You probably thought measles was a thing of the past. Along with Mumps, Rubella, Polio, Chickenpox and Heptatis B, kids are required to be vaccinated  for it as a requirement of going to school. (So the little disease spreaders don’t act as disease vectors, which parents and teacher s know they do.)

We hardly see most of these diseases any more, because we make sure everyone is vaccinated, so they can’t get a foothold. (That’s part of why vaccines prevent so many deaths, and that’s why vaccine denial is bad.)

But Florida has decided the days of effective disease control are over:

Florida will end vaccine requirements to attend school, making it the first state to do so. The state’s surgeon general said every vaccine mandate “drips with disdain and slavery.”

This is batshit insane. I don’t care what you think about the Covid vaccines, normal vaccines prevented vast numbers of deaths and crippling disabilities. If they are discontinued, the diseases will spread and be given a chance to mutate. They’ll mutate to defeat vaccines, putting everyone at risk.

I know it’s nice to think “everyone should make individual decisions about everything”, but that’s bullshit when it comes to public health issues, especially dealing with contagious diseases. I warned, repeatedly, that fucking up the Covid response (which was NOT primarily about the vaccine) would discredit public health “well it didn’t work for Covid, so it must be bullshit!”

Anyway, the age of rationality in the West was, overall, nice. But as a friend quipped (exaggeration for effect, I hope), “We’re at most 10 years away from witchcraft trials resuming.” (Ten is too soon, I think, I give it twenty.)

America is descending fast, and much of the Western world is going with it. The very idea of effective mass action has been discredited, and we are all going to pay for that, including the rich, who will find that they can’t completely protect themselves from the demons their malign incompetence has released.

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