"...climate change seems tailor-made to be a low priority for most people. The threat is distant in both time and space. It is difficult to visualize. And it is difficult to identify a clearly defined enemy."
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Follow Up Post
Regarding the last topic, here's another good article. One quote:
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Warm-Mongering
I don't agree with absolutely everything Mark Steyn has to say here, but anyone that politicizes Science, I say call them out. And I like his term "warm-mongering".
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
OH, The Swine!!
Did I have just get over the swine flu? I guess the answer has to be maybe not, supposedly when you have flu symptoms "at most half, and perhaps as few as 7 or 8 percent, of such cases are actually caused by an influenza virus in any given year". I have to tell you, though, if it wasn't at least the regular flu I got, whatever else that was, was some kind of powerful something. I haven't been that knocked out for that long since I was a child! And I saw or heard more than one reasonably reliable source say if you had the flu in our area, it was probably H1N1 as it really is the only thing going around. So who knows.
What's interesting to me is the fact that had I wanted to get a vaccination, I couldn't have. People are getting in line for it and getting turned away, finding that there isn't enough vaccine and only high-risk individuals (and financial fat-cats) will actually get a shot. You know, it is just the history of that whole business of flu shots: nothing but problems. Some of these problems are soon forgotten seems to me. I distinctly remember a couple of years ago when no U.S. company would make the vaccine and the British company that was supposed to make it screwed it up. Of course the problem was the politicians were trying to control the costs while simultaneously denying proper protection from liability that the vaccine makers wanted. And brother there is liability. People simply will die or otherwise get really horrible complications from getting the shots, sometimes in great enough numbers to be a financial disaster for that vaccine maker if held liable. This was the fiasco that resulted from the 1976 Gerald Ford swine flu vaccination drive. I don't know if the vaccine maker was liable or the government was liable, but in any case the topper for that year was that supposedly only one unvaccinated person died from the swine flu .
A doctor now no doubt banned from the media came on a local radio station about five years ago and said he didn't recommend getting flu shots except for the elderly, infants, or other high risk groups. His reasoning was that for healthy people there is almost zero risk of dying or getting complications, but there was a certain risk from getting a flu shot, and that risk is unknown for each year until, well, the results are in! Furthermore, there is a pretty high chance that you are not getting vaccinated for the strain that is actually going to go around.
Anymore, though, we are not hearing these voices. The regular media seems to be cooperating with the notion that, again, we can't handle the truth, and the truth is the flu shots must be given to everyone possible so the vaccine maker can sell them and also so that there is a theoretical wall of immunity out there amongst those who don't actually need it so that the high risk groups are more protected. It is my civic duty to get the flu shot?
So as not to paint the picture that the government's vaccination drives are wholly useless, I'll give them credit for trying to protect the vulnerable. And, yes, maybe when something more dangerous like H1N1 is becoming epidemic, maybe it is time for all of us to get that flu shot (oh if there weren't all those problems!) I have to confess that the idea of getting in an interminable line to get one may keep me in the uncooperative citizen category forevermore. But unfortunately, it is quite possible all this is misplaced effort anyway. A recent Atlantic Magazine article really lays out the case (the quote above is from that article)
I'd like to hear any other opinions.
What's interesting to me is the fact that had I wanted to get a vaccination, I couldn't have. People are getting in line for it and getting turned away, finding that there isn't enough vaccine and only high-risk individuals (and financial fat-cats) will actually get a shot. You know, it is just the history of that whole business of flu shots: nothing but problems. Some of these problems are soon forgotten seems to me. I distinctly remember a couple of years ago when no U.S. company would make the vaccine and the British company that was supposed to make it screwed it up. Of course the problem was the politicians were trying to control the costs while simultaneously denying proper protection from liability that the vaccine makers wanted. And brother there is liability. People simply will die or otherwise get really horrible complications from getting the shots, sometimes in great enough numbers to be a financial disaster for that vaccine maker if held liable. This was the fiasco that resulted from the 1976 Gerald Ford swine flu vaccination drive. I don't know if the vaccine maker was liable or the government was liable, but in any case the topper for that year was that supposedly only one unvaccinated person died from the swine flu .
A doctor now no doubt banned from the media came on a local radio station about five years ago and said he didn't recommend getting flu shots except for the elderly, infants, or other high risk groups. His reasoning was that for healthy people there is almost zero risk of dying or getting complications, but there was a certain risk from getting a flu shot, and that risk is unknown for each year until, well, the results are in! Furthermore, there is a pretty high chance that you are not getting vaccinated for the strain that is actually going to go around.
Anymore, though, we are not hearing these voices. The regular media seems to be cooperating with the notion that, again, we can't handle the truth, and the truth is the flu shots must be given to everyone possible so the vaccine maker can sell them and also so that there is a theoretical wall of immunity out there amongst those who don't actually need it so that the high risk groups are more protected. It is my civic duty to get the flu shot?
So as not to paint the picture that the government's vaccination drives are wholly useless, I'll give them credit for trying to protect the vulnerable. And, yes, maybe when something more dangerous like H1N1 is becoming epidemic, maybe it is time for all of us to get that flu shot (oh if there weren't all those problems!) I have to confess that the idea of getting in an interminable line to get one may keep me in the uncooperative citizen category forevermore. But unfortunately, it is quite possible all this is misplaced effort anyway. A recent Atlantic Magazine article really lays out the case (the quote above is from that article)
I'd like to hear any other opinions.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Starting to Look Like There Was No Excuse For This
You have to remember I think the Immigration Act of 1924 was a good law. Sorry.
LINK
LINK
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