When Republican Women stray.

It all started when I was a kid and had a friend die from Polio. As an adult, I worked in health care management. I learned that preventing disease was more compassionate than treating people after they got sick, or burying them, if the disease killed them. Early on when the scientists announced a new promising approach to RNA vaccines, I was hopeful, like President Trump was. Remember, he funded research to speed up the development of this approach to prevention. I may be a nitwit. But, at the end of the day, I have done nothing that might lead to the infection, serious illness, or death of people, to gain some piddling political advantage. Can you say the same thing?

In 1981, I was a VA Public Affairs Officer in L.A. In June of that year, Dr. Michael Gottlieb wrote a paper for the Journal of the American Medical Association about a cluster of Gay Veterans he was treating at the West LA VA Medical Center with "recently acquired immunodeficiency." What he was one of the first doctors to identify turned out to be AIDS. Early on Public Health Professionals called for measures to be taken to reduce the risk of the transmission of this incurable disease. Gay activists resisted things like closing down of the "Bath houses," which were centers for AIDS clusters. They put pressure on people like me to not issue news releases aimed at reducing the spread of the disease, because gay men were about 90% of the patients. At one meeting of the National Commission on AIDS, I remember one activist saying to me "When an American Beauty Queen gets AIDS, we will get the funding, attention and care we deserve." The point he missed is that year the vast majority of research grants approved by the National Institutes of Health related to AIDS in some dimension. I pushed Gay people to stay away from places where AIDS transmissions were high. I pushed Gay people to use condoms, always. I pushed Gay people to take responsibility. And, many of them reacted the same way you are. It is not just denial. That is an intellectual exercise. It is a feeling of inferiority that goes down to your bone marrow. It is the feeling that you are somehow defined as a person by your resistance to what you know at some level to be the truth.

humor*

Oh, the irony...

Had figured you were claiming to be American calling him out as a Brit.
My bad.

I'll delete that if you want.

I can't imagine having such a low self esteem that I would cling so desperately to flawed logic in order to "win." In the end, the people who rely on you to promote the unscientific premise that no prevention is preferable to a form of prevention that works in almost all cases, are merchants of suffering and death for political gain. The vaccine reduces infections for most people. For those who do get infected, it reduces hospitalizations. For those who do get hospitalized, it reduces serious disease. For those who do get seriously ill, it reduces deaths. When we read stories about guys in their 20's who followed your encouragement and did not get vaccinated for political reasons, and die agonizing deaths, you played a role in their demise. I did not. If you want to fall back on the argument that science and the CDC are imperfect, tell your kids to take heroin for fun. The CDC warns against the use of heroin and less than 50,000 a year die from using it. The libtards that warn against heroin are just "lily-livered."

When I first read about the Russians recruiting the "downtrodden," not because they cared about them, but because "an abused child will sidle up to any perceived protector," I never thought I would see it on wide display. George Wallace said something to the effect of "Tell the poor White Man he is better than the poor Black Man, and he will vote for you forever." But, this goes so much deeper. I don't remember anyone saying they would not take a vaccine touted by Donald Trump. Remember, the present vaccines got funding from his "Operation Warp Speed." It was only when the roll out for most people was to happen on Joe Biden's watch that you were all encouraged to oppose it. I remember questioning his suggestion that you shoot bleach into your veins. But, that was insane.