Tag: #CDC data

Vaccine Basics: The Truth About Vaccines

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VACCINE BASICS

The strength of the anti-vaxxer movement in the U.S. is dangerous to the public health.

Vaccine Basics: The Truth About Vaccines

The Chinese were using inoculation over a 1,000 years ago in an attempt to protect people from the scourge of small pox. Those early physicians would make a scratch on a person’s arm or leg and then rub fluid from the pox pustules into the broken skin. Another method involved blowing infected dust from scabs into the nostrils of a healthy individual. The first record of an injection of a weakened form of small pox was by a British physician, Edward Jenner, in the 18th century. 

D. S. Mitchell

An Army

Any regular reader of this website knows that I am a retired RN. And as such, health and wellness issues are an important part of the information I share on this site. The COVID-19 pandemic brought out an army of anti-vaxxers, led by a-holes like RFK, Jr. There’s a guy despised by his family and recognized world wide as a “nut cake,” but even someone as despised and discredited as Kennedy has followers. Just because his dad was famous and cool does not mean he passed any of that charisma, intellect, or personality on to his children, particularly junior, in this case.

A Veritable Quandary

I don’t understand it. During my life time vaccines have nearly caused us to forget the severe outbreaks of “childhood diseases” including polio, tetanus, hepatitis A and B, rubella, mumps, whooping cough, rotavirus, smallpox, measles, and more. Vaccines save money. If you don’t care about the human cost, there is the financial cost of infectious diseases on our country. The CDC estimates that inoculation against measles has saved the United States $295 billion in hospital costs and $1.4 trillion in societal costs over a 15 year span, according to an article in the August 2020  Prevention magazine, by Jennifer Wolff

Whatever

Fear, misinformation, and superstition are all drivers of the anti-vax movement. Because of all the screaming and hollering and the threats against Dr. Fauci, I thought now might be as good a time as any to provide a short refresher course on what vaccines are and what they are not.

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The Bastardization of the Second Amendment

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OPINION:

The Bastardization of the Second Amendment

OPINION:

The Bastardization of the Second Amendment

*The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as “one with four or more people injured or killed, not including the perpetrator.”

By D. S. Mitchell

 

Breakdown

2022 started out with a bang, and it just seems to be getting worse. I had barely stopped crying over what had happened in Buffalo, N.Y. when Uvalde took over the news cycle. Yesterday, I watched Mathew McConaughey, the Texas actor who was born in Uvalde, break down during his speech at the White House as he described trying to identify young bodies after being shot to pieces by an AR-15 assault rifle.  One cable commentator told the television audience that there have been more than 250 mass shootings since the beginning of 2022.  I can’t confirm that, but such a number would not surprise me.

Statistically Speaking

As most of us are aware, Americans kill Americans in huge numbers. Americans kill themselves in huge numbers. In 2020, according to CDC data, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, accidental deaths, and law enforcement actions. During the Corona virus pandemic, it seemed like mass shootings had stopped; or at least decreased.  But as information comes out it is becoming clear that perception was an illusion; the killings never stopped. For some reason the shootings were less public. Maybe there was just too much noise about masks, mandates, and vaccine protests. With all that aside, the statistics are staggering. There were more than 600 mass shootings in 2020, compared to 417 in 2019. That carnage continued into 2021, and now 2022, with hundreds of shootings.

American Exceptionalism

No where else in the world is gun violence a problem. So, why in the United States? Well, let’s see. I think a good place to start would be to recognize that we live in a country where there are more guns than people. We have a Supreme Court that wants to write its own laws. I say that, using the decisions of the Robert’s court to support that contention; whether it be Heller or Citizen’s United. In the minds of our 21st century ‘conservative’ justices, Ben Franklin, James Madison, Washington and all that crew visualized a country of 330 million people all able to pack AR-15’s if they are over the age of 18. Oh, and let’s not forget the NRA. In my opinion the NRA should be sued after every mass shooting. It is the power of the NRA lobby and their big money that buys off members of the House and Senate; halting any progress on common sense legislation.

Just Imagine

These rebels and rabble rousers of the 18th century never comprehended the potential invention of a revolver, much less an automatic weapon. Lord, folks, when I was a kid I never would have imagined the rise of the personal computer, cell phones, social media, electric cars, or billionaires. I’m damn sure that Ben, Jimmy and George would have written things a bit differently if they could have only imagined our world. There is no person on earth that could ever convince me of anything different. This bullshit of the Second Amendment being a permission slip to ignore pubic safety and turn our streets into war zones, as deadly as Mariupol, is outrageous. Personally, I don’t want to have to put on a flak jacket to go to the store, pick up my grand kids at school, or go to a concert.  Come on America demand sensible gun control; our lives, and the lives of our children depend on it.