And it is called Rubella after the latin "Little Red" after the rash associated with the disease.

Now that would put the fear of God in me!

When conservatives felt impervious to infection, they were very cavalier. But those masks came out like lightning the moment someone started coughing.

I seriously doubt anyone showing full blown measles symptoms is welcome in school or at the office. The xenophobes in the GOP probably don't want them anywhere near hospitals or churches either.

Now, prisons? That's a great place to put sick people.

Nicotine pouch maybe?

Bless the maker and his water

praise shai hulud!

That was a semi-ok episode. I liked that it was based on Geonosis

It's just as implausible as vaccines causing autism. So, I had some fun with it, presuming you're calling me a "dreamer" and you're not referring to something called "sci-fi dreamer."

I dont really know what the solution is.

One I can think of is that we need to start penalizing people legally, societally, or both for spreading lies and misinformation again.

There's no downside and lots of upside to just firehosing everyone with bullshit nowadays.

The harder you mandate it, the more people will get nutty about it.

I don't know that for sure. We had decades of norms long before this shit started in the 90s. Those norms resulted in most people not really even questioning it. Sure, you always had a few on the fringes like the Amish and Mennonites, but they also have minimum contact with the public anyway...

I think the craziness probably resulted from -

1. Primarily - vaccines being a victim of their own success, ironically, along with the way the culture pushes aside older people and the wisdom they may have. People don't see these diseases and their effects and assume, incorrectly, that they don't need to vaccinate. Older generations that did see this and were/are still around are largely ignored by some of the younger generations, probably mostly really getting going with younger Gen Xers, and getting progressively worse with younger and younger generations. It's all too natural for every generation to think they are uniquely different than everything that came before, most especially when they are young. Even in the 20th century, marketing and advertising has always made this narcissistic tendency of the young worse than it already is, but now with the atomization of everything and narrowcasting of so much content, this has been weaponized to an extent never seen before. The more ignorant and younger populations get anecdotes from others about how they didn't vaccinate and didn't get sick and instead of knowing that is because of everyone else doing their work for them (herd immunity), they think it's because they are not really needed. I remember my grandmother (Greatest generation) and mother (boomer) both getting quite annoyed when they started to see this phenomenon in the 90s. They were both nurses, and this royally pissed them off, and rightfully so, because this kind of ignorance among the young is dangerous. But again, the culture, now more than ever, worships the young. Old people are to be ignored and mocked, never learned from. Saying old people are just "stuck in their ways" is used to dismiss any wisdom that might be passed on. So here we are...my mother and grandmother are both now gone, and I guess one blessing about that is that they don't have to watch this clusterfuck unfold.

2. I think the 'net is partly to blame. People with like interests can find each other and start really maximizing those interests, which includes nutty conspiracy theories and anti-intellectualism. It's not like it's all high-minded scientists and intellectuals are the only ones finding each other...the nutbars find each other and probably work to push each other's Overton window to even further extremes.

3. The phenomenon of more people being diagnosed as on the spectrum. People wanted something to blame. Even if the more obvious answer might be that screening has changed over time, at least some people felt that vaccines were the real reason...

I definitely do see pockets of this among liberals in my anecdotal experience, going back to the 90s. Prior to that, other than Amish and Mennonites, I never really heard of people being anti-vaxx.

One thing I did notice is that older liberals (boomer age) would openly mock the younger liberals that were doing the "I'm not vaccinating my kids" thing. I think that is because some of them may have seen or heard things and it stuck. A lived experience/wisdom kind of thing. If you were old enough to see or hear about the situation before vaccines, you were old enough to know better and that younger people were just being morons. Listening to a centerfold when it comes to autism and vaccines instead of, you know, actual experts.

Why do the CRAZY dems not want us to HAVE our very own big beautiful IRON LUNGS? MANY people are SAYING that iron is the BEST element. Who doesn't want LUNGS made of iron?

I'm American so yes.