Sandi Dolbee of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote about the very different public responses to two life-saving vaccines for deadly diseases: polio and COVID-19. I remember the national fear of polio. Parents were not sure how it spread, so every family had different rules: Stay out of movie theaters, avoid public swimming pools, keep away from crowds.
She began:
Church bells rang out. Car horns honked. Stores painted “Thank you, Dr. Salk” on their windows. Synagogues and churches held services of thanksgiving.
It was 1955 in America. Dr. Jonas Salk, the son of Jewish immigrants and the first in his family to go to college, had successfully developed a vaccine against polio.
A young Charlotte D. Jacobs, the daughter of Presbyterians in the Bible belt state of Tennessee, already had her shot. She got it the year before as part of the March of Dimes’ national trial of Salk’s vaccine.
“My parents signed the permission because they wanted to protect me from polio and the iron lung and paralysis,” she remembers. “They trusted the medical profession, their government leaders and Jonas Salk.”
After that news, children’s vaccinations went into overdrive, followed by a national mass immunization drive. The number of polio cases plummeted from 35,000 in 1953 to only 161 cases in 1961.
Salk was a national hero. He would go on to found the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, living out his final years here until his death in 1995. Jacobs would grow up to be a professor of medicine at Stanford and write a biography of Salk, “Jonas Salk: A Life.”
Of course there was some opposition to the polio vaccine, though nothing like the COVID vaccine resistance. In her biography of Salk, Jacobs said the opponents ranged “from the legitimate to the psychotic.”
There was controversy between camps of researchers over whether to use a live or a killed virus in the vaccine (Salk’s was killed). And some health officials initially balked at implementing a widespread vaccination campaign, given the haste in which they thought the shot had been developed.
A man named D.H. Miller, who said he was president of something called Polio Prevention Inc., circulated vitriolic anti–vaccine letters, many of which were sent directly to Salk himself. One such piece began, “Only God above will know how many thousands of little white coffins will be used to bury the victims of Salk’s heinous, fraudulent vaccine.”
Miller did not appear to have much impact…
Even after offering incentives like gift cards and free drinks and a chance to win $1.5 million, only about half of eligible Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. In San Diego County, the percentage is higher — roughly 77 percent have gotten at least the first shot — though the opposition, judging by the hours of public comments at government meetings, is vociferous.
What happened?
For one of the nation’s top health leaders, a member of the White House coronavirus task force who helped shepherd this vaccine into a reality and prayed fervently for what he believes is nothing short of a miracle, this response has been shocking.
“I can’t tell you that I expected this,” says Dr. Francis Collins, who is director of the National Institutes of Health, the country’s chief medical research agency.
If you were an alien arriving here amid this pandemic “and you saw there were vaccines that had been scientifically put together that are safe and effective and yet you have a lot of people resisting them, you would scratch your head and you would try to figure out why,” Collins adds.
“How could we have had such an incredibly compelling case to have saved potentially hundreds of thousands of lives and have that fail for almost half the population? What happened here?”
It’s a question that makes the tale of these two vaccines — polio and COVID-19 — even more intriguing. How did one become an act of patriotism and the other an act of partisanship? And how did people of faith — particularly White evangelical Christians — become part of the resistance?
Sitting in his office in Bethesda, Md., with shelves of books flanking him, the frustration in Collins’ voice is palpable.
A physician and geneticist by training, Collins has spent much of his 71 years fighting diseases. Before heading the NIH, where he has served under three presidents, he led the Human Genome Project, a massive international effort to map the genes in the human body. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for that work.
But his frustration goes beyond what he does for a living.
Collins also is a born-again Christian, a self-described White evangelical, the very religious group that polls show are among the most likely to oppose the vaccine. Their reasoning is a blend of faith and politics, with arguments ranging from Jesus being their vaccine to viewing mandates as tantamount to government tyranny.
He is, he admits, puzzled by the attitude that if you take the vaccine, it means you don’t trust God.
“This is like God just answered your prayer. It’s a gift. But you have to unwrap it, which means you’ve got to roll up your sleeve.”
Then and now
By 1955, Americans had been in the grip of the polio outbreak for years. It was a terrible disease. Even a U.S. president had been crippled by it.
It was especially sad for children. There were “heartbreaking” pictures of kids in iron lungs, says Collins. Many would die. Many would be paralyzed.
“The idea that there might be a path forward was something everybody was hoping and praying for,” Collins says.
So when it arrived, they rejoiced.
It was a very different mindset.
“There was, I think, a general recognition that we are all invested in the health of our nation and our communities,” Collins explains, “and that science was something to count on and to be generally favorable to achieve some success.”
Re “How could we have had such an incredibly compelling case to have saved potentially hundreds of thousands of lives and have that fail for almost half the population? What happened here?”
The Internet happened. Never has ignorance, fear, and suspicion traveled so far, so fast.
The same thing happened for racism. We had boxed racism into a corner and it was becoming unacceptable in most areas of the country. Then along came the Internet, and Internet anonymity and reach brought racism back from the breech.
’60 Minutes’ had an interview with a Facebook whistle blower last night. She said Facebook changed its algorithm in 2018 to provoke more discord among users because it made the company more money. It reminded me of the Sacklers and the opioid epidemic.
I am fully vaxxed as are my kids, but I understand people’s hesitancy about a vaccine that seems rushed, especially considering even progressives were expressing hesitancy back when it was “Trump’s vaccine.” I think three things would go a long way towards increasing public trust in the vaccines. First, remove all immunity proections for the vaccine companies. If they’re as safe as the companies say, why do they need immunity? Second, release all patents and remove all profit motives. Third, mandate paid sick time to cover adverse reactions to the vaccine. I personally was dead to the world for 2 days after my second shot. If I had a job that didn’t provide paid sick time, I might not have gotten it.
Most of the progressive hesitancy over the vaccine centered around Trump, whose disdain for unity in America ruined his chances for re-election. Harris is widely quoted as saying she would not take the vaccine, but this is a misquote taken out of context. She objected to the idea that Trump might remove the policy decisions from the domain of the scientists.
That said, opposition to modern vaccines seems to come not just from evangelicals, but also from those who view scientists as too much wedded to money. After the Opioid debacle and a few other problems. I have some sympathy for this view, but by now any suppression of bad news about the vaccine would be impossible. In light of this, it is possible for reasonable people to accertain that the devastation of Covid far outweighs the risks of vaccine.
I also mourn the removal of paid leave time for the side effects of the vaccine, which kicked me very hard. When I got the vaccine, it was policy for teachers to receive paid leave time. I also argued that teachers who were put in the line of covid fire should have their health insurance paid for forever thereafter. Neither political party wanted that one.
Only your third reason, however short-sighted, strikes me as credible, especially for those who live paycheck to paycheck. It’s hard to imagine a worse possible future when getting through each day is a challenge. I can’t remember ever thinking of the vaccines as Trump’s. That bag of wind never had anything to crow about. As to being rushed, the core research came from years of experimentation, and I have trouble with that argument when it was used by people who would pop any folk remedy touted on the internet. Getting the vaccines to market certainly wasn’t pretty, but we have Trumpian incompetence to thank for that.
The third reason makes no sense at all. “If I had a job that didn’t provide paid sick time, I might not have gotten it.”
I support paid sick time, but the people who currently don’t have it are the ones who are suffering most because of not getting the vaccine.
They could get a vaccine the day before their regular day off.
Or they could not get the vaccine and not be paid during the weeks or months they are recovering from COVID.
The people they trust tell them that yes, how awful it would be if you had to miss a day or two of work unpaid because you had a strong reaction to the vaccine, without mentioning how bad it would be for them if they actually got COVID and weren’t getting paid any sick days!
That would be a far worse disaster for them.
“If I had a job that didn’t provide paid sick time, I might not have gotten it.”
This makes no sense, because if you got COVID instead of just a strong reaction to the vaccine, you would be missing at least a few days of work, and more likely at least a week for a “mild” case, and if you were hospitalized, you could be not paid for many weeks or even months, and then if you got long COVID you might have a hard time working full time for months and it would be far worse because you had no sick leave.
So I don’t get your logic. Are you saying that people who don’t have paid sick time should be very concerned about missing 2 days of work because of a strong reaction to the vaccine because that would be worse than not being paid when they miss weeks or months of work if they got COVID? Shouldn’t it be the opposite? That the most privileged folks who have generous paid sick leave and generous health insurance policies can spew anti-vaccine rhetoric that ignorant people who aren’t nearly as privileged as they are believe, and then when those most privileged people get sick, they demand to be first in line for monoclonal antibody treatment and the best medications that money can buy and have paid sick leave.
Meanwhile those without good benefits like paid sick leave who believed the anti-vac propaganda are the ones who have no income for weeks or months while they recover from COVID.
Being privileged allows you to be anti-vaccine just like Tucker Carlson. The most harmful effects of the anti-vaccine propaganda don’t affect the privileged with paid sick leave and great health insurance. They most harmful effects of the anti-vaccine propaganda affect those who do NOT have paid sick leave.
Can you imagine that instead of explaining to people without paid sick leave that they could get the vaccine on a Friday (or whatever day precedes their day off) and likely not have to lose a day of pay, instead those people tell them that their decision not to take a vaccine makes a lot of sense because they don’t have a job that provides paid sick leave?
No wonder our country is in such trouble. There is no way to reason with people like that – they have their own logical justification for not taking the vaccine (“I don’t have paid sick days”) and they have a whole slew of other people telling them what a very smart and reasonable choice they are making.
I don’t think the people telling people without paid sick leave that they are making a reasonable choice by refusing the vaccine have the best interests of those people in mind. They are selfishly trying to push some anti-Democrat agenda and they don’t care whether people who believe them are seriously harmed. They just keep telling them how reasonable it is foe them to fear missing 2 days of work because of the vaccine because they wouldn’t get paid (without caring about what happens to them if they catch COVID and aren’t paid for a very long time).
“considering even progressives were expressing hesitancy back when it was “Trump’s vaccine.”
That isn’t true. Progressives said that they would take a vaccine developed while Trump was president if the science supported it, but not based on Trump’s word alone because Trump will say anything – true or false – if it helps Trump.
The only “hesitancy” that was expressed by the progressives that this poster is now scapegoating in order to normalize vaccine hesitancy is a hesitancy to take the word of Trump alone because he has a long history of lies.
The progressives that this poster is now scapegoating would have accepted the vaccine if the science supported it. Just like they do now.
What kind of person would give their child a vaccine because Trump said it worked? The same people who took horse medication or injected bleach?
Maybe this poster is giving her children the vaccine just because “Biden says so”, but real progressives are taking the vaccine because they believe in science and truth. Sometimes science is wrong, but science corrects itself as new evidence arises instead of doing what people who don’t believe in science do and doubling down on their being wrong.
The fact that the most privileged families are giving the vaccine to their own is a sign that it isn’t some fake cure like the kinds of cures that Trump supporters believe even though no privileged Republicans who love it when their supporters believe this nonsense would ever give it to their own families. That is a sign that it is a lie.
Just like the fact that privileged billionaires don’t send their kids to schools that enforce the harshest no-excuses philosophy is a sign that is not a good way to teach students.
But scapegoating progressives for Trump supporters’ vaccine hesitancy should be beneath you.
This is the direct result of the privatization of healthcare in America. Insurance companies and their wealthy owners/boards now get to make decisions about healthcare spending. Big Pharma gets to make decisions about drugs R&D/pricing etc. All of this has been aided and abetted by our politicians since the early-mid 80’s. Healthcare was never owned by the government, but Doctors (trusted at the time) were allowed to make decisions about the health and well being of their patients….but that had hospitals and medical institutions running in the red every fiscal year and it had the Insurance and Rx industry paying out more $$$ than they cared to. The need for greed in the Medical Industrial Complex has scapegoated the Doctors and now “we can’t believe them”.
When it seems as though our government is in bed with big business, it leads people to believe the damning words of Ronald Reagan….”I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.
Eisenhower was U.S. president at the time of the polio vaccine when adherence to non-partisan governance norms and progressive tax codes prevented a wealthy libertarian
like Charles Koch from pervasive political influence.
Trump chose to divide the nation and oppose masks and vaccines. He downplayed the virus to protect the stock market and his re-election. In January 2019, Trump knew the Covid virus was airborne and deadly. He continued to lie to us and stated the virus would disappear on its own. Many of us had friends and family die because of Trump’s lies. Never forget.
Precisely. The man is responsible for the unnecessary deaths of a lot of Americans.
I don’t remember Trump opposing vaccines.
Kind of like saying that someone who actively supports giving parents the freedom to choose whether or not to put their infants or toddlers in car seats does not “oppose” car seats for kids whose parents want them in car seats.
Kind of like saying that the people who oppose laws mandating that people in front seats had to wear seat belts did not “oppose” seat belts for people who chose to wear them.
Who is “T____”? Never heard of it. Did you mean Former President? It’s not that he did not oppose vaccines, but that he did not not oppose opposing vaccines. Very not not not stable genius, he.
FLERP!
Perhaps you remember Trump not announcing he took the vaccine in early January till it was revealed in March that he had done so.
Next
Recall Trump offering bleach as an antidote to Covid? Recall Trump saying vaccines may be associated with autism? Recall Trump knows Covid virus is airborne and deadly in January 2020 and remains silent?
Curious, if someone were to express concern about the risk-benefit that a Covid vaccine had for young men because of the possibility of heat inflammation after the second dose, is that person “anti-vax”? Just trying it keep up with the lingo as it’s being redefined in real-time.
FLERP!,
Are you aware that all the vaccines you give your children have potential side effects? Because they do. Are you aware that putting them in a car to drive them on vacation carries a risk? So does allowing them to fly on a plane.
Because the Biden administration is not trying to cover up risks, the risk to “young men” is known. So are the benefits, not just to the “young men” but to his family and community.
There is a difference between politicizing and exaggerating a rare side effect of a vaccine to encourage vaccine hesitancy and help legitimize the far right effort to sow distrust in a vaccine that has actually worked quite well – which is how you always bring up the subject – and acknowledging a serious but rare side effect that in most cases can be treated.
One of the companies licensed to give the polio vaccines in the 1950s gave vaccines that ended up killing kids. The difference was not that this was covered up, but that it was not continuously cited as a reason for people to fear the vaccine.
In today’s climate, there would be a vast propaganda effort to convince parents like you not to give your child the polio vaccine.
You also define “risk-benefit” in very tiny terms and your calculation of “risk” is of course low because of everyone else who takes the vaccine and wears masks. And you don’t see any benefit except to your own child — the benefits to grandparents, other children, vulnerable populations is not part of your “benefit” calculation.
If everyone in your kid’s school was unvaccinated, unmasked, and refusing to stay home when members of their families were sick with COVID but the kids just felt “a little under the weather” and spent lunch sitting next to your kid talking, would you still think the “risk” to your kid of having a bad reaction to the vaccine was huge compared to the risk of them bringing it home to your family, their grandparents, their sports teams?
The CDC and doctors talk about side effects just like you do. But their calculation of “benefits” is not the same as the calculation that you and the group of anti-vaxxers in the Orthodox Jewish community make when they insist that their own kid is not at high risk of complications if they get measles or mumps.
I don’t know why you think you sound any different than the anti-vax Orthodox Jews who are fine with their kids getting mumps or measles because of the low risk of complications. You sound exactly like them. You all calculate “risk” as your child’s personal risk of having a bad outcome from getting the disease. And they all benefit from other people taking the precautions that they selfishly refuse to take – if other people did not, the risks to their child would be much higher.
There are nut jobs out there who even question that Covid is happening or claim that it’s no worse than the flu , so ho hum and a big fat yawn. The level of stupidity is alarming and paralyzing. Conspiracy theories are rife and mostly pumped up by people like Alex Jones, Fox News and other assorted far right wingers. As noted above by Robert Manley, Trump bears a lot of blame for the rampant anti-vaccine, anti-mask insanity.
Distrust of government is not new. However, at least since Reagan it has been the overriding go to strategy of the Republican party in order to protect wealth. Its enablers are the racism and inequity that have caused people to turn against rather than toward one another. Now we can see as clearly as ever that distrust kills and is ever bit as infectious as a virus. Sadly, it is immune to reason. The only antidote is organizing for victory at the ballot box and in workplaces through unions. If only places of worship would stand up too.
It is ironic that the same people who distrust the government put all their trust in corporations, billionaires, and the political party – the Republicans – who are entirely owned by them.
This isn’t really about not trusting the government. The anti-vaxxers don’t trust DOCTORS! They trust right wing billionaires!
And it doesn’t matter how many times those people have lied to them and hurt them, they come back for more.
I don’t expect perfection from a union, nor from the Democrats. I do expect honesty and having a truthful discussion about the compromises that might have to be made.
The best excuse was, “it’s not FDA approved.” When someone said that to me, I responded, “What’s so special about the FDA? I thought all government was bad and evil.”
GregB,
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare and Social Security”.
Are contradictions a “sign” that one is simply
incorrect or has not thought through a particular
point on any great amount of detail?
Now the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
(Parent organization-United States Department of Health and Human Services) Reports:
“19,400 people less than 80 years old have died within 14 days of receiving the COVID-19 Vaccine. In addition, 28,065 people have died that are over the age of 80 within 14 days of receiving the Covid-19 vaccine. The Total number of American Citizens that died within 14 days of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine is 48,465.
The data on the Remdesivir treatment reveals of the 7,960 beneficiaries prescribed Remdesivir for Covid-19, 2,058 died. That is 25.9%. 46% of people died within 14 days of the Remdesivir Treatment.”
Public Health England is now known as the
‘UK Health Security Agency’.
They report:
“During September 2021 the unvaccinated accounted for just 38% of hospitalisations due to Covid-19, whilst the vaccinated accounted for 62%. The number of unvaccinated people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 during this time was 2,922. The number of partly vaccinated people admitted to hospital was 356, and the number of fully vaccinated people admitted to hospital was 4,378.
There were 687 deaths among the unvaccinated, 110 deaths among the partly vaccinated, and 2,338 deaths among the fully vaccinated.”
Yes, it’s a tale of two vaccines with far too many
contradictions.
“The number of polio cases plummeted from 35,000 in 1953 to only 161 cases in 1961.”
Does anyone recall a “need” for polio boosters?
Were “break through” cases, if any, simply hidden
from view?
Point: We need a C-Jab that STOPS, like the
polio vax did.
Will one be developed while the most profitable
“vax” in history “needs” boosters,or where
“protection” depends on others being jabbed?
Blamming the jabless for what the current jab doesn’t
do, has yet to stop the spread.
Comparing the polio vax to the C-jab, has yet to
stop the spread.
Has the TDS (trump derangement syndrome) impacted
the CMS reports, or the UK Health Security Agency
reports?
Until contradictions are brought to a head, we’ll
remain the same…
What are you talking about?
Why do you think hospitals aren’t filling up with COVID patients in places where there are high vaccination rates?
The fact remains that hospitals have not been crazily overwhelmed in areas where the community takes precautions and they are still looking like NYC when there was no vaccine and no good treatments in places with strong anti-vax sentiment.
You are also comparing polio over an 8 year period to the US when most vaccinated people haven’t even been fully vaccinated for 6 months and a huge percentage remain unvaccinated.
Thank god this is not Facebook , Zuckerberg’s algorithms would certainly throw me in jail for 30 days for telling you what I think of the lying garbage you just posted. Out of respect for Diane I will control myself.
“19,400 people less than 80 years old have died within 14 days of” drinking a glass of water as well .
Out of 186 million fully vaccinated people that would be a very small percentage if it were true. But as that each reported death is examined by the FDA/CDC the number deaths attributed to the vaccine can be counted on your fingers of one hand .
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html
If you are going to quote a source in the UK you might want to actually check with the source.
Click to access Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_39.pdf
Now go be a good little idiot and drink your bleach and shove that Ultra violet light …..
If I may, I’d like to add to the beginning of this story. In 2015 I read Jeffrey Kluger’s Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio, an oddly gripping book. Odd because the most dramatic moment described in the book is a press conference! It was held to announce the finding of Salk’s research and the possibility of a vaccine. It was one of the first great live mass media events in history. After that press conference is when the bells started to ring.
In looking over my notes (thanks, Goodreads!), I was struck by one my paragraphs, it reads much differently now, with the hindsight of experience with the pandemic:
“The parts of Kluger’s account that elevated it from four to five stars include his descriptions of the non-medical/scientific aspects of Salk’s work: the impact of professional competitive behavior among researchers; the importance of good, accurate publicity; the role an advocacy organization can play to organize scientific communities and direct their work; how policy makers (read: politicians) can unnecessarily complicate the work through well-meaning ignorance; and the bureaucratic and manufacturing issues that conversely hindered and accelerated production and distribution of the vaccine.”
There was also a tainted polio vaccine.
The difference is that a serious and deadly mistake in one form of the polio vaccine – which was found out quite soon after the vaccine started to be given – was not used for political reasons by right wingers and their “liberal” media enablers. Promoting and normalizing a huge fear of all polio vaccines wasn’t yet perceived as something that would help the right wing goal empowering right wing John Birchers who could impose their will on America.
We live in a time where the worst anti-democratic actions and lies by Republicans are normalized by the media, and their most ignorant supporters are supposed to be coddled as sensitive snowflakes who understandably are racist and hateful toward anyone who doesn’t accept Trump as their savior because they think “libs” are too mean to them.
While even the tiniest misstep by anyone who isn’t a right wing Republican is magnified and amplified every day to undermine Democrats and progressives.
Another good example. Yes there was a problem with a batch of vaccines. It was researched, fixed, and never became a political issue.
This is what I think happened between 1955 and COVID in 2020.
In 1955, what was known as the Fairness Doctrine controlled how the media reported opinions and controversies requiring both sides of an issue to have a chance to respond at the same time, for the same amount of time, through the same media source.
In other words a fair debate.
Then President Ronald Reagan’s FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine. In June 1987, Congress attempted to codify the Fairness Doctrine but the legislation was vetoed by President Reagan, and when the first Bush was president, Congress tried again to codify the Fairness Doctrine, and that Bush vetoed that attempt killing off fair debates..
After the Fairness Doctrine was dead, it was no longer required for any media source to offer fair debates that focused on opinionated issues.
In 1988, Rush Limbaugh’s talk show went national. That was when Limbaugh’s format became the dominant form of talk radio in the United States thanks to the assassination of the fairness doctrine.
Back in the 1980s, I even listened to Limbaugh. He used a button to cut off any callers he didn’t like and then once a caller that disagreed with Limbaugh was off the air, Limbaugh called them trash names. Limbaugh used to call his followers ditto heads, and they didn’t have to think. He’d do their thinking for them. Just tune in every day to find out what to think.
Then in October 19965, FAKE Fox News was hatched. “Roger Ailes did more than any person of his generation to transform American politics into a contact sport. He coarsened the culture, he mainstreamed conspiracy theories and he paved the ground for the election of Donald Trump, who harnessed all of those currents that Roger Ailes unleashed on the country over the last 40 years.”
Roger Ailes said, “People don’t want to be informed, they want to feel informed.”
Fast forward to 2020 and the COVID Pandemic, and what Reagan and the first Bush started, now define what the Republican Party has become and why most Republicans seem to be goosestepping through life following and shouting “Dear Leader” to whoever leads the party.
Right now, most of the GOP is being led by Traitor Trump.
And today, most GOP voters are ditto heads being told what to think without any desire to hear both sides of an issue. Since 1987, most solid core Republican voters haven’t heard both sides of any issues. They only hear one side that is often misleading and pockmarked with lies.
I agree with this! Journalism before the end of the fairness doctrine was far from perfect, but the end of the fairness doctrine has made things 1000x worse.
Right wing hate radio is still going strong and 98%+ of talk radio is made up of far right wing/libertarian flame throwers. It’s not an accident. As you pointed out, once the Fairness Doctrine was dumped, talk radio fell into a black hole of Limbaugh clones. I remember when ABC radio 770 AM had a few quasi-liberals but they were soon dumped for a full blast of 100% right wing bloviators. Thank goodness for the Internet, I can actually listen to real progressives like Thom Hartmann, Stephanie Miller and Mike Malloy.
A Tale of Two Cranks
It used to be that cranks
Were limited in ranks
To those within their reach
Their crankery to teach
But now they have the net
And you can really bet
They’ll reach beyond the stars
With crankery from cars
Voltaire had it right: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
For 85% or so of Americans that starts with one of the Abrahamic religious faith belief systems. The bane of society for many centuries. . . faith religious beliefs.
Linda Greenhouse, Yale lecturer, NYT contributing writer and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, is scared of the religious right’s power. (The Hill, 7-16-21). She wrote in a NYT article this summer that Trump had turned over the policy writing apparatus to the religious right. A Northwestern professor summarized Greenhouse’s view, “Some of the religious right’s best organized elements are dangerously anti-democratic promoting a paranoid narrative of grievance conservatism- conservatives’ belief that they are losing unfairly even when they are actually winning.”
One-half of the politicized religious right, possibly the much more well-organized half, gets protection from a segment of liberals. That segment limits criticism of American weaponized religion to evangelicals (5% fewer of evangelicals voted for Trump in 2020 when he ran against another white man). Failing to assess the political situation accurately and providing unwarranted protection for a right wing religious sect adds to the danger from the religious right.
A Tale of Two Vaccines
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
Huh. That’s 2020. Didn’t have to change a single Dickensian word. Still fits. We live in a Dickens novel. That can’t be good.
Well said, LCT!
Diane,
I could use some help. If possible.
I wondered if you knew someone in Florida who has Florida ACT results from 1965 up through 2004. I have 2005 forward except for 2009. And would be willing to share their contact information or inform them of my interest and let them contact me if they choose to.
My primary interest is the Science results.
If this is not possible, then I thank you for reading this far.
My email: theafterclap@mail.com
Respectfully
Bruce
The scores should be available from ACT. OR google the numbers for missing years. Must have been reported in Florida media.
Don’t blame Facebook. As terrible as Zuckerberg is, we have been going down the Anti Science Anti Government path for decades the basket of deplorables has been around since before Reagan. Perhaps the mistake was thinking that the anti war participants of the 60s and 70s represented a left wing shift in the Nation rather than an opposition to the war based on personnel vulnerability. A movement that disappeared with the draft.
You can make the argument that the Vietnam War took away a substantial portion of faith in Government . Faith that had developed in the 30s with the helping hand of government policies and continued till the mid 60s. Was”don’t trust anyone over thirty ” actually code for don’t trust government. Not too many under thirties in Government . The right hopped on board with a vengeance playing the race card and depicting Government as the problem.
Throughout the period of the Vietnam War, more older Americans opposed it than did younger Americans. The hippies got the press, but there were lots and lots of young folks who didn’t give a flying spaghetti noodle.
From Pew Research:
During the Vietnam War, Gallup surveys showed that not only were older people less supportive of President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policies early on, but they also were more likely to say the United States made a mistake in sending troops to fight there. In August 1965, just 41% of those ages 50 and older approved of Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam situation. Americans under age 30 were far more positive toward Johnson’s performance on Vietnam (56% approval).
The generation gap in attitudes toward the Vietnam War did not erode over time. Gallup surveys conducted between 1965 and 1973 show that over time people of all ages increasingly expressed the view that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was a mistake, but the broadest criticism always came from older generations. In August of 1965, people ages 50 and older were already twice as likely as those under 30 (by a 29% to 15% margin) to say sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. Nearly eight years later, as U.S. forces were about to be completely withdrawn, majorities in all age groups saw Vietnam as a mistake, but younger people remained far less likely to take this view (53%) than those age 50 and older (69%).
One is tempted to say,, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” but it turns out that the younger generation in the U.S. today is MUCH more progressive than in the past. They hold left-wing positions on most issues, often by very large majorities. This is a bad sign for the Repugnican Know Nothing Party going forward. That’s why they want to fund fundamentalist madrasas with taxpayer dollars (vouchers), so that they can train a new generation of Hitler youth.
I hope you are right Bob about today’s youth. Call me a skeptic on those public opinion numbers in the 60’s and seventies. Someone voted for Nixon’s secret plan to end the war in 68 and then resoundingly defeated McGovern in 72. Polls lack a lot of context. Was the older generation against the war or were they against the (real) perception that we were not winning the war.
Much like Afghanistan many Americans wanted out till confronted with the reality that after 20 years we lost the war. Then there were recriminations about how we got out. Stoked by the endless war neocons in MSM. The same Generals who accomplished nothing in 20 years , who on the last day added another dozen innocent civilians to the 69,000 others killed . Have the audacity to tell congress if we only left 2500 troops there for another 20 years… Neglecting to mention there were 15.000 troops before the withdrawal agreement was made.
I’m a working teacher. Trust me, today’s youth are the hope. Just pull them away from the screen for a few moments, and you’ll see.
I emphatically agree. My experience of them as well, and I taught most recently in Darkest Flor-uh-duh. The kids are more than alright!
leftcoastteacher
Coming from the generation that was going to change the world . (I hate quoting this guy ) I will “trust but verify”
Those 18-29 had an increase in turnout of 9%+- ,voting at 53%. yet lagged every other age cohort substantially. Trailing the boomers by up to 25 in participation. 50 -64 year olds by 22%
We shall see how their politics develops as they get older and actually start participating in elections .
Holding my breath, waiting to see, Joel, but they give me hope.
“the generation that was going to change the world”
When I was sixteen, I was a true believer in the coming revolution. We were all going to live in communes and practice peace and love. And then my generation grew up and voted for Ronald Reagan.
Two words: Bernie Sanders.
Here’s something from the NYTimes about the evolving understanding of the risks of two-dose vaccinations of young men and boys. I’ve noted this before here and repeatedly been called “anti-vax,” but it’s something a lot of people have reasonably been concerned about since the spring. Don’t let everything become politicized and partisan.
FLERP!,
I don’t know any parents who would say “I would rather expose my teenage son to COVID so he gets sick and has an immunity than to give him the COVID vaccine.” But FLERP!, if you are one of those parents who thinks COVID parties where male teens would catch COVID would be safer than vaccinating them, then I don’t think anyone will disabuse you of your strong beliefs that having the vaccine poses far more danger to a male teen than having COVID.
If you read the article carefully, you would learn that the risks of the side effects of the vaccine are more likely to outweigh the benefits in places where there is very little COVID spread because people have been doing the right thing.
But the risks of not being vaccinated are much higher for young men in places where there is rampant COVID spread – like the US! Where the anti-vaxx and anti-masking beliefs being normalized and legitimized by people like you has led to high rates of COVID across the country.
None of your anti-vax posts has mentioned that the risks of a young man remaining unvaccinated are much lower if a very high percentage of the rest of the population is vaccinated and the general rate of COVID in the community is low. Wouldn’t it be great if the US was one of those countries? But it isn’t, thanks to those who politicized COVID. Stop blaming people on here for that politicization that has made it far riskier for young men to refuse the COVID vaccine.
You keep trying to politicize the COVID vaccine and make it a partisan issue but it is a SCIENTIFIC issue. Some of us believe in science. Others don’t seem to have the intellectual capacity to understand that not giving a male teen a vaccine that has some rare but serious side effects is a much better option when the disease that vaccine prevents is not running rampant throughout the country! And not giving that vaccine is a much worse option when that unvaccinated male teen is highly likely to catch and spread COVID.
Some people wrongly believe that the risks of being unvaccinated remain the same, regardless of whether that young man lives in a country with extremely low rates of COVID, or whether that young man will be spending 40 hours a week in a crowded room with 30 unvaccinated and unmasked students from families who have been attending other crowded indoor events in communities where the ICU beds are full because of the rampant spread of COVID.
People who politicize the vaccine, as you keep doing in your posts, tend to believe the risks of being unvaccinated are the same for male teens regardless of how prevalent COVID is in their community.
You are really a lunatic.
No name-calling. If you can’t make a reasoned argument, don’t insult others.
I was just called “self-righteous” by this commenter, which I believe is “name-calling.”
I stand by the comment.
Diane,
I think many parents (including myself) are interested in what this poster calls “the risk-benefit that a Covid vaccine had for young men because of the possibility of heat inflammation after the second dose”. I wish this poster wanted to have that discussion instead of simply posting links to inflammatory headlines and then refusing to discuss the content of the articles linked to and instead just hurling insults and making snide comments like “Just trying it keep up with the lingo as it’s being redefined in real-time” — which insults the rest of us by claiming – without one bit of evidence – that people who support vaccines are “redefining the lingo” in real time.
It is similar to the links to inflammatory anti-CRT headlines this person kept posting to attack Critical Race Theory — which this poster then refused to discuss.
Most of us are interested in discussing the pros and cons of various issues. This person too often posts inflammatory links – with CRT they also including a right wing pundit’s misleading claims about what the links said — and then attacks anyone who actual reads the articles linked to and tries to discuss the much more nuanced content of the articles.
As I posted above, the NYT article makes it clear that the risk to young men when a pandemic is raging, COVID rates are high, ICU beds are full, and there are low vaccination rates is very different than the risk to young men in places where the COVID rates are quite low.
We have always known that there are some vaccinations for diseases that are pretty much eradicated in the US but people may be required to take them when they travel – like Yellow Fever. No one suggests giving yellow fever vaccines to all Americans but they very likely would if there was a yellow fever pandemic across the country.
As we know, the COVID vaccine carries risks to all people – not just young men. No one in Biden’s government has tried to lie about that or cover it up. What they have done is tried to put it in perspective.
I personally want medical professionals to be put on notice about the rare and dangerous side effects of vaccines. That is important for all vaccines and all people – not just young males although their risk of myocarditis is higher. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine seems to carry more risks of a dangerous blood clot disorder.
It’s a shame this poster doesn’t seem to want a thoughtful discussion of the risks and benefits of giving the vaccine. No one here wants to endanger young men by mandating a vaccine that does carry risks (as other vaccines also do).
If 95% of adult residents had been vaccinated by June 2021, experts in virology, the spread of disease, estimate 100,000 dead would be alive.
What can we do? Get vaccinated! You did for polio, measles, chicken pox n other serious diseases that kill us. We got our shots n booster shot to stop spreading this Covid disease. Getting a vaccination against Covid is a patriotic act, “an act of love for our neighbors” as Pope Francis declared.