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Posts Tagged ‘Vaccines’

Quackery

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 26, 2025| 4 Comments »

There’s a chill in the air! My neighbor Les has moved, the Bat Mitzvah is fast approaching, and the Twins have turned six months. I’m never very good with change, but the cooler temperatures are certainly welcome. I’ve packed away my swimsuits and Bob and I are ready for our Fall jabs – you know, the annual Influenza and Covid vaccines. We wanted to get them a little early since the Love Bug’s big day will be full of friends and family fresh off airplanes. But guess what?

No such luck.

The 2025 Covid booster has been approved and manufactured in the US, except for some odd reason (RFK Jr) they have NOT been distributed yet! The Covid booster is nowhere to be found. Oh well, but if you search around, you might be able to find last year’s Covid vaccine… I hear the new flu shot is available though, which is great news since the L’il Pumpkin just found out the friend he played soccer with after school yesterday has the flu. Yep, flu and Covid are ramping up in Nashville.

And then I bumped into this article: “As Trump Weighs IVF, Republicans Back ‘New Natural’ Approach to Infertility.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/us/politics/trump-ivf-restorative-reproductive-medicine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE8.b_ok.-tvmuQ3oUKjI&smid=url-share

Just when you think the MAHA movement can’t get any wonkier, when you realize that the Kennedy name has lost its lustre, the GOP decides to push “restorative reproductive medicine.” After Mr T promised to make IVF available for everyone on the campaign trail, Christian Conservatives are having trouble dealing with those pesky, left-over embryos. It all started with Alabama’s Supreme Court Decision last year calling embryos “unborn children located outside of a biological uterus.” So they’ve come up with an alternative – they believe couples should look at the ‘root causes’ of infertility, like endometriosis or say environmental factors.

Hey, Catholics have been pushing a “natural” method of birth control for centuries. Why not return to the 19th Century, where charlatans in traveling caravans sold snake oil? Where polio and measles and flu killed thousands upon thousands of children each year. I’ve stopped making jokes about RFK Jr’s parasitic brain worm, but I still think that making him Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was a cringe-worthy, dirty trick. Here are just a few of his baseless views:

 “Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain”; that school shootings are attributable to antidepressants; that chemicals in water can lead to children becoming transgender; and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV. He’s also long said that vaccines cause autism and fail to protect people from diseases.”

And speaking of school shootings, our Grands had a bomb threat at their school the first week back, complete with FBI agents and bomb-sniffing dogs. It turned out to be nothing, but is terrifying none-theless. I remembered waiting for the all clear from a lockdown at the Twins’ NICU in the spring. The Twins are currently loving solid food! And thanks to the miracle of IVF and our iPhones, we can watch them in happy baby pose and rolling over, trying to crawl. After their measles vaccine, they will be able to travel on a plane!

That is, if our country can manage to stay in the 21st Century.


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A Pox Upon You!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on May 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Just when we thought it was safe to appear mask-less at certain public venues, like the Nashville Ballet this past weekend, Covid numbers are starting to rise. In TN, the average daily number of new cases last week rose by 58%!

“Health officials believe the virus has killed more people than state totals indicate, especially early in the pandemic before testing and effective treatments were widely available. A rise in deaths usually follows a rise in new cases by about a month. For example, after the delta variant caused a surge of new cases beginning in July 2021, the death toll began to climb in August.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=hp_habit-bar-morning&state=US

The Bride is seeing more cases of the virus, and one by one each Grand reports another student absent from class. Of course this is the last week of school. But I was just beginning to feel like the worst was behind us; like this summer might be especially sweet in our new/old Crystal Cottage. Bob has been replacing ceiling fans and adjusting doors – yesterday he and the Groom switched out a dead foundation shrub for a gorgeous flowering, snowball Viburnum.

Then I noticed a Tweet last week by Bill Hanage, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. It seems there are clusters of “monkeypox” in the UK, Portugal, Spain and Canada!

“It is v plausible that transmission has been happening for some time unnoticed because folks don’t expect to see monkeypox and so don’t diagnose it. You hear hoofbeats you expect horses, not unicorns. You see lesions, you don’t expect monkeypox and assume it is something else.”

The good news here is that if you happen to be of a certain age, your smallpox vaccine should protect you; the bad news is the same cannot be said for young people. Smallpox was a dangerous, contagious disease for over 3,000 years and was considered eradicated in 1980. Our children and grandchildren were never vaccinated.

Bob and I did our own Covid/monkeypox research at the ballet. He wore a mask and I didn’t. We’d received a text saying the symphony would not be playing live because of an outbreak of Covid among the musicians. But the ballet would be accompanied by the taped rehearsal music, complete with directions at times. I dream about this very thing! The last time I saw a ballet recital was in Saratoga with Balanchine. We could have exchanged our tickets, but I was there to see the dancers after all.

Some people must have opted out because the theatre was only a third full.

The Schermerhorn Symphony Center is like a beautiful cathedral to the arts, its ceiling rising over 40 ft. I figured I’d be safe without a mask, Bob wasn’t taking any chances. On Wednesday, we figured we’d do an at-home Covid test.

But this morning I awoke to two jars of Jiffy peanut butter on the kitchen island. My dear husband, who’d been feeling queasy last night, informed me that PB jars with our lot numbers were being recalled because of salmonella! So in the end, it may be a rotten jar of bacteria that you can’t see, taste or smell that finally brings us down, or I should say ‘him.’ He ate a PB&J sandwich, not me. I’m more of a lox and cream cheese type for lunch.

I made him take his mask off for this ballet selfie

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We Are Not Alone!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on July 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

No, I’m not talking about UFOs.

It’s time to discuss this anti-vaccination/misinformation trend, because it’s not just here in the US of A. I happened to notice this week on Twitter, that President Emmanuel Macron schooled the world on leadership. I will just say that he laid down the law on Covid 19 vaccines… those NOT vaccinated by a certain date in September will NOT be allowed to return to French schools, and will NOT receive a paycheck! And then he Tweeted:

“Bon 14 Juillet à toutes et à tous. Vive la République, vive la France!”

My first thought was, “We could never do that here.” But why, did I drink the Kool Aid?

Back in the 1950s, my Sacred Heart class had to line up and march upstairs to the auditorium – a place we would only visit for dance class. I remember learning to waltz with boys who kept us at a distance. But on this day, we had some pink liquid squirted down our throats. It was the first Polio vaccine and we were happy to get it. Our generation also has that weird smallpox spot on our arms. Our parents may not have been savvy scientists, but they listened to doctors. And there was no internet to spread lies and hate.

Maybe President Biden was right, Facebook IS killing people!

Vive la Difference! Today, about 40% of the French people are anti-vaxxers, as compared to 10 years ago when that number was 10%.

“France has seen several acts of violence and vandalism against lawmakers who supported the new vaccination rules.

Yet hundreds of thousands of people have signed up for the jabs after Mr Macron unveiled the plan last week.

His government is attempting to curb the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, which is causing a surge in hospital admissions.

More than 111,000 people have died with Covid in France during the pandemic, which has severely damaged the country’s economy.

Last week, a panel of scientists who advise the French government warned of a fourth wave in the coming months. Only a little over half of the population has received a first dose and less than 40% have had two shots.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57883397

And I thought only Americans could politicize a vaccine! You must understand, I am a complete Francophile. I love the French people, the French language, and of course the food. “Liberty Equality Fraternity” is the motto from the French Revolution. We Americans led the way for the French Revolution in 1789! France abolished their monarchy because they saw we Yanks could do just fine without one.

Still they skirt the line between freedom of expression and the broader community. The French people hate red tape and government interference, as we’ve seen by union members and farmers marching in Paris and closing down commerce. And they despise censorship, like the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist massacre. Their Muslim girls cannot wear a head scarf in school, nor can Jews wear a yarmulke. The French have drawn a line between religion and the state, a distinct red line. I must admit, I admire this differentiation.

So you may think I’m saying that nationalism in France is OK but not in America? No. Nationalism for any country can always lead to violence and unrest; the French have their own colonialism in Algeria and Vietnam to deal with, while we have our history of slavery and checkered immigration policy to consider.

How can we persuade or require social media companies to regulate their own misinformation campaigns? It’s easy. Just give Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg the go ahead… smart people can always fix the wayward tendencies of media moguls with rules and regulations and incentives. Go get ’em Pete!

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