State of Plague

Just when you think things can't get any dumber in the Sunshine State, the crazed Republican leadership that's been pretty much in charge since 1999 prove they can dumb down even further.

The GOP Morans are playing to their conspiracy-driven anti-vax MAGA base by deciding to end vaccine mandates for public schools (via Greg Allen at NPR): 

Florida's governor said he'll be asking the state Legislature to repeal a statute that requires children to receive vaccines for polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps before entering school. If it passes, Florida will be the first in the nation to eliminate all vaccine mandates for children and adults.

Other vaccines, including those for chickenpox, hepatitis B and strep infections, are mandated by the state health department, as opposed to Florida's Legislature. The state's Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said his department will soon issue rules repealing those requirements too.

"People have a right to make their own decisions," said Ladapo, who joined Gov. Ron DeSantis for the announcement on Wednesday. "If you don't want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. And I hope you make an informed decision. And that's how it should be."

These are, by the by, the same assholes whose anti-abortion stance is to take away all health care choices by women period, so where the "make their own decisions" defense then you bastards.

Public health and child health professionals condemned the move. Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, said, "This will cause havoc."

"It will cause problems for funding free vaccines for the impoverished and issues with vaccines to the rest of us due to insurance-related issues," Marty said. "It is clearly against empirical evidence of what is safest for individual children."

It's more than just the children at risk. It will be the teachers, the parents, the communities at large. Schools can be super-spreaders, which we saw happen during the beginnings of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

And here's the thing: COVID is not over. It's still out there, and not just in Florida.

And it's not just COVID, or "regular" influenza.

We're seeing the re-emergence of measles as an infectious threat after decades of thinking our nation had finally seen an end to it. But after all those decades of our medical and scientific leaders successfully promoting and encouraging vaccinations to reduce the risks, we're now in an age when medical frauds are in charge of our nation's health care and are actively shutting down every agency and means to combat infectious diseases.

It is factual to declare that Robert Kennedy Jr., that sonofabitch, is on the side of the viruses making us sick or dead.

And Florida's elected leaders like DeSantis are happy to assist RFK Jr and the other anti-vax frauds to wage war on our children and families all because their anti-science ideology convinces them their ignorance is superior to decades if not centuries of proven medical practice.

Republicans would rather have thousands of Floridians die than admit their anti-vax stances was poor pandering to their conspiracy-driven MAGA base. We're all going to pay for inept, insane leadership by a party that won't lead towards honest-to-God better health and safety for our communities.

Fighting DeSantis Over Masking This Week

Let's cut to the chase, there's a courtroom decision set to come down this Friday between DeSantis' mad efforts to spread COVID throughout our K-12 schools versus a ton of families and county school boards trying to, you know, KEEP OUR KIDS HEALTHY (via Jeffrey Solochek and Ana Ceballos at Tampa Bay Times (paywalled)):

The third day of Florida’s heated court battle over school mask mandates ended Wednesday with no ruling, leaving observers across the state waiting to see how to proceed next.

Leon County Judge John C. Cooper said he would take closing arguments Thursday morning and rule Friday morning on the case brought by parents from Hillsborough, Pinellas, Palm Beach and Alachua counties.

“I need some time. I need what I call alone time, with my door closed and no interruptions to go through this,” Cooper said.

The mask mandate debate has sparked debate statewide and even grabbed the attention of the White House. The judge’s decision could change the way schools work to fend off the coronavirus moving forward and affect the relationship between the state and local school boards...

Meanwhile, how is DeSantis' combatting the state of Florida's ongoing spike of COVID infectees and ICUs getting filled up? While cities like Orlando and Tampa cut back on liquid oxygen for their water treatments because that oxygen is needed for the overwhelmed hospitals?

He's accusing Biden of not doing enough to end COVID.

Bitch, Biden is out there every day asking people to get vaccinated and masking in public to reduce the spread of the pandemic. Biden's plans to get everyone vaccinated by July could have worked if only the goddamned wingnuts and anti-vaxxers getting misinformed by Fox Not-News and Far Right Facebook pages accepted the vaccines as legit and reduced the virus' chances to spread and mutate.

Instead, it was stupid idjits like you Ron who went out there and mocked the vaccines and refused to wear the masks. You campaigned against Fauci to mock his insistence that the pandemic wasn't over yet, while letting thousands of Floridians get sick and spread the COVID into our schools and workplaces well into August.

Thanks to your partisan bullshit, Governor DeSantis, Florida is one of the biggest hot zones on the planet this 2021. And you think this is going to win you votes in 2022, let alone 2024? You think at this rate ANY OF US WILL BE ALIVE TO VOTE BY 2024?!

Goddamn you, DeathSantis.

August 2021: This Is the Only Story That Matters Right Now

This is the only thing I can blog about right now.

Right now, in Florida and across half the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic is flaring back up due to a Delta variant that is more contagious and more harmful to our young.

Every day it is getting worse out there. Even with the good news that full vaccination can minimize the damage, people are still catching COVID and likely to spread it to others.

A fellow librarian I follow on Twitter just reported this morning she tested positive. She has children, the youngest apparently at high risk if he catches it himself.

We've spent more than a year now fighting this pandemic, and yet the political will to push back against this spike - the necessity of closing down public places again like we did in March-April 2020, the need to keep our children and teens out of super-spreader locations like schools - has pretty much died.

Our elected leaders like Gov. DeSantis are actively pushing laws and executive orders forcing our cities and counties to stay open, forcing our schools to reopen for fall semesters this August, and insisting our schools NOT do the simplest easiest step of mandating face masks to reduce transmission of the virus.

It's like DeSantis and his fellow Republicans WANT the virus to spread to our kids.

And nobody's rising up to stop them.

It's like we've given up fighting the anti-vaxxer and anti-mask madness.

If I were able to talk to every parent in Florida, I would be telling them right now to insist on keeping your kids at home and safe from the Delta COVID. If I were able to talk to every business owner and county/city commissioner, I would be begging them to close the offices and do all work remotely and over the phone like we did last year.

If I were able to talk to Joe Biden, I would be begging him to realize this is another medical crisis threatening our entire nation and he needs to issue executive orders overriding every Red State governor's madness, insisting on masks in public and delaying our school openings at least until September, and DEMANDING we make vaccinations mandatory for people to go to work or travel from state to state. 

Something, ANYTHING, to get our nation back to fighting against COVID and preventing our hospitals from getting overwhelmed again.

I know everyone's tired and emotionally screwed up from more than a year of this pandemic. I'm there myself, my anxiety and depression are all over the place. Thing is, what's causing my anxiety is the reality I work in a public sector - library - and I have to deal every fucking day with the nightmare that just one person can come in sick as hell with COVID and spreading that damn thing everywhere.

I may be fully vaccinated but I am still a high-risk person (diabetic and sleep apnea/pulmonary issues). I am ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED I WILL CATCH COVID.

My anxiety and stress would go down a lot if we mandated masks and did a two-week lockdown to reduce the spread of the virus. But it's not going to happen, is it? I live in a Red State that was already notorious for crazy self-destructive behavior, and everyone around me is doubling down on this shit.

And DeSantis' failures of leadership right now - refusing to put Florida on even a temporary lockdown, refusing to mandate masks indoors, refusing to admit COVID is back and more dangerous than before - increases the risks I face every day.

I am going to see more of my fellow librarians report online that they've caught COVID.

I am risking every day I go to work that same fate.

Goddamn you, DeSantis. Your posing and preening for the cameras while Florida burns in fever ought to condemn you to the deepest pit of Hell.

Goddamn every anti-masker and every anti-vaxxer. Your contrarian bullshit is not only killing yourselves but killing the rest of us.

COVID-19 Is STILL a Threat, Florida

This may be 2021. There may be vaccines out there to help us reduce the risks of the coronavirus, but we're running into mutant strains of COVID (currently the Delta strain) alongside the problem of people refusing to get vaccinated. THAT is causing the infection counts to go back up. Follow the report from Ian Hodgson with the Tampa Bay Times for example: 

The highly contagious delta variant is spreading rapidly in Florida and is the dominant strain of the COVID-19 virus in the country, according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC data released Tuesday shows that the delta variant accounted for 13.2 percent of new COVID-19 cases in Florida as of June 19. That’s up from 2.3 percent as of June 5.

“We shouldn’t be surprised at how quickly the delta variant is spreading here,” said Derek Cummins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, “given what we saw elsewhere in the world where it took over...”

New infections and hospitalizations have increased in recent weeks as the delta variant spreads. Nearly 16,000 new coronavirus cases were detected in Florida last week, a 35 percent increase over the week before. Florida also saw 1,963 new hospitalizations from June 27 to July 4, an increase of 18 percent.

As more and more elderly residents are vaccinated, fatalities due to the coronavirus continue to fall, with 213 new deaths recorded in Florida in the past week, down from 280 per week early last month...

The elderly in Florida may be close to full vaccination rates, but what about the rest of the state's population? Teens, college-age adults, even those in their 30s and 40s aren't close to getting covered. 

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the state are still below levels seen as recently as April, but are a worrying sign as vaccination rates stagnate across the state. Fifty-three percent of eligible Florida residents have been fully vaccinated, and 62 percent have received at least one shot.

The delta variant may be as much as 50 percent more infectious, according to a Public Health England report published last month. This means the virus will spread faster, especially among unvaccinated individuals...

It's been pretty much six full months of an aggressive vaccination campaign, and we're barely past 53 percent full protection.

While the death rate may be down the infection rates aren't. The good news, those fully vaccinated tend to suffer the least from the COVID symptoms. Bad news: Nearly every COVID-related death in the nation comes from the unvaccinated. From Carla K Johnson and Mike Stobbe at the AP Newswire:

Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine.

An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 1.1%.

And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average...

In Arkansas, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, with only about 33% of the population fully protected, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rising.

“It is sad to see someone go to the hospital or die when it can be prevented,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson tweeted as he urged people to get their shots.

In Seattle’s King County, the public health department found only three deaths during a recent 60-day period in people who were fully vaccinated. The rest, some 95% of 62 deaths, had had no vaccine or just one shot...

In the St. Louis area, more than 90% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have not been vaccinated, said Dr. Alex Garza, a hospital administrator who directs a metropolitan-area task force on the outbreak.

“The majority of them express some regret for not being vaccinated,” Garza said. “That’s a pretty common refrain that we’re hearing from patients with COVID...”

WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE GODDAMNED WOODS WITH THIS PANDEMIC, AMERICA. The sad sick thing is that our nation's population both seem unwilling to go back into quarantine - the drawn-out isolation for much of 2020 drove us mad apparently - and unwilling to fully embrace a vaccine program that is proving to work well helping people survive. 

We've gotten to the point where Biden's yelling and begging to the American people to get covered is falling on deaf ears. Even the Republican governors like Hutchinson in Arkansas are trying to get their own - and it is mostly the Republican base refusing to get their shots - and they're failing.

Do we as a whole nation even have the willpower anymore, are we burned out from fatigue? Are we all resigned to letting this pandemic get the better of us?

Gods help us if we have.

Good God. Surrounded By Idiots

Today was not a good day for smart people to read/watch the media.

Louie Gohmert - Texas' main competitor for the title of "World's Dumbest Congresscritter" - publicly questioned a Forest Service deputy chief if shifting the moon's or Earth's orbits could help solve climate change (via David Knowles at Yahoo News):

“I understand, from what’s been testified to the Forest Service and the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], you want very much to work on the issue of climate change,” Gohmert told Eberlien. “I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they’ve found that the moon’s orbit is changing slightly, and so is the Earth’s orbit around the sun. We know there’s been significant solar flare activities, and so, is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate.”

Taken a bit off guard, (Deputy Chief) Eberlien responded, “I would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert.” 

As video clips of the exchange began circulating, Gohmert lashed out at critics who mocked the idea that altering our planet’s orbit was a viable or wise solution to climate change. Specifically, he took issue with those he said had conflated the Bureau of Land Management and Black Lives Matter, which share the same initials...

I think Gohmert must have watched that episode of The Next Generation where Q was forced to be human and tried to help the Enterprise crew fix a rogue moon by suggesting they change the gravitational constant of the universe. Considering that the United States hasn't even developed a functioning WARP DRIVE yet, this is kind of impossible. And ANYBODY who stayed awake in middle school astronomy or physics should be able to tell you that.

AND WHAT THE HELL DOES THE BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS HAVE TO DO WITH THE GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT OF THE UNIVERSE??????

You can actually feel your own brain cells dying exposed to this level of stupid.

Hey, Gohmert! I got this awesome deal for a Weather Dominator made by this guy Destro!

That was all followed up today by clips of a pair of woman - one apparently a licensed physician and the other a licensed nurse - claiming that the vaccinations are injecting us all with 5G-powered microchips that make our bodies magnetized.

Yeah, let's go to Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice for the clips:

The woman above is a licensed physician, according to people on Twitter, who are never wrong. Anyhoo, she’s at a government hearing in Ohio, and it looks like she’s testifying in favor of stupid proposed legislation to exempt fellow idiots from vaccine “discrimination,” probably something modeled on the stupid law Florida recently enacted for that same idiotic purpose.

Dr. Tenpenny (confirmed!) does this by explaining that the coronavirus vaccines magnetize people because there’s metal in one of the proteins that are in the vaccine, and she wants to know what’s being transmitted from 5G towers.

At the same hearing, this nurse tries (and fails!) to demonstrate how her cleavage has been magnetized... So, here’s what I see: a woman pressing a key against her chest, where it briefly sticks without her hand holding it up due to the naturally occurring oil we all have on our skins, and then she whips it away and tries and fails to get the key and then a bobby pin to stick to her neck. I see her pretending that the demonstration went off without a hitch and triumphantly demanding an explanation for her magnetic qualities rather than slinking off in shame.

In short, I see a raving kook.

But I am 100% certain that millions of Americans could look at the same goddamned video clips and conclude that OMFG, the 5G towers are triangulating on us and yes, that poor nurse can’t walk through the hospital without scalpels and stethoscope heads and crash carts and other metal objects slamming into her, irresistibly drawn by her magnetic boobs...

Look, people, when I told you all that I developed a metallic taste on my tongue after the first vaccination shot, I also told you I DID NOT DEVELOP ANY SUPERPOWERS. That includes a shocking lack of electromagnetic capability akin to Magneto or Static.

Here's the thing: There is nothing metallic or robotic in the vaccines. The "nanoparticles" described in the contents relate to LIPID nanoparticles, and Lipids are fatty organic oils. Anyone with a medical dictionary - like a librarian, hi there! - could tell you that. You'd think medical experts who studied for this shit would remember that too.

You would think - in a world of general access to knowledge, basic education, and some element of goddamn common sense - that we wouldn't see such levels of ill-informed behavior out of our fellow citizens, some of whom HAD to have gone through such education to get where they are today.

I would argue what we are seeing here - the unthinking ignorance of elected officials, the disturbing lack of knowledge from our professionals - is a kind of American anti-intellectualism. Disdain and mistrust of verifiable knowledge because it offends a person's world-view (religious or political or racial or social). From where I sit, it's people being Contrarian in thought and deed just for the sake of being that way: To be in opposition to the generally accepted beliefs, for the sake of being self-serving and self-aggrandizing.

In short, we have people going out of their way not only to be idiots but also to be assholes.

And just our luck, there's goddamned too many of them among us in America. Like Betty says, we're doomed. May God have mercy on our souls.

Hit Me Baby With The Vaccine One More Time (w/ Update)

So today I got my second Moderna vaccine for the COVID-19 virus.

Ahhh, the ambiance of a retail store's pharmacy corner

I know what you're thinking:
I NEED TO SHAVE MY ARMS. /cries

This is the one that's supposed to wipe you out, create nausea, sweats, fever, general malaise, an unshakeable ennui, a propensity to write free verse poetry in Italian, and a possible rash.

It's been three hours. I was promised super powers. Where's my heat vision dammit.

(Update 4/24): As a follow-up, the following Thursday about two hours into work I got lightheaded, but not dizzy. Fatigued would be better. I knew this would be a possible side-effect so I tried to manage myself for the rest of the day, but by the afternoon my co-workers were worried I wouldn't even be able to drive home. Since I argued my balance was okay enough to walk, we compromised and a co-worker who lived near me agreed to follow me home to make sure I didn't crash or anything.

At home, I had a small dinner - leftover mac and cheese with a meat sandwich and sliced pears - and then napped for about two hours. I thought I was feeling better but just as I was about to get into bed I got hit with a severe case of the shivers. I was trembling so much it actually made it hard for me to move at all. It took serious effort of will to get my CPAP hooked up and then flopping into bed pulling every blanket I had over me to get warmer. It took about an hour of lying there shivering like mad before I felt any warmth at all.

Ugh.

Still no superpowers, either.

Hit Me With Your First Vaccine Shot

Given my situation working in public, and considering my health - I have a couple of factors that would make COVID-19 lethal to me - when the opportunity to get the vaccine for the coronavirus here in Florida came up this week (when DeSantis dropped the age requirement from 60 to 50) I took it.

I got a relatively quick appointment set up for Wednesday, left work for an hour, got the first round of the Moderna vaccine - the only one available at that Publix store - and tweeted the results:

 

Two minutes after the first shot, I am feeling a slight metallic taste on the edge of my tongue. #vaccine #firstshot pic.twitter.com/AQjfm3f7rt

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@PaulWartenberg) March 24, 2021

Apparently, that metallic taste on my tongue - just on the right side, and it was temporary it went away after I had dinner later that night - sent up a flag because earlier today I got a message from an NBC News reporter who wanted to ask me questions about it.

It is a common regret on social media that the vaccine is not
working like radioactive spider bites or something similar...

After a few hours of texting, he got sufficient information from my experience and added it to a quick article about this odd effect in vaccine shots: It is actually a bit common for people to get that metallic taste, even though no one knows how our taste receptors can pick up "metal" as a taste in the first place (article written by Erika Edwards):

 In addition to arm soreness and a little malaise, some people are reporting an unusual side effect following their Covid-19 vaccinations: an intense metallic taste that can last for days.

The experience is "like having nickels in your mouth," said John Howard, 45, of Columbia, South Carolina. The sensation came on within minutes of receiving his first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination this past week. He tried to get rid of it with coffee, then mouthwash. Twenty-four hours later, the metal taste remained...

He is not alone. Dave Bischel, 52, of Sacramento, California, said he tasted something that reminded him of nickels after both of his Pfizer shots. The metallic taste went away after a few days.

And Paul Wartenberg, 50, of Mulberry, Florida, said he tasted metal for several hours after his Moderna injection. It disappeared after eating dinner...

(I had asked for the report to not include my photo from Twitter, although it seems hypocritical of me to post that tweet here.)

While rare, developing a metallic taste after a vaccination is not unheard of; in fact, it's a side effect that's been documented with other vaccines, antibiotics and pain medicines.

"We've seen a few individuals with unusual taste after vaccines, commonly a metallic taste that lasts for several days," said Dr. Buddy Creech, an infectious disease expert and the director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee...

"Metallic taste is interesting, because we really don't know the biological basis for it," Nancy Rawson, vice president of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said. "There is no metallic taste receptor..."

Apparently there is. Or at least our memories of having put metal things in our mouths - hello, childhood between birth and 5 years uh 10 years hold on let's be honest 35 years old - lets our tongues think we know what metal tastes like. It could be the taste buds that would respond to things that are salty or acidic would retranslate to "that weird toy you put in your mouth in kindergarten that hopefully wasn't lead." Then again, we put metal eating utensils like spoons and forks in our mouths all the time, that could be the taste our memories are harking back to...

It certainly didn't taste like that playing marble I accidentally swallowed back when I was five (it hasn't shown up in any MRIs since), that's all I can tell you.

In the meantime, my second shot is scheduled for late April (the Modern shot has a 30-day waiting for the live, very serious shot). I will see you then.

Blame Gaming, Lying, Hypocrisy: The Republicans' Weapons Of Choice

When confronted with uncomfortable truths - for example the benefits of preventative health care, or the reality that most illegal immigrants are NOT a threat to the United States - the Republican establishment has usually gone for this tactic: lie their damn asses off.

For example: the current news trend of a measles epidemic sweeping the United States.  After decades of effective vaccination efforts to reduce the risk of a highly contagious - and lethal-to-kids - illness, we're getting hit with a major outbreak.  While 102 current cases of measles doesn't sound like much, when you consider that's in one month so far where previous annual counts were half that... we're looking at 2015 as a year with measles reaching thousands of victims.

from that Forbes link. Morbidity means infectiousness (Mortality is when it's deadly)

So into this come the anti-vaccination movement - an oddly bipartisan collection of concerned parents, uninformed media celebrities and a handful of quacks - defending their arguments as the nation faces a serious preventable epidemic.  And because this is all news, this topic gets into the political discussions as the cable channels and politicians weigh in.

Where the major Democratic leaders - Obama, Hillary Clinton - are weighing in firmly on the matter to vaccinate, the Republicans are a bit divided.  Ben Carson, an actual physician, went in pro-vaccination, as did Jeb Bush.  Presidential hopefuls Chris Christie and Rand Paul, however, both went for the "let's make it voluntary" waffling, with Paul jumping out with dire "tragedies" about vaccines before walking those comments back.

What's worse for the Republicans have been how some of the fear-mongering members of the party jumped in with a horrifying accusation that the measles epidemic is due to illegal immigrants.  Say hello to Alabama's Mo Brooks, who's been documented as an immigration denier before this, using the measles outbreak as another reason to go hating again.

And then there's Rush Limbaugh.  Ah, Rush, ill-informed blowhard that you are, let us have Politifact trout-slap you for your sins:

...The common thread in these statements is the idea that these children were never examined, that they had measles, and Washington took no precautions before allowing them to stay.

None of that holds up, however.

In fiscal year 2014, over 68,000 unaccompanied minors presented themselves at the border. The crisis spurred a flurry of activity, largely by two government agencies, the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. Homeland Security set up new processing centers and HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement looked after the children until their fates were resolved.

Contrary to Limbaugh’s assertion, the federal government did examine these kids. The protocol, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was to provide "vaccinations to all children who do not have documentation of previous valid doses of vaccine."

Limbaugh also claimed that these children were never quarantined if they had a disease. The reverse is true.

"Children receive additional, more thorough medical screening and vaccinations at ORR shelter facilities," according to the refugee resettlement Web page. "If children are found to have certain communicable diseases, they are separated from other children and treated as needed..."

...Further undermining Limbaugh’s case (we reached out to his show and did not hear back) are the vaccination rates for the key countries involved in the influx of unaccompanied minors -- El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

The latest data from the World Health Organization runs through 2013. As this table shows, over the past four years, the vaccination rates among those countries are on par or exceed the rate in the United States...

What is really happening here: the fear-mongers in the media and in Congress are using a current news trend to attack their preferred targets - immigrants, Obama, libruls, Obama, women, Obama, and Obama - instead of presenting solutions or helpful alternatives.  It's all about the attack, it's all about winning the ratings wars, it's all about the money they make shilling this crap.

And it's hypocritical as hell.  These are the same bastards screaming about Ebola before the election back in November, that it was gonna kill us all, that we gotta quarantine everybody, when in fact Ebola is hard to catch (it's still a scary disease to get).  Meanwhile, we've got an easily communicable disease like measles floating around and half the GOP establishment is talking about "keeping it voluntary" or worse buying into the anti-vaxxers arguments that the vaccines are not worth it (we've even got a Senator talking about basic hand sanitation being voluntary: he needs to have Typhoid Mary cook for him someday).  These vaccines-choicers - promoting a serious health risk that can kill children - tend to be the same SOBs denying choice for women on birth control and abortion.

This is all the Republicans have.  They can't lead on these issues, only attack others over them.  To them it's all about winning the game, not keeping the nation healthy or informed or improving.

If you want solutions, getting families to vaccinate their kids against the lethal and easily-contagious diseases is a first step.  Make it easy, make it informed, make it work.  The next step is to take health care serious, take science and medicine serious, and do your damn jobs Congress...  Third step is chicken soup, hot tea, and lots of rest.

Doubt the Republicans will even follow through on the no-brainer about chicken soup... sigh.