October 13, 2009

Spare me the stupidity

I'm reading Charlie Pierce's Idiot America. The genesis of the book was apparently an article he published in Esquire in December 2005. When you read the subtitle you can see what his goals are with this book: to explain How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.

He cites three ways in which stupidity takes hold:

  1. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
  2. Anything can be true if somebody says it on television.
  3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.
I'm reminded of this when I see "man in the street" interviews with people who say "Oh, no; no swine flu vaccine for me!" On last night's CBS Evening News I heard a college student (!) say this: "I'm pretty healthy; I'm not getting a shot."

Look, idiot. The point of being vaccinated is to keep you healthy.

We have been and will be inundated with people on TV telling us "there are questions about the safety of the Swine Flu vaccine." Hell, there are questions about the safety of hamburger, too. Does that mean you're not going to Jack-in-the-Box or Wendy's or Burger King? The damned vaccine has had far better and more thorough vetting than the average burger made from parts of multiple cows from different locations.

I plan to get the H1N1 vaccine the moment I'm eligible. You should too.

Posted by Linkmeister at October 13, 2009 11:56 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Everyone rants about the "safety" of this and the "safety" of that. Somehow this country has totally lost the ability to calculate risk. I guess it's time for some people to start dying from the flu. I listened to a discussion of this on Talk of the Nation recently and was hearing exactly that sort of crap; then a woman called in and said, my little boy died from it. I want you to vaccinate your children so my children will be around vaccinated children. Talk about a reality check. We've forgotten the whole concept of "public health." And yet, with all this, the probability of death is 1. For everybody.

Posted by: hedera at October 13, 2009 07:32 PM

I blame Ronald Reagan, too. When he said "Government is the problem" it rang too true to too many people, who've now infected their children with the same attitude.

And it wasn't helped by the past eight years when government showed just how inept it could be when confronted with an emergency. Katrina, security theater at airports, a financial crisis that was heretofore nearly unimaginable, and a war in which the contractors stole billions of dollars with no penalty; all prime examples of what happens when the politicians in charge actively hate the job of governing and really do want government to be drowned in a bathtub.

Posted by: Linkmeister at October 13, 2009 10:44 PM