A rare disease typically associated with horses has so far infected four people in Massachusetts this month, one of whom has died.
Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) is spread by mosquitos and can affect horses, humans, and birds. While the disease has “equine” in the name, birds are actually the most likely to contract the disease from a particular classification of mosquito. A different species of mosquito, however, is able to transmit the disease from birds to humans and several other mammal species. Horses do not appear able to spread the disease to humans, as their blood would not contain enough of the virus to infect mosquitos, which could then infect humans.
The first Massachusetts case of EEE in six years was discovered earlier this month, <a href="https://www.wcvb.com/article/massachusetts-has-first-human-eee-case-in-6-years-state-health-officials-say-9-communities-at-critical-risk/28666278">according to WCVB5</a>. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) issued a warning to nine southeastern Massachusetts communities about their risk of contracting the virus.
“Today’s news is evidence of the significant risk from EEE and we are asking residents to take this risk very seriously,” Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel, MD said in a statement to the outlet. “We will continue to monitor this situation and the impacted communities.”
The first case was reported in a male patient over 60, but the disease is not limited to the elderly or infirm. The second case was discovered in a patient between the ages of 19 and 30, WCVB5 reported. The third case also involved a man over 60, while the fourth case affected a woman over the age of 50.
The woman, Laurie Sylvia, died due to the illness. Sylvia’s husband was Robert Sylvia Jr., president of the Teamsters Local 59 union. The union <a href="https://www.facebook.com/teamsterslocal59/photos/a.923357174489477/1254035108088347/?type=3&amp;theater">wrote on Facebook</a> that it appeared Laurie would not recover after contracting EEE.
“It pains us to inform you that Laurie Sylvia, the wife of Teamsters Local 59 President Robert Sylvia, Jr has been stricken with the EEE Virus,” the union wrote. “For the last several days we were hopeful that with the best possible care from the Doctors and Staff at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, she would be able to recover. We have just learned that this will not be the case. Laurie’s condition has deteriorated and regrettably the Family is now preparing for the worst. Please keep Laurie, Bob and the rest of the family in your thoughts and prayers at this very difficult time.”
On Sunday, two of Laurie’s family members confirmed to the media that she had died. Her daughter, Jen, announced her death on Facebook.
“Today, I had to say goodbye to my best friend. My mum was my favorite person in the world,&#8221; Jen wrote. &#8220;She brought light and joy to everyone she came across.&#8221;
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know where to go from here,&#8221; she added. &#8220;I just don&#8217;t understand how such a beautiful person could be taken from me so soon.&#8221;
The MDPH identified 37 communities in the Bay State as being high to critical risk for EEE. This week, the state will start spraying for mosquitos to try and quash the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/easternequineencephalitis/tech/symptoms.html">states</a> that there is no vaccine against EEE and that about “a third of all people with EEE die from the disease.” Those who do recover are often “left with disabling and progressive mental and physical sequelae, which can range from minimal brain dysfunction to severe intellectual impairment, personality disorders, seizures, paralysis, and cranial nerve dysfunction.”

Aedes aegypti biting human skin

4 People In Massachusetts Have Contracted Eastern Equine Encephalitis, One Has Died

Health

Massachusetts

Across the world, a new drug-resistant infection has appeared.
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html">reported</a> Saturday morning that an elderly man was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital&#8217;s branch in Brooklyn for abdominal surgery. After getting his blood tested, it was revealed that he was infected with Candida auris, a fungus that was recently discovered but has been identified in patients around the world. The fungus is most deadly to those with already weak immune systems.
The elderly man, who was not named by the Times, was isolated in the intensive care unit, but died 90 days later. What makes his case so frightening is that after his death, doctors tested his room and discovered the fungus was everywhere.
&#8220;Everything was positive &#8212; the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,&#8221; Dr. Scott Lorin, president of the Brooklyn branch, told the Times. &#8220;The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.&#8221;
The hospital had to use &#8220;special cleaning equipment&#8221; and even had to remove part of the ceiling and floors to get rid of the fungus.
Reports of C. auris have come from Venezuela, Spain, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, and South Africa, according to the Times. In the U.S., cases in Illinois and New Jersey have also been reported, as well as others in New York.
The Centers for Disease Control said it &#8220;identified 51 clinical case-patients and 61 screening case-patients&#8221; <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/10/18-0649_article#tnF2">in New York alone</a>. The CDC reported 45% of the clinical case-patients died within 90 days.
Further, in the same study linked above, 98% of the clinical-case patients were resistant to fluconazole, which is used to treat serious fungal infections such as meningitis. The strength and resistance of the infection led the CDC to deem C. auris a &#8220;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/biggest_threats.html">serious threat</a>,&#8221; and said it infected 3,400 and caused 220 deaths per year.
The CDC also reported that the median age for the clinical case-patients was 72, but that the ages of those infected ranged from 21 to 96 years. Fifty-one percent of those infected were male, and all patients had &#8220;serious concurrent medical conditions,&#8221; such as needing &#8220;mechanical ventilation or central venous catheters or gastrostomy tubes.&#8221;
Infections like C. auris have been able to thrive due to the overuse of antibiotics, the Times reported. Such over-prescribing has reduced the effectiveness of the drugs, allowing once curable bacterial infections to thrive once again. Now, fungal infections are becoming resistant.
Naturally, those most at risk of these &#8220;superbugs&#8221; are newborns and the elderly, who generally have weaker immune systems.

Frightening Drug-Resistant Infection Cropping Up Around The World

Health Care

America will have to curtail its escalating suicide rate if it ever hopes to become truly great again.
According to the <a href="https://apnews.com/de57909c5bcc4162b122948539ed9c6a?fbclid=IwAR0F6sQRpwZx9eLRGTuJI5knDpY9qgOrVdkjRvwUEm6Zz0T1JE8XRX3mmlQ">Associated Press</a>, the suicide rate in America has reached a 50-year peak. In 2017, the United States had 2.8 million deaths, a full 70,000 more than the previous year. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the spike somewhat reflects the aging population, it&#8217;s the spike in younger age groups that raises the most concern.
&#8220;These sobering statistics are a wake-up call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable,&#8221; Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC&#8217;s director, said in a statement.
In 2017, there were 47,000 suicides in the United States. In 2016, there were 45,000. The numbers keep climbing, contributing to a decline in the overall life expectancy rate, which began to fall in 2015 and 2017 after several decades of escalation. It has not seen such a dip since the late 1910&#8217;s, when World War I and the worst flu epidemic claimed one million lives. Back then, the life expectancy was 39 years. The life expectancy now stands at 78.6 years, down one-tenth from last year.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve never really seen anything like this,&#8221; said Robert Anderson, who oversees CDC death statistics.
Of the 10 leading causes of death, only the cancer rate fell in 2017, while increases were observed in suicide, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer&#8217;s flu/pneumonia, chronic lower respiratory diseases and unintentional injuries.
Dr. William Dietz, a disease prevention expert at George Washington University, says the rising death rate stems from a sense of hopelessness among Americans. &#8220;I really do believe that people are increasingly hopeless, and that that leads to drug use, it leads potentially to suicide,&#8221; he said.
The death rate for drug overdoses rose about 10% in 2017. Accidental overdoses account for more than a third of unintentional injury deaths while intentional drug overdoses account for about a tenth of the suicides.
While numerous factors contribute to the spike in suicide rates, a recent <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/elfyscott/netflixs-13-reasons-why-may-be-contributing-to-teen-suicide">study from the University of Michigan showed</a> that the Netflix series &#8220;13 Reasons Why,&#8221; which focuses on teen suicide, increases the risk of suicide among teens. More from <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/elfyscott/netflixs-13-reasons-why-may-be-contributing-to-teen-suicide">Buzzfeed</a>:
<blockquote>
The research, published in the journal Psychiatric Services, surveyed 87 teenagers who were being treated in psychiatric emergency departments for suicide-related concerns in 2017 and 2018.
The teenagers, the majority female, were asked to complete a questionnaire during their emergency department visit.
Nearly half (49%) of the teenagers had watched at least one episode of the first season of 13 Reasons Why, and 84% of those had watched it alone.
Over half of the viewers believed that watching the show had increased their risk of suicide due to their identification with the lead female character, Hannah Baker, who kills herself at the beginning of the series after recording tapes detailing the reasons for her decision and the characters who she blames.
Teenagers with more depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation were more likely to report that they identified with Hannah and reported negative emotions while viewing the show.
The authors concluded that while further research is needed to assess the dangers of the show, &#8220;the findings suggest a particular vulnerability to the show&#8217;s themes among youths at risk of suicide,&#8221; and that steps are needed to be taken to ameliorate those problems.
</blockquote>
Of course, none of that suggests &#8220;13 Reasons Why&#8221; is responsible for the spike in suicide rates, but it does reflect a culture that does not take the presence of it seriously enough.

U.S. Suicide Rate Highest In 50 Years, Driving Down Life Expectancy Rate

Suicide

Do not wash and reuse your condoms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned last week.
Yes, apparently there are people who wash and reuse condoms.
&#8220;We say it because people do it: Don&#8217;t wash or reuse #condoms! Use a fresh one for each #sex act,&#8221; reads a tweet from an official government-funded CDC Twitter account.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
We say it because people do it: Don&#8217;t wash or reuse <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/condoms?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#condoms</a>! Use a fresh one for each <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/sex?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#sex</a> act. <a href="https://t.co/o3SPayRf9m">https://t.co/o3SPayRf9m</a> <a href="https://t.co/AwkPqE9YMl">pic.twitter.com/AwkPqE9YMl</a>
&#8212; CDC STD (@CDCSTD) <a href="https://twitter.com/CDCSTD/status/1021541728334094336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
The CDC posted a link on the effectiveness of condoms. &#8220;Correctly using male condoms and other barriers like female condoms and dental dams, every time, can reduce (though not eliminate) the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and viral hepatitis,&#8221; says the agency.
The fairly obvious and extremely gross guidance was met with an abundance of internet reactions. Here are some of the best, or maybe worst responses:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
just turn em inside out
&#8212; nap in finished basement with A/C (@intellegint) <a href="https://twitter.com/intellegint/status/1021923511152111616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8220;Hold on babe, let me just grab one off the clothes line&#8230;&#8221;
&#8212; Charles Hall (@CharlesHaHaHall) <a href="https://twitter.com/CharlesHaHaHall/status/1022071165106442242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
People do that??? <a href="https://t.co/4hsBBoW1vE">pic.twitter.com/4hsBBoW1vE</a>
&#8212; Cecil (@transyurochka) <a href="https://twitter.com/transyurochka/status/1021880103968665604?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
What about using one that someone else has used, or is that not good either?
&#8212; Brian (@drasca00) <a href="https://twitter.com/drasca00/status/1021909155303616512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Ah what would we do without the CDC
&#8212; DP (@DPKY96) <a href="https://twitter.com/DPKY96/status/1022502204404588544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>

CDC Posts Unbelievable (And Gross) Guidance On Condoms

According to the Centers for Disease Control, youth suicide is in the midst of a precipitous and frightening rise. Between 2006 and 2016, suicides by white children between ages 10 and 17 skyrocketed 70%; while black children are less likely than white children to kill themselves, their suicide rate also jumped 77%. And as <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/03/20/teen-suicides-up-70-percent-over-a-decade?utm_content=bufferdca1a&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=theblaze">The Blaze</a> points out, CNN reported last year that &#8220;the suicide rate among girls between the ages of 15 and 19 rose to a 40-year high in 2015.&#8221;
It&#8217;s not just young people. According to Tom Simon, a CDC report author, &#8220;We know that overall in the US, we&#8217;re seeing increases in suicide rates across all age groups.&#8221; As of 2016, suicide levels were at 30-year highs.
So, what in hell is going on?
A few years back, the trendy explanation was economic volatility &#8212; the market crash of 2007-2008 had supposedly created a culture of despair, cured only by suicide. But the economy is booming, and has been growing steadily since 2009. There are those who blame the rise in drugs as well, particularly opioids &#8212; but according to a study from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, drinking, smoking and drug use may be at the lowest levels &#8220;seen in decades,&#8221; as the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-drug-use-teens-20171213-htmlstory.html"> Los Angeles Times</a> reports.
So, what in hell is going on?
There seems to be a crisis of meaning taking place in America. And that crisis of meaning is heavily linked to a decline in religious observance. As <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/where-life-has-meaning-poor-religious-countries/282949/">The Atlantic</a> observed in 2014, citing a study in Psychological Science:
<blockquote>
The researchers found that this factor of religiosity mediated the relationship between a country&#8217;s wealth and the perceived meaning in its citizen&#8217;s lives, meaning that it was the presence of religion that largely accounted for the gap between money and meaning. They analyzed other factors&#8212;education, fertility rates, individualism, and social support (having relatives and friends to count on in troubled times)&#8212;to see if they could explain the findings, but in the end it came down to religion.
</blockquote>
In other words, people need meaning and purpose in life. Our focus on materialism from both the political right and left &#8212; on income inequality and intersectional victimhood from the left, and on tribal affinity and economic deregulation from the right &#8212; ignores the key problem: Americans, particularly young Americans, increasingly don&#8217;t feel that their lives have purpose. This isn&#8217;t a problem that can be cured by redistributing Xboxes. This is a problem of the soul.
So, what&#8217;s to be done? First, we need to get off the weak sauce of &#8220;spirituality without religion.&#8221; Spirituality is an aimless search within for some sort of transcendental values that simply can&#8217;t be found within. Religion is about practice &#8212; it is about acting in moral and ethical ways because your Creator demands it. This doesn&#8217;t mean you have to join an organized religion. It does mean that human beings need individual meaning &#8212; a belief in their holiness and specialness as beings made in the image of God, rather than a cluster of meaningless cells wandering through a cold, empty universe. And it means that human beings need collective meaning as well: brotherhood in this journey. If we can&#8217;t supply those things to our children, it&#8217;s no wonder they&#8217;re in increasing levels of despair, no matter how many tennis lessons we buy them.

CDC: Youth Suicide Skyrockets 70% Over Last Decade. Here&#8217;s Why.

A bogus study is floating around stating that guns are responsible for the mass slaughtering of children and the gun control zealots in the left-wing media are more than happy to promote it.
The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), states that data from 2002-2014 suggest that 19 children a day die or are wounded from guns, which results in almost 1,300 gun deaths and 5,790 wounded per year.
Of those gun deaths, 53% were homicides, 38% were suicides and 6% were accidental deaths. Homicides have declined by 36% from 2007-2014 while suicides have increased by 60% since 2007.
If one were to look at these numbers at face value, it creates the impression that children are dying en masse from guns. The media are obliging, as evident by these headlines:
<ul>
<li>ABC: <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/study-shootings-kill-injure-19-us-children-day-48125146">Shootings kill or injure at least 19 US children each day</a>.</li>
<li>CBS: <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gun-deaths-injuries-suicide-up-among-us-kids-staggering-report-reveals/">Study reveals &#8220;staggering&#8221; toll of guns on U.S. kids</a>.</li>
</ul>
The CBS report also quotes an assistant professor of pediatrics, Dr. Ruth Abaya, as stating, &#8220;Their numbers verified a lot of observations we&#8217;ve seen in regards to gun violence, gun death and unintentional injury to children over the years. It was very telling.&#8221; She also added &#8220;that we&#8217;re going to need a multi-pronged approach to gun violence prevention in this country for it to be affective.&#8221;
Here&#8217;s the problem: the CDC defines &#8220;children&#8221; as those 17 or younger, which is disingenuous because, as National Review&#8216;s Charles Cooke <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/448792/cdc-gun-study-counts-17-year-olds-children">points out</a>, &#8220;most of us don&#8217;t see 16- or 17-year-olds as &#8216;children,&#8217; and that&#8217;s where the deaths are overwhelmingly concentrated.&#8221; Cooke also produced the CDC data that proves his point, with the death rates being measured in per 100,000 people:
<img alt height="648" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/cooke_cdc_graph.jpg" width="720" />
As seen above, the death rate for small children is actually relatively low compared those who are 16 and 17 years old. In fact, according to Cooke, &#8220;Kids ten and under are more than three times as likely to drown as to die from a gunshot (accidental or otherwise), for example, and more than four times as likely to die in a car accident.&#8221; The real problem then appears to be violence among those who are 16 and 17 years old, as Dana Loesch pointed out:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Majority is gang violence by repeat offenders/prohibited possessors but let&#8217;s not clarify our numbers now. <a href="https://t.co/kBYs9772wW">https://t.co/kBYs9772wW</a>
&#8212; Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) <a href="https://twitter.com/DLoesch/status/876753816040996864">June 19, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Obviously, every gun death, particularly that of a child, is one too many. But the notion that small children are being slaughtered in hordes due to guns is fake news.
<a href="https://twitter.com/bandlersbanter">Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter.</a>

cooke_cdc_graph

MEDIA MALPRACTICE: No, Guns Aren&#8217;t Killing Massive Numbers Of Small Kids

Guns

On Tuesday, the U.S. <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/aahealth/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> released a report revealing that the death rate for black Americans has declined by roughly 25% over the last decade and a half. 
But blacks are still living shorter lives than whites, according to the CDC.
Whites are living four years longer than blacks, as younger blacks suffer from conditions usually associated with old age, including diabetes, stroke, and heart disease.
&#8220;The new report included health data and age-adjusted death rates for black and white Americans from 1999 to 2015. Additionally, age-specific data and death rates were examined,&#8221; <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/health/african-american-death-rates-cdc-study/">reports</a> CNN, adding:
The data were analyzed for age-specific trends among four adult age groups: 18 to 34, 35 to 49, 50 to 64, and 65 and older
The data came from the U.S. Census Bureau, the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Vital Statistics System</a> and the CDC&#8217;s <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System</a>.
The data showed that from 1999 to 2015, death rates decreased significantly in both black and white populations, and the racial disparity in death rates between the two populations fell from 33% in 1999 to 16% in 2015.
While young black Americans are still at a higher risk for early death than whites, diseases that once plagued black communities, particularly in impoverished areas, are declining dramatically.
In fact, death rates from HIV have <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/health/african-american-death-rates-cdc-study/">gone down by 80% in 18 to 49-year-olds</a>, according to CDC Division of Population Health epidemiologist Timothy Cunningham.
As lead author of the report, Cunningham pointed out that blacks are still more likely to die of HIV. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes all affect blacks at higher rates than whites as well.
Cunningham outlined potential causes for the racial disparity, including socioeconomic factors.
&#8220;The new report pointed to social and economic conditions, such as poverty, limited access to health care, educational attainment and home ownership, as factors influencing the racial health gaps that remain,&#8221; notes CNN.
With a higher proportion of blacks living in poorer neighborhoods compared to whites, it may be difficult to disentangle the environmental and genetic variables that may be contributing to the the racial disparity.

CDC: Black Americans Are Living Longer But Life Expectancy Still Lower Than Whites

Race

We&#8217;ve all been there. You&#8217;re trying to eat healthy, so you order the chicken wrap at the drive-thru, but when you open the bag, you notice a few curly fries mixed in with the regular fries, and now you&#8217;re over your daily caloric limit. 
That&#8217;s essentially what happened to two people in Florida &#8211; except instead of eating a drive-thru chicken wrap, they were eating a Wal-mart salad, and instead of curly fries, they found a dead bat. 
<img alt height="401" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/salad.jpg" width="534" />
On Saturday, a recall notice went out to all Walmart stores in the Southeastern United States selling the Organic Marketside Spring Mix salads made by Fresh Express. &#8220;Fresh Express was notified that extraneous animal matter was allegedly found in a single container of the salad,&#8221; the recall notice reads. 
Though Marketside wisely failed to specify the freaky creature that inspired the recall, as the Miami Herald <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/living/food-drink/article143606374.html#storylink=cpy" target="_blank">notes</a>, the Center for Disease Control did not. The CDC posted the following statement online:
<blockquote>
Two people in Florida reported eating some of the salad before the bat was found. The bat was sent to the CDC rabies lab for laboratory testing because bats in the United States sometimes have been found to have this disease. The deteriorated condition of the bat did not allow for CDC to definitively rule out whether this bat had rabies.
</blockquote>
&#8220;The CDC did say the risk of rabies transmission is very low, but not zero, so the organization recommended the two eaters of the organic salad begin treatment as if they&#8217;d been exposed to rabies,&#8221; the Herald reports. &#8220;Both report good health so far, according to the CDC.&#8221;
Ironically, &#8220;low, but not zero,&#8221; is the same answer Walmart shoppers gave when asked about the chances of them purchasing the same salad, minus the recall, but with a new chipotle ranch dressing.
Other states affected by the recall include Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Exit thought from ex-sportscaster turned fast food entrepreneur, Champ Kind: 
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kWsWhypMjYM" width="560"></iframe></div>
&#8220;Chicken of the cave.&#8221;

salad

These People Were Eating A Salad. What They Found Inside Is Horrifying.

Walmart

For all the talk about how Donald Trump may be dangerous for the nation, it has all been conjecture &#8211; until now.
<div class="media_embed">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Robert F Kennedy JR says Trump asked him to chair a commission on vaccine safety and he agreed. Has lobbied for vaccine exemptions.
&#8212; Ginger Gibson (@GingerGibson) <a href="https://twitter.com/GingerGibson/status/818897010053042177">January 10, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Kennedy, who is opposed to vaccines, claiming that those containing the element thimerosal may cause autism, which has no scientific evidence to back it up, chortled that Trump had asked him for the meeting, and asked him to &#8220;chair a commission on vaccination safety and scientific integrity.&#8221;
Kennedy wrote a book and promoted a documentary that supported the elimination of vaccines; as <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-meets-with-vaccine-skeptic-robert-kennedy-jr/">CBS News </a> reports:
<blockquote>
&#8220;During one showing of that documentary, according to the Sacramento Bee, Kennedy compared the damage done by vaccines to &#8220;a holocaust.&#8221; &#8220;They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,&#8221; Kennedy said at the screening in 2015. &#8220;This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Kennedy later <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-f-kennedy-jr-apologizes-for-holocaust-comment-in-vaccine-debate/">apologized</a>.
But Trump himself has vacillated on the issue of vaccines, saying in a 2015 GOP primary debate:
<blockquote>
I am totally in favor of vaccines. But I want smaller doses over a longer period of time. Same exact amount, but you take this little beautiful baby, and you pump&#8211;I mean, it looks just like it&#8217;s meant for a horse, not for a child, and we&#8217;ve had so many instances, people that work for me. &#8230; [in which] a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back and a week later had a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.
</blockquote>
He has also tweeted:
<div class="media_embed">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn&#8217;t feel good and changes &#8211; AUTISM. Many such cases!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/449525268529815552">March 28, 2014</a></blockquote>
</div>

<div class="media_embed">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Lots of autism and vaccine response. Stop these massive doses immediately. Go back to single, spread out shots! What do we have to lose.
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/260412905361657856">October 22, 2012</a></blockquote>
</div>
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="http://www.vaccineinformation.org/vaccines-save-lives/">all strongly support</a> protecting children with recommended vaccinations. To eliminate vaccines would be truly dangerous; as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="v">noted</a>:
<blockquote>
In 1974, Japan had a successful pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination program, with nearly 80% of Japanese children vaccinated. That year only 393 cases of pertussis were reported in the entire country, and there were no deaths from pertussis. But then rumors began to spread that pertussis vaccination was no longer needed and that the vaccine was not safe, and by 1976 only 10% of infants were getting vaccinated. In 1979 Japan suffered a major pertussis epidemic, with more than 13,000 cases of whooping cough and 41 deaths.
</blockquote>
The CDC <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm">added</a> that the success of vaccines protected the U.S. population:
<blockquote>
Before the middle of the last century, diseases like whooping cough, polio, measles, Haemophilus influenzae, and rubella struck hundreds of thousands of infants, children and adults in the U.S.. Thousands died every year from them. As vaccines were developed and became widely used, rates of these diseases declined until today most of them are nearly gone from our country. Nearly everyone in the U.S. got measles before there was a vaccine, and hundreds died from it each year. Today, most doctors have never seen a case of measles. More than 15,000 Americans died from diphtheria in 1921, before there was a vaccine. Only one case of diphtheria has been reported to CDC since 2004.
An epidemic of rubella (German measles) in 1964-65 infected 12½ million Americans, killed 2,000 babies, and caused 11,000 miscarriages. In 2012, 9 cases of rubella were reported to CDC.
</blockquote>
The CDC concluded:
<blockquote>
The United States has very low rates of vaccine-preventable diseases, but this isn&#8217;t true everywhere in the world. Only one disease &#8212; smallpox &#8212; has been totally erased from the planet. Polio no longer occurs in the U.S., but it is still paralyzing children in several African countries. More than 350,000 cases of measles were reported from around the world in 2011, with outbreaks in the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and Europe. In that same year, 90% of measles cases in the U.S. were associated with cases imported from another country. Only the fact that most Americans are vaccinated against measles prevented these clusters of cases from becoming epidemics.
Disease rates are low in the United States today. But if we let ourselves become vulnerable by not vaccinating, a case that could touch off an outbreak of some disease that is currently under control is just a plane ride away.
</blockquote>
Trump seems to be swayed by anecdotal evidence rather than actual facts. In some cases that might be tolerable, but there are millions of lives at stake, and this is no time to accede to those wanting to take us back to the era of losing thousands of children to diseases we can currently prevent.

Dangerous: Trump Consulting Anti-Vaxxers

Donald Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Vaccines

President Obama would rather disarm Americans than allow them to fight their rapists. That&#8217;s the takeaway message from a stunning exchange at Thursday night&#8217;s gun control townhall event on CNN. Kimberly Corban, a 2006 rape survivor, asked Obama why he wanted to crack down on guns when women can use guns to protect themselves from rapists:
<blockquote>
As a survivor of rape and now a mother to two small children, you know it seems like being able to purchase a firearm of my choosing and being able to carry that where me and my family are &#8211; it seems like my basic responsibility as a parent at this point. I have been unspeakably victimized once already and I refused to let that happen again to myself or my kids. So why can&#8217;t your administration see that these restrictions that you&#8217;re putting to make it harder for me to own a gun or harder for me to take that where I need to be is actually just making my kids and I less safe?
</blockquote>
After pattering on about his sympathy for Corban and his unearned and patronizing pride for her &#8211; no tears for her rape, notably &#8211; Obama denied that any of his actions would make it more difficult for her to obtain a weapon. He completely ignored that he, like other Democrats, fights concealed carry weapons permits at every turn. Then he got to his real point: women don&#8217;t deserve guns, because they are incapable of defending themselves:
<blockquote>
There are always questions as to whether or not having a firearm in the home protects you from that kind of violence&#8230;What is true is that you have to be pretty well-trained in order to fire a weapon against someone who is assaulting you and catches you by surprise. What is also true is always that possibility that firearm in the home leads to a tragic accident.
</blockquote>
So, just to be clear, the President of the United States told a rape victim that she doesn&#8217;t need a firearm in the home because she probably won&#8217;t be able to defend herself from a rapist anyway, and one of her kids might shoot himself.
There&#8217;s that famed Obama sensitivity at work!
First off, as the Centers for Disease Control <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15941-cdc-study-ordered-by-obama-contradicts-white-house-anti-gun-narrative">has reported</a>, &#8220;Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.&#8221; Second, the chances of your child being killed in the home by a gun accidentally are about the same as the chances your child will drown in a bathtub. And Americans are approximately 51 times more likely to die of <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/10/08/cdc-accidental-poisoning-death-51-times-more-likely-than-accidental-shooting-death/">accidental poisoning</a> than accidental shooting.
Beyond all of that, the morality of depriving a woman of her one shot to prevent her own rape because you doubt whether she is responsible enough to hide her gun from her toddler is mind-bogglingly patronizing and patriarchal. Obama can&#8217;t pretend sympathy for a rape victim, then suggest she shouldn&#8217;t even have a gun in the home, let alone in the street, to stop her own victimization.
The left&#8217;s myopic focus on guns rather than villains has costs. Those costs are borne by the victims of villains who target those who can&#8217;t defend themselves.

Obama to Rape Victim: You Probably Won&#8217;t Be Able To Use a Gun To Stop Your Own Rape Anyway

Barack Obama

Gun Control

Rape

A new Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study hypocritically blames Americans for their intolerance while at the same time finally acknowledging that there exists an &#8220;alarming&#8221; rate of STDs among homosexuals.
While the government report allows, &#8220;While anyone can become infected with an STD, young people and gay and bisexual men are at greatest risk,&#8221; the foreword to the study has the gall to state, &#8220;Indeed, there are many obstacles to effective prevention efforts. The first hurdle will be to confront the reluctance of American society to openly confront issues surrounding sexuality and STDs.&#8221;
If there is one institution that has been reluctant to acknowledge the consequences of homosexual behavior, it is the federal government. For example, which institution forced hospitals to forego screening of homosexuals blood for donation purposes? Only last December, the Food and Drug Administration<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/health/fda-lifting-ban-on-gay-blood-donors.html?_r=0"> announced</a> it would trash the lifetime prohibition on blood donation by gay and bisexual men, only forcing them to aver they had not had sex with a man in the past year, a pronouncement that could easily be a lie.
Just how reluctant has the government been to acknowledge the truth about homosexual behavior? Although the CDC report admits that in the case of syphilis, &#8220;Men who have sex with men (MSM) account for 83 percent of male cases where the sex of the sex partner is known,&#8221; six years ago, in an August 2009 article in the gay newspaper The Washington Blade, an article was <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2009/09/109798/">titled</a>, &#8220;Gay, bi men 50 times more likely to have HIV; CDC reports hard data at national HIV prevention conference.&#8221;
The CDC report, discussing gonorrhea, states, &#8220;During 2010&#8211;2014, the rate among men increased 27.9%, while the rate among women decreased 4.1%.The magnitude of the increase among men compared with a decrease among women suggests either increased transmission or increased case ascertainment (e.g., through increased extra-genital screening) among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (collectively referred to as MSM).&#8221;
Peter LaBarbera, founder of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, spoke to LifeSiteNews, and asserted, &#8220;It&#8217;s time for policymakers and pundits to acknowledge and deal with the elephant in the room: engaging in homosexual behavior can be very dangerous to one&#8217;s health.&#8221; He added, &#8220;If such overwhelming evidence pointed to any aberrant behavior other than homosexuality as so extremely high-risk, there would be a full-scale government-corporate mobilization urging people not to practice that behavior &#8211; or even leveling sanctions against it,&#8221; Yet homosexualism is celebrated, and promoted &#8211; even to young children.&#8221;
The myth of homosexual monogamy was <a href="http://advindicate.com/articles/3022">shattered</a> long ago; a large-scale study by Bell and Weinberg in the 1970s found 43% of white male homosexuals had had sex with 500 or more partners, 28% had had sex with 1,000 or more partners. In a 1997 study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in the Journal of Sex Research, &#8220;the modal range for number of sexual partners was 101-500.&#8221; 10.2% to 15.7% stated they had had between 501 and 1,000 partners.
<blockquote>
&#8220;It&#8217;s time for policymakers and pundits to acknowledge and deal with the elephant in the room: engaging in homosexual behavior can be very dangerous to one&#8217;s health.&#8221;
Peter LaBarbera, founder of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality
</blockquote>
In its <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/factsheets/std-trends-508.pdf">fact sheet</a>, the CDC has the gall to start blaming the American public, rather than homosexuals for their behavior, stating, &#8220;Additionally, complex issues like homophobia and stigma can also make it difficult for gay and bisexual men to find culturally-sensitive and appropriate care and treatment.&#8221;
The federal government and the Obama Administration have been assiduous in their efforts to hide the biological effects of homosexual behavior, but scientific truths eventually win in the end.

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Articles tagged with CDC

4 People In Massachusetts Have Contracted Eastern Equine Encephalitis, One Has Died

Frightening Drug-Resistant Infection Cropping Up Around The World

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CDC Posts Unbelievable (And Gross) Guidance On Condoms

CDC: Youth Suicide Skyrockets 70% Over Last Decade. Here’s Why.

MEDIA MALPRACTICE: No, Guns Aren’t Killing Massive Numbers Of Small Kids

CDC: Black Americans Are Living Longer But Life Expectancy Still Lower Than Whites

These People Were Eating A Salad. What They Found Inside Is Horrifying.

Dangerous: Trump Consulting Anti-Vaxxers

Obama to Rape Victim: You Probably Won’t Be Able To Use a Gun To Stop Your Own Rape Anyway

CDC Finally Acknowledges: Homosexual Behavior Can Lead To More STDs. Duh.