The New Hampshire GOP Declares War on the Polio Vaccine

Don't put your untested, experimental, DNA-altering potions into our bodies! Or the ones that have been tested and proven safe and effective for three generations either!

^ They're nuts!

Live Free and Die!

R1 forgot the second part of the GQP's mantra: "...but dump as many toxic chemicals, industrial and hazardous waste, coal ash, and everything else killing the environment as you want! There can't possibly be a link between pollution and the spikes in autism, cognitive disorders, deformities and stillbirths!"

It's time for the CDC and FDA to draw a line in the sand. Fine, don't vaccinate your children, but when they get polio, measles, chickenpox or any of the dozens of diseases that science has eradicated, parents withholding vaccinations from/and children are on their own. No Federal aid, no state aid, no medicaid, no welfare, nothing, nada.

And hospitals and the entire medical industry should refuse to treat them. Let them die at home, where it's safe from satanic modern medicine and all of the benefits it has brought us.

I think I'll go buy some stock in iron lung manufacturers.

Aww, she'll be so cute in an iron lung!

This is INSANE.

No one in the US should get polio or the measles.

I’ve mentioned this on DL before, but my dad contracted polio around 1950. He survived with a limp (shorter leg) and bouts of pain. Late in his life, he suffered from post polio syndrome. He viewed the polio vaccine as the greatest invention of his lifetime. He didn’t want anyone to suffer like he did (fortunately, he didn’t need an iron lung).

One of my aunts got polio when she was a child in the early 50s. She spent several months in an iron lung and to this day (she's almost 80) has had health problems related to the polio she had as a child.

Anti-vaxxers are fucking morons.

How anyone can be against the polio and measles vaccines is beyond me.

It's like being against blood transfusions, dialysis, and surgery.

It's unbelievable how stupid some people are r10.

It's entirely believable, R11, and they're not just stupid, they're gullible. And when you combine it with a political party (to be clear, the Republicans) that wants to destroy our form of government, it's not hard to understand how they have convinced so many stupid, gullible people that vaccines are dangerous. I've harped for years that the Republicans decided after the 1960s that democracy was standing between them and untold riches, so set out to destroy one of the pillars of an informed electorate: education, so they began cutting funding for schools (starve the beast), trying to find a way to funnel public money for education into schooling that only teaches the masses the minimum of required knowledge to barely function (charter and religious schools), and make it so expensive to go to college that only the wealthy can afford to go. Get the SCOTUS to undo Affirmative Action, stamp out DEI efforts, and you have the system that they want aka the nightmare that we're living through.

Part of the effort was to undermine science such that the electorate loses faith in it despite all evidence. When I was a little boy and first heard Paul Harvey (yes, I'm old) one of the first things I said was that it was entertaining radio but misrepresented science and injected mysticism into each story along with a healthy dose of conspiracy theory ideation. Harvey was a smart man and very entertaining, but what his stories did with the inevitable "rest of the story" twist at the end making everything make sense was encouraging listeners to always be on the lookout for the untold truth(s). I'm neither blaming Harvey and those of his ilk (and there are many), nor saying that a healthy dose of skepticism is a bad thing; his stories and the popularity of his program was just another example of how the general population was deluded into thinking that science is mysterious, scientists are not trustworthy (for instance, pointing at the folly of spending millions of American taxpayer dollars on doctors and scientists hunting bats in Chinese caves), and worse, that scientists are hiding something about their work that nets them lots of research money but which is dangerous and a threat to you and your family: basically, taking the foundational principles of the scientific method and turning them against knowledge.

Listen to the anti-vaxxers and you can hear it loud and clear: that doctors admit that a vaccine may have dangerous side effects isn't them being honest and ethical, it's them being deceptive and underhanded. Nevermind that vaccines are built up on decades of education, experience and know-how, are tested to the highest standards of medical practice, and are subject to the highest scrutiny that modern medical science offers through peer review. No, focus on the fact that as biologically diverse creatures, we all don't react to microbes, chemicals, and other organisms in exactly the same way, and make that seem as some underhanded, dishonest and scary. Undermine trust in the magnificent medical establishment we've built in the last century, and it's a lot easier to control stupid people. And as we've seen with Covid, that can evolve into outright hatred for the only people with the knowledge, skills and experience to stop the virus and save lives.

They know what they're doing, and the easiest proof to support my thesis is that News Corp required every person on their staff to be vaccinated to enter the building, which was a quietly-enforced mandate beginning the moment the vaccine was available. Remember how it was reported (by real journalists) that Rupert Murdoch was among the very first people vaccinated? Yet he instructed his highly paid shills to go out there and trash the vaccine, the medical establishment, and science to influence Fox viewers not to get vaccinated.

I wish that the people who trust in the right's bullshit would ask themselves why every one of their thought leaders was vaccinated yet they tell them to be afraid, distrust science, and willfully avoid the best method of preventing illness.