I don’t know why Florida is bothering since we’re on the road to vaccines no longer existing in America.
I’m certain we won’t see insurance cos refusing to cover the treatment of diseases, because they could have been prevented, with a vaccine that is not legally available in the US, but is covered by insurance.
Catch 22, not just a novel, a way of life.
I had a good time there in 1999 or so, went with a friend whose father worked for an airline and got me cheap tickets (and my friend and his father flew for free).
Books were far cheaper than in Buenos Aires and in Barnes and Noble there was a whole aisle full of impossible-to-get-in-Argentina Fantasy, Science Fiction and RPG books.
I’ll never forget the look in the face of the cashier when he saw me approaching trying to balance a meter-long pile of books …
That said, the lack of sidewalks everywhere and general air of alienation caused by the car-worshipping culture, the news channels constantly talking about culture war issues (Fred Phelps was big at that moment), plus the stupid woman who, when we were visiting an aviation museum and she learned that we were from Argentina pointed to a plane and said “airplane” like we were some kind of ignorant rubes from a backwards place, started the process of disabusing me of the somewhat idealized image I had of the USA at that moment.
Is he an M.D? I didn’t see his credentials listed, but maybe I skipped over them in my aghastness.
Update: he has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard. Harvard should rescind his degrees.
Disneyland has its own sad history with measles - the 2015 outbreak affecting close to 150 (largely unvaccinated) people in 7 states (primarily California), Canada and Mexico. It’s thought that the outbreak was started by an infected traveler from overseas.
The point here is that those living in other states are not insulated from Florida officials’ foolishness. We’re all just a plane ride or car trip away from an infective index case.
The only thing that will shake people out of their complacency and antivaccine leanings is the inevitable resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases. Too bad a lot of people, especially children, the vulnerable chronically ill/immunosuppressed and elderly will have to suffer and be killed before this turns around.
Pretty much like it did last time:
Plus ca change and all that. The difference is that the loons are now getting elected to public office.
If link doesn’t work, a post on Bluesky from AltCDC with a Oregon Trail parody picture of a covered wagon in front of palm trees and the caption “You have died of Florida”
I know that Johns Hopkins has basically wiped their websites of references to the formerly respected Dr. Ben Carson, due to some of his own wackadoodle statements.
Thinking about it, I guess the Republican politicians are just thinking long term. These Republican children that they’re going to kill wouldn’t have been able to vote for another ten to fifteen years. And by then, the Republicans will have eliminated real elections anyway, so the loss of all those voters won’t matter.
At one point in his act, Patton Oswalt had the line “The only reason to go to Florida is to identify your daughter’s body.”
Whoa, that’s dark.
Patton is a national treasure.
Surely Florida’s government based their decision on at some science, right?
Florida’s surgeon general did no research before moving to nix vaccine mandates as cases of preventable diseases rise across the state.
“Before you made this decision to try to lift vaccine mandates for Florida, did your department do any data analysis of how many new cases of these diseases there will be with no vaccine mandates?” CNN host Jake Tapper asked Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, noting that case or Hepatitis A, whooping cough, and chickenpox are on the rise in Florida
“Absolutely not,” Ladapo proudly shot back. “There’s this conflation of the science, and what is the right and wrong thing to do.”
Evidently “the right thing to do” is just flat out lie about the vaccines.
In addition to bypassing science altogether, Ladapo has a history of cooking the books to make vaccines look dangerous. Ladapo was found guilty in 2023 of altering study data to make COVID-19 vaccinations appear dangerous to young men.
During his CNN appearance Saturday, he further defended this week’s move by citing whooping cough, claiming “that’s an example of a vaccine that’s ineffective” and that “the data show that it’s ineffective at preventing transmission.”
Otherwise known as pertussis, whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory tract infection that can be deadly among children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vaccine fully protects 98 percent of kids within a year of receiving the jab, and around 71 percent within five years.
The United States is well on its way to be a medieval country.
Bring out yer dead! Bring out yer dead!
Maybe we need to explore this:
Both currently run by far-right loons but it would certainly improve the food.
[Quoted by Monty from another source]
My mother was born in 1940, and so when I (aged 3 in 1970) came down with what my doctor called an “attenuated” case of whooping cough a few days after getting the vaccine, she wasn’t even upset-- other than for the fact of my suffering though it-- but in her opinion, the 3-day bout I had was so much better than 2 weeks of possibly being at death’s door, or surviving, but with residua, that she was quite happy.
I was tired and had a fever the first day, second day, had the uncontrollable cough, which I still remember vividly, and then 3rd day was stuffy, and had a “regular” cough; fine the day after that.
I spent 40 years thinking that an early form of the vaccine gave me a mild case of whooping cough, but then, when relating the story to my doctor while getting the adult Tdap booster, she said that it probably didn’t-- more likely what happened is that when I was taken to the doctor for the vaccine, there was someone in the waiting room with pertussis, and I was exposed. The fresh vaccine gave me some protection, but not enough to entirely prevent my getting sick-- so I just got mildly ill. I swear I felt the jerk, and heard the grinding noise as the paradigm shifted.
Can we just take a moment and curse parents that don’t do everything so their children don’t die? And curse the state that condones that?
Unfortunately that’s what they want. Floridians have given Republicans the mandate to do exactly this. Isn’t this dismantling of the “nanny state” exactly what you (not the specific you, but generic Republicans) have been voting for for the last five decades? I didn’t understand why you would curse what you asked for.