Monday, June 26, 2017

Vaccines: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)




It's really not a matter of whether someone is anti-vaccine but whether they are anti-doctors and the KnowItAll Party doesn't believe anyone.  There's no need to flog it since you have seen that yourself. Oliver said the confusion about information is a problem but only because people made it that way by undermining trust in doctors or any kind of authority except, ironically enough, governmental.

Oliver emphasized how few take that course of refusing vaccination but the fact they exist at all is astounding and most particularly from the view of the Boomer generation since we were the ones standing in the lines waiting for the polio vaccine and I know damn well my parents and all the others were terrified of that disease.  I knew people who had been afflicted by polio since some weren't much older and they limped or had other problems for the rest of their lives.  I also remember wards full of iron lung machines to keep people with polio alive.

If you want to make others happy, practice compassion with them; if you want to be happy, practice compassion with yourself. - Dalai Lama

Dr Jonas Salk took no royalties from his discovery of the polio vaccine and is one of the Rockhouse's greatest heroes for that.


One of the most sweeping parts of Last Week Tonight was about how the Boomers and some generations previously have largely wiped out infectious disease in America.  There were six kids in my family back in the 50s and we caught all those diseases but that seems rare now.

The trouble isn't so much an anti-vaxx statement but rather anti-everything and that's a much deeper problem which has led to a cultural malaise and depression.  That they can amuse themselves with this or that doesn't change the fundamental of a sense of futility insofar as we're screwed no matter what we do.

The Rockhouse does not and will not ever accept that.


The last bit in the vid is all the sweetness you will need for the week.  John Oliver brings certain proof he believes every word he says.  Tres sweet.

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