Omission

I mentioned the movie The Holdovers a couple of days back, but neglected to include one of my favorite lines from the film. I was reminded of it this morning as I slogged through CNN online where they were interviewing Cluck voters in New Hampshire.

(This does not mean that I think all Cluck voters can be described in that way. Not my intention at all. I think that there might have been some selection and editing going on because all of those being interviewed on CNN this morning … well … every one of them could have used a boot check.)

******

******

There aren’t too many things that instantly get me riled up. Well, that’s not actually true, there are quite a few of them, come to think of it. One of them is stories about infectious diseases making comebacks, diseases for which we have effective immunizations.

It’s one of the most harmful things that can happen when politics intersects with public health. Politics can be a mindless beast that thrives on controversy and vituperation, and we saw so much of this during the pandemic years that it became an experience painful enough to sear itself into my shrinking brain.

At the onset of the Covid 19 story, I thought there would be a period of fear, confusion, and a lot of deaths at first, but in a year or two a vaccine might be produced that would carry the day for us. I was wrong twice.

First, I did not realize that there was new technology for vaccine production just waiting for such an opportunity to be used, and a vaccine was put into play within months rather than years. (That seemed miraculous to me, who once had waited 25 years for the chickenpox vaccine to come to where pediatricians had access to it for their patients.)

And then the second mistake in my prediction. Some of the meanest-spirited and most ignorant mouths in America opened in a collective yawp and instead of having a good chance of throttling this viral invader, we found a large contingent of our “leaders” shouting down the scientific community in the absolutely most witless and venal sort of way, attacking those workers who were doing their best to protect us against this threat.

You know the rest. We are still dealing with Covid and we still have a large number of people who refuse to be vaccinated and that are providing the population needed to keep the disease going.

Meanwhile, those citizens who are not suckered in by the mountebanks and the politicians are still getting their shots and are still doing much better as a result.

When you read the stories of people over these past several years who are literally dying of Covid-related disease but refuse to accept that they even have it because they have been told that the whole thing is a hoax … well … what can I say? The gap here seems almost unbridgeable.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H.L. Mencken

******

******

What got me going on this rant this morning (Thursday) was a story in the Times of New York about measles making a comeback. Vaccination rates have fallen in Europe to the point where it was absolutely possible to predict that an outbreak would happen soon, and it appears to be doing just that. No surprise at all. 

Viruses have no brains, the only thing they seek is to reproduce, and the only thing needed for that to happen is opportunity. Too many parents have listened to the anti-vaxxers and now … the predictable whirlwind is being reaped. It is children who will suffer, children who depended on grownups to do the right thing for them.

******

As a child I had measles, rubella, mumps, whooping cough, and polio. If you had told my mother that there was a vaccine available for any of these and did she want her child to receive it she would have laughed at you, because the answer was so obvious. OF COURSE I WANT MY CHILD TO BE IMMUNIZED, she would have said, because these diseases were not hypotheticals to be argued about over afternoon coffee, they were potential killers that were right then tearing up the family three houses down from ours.

******

******

Here’s the good news. 

Thanks to vaccines, measles, rubella, and polio have officially been eliminated in the United States. But that could change due to imported cases of these diseases and low vaccination rates. None of these diseases have been eliminated globally, and there have been measles outbreaks and rubella cases in the United States in recent years. Efforts to increase vaccination rates are critical for maintaining elimination of these diseases.

Health.gov

Here’s the worrisome news. Immunization rates for these diseases are below the 95% threshold necessary to eliminate the possibility of epidemics. Which means that should a case be imported from another part of the world, we are becoming a fertile ground for that virus to grow in.

In the political climate of today, where scientific ignorance is not only bliss, but often rewarded by election to public office, I don’t see these numbers changing any time soon. I earnestly hope that I am wrong in this, and that we drop the glorification of nonsense and the lines start to go around the block at the immunization clinics. 

******

******

******

Drove to Grand Junction to see the movie American Fiction, having decided that although Paradise is 99% perfect, part of that 1% that is missing is in the film department. To make it short, AF was a fine movie, and Jeffrey Wright got his chance to be the lead and really show us what he could do.

Since we hit “Junction” with some time to kill, Robin and I walked over to a strip mall where there was a store she wanted to visit. I forget the name of it, but it was devoted entirely to cosmetics, and to a person like myself – it was a foreign country. Bewildering. Not sure how a real customer could ever navigate such a place.

But I was fascinated by how you could get a cream, balm, ointment, or oil for basically any part of the body. The question I kept asking myself was is this variety really necessary?

My insecurities started to mount, as they always do when I find that I’ve been unaware and ignoring something completely that might be important to my life.

I wondered … do I need some B-Tight? Have time and gravity been doing anything back there that I can’t see but everybody else can and that needs my attention? Am I too late in discovering this product? Are there limits to the power of the unguent and I must now remain un-lifted and un-firmed for the remainder of my days?

It was all too depressing, and I had to leave the store. There are some questions that I am just not brave enough to hear the answers to.

******

******