This is the level of stupid that scientists have to deal with

[Scooter]

How does science have any hope of grounding its audience in reality when it can't possibly keep up with all the absurdity that is hurled its way?

[BoSoxGal]

What a moron. It frustrates me to see morons like him be successful in life, but then Americans do seem to have a certain reverence for morons.

I grew up in rural New England, in a neighborhood that had once been my great grandparent's very large farm and acreage. There were a couple of very, very, VERY old graveyards in the neighborhood - as well as a very old one adjacent to the hundreds-years-old church I attended as a kid (Dighton Community, which existed when we were still ruled by mad King George).

I remember one of my first lessons in life - and science - was when I asked my mother why so many people died as children in the 1600s and 1700s and 1800s and could I die so young too, and she briefly explained to me (age appropriate) about sanitation and vaccines.

Rob Schneider is a product of California public schools when they were still excellent. He must have spent all his time screwing around and trying to be class clown? Anyway I'm half a decade plus younger than him, and yet I still recall the news in the late 70s when we had eradicated polio from the country. It was big news, given that only one generation before children were dying and ending up in iron lungs or wearing braces for years or forever. We had a very, very famous president who was very famous for contracting polio as an adult and living paralyzed forever after.

That fool didn't crack a book in school, which makes him a perfect Trump supporter. The rest are just so hateful it overwhelms any intelligence, or they are psychopaths who are using the MAGA movement for power and wealth.

What an awful timeline we are stuck in.

[Burning Petard]

My father had three siblings who died before they were one year old. One, and one of my father's uncles, died of the Spanish Flu. The other two deaths were remembered as measles and 'childbirth'. They are buried in a cemetery in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. My father had seven other siblings who lived into a normal adulthood,. Being a mother in the early 20th century was not easy. I attended my younger brother's funeral almost four years ago. The only person there I knew who was not family was nearly the same age as my brother and he had to introduce himself because I did not recognize him. He was probably my brother's oldest friend. That family was our next door neighbor as I was growing up. When he was about 9 years old, he and his mother came down with Polio. It was nearly the last big summer wave before the first vaccine. He managed to get out of the Kansas City Children's Hospital with no obvious effects beyond a lingering slimness--perhaps a chronic slow muscular development. His parents and younger sister were not naturally thin. His mother came home much later, totally confined to a wheelchair and steel leg braces. She died about three years later. There was no treatment back then beyond physical therapy to keep the muscles moving and perhaps stimulate the nerves. At least the mother was not confined to an iron lung.

When I met him at the funeral, the polio had come back, sort of like Shingles. He still got around , but with a cane and lots of pain. He was five years younger than me and he looked ten years older.

Anybody that yearns for the good old days when they were a little kid is ignorant and stupid. The post at the head of this thread in one more data point why I don't participate in any social media.

snailgate.