sociopathic mediocrity that is the entrenched liberal political class in Washington began bullying normal people into wearing masks, staying home, standing six feet apart from others at all times, mobilizing even less impressive liberal stormtroopers to play the role of COVID-19 prevention Gestapo, and then finally propped up the vaccine as the Holy Grail that would lead us back to “normalcy,” that I finally began to have an opinion on vaccines. And though I don’t know much about the “anti-vaxxers,” I do know that I’m displeased with the way they have been portrayed by the aforementioned GITMO-bound media, simply for harboring opinions that are considered non-mainstream. 

So I have decided that because the vile political Left, which I despise in the abstract,[ie WO THINKING OR FACTS]  wants me to take their coveted vaccine, I simply will not. After the horrifying displeasure of meeting several of their militant COVID-19 restriction enforcers in person over the past year, I have become even more steadfast in my stance.

My newly formed and well-developed opinion on vaccines is this: if those bastards want me to get the jab, I’m not going to do it, because it annoys them.

Perhaps you think I’m being obtuse. I do not care.

I’ve seen too many videos of screaming ninnies losing their minds on people who didn’t buy into the mask hype. It is impossible to convince me that I am somehow abnormal for refusing the vaccine, and that the ranting pro-mask schizoids in the supermarket are the normal ones.

I also don’t care whether you decide to get the vaccine. It’s really none of my business. 

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Perhaps you’re not as committed to upsetting the enemy as I am. That is fine. 

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Perhaps you just want to go on a cruise vacation again. If so, call Bill Kristol or Jonah Goldberg and have your vaccine identification card ready. Godspeed. 

Share on

About Peter D'Abrosca

Peter D'Abrosca is a conservative campaign strategist, author, and columnist. A proud law school dropout,he is not a decorated member of the fancy credentialed class, and that's just the way he prefers it. He considers himself a political outsider who seeks to give a voice to thelong-forgotten American working class.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/19-vaccines-were-made-possible-by-socialism-and-years-of-public-sector-funding-journalist/

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The coronavirus pandemic has had its deadliest days yet in December 2020, but the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and others offer hope that life might start returning to some degree of normal in 2021. Journalist Leigh Phillips, in an article for the democratic socialist website Jacobin, praises the arrival of the vaccines but expresses strong concerns about the ways in which they will be distributed.

"A jaw-dropping marvel of science, economic planning and selfless, humanist cooperation by thousands of researchers around the globe, the development of this and other vaccines hot on Pfizer's heels has taken a mere nine months since the discovery of the disease, rather than the years or even decades such medical research and development (R&D) normally takes," Phillips explains. "They offer a glimpse of how much more an egalitarian, rationalist world could produce and achieve, freed from the fetters of profit."

Phillips argues that the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna shouldn't be hailed as a "triumph for capitalism," as the companies relied heavily on "years of public-sector funding." The companies, Phillips notes, "relied on state shepherding and bankrolling of the vaccine development process."

Phillips adds that distribution of the vaccines will underscore the harsh inequalities in the U.S. and other countries.

"Before we get out the champagne and toast our genuinely heroic scientists and clinicians," Phillips writes, "we have to recognize that while these vaccines are indeed a light at the end of a very long tunnel, that same tunnel will be yet longer than it needs to be, thanks once again to the irrationality, inefficiency and injustice of capitalism. It will be especially unfair for those in the developing world — and even in many poorer, less populous parts of the developed West, there will be cruelties for those who live outside the metropolitan core, as there already have been throughout 2020 in the United States especially."

Phillips wraps up the article by stressing that the public sector will be crucial in fighting future pandemics.

"Looking beyond the horizon of COVID-19, the threat of future pandemics — and among them will be ones nowhere near as forgiving as this coronavirus — requires, at some point, a serious discussion of how global democracy can be constructed from the bottom up, and how in such a democracy, worldwide economic planning can tame the inefficiencies, irrationalities and injustices of markets," Phillips writes. "Because no one is safe until we are all safe."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/vaccine-2649583881

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no lnx

The wealthiest people in this country are pushing to the front of the line to get vaccinated

Dartagnan and Daily Kos December 21, 2020

More than any single event in recent memory, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the gaping chasms of inequality in American society. From the very outset it was accepted wisdom that "essential workers," i.e., those forced to risk their lives in unsafe workplaces throughout the country, would include not only medical personnel such as doctors, nurses, and hospital orderlies; not only police, firefighters and first responders; not only operators of public transportation and critical government services such as postal workers; but also the folks who worked behind cash registers at the Lowe's, the 7-11, and those whose jobs involved the processing, delivery, preparation and transportation of food items and consumer goods that kept the moribund economy from congealing into a second Great Depression.

The "essential" nature of these workers was loudly touted by companies from Amazon to WalMart to Domino's pizza, who extolled the selfless bravery of their employees in warm and touching TV ads, ads that served as a new type of PR for those same companies with sordid past track records about treatment of workers. Meanwhile, the highly compensated officers and executives of these companies bore the brunt of the pandemic not by interacting daily with a stressed and potentially infected public, but from their snug and expansive estates and second homes where they continued to bark orders and issue their edicts remotely.

And this was also the case with the so-called "professional class," as six-figure income lawyers and corporate managers developed new ways to work from home, reallocating firm IT services and equipment while the lower-tiered employees such as clerks and secretaries were mostly told to return to the office, if they were to keep their jobs at all. Probably the most telling example of the disparities in treatment afforded between high managerial and service-level, clerical employees is the current, never-ending circus continuing to unfold in our Congress this weekend, in which financial and rent assistance to ordinary middle and lower income Americans is being held hostage to liability protections insisted upon by the corporate "owner" class in the persona of Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.

In short, this was never going to be an "equal opportunity" pandemic. Its inherent unfairness has been even more apparent in the medical treatment received by the wealthy as opposed to ordinary Americans, personified by no less than Donald Trump and his White house cronies who, being infected with the COVID-19 virus through their own carelessness and recklessness, nonetheless have instantly received the quickest, most cutting edge care available. Nor are they alone—as described by Mark Sumner here, the gross disparity between medical treatment available to this countries' richest citizens and its less fortunate (but so "essential") workers, mostly those people of color who couldn't work from home due to the very nature of their jobs, often with substandard health insurance, if any, was bound to surface before too long.

And now that multiple vaccines are looming, we are seeing the same sense of natural entitlement among the top 1% playing out, as reports emerge daily of attempts by these same people to bribe their way to the front of the line for vaccination, the better to allow themselves to carry on with their lives as soon as possible, with an eye to traveling and frolicking amongst their islands (both metaphorical and real ones) while the rest of Americans prepare to stand in line for months.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times:

They're offering tens of thousands of dollars in cash, making their personal assistants pester doctors every day, and asking whether a five-figure donation to a hospital would help them jump the line.

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The COVID-19 vaccine is here — and so are the wealthy people who want it first.

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"We get hundreds of calls every single day," said Dr. Ehsan Ali, who runs Beverly Hills Concierge Doctor. His clients, who include Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, pay between $2,000 and $10,000 a year for personalized care. "This is the first time where I have not been able to get something for my patients."

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A few years ago, in what came as a bit of a surprise to my woefully provincial sensibilities, I first heard the term "concierge medicine." It refers to health care offered—at substantial cost—by an elite network of physicians and other medical providers designed to allow wealthier Americans (who may not wish to dirty their hands with the type of medical care provided to the vast majority of us) access to the best medical treatment money can buy. As described by Hayley Fowler, writing for the Miami Herald:

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Many wealthy Americans pay for concierge medical services — a "kind of high-quality, primary care most Americans can't afford," the Los Angeles Times reported. Some of those services have already procured the expensive freezers needed to store the vaccine and put their patients on wait lists as soon as it becomes available for widespread distribution.

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The cost of such "concierge care" can run in excess of $250,000 per year, and guarantees, as noted in the LA Times article, personalized 24-hour access to physicians who provide their services to a small segment of wealthy clients. These physicians' groups have the financial wherewithal, for example to have immediately secured the types of freezers necessary to hold the Pfizer vaccine in cold storage at -94 degrees Fahrenheit for significant lengths of time. That in itself provides these groups with a leg up on receiving the vaccine, despite whatever state restrictions may be in place as to who receives it.

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Doctors in boutique practices say they'll adhere to public health guidelines in determining who gets priority. But being on a waiting list at a practice that has special freezers and other high-quality resources means you're already near the front of the line once the supply opens up.

Doctors in these "boutiques" confirm this. One co-founder of a "concierge" medical service "with clinics in New York, the Hamptons and Beverly Hills" told the LA Times that his group started soliciting these expensive deep-cold freezers as soon as it was apparent the vaccine would be on the market.

While the Trump administration has not yet been caught offering the vaccine for private distribution, these physicians groups feel it is just a matter of time before such allocations are made, in part due to the demanding and entitled nature of their patrons. The LA Times specifically refers to instances of these "concierge" patients offering huge payments to these groups for the privilege of jumping to the first in line.In one case a person asked if he could accelerate his receipt of the vaccine by making a $25,000 "donation" to a hospital. And, as CNN reports, other physicians with "A-list" clients have been fielding hundreds of calls, all conveying the message, of course, that their money should give them priority:

Dr. David Nazarian, of My Concierge MD in Beverly Hills, said a number of his A-list clients are contacting him, saying that money is no object if it helps them get the vaccine early. "They wanted it yesterday," said Nazarian. "We will play by the rules but are doing everything we can to secure and distribute the vaccine when its available to us."

State officials quoted through these articles are adamant that they will do everything they can to prevent such "line jumping" and they are obviously sincere in that intent. The LA Times article cites no instances yet of physicians succumbing to these types of pressures, but that is likely because the vaccine rollout has just begun, and also because physicians fear the public consequences if they are found out providing the vaccine to those people whose only qualification to receive it is that they are not familiar with taking "no" for an answer.

Another concern described by the Times is the potential for wealthier people to arrange to have their symptoms "fudged" so that a minor history of asthma, for example, could be highlighted or stressed by their doctor for the purpose of receiving the vaccine on a priority basis. And there are always those people closely connected with pharmaceutical executives who believe they ought to warrant special treatment due to the nature of those relationships. Beyond this, as reported by Stat News here, once a vaccine is developed that does not require such stringent storage, there is virtually no doubt that a "black market" will develop for it, with access provided to the highest bidder.

As bluntly emphasized by Timothy Egan this week, writing for the New York Times, this pandemic is hardly close to reaching its conclusion. The next three months are going to be a living hell, with American deaths by March now expected to reach or exceed 500,000. We already know that the Trump administration will pay scant if any attention to the way this vaccine is allotted once it finally gets its act together on distribution. It is the individual states that will ultimately determine the priority of how the vaccine is dispensed, at least officially.

Which brings us back to those so-called "essential workers." If they were as essential as they were roundly described in all of those solemn advertisements, one would expect that, after health care workers (which seems obvious) they would be the first to receive the vaccine, right?

As reported by Stat News, not necessarily:

"Essential workers" are expected to receive early access to the vaccine, and the definition of this category is open to interpretation by state health departments, creating a means for influential industries to lobby for priority. "The devil's going to be in the details of how the state runs their program," Lang said he tells his patients.

Members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the federal panel recommending how to distribute the vaccines, want to prioritize essential workers to help ensure people of color, who are often the hardest hit by the virus, get early access. But the predominantly white workers in the financial services industry are also considered essential, according to guidance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was referenced by ACIP, as well as executive orders from several states including New York, Illinois, Colorado, and California. Public-facing bank tellers face contagion risks in their work, but aren't the only financial services employees included.

"It was left a little bit nebulous but basically covered people who oil the movement of money, so exchanges, trading floors, trading operations, and people who keep money moving at the retail [banking] level," said Lang.

Again, it seems that the people who have the money will be prioritized to receive the vaccine, as well as—not coincidentally-- the people whose job it is to move money for those same people.

A more telling verdict on our society's priorities could hardly be imagined.

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doctor in Houston, Texashas revealed that "more than half of the nurses in his unit" are not willing to take the coronavirus vaccine due to politically motivated reasons, despite the state's healthcare systems being inundated with increasing positive coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

During an interview with NPR on Wednesday, Dr. Joseph Varon, critical care unit chief at the United Memorial Medical Center, was notified that the healthcare staff in his hospital would be among the first vaccine recipients."I had a friendly argument with more than 50 percent of my nurses in my unit telling me that they would not get the vaccine," Varon said.

While some of Varon's staff members were elated to hear the news, others weren't exactly thrilled about the new vaccine. Now, Varon is concerned for those who have opted not to receive the vaccine as they care for the hospital's most critical COVID cases. He also noted most of the opposing nurses have reservations based on political beliefs.

"At the end of the day, like I have said before, coronavirus has become a political toy," Varon said, adding, "Most of the reasons why most of my people don't want to get the vaccine are politically motivated."

Many Americans are apprehensive about the effectiveness of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, which — the LA Times reports — is "95% effective in preventing COVID-19."

As of Thursday, Dec. 17, the United States has reported more than 17.3 million coronavirus cases across the country. Public health experts estimate that approximately 70 to 75 percent of Americans will need to be vaccinated in order for the country to return to normalcy.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/conservatism/

common dr

What is a conservative? We've seen a lot of them in 2020, refusing to respect the needs of society.

The Heritage Foundation says: "Foremost among [conservatism's] transcendent values is the individual's use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force." Stanford University adds: "For conservatives, individuals and local communities are better assessors of their own needs and problems than distant bureaucrats."A 2003 study for the American Psychological Association stated: "The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality." There are many other forms and definitions of conservatism as political, economic, and social philosophies. The usage here may best be understood as the evolving marriage of individualism and neoliberalism (privatization, deregulation, low taxes, austerity) since the 1970s.

Conservatism has made 'social' a dirty word. Here are some of the details of fifty years of damage inflicted on America.

The Disastrous Effect of Placing Individuals Over Society

The anti-government, "all about freedom" individuality of conservatives has failed terribly in a time of national emergency. How did the misdirected mindset get its start? With Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who are commonly referenced with connection to neoliberalism. Friedman:{ is the author of some remarkable quotes: "The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people." And, according to guk :{The Guardian}:: "There is evidence that a democratic society, once established, destroys a free economy."

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Then came Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The former UK Prime Minister said about society: "There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families."Reagan, whose campaign slogan was, familiarly, "Let's make America great again," famously stated that "Government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem."

So now, at a time when we need to work together as a society rather than as a crowd of individuals, we've been betrayed by conservatism. As historian Neil J. Young puts it, "Now, 40 years later amid a global pandemic, that unbridled individualism has shown its deadly dimensions in Trump and the Republicans' lack of response to COVID-19...it's evident in the millions of Americans who—in refusing to wear masks, practice social distance, and momentarily deny their self-gratification—have selfishly exploited the language of 'individual responsibility' as license for their own recklessness."

Just as frightening is the recent conservative Supreme Court church-gathering decision that "placed religious freedom before pandemic precautions."

Deregulation and Subsidies: Corporations Running Rampant

The euphemistically-named Citizens United(CU) is an example of the deceptive measures used by conservatives. CU refers to an initiative that "seeks to reassert the traditional American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security." But it helps corporations, not citizens, by allowing unlimited funding for corporate-friendly candidates.

Conservatives argue for less government intervention—except when it comes to subsidies. Leading the pack of favor-seeking lobbyist groups is the pharmaceutical industry. Few companies have benefited more than Pfizer, whose former CEO Ian Read once complained that U.S. taxes had his company fighting "with one hand tied behind our back." In 2019 Pfizer made nearly half of its $17.7 billion in profits in the U.S., yet the company claimed $1.8 billion in federal and state tax refunds. And it takes from America in another way. In recent years Pfizer has increased the prices of dozens of prescription drugs at over ten times the rate of inflation.

Now Pfizer is basking in the glow of media coverage for the so-called "Pfizer Vaccine." The company deserves credit for its all-out efforts to distribute the medication to millions of people. But the vaccine was created by the Turkish/German founders of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, who guided the development of the messenger RNA process that triggers an immune reaction against Covid. The groundwork for the relatively rapid production of the vaccine was laid in place at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Pennsylvania by research on the prior SARS and MERS outbreaks. More expertise came from the taxpayer-funded Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC). According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, "The speed is a reflection of years of work that went before." Indeed, a successful vaccine is the product of long-term social cooperation, not individualism.

Inequality: Going Viral

:{Thanks to the insidious conservative-minded 50-year-old "trickle-down" philosophy—which astoundingly continues to be preached by many of the super-rich—inequality has stretched our nation nearly to the breaking point.

At one end, the 25 million adults who make up the richest 10% of America increased their wealth in this pandemic year by an average of $200,000 each.

At the other end: it is estimated by Moody's Analytics that nearly 12 million American renters will owe an average of $5,850 in back rent and utilities by the beginning of 2021. Little of America's surging income and wealth since the 1970s has gone to the poorest 50%.}:

Some Hope?

Philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill once said, "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

As Mill made clear, smart people have also gravitated to the conservative side. Among them were the aforementioned anti-government crusaders Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who expressed support for a Universal Basic Income. In fact, the UBI concept has been promoted by both political parties over the years. But it will take the will and fortitude of Congress to make it a reality. And Congress is overflowing with John Stuart Mill's conservatives.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/deanna-lorraine-will-not-take-the-covid-19-vaccine-even-if-jesus-takes-it/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-speech-2649419941/

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trump met wakefield in 2015 campaign? 1st UK jabs

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aha 1120: trump clown car legal disaster: rooted in hofstaedter paranoid style?  trump trial ballooning lots of anti-socialist, extreme-ist BS in campaign, trying to make us afraid of green new deal AOC The Squadantifa arsonists who are coming to your burbs;  (not so much socialized medicine?)

stop the steal is a stew of recycled remixed conspiracy memes?  building on GOP newt Koch Fox ~ AGW BS Vlad Kremlin GRU sow doubt about validity of system provides basis/rational for authoritarian coup.

vaxxer started/boosted by RFK kernal of truth mercury probbly bad idea for preservative, but really took off with Jenny McCarthy has been actres proto-influencer but most important interwebs were new so Nigerian dictator (they wouldn't let you print/post it unless true, right?)  1st mass media eith no filter/fact check/correction [10k eyeballs?]

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nyt

Among the other payments to Mr. Cohen’s company described in the financial records were four for $99,980 each between October and January by Novartis Investments S.A.R.L., a subsidiary of Novartis, the multinational pharmaceutical giant based in Switzerland. Novartis — whose chief executive was among 15 business leaders invited to dinner with Mr. Trump at the World Economic Forum in January — spent more than $10 million on lobbying in Washington last year and frequently seeks approvals from federal drug regulators. Novartis said in a statement that its agreement with Essential Consultants had expired.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-administration-keeps-hiring-companies-with-histories-of-ripping-off-our-government/

phil m

you needed a plumber or a caterer, you would avoid a service provider who had in the past tried to bill you for work not performed or grossly overcharged for what was completed. The Trump Administration takes a different approach. In selecting contractors to provide the goods and services the federal government needs to deal with the pandemic, it has turned to dozens of corporations with a history of cheating Uncle Sam.

This finding emerges from a comparison of the recipients of coronavirus-related contracts to the data in Violation Tracker. The analysis focuses on a list of about 175 larger corporations and non-profits that account for nearly half of the roughly $12 billion in contracts awarded so far for laboratory services, medical equipment and much more.

These are not trivial matters. Twelve of the contractors paid total penalties of more than $100 million and the average per parent company was $27 million.

among this group,69 contractors, or more than one-third of the total, have paid fines and settlements during the past decade for healthcare fraud and other violations relating to the federal False Claims Act or related laws. They have been involved in 189 individual cases with total penalty payments of $4.7 billion.

These are not trivial matters. Twelve of the contractors paid total penalties of more than $100 million and the average per parent company was $27 million.

Overcharging Healthcare Programs

The company with the largest penalty total is pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which received a $13 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services and whose separate COVID-19 vaccine effort is being touted by the Trump Administration. Over the past decade, Pfizer has been penalized in 15 contracting cases, paying out a total of $987 million, most of it stemming from a 2016 lawsuit in which its subsidiary Wyeth had been accused of overcharging federal healthcare programs by misrepresenting its financial relationships with hospitals.

Drug wholesaler McKesson, which has been awarded contracts worth a total of $9 million, has paid penalties of $453 million to resolve allegations such as reporting inflated pricing information for a large number of products, causing Medicaid to overpay for those drugs.

Dispensing Unneeded Insulin Pens

The Walgreens pharmacy chain, which received a $72 million contract for COVID-19 testing services, has paid $367 million in contracting penalties, three-quarters of which stemmed from a 2019 case in which the company had been accused of billing federal healthcare programs for hundreds of thousands of insulin pens it knowingly dispensed to beneficiaries who did not need them and that it overcharged Medicaid by failing to disclose lower drug prices it offered the public through a discount program.

Smaller but still significant penalties have been paid by the companies receiving the largest COVID-19-related awards. The Dutch company Philips, recipient of $646 million in ventilator contracts, paid a penalty of $34 million through a subsidiary for giving illegal kickbacksto suppliers that purchased sleep apnea masks that were sold to Medicare beneficiaries. AstraZeneca, the recipient of $436 million in contracts, has paid $170 million in penalties for False Claims Act and related violations.

Business as Usual

The discovery that many COVID-19 federal contractors have a history of misconduct in their government business is consistent with the recent finding by Good Jobs First that thousands of companies receiving CARES Act grants and loans have similar track records, including more than 200 healthcare providers that have paid $5 billion in False Claims Act penalties over the past decade.

Some of those aid recipients are also COVID-19 contract recipients. Large companies such as Walgreens, Quest Diagnostics and Becton Dickinson are receiving money from the federal government through multiple channels despite having paid penalties in the past for contracting abuses.

The awarding of federal contracts to corporations with a history of misconduct dates back long before the pandemic or this administration, but maybe now is the time to begin doing something about this wrong-headed practice.

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rich nations are hoarding potential COVID-19 vaccine doses: Oxfam

Andrea Germanos / Common DreamsSeptember 17, 2020

Oxfam on Thursday reiterated its call for a “people’s vaccine” as the anti-poverty group released a new analysis showing that a handful of rich nations representing just 13 percent of…

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920 talk of skipping/skimping on 3rd phase testing?

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Like the wolf saying he’ll guard the henhouse’: Big Pharma CEO insists industry can police itself on COVID-19 vaccine

Jake Johnson / Common DreamsSeptember 2, 2020

Amid growing concerns that the Trump administration is moving to bypass normal and crucial safety protocols in a rush to approve a Covid-19 vaccine ahead of the November election, the CEO of…

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-u-s-is-declaring-a-vaccine-war-on-the-world/

an 5/20

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/anti-vaxxers-are-latching-onto-the-coronavirus-pandemic-to-bolster-their-movement

no lnx

Anti-vaxxers are latching onto the coronavirus pandemic to bolster their movement

Written by Kaiser Health News April 25, 2020

While most of the world hungers for a vaccine to put an end to the death and economic destruction wrought by COVID-19, some anti-vaccine groups are joining with anti-lockdown protesters to challenge restrictions aimed at protecting public health.

Vaccine critics suffered serious setbacks in the past year, as states strengthened immunization laws in response to measles outbreaks sparked by vaccine refusers. California tightened its vaccine requirements last fall despite protests during which anti-vaccine activists threw blood on state senators, assaulted the vaccine bill’s sponsor and shut down the legislature.

Now, many of these same vaccine critics are joining a fight against stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns intended to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which had killed more than 47,000 Americans as of Thursday afternoon.

“This is just a fresh coat of paint for the anti-vaccine movement in America, and an exploitative means for them to try to remain relevant,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Hotez said anti-vaccine groups are seizing on the anti-government sentiment stoked by conservative-leaning protesters to advance their cause.

“Unfortunately, their strategy may work.”

A group calling itself the Freedom Angels, whose members last year stood on chairs and chanted at public hearings on the California vaccine bill, say governors are abusing their power by shutting down gun shopsand other businesses.

Many anti-vaccine activists — who have claimed that diseases such as measles aren’t that serious — now contend the coronavirus isn’t dangerous enough to justify staying home. They agree with President Donald Trump that the “cure” for the pandemic could be worse than the disease itself.

That’s led some vaccine foes to join the protesters — whom Trump has encouraged on Twitter — in staging demonstrations in state capitals to “reopen America.”

“This is the time for people to take notice and really evaluate the freedoms they’re giving up, all in the name of perceived safety,” said Freedom Angels co-founder Heidi Munoz Gleisner in a Facebook video.

The group organized a Monday rally in Sacramento called “Operation Gridlock.”

“People need to get back to work, get back to life, get back into contact with their loved ones who they’re isolated from, they need to be able to have a paycheck,” group co-founder Tara Thorntontold The Sacramento Bee, which interviewed her during the demonstration. “This is the grounds they will enslave us upon.”

Freedom Angels did not respond to requests for interviews. The group’s website mentions plans for additional rallies and includes photos from Monday’s demonstration, such as one in which a protester holds a sign proclaiming “No Mandatory Vaccines.”

But after the Monday event, the California Highway Patrol announced it had revoked the group’s permit for future protests because the gathering — which included dozens of people — violated the governor’s social distancing order. The highway patrol has now banned all group events at the Capitol during the pandemic to avoid spreading the coronavirus.

A big tent

The anti-vaccine movement has never been limited to one political party. Left-leaning vaccine critics — such as Children’s Health Defense, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — include environmentalists who are suspicious of chemical pollutants, corporations and “Big Pharma.” The Kennedy group’s website attacks Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for rushing “risky and uncertain coronavirus vaccines” into development as part of a “sweetheart deal” for drug companies.

On the other side of the political spectrum, many anti-vaccine conservatives oppose state immunization requirements because they distrust “big government.”

A group called Texans for Vaccine Choice has called on the governor to promise that no one will be forced to get a coronavirus vaccine in order to go to work or school.

Posts on the Facebook page of Californians for Health Choice, which also opposed California’s vaccine laws, question stay-at-home orders and accuse government officials of refusing to admit the orders are a mistake.

In a video on the Freedom Angels’ Facebook page, its founders describe stay-at-home orders as an abuse of government authority, and the closure of California gun shops as an assault on the Second Amendment. The group notes that guns could be essential for protection from rioters and looters looking to steal food during the pandemic.

In many ways, the conservative arm of the anti-vaccine movement is a natural ally for those leading “reopen America” rallies, saidDr. David Gorski, an oncologist and managing editor of the Science-Based Medicine site. Both harbor suspicions about government authority.

Vaccine critics, for example, have long championed the false claim that vaccines cause autism, and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tried to cover up that information, Gorski said. Trump has at times linked vaccines with autism, although he came out strongly in favor of vaccinations during the 2019 measles epidemic.

Anti-vaccine groups are now rebranding themselves as advocates of “medical freedom.”

Protests against social distancing began in Michigan but have spread to state capitols in Texas, Colorado, Nevada, Maryland, Wisconsin and elsewhere, with more planned. Most protests have been small, limited to a few hundred or fewer people.

Yet the anti-vaccine movement doesn’t speak for everyone on the right.

Stephen Moore, the senior economic contributor for FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group that has been helping publicize the protests, said he’s unfamiliar with the Freedom Angels or their rallies.

“I’m personally pro-vaccine,” said Moore, a member of the White House council to reopen the economy. “Especially when it comes to coronavirus.”

And some heroes of the anti-vaccine movement say they support coronavirus lockdowns.

Dr. Jay Gordon, a Santa Monica, California, pediatrician popular among vaccine foes for downplaying the risks of measles, said the risk of COVID-19 is real. Gordon said he approves of the lockdown, “and we have to keep it up.”

Containing the pandemic

Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician and California state senator who has championed stronger vaccine mandates, described anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protesters as “essentially selfish” because they put other people at risk.

“One of the hallmarks of the anti-vaccine movement is this sense of selfishness and lack of concern for other people’s health,” Pan said. “They like to talk about rights and freedom. But what they really want is freedom without consequences.”

Both anti-vaccine parents and those who want to relax social distancing assume that the medical system will come to their rescue if they become sick, said Pan, who noted that thousands of health care workers have died while fighting the pandemic.

Fauci has said that relaxing stay-at-home orders is dangerous as long as the virus — for which there are no approved treatments or vaccines — is actively spreading. Reopening businesses too soon could spark a second wave of infections.

More than 75 companies and research groups worldwide are trying to develop vaccines, which are seen as a key weapon against the novel coronavirus.

In the meantime, the CDC says that social distancing measures — such as working from home and avoiding large gatherings — are critical to slowing the spread of the coronavirus and preventing patients from overwhelming hospitals. Health leaders say it won’t be safe to reopen the county until widespread testing shows the coronavirus has died down.

Americans overwhelmingly support vaccination, according to surveys, and polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 80% of Americans want lockdowns to continue. Only 19% said social distancing orders placed an unnecessary burden on the economy. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

Neither the anti-vaccine nor anti-lockdown demonstrators represent the opinions of most Americans, Pan said.

“Let’s put this movement into proper context,” he said. “They’re loud, they’re noisy and they’re small.”

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aha note escalator, and rexycling mutation/hybridization of older conspir BS

he's the next soros re covid?

Bill Gates coronavirus conspiracy theory spread on social media and then to a Fox News host.

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/bill-gates-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-spread-social-media-and-then-fox-news

mma many link, pix, graf/ twt

Bill Gates coronavirus conspiracy theory spread on social media and then to a Fox News host

Conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, white nationalists, and QAnon supporters spread the false claim online

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 04/08/20 12:13 PM EDT

A conspiracy theory about Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus has been circulating for weeks on social media platforms, getting high engagement numbers, and has since been pushed by both Fox News host Laura Ingraham and a Newsmax correspondent.

As the coronavirus pandemic has spread throughout the United States, Gates, who runs an organization that focuses on public health worldwide and has warned of the threat of epidemics for years, has been leading efforts to and spoken out about finding a vaccine. That has included spending billions of dollars to find a cure via his foundation and doing interviews on shows including Fox News Sunday and The Daily Show about the need for a vaccine.

Gates on March 18 also participated in a Reddit “AMA” (“Ask me anything”) Q&A, where he encouraged a “national tracking system” for the coronavirus and “some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”Scientific American reported in December that Gates had been funding efforts to create an invisible ink that could go into people’s skin to see who has been vaccinated. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology bioengineer said the ink could provide data that is useful in fighting disease around the world, noting, “If we don’t have good data, it’s really difficult to eradicate disease” (though the outlet also quoted a bioengineering professor admitting it could raise privacy concerns).

During this time, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, white nationalists, and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory have spread a baseless conspiracy theory on multiple social media platforms, far-right sites, and message boards claiming that Gates’ effort to help develop a vaccine is some kind of nefarious attempt to control, follow, or even depopulate the world’s population via a “microchip” of some sort (the “depopulation” claim is based on a major misreading of Gates’ past remarks).

A review by Media Matters found that the conspiracy theory first seemed to gain traction around March 17, when a YouTube video about the virus mischaracterized Gates’ work to develop trackable vaccine data as “implanting everybody with a global ID” and compared it to tattoos on Holocaust victims. The video received more than 120,000 views. On that same day, conspiracy theory outlet Infowars published a piece and video of an Infowars host suggesting Gates was using the situation to “reduce the world’s population,” citing the invisible ink, and tied it to claiming the government would give out a “color-coded wristband that will be used for traveling Americans during an impending COVID-19 lockdown.” The Infowars article subsequently spread in Facebook groups and showed up as a meme on Instagram.

Infowars Bill Gates

Following Gates’ AMA and his “digital certificates” comment, the conspiracy theory spread on March 18, moving to message boards including 4chan’s “/pol/” and the conspiracy subreddit on Reddit, where a user called Gates’ Reddit posts “pretext for introduction of certificate of movement” and a plan to be “fully enslaved by the Deep State.” On Telegram that evening, white nationalist Faith Goldy wrote that Gates’ posts were “underreported” and that a “microchip implant ID” would be harmful to “nationalists.”

Faith Goldy Bill Gates

The following day, as the conspiracy theory continued to circulate on 4chan, it was picked up by NewsPunch, a disinformation site formerly known as YourNewsWire, which accused Gates of pushing for technology that will be “adopted for its ‘convenience and safety’ and then overnight will become mandatory for you and your family – or else.” That piece, too, circulated on social media and as a meme, along with other memes accusing Gates of using a vaccine to work with “globalists” for a “new world order.”

Bill Gates Instagram3

On March 21, another YouTube video was uploaded saying Gates wants to implant microchips in people and calling them a “mark of Satan” that could be used for “identifying us to the United Nations.” The video has received nearly 1.8 million views and at least 1.2 million Facebook engagements, according to the tracking tool BuzzSumo. That includes shares in QAnon Facebook groups and on a major anti-vaxx Facebook page.

Bill Gates Facebook1

Throughout the rest of March, more videos popped up on YouTube (despite the platform’s pledge to crack down on coronavirus misinformation) accusing Gates of wanting “eugenics” and “population control” and claiming he is the antichrist and that he essentially supports genocide; they racked up another 1.6 million views combined. The videos included a clip from anti-Semitic conspiracy theory outlet TruNews and a video whose title called the virus a “hoax” (those videos received hundreds of thousands of Facebook engagements combined).

Bill Gates YouTube5

Videos on social media platform TikTok pushing the conspiracy theory in late March and early April also racked up many views(despite the platform’s anti-misinformation policy). One video that received more than 230,000 views included in the caption “#fvaccines” and accused Gates of pushing for everyone on the planet to have a “digital ID … by combining mandatory vaccines with implantable microchips.” (Media Matters removes identifying information from videos created by or featuring minors to protect their identity.) Another video that received tens of thousands of views claimed Gates was “evil” and connected him to a plan to “get everybody microchipped” via vaccines.

Video file

CitationFrom a video uploaded to TikTok on April 1, 2020

The conspiracy theory continued to spread following news in early April of Gates’ spending for a coronavirus cure. Another major white nationalist Telegram account shared a post saying Gates wants the population “extinguished,” and multiple accounts on Facebook and Instagram, including QAnon and anti-vaxx accounts, shared a meme urging people to take “no vaccine from some shady ass nerd that wants to depopulate the planet.” Ben Garrison, a far-right and pro-Trump cartoonist, drew a cartoon pushing the conspiracy theory that portrays Gates as a Nazi, which was also posted on the backup site of the pro-Trump subreddit “r/The_Donald.”

Bill Gates Facebook Instagram meme

By April 6, bigger QAnon accounts on social media had spread the conspiracy theory, such as Dylan Wheeler, who accused Gates of using “microchip[s]” in order to be “the face of the New World Order.”

That afternoon, Emerald Robinson, Newsmax’s White House correspondent, tweeted a thread accusing Gates of “control[ling] global health policy” and saying that his “plan” was to use “vaccines to track people.”

On the morning of April 7, Fox host Laura Ingraham, while quote-tweeting an anti-vaxx musician's post about Gates’ AMA, said “globalists” see the pandemic as a “perfect vehicle” for their “dream” of “digitally tracking Americans’ every move.”

The spread of the conspiracy theory comes as multiple other conspiracy theories about the coronavirus have circulated on social media, including others about Gates and the virus.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-why-the-tormented-conservative-mind-is-so-drawn-to-the-dangerous-allure-of-miracle-drugs/

no lnx

Here’s why the tormented conservative mind is so drawn to the dangerous allure of miracle drugs

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 3, 2020

In one of the oddest developments of the coronavirus crisis, there’s been a run on a pair ofantimalarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which are used primarily in the U.S. to treat arthritis and to prevent organ damage from lupus. The drugs are being sucked out of pharmacies at an alarming rate, thanks to Americans who have convinced themselves these drugs will save them if the develop COVID-19, and thereby leaving patients who actually need these medications in danger.

This is happening in the face of only thin evidence that these drugs work against the novel coronavirus, and plenty of evidence that they don’t work. At one Paris hospital that used the drug heavily — on the recommendation ofDidier Raoult, a climate change-denying French doctor with a shady reputation— the results suggest these drugs are not effective at all. Chinese doctors also concluded they were useless. These drugs are known to have some scary side effects, including sudden cardiac death in some patients. They are also notorious for psychological side effects, such as paranoia and nightmares. At least one person in the U.S. has died from swallowing aquarium cleaner that contains a similar chemical compound.

So why are so many people so eager to get their hands on drugs that are clearly dangerous and may do no good?

The most immediate reason is simple: The people rushing the pharmacies are Republicans, and both Donald Trump and numerous Fox News personalities have told them these drugs are a “game-changer” that can save them from the coronavirus.

But there’s a reason these false or unproven claims are resonating with the ordinary citizens of Trumpistan. The hope that there’s a hard-to-get miracle cure that will save them speaks directly to the poisonous social Darwinism that guides modern conservatism. It reflects deep hostility to the very concept of a shared public good and a fierce attachment to a racialized ideology of individualism that treats public goods such as health care as things to be hoarded by those with the privilege, money and status to do so.

Conservative ideology simply doesn’t allow for the possibility that anything, including pandemic management, is best managed with a “we’re all in this together” mentality. Instead they’re drawn to this fantasy that there’s a Platinum Member COVID-19 status that can be purchased, which will allow them to opt out of the suffering of the plebeian class that has to quarantine or risk sickness and death.

There’s no question that Trump and other right-wing figures are pushing this hydroxychloroquine angle hard. Trump has talked about these drugs several times during his daily propaganda-dump “press briefings,” as well as on Twitter.

Laura Ingraham of Fox News has been hyping this stuff heavily, hosting a doctor who misleadingly argued that “this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic” Wednesday night. She’s also had tweets removed by Twitter for promoting medical disinformation.

Sean Hannity of Fox News has been urging his millions of viewers to grab this stuff up as well, saying “I love the idea of off label use” and arguing that even if it doesn’t work, people have “right to try”— completely ignoring that these drugs are dangerous.

There are many other examples, carefully collected here by Media Matters. This kind of repetition works, and goes a long way towards explaining how enthusiastically right-wing audiences have latched onto these drugs as a possible miracle cure.

But hydroxychloroquine mania also flows from the rigidly hierarchical view conservatives hold of society, one where even basic necessities like health care should be differentiated along class and race lines. Public health measures like quarantine and vaccine are viewed suspiciously precisely because they involve everyone on an approximately equal basis. They long for a special kind of medical care, one that’s just for the people they see as better than everyone else.

This attitude has manifested in many ways before this crisis, most notably around the debate over health care policy. For progressives, the conservative resistance to a single-payer health care system is baffling, even viewed from the perspective of pure self-interest. Private insurance is expensive and unreliable, and since your plan is constantly changing, it can makes basic things like keeping a steady relationship with a doctor nearly impossible. A single plan for all Americans that covers us all in the same way would be cheaper and more efficient and take a lot of pain out of seeking medical care when you need it. That seems obvious.

But that’s just what conservatives don’t like about it: They don’t want a single plan for all Americans.The very idea of having the exact same health care plan as people they see as beneath them, especially lower-income people of color, causes an angry reaction. That’s what all the right-wing hysteria over “rationing,” in response to both Obamacare and the possibility of Medicare for All, is ultimately about.It’s not that you might have to wait in line for something like knee surgery, because that’s already happening under our patchwork private-insurance system. It’s that people you deem unworthy, due to skin color or class status, also get to wait in line and — heaven forbid — might be ahead of you.

(This attitude also explains the longstanding right-wing desire to police the food purchases of people on food stamps, to make sure they are sticking with “their” food and not buying conservatives feel are reserved for true and upstanding Americans. It also explains the often-hysterical levels of right-wing hostility to public transportation, which can be traced back to the end of the practice of sending black people to the back of the bus.)

In this worldview, certain kinds of health care are for grubby commoners, while the well-off white homeowner class should have its own elite status. This is also part of the reason that the anti-vaccination movementhas taken off in this country. Vaccinations, after all, are an unpleasant reminder that disease has no respect class or race, but sees all humans as basically equal, which very much does not fit with conservative ideology.

Unsurprisingly, then, anti-vaxxer attitudes have taken hold on the right, especially in the religious right, which has long been tightly intertwined with a hostility to the government defining and controlling public goods, and has favored widespread privatization of everything from education to welfare.

A lot of people believe that anti-vaccination attitudes are most common among New Age-style leftists, but in reality, Republicans are more likely to oppose mandatory vaccinations than Democrats. It’s largely Republican elected officials who are trying to roll back laws requiring vaccinations, and the religious right has increasingly promoted the idea that it’s better for kids to simply get diseases like the chicken pox than to vaccinate them.

It’s true that anti-vaccination ideology started off in lefty circles, but that happened largely among well-off white people who may vote Democratic but tend to live in highly segregated communities and tend to embrace reactionary ideologies like “attachment parenting” that prevent women from having employment outside of the home. Ultimately, the logic of anti-vaccination comes down to a belief that an elite lifestyle of organic foods and helicopter mothering precludes the need for sharing the same health care common people use, including universal vaccination. That this mentality would leap to Republicans, who would lean into it even harder, isn’t really a surprise.

The irony of the anti-vaccination movement is that the “elite” form of health care — organic food, a mother’s unwavering attention, chicken pox parties — is less effective than the universal policy that’s under disdain, which is vaccination. But that kind of logic, where reactionaries turn up their noses at the common good since it also benefits the proletariat, is hardly limited to health care. It’s also evident in everything from rejecting the local taco stand to thinking that hip-hop isn’t “real” music.

That tormented way of thinking is what’s driving the conservative enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine. The drug probably doesn’t work, and the side effects are scary. But getting a prescription for it helps set one apart from ordinary working people who are doing the stuff public health officials prescribe, such as washing their hands a lot and staying home (even though, for many, it’s meant the loss of jobs and steady income).

Even if a coronavirus vaccine is developed relatively quickly, don’t be surprised if many conservatives prefer the fantasy of hydroxychloroquine over having to submit themselves to the same jab that janitors and hamburger flippers will line up for. Most working-class people can’t afford to turn their backs on effective, preventative health care when they can get it.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/new-study-finds-trumps-tweets-intensify-anti-vaccine-attitudes-among-his-supporters/

New study finds Trump’s tweets intensify anti-vaccine attitudes among his supporters

Written by April 3, 2020

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New research has found that Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 are particularly prone to anti-vaccination attitudes and that these attitudes can be exacerbated by the president’s tweets. The findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.“I’m generally interested in anti-vaccination beliefs because they have the potential to do so much damage. When Trump was elected it also struck me as a curious moment in history, because he was the first U.S. president in modern history to be on the record with anti-vaxx views,” explained study author Matthew J. Horns…

Read More

New research has found that Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 are particularly prone to anti-vaccination attitudes and that these attitudes can be exacerbated by the president’s tweets. The findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

“I’m generally interested in anti-vaccination beliefs because they have the potential to do so much damage. When Trump was elected it also struck me as a curious moment in history, because he was the first U.S. president in modern history to be on the record with anti-vaxx views,” explained study author Matthew J. Hornsey, a professor at the University of Queensland Business School.

Trump had sent dozens of tweets linking vaccinations with autism, such as one in 2014 that read: “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!”[see CPP?!]

Hornsey remarked that Trump is “the most conspiracy-minded president in modern history. It was natural to wonder, then, whether Trump supporters were more anti-vaxx than other Americans, and whether Trump’s tweets had the potential to still do damage.”

The researchers first conducted a scientific survey of 518 Americans who voted in the 2016 presidential election. They found that participants who voted for Trump tended to be more conservative and more conspiracy-minded, which in turn made them more likely to express concerns about vaccines and agree with statements such as “Children get more vaccinations than are good for them.”

“There’s a conspiratorial worldview that Trump voters hold more than other people; that it’s commonplace for groups of elites with hidden agendas to band together and conduct elaborate hoaxes on the public in near-perfect secrecy. And the data show that having that worldview makes you much more likely to be anti-vaxx,” Hornsey told PsyPost.

“We then did a study to test whether reading Trump’s anti-vaxx tweets still have an impact on the public.”

In the second study, another 316 Americans who voted in 2016 completed the same scientific survey. About a week later, the participants were randomly assigned to either view Trump’s tweets about vaccines or a view Trump’s tweets about golf. They then reported their levels of concern about vaccination for a second time.

“Trump voters became more anti-vaxx after reading his tweets. So Trump doesn’t just reflectthe views of his supporters, he still has the power to shapehis supporters’ views,” Hornsey explained.

“We thought that reading Trump’s tweets might shock liberal voters into being lessanti-vaxx. But it didn’t. Trump’s tweets made his own supporters more anti-vaxx but had no effect on anyone else. So it was all downside; there was no upside to the tweets, sadly.”

Trump appears to have reversed course on this issue, however.

“Trump has stopped making anti-vaxx statements since he became president. Last year, he even encouraged parents to vaccinate their children in the face of a measles outbreak. We’re hoping this is a permanent change of heart, especially in the wake of COVID-19. Every president since Roosevelt has swung behind the science on vaccination. It’s promising that Trump has stopped backing himself into a corner on this, because his words can save lives,” Hornsey said.

The study, “Donald Trump and vaccination: The effect of political identity, conspiracist ideation and presidential tweets on vaccine hesitancy“, was authored by Matthew J. Hornsey, Matthew Finlayson, Gabrielle Chatwood, and Christopher T. Begeny.Trend MD v2.4.7

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Paltrow’s anti-vaxxer ally comes under fire for ‘discredited pseudo-scientific claims’ about coronavirusAlex Hen

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-right-wingers-and-trump-apologists-could-get-people-killed-with-coronavirus-disinformation-columnist/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/malicious-bots-and-trolls-spread-vaccine-misinformation-now-social-media-companies-are-fighting-back/

no lnx

Malicious bots and trolls spread vaccine misinformation – now social media companies are fighting back

Written by The Conversation September 27, 2019

Social media have become one of the preeminent ways of disseminating accurate information about vaccines. However, a lot of the vaccine information propagated across social media in the United States has been inaccurate or misleading. At a time when vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise, vaccine misinformation has become a cause of concern to public health officials.

A 2018 study showed that a lot of anti-vaccine information is generated by malicious automated programs – known as bots – and online trolls. In a striking parallel with the 2016 presidential campaign and the 2018 midterm elections, some vaccine misinformation on American social media has been traced back to Russia.

At Saint Louis University’s Center for Health Law Studies, I monitor legal and policy responses to vaccine misinformation. Now platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest are developing strategies to address anti-vaccine bots and to try to reduce their reach in the United States.

Vaccine misinformation is all over social media

“Vaccine hesitancy” is what public health officials call the “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines” despite their availability. The World Health Organization has classified vaccine hesitancy as one of 10 big threats to global health in 2019, on the list with air pollution, heart disease, cancer and pandemic outbreaks due to viruses like Ebola.

In recent years, social media platforms have become effective vehicles for conveying inaccurate information about vaccines, amplifying anti-vaccine movements and giving greater visibility to scientifically unsound data.

In a 2019 experiment, several journalists searched the term “vaccine” on Facebook. What came back was predominantly anti-vaccine content, even though the vast majority of parents – 91% in one survey – are pro-vaccine.

One study by the Royal Society for Public Health in the U.K. found that 41% of parents using social media reported having encountered “negative messages” related to vaccination. The number increased to 50% among parents of children younger than 5.

via MEME [matrix]

Memes and other eye-catching visuals can also help propagate the idea that vaccines are unnecessary or harmful, without any reference to scientific or medical data.

Anyone with access to a computer can easily spread inaccurate information about vaccines through social media.

But bots trolling social media can accomplish this goal at a massive level, as they have been doing in the United States at least since 2014.

Malicious bots targeting vaccine info

Bots account for a large percentage of online activity overall. Calculations suggest that between 40% and 52% of all internet traffic is automated. A study analyzing online bot activity in 2018 estimated that 20.4% of bots were malicious. Researchers estimate that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts, for instance, are run by bots, instead of people.

A 2018 study analyzing Twitter data examined the role of bots and Russian trolls in spreading vaccine misinformation. Researchers looked at over 1.7 million vaccine-related tweets between July 2014 and September 2017. Accounts associated with these two categories tweeted at a higher rate about vaccines than average users. While there are no published studies about other social media, researchers have warned of similar activity on Facebook and YouTube.

In the case of Twitter, there seem to be at least two separate goals behind spreading misleading news about vaccines. Most vaccine-focused bots are deployed with the direct goal of spreading vaccine misinformation, presumably with the purposed of amplifying anti-vaccine views.

But content originating in Russia conveys both pro- and anti-vaccine messages. This is part of a broader strategy aimed at sowing discord in the U.S. by stirring up conflict around divisive topics.

Some Russian tweets identified in the study used the Twitter #vaccinateUS hashtag. Of all the #vaccinateUS tweets that had Russian sources, 43% were pro-vaccine, 38% were anti-vaccine and 19% were neutral. A pro-vaccine one asked: “Do you still treat your kids with leaves? No? And why don’t you #vaccinate them? It’s medicine!” An example of an anti-vaccine one read: “#vaccines are a parents choice. Choice of a color of a little coffin.”

The U.S. is not alone in facing increasing levels of vaccine misinformation on social media. Canadahas also reported a rise in the number of online bots spreading vaccine misinformation. Moreover, as content from social media is consumed across borders, these issues are now turning into a global problem.

Social media platforms clear out misinformation

A 2015 study analyzing vaccine pins on Pinterest found that the majority were anti-vaccine. By early 2019, the company decided to block all vaccine content from the platform.

Initially, the ban was absolute, regardless of the accuracy or source of the information. In late August, Pinterest announced that it would start allowing content from public health organizations, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organization.

In March 2019, Facebook announced that it would take steps to diminish anti-vaccine content.The company no longer allows anti-vaccine advertising and says it is considering removing fundraising tools from anti-vaccination Facebook pages. It no longer “recommends” anti-vaccine content and reduced the rankings of groups and pages conveying vaccine misinformation. They’re less visible, but not banned – these groups and pages are still present on Facebook.

Also in 2019, YouTube prohibited advertising on channels and videos that run anti-vaccination content. Until then, most YouTube searches for “vaccine” served up misinformation at the top of the list results. Afterwards, John Oliver’s HBO episode on vaccines and similar content jumped to the top.

Plenty of misinformation still online

As I wrote this article, dozens of new tweets were added to the #vaccine hashtag on Twitter. Several were similar to this one, tweeted from an account with over 11,000 followers, that conveys an anti-vaccine message under the guise of scientific information.

This account, which appears to be closely related to a previously suspended one, tweeted multiple times per hour. Less than an hour before the tweet above, it had tweeted a visually more blunt message asserting the false link between vaccines and autism.

Like most Twitter users, I have no idea whether this is a personal account or one operated by a bot. But for several hours the vast majority of the tweets on the vaccine hashtag were spreading content that is not supported by current scientific consensus.

While the latest tweets were predominantly anti-vaccination, when I sorted results by “top tweets,” a tweet from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pointing readers toward its own vaccine information page, appeared first.

But tweets 4, 5 and 9 in the top 10 belonged to the same account with 11,000 followers I encountered repeatedly while monitoring the Twitter vaccine hashtag.

With outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases on the rise, public health institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been increasing their social media presences. Social media platforms can continue to help reduce misinformation that could further increase vaccine hesitancy in the United States and elsewhere. As suggested by Pinterest’s approach, these tech companies can increase the amount and visibility of vaccine content from reliable sources. While it’s virtually impossible to eliminate all inaccurate posts, I believe social media can and should be redesigned to facilitate the promotion of accurate vaccine information.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter. ]The Conversation

Ana Santos Rutschman, Assistant Professor of Law, Saint Louis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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kid in vax lawsuit gets measles?

Only the lord God almighty is in control’: Texas lawmaker calls vaccines ‘sorcery’ in attack on renowned pediatrician

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

Conservative Christian Republican also claimed that parental rights are more important than “science,” which he put in scare-quotes.

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cruise ship reportedly owned by the Church of Scientology has been quarantined in the port of St. Lucia after a case of measles was confirmed on board, health officials said Wednesday. There are almost 300 passengers and crew on the ship, which has the same name as a ship owned by the church, NBC News reported.

only one crew infected measles?

..."Because of the risk of potential infection, not just from the confirmed measles case but from other persons who may be on the boat at the time, we thought it prudent to make a decision not to allow anyone to disembark," St. Lucia Chief Medical Officer Dr. Merlene Fredericks-James said in a statement reported by The New York Times. St. Lucia cannot stop the boat from departing, which it is scheduled to do on Thursday, NBC reported.

Health officials did not give the name of the vessel, but St. Lucia Coast Guard Sargent Victor Theodore said it was called "Freewinds." The Church of Scientology owns and operates a 440-foot cruise ship by that name, and Theodore identified the quarantined ship as the one pictured on the church's website. The Church of Scientology did not respond to requests for comment from NBC, CNN or The New York Times.

While some high-profile Scientologists have spoken out against vaccines, the church itself has no official stance on vaccination, The New York Times reported.

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4/19

Anti-vaxxers are just as bad as climate deniers

Sonali Kolhatkar / Truthdig

There have been at least 555 confirmed cases of the highly contagious measles virus since January alone, prompting officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to call this…

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the disturbing reason Republicans deny science and embrace measles epidemic

Joan McCarter / Daily KosApril 17, 2019

All around the country, Democratic lawmakers are trying to stem the resurgence of measles by tightening immunization laws, efforts that are being rejected by Republicans, Politico reports. In Washington state, where…

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/simply-wrong-anti-defamation-league-slams-anti-vaxxers-for-using-the-star-of-david-to-symbolize-their-persecution/

Some members of the anti-vaccine movement have recently been wearing a yellow Star of David as a method of protesting against vaccine requirements in the United States.And the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is speaking out against this practice, declaring in an official statement that it “trivializes the experiences of the survivors and victims of the Holocaust.”

The ADL quoted its leader, Jonathan A. Greenblatt, as saying, “The Holocaust was a unique event in human history. European Jews were forced to wear yellow Stars of David by the Nazis as a kind of scarlet letter—a form of persecution and forced exclusion from society. It is simply wrong to compare the plight of Jews during the Holocaust to that of anti-vaxxers.”Greenblatt added that “groups advancing a political or social agenda should be able to assert their ideas without trivializing the memory of the six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust.”

The ADL, in its April 5 article, noted that anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree used Holocaust-era imagery during a recent event in Austin, Texas—and that the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum in Poland has vehemently criticized him for doing so. The Memorial/Museum asserted that equating “extermination camps like #Auschwitz” with “vaccination that saves human lives” is “a symptom of intellectual and moral degeneration.”

The ADL’s article also points out that social media giant Facebook recently announced it would no longer support anti-vaccination articles or ads.

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https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-april-8-2019/

Pox: An American History (Penguin History of American Life) Paperback – March 27, 2012

by Michael Willrich

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As measles outbreaks spread across the U.S., our new look at how information about vaccine safety and reliability spreads online suggests that the tide may be turning against the anti-vaccination movement.

Between Jan. 1 and March 28, 387 people contracted measles in 15 U.S. states. Mumps is also coming back, with 151 infections in just the first two months of 2019. Both of these dangerous and deadly diseases can be prevented by getting the MMR vaccine, which is so safe and effective, and so widely used, that measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000. But more recently, new outbreaks have struck areas with large pockets of unvaccinated people.

Many states allow parents not to vaccinate their children if they have religious or philosophical beliefs against immunizations. Online disinformation campaigns are spreading false claims about vaccine dangers, boosting the numbers of people seeking those exemptions – and inviting disease into their homes and communities.

Our research lab has spent years tracking the spread of misinformation on social media, including about vaccine safety and effectiveness. Our most recent update of the data has found that pro-vax information and activity is beginning to push back against, and even overtake, anti-vax disinformation.

Mapping the spread of vaccine (mis)information

In 2016, we mapped the online debate around a 2015 California bill that eliminated the personal-belief exemption to mandatory vaccination rules. We found that several of the most-retweeted accounts using the bill’s main hashtag #SB277 were highly automated, appearing to come from bots.

Two years later, other researchers revealed that some of those accounts belonged to the same Russian trolls that influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Those now-suspended accounts tweeted both pro- and anti-vaccine messages to stoke discord.

We recently updated this work, looking at vaccine-related Twitter hashtags between September 2016 and September 2018, to see how the vaccine debate continues to play out.

We took a random sampling of 10 percent of the public tweets during that time period. We identified 41,998 posts containing the most popular pro- and anti-vax hashtags. We then classified the 27,590 accounts that generated those tweets as pro-vax (blue) or anti-vax (green) based on whether each one used more hashtags from one side or the other.

We used retweets to visualize the diffusion of vaccine information. A node represents a Twitter account; a link from @alice to @bob indicates one or more vaccine-related retweets of @alice by @bob. We then mapped the largest network of connected accounts for each of four six-month intervals.The two communities of pro- and anti-vax information are quite segregated in the network, indicating that the accounts in one group do not generally retweet messages from the other. In the last year, however, we observe some blue nodes connected to the green clusters, suggesting that pro-vax information is beginning to penetrate the anti-vax community.

Accounts likely controlled by bots are depicted as red nodes in the network. They are prominent on both sides of the online discussion: Consistent with prior research findings, bots share both pro- and anti-vax content.

In late 2016, the anti-vax movement (in green) was much larger than the pro-vax movement (in blue). Over time, the pro-vax movement expanded and now dwarfs the anti-vaxxers.Filippo Menczer and Pik-Mai Hui, Indiana University, CC BY-ND

Our analysis reveals the most influential accounts on each side – the accounts whose tweets are retweeted the most. On the pro-vax side are organizations like @WHO, @UNICEF and @gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, as well as celebrity advocate @ChelseaClinton and pediatrician @luciapediatra.

On the anti-vax side, one account dominates all the others: @LotusOak, which gave as its full name “Vira Burnayeva.” That account was suspended by Twitter in late 2018 or early 2019. Interestingly, another account @ViraBurnayeva (full name “LotusOak”) that posts similar anti-vax misinformation and propaganda is currently among the most influential anti-vax nodes. The names suggest this account is controlled by the same source, illustrating how easy it can be to circumvent social media companies’ efforts to curb vaccine misinformation.

We have found some possible signs of good news: Initially most of the information on Twitter was dominated by people who opposed vaccinations. But in 2017, the scenario appears to have reversed: Anti-vaccine content is now shared only by a minority of users.

If that preliminary finding is confirmed by other research, it could provide evidence that the combined efforts of social media platforms, health organizations, public policy campaigns and grassroots advocacy may eventually overcome anti-vax junk science.

Who profits from vaccine opposition?

The modern anti-vax movement is still around, at least in part, because it makes money. It originated from a disproven, false claim about a link between vaccines and autism in a fraudulent, retracted 1998 paper by British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. Reportedly driven by financial profit motives, Wakefield falsified data and allegedly abused developmentally delayed children.

His U.K. medical license was revoked in 2010 for unethical behavior, misconduct and dishonesty. But he continues to oppose state bills against vaccine exemptions and profit from promoting anti-vax disinformation, including through his propaganda film “Vaxxed,” which is available on popular streaming platforms.

Others profit from spreading this misinformation, too. For example, InfoWars and Natural News discredit medical science while earning money from the sale of alternative medicine products. The disinformation spreads quickly on social media through a well-connected network of activists and concerned parents.

When enough parents in a specific local community are misled into forgoing vaccination of their children, that area’s vaccination rate falls below the level necessary to confer what is called “herd immunity” on the entire population. For measles, 96 percent or more of a population need to be vaccinated to protect everyone.

Communities with lower vaccination rates are where outbreaks happen. For example, the 2017 measles outbreak in Minnesota followed an anti-vax disinformation campaign targeting Somali immigrants. The current outbreak in Washington affects mostly Slavic immigrants.

Some of the parents may be making their decisions based on what they learn online about vaccination.

On the legislative agenda

Much of this online activity appears to relate to debate in the real world. For instance, many of the tweets refer to legislation or other policy discussions. And there is a fair amount of disagreement in the political world.

At the moment, almost all states grant religious exemptions and 17 states allow parents to refuse vaccinations on philosophical grounds. Congress is studying the issue.

Some states, like Arizona, are working to expand those exemptions, although the state’s governor has vowed to veto such bills.

Other states are pushing in the opposite direction: Mississippi doesn’t have a religious exemption and has rejected attempts to create one. Washington is considering a bill that would grant exemptions only to parents of children with religious or medical reasons to refuse immunizations, much like California’s SB277 did. Rockland County, New York, has banned unvaccinated minors from public places to curtail the spread of disease.

This may be a legislative reflection of the same trend our research has observed online – where pro-vax information is beginning to push back effectively against the anti-vax movement. Children’s lives are at risk.

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GoFundMe bans antivax fundraisers as tech companies finally crack down on medical disinformation

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gov exposed kids to c pox?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/right-wing-politician-who-condemned-mandatory-vaccination-hospitalized-for-chickenpox/

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1. Rand Paul says we shouldn’t be “giving up on liberty” by ensuring kids get vaccinated.

At a moment in our country when previously-eradicated deadly childhood illnesses like measles are resurging in the United States, Sen. Rand Paul wants to speak out against mandatory childhood vaccinations — not, he stressed, because he believes they don’t work or because he buys conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism, but because gosh darn it, parents deserve freedom.

“As we contemplate forcing parents to choose this or that vaccine, I think it’s important to remember that force is not consistent with the American story, nor is force consistent with liberty our forefathers sought when they came to America,” said Paul in a Senate Health Committee hearing on Tuesday. “I believe that the benefits of vaccines greatly outweigh the risks, but I still don’t favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security.”

Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a former physician, smacked him down, saying, “I’ve seen people who have not been vaccinated who required liver transplantation because they were not.”

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anti-vaxxers sorta, but no mention of recent outbreak in US NW, amazing pro UN, dump on france; yemen mentioned but not 1 mil cholera

https://www.breitbart.com/news/un-warns-of-complacency-as-measles-cases-soar-worldwide-2/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/anti-vax-mom-and-unsubtle-sexism-why-the-internets-latest-meme-is-more-about-mocking-women-than-mocking-pseudoscience/

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a large measles outbreak in Washington state. Vox's Julia Belluz looked into a study about what makes people fall for anti-vaccine messaging, honing in on the ideas of liberty and purity. One suggestion from the author of the study for reaching these people is framing vaccines as something that is natural.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/heres-why-vaccine-opponents-think-they-know-more-than-medical-experts/

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One of the most contentious areas of health policy over the past two decades has been the safety of vaccination. Vaccines prevent the outbreak of diseases that used to be widespread, like polio, and scientific consensus strongly supports their safety. Yet many Americans refuse or delay the vaccination of their children out of fear that it could lead to autism, even though scientific consensus refutes this claim.

Anti-vaccine attitudes have been fueled in large part by growing rates of autism diagnoses as well as a now debunked study in The Lancet that linked autism and the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine – pushing many parents to see vaccination as a potential explanation for their child’s autism diagnosis.

The growing “anti-vax” movement here and abroad has seen parents refuse to give their children mandatory school vaccinations, growing numbers of celebrities questioning vaccine safety, and even pet owners refusing to vaccinate their dogs – forcing the British Veterinary Association to issue a statement in April that dogs cannot develop autism.

Given the consistent message from the scientific community about the safety of vaccines, and evidence of vaccine success as seen through the eradication of diseases, why has the skepticism about vaccines continued?

One possibility is that attitudes about medical experts help to explain the endorsement of anti-vax attitudes. Specifically, building on past research, our research team contends that some U.S. adults might support anti-vax policy positions in part because they believe they know more than medical experts about autism and its causes.We wanted to test this theory.

Vaccine skepticism and knowledge

A child in Romania, on June 6, 2018, receives vaccination after a measles outbreak has sickened hundreds of children. Health officials say the outbreak is serious because of low vaccination rates.And yet, vaccine skepticism persists, extending into the political realm, with many politicians questioning the safety of vaccines. Most notably, President Donald Trump has questioned the credentials of doctors calling for vaccination, pushed for slowed vaccination schedules, and tapped vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. to chair an administrative panel on vaccine safety.

We wondered: Could the inability of anti-vaxxers to accurately appraise their own knowledge and skills compared to those of medical experts play a role in shaping their attitudes about vaccines? This inability to accurately appraise one’s own knowledge is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, first identified in social psychology. Dunning-Kruger effects occur when individuals’ lack of knowledge about a particular subject leads them to inaccurately gauge their expertise on that subject. Ignorance of one’s own ignorance can lead people who lack knowledge on a subject think of themselves as more expert than those who are comparatively better informed. We refer to this as “overconfidence.”

Dunning-Kruger effects and anti-vax attitudes

To test our hypothesis, our research asked more than 1,300 Americans in December 2017 to compare their own perceived levels of knowledge about the causes of autism to those of medical doctors and scientists. After doing that, we asked respondents to answer a series of factual knowledge questions about autism, as well as the extent to which they agree with misinformation about a potential link between childhood vaccines and autism.

We found that 34 percent of U.S. adults in our sample feel that they know as much or more than scientists about the causes of autism. Slightly more, or 36 percent, feel the same way about their knowledge relative to that of medical doctors.

We also found strong evidence of Dunning-Kruger effects in our sample.Sixty-two percent of those who performed worst on our autism knowledge test believe that they know as much or more than both doctors and scientists about the causes of autism, compared to only 15 percent of those scoring best on the knowledge test. Likewise, 71 percent of those who strongly endorse misinformation about the link between vaccines and autism feel that they know as much or more than medical doctors about the causes of autism, compared to only 28 percent of those who most strongly reject that misinformation.

We recently published our findings at the journal Social Science and Medicine.

How does this affect vaccine policy?

Our research also finds that these Dunning-Kruger effects have important implications for vaccine policy.

In addition to gauging autism knowledge, our survey asked respondents to share their opinions on several aspects of vaccine policy. For example, we asked respondents whether or not they support parents’ decisions to not vaccinate their children before sending them to public schools. Respondents could tell us whether they strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree or strongly disagree with that statement.

We found that nearly a third, or 30 percent, of people who think that they know more than medical experts about the causes of autism strongly support giving parents the latitude to not vaccinate their children. In contrast, 16 percent of those who do not think that they know more than medical professionals felt the same way.

Our study also finds that people who think they know more than medical experts are more likely to trust information about vaccines from non-expert sources, such as celebrities. These individuals are also more likely to support a strong role for non-experts in the process of making policies that pertain to vaccines and vaccination.

An uphill battle?

Ultimately, our results point to the uphill battle that the scientific community faces as it confronts growing anti-vax sentiment from the public and politicians alike. Even as the mountain of evidence on the safety and importance of vaccines from doctors and scientists continues to grow, many Americans think they know more than the experts trying to correct their misperceptions.

Therefore, finding new ways to present scientific consensus on vaccines to an audience skeptical of medical experts should be a priority. Our research suggests that one interesting area for future research could be to examine whether pro-vaccine information from non-expert sources like celebrities could persuade those with anti-vaccine policy attitudes to change their minds.

Matthew Motta, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Pennsylvania; Steven Sylvester, Assistant professor, public policy, Utah Valley University, and Timothy Callaghan, Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University School of Public Health, Texas A&M University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Here are 3 life-saving reasons we should remove state vaccination exemption clauses

Imagine your child in the intensive care unit, sedated and on life support. You brought them to the emergency room with a fever and watched as their lungs faltered, the war being waged inside their little body. They are now attached to a ventilator that breathes for them, and a machine is delivering oxygen to their blood outside of their body. Your child is alive thanks to the unbelievable power of modern medicine, but fighting for their life. Your child has the flu.

Stories like these are becoming a common occurrence, especially at the peak of the flu season. During my career as a registered nurse in a large academic medical center, I have had the displeasure of watching the influenza virus ravage even the healthiest of individuals. It is a merciless and indiscriminate enemy. It is also largely preventable.

Yet recent data suggests parents of school-age kids in Texas are opting out of vaccinations, including the flu vaccine, at alarming rates. Texas — along with 16 other states — allows parents of school-age children to opt out of required school vaccinations on the basis of conscience. This clause has allowed for a recent explosion in the number of vaccine exemptions.

In virtually every school district within and around Austin, the vaccine exemption rate has risen. Nearly 50 percent of students attending Austin Waldorf School — a staggering statistic — went unvaccinated this past school year.

In the larger Austin school districts, such as Austin ISD, the exemption rate is now roughly twice the state average. This is a cause for concern.

Local clinics and hospitals can become overwhelmed with treating preventable illnesses during peak seasons, which can lead to delays in care and increased healthcare expenditures. In addition, herd immunity — the reduced risk of contracting a disease when a majority of a community is immunized — can become unpredictable with an increase in opt-outs, putting the most vulnerable among the community at greater risk.

Studies have shown that states with lenient vaccination laws often have higher nonmedical exemption rates and disease rates. It’s time to forego the nonmedical exemption clause and reframe our school vaccination requirements to reflect recent discoveries.

So, what would it look like to have Texas’ exemption clause removed? For one, the rate of vaccinated school-aged children would likely rise. In 2015, California passed SB277 which eliminated nonmedical exemptions for school entry. It was the first state in almost 35 years to do so. In the two years following the bill’s passing, California saw a nearly 2.5% increase in statewide kindergartners receiving school-entry vaccines.

Second, there would likely be a decline in the rate of children contracting — and dying from — preventable infectious diseases such as the flu, measles, and pertussis. Hospital admission rates related to these illnesses would in turn decrease.

Finally, a discussion on vaccinations would be incomplete without addressing autism. From the mouths of celebrities (think Jenny McCarthy) to the average parent’s Facebook newsfeed, the idea that vaccines cause autism is rampant. It’s also incorrect, dangerous propaganda. The only two published studies — by the same author, no less — that claimed to find a link between vaccines and autism were critically flawed and later retracted from scientific records. To be crystal clear, vaccines have not been found to cause autism. They also do not cause that which they are designed to prevent ­— a common flu vaccine myth.

Legislators of Texas, in the midst of ever-increasing vaccination exemptions, consider drafting legislation to eliminate exemptions of conscience.

And parents, with the flu season upon us, I implore you to vaccinate your children. The lives of our kids are invaluable. Without this lifesaving preventative medicine, the next victim of this unforgiving killer could be yours.

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AW

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father of the anti-vaccine movement, “[doesn’t] feel responsible at all” for the ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota.

We beg to differ.

The largest ever measles outbreak in the state’s history is propagating among a tight-knit Somali immigrant community – the same community Wakefield visited at least three times in 2010 and 2011 to warn parents against vaccinating their children. His message clearly took root, because 92 percent of the 50 children affected in the current outbreak were either never vaccinated against measles, or did not finish the vaccine’s full course.

Wakefield and others who peddle the falsehood that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism are almost entirely responsible for the virus’ rampage against this community.

Vaccination safety isn’t a matter of opinion. A study in the *Journal of American Medicine* followed more than 95,000 children to conclude that the MMR vaccine doesn’t increase the risk of autism, even among the highest-risk children. Autism appears with equal frequency in vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and a firm scientific consensus – to the tune of tens of thousands of independent studies – confirms vaccines aren’t responsible.

Rarely will junk science have as immediate and deadly an impact as the anti-vaccine movement. Although most measles cases are limited to a high fever, flu-like symptoms, and a full-body rash, complications can include life-threatening swelling of the brain and pneumonia.

Measles is incredibly contagious. Roughly 90% of people not already immune to the virus (through vaccine or prior infection) but living with an infected person will catch it. Prior to vaccine availability in the 1960’s, an average of 500,000 Americans could expect to be infected each year.

That doesn’t even consider the litany of other vaccine-preventable diseases which anti-vaxxers presumably subject their children to, including:

Pneumonia, meningitis (swelling around brain and spinal cord), chickenpox, hepatitis A and B (liver infections), rotavirus (diarrhea), diphtheria (severe, thick throat infection), tetanus (painful muscle spasms) whooping cough, and HPV(cervical cancer).

Despite these very real risks, the anti-vaccine movement still clings to the wholly disproven notion that immunization causes autism. The very minor chance of vaccine-related injury is far outweighed by the benefits of vaccination in preventing deadly disease.

..

North Carolina is reporting the worst chickenpox outbreak since a vaccine for it was introduced more than 20 years ago. Ground zero for the outbreak is the Asheville Waldorf School, where 36 children have come down with chickenpox.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that "the percentage of children under 2 years old who haven’t received any vaccinations has quadrupled since 2001," according to the Washington Post. Many of the parents who refuse to vaccinate their children do so under a religious beliefs exemption. "[T]he flare-up demonstrates the real-life consequences of a shadowy debate fueled by junk science and fomented by the same sort of Twitter bots and trolls that spread misinformation during the 2016 presidential election."

The claim of an autism risk, though it has been debunked, has remained a rallying cry of the anti-vaccine movement.

“What’s the big deal with chickenpox?” one city resident, Amy Gordon, told the Citizen-Times.

Chickenpox is serious, warns the CDC, “even life-threatening, especially in babies, adolescents, adults, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.”

Related: Throwing Science At Anti-Vaxxers Just Makes Them More Hardline

==

https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-pregnant-women-are-falling-anti-vaxxer-propaganda-and-how-we-can-stop-it-spreading

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https://www.alternet.org/celebrity-pseudoscience-here-are-nine-household-names-whove-pushed-bad-science-public

https://www.alternet.org/psychologist-explains-thinking-error-root-science-denial

there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus but controversy among laypeople: climate change, biological evolution and childhood vaccination. On all three issues,[members](https://youtu.be/ikax0Y0NJsY)members of the Trump administration, including the president, have lined up against the conclusions of research.

This widespread rejection of scientific findings presents a perplexing puzzle to those of us who value an evidence-based approach to knowledge and policy.

Yet many science deniers do cite empirical evidence. The problem is that they do so in invalid, misleading ways. Psychological research illuminates these ways....

As a psychotherapist, I see a striking parallel between a type of thinking involved in many mental health disturbances and the reasoning behind science denial. As I explain in my book “Psychotherapeutic Diagrams,” dichotomous thinking, also called black-and-white and all-or-none thinking, is a factor in depression, anxiety, aggression and, especially, borderline personality disorder.

In this type of cognition, a spectrum of possibilities is divided into two parts, with a blurring of distinctions within those categories. Shades of gray are missed; everything is considered either black or white. Dichotomous thinking is not always or inevitably wrong, but it is a poor tool for understanding complicated realities because these usually involve spectrums of possibilities, not binaries....

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http://www.ecowatch.com/cdc-corruption-robert-kennedy-jr-2096438139.html:{

hmn

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/vaccines-retroviruses-dna-and-the-discovery-that-destroyed-judy-mikovits-career/

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http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/researchers-may-have-found-what-causes-autism-and-even-how-to-prevent-it

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gut bacteria

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wait, what?

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:{http://www.globalpossibilities.org/the-great-vaxxed-debate/

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offit, paul acsh

~ vaxxers gives him cover was cigs sis for Whelan? michael specter?

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movies, deniro, RFK2, jenny mccarthy goofy husband;

:{==

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:{day after Governor Jerry Brown signed a tough vaccination bill into law, former assemblyman and gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly started an effort to repeal it.

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The new law aims to boost immunization rates by requiring that children be vaccinated to attend public or private daycare or school. The law eliminates exemptions based on personal beliefs and religion, while maintaining a medical exemption.

Donnelly submitted his proposed referendum in a July 1 letter. He has 90 days from the date Brown signed the bill to circulate and file petitions. He will need to collect more than 365,000 valid signatures to qualify for the Nov. 2016 ballot.

In a phone interview with KPCC, Donnelly, who’s now a radio host, said the new law is “devastating” to parents’ right to choose which medical care their children receive. “Why should the state have more control over our children’s health than we do?” he asked.

When asked if he thinks he can collect enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot, Donnely replied, “we’ll see,” maintaining that there was a “huge outpouring” of bipartisan opposition to the bill.

Donnelly’s is the first formal challenge of the law, but others are expected. Christina Hildebrand, founder ofA Voice for Choice, a group opposed to SB 277, said her group would also attempt to overturn the law through a ballot referendum. She also pledged to file a lawsuit on the grounds that the bill infringes on the state constitution’s guarantee of education.

Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), who wrote SB 277 with Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), responded to Donnelly’s move by issuing a statement asserting that Californians “overwhelmingly support” requiring vaccinations for school, according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California survey.

“Our bill was a reasonable, science-based approach to protecting children, and the most vulnerable among us, from dangerous diseases,” he said.

“I have spent my career campaigning to build healthier and safe communities and I will continue that work by fighting any referendum that hurts Californians,” added Pan.

==

http://www.alternet.org/culture/anti-vaxx-mother-leaves-movement-after-all-7-her-kids-get-whooping-cough

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vaxxer?

http://www.desmogblog.com/conservatives-versus-science-new-scientific-validation-republican-war-science-and-republican-brain-thesis

UPDATE: The paper discussed below is downloadable here [1].

For a while now, I’ve been aware of a powerful new paper that directly tests the central argument of my 2005 book The Republican War on Science [2]—and also validates some key claims made in my new book, The Republican Brain [3]. I’ve had to keep quiet about it until now; but at last, the study is out [4]—though I’m not sure yet about a web link to it. 

The research is by Gordon Gauchat [5] of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and published in the prestigious American Sociological Review [6]. In the study, Gauchat uses a vast body of General Social Survey data to test three competing theses about the relationship between science and the U.S. public:

1) the cultural ascendancy thesis or “deficit model” view, according to which better education and engagement with science lead all boats to rise, and citizens across the board become more trusting of scientists and their expertise;

2) the alienation thesis, according to which modernity brings on distrust and disillusionment with science (call it the “spoiled brat” thesis if you’d like); and

3) the politicization thesis—my thesis—according to which some cultural groups, aka conservatives, have a unique fallout with science for reasons tied up with the nature of modern American conservatism, such as its ideology, the growth of its think tank infrastructure, and so on.

The result? Well, Gauchat’s data show that the politicization thesis handily defeats all contenders. More specifically, he demonstrates that there was only really a decline in public trust in science among conservatives in the period from 1974 to 2010 (and among those with high church attendance, but these two things are obviously tightly interrelated).

And not just that.

Gauchat further validates the argument of The Republican War on Scienceby showing that the decline in trust in science was not linear. It occurred in association with two key “cultural break” points that, I argue in the book, heightened right wing science politicization: The election of Ronald Reagan, and then the election of George W. Bush.

This one figure from the paper really, really says it all:

 [7]

As you can see, conservatives go down, down, down in their trust in science over the period in question—which, of course, is also the period that thoroughly divided and polarized America.

And it’s not just these new findings that resound. Much of Gauchat’s data also validate key points from my new book *The Republican Brain* [8], which is in many ways my deeper elaboration of the arguments of the Republican War on Science.

First, Gauchat shows something I also highlight: Graduate degrees are now much more numerous among liberals, and the graduate education gap between left and right is widening. This factor–reflecting liberals’ greater Openness to scientific information and new ideas, as well as unending conservative attacks on academia (and recourse to ideological think tanks to take its place)–is a key structural force involved in driving conservatives away from science.

Second: Gauchat also captures, once again, the**“smart idiot” effect** [9]: Conservatives becoming more factually wrong—or, in this case, more distrusting of science, which to me is basically the same thing—as their level of education advances. Here let me quote in full, because frankly, the finding can only be called highly disturbing:

…conservatives with high school degrees, bachelor’s degrees, and graduate degrees all experienced greater distrust in science over time and these declines are statistically significant. In addition, a comparison of predicted probabilities indicates that conservatives with college degrees decline more quickly than those with only a high school degree. These results are quite profound, because they imply that conservative discontent with science was not attributable to the uneducated but to rising distrust among educated conservatives.

The key question to pose, after reading Gauchat’s paper, is why this occurred. Clearly, The Republican War on Science’spoliticization thesis is being strongly validated—a thesis that attributes the problem to the growth of a modern conservative movement, its need to appease its core interest groups and constituencies (corporate America, conservative Christians), its need to have its own alternative expertise and journalism (think tanks, Fox, Limbaugh), and so on.

But frankly, I don’t think this thesis goes far enough. That is the whole point of The Republican Brain, where I assert that we need a nature plus nurture account to understand why conservatives deny science and reality. And all of this stuff Gauchat is talking about is sociology—aka, “nurture.” It’s very real, undeniably so–but is it the whole story?

I doubt it. For instance, in their book Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics [10], Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler have shown that as the “New Right” emerged in the U.S. in the wake of the cultural battles of the 1960s and 1970s, it mobilized strong forces of authoritarianism–e.g., psychological rigidity and closed-mindedness. In this era, driven by hot button “culture war” issues, authoritarians moved to the  right, leaving behind the Democratic Party, particularly in the South. These were the so-called “Reagan Democrats.”

I find it hard to believe that this trend is not also showing up in Gauchat’s data. If anything, the finding about church attendance kind of gives it away—in the U.S., authoritarians are often biblical fundamentalists.

Whatever the underlying causes, though, the punchline of the story that Gauchat tells—reaffirming the story I have told—is unmistakably grim. We now have a powerful linkage between a powerful political movement in the United States on the one hand, and the denial of science and reality on the other. This not only manifests itself every day in our dysfunctional political debates; it is a gigantic threat to the country’s future and its ability to cope with 21^stcentury problems.

Tags:

republican war on science [11]

republican brain [12]

gordon gauchat [13]

Read more: Conservatives versus Science: A New Scientific Validation of the Republican War on Science (and Republican Brain) Thesis [14]

Source URL: http://www.desmogblog.com/conservatives-versus-science-new-scientific-validation-republican-war-science-and-republican-brain-thesis

interesting convergence of anti-science; herd immunity is a version of the commons;internet meme; (goes viral ;(

understandable that DDT would be target, but harder to see why vaccine, tho JBS used to think fluride was commie plot

hdnet is AXTV rather?  corrected?

Vaccines and the Republican War on Science

Posted by Josh Rosenau on April 4, 2013

http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2013/04/04/vaccines-and-the-republican-war-on-science/

Ever since Chris Mooney’s *Republican War on Science*was published in 2005, folks have been looking for a way to argue that Democrats are just as bad. The standard example for this counternarrative, one which Mooney even offered in his book, was vaccine denial – the claim that vaccines cause autism or are otherwise dangerous.

Intuitively, this seems right. The folks and venues touting antivaxx conspiracy theories tended to be New Agey outlets, and the places facing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases tended to be liberal strongholds, like Boulder, CO or Marin County, CA.  That must mean liberals are more likely to buy into vaccine denial, right? Unfortunately, no pollster ever seemed to include a question about vaccine denial in a survey along with questions about political party or political ideology.

Until recently.

Yesterday, Public Policy Polling, an outfit known for asking wacky but surprisingly informative questions, asked people about a host of conspiracy theories.  The Atlantic Wire’s Philip Bumpsummarizes the results nicely, and there’s much to return to here.  For our purposes, the most interesting outcome is that 26% of Republicans think vaccines cause autism, compared to 16% of Democrats (that’s on p. 21 of the PDF).  

Indeed, the only claimed conspiracies which Democrats were more likely to back than Republicans were: “the moon landing was faked” (D: 7%, R: 4%, I: 9%, all within the margin of error), “President Bush intentionally misled the public about the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to promote the Iraq war” (D: 72%, R: 13%, I: 48%), “the CIA was instrumental in distributing crack cocaine into America’s inner cities in the 1980s” (D: 14%, R: 9%, I: 21%), “Paul McCartney actually died in a car crash in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a lookalike so The Beatles could continue” (D: 7%, R: 4% I: 5%, inside the margin of error), “the United States government knowingly allowed the attacks on September 11th, 2001, to happen” (D: 14%, R: 8%, I: 12%). Republicans are more likely to believe in aliens and in bigfoot, that aliens crashed at Roswell and shape-shifting reptiles rule our world, that Saddam Hussein played a role in 9/11 and a secretive power elite secret rules the world, that the government adds mind control messages to TV signals, sprays evil chemicals into the air, and fluoridates water for nefarious purposes, that bin Laden is alive and Oswald didn’t act alone, that pharmaceutical companies invent new diseases to make money and vaccines cause autism. They also are more likely to think President Obama is the anti-Christ and global warming is a hoax.  Republicans endorse more conspiracy theories, and with greater fervor, than Democrats (even stretching back to conspiracies of yesteryear, like McCartney’s supposed death or the CIA’s ambiguous role in the Contras’ drug dealing).

According to a survey last December, Republicans aren’t just more likely to think vaccines cause autism, they are also less likely than Democrats to think “the schedule of vaccines recommended by the Department of Health and Human Services is safe.”  At the time, Adam Berinsky, the researcher who commissioned the survey, suggested that Republicans’ negative reaction might simply be “a result of the interaction between anti-government sentiment among Republicans and the mention of a government agency in the question.” Yet that survey also found that Republicans were more likely to think vaccines were associated with autism, cancer, and heart disease (and less likely to link it with diabetes).

Berinsky compared those conspiratorial beliefs with another conspiracy theory, finding that people who are less trusting of the vaccine schedule are more likely to think President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.  In other words, belief in one conspiracy seems to predispose you to others.  Democrats who were more dubious of the vaccination schedule were also more likely to doubt that the President was born where all evidence indicates he was born.  This parallels findings from Australian researchers including Stephan Lewandowsky, who found thatpeople who endorsed conspiracy theories like the CIA assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr., or NASA faking the moon landing are more likely to reject climate change. (Lewandowsky’s paper itself inspired such a fury of conspiracy-mongering that he was able to generate another paper about the conspiracy theories spawned by the first.)

I wrote to Berinsky to ask whether he’d compared vaccine denial with other conspiracy theories, like creationism or climate change denial, and he was able to make a comparison with climate change denial. “As you would expect,” he told me, “anti-vaccine people are climate change deniers.”

That’s what you’d expect from the evidence that conspiracy-mongering begets conspiracy-mongering. It’s not what you’d expect if you shoehorn vaccine denial into the role of a liberal counterpart to conservative science denial.

==

s mercer mojo

So Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) is finally retiring, after two decades in Congress. He's got a notable record of craziness, having doggedly pursued President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal while knowing full well he'd had an affair himself and even fathered a child out of wedlock. He famously claimed to have shot up a "head-like object" (likely a melon or a pumpkin) to try to re-create the alleged "murder" of former Clinton deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, who committed suicide. But Burton doesn't get enough credit for what may be his lasting legacy: helping turn Americans away from life-saving childhood vaccines.

Burton has said he believes one of his grandchildren became autistic after receiving a childhood vaccination. As a result, he spent many years and lots of congressional resources trying to investigate the alleged link between the two. In 2000, he held a circus-like hearing in which he provided a very high profile platform for the now entirely disgraced British doctor :{Andrew Wakefield:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:, who helped spawn the myth that vaccines cause autism. Wakefield has since lost his medical license for allegedly falsifying the medical histories of the children he claimed had gotten autism from vaccines, among other issues.

Michael Specter's new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives, dives into a worrisome strain of modern life -- a vocal anti-science bias that may prevent us from making the right choices for our future. Specter studies how the active movements againstvaccines, genetically engineered food, science-based medicine and biotechnological solutions to climate change may actually put the world at risk. (For instance, anti-vaccination activists could soon trigger the US return of polio, not to mention the continuing rise of measles.) More insidiously, the chilling effect caused by the new denialism may prevent useful science from being accomplished.

:{

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http://www.ted.com/speakers/michael_specter

http://www.dailykos.com/news/american%20thinker#

eg http://www.dailykos.com/news/Randall%20Hoven vaccine

http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Anti-Vaccine_Body_Count/Anti-Vaccine_History.html

http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/26/jenny-mccarthy-vaccine-expert-a-quarter-of-parents-trust-celebrities/

5/14 vaccine and autism (2nd suggestion for vaccine)

About 5,100,000 results (0.28 seconds)

1. ### Can **vaccinations** cause **autism** - myasdf.org‎

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ASDF has 270 followers on Google+

2. ### **Vaccines and autism** - aspiranetffsn.org‎

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3. ### **Autism Vaccine** Injury - ebcala.org‎

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Gov't compensated autistic children injured by vaccines. Watch video.

Although child vaccination rates remain high, some parental concern persists that vaccines might cause autism. Three specific hypotheses have been proposed: (1) the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism by damaging the intestinal lining, which allows the entrance of encephalopathic proteins; (2) thimerosal, an ethylmercury-containing preservative in some vaccines, is toxic to the central nervous system; and (3) the simultaneous administration of multiple vaccines overwhelms or weakens the immune system. We will discuss the genesis of each of these theories and review the relevant epidemiological evidence.

A worldwide increase in the rate of autism diagnoses—likely driven by broadened diagnostic criteria and increased awareness—has fueled concerns that an environmental exposure like vaccines might cause autism. Theories for this putative association have centered on the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, thimerosal, and the large number of vaccines currently administered. However, both epidemiological and biological studies fail to support these claims.

On 28 February 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, and colleagues [1] published a paper in The Lancet that described 8 children whose first symptoms of autism appeared within 1 month after receiving an MMR vaccine. All 8 of these children had gastrointestinal symptoms and signs and lymphoid nodular hyperplasia revealed on endoscopy. From these observations, Wakefield postulated that MMR vaccine caused intestinal inflammation that led to translocation of usually nonpermeable peptides to the bloodstream and, subsequently, to the brain, where they affected development.

Several issues undermine the interpretation by Wakefield et al. [1] of this case series. First, the self-referred cohort did not include control subjects, which precluded the authors from determining whether the occurrence of autism following receipt of MMR vaccine was causal or coincidental....

Search Results

1. - ### CDC - Concerns About :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: - :{Vaccine:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Safety

www.cdc.gov/vacci...‎

United States Centers for Disease Control and Preve...

:{Mar 26, 2014 - Concerns about thimerosal :{vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: leading to :{autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Vaccine not associated with ... - ‎IOM Report on Adverse Effects

• • ### :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:-:{Vaccine:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Link: Evidence Doesn't Dispel Doubts

www.webmd.com/brain/autism/searching-for.../vaccines-autism‎

WebMD

:{Many major medical groups say :{vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: don't cause :{autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. Many parents say they do. So who's right?:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

• • ### :{Vaccines and Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: - Autism Speaks

www.autismspeaks.org/.../information-about-vaccines-and...‎

Autism Speaks

:{Many studies have examined possible links between :{vaccination:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and increased prevalence of :{autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. This research has paid particular attention to the ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

2. News for :{vaccines and autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:

The Guardian

1. State of Confusion: One-Third of American Parents Continue **...**

Huffington Post ‎- 3 days ago

We must not allow anti-vaccination rhetoric to undermine these ... One-Third of American Parents Continue to Link Vaccines and Autism.

1. How :{vaccine:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: denialism in the West is causing measles **...**

3 days ago

More news for **vaccines and autism**

3. * * *

• ### MMR :{vaccine:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy‎

Wikipedia

:{The scientific consensus is that no evidence links the :{vaccine:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: to the development of:{autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, and that the :{vaccine's:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: benefits greatly outweigh its risks. Following ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

• • ### :{Vaccines and autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:: Separating fact from fiction | BabyCenter

www.babycenter.com › ... › Baby Vaccine Concerns‎

BabyCenter

:{Did a preservative in children's :{vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: cause a rise in :{autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: rates? We examine the evidence.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

• • ### :{Vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: & :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: « Science-Based Medicine

www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/vaccines-and-autism/‎

:{Overview of :{Vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: & :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. :{Vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: are generally considered to be the most successful public health intervention ever devised. And yet there have been ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

• • ### 22 Medical Studies That Show :{Vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Can Cause :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:

www.activistpost.com/2013/.../22-medical-studies-that-show-vaccines.ht...‎

:{Sep 12, 2013 - Regardless of the MMR :{vaccine and autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: debate, there are still a number of studies that link vaccines to a possible autism connection.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

• • ### MMR :{Vaccine:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: & :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: - American Academy of Pediatrics

https://www2.aap.org/.../mmr.html‎

American Academy Of Pediatrics

:{Studies conducted in the US and Europe have found no association between the MMR:{vaccine and autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. Over the years, the Institute of Medicine and the AAP ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

• • ### :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and :{Vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: - :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Science Foundation

www.autismsciencefoundation.org/autismandvaccines.html‎

:{The results of studies are very clear; the data show no relationship between :{vaccines and autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. Read the studies themselves below and browse our ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

4. In-depth articles
5. - ### How to Think About the Risk of :{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:

The New York Times - 

Mar 2014

Yet most media coverage focuses on vaccines, which do not causeautism and are given after birth. How can we help people separate real risks from false rumors? Over the last few ...

Explore: autism genetic

• • ### Why Does the :{Vaccine:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:/:{Autism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Controversy Live On **...**

Discover - 

May 2009

Research has soundly disproved the alleged connection, yet fears aboutvaccines continue to be a major risk to public health.

Explore: vaccine controversy

• • ### Jim Carrey: The Judgment on :{Vaccines:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Is In???

huffingtonpost.com - 

Apr 2009

Can we afford to ignore vaccines as a possible cause of rising numbers of children with Autism, when they are one of the fastest growing elements in our children's environment?

Explore: anti vaccination