Celebritarded III: Politickin’
The ugliness of the vaccine debate is something you need to see to believe. Character attacks, death threats, the much-hyped research of the scions of famous American families — this story’s got it all. And it continues to grow.
Because it’s flu season, and with the changing colors comes the annual flush of influenza strains, including the It Girl of communicable disease this year, the H1N1 virus (Swine Flu to her friends). Now with the continuing debate over the vaccine safety thing, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had to set down her mojito and go out to spread the word that young people need to get vaccinated or they may die. She’s really putting on the sales charm, too:
“We strongly urge parents to take precautionary steps. Flu kills every year … and we’ve got a great vaccine to deal with it.”
“There’s going to be plenty of vaccine,” the secretary said. “It’s rolling off the production lines right now … ahead of schedule, and that’s good news… By the end of October we should have a substantial amount available and begin to vaccinate a wider population of folks.”
Swine Flu has of course gotten her fair share of press this year, much of it unjustified, but there is something to be said for getting the young, old and weak their shots — just like every year, maybe, but this strain hasn’t cropped up in a while, and so there are humans crawling around who have no immunity against the thing.
Meanwhile, Wired magazine ran a big package on autism this month — coming out firmly against the anti-vaccine camp’s arguments. The problem with this package is that it perpetuates a conflict; essentially it’s anti-anti-vaccine. Read the comments and you’ll get an idea of how hot this topic is.
The debate is shaping up like most big American debates do: polarized. Democrat v Republican, Creationist v Evolutionist, Pro-Choice v Pro-Life. In between each of these camps there is always a middle ground that is close to what we might call reasonable, but their voices are not nearly as loud, their opinions not nearly as strident, as the extreme views. With the vaccine debate, I fear a similar inability to reconcile sides.
When did we become so black-and-white? When did the moderate voices leave this planet in their reasonably priced spaceship? Could they not have raised their voices and at least asked if anyone wanted to hitch a ride?
Anyway: stay tuned this season for a full lineup of carefully monitored flu deaths, arguments about whether death is better than autism, and the grinning faces who would love to suck the marrow from the bones of their talk-show foes.
Oct 23th, 2009 1:37am
