Health And Wealth

Without health, there is no wealth is the kind of folksy saying that I sort of agree with especially after a month of being sick and confined to home. The thing I know is that the relative wealth of a white boomer retiree makes being sick a very different experience for me than for many people in my country; I've got food, secure housing, plenty of firewood, wifi, streaming movies, etc. to comfort me in my affliction. Oh and did I mention great health care? I've known my doctor and family practice for decades, it's in one wing of a teaching hospital where my family has always received excellent care, and I have both retired teacher health insurance plus, at my age, Medicare (at least for now).

If I were living in my car and eating uncooked ramen noodles, relying on the emergency room to see a doctor, I might not have survived walking pneumonia. Or the allergic reaction to one of the medicines I was prescribed. As it is I'm on the mend and can waltz in without an appointment and get a follow up chest x-ray when the appointed day arrives.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

What if I lived in another country?

I've experienced minor health challenges in a few different countries. In Australia, which has a public health system that is barely adequate buttressed by a private system that some can afford, I saw a nice doctor that my aunt knows and my out of pocket cost was not high enough to be memorable.

Tokyo street scene, March 2023 Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images

In Tokyo, where I lived for four years, I had two babies, mastitis from a staph infection, and the kids had the usual viral infections. There were doctors and midwives right in our neighborhood who charged an infinitesimal co-pay (like $2.50), and we were in the public health system by virtue of working and paying taxes (10% flat) even though we weren't Japanese. The doctors gave us prescribed medications on the spot but maybe only a couple of days worth so I would bring the baby back for follow up.

Japanese people at the time (early 1980s) did not vaccinate until age 2, but I was able to get the standard childhood vaccinations for my kids earlier than that by asking around. Whooping cough was still a thing if not measles, tetanus, diphtheria, or polio.

In India I contracted dysentery while about three weeks pregnant and was very, very sick for a long time while my husband bounced back quickly from the same ailment. I saw one of the many woman doctors trained in India and was given antibiotics and powdered electrolyte mix. Again, the out of pocket cost was so small I cannot remember it.

Now that I've lived through Covid and the anti-vax movement on steroids that it fueled, I have a few thoughts.

The body of scientific knowledge is based on data, not anecdotes. All of the above I've just shared is anecdotal. Being a boomer, I remember a time when the prevailing sentiment was that vaccines save lives and doctors usually know best. Being someone with chronic digestive problems that started at birth, I also know that Western medicine is far from the definitive authority on how to get or stay well. A G/I specialist finally diagnosed what was wrong with me, but it took a naturopath and an acupuncturist to get me back on the path to decent health.

All of that is background for me to say that the profit motive has infected health care in the U.S. and a profound lack of trust in medical authorities stems from this root cause.

After we were told that Covid vaccines would stop transmission (they don't) -- and that we were criminals if we questioned that orthodoxy -- public faith in medical authorities began to disintegrate.

After we were told that Covid couldn't possibly have originated in a lab (it could, possibly with Mossad's involvement) -- and that we were criminals if we questioned that orthodoxy -- public faith in our government's commitment to our health began to disintegrate.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images  Source: "Newly sworn-in HHS Secretary RFK Jr. vows to tackle physical, as well as spiritual 'crisis' in the country"

Enter RFK Jr.

Kennedy is easily the most bizarre Secretary of Health & Human Services that we've had in my lifetime. One of the original "vaccines cause autism" advocates, he now appears to have walked that back somewhat -- or at least that's what he told senators in his confirmation hearings.

When I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020 there was a large contingent who were intent on weaponizing anti-vax sentiment against me. Either trying to falsely paint me as anti-vax (as they had successfully done to pediatrician Dr. Jill Stein in 2016) or organizing opposition because I had made clear my position that parents are free to not vaccinate their kids, but in my opinion those kids should not be admitted to public schools. 

To really understand the concept of public health, you might have to work in a setting like public schools for a few years. Many anti-vax parents are against schools, too, and they homeschool with widely varied results. One such parent commented online, "I am only responsible for my family's health" which is a sentiment that would probably get you sent to a re-education camp in China (kidding).

China was set up to be seen as the bad guy during Covid. The virus was clearly developed with U.S. financial and logistical backing, but it "leaked" in Wuhan. Hmmm,  interesting. China went into overdrive to address the public health crisis, as did Cuba. The U.S. made sure a lot of very wealthy Big Pharma executives became even more wealthy, and withheld the patents for various early Covid vaccines.

China is not the bad guy here. Health care for profit is the bad guy. It is an oxymoron. It has eroded our faith in public health directives, and our faith in health advice from people who went to medical school.

If you haven't seen the mini-series Apple Cider Vinegar you might want to check it out. It's a recreation of the true story of an Australian health "influencer" who died of cancer after rejecting medical advice and instead attempting a fresh juice cure. Her mom also bought in and also died of a different type of cancer. Just today I learned that super model Elle Macpherson is another health "influencer" in Australia who rejected chemo for breast cancer and publicized it. 

I like fresh squeezed juice as much as the next person. But I also like my friend in town who is still alive after chemo to treat bladder cancer. In fact, they are in remission and were given a clean bill of health over a year ago. Honestly, they were the last person I expected to go the conventional route based on their lifestyle up to that point. But they have a family who loves them. So they talked it over and came to the decision to let the doctors try their best. I'm sure being so healthy heading into self-poisoning to kill the cancer cells made a difference.

In what direction will Secretary Kennedy lead us? As long as Congress fails to take the profit out of health care, it probably won't matter much. 

Am I too old to move to China?

Fear Is Driving Both Sides In Vax Controversy

Screenshot shared on Twitter by Dr. Kimberly Manning https://twitter.com/gradydoctor/status/1443894539471687698 

An angry white man chastised me on Facebook for using asterisks in the word m*therf**ker claiming that Vietnamese Buddhist and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh advises us to "call things by their proper names." He had commented on my recent blog post with a meme showing an unidentified Black man saying, "When are you dumb m*therf**kers gonna realize both parties work for the same fuckin people?"

While I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis, I have two goals in mind: the first is, don't sink to name-calling (the first step in any genocide or civil war, because it dehumanizes "others"). The second is, don't get kicked off Facebook. 

Just yesterday a slew of prominent anti-vax accounts were kicked off YouTube (which is Google-owned, not Facebook-owned) and political commentators routinely have their social media accounts shut down for sharing inconvenient truths or using "violent language."

So, I may be skating on thin ice with this post examining some of the thinking on both sides of the COVID vaccine controversy. 

But, since I write when I've been reading news and opinion pieces until my head is about to explode, here goes.

Dr. Kimberly Manning is Black and, using hashtags like #blackwhysmatter, is offering a "No Judgment Zone" where people can talk about their vaccine hesistancy.

Fear is driving a lot of this hesitancy, especially as the CDC is a government agency that has given some really bad advice during this pandemic e.g. telling us last summer it was ok to take off masks in indoor public spaces if we were vaccinated. I suspect their motive for doing so was commerce not public health but, even if they were sincerely misguided, the advice was disastrous and led directly to this, the third and worst spike of COVID infections in the U.S.

And the good old U.S. government has not only lied to us many, many times, but has sponsored multiple genocidal practices like literally starving indigenous children in residential schools to see how few calories they could tolerate before succumbing. 

Also infecting Black men with a debilitating, fatal disease in the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. The study ran, incredibly, from 1932 to fucking 1972! The subjects of this gruesome experiment were not told the facts, just that they were getting "free health care" from the federal government.

And let's not forget that the U.S. has been investing in biological weapons research for decades.

Here's a young NBA player explaining his own vaccine hesitancy:

I woke up to see videos of basketball players being more reasonable about vaccine hesitancy & loving your neighbor than the government and most other celebrities …am I still dreaming? Is this real?

pic.twitter.com/c9pq9IpjM7

— Ezra (@EzraCeleste) September 28, 2021

By now you probably think I'm anti-vax, but I assuredly am not. 

I'm fully vaccinated, everyone in my family that's the right age is fully vaccinated, and just this week I facilitated my husband getting a booster shot. One of my children got COVID last month but is fully vaccinated and had a mild case with no serious repercussions thus far.

Which is really fucking lucky, because now I'm going to address the other side of the ethical question. You know, public health, and the fact that we're all in this mess together.

When an individual speaks about why he, as an individual, isn't going to take the vaccine, I respect his opinion but I think he's wrong. Epidemics aren't about you, they're about the germ pool you're part of AND, increasingly important, about the hospitals you're sharing with others in your community.

I'm going to share one of the thousands of stories out there from grieving families who watched a loved one die, not of COVID, but of being unable to access health care in areas where hospital ICUs are full to overflowing.

Then I'm going to share one of the thousands of stories out there from doctors and nurses who care for acutely ill patients and have been doing so in an escalating emergency that has now lasted 20 months.

Here's one from Alabama dated September 13, "Family: Man turned away from dozens of COVID-filled hospitals." 

As hundreds of mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 patients filled Alabama intensive care units, hospital staff in north Alabama contacted 43 hospitals in three states to find a specialty cardiac ICU bed for Ray Martin DeMonia, his family wrote in his obituary.

The Cullman man was finally transferred to Meridian, Mississippi, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) away. That is where the 73-year-old antiques dealer died Sept. 1 because of the cardiac event he suffered. Now, his family is making a plea.

“In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID related emergencies,” his obituary read.

reported by Associated Press

And, here's one from Iowa reported September 6 where an emergency room doctor with decades of experience shares his exhaustion and career perspective:

[Dr.] VanGundy said that he'd recently seen non-COVID-19 patients with meningitis, stroke, heart attack, and blood clots in the lung, but couldn't transfer them to ICUs because "they're all full" with people who had COVID-19. He warned that if patients get sick then they'll have to wait as long as "days" for a bed to open up...

"In over 20 years of doing this I have never been this busy or this stressed or seen this many sick people," he said.

reported by Business Insider

There is lots more anecdotal evidence of health care provider burnout and grieving families begging people to get vaccinated.

Many health workers will have the problem solved for them because many governments are mandating vaccines for them. It's not a new idea, but it is adding a new vaccine to the list of vaccines already required in their field. And some health care workers have already quit rather than comply. They're certainly not in the majority, but they do exist.

Do mandates work? Again, not a new question as vaccines and vax hesitancy have been around for a long time. 

Short answer: no. Coercion is not the most effective way to address people fearful of a new type of vaccine.

What does work? Dr. Kimberly Manning's approach: education, persuasion, listening, and not judging.

If I get kicked off my blogging platforms for saying that, so be it.

Maybe I'll just go archive my post from a few months ago: "Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose."

Uncivil War Over COVID Response Gaining Momentum & Distracting Us From The Real Villains

A tremendous amount of debate is apparent around the convergence of two themes I've posted about recently on this blog: "Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose" and "Revolution Needed, So Our Corporate Overlords Are Fanning The Flames For Civil War."

Just yesterday I saw this post from a friend on Facebook:

He was making reference to the many people posting sentiments like "Let the unvaccinated die at home rather than taking up an ICU bed when they catch COVID." Besides the creepy tone of wishing death on others, my first thought was that it would include all children under 12. Wow.

The same source shared an excellent article on medical ethics by Dr. Jay Baruch: "It's easy to judge the unvaccinated. As a doctor, I see a better alternative."

Dr. Baruch points out that when people ask him how he can provide care to a COVID patient who is unvaccinated, it's analogous to asking how he could treat a drunk driver for injuries, or a burn victim who lit a cigarette while on oxygen for emphysema.

Touché.

But nearly every COVID response has been politicized to the nth degree in order to drive us ever further from common ground. 

Whether to mask, whether to vax, whether to distance, or open schools, or mandate public health measures in public places like schools -- all are subject to hysterical name calling aimed at opponents and coming from both sides of any of these issues.

I'll stop with the examples now. Compiling them all would require several websites.

My friend Pat Taub who has a background in group facilitation wrote a letter to the editor that was published this week by Maine's biggest daily paper: "Creating listening circles to heal our divisions." An excerpt:

I wish the media would stop reporting on the deepening clashes between the vaccinated and the anti-vaccinated as if it were a fait accompli, rather than suggesting ways to heal this division.

The vaccinated look down on the unvaccinated as irresponsible because they fail to consider that being unvaccinated means, if they get COVID, that they also can infect others and spread the virus. The unvaccinated feel that government-mandated vaccinations are an infringement on their personal freedom. Others opposed don’t trust the vaccines or believe in their efficacy.

These divisions, which are becoming increasingly violent, are distracting us from coming together to build strong communities. We are lacking in mutual understanding.

To bridge this gap, I suggest local listening projects, where individuals representing opposing views meet in a supportive environment led by a moderator experienced in communication skills. Schools, churches, synagogues and libraries are logical settings. The listening groups would be composed of pro-vaccination and anti-vaccination volunteers.

Seven of the eight comments on her letter expressed contempt for the idea of listening to the other side. Only one affirmed her diagnosis while suggesting an alternative cure:

Meanwhile, teachers and college instructors heading back to the classroom right now are sounding a note of desperation about keeping themselves and their families safe in the face of the highly infectious Delta variant. 

An example from Dalton State College in Georgia:

I start every class with an ultrasound picture of my son due in October, pleading with my students to wear masks as a personal favor to my family. In small, at-capacity classrooms, only 5 of 45 of my students wore a mask. I’ll never be able to look at this job the same way.

— Matthew LeHew (@matthewlehew) August 30, 2021

(Link to the tweet if the embed does not work for you: https://twitter.com/matthewlehew/status/1432392705104093187)

I just retired from teaching and I'm about to turn down two invitations to volunteer because the part of Maine I live in isn't all that different from Georgia. With an older husband who already has respiratory issues, it's not a gamble I feel like I can take to be indoors among unvaxxed or unmasked adults.

I'm disappointed in people's choices, but I'm going to keep listening. 

I'm not going to wish them dead. 

Health Care Workers Who Won't Get COVID Vax To Be Out Of A Job In Maine

My status updates on spybook seldom get much attention, but lately almost anything about COVID choices gets a lot of comments and clicks (and a gratuitous offer of COVID information I can trust? I'll pass.) 

Yesterday I had a mildly shocking experience receiving health care and I posted this:

The context here in Maine is that our governor has given health care workers notice that, unless they are vaccinated, they will have to stop working in health care. 

If you think this should be a foregone conclusion, you haven't been paying attention.

There have already been two protests in Maine cities with hundreds of health care workers marching for their right to get up close and personal to administer health care without being vaccinated.

I have persistently shared my theory that the underlying purpose of COVID was to divide the 99% against one another so that the 1% can continue their reign of austerity for us and obscene wealth for them. That, too, has gotten a lot of clicks and shares so it will probably be taken down as misinformation soon (read it here while you can).

Many of the comments I cannot agree with, but I let the debates rage on because

I'm genuinely curious to know how other people understand this health crisis and the optimum ways to respond.

Both right wingers and liberals tend to be really nasty with the name-calling, insults, and generalized lack of respect for other people. I think that's sad and I never "like" that kind of language. Every genocide and civil war begins with dehumanizing language aimed at "others."

I am reminded of a theory I encountered recently: holding demonstrably false ideas in public is a way of signaling loyalty to your group, thus conferring an evolutionary advantage. If true, this explains a lot. Especially how 45 became more popular with his fan base for tweeting lies that everyone knew were lies. If you want to check out this theory, you can read about it here.

A ubiquitous comment from both sides wonders how the others could be so stupid.

This is an ableist comment unless what they really mean is ignorant. No, stupid and ignorant aren't synonyms. One means unable to use reasoning well and the other means lacking information. People with developmental delays in cognition are not uneducated but they are differently abled. As for what happened with public education in the U.S., don't get me started.

An anecdote from pre-COVID days:

I once learned how to use an app for making online quizzes. Another learner and I took a sample quiz where one of the math questions depended on knowing the order of operations i.e. PEMDAS. The other learner doubted the answer and it bugged them enough that they brought it up to me later. I explained why I thought it was the right answer using PEMDAS and then added, "______ was a math major and is our IT director so I'm pretty sure if he and I disagree about the answer to a math problem, he's gonna be correct." I could tell that this did not resolve the other learner's skepticism. They trusted my answer -- I was a literacy coach -- more than his! Possibly because they had a closer relationship with me than with the IT director? Who really knows.

Distrust of experts -- even in an education setting -- has been with us for a while.

And it can be deadly. 

Maine legislator Rep. Chris Johansen continues to go into crowds unmasked and to fight vaccines and masking requirements for large gatherings despite the fact that both he and his wife contracted COVID. His wife died.

Then there's the fact that the No Child Behind Act, passed with bipartisan support during George W. Bush's adminstration, took an ax to both science and social studies education. It did this by preferencing reading and math for the test-and-punish regime that enriched for-profit testing corporations. Science clawed its way back via STEM and other intitiatives from the outside world, but much damage had  been done. And social studies has never really recovered. 

That explains a lot, too, doesn't it? It's clear how even many elected officials really don't know the structures of government or understand their role in that structure. Once big money controlled all three branches of government at the federal level, and many if not all state legislatures, the old civics lesson on "how a bill becomes a law" became a lie anyway.

It would probably be elitist of me to point out that it isn't doctors or registered nurses (RN) refusing to get vaccinated for the most part. 

Here in Maine it's the much less educated health care providers who are the refuseniks e.g. certified nursing assistants (CNAs), lab technicians, hospital kitchen workers, group home attendants, and the like.

My sister works at the leading research hospital in northern California as an RN and has for years. I value her information and advice because so far it has been ahead of the curve i.e. the intel that she passes on from the epidemiologists at her hospital anticipates what eventually the CDC gets around to recommending. I'm guessing this is because UCSF researchers care about health rather than about commerce, while the CDC must serve two masters.

Meanwhile, every school district in Maine -- and there are a lot of them -- has been thrown to the wolves to hold the line for science amid shouts, threats, and jeers of uneducated and/or ignorant parents.

Then there's the big picture context.

Source: https://twitter.com/OpinionatedLab/status/1426296638654619648

Lies are the currency of the day. Big lies, ones that can kill you.

Well, after all this gloom and doom I feel moved to end on a lighter note. No idea who created this gem:

Source: https://www.facebook.com/snarkavenue/photos/a.397515703684731/3517531905016413/

Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose

I've been thinking a lot about how the SARS-CoV2 pandemic and vaccination drama has played out in the U.S., and why that might be. 

It's pretty clear by now that the coronavirus with cutting edge gain of function capabilities was made in a lab in Wuhan, China and that this particular project was a collaboration between that country's government and my own. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of our federal government's response to the pandemic, was deeply involved.

Whether or not the virus leaked accidentally or was deliberately released will probably remain as murky as the truth about the unfortunate events of 9/11. 

No real inquiry will ever be conducted, and the misinformation swirling in "news" outlets, blogs, and social media platforms will continue to muddy the waters.

Certain bioweapons experts like Dr. Francis Boyle maintain that the accidental leak theory is likely. His reasoning: all bioweapons he's studied have accidentally leaked, including Lyme Disease and West Nile virus.

But the history of U.S. development and deployment of bioweapons since the nation's founding is both sordid and largely undisputed. So, there's precedent for an intentional introduction of the virus. Also for the assertion that the vaccines themselves could be bioweapons.

I used to sort through 9/11 theories with an eye to the uses that were made of that event: perpetual occupation and theft of resources in the Middle East; severe restrictions on civil liberties formerly guaranteed by the Constitution; the creation of the odious Department of Homeland Security and its evil subsidiary ICE. So quickly were these changes instituted that it is barely plausible that the events of 9/11 were unexpected.

Now I'm sorting through COVID theories with a similar lens. Aside from the death of 4 million, accelerated wealth inequality, and the privatization of profits from vaccines developed largely at the public's expense, what has been the most noticeable effect of the pandemic to date?

The division of formerly coherent communities, groups, coworkers, and families has been a very significant effect of COVID.

This would put the virus in a category with plenty of other features of 21st century life: 

• robust, well-funded disinformation campaigns disseminated widely and constantly
• promotion of the belief in false dichotomies (e.g. Democratic Party vs. Republican Party) 
• deliberate fueling of conflicts between generations, genders, sexual orientations, education levels, and geographical groups.

To what purpose?

A recent observation by Australian blogger Caitlin Johnstone caught my eye.

Caitlin Johnstone on substack

As people lose faith in electoral politics to change anything, so the corporate media gin up the show of differences between the two flavors of oligarchy. But young people aren't buying it. Most of them are too damn poor to believe that it makes a significant difference in their circumstances which color is sitting in the White House or Congress. The American Dream for these generations is to be able to move to a country with universal health care. On this basis, they envy Russia and China rather than fearing them.

Keen interest in socialism, communism, Marxist-Leninist theory, radical socialist feminism, and non-hiearchical cooperatives is evident from Gen Z through millenials. Capitalism is a dirty word. This undoubtedly worries those "winning" at capitalism (though how profits generated by destroying the planet as a viable biome for human beings can be seen as a "win" defies logic).

Some of the formerly coherent groups I'm aware of that are rendered asunder by the COVID vaccination controversy: nuclear families, extended families, organizations working for social change, dance troupes, schools and universities. Cousins gathered this summer based on who had, and had not, gotten the shot, and teens whose parents would not consent to their vaccination were excluded. Mask wearers inside stores were jeered at and hassled by mask refusers. Hospital workers went back to wearing N95 masks and goggles all day every day, seething with resentment at people who won't pitch in for public health after an exhausting 16 months of pandemic life. 

It's almost like the virus was designed to feed into the individualism on steroids that characterizes U.S. culture. 

And was deployed only after the immense disinformation mechanisms of mass media and social media were in place to cast serious doubt on the veracity of any and every fact.

Divided, we are most vulnerable to the depradations of our corporate overlords. 

EDITED July 29, 2021

A few things I wish I'd seen -- or remembered -- before writing about this yesterday. I'm likely to write about this topic again but I don't have time right now, so I'll include these as a postscrip here.

Anti-vaxxers may just obey Trump or believe lies or not understand statistics, but I wonder what impact it had that Reagan helped supply Iraq with bioweapons and then Bush #1 forced 1/2 million U.S. soldiers to take experimental vaccines in a war that made a lot of them sick.

— David Swanson (@davidcnswanson) July 29, 2021

Corporate Government Could Kill You -- It's Already Killing Your Global Neighbors

First recipient of covid vaccine in the UK. With the stark racial disparities in morbidity from covid, why did they pick a white woman? Source: England NHS UK

The anti-vaxxers in Maine were the most virulent opposition I faced when I ran for the US Senate in 2020. By which I mean, they threatened me the most often and harrassed me endlessly from the very first days of my campaign to the end 15 months later.

I don't doubt their sincerity in believing that vaccines are too harmful to give to their children. Nor am I surprised that they are on social media now declaring they will never take a vaccine to prevent being infected by covid-19.

I do doubt their critical thinking abilities. I was repeatedly told that I favored mandatory vaccinations for children even though I was clear in public forums from the early days of the campaign that this applied only to children enrolled in public schools (which are not mandatory). As a teacher for 25 years, I have the lived experience of communicable diseases spreading rapidly (not to mention lice) and profoundly affecting educational opportunities. 

Opportunities like learning more about the scientific method of having a hypothesis, collecting evidence, considering its implications, and further revising one's hypothesis.

I was told by a mom representing a group of anti-vax parents that they were planning to vote for Max Linn over me, Susan Collins, or Sara Gideon because he was the only one they could trust not to support a mandatory covid vaccination program.

I have also seen anti-vaxxers make several references to medical tyranny.

Mask wearing, even if mandatory, is not medical tyranny.

Health care workers are exhausted and posting photos of the effect of working for hours on end with PPE in place to protect themselves from covid infection. I wear a mask for them. Source: Noosa News

It is akin to infant car seat mandates, limiting personal freedom on behalf of protecting those who cannot protect themselves.

A problem with corporate government is that it breeds distrust, and that distrust becomes a huge factor in emergencies like our current public health crisis.

Big Pharma has undoubtedly infected Congress and other branches of our government. Any health care with a profit motive is a business first and a health program second. This is a problem created by our captured federal, state, and local governments who serve business interests that fund their campaigns and perqs rather than serving the people as they swore they would do.

Today Pfizer announced that people with severe allergic reactions should not take their vaccine. Two National Health staffers in the UK had reactions to the new covid vaccine Pfizer is selling. That doesn't mean nobody should.

Corporate government is also infested by another pathogen: weapon manufacturers. Every Biden cabinet nomination to head up the US military has been a board member of Raytheon, Booz Allen, or another corporation that feeds at the public trough. That's why US foreign policy amounts to endless wars with the corporate media ginning up fear of new enemies constantly.

Chris Hedges has observed that declining empires often feature irrational beliefs and "crisis cults" as the material conditions for life spiral downward. 

One word: QAnon. 

Unsurprisingly, even the outlandish beliefs of that cult have a kernel of truth underlying them. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell did operate an international ring trafficking children for sexual exploitation, with many Democrats like Bill Clinton apparently involved. The predators weren't all Democrats, of course. They were various powerful men who could be blackmailed afterwards.

I can't dispute the kernel of truth underlying anti-vax sentiment -- that for-profit health measures pushed by corporate government could be harmful. 

But I'll continue to put my faith in scientists motivated by a concern for the common good. When deciding about taking any new vaccines I'll consult the health care providers I trust, including my sister who works at a prominent research hospital, and my own doctors who I've been fortunate to know for several years. 

Source: floridacovidaction.com

I'll read sites by scientists like Rebekah Jones in Florida who have suffered their own harms for their effort to tell the truth about covid. Or the truth about artificial intelligence, for that matter.

I will continue working to distinguish between medicine for health and medicine for for profit. I can continue to be aware of my distrust of corporate government without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.