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Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

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Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#291

Post by mindslight »

dang wrote: post #275
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some yes, but maybe not you? Because you used the following language yesterday: "Only a few short months ago, I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views. The vitriol was quite unhinged, really." when asked for specifics you went to '...on CNN for example'.

Digging up people's comments from unrelated threads* starts to cross into personal attack. Please don't do that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html * edit: I mean for use as ammunition in an argument. It's not that you're wrong—it's just that the cost (to the intended spirit of the site) outweighs the benefit (being right in an argument).

TBH this idea that each comment should stand individually on its (including HN's downplaying of the usernym with grey) seems like it contributes to some of the problems with modern discourse. When someone I know says something challenging, I know the context they're coming from, what I do agree with them on, what skills of theirs I respect, etc. Whereas message board comments are just tiny slivers of information with which you can agree or disagree.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#292

Post by lazide »

hinkley wrote: post #279
SecretDreams wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully we can course correct before we have to relearn lessons from the 1800s.

Maybe if we learned about the 1800’s in school things would be going better now.

We learned that we’ve progressed and that we’re totally different people now, so obviously we can’t end up with the same problems if we’re stupid about it. (/s, kinda)

At least smallpox has been eradicated (except for potentially some bio weapons labs), so hopefully our stupidity won’t bring that back.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#293

Post by lazide »

Animats wrote: post #278
ksenzee wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a valid question, but I don’t think the current vaccine-unfriendly climate in the US is the reason why the BCG vaccine wasn’t mentioned. BCG wasn’t routinely given in the US even in the last half of the 20th century when vaccines were universally popular. I was surprised to learn a TB vaccine even existed when I started a public health−adjacent job in the 2000s. Our public health establishment just isn’t convinc…

The BCG vaccine does exist, but it's an 90 year old live-virus vaccine with short-term side effects. Because it's a live-virus "natural" vaccine, it can't be used on people who are immunocompromised or have HIV. There's work on more modern vaccines.[1] No big successes yet. The safety record of the BCG vaccine, in terms of permanent harm, is pretty good. But a normal side effect is "The usual expected reaction to BCG…

Yeah, when it’s dress/tank top weather, you can see what part of the world people grew up in by the upper-left-arm scar.

[https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/tuberculosis/Pages/...]

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#294

Post by danw1979 »

mhandley wrote: post #51

Not being from the US, I find it odd that the article didn't mention anything about vaccination. Until 2005, pretty much everyone in the UK received the BCG vaccine. After that the TB rate fell too low to merit routine vaccination, but even today it's still given routinely in a few areas where the rate merits it, or if there's elevated risk of exposure via family from abroad, etc. Has vaccination in general become su…

Kind of related to your point… I remember my maternal Grandmother was looking after me one day and I’d either missed or skipped my earlier vaccination appointment in school (which, I think was a BCG or booster, it was in the early 1990s). She was raised by her maternal Grandmother after her mother died from TB when she was 2 years old. Her father died of… something infectious when she was teenager

(the oral history is obviously a bit sketchy, but she used to tell me her father also caught TB - cholera maybe ? - when he was removing bodies from the flooded Balham tube station in 1940 - https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/75th-anniversary-of-the...)

Well, I got quite the scolding about missing my jabs and a stern lecture about how many awful diseases have been cured because of vaccination. I could never forget how emotional she was about it.

To people born in the early 20th century, seeing the effects first hand of the vaccination programmes of the mid 20th century (not to mention antibiotics) must have seemed miraculous. I think we’ve lived without these diseases for so long that some people (stupid, selfish people) simply think they don’t exist or pose a threat any more.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#295

Post by hilux »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #241
hilux wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His views most certainly aren’t what a majority of people want I'm not sure what you gain by telling yourself that. I could just as easily assert, without any evidence (i.e., like you), that every single person who didn't vote loves Trump and supports all his policies. > If anything he paints those not completely in his camp, which is the vast majority of Americans, as an enemy. That has nothing to do with whether…

Experiments consistently and repeatedly show that when given practical descriptions of policy actions and outcomes, the majority of Americans do not choose the ones that republicans promote. BUT when told that they are Republican policies, then about half of Americans do support those policies.

Well then, liberal politicians aren't doing a very good job, are they?

This is like a cliche from the chess world, where the guy who lost the game, then does a postmortem to convince everyone that he was actually winning the whole time. "Except for that one little blunder."

The Dems keep losing losing losing, but rather than figure out how to fight better, you instead try to convince yourself that people support you. And then you go back to debating Israel v Palestine or trans pronouns while our own country descends into tyranny. (Literally - many progressives I know.)

Meanwhile, Trump owns the White House, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court!

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#296

Post by Dalewyn »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #259
Dalewyn wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it's fair to say a lot of Trump's apologists and defenders really did not understand the ramifications of his first presidency, and are not in a position to clearly anticipate the ramifications of his second presidency. Speaking as one Trump voter among many others, I knew exactly what he accomplished in his first term and what a hypothetical second term could look like. I also understood what his campaign p…

[flagged]

I saw that, and that wasn't a "Nazi salute". Any and all publications and pundits/influencers declaring it as such are wholly disingenuous and should be ashamed of themselves. The sensationalizing was a textbook example of taking things out of context and projecting your(the Left's) own biases.

If you can't understand that, let me put it in simpler terms: That was a "My heart goes out to you!" salute and I am happy for Musk for being happy that we the American people won the election against all odds.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#297

Post by raffraffraff »

cushychicken wrote: post #102
netman21 wrote: post #48

Largest in recorded history is a bit of hyperbole. In the 1800s something like 80% of all Americans had the TB bacillus and of those that came down with TB a huge percentage died.

I agree, the emphasis probably should be on “recorded”, not “largest”.

I assumed that the emphasis is correctly on "outbreak", ie: a single statistically significant increase, as opposed to a progressive increase over centuries (which is what led to the huge numbers in the 19th century)

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#298

Post by johnnyanmac »

nejsjsjsbsb wrote: post #54
johnnyanmac wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it that Trump is so timely at cutting medical resources right before the moment it is most needed? Or perhaps such outbreaks are more common than you'd expect and it's the equivalent of leaving a firewall down for a day? And yeah, I'm aware a bigger factor in this freeze was hiding the very obvious Bird Flu pandemic. Can't hide the eggs getting more expensive though.

Trump is not acting in people's best interests. Wait, just rumaging around looking for my shocked face mask. Eggs more expensive doesn't matter any more.

Indeed. I'm just also find it interesting how timely some of his actions can immediately blow up on us.

And yes. It really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but was such a common rationale for those who voted Trump. I'm shocked that he did not in fact keep a promise thst would have benefitted the working class.

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#299

Post by bryanrasmussen »

lazide wrote: post #292
hinkley wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if we learned about the 1800’s in school things would be going better now.

We learned that we’ve progressed and that we’re totally different people now, so obviously we can’t end up with the same problems if we’re stupid about it. (/s, kinda) At least smallpox has been eradicated (except for potentially some bio weapons labs), so hopefully our stupidity won’t bring that back.

I mean, if you could get a large country that you had some enmity with to embrace anti-vaxx I guess weaponizing that smallpox might seem attractive, if you had really poor morals of course.

So luckily that won't happen!

Re: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is America's largest recorded since the 1950s

#300

Post by Dalewyn »

dmix wrote: post #270
Dalewyn wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I at least didn't read any of the links because I couldn't care less beyond seeing what everyone was talking about in a thread about tuberculosis in the US. My point still stands that if someone doesn't want to see conversations regarding the US, politics or otherwise, maybe he should stay out of threads regarding the US and maybe also find other forums not hosted in America and managed by Americans where the vast ma…

That’s a wholly unambitious worldview Online communities need constant self checking and introspection to not go off the deepend. This isn’t like Reddit where you can unsubscribe from the crazy big politics subreddits or unfollow people on Twitter. I still think the old ideal of HN where we have some higher goal than yet another US political rant forum is still worth fighting for. > I couldn't care less beyond seeing…

>This isn’t like Reddit where you can unsubscribe from the crazy big politics subreddits or unfollow people on Twitter.

Sure it is. This is the internet, Hacker News is just one website someone could choose not to patronize among countless others.

If you don't want to see US centric conversations, don't patronize American websites like Hacker News and certainly centralized American services like Reddit or X.

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