I’m waiting for someone to answer a phone. I have it on speaker, since I’m up to five minutes of brr-brr brr-brr. The ringing beats the dumbo-gumbo service announcements intercut with upbeat (!) music when on hold. I never feel very upbeat listening to that hold music, unless feeling Hulk smash counts. It might.
In the interim, I need to start keeping more thorough notes for this thing. I’ve been pretty much sitting on twitter the last couple of days (or rather, the spare time therein), and could I possibly stop qualifying every damn thing I say?
Ahem. Sitting on twitter, check. Laughing so hard I can’t breathe, check. Wanting to vomit and bawling at the next scroll, check. The feed from Gaza and the current atrocities is being documented with photos of dead children. I’ll pass by on the effectiveness of shock in transmitting a message, because really, I’m not shocked by this, I’m hurt by it - and I can’t do much but protest. And cry. Well, whoop-de-doo. Not to denigrate my own feelings, but it isn’t very useful. And worse, I’ve seem some snide commentary on people switching off on photos of dead children from Gaza, but not from continued no-news about asylum seekers. Yes good, let’s all feel smug and superior about our humanist cred. Or, let’s not and say we did. Or just not.
Given civilian bombings, planes full of people being shot down and the supposed end of the world the Abbott government is trying to save us from (yeah, I’m not seeing it either), perhaps the current thing on facebook isn’t such an odd duck. The idea is that you post three positive things per day and nominate three of your friends to do the same. I’ll confess I’m not nominating any friends, because I don’t share my toys. Strangely or not, my facebook and twitter worlds rarely collide, so one of yesterday’s positives was a great way to share some of the fun of twitter, to wit: #RemoveALetterRuinABand.
My personal favourites:
- Crowded Hose
- Dire Traits
- Taking Heads
Since I have strange associative thinking, somehow the last one lead me to thinking about a link I saw from an anti-vaccination something-or-other. I didn’t read past the first few lines because I was tired and then angry (I know, I was shocked too - I so rarely get angry, right? Right? RIGHT?). Possibly I fancied taking a few heads, which is pretty boring linkage, but so it goes.
The last few go-rounds from anti-vax palaver have included statements around how “Big Pharma” want us to vaccinate our kids because they make money out of it.
It’s an odd argument to make in Australia, where the majority of children’s diseases are on the immunisation schedule and therefore covered by Medicare. The ones that aren’t covered, as chickenpox wasn’t when small lad was getting his shots, can be paid for by anyone wanting the vaccine.
You could, if you really felt like it, start arguing that Medicare is paid for by us, and thus zee BP’s are still making a quid, but seriously? Or #srsly? Big drug companies are essentially businesses - built around the idea of providing a product and getting paid money for it. They may also be the source of all evil multi-layered conspiracies against the rest of us schlubs (if that role hasn’t been taken by Google), but I digress.
Some of the arguments against the BP’s have the sense that several tens of exclamation marks were removed in the final edit - for tone, there’s nothing like shrill hysteria to make me listen, no ma’am - and boy does it make me tired. Some of that shrillness is probably derived from the stridency of the anti-vax arguments themselves, which I’m going to avoid for the moment beyond a something-to-declare statement at the end of this post.
That BP’s have little or no regard for their customers is nothing new - and here I link a transcript from an episode of 4 Corners from 2004 - A Bitter Pill. Worth the read.
But the mercenary nature of capitalism and the possible profiteering by pharmaceutical companies is an odd argument for refusing vaccination for either yourself or your children, particularly where the vaccines are free.
If your choice is to forgo vaccination, then whether the vaccine costs anyone money is completely moot. Your answer is no, so you won’t be handing over the loot. If your next argument is you shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s anything via Medicare, then let me introduce you to society and wow that’s the kind of mercenary thinking that Big Pharma does, isn’t it? Sun Tzu might have said, “To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy”, but whose aim in life is it to be a turd?
I can get behind the idea that the behaviour of Big Pharma and their attitudes towards research and development need adjustment. Most forward R&D (such as an HIV vaccine) is not done by companies, but by independent research funded by taxpayers, which is simply insane. They’re making a product for sale, ergo they are responsible for costs in R&D, or at least the lion’s share. Independent testing and research is crucial, but shouldn’t be driving directions for companies whose livelihood is in providing medicine.
And here is where I have the real problem with anti-vaccination arguments using Big Pharma. In arguing either for or against vaccination, the connection is counter-intuitive: “I’m not vaccinating my children because you’re just making money off it!”.
Err, they’re supposed to make money off of it. I’d rather pay a drug company to make drugs than than Wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop from Aberdeen, whose qualifications consist of being an offscreen toilet cleaner in an episode of Blackadder Goes Forth.
As a secondary argument (possibly quaternary), it must be nice to not have to repeat yourself with your reasons for refusing to vaccinate. But it’s weak, and it undermines the other stuff.
Something to Declare? Thank you, I will. I studied immunology and microbiology at uni, work in health, and get the point of epidemiology. We’re vaccinated in our house, and I fundamentally disagree with you not vaccinating your children: the risk is not only to you, but to other people you may infect. That risk rarely seems to come up as anything in anti-vax literature. But, if you wish to object, even conscientiously, I’m not going to stand in your way. That’s freedom, baby.
One last thing. Small lad dropped a cup in the kitchen and it rolled away. He watched it and declaimed, “Fly! Fly!”. When I answered, “Thou may’st revenge!” he asked what I was on about. I really need to catch him up on Bill.
Love and peace, peeps.
