Polio, Swine Flu and the End of Trust

MODS: Please delete this post, The links will not load right and the subject has already been covered in another thread while I was trying to make this one work.

My apologies.

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First of all, I was not one who was in to all the Swine Flu conspiracy theories.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s… polio and small pox vaccinations were mandatory and I never heard of anyone dying from them or going to jail for refusing them.

But then again, I was just a kid. I took the shots and beyond that, there was nothing to see. That’s the way it always was. We trusted our government then, too. It was the age of Eisenhower and Kennedy.

I got the links listed below from an email to my blog… which really does not cover this kind of thing. It’s mainly a local, life-color journal for the small community I live in and then too, some of the areas around us.

You have to understand that this is a very conservative corner so… I tend to write to my readership. Mostly things about how taxes are being spent, whether roads are getting the proper amount of attention, etc.

You get the picture.

The email in question asked me to read each story from the link, in the order they appeared in the correspondence. I had no real idea what I was getting into aside from some small hints provided in the link names themselves. The domains are clean too, name-brand websites, so I wasn’t worried about walking into place that was going to dump trash into my computer.

The stories are each very worthy on their own but… taken in order, they paint a different kind of picture than when taken by themselves.

For those without the time to read them each in their entirety, the first two tell of how polio vaccines administered in Nigeria, have unexpectedly mutated and into infecting the subjects with the polio disease itself. After those two accounts, a brief about how some parents in the UK are worried about swine flu vaccinations due in October. And finally, the last link is about a small town in Maine where National Guard troops are carrying out an exercise in expectations of public panic… a panic of people supposedly trying to GET a swine flu shot.

Like I said, taken in order, it paints a different kind of disturbing picture. It is exactly the kind of thing I have repeatedly thought of here as being... well, simply paranoia.

Links appear in order, below.

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Nigeria, Polio #1

Nigeria, Polio #2

UK, Swine Flu

Maine, National Guard

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Personally, I had been a bit of doubter until now. You know… don’t panic and all that.

Now? These are damned sure strange days we live in and trust is no longer a thing you give freely.

Color me now with my eyes opened.

EDIT:

No matter how I enter them, two of the links will not load in and refer to 'n-word' in place of Nigeria.



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[edit on 15-8-2009 by redoubt]

[edit on 15-8-2009 by redoubt]

[edit on 15-8-2009 by redoubt]

In the Fifties and Sixties, a huge number of men had been in the military during WW II. They were used to taking orders. I'm not sure they trusted the authorities, exactly, but they had learned to obey them. I think that may have been part of the reason parents so easily agreed to have themselves and their children vaccinated.

Polio was an especially frightening disease. You could become infected and wind up paralyzed, living in the "iron lungs" they had in those days. You could get polio from crowds, at the beach, almost anywhere people gathered. A vaccine seemed like a Godsend, a way to ensure that you or your kids wouldn't suffer that awful disease. The risks of the vaccination were far less than the risks of catching polio.

The first vaccine was developed by Dr. Salk. It used a killed virus that was injected into the muscle. A few years later, the Sabin vaccine was developed that used attenuated live virus. You could take this vaccine orally. We got it on sugar cubes.

The problem with the live vaccine is that those who aren't already protected could catch a full-blown case of polio from someone who had just been inoculated. The live vaccine induced a very mild case of polio in the subject. Sometimes that subject could pass the infection on to someone else, and sometimes that infection was full strength.

Over the years, 0ur trust in doctors has eroded, as we kept learning of medical disasters. We had Thalidomide, that caused severe birth defects when given to pregnant women. We had the DES disaster, which caused the daughters of women trreated with the drug to develop reproductive organ problems. X-Rays had been used to shrink inflamed tonsils, leading to later cases of thyroid cancer. Valium and other anti-anxiety drugs caused mass addiction in the American population. We learned repeatedly that medical treatment can be more dangerous than the illnesses they tried to heal.

These days many people no longer believe in the "doctor knows best" theory. We have learned to ask questions and not believe everything we're told. That's a good thing. Medicine is more art than science, and doctors can make mistakes. Every medical treatment should be approached with caution, all doubts answered before beginning.

So yeah, many people are unwilling to entrust their health, or the health of their children, to doctors. That's just common sense, considering how many times the medical profession has blown it in the past. It's not paranoia to recognize that doctors are prone to error and mistakes and poor judgement.

Found this video fitting

IllChemist video remix
Masked Militant by
The Civilians Military
from the album
Tactical Combat Maneuvers