Liberals have no problem deriding, insulting, demeaning and labeling as ignorant and anti-science anyone who refuses to get a vaccine, but if you tell someone overweight to diet and exercise, the liberals get all bent out of shape, because didn’t you know: that’s fat shaming! Tsk, tsk, shame on you for being so insensitive! They’ll shame you for that too!
I usually wouldn’t write a blog so soon after another, but sometimes my blood boils so much in my veins that if I don’t write I may incinerate those around me as I over-heat. This morning doing my rounds in my favorite nursing home, MSNBC was on a patient’s TV. A big, overweight “doctor” with a bowtie and likely multiple degrees was blurting out the dangers of people refusing to be vaccinated, how dumb they are, why the conspiratorial theories they hold are unfounded, and how the pandemic will never go away until people like that fall into line. They are all bad, ignorant, selfish people who need to listen to scientists like me, I could hear him say under his erudite breath. Of course, Morning Joe and his sycophantic compatriots—who believe dogma without every asking a question or looking anything up, kind of like the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages or Goebbels rather than the reporters they pretend to be—gave this big man an unassailable podium and let him speak as though he were God.
OK, let’s get some facts straight.
Yes, there was a pandemic, and yes people still get sick from COVID, and yes people still occasionally die and go into hospitals. But now the disease has trickled down to being like infections we deal with every day. Hospitals fill up frequently from many things, but the big bowtie guy makes us think that COVID is all that’s out there and that the unvaccinated people in this country are the greatest threat to our country since communism (when other bowtied geniuses told us that hidden communists in our country were similarly evil). Dr. Bowtie doesn’t get on TV and shame people who get the flu and end up in the hospital, he doesn’t force kids to be vaccinated against the flu or pneumonia although those infections kill more kids than COVID, he doesn’t want to shut down society because of a bad case of dysentery that may hit a community and cause some people to be hospitalized and die. So, let’s put this ego-inflated moron in his place. Not only is his one-sided harangue anti-science, inaccurate, inflammatory, unhelpful, and in defiance of the dictates of public health (“We need to educate and empower, not imprison”) and our American values (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all), but it’s hypocritical. His own behavior is far more dangerous than what he is inveighing against; he is a huge part of the problem (pardon the pun) despite his degrees and his arrogance.
· First of all, this guy has the nerve to shame people not vaccinated, and he’s obese for Christ’s sake! Obesity is killing more people than COVID at this point, and it’s totally preventable. Before he starts shaming people who don’t get a vaccine, maybe he should look in the mirror and lose some weight. Yes, there is an epidemic of obesity in this country leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of hospitalizations every year, and it is easy to fix. So, maybe we should use Dr. Bowtie’s logic and force this guy to eat a certain way, force him to exercise, and shame him every time he walks by with his big belly dangling as he walks. Is this the America he and the MSNBC crew seek? Because that’s what they are creating!
· And for that matter, the unvaccinated are not dying in droves, as Dr. Bowtie and his pal Fauci are insinuating. The rate of death from those infected by COVID was 3/1000 at its peak, and with Delta it’s far lower. The rate of death in people under the age of 20 is 1/300,000, similar to their chance of being hit by lightning, and only after age 75 does it go up substantially. So, many people are making rational decisions to not take a poorly studied vaccine for a disease not likely to kill them. Maybe they are smarter than you, Dr. Bowtie. Maybe they actually read the damned data instead of preaching dogma from a pedestal like a Medieval monk!
· And these same clowns like Fauci, and bowtie guy, and Morning Joe, they are so enamored by masks and shame people who don’t wear them, which really makes them seem to be ignorant and dangerous to any of us who have looked at the mask studies and who actually take care of patients infected with COVID, all of whom (in my case) got it through a mask. Here’s a fun fact for the gang of geniuses. We’ve studied masks and we know they don’t work. That’s proven science! They don’t protect the wearer and don’t prevent death from COVID in the community. Look it up, geniuses, if you know how to do that, or you can buy my recent book if you need references; it’s cheap, don’t worry. So, here’s a question that a lot of the “dumb conservatives” and “unqualified doctors” like me say to Morning Joe and Jake Tapper for which they don’t have an answer: why don’t you ever ask the medical seers you invite on your show, and whose words are gospel to you, to produce data showing masks work? You asked Trump to prove everything he said, why not these people? Is it because they wear bowties and have fancy degrees? When a doctor or scientist advocates mask use, or wears a mask in a situation they aren’t required to, I immediately realize that they are morons. Clearly, these are not thinking people; they believe in dogma and ritual, not science. They would do just as well wearing a clove of garlic around their necks, which has the added advantage of keeping vampires away. (Dr. Fauci may say two cloves of garlic, just to be safe). As Tapper and Joe and Rachel call unmasked people and people who demand data before being vaccinated (and often justifiably turn down the vaccine after seeing the data) morons and mass murders and anti-science, maybe they should look in the mirror, because that really describes them, not people who think and make rational decisions!
· Which brings up another point. I’m not a conspiracy kind of person, and I was a liberal Democrat until that party started using the playbook of Mussolini during COVID, but maybe all these people who fear a conspiracy have a point. Hell, once the government forces untested vaccines on kids and forces them to wear masks, even though their risk of dying of COVID is far less than 20 other things they face every day, and even though masks are clearly harmful and disturbing to kids and vaccines might be, that smells of conspiracy to me. It’s either a conspiracy to force young people to be vaccinated, or it’s medical negligence and child abuse. Which is it, Morning Joe and Doctor Bowtie? The government doesn’t force us to be “healthy” in ways that could have side effects. Sure, we have helmet and seat-belt laws, but those aren’t dangerous like masks and vaccines could be. And twenty times more young people die of auto and bike accidents than COVID! Yes, who wouldn’t think that if they force kids and young adults to vaccinate, force us all to wear masks, they’re after something? I don’t think that. I just think they’re arrogant morons who should all lose their medical licenses. But, hey, I’m not a conspiracy theory person, I’m just someone who has lived in the health care world and seen how these hucksters with a degree lie and deceive people all the time.
· Oh, and by the way, we doctors are supposed to do what’s called shared decision making. Do Dr. Bowtie and Fauci know what that is? Hint: it’s not telling people to do something without giving them any data about it, and then calling them morons and mass murderers if they don’t do what we tell them to do. Just an fyi. It’s giving them risks and benefits of an intervention and then allowing them to decide what’s best for them. Because, as long as Dr. Bowtie and Morning Joe are vaccinated, they shouldn’t worry about those who aren’t, it’s no longer a public health issue any more than Dr. Bowtie’s obesity is. It’s an issue of individual choice. And if you tell a college student that her chance of dying of COVID is 1/300,000, and that the long-term risks of a vaccine are unknown since they haven’t been studied, and then you let that college student make a choice, it’s not up to you to shame them or keep them out of college if they choose the answer you don’t want them to choose. Nor is it up to me to question them if they get the vaccine, which to me is medically negligent given the tiny benefit and unknown risk. It’s like forcing a kid to take a pill that has no benefit and may harm him and telling him he’s an idiot and can’t go back to college if he doesn’t take it. I Dr. Fauci’s Shared Decision-Making Primer can lay it all out. “Do what I say, I’m the scientist, you ain’t,” he’ll explain. H can get on a lot of TV shows promoting it, which seems to be what he likes to do the best!
· Maybe, by Dr. Bowtie’s logic, we should shame everyone with a potentially fixable issue, not just him for have the effrontery to be fat and thus burden the entire health care system due to his poor decision making, but let’s shame everyone for everything. Like, when COVID hit this nursing home unit where I am now, we had a special place for our COVID patients, the COVID unit. We lost no one here from COVID after the big surge last spring, when two people did die, but we lost dozens to the quarantine. Lots of people here die of many things as they are old and frail, but the quarantine proved to be a slaughter for frail elders, many of whom died after falling. Falls are a big killer of the elderly. So, maybe we should lock anyone who falls in a room and tie them down so they don’t fall. That would solve the problem and prevent a lot of deaths from falling! In fact, we’d save more lives doing that then vaccinating them all and quarantining them all. Let’s lock up and tie down anyone who makes bad decisions. We can lock up smokers, people overweight, people who drive poorly, people who drink too much. And if they don’t do what we say, we’ll shame the crap out of them and keep them locked up. Doctor Bowtie can have a nice room in which we’ll lock him up, shaming him daily, and forcing him to eat exactly as we say and exercise too. And we will call him a moron and tell him to shut up if he dares question us. Better lose weight, Dr. Bowtie, or you may never get out of the room. As you told us on MSNBC, even one person who is not doing what we say to be healthy poses a threat to the entire nation! So, you can stay here drinking celery water until you slim down! Just doing what you want us to!
· Because here’s a news flash, if people ate right, exercised, didn’t smoke, and stayed away from over-zealous doctors, likely we’d extend life expectancy in this country by many years, and most of our hospitals would either have to close down or be half full. As Morning Joe and Jake Taper talk about the occasional hospital that is filled up with unvaccinated COVID people, why don’t they mention that most beds in hospitals are filled with people who make bad life choices, like Dr. Bowtie has done? COVID is nothing compared to obesity and smoking, especially since so many people are now vaccinated or have natural immunity from having had COVID, and since the oh-so-frightening Delta strain is so much less lethal than what we faced last Spring. Let’s be consistent here, Dr. Bowtie and Morning Joe. I don’t see Fauci telling people to lose weight. Or to be healthier. I hear him saying to wear masks, which we know doesn’t work. A mask is like a girdle; it makes you feel like you’re not fat even if you are. Let’s not lose weight, let’s just wear girdles. That’s Dr. Fauci’s prescription. And for people who don’t wear girdles to hide their obesity, we’ll shame them and call them morons and keep them out of school and their jobs. And then Dr. Fauci can write a book: No need to lose weight, we can make it look like you’re thinner, a guide to how science works these days. Dr. Bowtie can write a prologue: Don’t fat shame me, just shame everyone else I don’t agree with, I got my girdle on. And they can sell girdles. Phew, at least we know they can still get on Morning Joe after the pandemic ends and keep shaming! I’d hate to be in a world where that ever goes away!