[Crabcakes]

I shall be taking my 88 year old Mother in Law for her Covid booster and annual Fly vaccine later this week.

I could do with the latter. We get loads of bluebottles in the house in summer.

[kreuzberger]

At my old man's funeral back in July 2019 I mentioned that as a type one diabetic for over 47 years, my sister and I calculated that he'd self administered insulin injections at least 50,000 times over the years. I'm not too sympathetic when someone mentions that they're scared of needles.

I am not scared of needles. It's just that I have had quite a few in recent months. Having one thrust through the muscle and deep in to your spinal cord is something of a novelty over and above the delight of life-preserving inoculations.

Find me a diabetic who disagrees with that and I'll make you breakfast.

[Rosvanian]

I certainly wasn't suggesting that. That sounds extremely unpleasant.

[Bones McCoy]

Went for our 'flu vax today, and got chatting to a guy who administers the covid vaccine for students at a local college. Or doesn't.

He says that since Price Waterhouse Cooper got the logistics gig for the vaccine it's been a shambles. The whole borough (close to 70,000 people) got a total of 400 doses last week. None this week so far.

But hey, the efficiency of the market. And stuff our friends' pockets with your gold...

"Always two, there are. No more. No less. A Master and an apprentice."

And they'll charge you £720 and £360 hourly.

[Boiler]

Interesting comment on Fenton's blog of yesterday:

David Walsh said...

According to today's Times, the guy in the video is one Michael Manoel Chaves. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate says that Chaves is the leader of Learn Something New Today, a group which believes that Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is a murderer, vaccinations will kill children and Joe Biden is not human. Before the start of the pandemic Chaves had released videos covering conspiracy theories on topics including 9/11, crop circles and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Imran Ahmed, of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said: “By continuing to host radicalising conspiracist content, big tech is knowingly enabling the organised abuse of public figures and damaging trust in the institutions tasked with putting an end to this pandemic. Extremists want to intimidate people to silence them because they can’t win on the arguments and broadcasters or journalists don’t wish to give them the oxygen of publicity, instead issuing mumbo-jumbo legal documents and bellowing threats.”

Looks like anti-science is the new religion, and pursued with as much zeal.

[MisterMuncher]

The fact that crop circles is in there kills me

[Boiler]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-58890309

On the refusal to believe in the pandemic or the vaccines, but in falsehoods spread via other sources.

It never ceases to amaze me how in so many cases, if you're seen to support something you must automatically be in 'their' pay.

[Spoonman]

Over in the US of A, and it's in some ways strange and a little disappointing it has come to this, but at the same time, good on them!

Wisconsinites plan to sue “every school board” that ignores CDC’s COVID advice
Brewery's Super PAC fed up with "anti-science' school boards, helps parents sue.

A Wisconsin brewery that says it's fed up with "anti-science," "Tucker Carlson-watching zombies" is funding a series of lawsuits against school boards that do not follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on COVID-19. So far, the Minocqua Brewing Company's Super PAC has helped parents sue two school districts and says it plans on "suing every school board in Wisconsin that doesn't follow CDC guidelines to protect the spread of COVID in schools."

"Our Super PAC should NOT be funding these lawsuits," Bangstad wrote. "We always thought that our government, the teacher's union, the ACLU, the hospitals, the nurse's unions, or any other number of progressive groups or 'academies of smart people who understand stuff' should be stepping up to block the alt-right, anti-science, and anti-history nonsense that has overcome school boards across our state. Wisconsin communities have exploded with the Delta variant because many school districts have dropped all forms of COVID mitigation that were in place last year due to the shrieking hordes of Tucker Carlson-watching zombies separated from their cerebrums and driven only by their lizard brains."

Bangstad wrote that there is one high school "where we've heard that anyone daring to protect kids and staff from COVID are being railroaded by folks who still have delusions that Trump won the election and who recently got their YouTube epidemiology degrees in 'how masks cause carbon dioxide poisoning.'"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... id-advice/

[Spoonman]

Another 'murican fundie flat-earther vaccine-denying fookwit bites the dust...

Anti-Vax Flat Earth Preacher Rob Skiba Dies From COVID-19
"The one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead," Skiba posted to Facebook to those getting vaccinated.

Skiba was calling vaccine mandates the "mark of the beast" from Revelations way back in 2012. He thought COVID-19 vaccinations were dangerous, posting on Facebook, "To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote.

Rob Skiba made a really bad bet.

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/10/anti ... -rob-skiba

[kreuzberger]

Not all bad news today, then?

[mattomac]

Maybe it will lift the veil from someone’s eyes we can but hope, most deaths from this are now preventable.

Yeah there will always be someone’s immune system even with the vaccine that can’t cope but I would say we’re probably at 90% of deaths being caused because people choose not to have the vaccine.

[Bones McCoy]

Another 'murican fundie flat-earther vaccine-denying fookwit bites the dust...

Anti-Vax Flat Earth Preacher Rob Skiba Dies From COVID-19
"The one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead," Skiba posted to Facebook to those getting vaccinated.

Skiba was calling vaccine mandates the "mark of the beast" from Revelations way back in 2012. He thought COVID-19 vaccinations were dangerous, posting on Facebook, "To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote.

Rob Skiba made a really bad bet.

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/10/anti ... -rob-skiba

Maybe this is the wager that Pascal was really taking about.

[Boiler]

For pity's sake, the anti-vax brigade are even posting in the chat section of Railcam UK...

"conned into jabs"
"dont have both together ex-nurse"
"wy have jabs if your fit and heathy" [sic]

[Cyclist]

They're like Jehovah's Witlesses. They 'think' the reason so few people follow them is because the message hasn't been spread far enough. They're too stupid to understand that people have heard their message and have rejected it as nonsense. So they'll keep on going

[Andy McDandy]

Once read a thing about the Jobos and other cults, that the door knocking and missionary work is known to be ineffective and alienating, but they keep on at it because it reinforces an "us vs them" mentality and dependence on the community.

[Bones McCoy]

Once read a thing about the Jobos and other cults, that the door knocking and missionary work is known to be ineffective and alienating, but they keep on at it because it reinforces an "us vs them" mentality and dependence on the community.

A pretty common cult tactic is to work the members hard, allow little spare time, and ensure it's spent in the company of fellow cultists.

That isn't a definition of a cult, otherwise a lot of hobby enthusiasts would be swept up.
But it's an extremely common factor whenever those "My cult hell" stories break.


[ Imagine how slowly and carefully I typed this reply ]

[Malcolm Armsteen]

In France there are English JoHos who check the phone books and then doorstep people with English names.

In my case they tried to engage me in a spiritual discussion whilst my neighbour and I were trying to load a sit-on mower onto a trailer...

[Abernathy]

Once read a thing about the Jobos and other cults, that the door knocking and missionary work is known to be ineffective and alienating, but they keep on at it because it reinforces an "us vs them" mentality and dependence on the community.

They don’t do as much door-knocking these days. They seem to prefer to stand in shopping thoroughfares with a trolley stand of their mad literature and accost gullible looking passers-by.

Once, door-knocking for the Labour Party, I knocked on a door and spoke to a Jojoba’s Witness lady who otherwise seemed a bit normal, attractive, even. As usual, she told me that she did not vote. I’d come across this before with the Jojobas, but I’d never really found out precisely why. So I asked her.

She said “We Jojobas believe that the only government that we require is the divine and wise government of Jeebus Christ”.

“Oh yes,” I said, “and when is that going to happen, then ?”

She looked outraged. “It’s happening NOW”, she insisted.

At which point I realised that discretion was the better part of valour and beat a hasty retreat.

Very odd people.

[MisterMuncher]

The JWs do have form with medical idiocy, too.

There was one used to get the same bus as me on a Monday morning, and would usually be waiting at the same stop, were we were generally alone (I worked out of town, so the full buses and stops were those going the other way) and fair play, he have it a good effort every week. I mean he had to have known from the first week that it was just *never* going to fly, and yet he plugged away.


IIRC, evangelism doesn't make a lot of sense from their perspective as they believe there's a fixed number going to heaven, and said number (144,000) is not big and dwarfed by their extent membership of somewhere close to 8 million.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

In my role at school I had to think seriously about Jojobas and medical treatment, as I was in loco parentis, often abroad and beyond calling for parents to deal with any emergency requiring an operation or a transfusion.

The fix was that I knew that if I gave permission for a life saving procedure I would quite likely be going against the wishes of the parents to 'let God decide'. But by my values, if I followed the parents' wishes, I would be letting a kid in my charge die.

In the end I decided that should the situation arise I would not inform the parents until after I had given permission (which I could do in loco parentis) for the procedure. The kid would (hopefully) live and the parents could sue me afterwards. If they wanted that kind of publicity.

My opinion of them is not high.