The study made a big splash probably because it focused on something as American as apple pie: Girl Scout cookies. It found trace amounts of heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury), aluminum and an herbicide called glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, in the cookies.
OK, so here is the kernel of truth behind RFK jr’s MAHA looniness. Anything examined at a small enough scale will have traces of pretty much every naturally occurring element, including lead and uranium, within it. This is our world and it is inescapable. But, as Paracelsus put it, “The dose makes the poison.” (Well, that’s almost the quote, and will do for the purpose.) There was a study published a couple decades ago examining vaccines that found the same thing. Problem is, when compared to ultra-distilled water, the levels in the vaccines were an order of magnitude lower. This was, of course, not commented on in the paper. The glyphosate is another story, and relates to industrial farming processes. Pretty much any non-organic wheat will have been treated with glyphosate. (And, sadly, a lot of organic wheat will as well, since it can get wind-blown Round-Up from neighboring fields.) My brother did a highly unethical study involving his own kids, who were labeled as “gluten intolerant,” in which he imported European flour (where they do not use glyphosate at anywhere near the rate we do) and found that they tolerated it just fine. Switching out for USAian flour, and they got sick. Too small to draw wider conclusions, but my suspicion is that a lot of the “gluten intolerance” we are seeing is actual glyphosate intolerance. Being that glyphosate was never meant for ingestion, and has been linked with some pretty gnarly effects in folks exposed at high levels, I can see this. I suspect Monsanto / Bayer would go to great lengths to make sure this is never actually studied on a wider basis, we may not get better data than this. Anyway, yeah, MAHA is full of shit, but there is always that kernel of truth that draws folks in and starts them down that path to destruction of their critical thinking abilities.
That’s a sad, ironic thing. We do live in a world full of toxins (even more so in Tramp’s deregulatory times), so we’re right to worry about that. But that worry gets exploited by cynical wealth seekers, and these people end up worrying about the wrong toxins.
But the funding approved by Congress was not limited to the period of the COVID-19 emergency, the states’ lawsuit said. “And after the pandemic was declared over, Congress reviewed the COVID-19 related laws, rescinded $27 billion in funds, but determined not to rescind any of the funding at issue here,” the states told the court.
And TX is closing some 50ish measles clinics and firing 20+ frontline healthcare workers because of loss of funding.
TX, of course, is not one of the states suing over this. I gues they are fine with it?
This was a new one on me, but, of course, a growing outbreak in TX
Not much coverage, but the AMA YouTube channel is covering it. Mostly in south TX, largely underreported. Probably not going to be a huge issue outside of that locality (although there is a smaller outbreak in CA)
OK, this is going to fall under “developing story,” but we just got a report of a 4yo child who died at UVA of a “rare bacterial infection associated with hoofed animals,” suspecting anthrax. Holy fucking shirtballs, can we not please catch a break here? Anyway, if it is, I suspect it will be all over the news. Crap…
Not seeing much coverage of this, but measles is not the only vaccine preventable disease on the rise.
In Louisiana, two infants have died of pertussis in the past six months, according to the state health department, the first deaths from the disease in the state since 2018.
Louisiana has had 110 cases of pertussis reported so far this year, the health department said – already approaching the 154 cases reported for all of 2024.
Unlike measles, this one I can say I have seen. We have had a couple outbreaks, mostly in our Russian-speaking immigrant community, since they almost universally refuse vaccinations, and over 30 years of doing this I have had 2 babies die of it. But we really are returning to the pre-vaccine days of dead babies, only this time we know how to prevent them! It’s easy, cheap and incredibly safe. But here we are. Decades of progress thrown in the trash so we can watch children die needlessly. I just don’t know…
Are we looking at a distrust of “Government”? Religious reasons [akin to the religious exemption forms I’ve seen in Texas]? Misinformation overload? Lack of science education?
I realize professionals aren’t encouraged/allowed/permitted to ask their patients why. Please do not reply if for any reason you can’t.
No, I have asked. One of my nurses is from that community. She tells me that distrust of government is so deeply engrained in that community that first generation immigrants very rarely break through. There is an additional layer of MAGt-ism (religiously conservative, deeply racist, hugely sexist) there that makes it even more difficult. I cannot grasp immigrants buying into MAGA shit, but I’ve seen it too often to not realize it happens. I think they see at “even if it hurts me, he hates the right people.” So they follow the RFK jr lies both because it fits their government distrust and their political leanings.
Having lived in the former Soviet Union, including Russia, it really would depend on what the group was.
Distrust of government, maybe, but in the FSU trust of vaccines was very, very high, especially since massive toll of death and misery from preventable disease was and is still a living memory.
Persecuted religious minorities tended to be more distrustful of medicine as public health was a heavy hand of the state, and were among the first to flee the SU when they could (primarily Jewish people, but other faiths, too.)
There’s a lot of crazy religious woo in the FSU, a result of the state trying to eliminate religion entirely and a vacuum ripe for exploitation forming. That would also apply to people leaving the FSU and finding themselves in the US, without a faith community, and without community ties. Existing religious groups provide a ready made support group, and therefore joining them attractive for immigrants with little to no support structures. A group with little religious background or exposure could find themselves without some of the critical thinking skills needed to parse whether the group they are part of is “healthy” or “toxic,” as well as know what is “normal” vs “extremist” behavior.
All a long winded way of saying, it’s complicated, and each group will have a myriad reasons for vaccine refusal.
There is a Russian Baptist Church here that serves that community almost universally and pretty much exclusively. It is tied very tightly to the identity of the community here. The Mennonite Church here is very involved with refugee resettlement, and brought the initial elements of the community here, but they are pretty much self-sustaining at this point. And pretty uniform in their belief system. It’s a little creepy, to be honest.
that’s an idea, but like so many native-born, “We don’t get vaccines” has become a signal of group identity for most of them. I admit, I have largely given up on convincing them differently. I find it just alienates them and hurts their kids. If/when we are getting measles here, though, there will have to be a decision made. We are having a Zoom meeting at 7am on Monday April 14 to discuss this. (7am on a Monday I feel is just punishment for screaming about the need to have a plan in place ahead of time.)
These people need to go to old graveyards and see how many children’s graves there were prior to the introduction of vaccines. Diet and vitamins and exercise ain’t gonna do shit against these diseases that have been with us since the dawn of time, and the lack of child deaths in the last century is a miracle we’re actively throwing in the trash.
