Did I miss something? My seventy plus years spent mostly on this farm dealing with livestock has resulted for me in a healthy respect for vaccines. It has gotten to the point with our overproduction of pigs in the upper Midwest, that I do not know if it is possible to produce pigs at any scale here without vaccines.
So why do we have our Secretary in charge of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration, a known vaccine opponent who also is a Kennedy, now say, after a lifetime of denial of vaccine usefulness, that he will make measles vaccines available in view of the situation in Texas, but will do nothing to require them. Why? This runs contrary to virtually everything I have been taught, in large measure by veterinarians
Vaccine effectiveness relies mostly upon uptake. The more casual the use of vaccines in a situation, the less well they will work. I think I am right here. Anyone who wishes to argue against that belief can start discussion by making a comment below.
I think the real controversy about vaccines is due to the ascendancy of libertarian thought and action. Due to the success of this philosophy over the last half century, we have difficulty doing anything that helps the neighborhood or community, even if it would benefit us as well. Our minds just no longer work that way. We think that for us to succeed others must fail, as Gore Vidal said.
