Category: Health / Healthcare / Illness / Vaccines

Nice Time: Jimmy Carter Lives To Defeat The Guinea Worm!

He may have eradicated only the second disease since smallpox!

MARCIE JONES JUL 27, 2024

Good news!

Read on Substack

Snippet:

TRIGGER WARNING: Contains disgusting descriptions of the nasty-ass Guinea Worm, though no photos. Do not Google the photos.

…

So this is very nice, former President Jimmy Carter — who is still alive and 99 years young, though in hospice — has succeeded in his decades-long goal to get Guinea Worm Disease cases down to zero before he dies. (Warning, the picture at that link is disgusting.) There have now been zero cases of Guinea Worm disease in the past three months, and there were only 14 last year. Extremely promising signs that maybe they are truly gone forever! If no more Guinea Worms burst through anybody’s flesh within the next nine months, then it’ll officially be the second disease eradicated by humanity after smallpox.

When the Carter Center started trying to take down big Guinea Worm back in 1988, more than 3.5 million people in Africa and India were suffering from it. And BOY WERE THEY SUFFERING, because while the worm won’t directly kill you, it is agonizing and SO RETCHINGLY GROSS. First, nasty-ass fucking worm larva gets into your guts through dirty drinking water. Then it grows in your stomach for a fucking year. And THEN, a fucking THREE-FOOT WORM POPS OUT OF YOUR SKIN which hurts like fucking hell, obviously. And there is no vaccine or cure, the only solution is to pull this FUCKING DISGUSTING WORM out of your fucking skin by winding it around a fucking STICK. 

So it is not the glamorous kind of affliction that makes a good poster for a benefit concert or bake sale, or plays well on an ad with Sarah McLachlan playing in the background. But one fixed relatively simply, with clean drinking water. And so that is what sweet peanut-farming Jimmy worked at. His Carter Center partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been quietly toiling to eradicate many other un-glamorous diseases that no one in the year of our Lord 2024 should have to suffer from, including: poliomyelitis (a virus that paralyzes mostly children), mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (aka elephantiasis, a roundworm transmitted by mosquitoes), cysticercosis (tapeworm infection), measles, river blindness, and yaws (a nasty spirochete bacteria that causes bursting lesions). (snip-More)

Elon Musk’s trans daughter Vivian Wilson slams his anti-LGBTQ+ comments as ‘ketamine-fueled haze’

(I ran across this on currentstatus.io . Also, Mr. Musk is a bigger ass yet than I already thought he was. Vivian Wilson, on the other hand, seems well adjusted.)

vivllainous threads Vivian Jenna Wilson transgender daughter elon musk

THREADS @VIVLLAINOUS; CRISTIANO BARNI/SHUTTERSTOCK

“I look pretty good for a dead bitch,” Wilson, a transgender woman, said of her biological father’s claims that gender-affirming care “killed” her.

RYAN ADAMCZESKI

JULY 25 2024 1:00 PM EST

Vivian Wilson is fact-checking own father after billionaire Elon Musk made bigoted comments about her gender.

The billionaire recently attacked gender-affirming care in an interview with conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson for conservative platform the Daily Wire, claiming that the life-saving treatment “killed” his daughter while repeatedly misgendering her.

Musk said that when his daughter wanted to begin transitioning, he “was essentially tricked into signing documents” before he “had really any understanding of what was going on.” He said that doctors told him his daughter “might commit suicide” if she was prevented from receiving care.

“I lost my son. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason,” Musk said. “The reason it’s called ‘deadnaming’ is because, your son is dead. So my son is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”

Wilson has since responded to Musk’s assertions on Threads, the rival to his platform Twitter/X, saying that her biological father’s claims are so blatantly false that she’s “just started to find it funny at this point.” “

“Calling me dead on a podcast with JORDAN PETERSON of all people while basically admitting you have zero reading comprehension by saying you were “tricked” into signing documents that you read over multiple times is basically a parody of itself,” she wrote. “Like it’s honestly camp-“

“I look pretty good for a dead bitch,” she added.

Wilson then debunked some of Musk’s other assertions about her, among them several homophobic stereotypes about her youth, including that she was a fan of musical theatre (she wasn’t) and picking out clothes for Musk to wear (she didn’t). Musk also claimed that Wilson was “born slightly autistic.”

“This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this. He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness,” Wilson wrote. “Obviously he can’t say that, so I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype f*g-ing along to use at his discretion. I think that says a lot about how he views queer people and children in general.”https://www.threads.net/@vivllainous/post/C91xDGJSUX_/embed/

Wilson, 20, is one of six children (five living) Musk had with his first wife, model Justine Wilson. She filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court in April, 2022 to legally change her name and gender, citing the reason as “Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”

Wilson then shot back at her father’s claims that she is “not a girl,” telling Musk to “go touch some fucking grass.”

“As for if I’m not a woman… sure, Jan. Whatever you say. I’m legally recognized as a woman in the state of California and I don’t concern myself with the opinions of those who are below me,” she wrote. “Obviously Elon can’t say the same because in a ketamine-fueled haze, he’s desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red-pilled incels and pick-mes who are quick to give it to him.”

https://www.advocate.com/elon-musk-trans-daughter-vivian-wilson

As a College Student, I Hope the Presidential Election Is a Wake-Up Call for Our Country

JUL 25, 2024, 10:00AM

LORIEN TYNE

As a College Student, I Hope the Presidential Election Is a Wake-Up Call for Our Country

I’ve become cynical in the last decade, but I am holding out hope that Vice President Kamala Harris can lead the country into a new chapter.

This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.

By now you’ve heard President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, which either puts the nation on a path to more progressive reform and the first woman president or catapults Donald Trump back into the White House.

As a college student, I am excited for the possibility of Harris winning the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, and I’m eager to see who she chooses as her running mate. However, I am also terrified by the chaos because it has made the results of this presidential election so unclear, and the impact of the outcome will last longer than a four-year term.

This turn of events has to be a resounding wake-up call for our country. I was worried that choosing Biden to beat Trump in 2020 was putting a placeholder president in the White House, and one that wouldn’t offer much change. But I was wrong. And with Harris as the presumptive nominee, the country gets an even stronger advocate for reproductive rights.

Just look at her recent record:

By Monday evening, Harris had already amassed the endorsements of enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Delegates from more than half the states—including California, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—have already pledged their support. The rest are expected by the end of the week.

I’ve become very cynical in the past decade, but I am holding out hope that Harris can lead us into a new chapter. I am tired of choosing the best of the worst options when I stare down a ballot, and if she wins, a little of my faith in our country will be restored.

Harris would not only be the first woman president and the first Black and Asian woman president, but would open doors for more radical change. I’ve decided that we cannot be complacent with blind trust in the Democratic Party, nor paralyzed with fear of what another four years under Trump would bring. For the first time in my lifetime, the Harris nomination presents a real choice to move forward, and I hope the country takes it.

Let’s talk about shifting opinions on Project 2025….

Let’s talk about Trump’s nephew and healthcare….

South Korea confirms state benefits for gay couples | REUTERS

South Korea’s supreme court upheld a ruling that a same-sex partner was eligible for spousal benefits from state health insurance in a landmark move

Stuff I saw on AP today

A few headlines of interest here, with snippets and links.

I got a great giggle when I saw this story last night. Imagine Republicans telling other Republicans they’re being too racist…

https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-attacks-johnson-hudson-76f8e90d24004e49449087787ac031a5

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former President Donald Trump’s campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.

At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies. (snip-more)

=====

Monthly headlines are turning into daily headlines:

https://apnews.com/article/hottest-day-ever-climate-change-weather-heat-extreme-global-warming-8e2b0b7fa0360ecb931ca333a832c694

Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, beating a record set the day before, as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.

Provisional satellite data published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous day’s record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit).

Climate scientists say it’s plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture. (snip-more)

=====

Cuteness overload!

https://apnews.com/video/kangaroos-animals-new-york-bronx-wildlife-conservation-society-11cbd816bd71411fb4ecb980b986361e

VIDEO

A 7-month-old tree kangaroo peeked out of its mom’s pouch at the Bronx Zoo and here is the video

The second baby of a tree-dwelling kangaroo made its public debut this week in New York, poking its pink head head out of its mom’s furry white pouch. (snip-click the Video hyperlink just above the title)

I Am

I am so incredibly tired.  I am still suffering under the cold and yet have to set my alarms for 6 pm as then I have to give the cats their medications.  I will talk later and do more comments.  But I could barely eat half my supper / lunch.  Night.  Hugs.  Scottie

Moms for Liberty have had a rough year. They’re still RNC darlings.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/07/moms-for-liberty-have-had-a-rough-year-theyre-still-rnc-darlings/

Thanks to their friends in (very) high places.
By Keira Butler 
The Moms for Liberty co-founders hold two awards sculptures shaped like waving American flags while standing against a gold and blue background at Fox Nation's 2023 Patriot Awards
Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany JusticePhoto: YouTube clip

This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.

On the second day of the Republican National Convention, I made my way back to Milwaukee’s symphony hall to attend a town hall hosted by the conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. This wasn’t my first Moms for Liberty event—I’ve attended the annual summits for the past two years. Back in 2022, Betsy DeVos, who served as former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, delivered the line that got the loudest applause. “While I know that everything we did was with the interest of kids in mind and policies that would really give as much power back to the states and local communities as we possibly could,” she said, “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist.”

At the time, that statement felt a little bit edgy—like DeVos was saying the quiet part out loud. But two years later at yesterday’s event, many of the panelists expressed that same sentiment as a a foregone conclusion. “The fundamental problem that we have in the United States was the creation of the federal Department of Education,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) told the crowd of maybe 400 or so mostly white women. In his remarks, erstwhile GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said, “We’re not just going to reform the Department of Education, it means we’re going to get there and actually shut it down.”

Does that mean that a ragtag group of moms single handedly turned the abolition of a behemoth government agency into a run-of-the-mill conservative talking point? Not exactly. On that issue and many others, Moms for Liberty has had a major assist from powerful conservative groups that share their goals—and are shaping the Republican agenda for 2024.

Founded in 2021 by three former school board members in Florida, Moms for Liberty rode the rising tide of anti-mask sentiment in the tumultuous year after schools were closed during the pandemic. The group’s leaders capitalized on the backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd. In fact, Moms for Liberty was one of the most prominent early groups to criticize the teaching of ant-racist curriculum in schools, which they incorrectly referred to as “critical race theory.” The group also vociferously opposed LGBTQ-inclusive lessons, and its members led campaigns to rid classrooms and school libraries of books deemed inappropriate.

Over time, Moms for Liberty grew in both membership and influence. Today, the group counts 130,000 members across chapters in 48 states. The organization groomed some members to run for local school boards, gradually expanding their influence throughout communities. Last year, all of the Republican presidential candidates, including former president Donald Trump, spoke at their annual conference in Pennsylvania.


In its marketing, Moms for Liberty comes off as a group of like-minded people, mostly women, who all happened to come together because of a shared concern for children. Founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Deskovich, the website says, are just a couple of “moms on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.” But as I’ve previously reported, the organization’s connections to the Republican party run deep. Its conferences have been sponsored by the GOP training group the Leadership Institute and the conservative powerhouse think tank the Heritage Foundation. Earlier this week, after the RNC Heritage Foundation event, Moms for Liberty national director Catalina Stubbe told me that her group is “very close friends” with Heritage, which was one of the sponsors of today’s event, and whose president Kevin Roberts spoke on one of the panels.

 

Considering the group’s cozy relationship with Heritage, the RNC town hall panelists’ focus on abolishing the US Department of Education shouldn’t be surprising. Project 2025, the 920-page conservative policy roadmap that Heritage spearheaded, calls for the complete elimination of the Department of Education, along with the codification of parents’ rights laws similar to those in Florida, which strictly limit teachers’ use of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and books.

After the event, I spoke to Lydia Dominguez, a Moms for Liberty member running for school board in Clark County, Nevada. Dominguez, the mother of two teenage boys, told me that she believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas.” What kinds of national agendas? I asked. “They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”

—————
She believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas…They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”
—————

Monica Kepes serves as the secretary of a Moms for Liberty chapter in Washington County, Wisconsin. “I think the big bureaucratic institutions are instituting a lot of stuff that comes down through the education system,” she said. “I think the bigger you get, the more power there is, the more chance corruption and all that kind of stuff.”

At Moms for Liberty’s upcoming 2024 summit, which will take place next month in Washington, DC, it seems unlikely that the group will be able to muster a repeat performance of the star-studded speaker roster from last year. So far, this year’s list appears to be a grab bag of not especially famous ultra-conservative pundits, C-list comedians, and culture warriors. One reason for this lackluster lineup could be the fallout from a series of scandals in 2023. A group from a chapter in Kentucky posedfor a photo with the white nationalist group the Proud Boys. (Those members were later removed from the group.) Last year, a chapter leader in Indiana quoted Hitler in a newsletter. On the last evening of the annual summit a few months later, Justice, the co-founder, said in a speech, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler…I stand with that mom!”

But the most damaging setbackcame in late 2023, when Christian Ziegler, chair of the Florida GOP, was accused of raping and illegally filming a woman who had been involved in a sexual relationship with him and his wife, Bridget Ziegler, a founding member of Moms for Liberty. As I wrote at the time, the situation was especially awkward because Ziegler helped craft Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” parents’ rights law, which forbids teachers in the state from talking about same-sex relationships. “The irony is crazy because you have this woman and her husband who are so concerned with preventing children from hearing anything that doesn’t totally align with their values,” one Florida mom told me at the time. “And then it’s like, I’m having to explain a three-way to a 12-year-old this week.” (Christian Ziegler has been cleared of rape charges; in March, the Florida state attorney’s office declined to criminally charge him for illegally filming the sexual encounter because of insufficient evidence.)

 

Unsurprisingly, no one mentioned the sex scandal (or any of the other ones) at the town hall event. But on one panel, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took a victory lap about a bill Ziegler helped to create. “It used to be…you didn’t have to worry about your kid going to kindergarten and being told that they should change their gender,” he said. “We put the kibosh on that in Florida—we said, ‘We are not going to be indulging in things like gender ideology in our schools.’” The crowd whooped with approval.

The Republican Party seems to agree. Its official platform, released last week, calls for funding cuts for schools that embrace “woke” policies like LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. This serves as a reminder that even though Moms for Liberty’s star appears to have dimmed over the past year, the reverberations from its movement will be felt for years to come. Moms for Liberty, cofounder Tina Descovich told the crowd, “is here to fight, fight, fight, and win, win, win.” She paused. “And winning we are.”

 

Don’t forget to share:

Day 1 RNC Speeches Attack Trans Day Of Visibility, Pronouns, And Safe Schools

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/day-1-rnc-speeches-attack-trans-day

On day one of the Republican National Convention, at least four Republicans used their platform to target transgender people.

ERIN REED
JUL 16, 2024
 
 
Marjorie Taylor Green – RNC – Republican Party

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

On the first day of the Republican National Convention, prominent Republicans used their national platform to target transgender people. This signals that the party is not abandoning its efforts to curtail transgender and LGBTQ+ rights if they gain power in the next election. This comes after the vice presidential running mate pick of JD Vance, the lead author of a Senate bill that would institute a national ban on transgender youth care and bar all medical schools from teaching about transgender care, including adult trans care.

The most prominent figure to use her platform to attack transgender people was Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene criticized Transgender Day of Visibility for falling on the same day as Easter Sunday in 2024. Notably, Easter Sunday is a moving holiday, while Transgender Day of Visibility has always been held on March 31. There have been more Transgender Days of Visibility on that date than Easter Sundays since America was founded.

“They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” Greene said to raucous boos. “And let me state this clearly: There are only two genders, and we are made in God’s image,” she continued.

Video at link above

Many on X (formerly Twitter) questioned the statement and its implications for the nature of God’s gender. Vinny Thomas, a user on the platform, pointed out, “‘There are only two genders and we are made in God’s image’ is so fascinating because what exactly are you saying about God’s gender?”

Representative John James from Michigan also joined in, using some of his time to target transgender women in sports and changing rooms. “Our daughters were sold on hope, and now they are being forced onto the playing fields and into the changing rooms of biological males. America was sold on hope, and now the world is on fire,” Rep. James continued.

Senator Ron Johnson joined in with his speech, calling LGBTQ+ inclusive education, sports participation, and inclusion “sexual indoctrination,” and stating that it was an attack on American values. “This fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children,” he said to boos. He continued, “Today’s Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to our institutions, our values, and our people.”

Video at link above

One of the “everyday Americans” chosen to speak at the Republican National Convention, Linda Fornos, was the last to target transgender people. In a speech that fell rather flat with little reaction, she questioned children learning pronouns in schools. Many correctly pointed out that pronouns have always been part of an English education.

Video at link above

 

The willingness to lean into anti-LGBTQ+ policies on the first day of the Republican National Convention may seem puzzling. Attacks on LGBTQ+ people have faltered in 2024 compared with 2023, with far fewer laws passing. Several states that had targeted trans people in previous years, such as Florida, Georgia, West Virginia, and Kansas, failed to pass anti-LGBTQ+ policies this year, despite over 80 bills proposed in those states targeting the community. In many elections where anti-trans policies were a major issue, the Republican Party suffered setbacks: 70% of Moms for Liberty and Project 1776 candidates lost their races in 2023. Other losses Republicans have suffered on this issue occurred in the Virginia legislature elections, the Arizona Governor’s race, the Michigan legislature elections, the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, the Walker-Warnock Senate race, and in dozens more places. Furthermore, recent polling from Gallup, Navigator, and the LA Times indicates fading public support for such laws, with huge majorities of respondents seeing them as a distraction and opposing bans on trans youth care.

Still, Trump’s selection of Senator JD Vance as his running mate indicates that he and the Republican Party have not backed off from this issue. Vance notably was the primary sponsor of a Senate bill to bar all trans care for trans youth nationwide. His bill would also bar secondary educational institutions, including medical schools, from teaching gender-affirming care for any age. Trump himself has called for investigations of hormone therapy manufacturers, bans on LGBTQ+ inclusive policies in schools, and targeting transgender people “at any age.”

As the Republican National Convention unfolds, the stage is set for a parade of speakers with deep-rooted anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ records. For LGBTQ+ people, these are not just rhetorical threats but a potential harbinger of laws that could be passed over the next four years. LGBTQ+ people will therefore likely be especially tuned in over the remaining nights.

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.