How the Contagion Spreads
Partisanship weakens the immune system and can lead to spread of bad ideas.

I have noted on more than one occasion that instead of RFK, Jr.’s conspiratorial views on vaccines leading to his rejection, he is infecting the GOP with his nonsense. Since Kennedy appears now as a Trump-appointed member of the team, his newly acquired co-partisans are far more receptive to his nonsense than they ever would have been when he was perceived as belonging to the other team.
And just like diseases often enter the population through those with weaker immune systems, Kennedy’s conspiracy contagion enters the body politic through the weak-minded.
To wit (or, perhaps, the lack thereof), the senior Senator from my state, Tommy “Coach” Tuberville (R-AL).
So, yes, Tuberville has never said anything to make me believe that he isn’t at the bottom of the intelligence ladder in the chamber. As such, one might be inclined to dismiss him. But the reality is, he is one of 100 Senators, and one of 50 needed to confirm Kennedy to HHS (Vance would break any tie). As such he is influential (other co-partisans will listen to him, and some of them will catch the contagion in question) and he has a literal direct power over the outcome.
The more people who listen to this nonsense and believe even part of it leads us down a road of dangerous skepticism over public health policies and specifically the mitigation of disease.
There is a lot to unpack from his statement, but here are a couple of thoughts.
First, there is the assertion that somehow the current approach to vaccinations is “guessing” and not science. But, of course, science is what is guiding all of this. ( But, yes, Senator, let’s “Do facts”).
Second, there is the suggestion that children just get too many vaccinations. I think that this is, in part, counting different doses to amplify the number. But from a propaganda POV, throwing out a number could make many people say, wow, that sounds like a lot! I wonder if it is too many? But, again, the issue is not the number, it is the efficacy and knowable side effects. You know, because of the science of it all.
I also note the number of shot issues, because clearly is it a talking point that sticks in the minds of people like Tuberville, because I have heard it repeated more than once in similar conversations.
Third, the assertion that everyone knows someone who was perfectly healthy and died from the COVID vaccine is a dangerous falsehood. And, of course, that statement alone should underscore that Senator Coach should not be trusted.
We always have misinformation (if not straight-up conspiracy theories) in our politics and society, but we are currently mainlining them into our system via the leadership of the Republican Party. The damage is going to be immense and long-lasting. At a bare minimum, it is damaging to critical thinking and basic knowledge. But if it does lead to changes in public trust in vaccinations, let alone actual changes to public health policy, it will lead to more sick and/or dead people than was necessary.
This all, I would note, a trip down Unreality and Propaganda Lane in a way the sews the seeds of distrust in experts and is something that Uncle Vlad would be most proud to see.
If I had a time machine, I’d use it to send vaccine-skeptical Americans back to the time before vaccines to witness the suffering and death of the diseases the vaccines now prevent. Apparently there aren’t enough people alive today who knew someone living in an iron lung, or disfigured by smallpox.
Tuberville’s an imbecile and always has been. FFS, he couldn’t even name the three branches of the government to which he was elected to serve.
The GOP contempt for true expertise damages public trust in critical thinking and basic knowledge. The GOP memory-holing of Trump’s criminal acts and their embrace of a convicted felon as the head of the Republican party undermines the rule of law.
Trump hasn’t even taken office, yet the damage to these foundational elements of good governance is already done by virtue of his being elected. The long and immense damage is already inescapable. Trump hasn’t seated a single cabinet member or judge, hasn’t championed passage of a single law, and hasn’t yet signed an executive order, but the country is screwed for decades nevertheless.
I lack the time right now to go into detail, but there is simply no such thing as too many vaccines. TL;DR, what the vaccines do, the regular course of interaction with the environment, including eating, also does every single day. Namely causes reactions with the innate immune system and the adaptive immune system. This happens all the time.
The only difference, is vaccines then offer long lasting protection against diseases.
It’s perfectly understandable that Republicans are skeptical of science and experts. After all, if the trusted experts they’d have to raise taxes and cut oil and coal production.
It’s a fairly easy choice. You can have too many vaccines or too many severe viral infections. Too many lives saved or too many deaths. Too many people walking or too much paralysis. Too many kids with intact brains or too many kids with encephalitis. We know which side to which the GOP is now leaning.
Steve
Antivaccine idiocy had a foothold in the crunchy granola types for a number of years. It wasn’t until it was combined with pathological libertarianism and groupthink, misinformation spreading which drives MAGA, that it found a lot of vulnerable hosts in which to flourish.
One presumes that the power-brokers in Alabama that recruited him to run knew full well that he was little more than a mentally deficient ex-jock that looks good in a suit. Yet they decided that’s what they needed, and talked him into running*, and then threw their weight behind him. It’s interesting to contemplate why they felt their interests were best served by having a moron as a US Senator.
*I presume it wasn’t hard to talk him into because, college football coach. Has there ever been a collection of Dunning-Krueger warriors more distilled and refined than college football coaches?
@Kathy:
Yes, but what you’re forgetting is that the flu/covid/measles vaccine is more dangerous than the flu/covid/measles itself because it is artificial.
If it’s natural that means it’s healthy! Like, for instance, v. cholerae and y. pestis. These build your immune system in a fun, natural, and healthy way. You simply can’t get that with artificial vaccines.
I’d love to explain more but I am already late for my scrotum tanning session.
I’m not sure who said this but they were absolutely correct …
If Covid left everyone absolutely healthy, but with grotesque boils and disfiguring and permanent boils on their face, everyone would have been stampeding to get the jab.
From what I can see, the GOP is mainstreaming (mainlining?) the general working public’s mistrust of expertise. Mistrust in science and expertise also has been a long-term project of the fossil fuel industry, who, I feel sure, has paid “black art” PR firms a bundle of money to carry out this project.
We focus on polticians, like Tuberville. But to solve this problem, we have to focus on working-class people, why they are suspicious, and how trust can be rebuilt. In short, ignore people like Tommy Tuberville.
Weirdly enough, on this particular front, Mitch McConnell is also an ally. He is a polio survivor. I only learned this a couple of days ago. He is very definitely anti-anti-vax.
Politics makes strange bedfellows.
As a more practical matter:
You may want to consider redoing your childhood vaccinations as an adult. It turns out a lot of them have a significant chance of wearing off after 30-40 years. In the past, there was enough herd immunity that this wasn’t a big issue, but as anti-vax views become more common, that may not longer be a safe assumption.
I personally got titer tests to check my immune response to both measles and Hepatitis B, and they came back negative, so I redid both my MMR and Hep B series
@MarkedMan:
Their interests are brand reinforcement, no?
The GOP brand now is experts = bad. Ergo, government would run better by tech bros, businessmen, people leaders from other fields like coaching, TV stars, and podcasters. It’s the Cliff Clavin Party – government by know-it-alls who are really know-nothings.
@Steven Taylor
Thank you. Every time I “go there,” I get hit with the “elitist” charge. Somehow being informed by data and outcomes is “elitist,” aside from the reality that that is how our species has survived to this very day.
People like RFKjr, Tuberville, and the rest seem to think science is only done in laboratories and written up in boring text books. They don’t realize the process of “science” is inextricably built into human behavior and directs everything we do except when we are being stupid.
If “science” wasn’t so wedded into our being, we could tell Tuberville to “go jump off a cliff,” and he very likely would, especially with the right incentive. But here’s the thing, Tuberville, RFKjr and gaggle, are telling our society to jump off a cliff. And if we call them out on it, we are dismissed as “elitist.”
There’s no logic, no reason in any of the MAGA-verse beyond the doing whatever is required to feed pathological aggregation of pathological power.
We spent 2 million years surviving off of our rational ability to discriminate among datasets, selecting rational outcomes of survival and sustainability, building on a now massive database of trial and error, to chuck it all away for “clicks and lolz.” All that public education, all that mathematics, all that science, all that accumulated sense of “the Commons”… down the drain.
P.S. I know a lot of people. And none of them have died from Covid vaccines. The military pumped me full of vaccines and I’m still here and going strong. I’d like to stick with the data-driven outcome format.
@Jay L Gischer: Yep, the GOP has been propagandizing anti-elitism, anti-experts, and anti-intellectualism for a long time, and they’re reaping the rewards. Too bad we all suffer.
@Jay L Gischer:
Or McConnell is epically craven. “Politics as usual” is far too benign an excuse for what ol’ Mitch has done regarding Trumpism.
@Stormy Dragon: That’s a good idea….did you have them run the tests for titers at your doctor’s office? We have a clinic and a public health office….public health is where I’ve normally taken my kids for their shots, not sure if they can test for titers, though. Guess I’ll ask!
@MarkedMan:
I take this as some dim self-awareness on Tuberville’s part. When he was recruited as a senate candidate he would have known that:
1. His future success as a coach in the SEC would be severely limited while Nick Saban was coaching
2. Nick Saban wasn’t going anywhere at that time
3. The same boosters who fund SEC football programs also fund senate campaigns
And thus we wind up with a dangerous idiot in the senate.
@Jax:
The titer tests were for insurance, who wouldn’t cover the vaccinations for an adult who already had the vaccinations without the test (which was weird anyways because the titer tests cost almost as much as the vaccines, so they aren’t saving anything even if it comes back positive)
Any standard blood lab should be able to run the immune tests along with your normal annual blood tests.
@Scott F.: Sure, but you can have moderately to highly intelligent phonies like Gaetz or J.D. Vance to parrot the party line. What was going on with the Alabama power brokers that they chose such an obviously stupid person as their Senator?
I said it was interesting to speculate, and my speculation runs towards this: They are engaged in something that requires a Senator friend at times, but it is bad enough that they didn’t want that Senator friend to know what they were doing. Someone on the order of a Gaetz or Vance could have been bought initially for realitvely small amounts, but then would have figured it out, giving leverage over the powerbrokers and then raising the price to stay bought.
Pure speculation, but interesting to think about.
I just wanted to note that in Kennedy’s statement, as quoted here, that word “possibly” appears as a GIANT hedge. A complete weasel-out. Even Kennedy knows that he’s way out over his skis on it.
I mean, this is what I think of as “consultant-speak”. Trump does it *all* the time. I mean the phrase, “people are saying X” means “X is not true”. If X were true, he’d just say it, not say, “people are saying”.
I’m old enough to have had the mumps. Chicken pox. Mononucleosis. Having the mumps was one of my first actual memories. I distinctly remember how painful it was to swallow. I remember my lower face swelled up.
In the new regime, influencers will be pushing the mumps as a weight loss strategy. Measles scarification as a statement body modification for the hipsters. Widespread polio will increase acceptance for the differently-abled, and would goose American made manufacture of the production of needed iron lungs.
Small pox would reduce our carbon footprint.
I never expected to have to face an anti-vaccination movement against preventable childhood diseases that will kill many kids from my elected government. Strange days, indeed.
@de stijl: I also had measles, mumps and chickenpox, pre vaccine. No fun. My parents lived through the polio era so they would have gotten any vaccine they could get (and I continue that tradition).
But I’ll also offer my oft-repeated warning tale. We are always focused on the direct deaths due to these childhood diseases. But there are other, much more prevalent problems. I was born in 1960 right in the beginning of a nationwide measles outbreak. When I turned 18 I went to Rochester Institute of Technology, which is also the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The Dorms that were built as part of that are specially wired for strobe lights as well as alarm bells and a few other accommodations. Built in the 60’s and early 70’s, they were made to accommodate three times the number of deaf students who were anticipated in those years, because starting in 1979 they were going to get the “Rubella Bump”, i.e. the children of mothers who got the measles while they were pregnant. These children were much more likely to have birth defects of all types, not just deafness.
A friend of mine got shingles really bad. He got lesions inside his eye socket. It hurt everytime his eye moved. I cannot even imagine the pain, the experience of that. That’s really disturbing.
I’ve had chicken pox. That could happen to me if I got an unlucky roll.
One would think that preventing preventable childhood diseases would be pretty high on any government’s to-do list.
The embrace of antivaxxers is an odd combination with the usual fascist mantra that (the right) people need to be having more kids.
@MarkedMan:
As with Reagan, W, and Trump, establishment GOPs need someone dumb enough to believe their nonsense, but with enough populist charisma to get elected. In Alabama having been a football coach will serve nicely to get him elected.
@Stormy Dragon:
I can’t give enough thumbs up.
A major factor to consider, is that measles and other childhood diseases are far more severe for adults.
In fact, it’s something I’ve been looking at, on and off, since 2021. I’m having trouble finding the shots. Some also have a hefty price, which of course would be far cheaper than contracting even one such disease).
“Partisanship weakens the immune system and can lead to spread of bad ideas.”
Coming from the most partisan blog I read.
You can’t make this shit up.
@Jack:
Serious question Jack, what other blogs do you read? It’s always helpful to understand that.
Which, ironically, how I feel about JKF Jr’s positions on vaccines. Or Tuberville’s position.
Of course, the key difference is that we’re just cranks on the internet and one is a sitting Senator and the other is *check notes* Trump’s pick to head Health and Human Services. Now look, I know you don’t support Trump or something like that, but man do little comments like this detract from the fact that Trump nominated an anti-vaxxer to help lead our nations approach to health.
But of course, your post really gets to that partisanship issue doesn’t it. You apparently can’t bring yourself to critique anyone who you feel any attachment to.
A quick search tells me about 230 million people in the US alone took two COVID shots. If the death rate from the vaccine were real (it’s not), and it were as high as 0.5%, we’d see excess deaths in the amount of (drum roll) of 1.15 million.
The bodies shouldn’t be hard to find. Or they wouldn’t be if they existed.
Modern conspiracy theories need merely be asserted.
@Jack: As usual, no positive defense of anything.
And a statement that tries to sound biting that really means nothing.
Tommy Tuberville … consistently substandard …
I’m old enough to remember when in 1970 Richard Nixon nominated a Florida judge, Harold Carswell, to the Supreme Court. Even by the standard of the day Carwell was ‘undistinguished’ and opposition to his nomination emerged quickly. and Carswell subsequently withdrew from the process. For me the most memorable takeaway from that episode were words by Nebraska Republican Senator Roman Hruska in suport of Carwell:
The bar is set pretty damned low these days.
Guys like Tuberville clearly meet the Hruska Standard, albeit for the Senate.
The House is replete with Hruska’s people.
@Jay L Gischer:
You are ignoring the fact that working-class people are suspicious and distrustful because they are being told to be by the sources they do trust — which include (Cthulhu help us) Tommy Tuberville.
It isn’t an accident that so many Americans distrust government, science, and experts when billions of dollars have been spent on the message that government, science, and expertise are not trustworthy (at best) and possibly even conspiring against Ordinary People. Figuring out how to counter that is what we should be focusing on, now that the GOP has successfully devolved education to those same ignorant masses.
@Jay L Gischer:
Then I hope he enjoys remembering, every day of the remainder of his pathetic life, that he personally is responsible for RFK Jr. being in a position to sabotage vaccination programs for many years to come.
Dumb people are easily manipuable.
@DrDaveT: Oh hell no. I’m not ignoring the difficulties. Just not mentioning them in one brief post.
I have one friend who, when we talk about the vaccination stuff, says, “All those Trump voters can die of all those horrible diseases for all I care, and it would fix the problem.” Of course, they would give the diseases to lots of other people, too. And life would generally be worse for everyone.
I don’t think working-class white people are unreachable. I think that so many of my political fellow-travellers, though, have never figured out how to reach them, or have never seen any reason to try. That’s ok at one level. Not everybody is a politician.
Interestingly enough, if you’re on the corporate right, you have lots of marketing/sales types, who have reached these people. Who have persuaded them. Which means I don’t think they are unreachable. I think they have been reached. They have been persuaded. Which means we could do that too.
We are now in a situation where each and every one of us who posts on any social media is a de-facto politician.
Mostly highly-educated people speak to other highly educated people, me included. It’s more interesting that way. To wit, this blog. I hope to Dog that some people better at this than me are trying to figure this out.
@Jay L Gischer: I have a more cynical take than you do. I really do believe that for a significant portion of our commentariat, working class people–particularly WC whites–are only considered at all to the extent that they mow our lawns, sweep our floors, check out our groceries, and deliver stuff to us. And vote Democratic. Beyond that working class people can ESAD for all we care.
Reach out? Seriously? Another Cletus safari? Who are you some prog?
@Rob1:
Yeah, I’m getting really tired of having to explain that I don’t think it’s elitist to expect surgeons to have successfully graduated from medical school. “That’s different!” usually gets the tacit assumptions out into the open…
@Matt Bernius:
Matt –
I’m not questioning peoples policy preferences. You, and all the people here have the right to your opinions. What I am questioning is this notion of “fact and logic driven,” or “non-partisanship” at OTB. Just look at various threads. Look at this thread. Essays and threads here are largely (paraphrased) “Republicans are bad, Republicans are evil idiots, Trump is an idiot/immoral cad, and you Mr (Commenter) are an idiot. To be lectured about partisanship is ludicrous.
Further, so many of the criticisms of (Trump) I would agree with, but the selective outrage vis-a-vis other pols, including so many Dem politicians, is staggering. (Adam Schiff???? Seriously??
Bill “I did not have sex with the intern pool” Clinton???? Hillary “Bleach Bit/Dossier” Clinton???? Nancy “The Savant Stock Picker” Pelosi?? )
Politicians are who they are. Whores. It seems to me people should grow up and realize its not “tastes great, less filling.” This blog seems to be filled with people who are just fanboys who believe their side occupies the intellectual and moral high ground. That’s at one level arrogant, and at another, juvenile and laughable.
You asked about blogs. As I have said, and perhaps surprises some, OTB is my first read, although it takes a while to gain momentum in the morning. I want to know what you yokels (joke) are saying.
The best political blog in the world in my opinion is Dave Schuler’s Glittering Eye. (He would call it an analysis blog) Practically a national treasure. An unabashed Democrat, I disagree with much he says, but agree with so much as well. He is the model of fact driven, logical and understated commentary. Through the strength of his arguments he has changed a number of my views over the years.
I read Hot Air. Considered center right. Who knows.
Just the News is a great site. No bullshit. Just the facts.
If I want red meat right commentary I go to Ace of Spades. I want to know what the far right is thinking as well as the far left.
For legal, Jon Turley. I note that Dr Taylor called out Turley a while ago as a turncoat hack. The truth is that his reputation is impeccable. Its unassailable except on MSNBC etc. When you have devolved into calling Jon Turley a hack you need to look in the mirror.
I drift around to others. Note: when I hear anyone quoting Raw Story or Bulwark I immediately tune out. Those people are bat shit crazy. The recent election is empirical evidence of that.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Perhaps you might consider I have absolutely no intent or goal of being “biting.” I’m observing. Matt asked me a legitimate question. I don’t know if my response will make it through the screen.
The number of vaccinations is irrelevant. What’s relevant is viral load (which is lower) and number of sites the immune system has to home in one (also lower). We are using far more narrowly targeted vaccines these days, which reduces any strain on the immune system.
It wasn’t that long ago that John Cornyn was the dumbest guy in the Senate. Ron Johnson lapped Cornyn, and Tuberville makes Johnson look like Einstein.
@Charley in Cleveland:
Are you sure about John Cornyn? I don’t like his ideology but he never seemed dumb.
Now Ron Johnson, I agree with you, clearly dumb but not close to being Tommy Tuberville level dumb. Tuberville is probably the dumbest guy I’ve seem in the Senate in a long time.
The House is a different ballgame.
I think that, on a per-capita basis, the mediocrity and dumbness in The House is ahead (behind?) The Senate. Honestly, I’m not sure who would win (lose?) a dumb-off match between Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene AND Ron Johnson amd Tommy Tuberville.
I will repeat:
All Republicans are liars. Their platform consists of bigotries and resentments which are socially unacceptable, so they need to lie constantly to conceal this fact.
Since their platform has nothing to do with actual governance but is about inflicting punishment on hated outgroups, they really don’t care one way or another about policy; They can be for or against vaccination, or disaster aid, or infrastructure funding, they don’t care really.
@Hal_10000:
To be clear: I am not saying that the number issue is valid. I am saying it is the kind of thing that can sound valid, especially for people looking for a reason to agree.
@al Ameda: I agree about Cornyn. I have never thought he was dumb.
And I think Tuberville might be the dumbest member of Congress.
@Jack: Note that I freed your comments from moderation, so I am not blocking you from commenting.
But I am not sure what your point is. If you want a specific kind of blog, feel free to create your own.
I tried to treat you seriously, but it was pointless.
Read OTB or don’t. Whatever psychological need this place fulfills for you, enjoy.
But otherwise, whatever, dude.
@Jack:
I’m not sure where we ever promised to be “non-partisan”–or at least where I ever did. I also have tried my best, where it made sense to compliment past policies from the other side (see for example my repeated praise for the First Step Act) and be critical of Democratic policies (or progressive overreach) where it made sense to me. More so than you have ever been critical of Trump or Republicans, I will note.
The fact you think that OTB is somehow more partisan than Hot Air and Ace of Spades tells us a lot more about your biases than anything else.
Also, you don’t think that Hot Air engages in selective outrage? Your reading comprehension clearly needs work.
Finally, we get to:
You have repeatedly written this for over a year and never name anything beyond… possibly, his crassness. Further when we have called specifically out things like anti-immigrant rhetoric, his fundamentally misunderstanding of tariffs, and repeated lies about his ability to bring down prices, you break your back to not-defend-but-still defend those policies.
So I call bullshit. Once again.
Or rather, strategic use of selective outrage to never address any issues on your side of the aisle.
Glad to hear you can’t quit us. Though personally, this sounds more like an addiction than anything else. I’m not sure why you would want to hate read us each morning, but I guess we’re kinda like Howard Stern in that way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6xu-J_Dmc
@Steven L. Taylor:
For the record, I was the one who put Jack in a moderator review jail a few weeks ago. It was during a time when he was being particularly petulant and disruptive. BTW, he promised he was rage quitting the site after that particular incident… but like he said, he can’t quit us apparently.
Generally speaking, everything he’s posted since being on moderation has been a little more civil. I think he’s close to getting let out again. On the other hand, then someone will question his intelligence and his belief that he is somehow above partisanship and he’ll go into one of his emotionally disregulated “HOW DARE YOUR QUESTION WHAT I WRITE!!!!” I’m a PRINCIPAL INVESTMENT BANKER*, and I know everything about finance and law (because TURLEY!), and you all are brain-dead liberals who are always wrong….” and will probably end up back in detention again.
* – BTW, Jack, FWIW understand the difference with a principal in private equity (or whatever type investment work you do) and a principal investment banker, but I’m taking a page from your book of trolling and choosing the one that I know will push your buttons. Love you too pookums.
Just the News? Sean Hannity’s favorite reporter??
@Steve V: I assume anyone who praises John Solomon as a legitimate journalist has their tongue firmly in their cheek. Solomon proved too unprofessional not only for The Hill, but even for Fox. A sample of his record (per Wikipedia):