They Will Kill Us All
A lot of people, including Steve Bates, have posted on the Tea Party response to uninsured people, i.e. let them die.
They should stop by their local movie theater and have a look at the new movie, Contagion. The thing about the movie is that the people at the Centers for Disease Control say the film is actually very accurate about what could happen.
If you look at the bird flu outbreak, or SARS, or AIDS, these things were spread around the world quickly because of air travel. The old days of stopping ships in the harbor and conducting health inspections before allowing people to come ashore are over, but that was the reason the US Public Health Service was established in 1798.
More than any other first world country, and many in the second world, the US is vulnerable to pandemics because of our lack of universal health care. People who can’t afford to go to a doctor are going to spread the disease. A lot of those people work in food service and retail. Health care is a national security issue.
People forget that the predecessor programs to the US Social Security System were implemented in Germany and Britain because the pool of men of draft age weren’t healthy enough to serve in the military.
23 comments
That is the point that I’ve been trying to make for five years now, I pretty much post a yearly post on how the lack of universal health care could end up killing us all. But it never seems to win any traction with Teabaggers or their ilk, who start changing “individual responsibility!” as if it were some magic talisman that would protect them from the Rampaging Skin-eating Plague if said plague broke out. When 50% of the population is below average, and average ain’t so smart to begin with, the only thing I can conclude is… WASF.
– Badtux the Waddling Penguin
Bryan, I have said for years that the virus has yet to evolve that can distinguish a Mexican from a Texan, or, I might add, an Englishman. What one of us is vulnerable to, all of us are vulnerable to.
Antibiotics have changed the picture… for the worse. Resistant strains of once-innocuous diseases come up all the time now, and some of them are markedly worse than their predecessors. Along with antibiotics, thanks to Monsanto et al we now have to deal with genetically modified organisms (GMO), which often combine with naturally occurring organisms of the species from which they are derived to compromise some of the survival traits of the original. <Tennessee-Ernie-Ford-voice> If the germs don’t get ya, then the sick corn will. </Tennessee-Ernie-Ford-voice>
OT, Bryan, but still in the realm of killing us all, I know this will interest you, but it will be of no interest to your troll, to whom ideology counts more than research results: Dr. Jeff Masters writes “Arctic sea ice bottoms out near all-time low; August was Earth’s 4th – 8th warmest“. Masters also examines possibilities for the last time the Northwest Passage was open (from centuries to millennia ago), vs. how ice-free it is now; the results aren’t encouraging.
The Uber Weathly haven’t figured out yet that their gated communities aren’t immune.
Hell, we are seeing measles and whooping cough outbreaks because people aren’t taking their kids in for childhood immunizations which are free from most health departments. Some people are claiming ‘religious exemption’, which is not defensible if they want to live in society.
Mr. Duff, words have meanings. ‘Quote’ has meaning, and there are standard punctuation characters used in association with quoted material. A link is not a quote.
The movie was reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the US Public Health Service and found to be reasonably accurate. Several scientists in the field consulted on the film to make it as accurate as possible within the framework of the format. Where the film strays from reality, they comment on the problems.
It’s a good thing there is no global climate change or the British Isles might be hit with hurricanes … oh, wait, they just were.
Steve, factory farming and monoculture are just about one disease from a world-wide disaster. Monsanto has put agriculture on the path to meltdown in pursuit of profit.
OT: Congratulations on finally seeing some rain. Maybe the next tropical storm will have a chance to break the drought. I read Dr. Masters every day, and you can’t argue with the data.
The wealthy need to provide their employees with health care or they are going check out early. What goes around, comes around.
You might at least attempt to find sources other than TV weathermen like Watts, a fan of that moron Monckton.
The long-term cycles all point to cooling, not warming, which is why people who actually study climate over the long term are yelling so loud about the problem. The Earth is supposed to be in a cooling trend according the all of data collected from the core ice samples, and the tree ring data. If the natural trend wasn’t for cooling the effects of the greenhouse gases would be even worse.
Winters in the British Isles are going to be brutal because the Gulf Stream that moderates the weather in Britain is dependent on the Arctic being cold. Arctic warming disrupts the current, and winters are going to get nasty. The climate is changing.
“Actually, it wasn’t writen by Watts but by:”
ANOTHER TV weatherman.
As a non-expert member of the reading/viewing public, one has a choice in evaluating reports on scientific matters. She can assess the preponderance of evidence among independent respected researchers. Or she can do what Duffer does: select the outliers (not to say the out-and-out liars, though he has more than twice quoted people who are demonstrably paid by corporations to say what they say, science be damned).
I choose the former. I will go unapologetically with the preponderance of evidence, however unpleasant its conclusions, and that evidence, increasingly with each passing year’s research, is that there is going to be utter hell to pay in consequence of drastic climate change, and that moreover that catastrophic climate change is, in our time, specifically attributable to human activity, not natural cycles.
If Duffer wants to stand (metaphorically, or perhaps literally) on the deck as the waves take him under, who am I to stop him. But goddamn him if he exerts influence to force us all to suffer for his folly.
Mr. Duff, exactly when did you acquire the right to award PhD’s? D’Aleo doesn’t claim to have one, and he is “Mr.” D’Aleo in the biographies posted on all of the whacko web sites he inhabits.
D’Aleo was part of the Frasier Institute that receives three-quarters of its funding from Exxon, and is a whacko Christianist who doesn’t believe in evolution, any more than he agrees with climate change. He is a TV weatherman, nothing more. Where are his peer-reviewed papers on climate research? You can’t be a scientist if you deny the fundamental principles of science, as he most assuredly does. He makes a lot of money denying reality, so he probably has his mountain-top retreat ready when the floods come.
Ach that wanker Duff is about again. Ah well. I watched the let them die vid. Then found a longer one that makes Rand seem a little less of a callous shit (only a little) Then he started to crap on a bout deregulating medical practicioner licenses.
Is that arsehole for real???
Not weathermen, nor meteorologists, but TV weathermen, people who read the forecasts provided by the National Weather Service, rather that making up their own by observing the climate data. These are media figures, not scientists.
You wouldn’t want to compare the government subsidies of the oil and coal industry which funds these fakirs, to noise level subsidies of ‘green energy companies’ ?
Al Gore is independently wealthy, and doesn’t need anyone else’s money. He is continuing his family’s tradition of public service. Politically, he is centrist, but that makes him a ‘liberal’ to the lint [so far right they are no longer connected to the fringe] that ‘conservatives have become.
Jams, the Paul family are libertarians, who see no value in government or society.
Being a TV weatherman for 30 years doesn’t make you anything but an experienced TV weatherman.
Read the bloody article – the grants are going to utility companies, not to the company Gore invested in. The utilities qualified for the grants because of the technology created by that company, but the company is a vendor. Gore invests in the field he believes in – energy efficiency and conservation. The US power grid is part of the national infrastructure and is a mess because the for-profit utilities don’t spend enough on maintenance and modernization. When swapping out a circuit breaker kills power to Southern California, as just happened, there is a major problem.
D’Aleo makes big bucks denying the scientific consensus of 97% of all of the reputable researchers in the field, while doing no actual research himself – he is an actor playing a part, just like any other TV weatherman.
“Joseph D’Aleo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin BS, MS and was in the doctoral program at NYU.”
Oh, gimme a fucking break. In other words, in the real world, outside Duffer’s Brain, D’Oleo didn’t make it through the doctoral program. If he spewed the kind of climate-related bullshit Duffer does, that could be a reason for his epic fail. Whatever the reason, if I had a dollar for every fuckwit who didn’t make it through a doctoral program, I could retire comfortably, almost as comfortably as Dr. Margarine.
Bryan, save your breath. The moment you used the term “power grid,” Duffer’s eyes glazed over.
Steve, I take PhDs seriously, because I know a lot of people who have busted their butts as slaves trying to complete the program and failed due to money problems. It is a grind and there is a lot of ramen soup involved as you do all of the grunt work for professors while attempting to complete your own research. The PhD requires original work, and some fields don’t lend themselves to it. In other fields, people see the equivalent of their thesis published by someone else when they are in the final stretch. It is a miserable life, and the people who complete the process deserve respect, even when they are total whackos when outside their field of study.
As an ‘Intelligent Design’ creationist, D’Aleo would have a difficult time finishing a scientific doctoral program.
Oh, to be clear, Mr. Duff awarded the degree. Mr. D’Aleo has made no such claim.
I have an innate dislike for propaganda – I was required to read the Soviet version for years, and the wingnuts haven’t improved the style.
Bryan, I respect PhDs in large part because I barely had the patience to complete a Master’s, and I can only imagine the wear and tear on the soul of someone who does a degree that typically takes another four or so years of unrelenting stress. It’s almost too much. But it merits respect, presuming it is awarded by a genuine department at a genuine university, not the Duff Junior College of Wingnut Politics.
There are plenty of people who display great talent and admirable diligence who do not have academic degrees, e.g., jazz musicians before about the 1970s. But times have changed, degree requirements for faculty are the rule not the exception, and there is hardly any serious field of study… yes, most certainly including jazz… in which a PhD is not a prerequisite for someone in a faculty position. They should not be handed out wantonly by blog commenters.
Nor claimed by conservative German politicians…
It is the requirement that you have to give up your autonomy to another person to do it that precluded my going for it. After the military I wasn’t ready to do that again.
“I am happy to be proven wrong but not happy being accused of lying.”
One can… Duffer does… lie by quoting liars. Most often, Duffer quotes well-paid professional liars. For such lies the repeater is as guilty as the original liar. If you’re not willing to take responsibility for the “facts” you quote, you shouldn’t be quoting them.
“And, Batesy, do cheer up!”
And, Duffer, do fuck yourself!
(You still haven’t learned how to insert a link that shows as ordinary text. Lazy, aren’t you?)
Mr. Duff, if you intended that to be a quote, you should have cited a source, which you didn’t. If no source is cited, no matter how you format it, it is your responsibility. As there was no PhD, it obviously wouldn’t have made any difference, because the information was factually wrong.
The tax dollars, as I already pointed out, are going to the utilities, and not to the vendor. The vendor might expect to make more sales, and will certainly highlight this in its annual report, but the Federal money is going to the utilities, and the utilities will decide how it is used.
There is no conflict of interest, Gore is investing his own money into conservation and energy efficiency, and not just talking about it.
The Department of Defense has already classified global climate change as a major threat to world stability based on its own research, and has been testing bio-fuels and solar energy to reduce costs and their carbon footprint. It is real, and no one cares if you want to commit suicide by ignoring it, we won’t join you to ensure future profits for the fossil fuel industry.
Yes, you are doing something wrong, Fudd. Links can contain ordinary text for clarity about where they go, e.g., Duff’s blog. Learn how to do it… it’s not rocket science… or be thought somewhat less than civilized.
Duffer, you have quoted paid liars three times that I remember, including two about the BP disaster. I stand by my accusation: quoting a demonstrable paid liar is not morally superior to lying yourself. If you want us not to call you a liar, you really must find better sources. You are being willingly, knowingly led astray, in an era and on a medium in which there’s no excuse.
http://www.hyperlinkcode.com/make-hyperlink.php
Mr. Duff, at no point in this thread did I call you a liar. I pointed out the factual errors in your comments.
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” [attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan]
Instead of addressing the errors, you became defensive, and even resorted to a non sequitur about Al Gore to deflect criticism, and even that was logically flawed. ‘Practicing what you preach’ and ‘putting your money where your mouth is’, are not hypocrisy or conflict of interest, but emblematic of someone who believes what they say.
Mr. Duff, if you don’t want to be a ‘liar’ under your definition of the word, not mine, you might want to actually read the article about Gore for comprehension, as it specifically says that the government money is going to the utilities, not to the company that Gore invested in. I have pointed that out twice, and you insist on distorting the facts.
i’m not the hand-holding type. scroll down to about the middle of the page and you will see two long narrow boxes containing text in red, blue, and black. copy the text in either one of those boxes into a comment here, post it, and see what happens. bryan can always delete your extraneous experimental comments if they get out of hand.