I know this is not a unique observation but public health was basically created to deal with the Spanish flu, and then a century later COVID hit and killed twice as many people and our response was to destroy public health
Replies
What changed? Just a century of reactionary government, anticommunism, and the inculcation of extreme individualism
aug 25, 2025, 4:34 pm • 290 16 • view
But did you consider how much people who write articles hate spending time with their kids?
aug 26, 2025, 3:10 pm • 3 0 • view
There is much truth to this
aug 26, 2025, 3:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Don't forget that the main reason we don't have universal healthcare is that racists were afraid that it would also go to Black people.
aug 25, 2025, 10:36 pm • 1 0 • view
the same things that changed since the wealth concentration of the gilded age led straight to popular and institutional rejection of that concentration
aug 25, 2025, 4:39 pm • 3 0 • view
Nope. It’s the age of the people dying. Spanish flu took out people in their twenties. Most Covid deaths are over 65. In terms of “years of life lost” Spanish flu was worse. If you’re one of the people who think in terms of “productive years of life lost” the deaths over 65 are a blip.
aug 27, 2025, 11:30 pm • 0 0 • view
When Romney talked about half of Americans being unproductive he was talking about senior citizens and children. Some of us see babies and granny and some of us see moochers.
aug 27, 2025, 11:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Toxic individualism.
aug 26, 2025, 2:26 am • 2 0 • view
Also: There is a huge element of profiting off the suffering and death of people.
aug 31, 2025, 4:22 am • 0 0 • view
I'm going to request that anyone thinking I'm just talking about Republicans consult the previous post, there is plenty of blame to go around here and both parties are anti-communist, pro-capitalist, individualist parties of reaction
aug 25, 2025, 5:31 pm • 191 10 • view
Both parties?????
aug 25, 2025, 11:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes
aug 25, 2025, 11:33 pm • 10 0 • view
Now you're 'both siding' it, when the blame really does lie on the Republicans. They could have been heros. They could have called for unity. Trump could have called for public health measures and MAGA would have followed as well as the sensible among us. They didn't and the country split apart.
aug 25, 2025, 6:19 pm • 39 0 • view
"Both siding" it would be to say that one side being bad excuses the other side from being bad. I'm not doing that: Republicans were horrible on COVID in 2020. Full stop. And in 2022, it was Biden who made the political--not scientific decision--to declare the pandemic over and discourage masking.
aug 25, 2025, 7:10 pm • 16 0 • view
Only the Democratic Party offers the framework for resistance to white Christian nationalist fascism so I vote for Democrats. But I will not forgive Democrats for killing masking in America in 2022. Do you still mask in essential public places? If yes, thank you. If no, when and why did you stop?
aug 25, 2025, 7:22 pm • 5 0 • view
Democrats are complicit in everything that Republicans perpetrate.
aug 25, 2025, 10:31 pm • 3 0 • view
I don't agree that Democrats killed masking. That was also MAGA because Trump didn't want masking. If you remember the Republican convention or other gatherings where they went unmasked and Herman Cain died? Republicans killed masking. MAGA were trashing masking displays in stores.
aug 25, 2025, 7:30 pm • 0 0 • view
Republicans killed masking among Republicans in 2020. Liberals kept masking, albeit at declining rates, until 2022 when liberals mostly chose to stop. How did Republicans force so many liberals to stop masking then? Do you still mask? If so, thank you. If not, when and why did you stop masking?
aug 25, 2025, 7:44 pm • 6 0 • view
You people are fucking astounding lol
aug 25, 2025, 6:40 pm • 0 0 • view
You found nothing wrong with the Biden administration's COVID response, or the activities of congressional Democrats since then?
aug 25, 2025, 6:37 pm • 83 0 • view
So what do you think they did wrong? Nothing in this world is perfect (saying this as a safeguard against the Eden fallacy). But Biden's COVID response generally followed the best practices, and was supervised by competent scientists and civil servants. Please do not both-side this.
aug 25, 2025, 6:56 pm • 6 0 • view
I just posted like a dozen articles about the failures of Biden and the Dems and I could easily post a dozen more, or you could find it yourself with a simple ten second search. I'm not saying the GOP hasn't been worse - that's the point of the original post
aug 25, 2025, 7:12 pm • 8 0 • view
If these failures of the past Democratic administration are so evident and so glaring, why don't you summarize them in 160 characters or so? I am especially interested in what Biden admin did that was as bad as politicizing masking, or promoting HCQ/Didier Raoult. Or talking about bleach enemas.
aug 25, 2025, 7:27 pm • 2 0 • view
I’ll volunteer. He ceded to political strategists on dropping masking mandates and lowering the isolation period over Health experts. He complained about masking, and declared the pandemic over in 2022. He oversaw the CDC switching maps clearly intended to create a false calm.
aug 25, 2025, 10:23 pm • 4 0 • view
Please see my post above for the definition of the threshold. None of the things you listed (which are indeed controversial) are in the same category as promotion of Didier Raoult/HCQ, ivermectin, or the bleach monologue. And no other country did much better.
aug 25, 2025, 11:21 pm • 0 0 • view
You seem to keep thinking the argument is "Biden did exactly as bad as Trump", which is not an argument anyone is making; the argument is that Biden did poorly, and for very specific reasons.
aug 25, 2025, 11:40 pm • 2 0 • view
He prioritized a “return to normal” that was unsupported by mitigations like clean air, mask requirements, and protections for disabled workers. He continued to require testing around his administration while telling the public it was over. His CDC refused for *ages* to confirm airborne spread.
aug 25, 2025, 10:25 pm • 5 0 • view
He ended suggested states give “leftover” covid money to cops. His public health officials put out consistently confusing messaging regarding safety protocols. Sorry, this is more than 160 characters.
aug 25, 2025, 10:26 pm • 3 0 • view
Okay, okay, valid. People were running out of patience by then but okay, your criticism is valid and I've heard it from other health and safety people. Vaccine uptake wasn't good enough but it wasn't going to get better.
aug 25, 2025, 10:31 pm • 0 0 • view
Leading is done by example. If we’d had leaders unafraid to act for safety despite ignorant public opinion, things could be different. I probably wouldn’t be permanently disabled, for one.
aug 25, 2025, 10:33 pm • 2 0 • view
Do your own work
aug 25, 2025, 7:43 pm • 0 0 • view
I already did. I am an actual practicing scientist. I also have family members working at NIH. What's your PhD in?
aug 25, 2025, 7:46 pm • 1 0 • view
My PhD is in people being condescending to me when I already linked an article from the NIH criticizing the Biden Administration response to COVID
aug 25, 2025, 9:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Is this your first day on the internet? That isn’t how this works. The person making the allegation has to back it up. This is basic internet etiquette and a known practice. Either put up or shut up.
aug 26, 2025, 5:43 am • 1 0 • view
First, I linked many articles making the point that the Biden administration made many critical mistakes in its COVID policy, and this person ignored all of them Second, you don't get to give me odd jobs
aug 26, 2025, 1:39 pm • 0 0 • view
But you can say "don't both-sides" this all day long and that just tells me you don't understand how both sides fucked up. And that happened because they are both beholden to capital over the people. Contrast either Trump or Biden with many other countries and it's easy to see
aug 25, 2025, 7:14 pm • 6 0 • view
Which countries? Be specific. Ideally cite numbers. I am listening. No country had "perfect" response. US response under Biden was not perfect either. But saying that "both sides" did it in this context is absolutely unsupported by evidence. Which politicians were anti-vax? Who pushed quack cures?
aug 25, 2025, 7:30 pm • 1 0 • view
Admonishment that I do not understand my lived experience is rather pompous. You have not provided any examples in your criticism. You have just provided criticism.
aug 25, 2025, 7:37 pm • 4 0 • view
More details for you to deny and ignore here: petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2022/01/05/f...
aug 26, 2025, 3:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Your opinion and his opinion. I disagree. I think you've distorted history by looking for the perfect during a confusing and divided time. But here's what you can look forward to... No Covid vaccines at all. RFK Jr and his anti-vaxxers are pulling it off the market. So, there are no answers now.
aug 26, 2025, 4:17 pm • 1 0 • view
Biden gave meager lip service to the idea that the vaccines (research paid for by our taxes) should be public domain, but did nothing more to make it happen. He declared COVID "over" and then got it himself almost immediately. He let state & local govts. spend mitigation money on cops. Etc., etc.
aug 26, 2025, 3:01 pm • 1 0 • view
Well, you are denying MY lived experience, which includes being aware that Biden did a horrible job of "managing" COVID. (I voted for him, and for Harris, and HRC -- I always vote for the Dem. nominee in the general, because of course the GOP is worse, but that is *relative.*)
aug 26, 2025, 2:59 pm • 1 0 • view
It is the same mindset that made people stay home (or vote for Trump) because of Biden administration's alleged support for Netanyahu. Normally I just scroll through posts like this, but shitposting of this kind about US science at this particular time in history is offensive.
aug 25, 2025, 7:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Biden's support of Netanyahu was wrong. I did not agree with it. I saw us be complicit with Genocide. But I voted for Harris because I felt we had more of a chance to protest and petition for a change than with Trump. Calling my posts, shitposting is aggressive and has nothing to do with science.
aug 25, 2025, 7:49 pm • 1 0 • view
Okay
aug 25, 2025, 7:44 pm • 1 0 • view
But the fracture lines were set and being exploited by the Trump admin in early 2020 because he was thinking only of his reelection. You are spot on with extreme individualism/selfishness and Trump is the embodiment of all this.
aug 25, 2025, 6:55 pm • 13 0 • view
I remember listening to a Trump rally where he talked about wearing masks as a good thing (despite him not wearing one because he thought it made him look weak) and when his audience began to rise up in anger, he switched his viewpoint. He was constantly waffling about face masks, which killed many.
aug 25, 2025, 9:21 pm • 15 0 • view
trump could've turned covid and operation warp speed into rally around the flag moments but instead his base got furious that they couldn't spend three hours a day at the big box store and he started listening to them. the george floyd protests were the final straw for his chances in 2020.
aug 26, 2025, 3:13 pm • 3 1 • view
There've been a lot of missed moments for him, he always deferred to the lowest of the low, which is kind of his default setting.
aug 26, 2025, 3:29 pm • 2 0 • view
They could have been heros. If they had just tried. But no, they had to be hateful heels.
aug 26, 2025, 3:57 pm • 0 0 • view
And that provides an excuse for the failure of the Biden administration to provide consistent, clear messaging about the necessity to continue masking and practicing other NPI to protect the vulnerable? And to shut down the Bridge program, which provided Covid shots and boosters for the uninsured?
aug 26, 2025, 4:38 pm • 2 0 • view
I've been doing research. More than 80% of ALL Americans haven't worn a mask indoors all the time - or even most of the time - in the last week. What does that say about how much society cares about protecting the vulnerable? When do WE get back to normal? Never, because of apathy and selfishness.
aug 26, 2025, 4:38 pm • 0 0 • view
We were told we should lock ourselves inside our homes and never come out. We were told society would be better off without us and our fucked-up immune systems. We were told to get the fuck over it. We heard people call us fearmongers and fools. Then liberals abandoned us, too. We're on our own.
aug 26, 2025, 4:38 pm • 0 0 • view
The past month has nothing to do with Biden...
aug 26, 2025, 4:56 pm • 0 0 • view
No. No, I didn’t. Except Schumer and Jeffries being appointed leaders, that is.
aug 26, 2025, 5:51 am • 0 0 • view
I believe there’s a difference between doing something wrong while trying to do the best in a horrible situation, and doing things wrong by creating conspiracies, encouraging science denialism, and ignoring millions of deaths. Of course Dems aren’t perfect, but the scale is not balanced at all.
aug 25, 2025, 7:17 pm • 5 0 • view
I don't understand why it's so difficult to recognize that the COVID policy in the US was bad all around. Trump being worse doesn't make what Biden did good. I promise you it is okay to criticize the Dems when they do bad things and, in fact, not doing so guarantees they will do worse
aug 25, 2025, 7:21 pm • 9 1 • view
I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to recognize the difference between “well intentioned but imperfect” and “actively malicious”. Maybe start constructively criticizing when there is isn’t a new constitutional crisis daily.
aug 25, 2025, 9:37 pm • 1 0 • view
1. I don't care about someone good intentions 2. It is malicious to let your donor class dictate public health policy 3. I've been criticizing both parties my entire adult life and they've both just gotten worse 4. Which is why the current crisis is happening
aug 25, 2025, 10:35 pm • 3 0 • view
There was no perfect answer to the Covid pandemic. There was trying to deal with problems as they arose. Biden is just a man. I genuinely believe he did his best.
aug 25, 2025, 10:00 pm • 2 0 • view
I do actively criticize Dems, and I also believe that it’s misleading to throw all bad behavior by govt during Covid into one pot and call it equal across the board. There is a marked difference in content and context that makes the T1.0 response objectively worse, and it’s okay for us to disagree.
aug 25, 2025, 7:27 pm • 1 0 • view
I didn't say the blame was equal across the board
aug 25, 2025, 7:43 pm • 0 0 • view
Okay
aug 25, 2025, 7:48 pm • 0 0 • view
Republicans could have been heros. Dems would have come along. Republicans could have called for unity. Could have called for patience while science figured things out. They could have taken out that 13 page pandemic play book by Obama. But no. Republicans ridiculed science.
aug 25, 2025, 7:33 pm • 4 0 • view
Yes. And now we have measles and TB spreading across the country and no covid vaccines for those who live with vulnerable folks. Republicans, in this instance, could have behaved within behavioral norms for govt, but they were too far gone. And who was responsible for that? 🧐
aug 25, 2025, 7:37 pm • 2 0 • view
What do you mean? I don't understand? My point was Republicans could have been heros. Instead, they've screwed up everything they can.
aug 25, 2025, 7:40 pm • 0 0 • view
I think I’m agreeing w/you, but maybe I’m not articulating things well. If we look at GOP could-have-been, then at this moment we would not have previously-eradicated diseases spreading and we’d have access to vaccines for Covid/flu for those who want them. Instead we got this. T1.0 did that.
aug 25, 2025, 7:45 pm • 1 0 • view
Actually, no.
aug 25, 2025, 7:51 pm • 4 0 • view
Neoliberalism. Party donors didn't want value of human life being a regulatory barrier. They've been attacking public health for years, this just became the major battle because hyper-individualism and inconvenience was weaponised. What got us to ascendant fascism
aug 26, 2025, 1:31 am • 6 0 • view
That just doesn't make sense at all. Neoliberalism is responsible for fascism. Sounds like you know how to use big words.
aug 26, 2025, 1:39 am • 0 0 • view
Neoliberalism is absolutely responsible for fascism and if you understand what both of those words mean it is very obvious. Serious people who think about politics in a serious way have been saying so for decades
aug 26, 2025, 1:46 am • 5 0 • view
I'll pick it up here again. I'm 'serious people' and I've been talking politics for the last 40 years. I've never heard neoliberalism being accused of fostering fascism. That sounds more like a radical right-wing talking point. I'm pretty sure conservatism and capitalism leads to fascism.
aug 26, 2025, 12:26 pm • 1 0 • view
With all due respect, it's hard to believe you've been talking about politics for forty years and have never encountered this idea. My suspicion is that you only talk about American politics from a liberal perspective, but maybe I'm wrong. At any rate, let's give this a try.
aug 26, 2025, 2:20 pm • 4 0 • view
1. Neoliberalism involves the privatization of state functions. Neoliberal countries, whether run by liberals or conservatives, do this extensively. It is nearly universal in the US, with (among others) health care, education, social services, transportation, and infrastructure becoming privatized.
aug 26, 2025, 2:23 pm • 5 0 • view
Enshitification of institutions, cutting regulations -in-line with prioritisation of commercial interests over population welfare, priorities that enable consolidation of private power, donations that allow private entities to effectively buy policy, state and corporates... it's a transition state
aug 26, 2025, 1:50 am • 0 0 • view
Yeah, I know about that. It's called the Shock Doctrine and it was a book long ago. But to say it simply Republicans keep saying government is broken and should be privatized. Then they go and break it. Corporations sweep in and buy up the pieces. But they're wrong, without consumers they go broke.
aug 26, 2025, 2:19 am • 1 0 • view
Doesn't have to work. Also, like vulture capitalism, it's about ransacking the place for personal wealth amd status. They don't care what works, or if the business survives. Power plays for a bunch of psychopaths. Opposition parties these days are backed by same groups, all a ratchet.
aug 26, 2025, 2:31 am • 0 0 • view
Historically always plays out this way. Drives populations to desperately look for "alternatives", anyone promising change, demolish the status quo, a void usually fillled by the extremists backed by moneyed interests...
aug 26, 2025, 1:52 am • 0 0 • view
In what way did democrats do anything over the last 100 years to stem the anti-communist hyper individualist propaganda we've produced? OP wasn't just talking about the response to covid, they were talking about the history that brought us to the response to covid.
aug 25, 2025, 8:47 pm • 2 0 • view
Yeah, yeah, everyone likes to blame the Democrats. Who'd have thought Law and Order Republicans, anti-communist, anti-Russian Republicans would turn into dictatorial despots. My dead Republican parents wouldn't recognize their party. But it's the Democrats fault. They tried and tried to warn you.
aug 25, 2025, 8:54 pm • 0 0 • view
And public health working so well with little fanfare that people came to view their wellbeing as natural instead of the result of diligent human efforts
aug 25, 2025, 5:38 pm • 7 0 • view
You can thank Trump and his mindless cult for that.
aug 25, 2025, 7:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Not "OUR" response.
aug 26, 2025, 12:35 am • 0 0 • view
Omg, the comments.
aug 26, 2025, 2:39 pm • 0 0 • view
YOU'RE TELLING ME
aug 26, 2025, 2:52 pm • 2 0 • view
Covid only killed so many in the country because of Donald Trump. Destroying public health is only occurring because of Donald Trump. But Donald Trump is only killing and destroying us because of American Cowardice, Complicity, and Ignorance.
aug 25, 2025, 5:51 pm • 1 0 • view
🤬. So basically killing the messenger.
aug 25, 2025, 8:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Nothing makes sense anymore with the trumpanzies in charge of everything. 😒
aug 25, 2025, 5:27 pm • 1 0 • view
We deserve extinction
aug 25, 2025, 10:19 pm • 0 0 • view
journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/less...
aug 25, 2025, 6:18 pm • 17 1 • view
See?! The system works!
aug 26, 2025, 12:11 am • 0 0 • view
/s
aug 26, 2025, 12:11 am • 0 0 • view
We the people have nothing to do with the destruction of public health. This is all on two old white men with NO VISION. One is out for total revenge on the American people. This is all on Donald J. Trump & Robert F. Kennedy jr.
aug 25, 2025, 6:10 pm • 2 0 • view
Plenty of blame to go around
aug 25, 2025, 6:31 pm • 0 0 • view
That wasn’t “our” response. OUR response was to root for COVID when Trump got it.
aug 25, 2025, 11:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Is this a great country or what? 🙄
aug 25, 2025, 7:59 pm • 2 0 • view
Turns out that public health costs money that can be put to much better use by letting the criminal president's co-conspirators hoard it all in their offshore tax havens.
aug 25, 2025, 8:40 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s flabby-ass’s reaction, not ours. He’s not just a slow learner; he’s a non-learner. Also, fuck him.
aug 25, 2025, 10:57 pm • 0 0 • view
It wasn’t “our” response. It was MAGA& trump’s vindictiveness. Please don’t put all of us in the MAGAt hat. For some reason, Cankles McDiddler keeps getting a pass on everything he does, & it’s blamed on everyone else. He’s never in the gallows alone. Put MAGA with him, but leave the Resistance out.
aug 26, 2025, 8:45 am • 0 0 • view
Donald J Trump at the helm. A blithering idiot who only cares about himself.
aug 26, 2025, 2:40 am • 0 0 • view
Waiting for RFK to resurrect the Miasma theory.
aug 25, 2025, 5:14 pm • 3 0 • view
He already has
aug 25, 2025, 9:28 pm • 2 0 • view
Aaaaaahhhhhh.....
aug 25, 2025, 9:36 pm • 1 0 • view
Ironically, given what we've learned about aerosols and airborne transmission, bringing back Mia's a theory might be a GOOD idea
aug 25, 2025, 9:56 pm • 0 0 • view
No, just no.
aug 25, 2025, 10:11 pm • 0 0 • view
YEAH REAL SMART
aug 26, 2025, 12:53 am • 0 0 • view
Because the GOP wants the End Times to come early.
aug 26, 2025, 4:34 am • 0 0 • view
Yup. People were too mentally fragile to deal, so we got tons of denialism and a general refusal to inform
aug 25, 2025, 5:15 pm • 7 0 • view
And today, the majority of liberals are right there with them. 80% of people in this country don't wear masks indoors all or even most of the time. 50% of Covid infections are asymptomatic. Liberals don't care much more than conservatives. (the original link was too long) tinyurl.com/2473wymx
aug 26, 2025, 5:20 pm • 2 0 • view
It was the idea of the Rethuglican Party!! The party who has worm brain RFK Jr, a known idiot of medical conspiracies leading the wave of destruction. Make America sick again!!
aug 26, 2025, 1:32 am • 0 0 • view
Wrong. Public Health began with infrastructure improvements to fight cholera, typhoid, and typhus. Sewers, water filtration and plumbed water to clean streets, houses, and people were the first successful public health efforts.
aug 25, 2025, 9:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes, obviously the *concept* of public health began before the Spanish flu, and even long before the events you mentioned. As I have *also* said repeatedly, what I meant was "public health" as a national concern and a thing to be addressed federally
aug 25, 2025, 10:58 pm • 4 0 • view
All the things you talk about were generally dealt with at a local level, and these efforts were completely overwhelmed by the scope and severity of Spanish flu. Most countries only introduced a federal department of health after it happened, including the US and the UK
aug 25, 2025, 10:59 pm • 7 1 • view
It also revolutionized the teaching of medicine, the certification of disease researchers, and many other public health-adjacent concerns. John Barry's THE GREAT INFLUENZA talks about this extensively Also this:
aug 25, 2025, 11:01 pm • 5 0 • view
Buddy, I have a PhD in the history of medicine, not just an acquaintance with a few popularized books and articles. Stand the fuck down.
aug 25, 2025, 11:45 pm • 0 0 • view
You can't fix stupid, but you can not vaccinate it and let nature take its course.
aug 26, 2025, 12:08 am • 0 0 • view
Truth
aug 25, 2025, 6:27 pm • 1 0 • view
Our you say? I can bruise the back of my right hand by backhanding the idiot who’s solely responsible.
aug 26, 2025, 3:52 am • 0 0 • view
President Pedophile and his Fascists are bound and determined to kill off as many Americans as possible. Watch.
aug 25, 2025, 5:11 pm • 4 0 • view
They already are imo. It’s happening now: ICE rounding up and sending brown people to 3rd world countries. Denying health care. This alone will kill millions. Medicaid cuts are on the way to doing that. Killing people by ending US AID. Trump let the food rot rather than feeding the people.
aug 26, 2025, 1:04 pm • 0 0 • view
Trump response!
aug 26, 2025, 1:25 am • 0 0 • view
What happens when you have religious nuts in charge not scientists and doctors. Religion gave us the black plague and dark ages.
aug 26, 2025, 1:47 am • 0 0 • view
A lot of the early leaders in public health were women of strong personal faith who'd gone to med school and were part of the overall reform movement of the early 1900s, which spanned sanitation and safe food initiatives, vaccine development, early fair labor movements, suffrage, and more.
aug 26, 2025, 1:56 am • 1 0 • view
Well . . . your fellow Americans did vote into office a death cult.
aug 25, 2025, 5:40 pm • 0 0 • view
I am aware
aug 25, 2025, 6:21 pm • 1 0 • view
welcome to the new improved Trump health country plan. If more people die, that lessons the drain on our health department, no long stays in hospital, no expensive drugs, just bag them and tag them is they're motto.
aug 25, 2025, 6:57 pm • 4 0 • view
Putin is winning, clearly!
aug 25, 2025, 6:49 pm • 0 0 • view
Hate and ignorance, synergistically combined, created fertile ground for stupid conspiracy theories and misinformation to flourish. Knowledge and intelligence became "elitist" and "liberal."
aug 26, 2025, 6:46 pm • 1 1 • view
it makes sense if the magotts have eaten your brain🤯
aug 26, 2025, 7:58 am • 0 0 • view
It was “our” response. It was the response of the ignorant
aug 25, 2025, 6:32 pm • 1 0 • view
To be fair it was not ‘our’ response, but the response or lack there of from leadership. We got sold out.
aug 26, 2025, 1:00 am • 4 0 • view
RFK: We're not Anti-Vax .. we are Pro-Natural Selection. bsky.app/profile/opsa... Some have fallen into the trap: "RFK said something sensible a while back; therefore, he must be trustworthy". He did, but he's not.
aug 26, 2025, 2:37 am • 0 0 • view
Wake up America 🇺🇸
aug 25, 2025, 7:07 pm • 0 0 • view
We were lucky with Covid. It could just as easily have killed 20% instead of .5 percent. Or 50%. And now we have this bloody lunatic running HHS, thanks to an American public that, on the whole, isn't much brighter than a hot dog bun.
aug 26, 2025, 4:01 am • 1 0 • view
not all surely?
aug 26, 2025, 9:49 am • 1 0 • view
No, but 2/3drs of the American electorate are responsible for this disaster. The 1/3rd who voted for the fetid criminal, and the 1/3rd who didn't bother to vote at all. We've failed miserably as a society.
aug 26, 2025, 1:34 pm • 0 0 • view
can all hope it gets better,it has too
aug 26, 2025, 4:02 pm • 1 0 • view
I have hope. Always. Faith? Not so much.
aug 26, 2025, 6:35 pm • 0 0 • view
to be honest me either
aug 27, 2025, 12:00 am • 1 0 • view
No, I'm sure there are *some* parts of the American public who know what "on the whole" means?
aug 26, 2025, 10:55 am • 1 0 • view
me too,but very few
aug 26, 2025, 12:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Trump did away with infectious disease branch related to response as soon as he (& Putin) took office the first time. Did the same destruction when he resumed his project 2025 march to destroy america. Lock step destabilization & this time with most of his reports being authors of project 2025.
aug 25, 2025, 6:39 pm • 0 0 • view
We have devolved and just take a look at the Bible Belt to see how.
aug 26, 2025, 4:21 am • 0 0 • view
Not our response. It was Trump's response
aug 25, 2025, 5:12 pm • 2 0 • view
Trump administration is destroying it a vaccine denier running public health seriously 😐
aug 25, 2025, 5:12 pm • 4 0 • view
Trump and MAGA not everyone. Specifically Trump and evil MAGA minions like Moms for Liberty and RFK Jr.
aug 26, 2025, 12:57 am • 1 0 • view
Well…. That’s how we do it under a republikkan administration. 🙄
aug 25, 2025, 6:28 pm • 1 0 • view
The government is full of idiots, morons and uneducated clowns
aug 26, 2025, 12:26 pm • 0 0 • view
This is true ..Scotland has continued to support “ The Scottish Public Health System from The First World War ..It has been an outstanding public service facility for over 100 Years of which we remain very proud…It continues today having proved it’s worth and excellence along with outstanding Staff
aug 25, 2025, 8:08 pm • 0 0 • view
They want us dead.
aug 26, 2025, 5:10 pm • 0 0 • view
The Spanish flu was worse. If COVID killed more people is because there are more people to kill. If we had the same messiah technology as 1910s, far more would have died. Our science & medical technology are vastly improved. But in reverse with Trump & RFK Jr.
aug 25, 2025, 10:49 pm • 3 0 • view
*medical
aug 25, 2025, 11:17 pm • 0 0 • view
As I have repeatedly said, when I said COVID killed more people, I mean (a) in the US only and (b) not adjusted for population.
aug 25, 2025, 10:55 pm • 0 0 • view
I have only read one thing from you. Not repeatedly. I'm not going to research everything you've said on social media.
aug 25, 2025, 11:20 pm • 0 0 • view
Fair enough. When I said COVID killed more people, I mean (a) in the US only and (b) not adjusted for population.
aug 25, 2025, 11:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Do remember that RFK Jr. says that the Spanish flu was caused by the flu vaccine. The flu vaccine wasn't available at that time. 🗽🇪🇺🇺🇦🌻
aug 26, 2025, 2:45 am • 1 0 • view
1. Republicans think only the Democrats will get sick and die. 2. Or, they will have access to vaccines & get vaccinated in secret.
aug 25, 2025, 9:33 pm • 0 0 • view
A significant percentage of us are ahistorical imbeciles.
aug 26, 2025, 2:02 am • 0 0 • view
That’s what happens in pandemics: panic and forget. We are now in the forgetting
aug 25, 2025, 8:00 pm • 0 0 • view
Public health was accelerated in large part by women from ~1895 thru the 1918 flu & beyond. Men didn't want to bother w/it, lower $. Dr. Josephine Baker (not the singer) is one example. Women were working on vaccines before 1900 & were part of early NIH mid 1910's. open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...
aug 26, 2025, 2:04 am • 0 0 • view
What will happen when the next pandemic hits? Will the government just stick their heads in the sand….denial is not a good defense mechanism…
aug 26, 2025, 1:13 am • 0 0 • view
Retired RN, I've worked with those algorithms in healthcare allotment, and I have a book's worth to say about it. Health insurance started as a pooling of resources for high risk jobs; then some asshat saw a way to profit, and BOOM. US healthcare crises because we don't see care as a human right.
aug 26, 2025, 3:15 am • 8 0 • view
Really, there R 2 reasons theCDCwas set up inAtlanta,GA was the threat of venereal disease from soldiers coming back from World War I. But they also brought back theSpanishFlu as well, which they expanded their role&purpose&2 fight.They in the same state,Georgia asFortBenning&other military bases.
aug 26, 2025, 2:02 am • 0 0 • view
The irony makes me weep.
aug 26, 2025, 12:12 am • 0 0 • view
The Great Dumbening (or Idiocracy) had a century and the Internet to speed it up this time.
aug 25, 2025, 10:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Sure...and then we got RFK, Jr.....
aug 25, 2025, 6:47 pm • 0 0 • view
"our". No. "Their".
aug 25, 2025, 11:48 pm • 0 0 • view
COVID has not killed anywhere near as many people as Spanish Flu. Estimates for Spanish Flu range between 17-50 million, whereas COVID deaths are more than 7 million (even if that number should be taken with several grains of salt). But one could argue that's the evident result of public health.
aug 27, 2025, 8:35 pm • 0 0 • view
bsky.app/profile/leon...
aug 27, 2025, 8:41 pm • 0 0 • view
Ah gotcha - the wild thing is, in Canada, approx 50K died from Spanish Flu, while COVID deaths are about 61K at this point, which is really something to think about given that Canada has since quadrupled in population to say nothing of the changes in frequency of int'l travel etc.
aug 27, 2025, 9:07 pm • 2 0 • view
Makes so much sense doesn’t it? They just want us sick, worked to death or dead.
aug 25, 2025, 9:13 pm • 0 0 • view
Trump’s response
aug 25, 2025, 6:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Plenty of blame to go around
aug 25, 2025, 6:39 pm • 0 0 • view
Correct
aug 25, 2025, 10:42 pm • 0 0 • view
And it’s called winning.
aug 25, 2025, 8:09 pm • 0 0 • view
I somehow feel certain that the same misdirection/distraction that named it 'Spanish' flu, pretending it was not killing tens of thousands in the trenches of WWI, will find it comforting to look in every other direction for the reason this 21st c influenza is so murderous.
aug 26, 2025, 7:56 am • 0 0 • view
That would be the alphabet boyz. DJT & RFKjr
aug 26, 2025, 4:18 am • 0 0 • view
America suffers from a deadly epidemic of Dunning-Kruger disease
aug 25, 2025, 11:53 pm • 2 0 • view
Turning public health off and on until it works
aug 25, 2025, 4:40 pm • 5 0 • view
At this point, we’re beating public health with a mallet with pieces flying off until it works
aug 25, 2025, 5:17 pm • 10 0 • view
Both parties are responsible. Tramp started it -- the Biden adminstration continued it. They ended the Bridge program, which provided no-cost Covid shots to those without insurance -- than 40 million people. They declared the pandemic over instead of annoucing it had become endemic.
aug 26, 2025, 5:26 pm • 3 0 • view
They stopped requiring employers to pay infected employees to stay home. They let millionaires get away with taking out PPP loans and not repaying them. They ended the mask mandate on public transportation and in government buildings too damn early. I could go on, but you get the idea.
aug 26, 2025, 5:26 pm • 3 0 • view
Thank your local Trump supporter. #TrumPedo #pedopresident #trumpisarapist #impeachtrump #eightysixfourtyseven #justiceforvirginiagiuffre #justiceforalltrumpvictims #trumpisintheepsteinfiles #donaldtrump #felon47 #epsteincover-up #trumpandepstein #trumprapeschildren #86fourtyseven #dietrump
aug 25, 2025, 7:27 pm • 0 0 • view
Go figure! Guess it is culling the herd and saving the sheeples that work, pay taxes and tariffs, eliminating the debt for the wealthy 🤑
aug 25, 2025, 10:54 pm • 0 0 • view
We never learn. Plus, as a species, we have a huge idiot gene, esp the rich !
aug 26, 2025, 9:44 am • 0 0 • view
aug 25, 2025, 5:11 pm • 0 0 • view
Yep- sounds about right🤯😡
aug 25, 2025, 7:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Spanish flu was far worse than Covid. I think more people died than Covid, though numbers from that far back are fuzzy. But, in terms of percent of the population, it was far more devastating. Still, COVID is no joke, and millions died. Certainly a human life is worth more than that…
aug 25, 2025, 6:00 pm • 0 0 • view
Spanish flu may have been more deadly in the acute phase but covid is killing people via organ damage, immune system damage, and inflammation months or years later; it has contributed to a rise in heart disease, diabetes, strokes, Alzheimer's and dementia to name a few potential complications.
aug 25, 2025, 10:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes, that is true, but that’s also a function of modern high tech healthcare. Very possibly, COVID would have killed more without significant medical support. But those people survived but not without lasting effects. With Spanish flu, they just died.
aug 26, 2025, 1:12 am • 0 0 • view
That was trump response.
aug 25, 2025, 8:53 pm • 0 0 • view
The population was about 105 million in 1918, and we lost nearly a million people. The population in 2019 was about 350 million people and we lost over a million. Even with horrible leadership when you do the math, you see the difference.
aug 26, 2025, 12:31 am • 0 0 • view
Trump reluctantly promoted the vaccine-the best thing he’s done-which prevented many deaths.
aug 26, 2025, 4:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Kansas Flu. It came from Kansas, not Spain.
aug 26, 2025, 1:32 am • 0 0 • view
No one really knows where it came from, and it was observed in the UK and France before it was in both Kansas and Spain. But I call it the Spanish flu because that is what everyone calls it and nobody knows what you're talking about if you call it the Kansas flu.
aug 26, 2025, 1:41 am • 0 0 • view
Siamese twins. Mongoloids Japs Nig-ers We have stopped using names that are wrong before; and one thing we know about the Spanish Flu is it had nothing to do with Spain.
aug 26, 2025, 1:53 am • 1 0 • view
Okay
aug 26, 2025, 1:54 am • 1 0 • view
Humans are really stupid
aug 25, 2025, 5:42 pm • 0 0 • view
Our??? Our??? Who is this our?? I didn't get any choice in any of these decisions. Sure wish I had!
aug 25, 2025, 8:27 pm • 0 0 • view
Our only hope is smart people will vaccinate and Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest will take care of the rest
aug 25, 2025, 8:36 pm • 0 0 • view
prove it killed a single person
aug 25, 2025, 6:28 pm • 0 0 • view
Prove you have a single brain cell
aug 25, 2025, 6:41 pm • 0 0 • view
DEVO was right, we’re devolving. And the pace sure seems to be picking up.
aug 25, 2025, 5:59 pm • 4 0 • view
Thanks to Trump.
aug 25, 2025, 6:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Plenty of blame to go around
aug 25, 2025, 6:45 pm • 1 0 • view
It's nothing we can't breed our way out of.
aug 26, 2025, 7:02 pm • 0 0 • view
COVID deaths are estimated at 7 million (though we will never know how many died in China, Iran, Russia and several other countries and it's fair to assume those countries under counted). Spanish Flu deaths are estimated around 50 million. But I agree public health deserves full funding and support.
aug 26, 2025, 1:53 am • 0 0 • view
😮
aug 25, 2025, 5:56 pm • 0 0 • view
The Republicans decided to destroy public health.
aug 25, 2025, 7:56 pm • 0 0 • view
Trump’s COVID strategy, then and now, isn’t about protecting people. It’s about using chaos to achieve ideological goals: dismantling public health, defunding education, erasing gender equity, and pushing women back into the home under the banner of “traditional values.”
aug 26, 2025, 7:02 pm • 0 0 • view
Fun fact: The Spanish flu is a misnomer for the Flu pandemic of 1918. It broke out everywhere equally, but only Spain, who was neutral in WWI, was reporting their numbers honestly. Other countries at war didn’t want to give up intel on their populations.
aug 25, 2025, 5:31 pm • 32 4 • view
Very true. It may have started in Haskell County, Kansas, but even that is not certain. Overcrowded conditions in US military camps helped it to spread. The deadly flu became worldwide very fast and killed millions.
aug 25, 2025, 6:45 pm • 10 0 • view
Maybe Trump, given his inexplicable desire to rename things (gulfs, departments), can issue an EO that it is now the "Kansas flu."
aug 25, 2025, 8:29 pm • 9 0 • view
I'm sure he'd find a way to place the blame on Obama or Biden.
aug 26, 2025, 7:44 am • 4 0 • view
He'd only rename it after a blue state. He only blames the blues.
aug 25, 2025, 11:49 pm • 1 0 • view
Another fun fact: variants of the original Spanish flu are still killing people today. Pandemics are never really “over” they just become endemics, and kill in comparatively smaller numbers as the population develops immunity.
aug 26, 2025, 9:46 am • 1 0 • view
A countries health loaned to pharmaceutical elites in worship to a cash cow can be overturned when a watchdog is around. Torch the granary and the rabbits cry b/c they can’t store grain and thus have to buy, we look not at the mad queen that burns her footmen.
aug 25, 2025, 7:29 pm • 0 0 • view
Horrific
aug 25, 2025, 6:50 pm • 2 0 • view
Every day I went to work realizing with learned nothing #FormerHospitalStaff 🙃
aug 25, 2025, 5:20 pm • 1 0 • view
as one does
aug 26, 2025, 2:37 pm • 0 0 • view
When you think about Trump’s grandfather dying after catching the Spanish flu, you’d think that might inform his stance on public health. Nope!
aug 26, 2025, 2:25 am • 2 0 • view
In order to understand that you need to have a brain, unfortunately 77 million lunatics (to be polite) voted for a felon without brain. Consequently all around him are brainless.
aug 25, 2025, 9:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Trump and RFK are destroying this country. Are the rich the only ones getting access to healthcare?
aug 25, 2025, 6:48 pm • 3 1 • view
Those lucky enough to be able to afford healthcare coverage are doing better than people excluded because they fall in the gap or their states didn't expand Medicaid. The wealthy can buy their way out of many things.
aug 26, 2025, 5:15 pm • 1 0 • view
Not “our response.” It was the response of Trump and his unqualied administration, and the people who voted for Trump.
aug 26, 2025, 3:46 am • 0 0 • view
That about sums it up. ☹️
aug 26, 2025, 12:46 am • 0 0 • view
intelligence is the ability to use the best contemporary knowledge available to tackle diseases; unintelligence is using ancient practices like bloodletting, leeches mercury, chloroform and trepanation to tackle diseases;
aug 26, 2025, 12:37 pm • 0 0 • view
Actually the Public Health Community did what it could with the resources it was provided with. The Healthcare breakdown of Co~Vid was caused by Neoliberal Austerity Policy and the Privatization of Healthcare. NY State alone had 50,000 less hospital beds during Co~Vid than it had in 1980. #Co~Vid
aug 26, 2025, 6:07 pm • 0 0 • view
A note on the statistics here, the basic numbers are correct. However the American population during the Spanish flu was basically 1/3 the current population so the Spanish flu killed a greater proportion of the population. youtu.be/Qh03tYOqmdo
aug 25, 2025, 5:10 pm • 11 0 • view
While fighting COVID in 2020-2021, modern medicine had access to dialysis, ventilators, ECMO, and a whole host of medications that would have saved a bunch of people during the Spanish Flu. It‘d be better for killer flu strain to hit that current vaccines don’t cover than a new killer Covid strain.
aug 25, 2025, 6:10 pm • 2 0 • view
Except a sizeable chunk of our population is now allergic to science and reality. Vaccination rates are going down across the country -- and it's not just the Covid vaccine, but childhood and adult vaccines as well. Either one could - and most likely would - be devastating.
aug 26, 2025, 5:12 pm • 0 0 • view
💙💙💙 This is part of their ethnic cleansing they want to sink in the week to die they don’t care
aug 25, 2025, 8:41 pm • 0 0 • view
Not “our” response; Trump’s and MAGA’s, and RFK Jr’s.
aug 25, 2025, 11:20 pm • 0 0 • view
If you please: Trump’s response was to destroy public health.
aug 25, 2025, 6:18 pm • 1 0 • view
Plenty of blame to go around
aug 25, 2025, 6:35 pm • 0 0 • view
The whole first year of the pandemic was on Trump ~ hiding info from the public, denying the danger posed, childishly blaming China, advocating insane measures like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and bleach while actively discouraging masks and vaccines!
aug 25, 2025, 8:38 pm • 2 0 • view
📌
aug 25, 2025, 11:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Outside the US we have strong public healthcare and a distinct lack of nutters in charge. The US has been trying to use its power to destroy and privatise healthcare across the world for decades. You’re just in the realisation of the end state now.
aug 25, 2025, 10:31 pm • 0 0 • view
every single person responding to this thread with "Trump this" and "Trump that" as they run around in their fifth maskless year on BIDEN'S orders is precisely why we're still neck deep in this murderous plague BOTH parties. the duopoly is literally murdering us. you. everyone.
aug 25, 2025, 7:45 pm • 3 0 • view
Exactly; and we have neither of those men here in Canada but no one masks here either! The issue is systemic and not caused by any single political figure.
aug 25, 2025, 10:03 pm • 1 0 • view
You misspelled REPUBLICANS
aug 25, 2025, 5:25 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s absolutely f$cking crazy!
aug 25, 2025, 10:34 pm • 1 0 • view
People freaked out about not getting a hair cut for a few weeks and here we arr
aug 25, 2025, 5:56 pm • 1 0 • view
Well let’s look at who is in charge. Only the best people
aug 25, 2025, 8:31 pm • 0 0 • view
I don’t think it is being destroyed. I think they’re trying to reset it so people trust them again.
aug 25, 2025, 8:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Excellent observation.
aug 26, 2025, 1:16 pm • 0 0 • view
Correction: Hookworm and sanitation campaigns built public health long before the Spanish flu. 1918 expanded it. But after COVID we chose backlash: defunding, harassment, and politicization. Instead of stronger, public health came out weaker.
aug 25, 2025, 8:40 pm • 0 0 • view
hindsight is 20/20. while i agree with your general sentiment, there is a massive difference between Biden's missteps and miscalculations, and Trump's total disregard during the first year and subsequent dismantling of NIH, CDC, FDA, etc., in his second term.
aug 25, 2025, 7:09 pm • 0 0 • view
The former led to the latter. And this isn't hindsight, tons of people at the time were criticizing the Biden approach including many communicable disease experts
aug 25, 2025, 7:17 pm • 1 0 • view
Delusional MAGA cultists motivated by ignorance and lies destroyed public health.
aug 26, 2025, 2:42 am • 0 0 • view
Please don’t call it Spanish Flu. It blames them for it when they just acknowledged it was happening and everyone else just pretended all was well. Thx.
aug 26, 2025, 2:27 am • 0 0 • view
The world population was just under 2 billion and in 2020 was 8 billion, far into overshoot ecologically and financially....
aug 25, 2025, 7:24 pm • 0 0 • view
"OUR" actually you mean F47 and his minions! I believe it's important to use precise language since "We the People" did NOT do this! Yes, MAGA folks disdain the use of vaccine, but they are NOT the majority!
aug 25, 2025, 9:18 pm • 1 0 • view
And rightly so. It was helping people and Republicans can not stand that.
aug 26, 2025, 12:48 am • 1 0 • view
Definition of conservative thought…
aug 26, 2025, 12:55 am • 0 0 • view
Conservative politics…
aug 26, 2025, 12:56 am • 0 0 • view
Backwards is best…
aug 26, 2025, 12:57 am • 0 0 • view
Are you talking about America here, or worldwide? Even a low estimate of the worldwide fatalities from Spanish flu was 17 million.
aug 26, 2025, 1:43 am • 0 0 • view
Yes, just the US, hence "our"
aug 26, 2025, 1:46 am • 0 0 • view
Thanks for replying, and fair enough.
aug 26, 2025, 1:55 am • 1 0 • view
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish...
aug 26, 2025, 1:43 am • 0 0 • view
Did covid come from a bat, or a lab ?
aug 26, 2025, 6:11 pm • 0 0 • view
Trump didn't want to believe covid was real....look where that got us. Now the same people who hated masks are the same ones working for ICE
aug 25, 2025, 6:12 pm • 9 0 • view
Republican response, before, during and after vaccines were brought in by Democratic President’s effectively garnering more vaccine production and evolving vaccine safety standards, no cost vaccine distribution for everyone in the country, in saving lives. Repubs 👉 no more funding or preparedness
aug 26, 2025, 10:55 am • 0 0 • view
With a lunatics runny our heal are that is left
aug 25, 2025, 6:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Because the dynamics of social media, the attention economy, greed and selfishness worked to turn what should have been a unifying event into a divisive issue. Those dynamics did not exist 100 years ago.
aug 25, 2025, 6:51 pm • 0 0 • view
💯
aug 25, 2025, 7:22 pm • 0 0 • view
I never can understand why it's called Spanish flu. It came from America, spread by US soldiers.
aug 26, 2025, 8:10 am • 0 0 • view
No one knows where it really came from. It was called Spanish flu because the war was on and most countries had censorship of the press (including France and the UK, where it was first recorded); Spain didn't participate in the war so they reported on it. So people assumed it came from there
aug 26, 2025, 1:46 pm • 2 0 • view
Back then, people were starting to believe in science. For some reason, a number of the current voters prefer tailored lies.
aug 25, 2025, 9:17 pm • 2 0 • view
Isn't it ironic, don't ya think.
aug 25, 2025, 5:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Don't forget the purposely ignored 69 page handbook left by the Obama administration...
aug 26, 2025, 12:33 pm • 0 0 • view
And all because they were "forced" to wear masks. Their tantrum is going kill countless people.
aug 26, 2025, 2:40 am • 0 0 • view
I object to the word "our" pin the blame where it belongs on the Biden and Trump administrations.
aug 25, 2025, 4:35 pm • 2 0 • view
As the man said, this is America, you live in it, you let it happen
aug 25, 2025, 4:38 pm • 4 0 • view
Get out you have no clue what I've done to help prevent this catastrophe that is before us. Collective guilt is not remotely helpful, can be incredibly destructive and too vague to be helpful.
aug 25, 2025, 4:44 pm • 2 0 • view
Okay
aug 25, 2025, 4:45 pm • 1 0 • view
“okay” 😂 > Following you!
aug 25, 2025, 6:29 pm • 2 0 • view
do you wear a well fitting mask when you go into buildings?
aug 25, 2025, 6:38 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes
aug 25, 2025, 6:40 pm • 0 0 • view
That really doesn't hint at the problem people followed the advice of the Biden Administration and the CDC when they downplayed mask wearing in lieu of vax and relax.
aug 25, 2025, 6:41 pm • 0 0 • view
These were trusted institutions that people have been told to believe in and the Biden Administration the "follow the science" guy completely underminded the science and Public Health to accommodate business interests.
aug 25, 2025, 6:44 pm • 1 0 • view
If you realise that the 1918 Flu probably killed over 50 million people, COVID certainly didn’t kill twice as many - BUT the world population was a lot smaller in 1918, so the CFR for Flu was a lot higher. Doesn’t minimise the impact of COVID, though, which was way worse than seasonal flu.
aug 27, 2025, 6:42 am • 0 0 • view
please change "our" to "trump's"
aug 25, 2025, 5:30 pm • 1 0 • view
No
aug 25, 2025, 6:18 pm • 0 0 • view
*7,010,681 people have died so far from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as of April 13, 2024, 01:00 GMT. The Spanish flu pandemic, which occurred from 1918 to 1920, is estimated to have killed between *50 and 100 million people worldwide. This makes it one of the deadliest pandemics in history
aug 26, 2025, 10:29 am • 0 0 • view
USA public health origins can be found in the marine hospital services around 1798 so quite a bit before 1918 influenza epidemic
aug 25, 2025, 5:35 pm • 0 0 • view
I suppose I could have said "public health as understood in a modern context" but I stand by the basic validity of the statement
aug 25, 2025, 6:20 pm • 0 0 • view
But public health only became a consistent concern of public policy after the 1918 pandemic. The original statement stands.
aug 25, 2025, 5:47 pm • 1 0 • view
In the USA, the Marine Hospital System was created by the First Congress to provide public health services to merchant marine crew on America's waterways so they would not spread diseases up and down the rivers and coastlines. It later became the Public Health System. It had mandatory insurance.
aug 26, 2025, 5:05 am • 0 0 • view
Well, obviously it wasn’t working
aug 25, 2025, 10:09 pm • 1 0 • view
It could have worked if people gave a shit.
aug 26, 2025, 5:21 pm • 2 0 • view
Yes.
aug 26, 2025, 5:26 pm • 1 0 • view
👺
aug 25, 2025, 7:48 pm • 0 0 • view
What dismantled our Public Health Department was the Republican led Congress and that bloviated narcissist Donald J Trump. If you are looking to blame someone look no further than who signed the EOs!
aug 25, 2025, 6:07 pm • 0 0 • view
Plenty of blame to go around
aug 25, 2025, 6:29 pm • 0 0 • view
Fuck around and find out, I guess…
aug 25, 2025, 5:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Gobsmacking.
aug 26, 2025, 2:05 am • 0 0 • view
yeah i don’t see a problem with that. seems totally logical. fucking doctors always trying to shove science down our stupid throats
aug 26, 2025, 2:50 am • 1 0 • view
😢🤢
aug 25, 2025, 11:39 pm • 0 0 • view
And use Cod Liver Oil and Leeches instead of science.
aug 25, 2025, 5:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Leeches are very scientific and are still used in medicine.
aug 25, 2025, 5:23 pm • 1 0 • view
I got leeched. It was medieval- feeling, but those literal suckers saved my tissue post surgery.
aug 25, 2025, 6:27 pm • 1 0 • view
It was an amazing discovery and its dovumented use in medicine dates back to the Ancient Egypt, around 1500 BCE. Leeching in the history--a review - PubMed share.google/Ok9ONvpAAza7...
aug 25, 2025, 6:41 pm • 1 1 • view
aug 25, 2025, 6:51 pm • 2 0 • view
Love it!
aug 25, 2025, 6:52 pm • 1 0 • view
I DID try leeches. They tasted horrible.
aug 25, 2025, 6:53 pm • 0 0 • view
Guess what? People in ancient history died at an amazing rate, Trying to make leeching look like a replacement for scientific medicines like vaccines isn't going to do it for me. Only the very wealthy lived longer because they had a life of leisure.
aug 25, 2025, 6:49 pm • 0 0 • view
I never once said it was a replacement for modern meds or vaccines. Trigger point for you eh? Didn't check my bio before posting SMH
aug 25, 2025, 6:52 pm • 2 0 • view
And bring back measles and pertussis. Which will cost children their lives.
aug 26, 2025, 1:41 am • 2 0 • view
And chickenpox, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough, typhoid, TB, tetanus, Hepatitis B.....let's see how quickly we can get back to the 1700s!
aug 26, 2025, 5:13 pm • 0 0 • view
Because Trump silenced the people who studied public health and he didn't like their recommendations.
aug 25, 2025, 5:24 pm • 1 0 • view
Drumpfs response
aug 26, 2025, 3:41 am • 0 0 • view
aug 25, 2025, 7:34 pm • 0 0 • view
They hadn't invented the stock market yet so they don't get it
aug 26, 2025, 5:42 pm • 0 0 • view
And another one will come under this fascist regime and then we’ll be finished
aug 26, 2025, 12:11 pm • 0 0 • view
Not my response. I will never believe something just because it shows up on my media feed. I will never doubt something just because an administration says it's "fake news". I don't want to be reassured by authority. I don't need someone to tell me what is real, important, or normal. Science, yes.
aug 25, 2025, 5:37 pm • 3 0 • view
Eugenics.
aug 25, 2025, 5:25 pm • 1 0 • view
Spanish Flu is #1, COVID is #5 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
aug 25, 2025, 9:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Your username is appropriate
aug 25, 2025, 10:16 pm • 0 0 • view
Thanks
aug 25, 2025, 11:10 pm • 0 0 • view
You make a valid point about public health but the numbers aren't even close. The 1918 pandemic killed 50 to 100 MILLION people. Covid isn't even up to 8 million yet. That said, public health has been wrecked by ravenous greedheads dominating the planet nowadays.
aug 26, 2025, 1:46 am • 0 0 • view
Just in the US is what I meant, hence the "our" in the post
aug 26, 2025, 1:49 am • 0 0 • view
The rich and powerful were mad it didn't kill more
aug 25, 2025, 6:35 pm • 6 0 • view
Especially the vulnerable and/or disabled. They consider us a drain on society's (THEIR) resources.
aug 26, 2025, 5:07 pm • 2 0 • view
I still don't quite understand why the ruling class went this way. Their wealth basically doubled during the lockdown year and the year after
aug 25, 2025, 4:36 pm • 30 0 • view
In the now for immediate benefits, thinking ahead when it came to maintaining an exploitable workforce, insular when it came to the implications of little to no public health measures?
aug 25, 2025, 5:14 pm • 2 0 • view
The ruling class, incredibly, cares less about wealth than they do about social control
aug 25, 2025, 4:39 pm • 70 6 • view
If that were not the case, then they would do cool things with money rather than what they actually do.
aug 25, 2025, 6:56 pm • 1 0 • view
Social control is what allows them to accumulate so much wealth i and to ensure that their possession of it is never threatened. They made a lot of money, sure, but they couldn't tolerate the establishment of a precedent that government is allowed to interfere in their affairs for the public good
aug 25, 2025, 4:42 pm • 63 4 • view
Well the Soviets had Lysenkoism. Perhaps it’s not the system, but rather the species.
aug 26, 2025, 3:04 pm • 0 0 • view
Lysenkoism was bad but (a) it only lasted a brief time in the USSR, (b) it didn't happen in other socialist states, and (c) they still had universal health care, which we don't and which would have made an enormous difference during COVID.
aug 26, 2025, 3:06 pm • 2 0 • view
Wasn’t so short. Moreover, it was buoyed by an argument of Marxist versus bourgeois genetics. If the leaders do not respect science and scientists, it doesn’t matter the system.
aug 26, 2025, 3:13 pm • 1 0 • view
Okay
aug 26, 2025, 3:28 pm • 1 0 • view
I think you have hit on a major root cause here. The ruling class thinks great wealth confers the right to dictate social policy.
aug 25, 2025, 5:24 pm • 4 0 • view
That's the Golden Rule in full effect
aug 25, 2025, 7:34 pm • 0 0 • view
yep! I've heard that.
aug 26, 2025, 1:33 am • 1 0 • view
ouch, cutting, true but cutting the souls of those in the social order.
aug 25, 2025, 5:18 pm • 1 0 • view
Why? Because they're incredibly out of touch with reality, that's why. They're so insulated from the plight of mere mortals like us that they have no freaking idea how to operate anything but maybe their own whims.
aug 26, 2025, 7:40 am • 1 0 • view
That period gave them previously unseen wealth and power for any private individuals to wield and they reacted by setting themselves to destroying the world order that made them so powerful in the first place
aug 25, 2025, 4:39 pm • 5 0 • view
It gave them forbidden knowledge. It gave them knowledge of the world they inherited, it's actual material conditions rather than the stories of old, and of the Many problems and issues that cropped up just fixing those did. Every problem solved, created two more. They know that for everything
aug 25, 2025, 8:44 pm • 1 0 • view
They've ever done, they will end up in the same ground as us, the same air, and the same fishes. Their name? Don quixote.
aug 25, 2025, 8:44 pm • 1 0 • view
And the reactions to both pandemics we're similar...a bunch of white supremacists fussing about having to wear masks.
aug 26, 2025, 1:05 am • 0 0 • view
Maybe forcing every person everywhere to get an experimental nonpreventative vaccine or lose their jobs house and money was a bad idea 🤷♂️
aug 25, 2025, 5:00 pm • 0 0 • view
Maybe you were a bad idea
aug 25, 2025, 5:08 pm • 13 0 • view
Clever. Enjoy your unemployment check
aug 25, 2025, 7:09 pm • 0 0 • view
Thanks
aug 25, 2025, 7:16 pm • 3 0 • view
Good thing that's not what happened.
aug 25, 2025, 5:48 pm • 5 0 • view
Explain to me what happened then? No one lost their jobs b/c they wouldn’t get vaccinated? How many people who got vaccinated also got infected?
aug 25, 2025, 7:11 pm • 0 0 • view
Far fewer than would have without the vaccine. And the only people who lost their jobs were endangering others by not being vaccinated. They FA'd, they FO'd. >>
aug 25, 2025, 9:29 pm • 2 0 • view
So you admit that that is exactly what happened despite JUST now saying that I am lying. It’s almost like you and the ppl like you will just lie and say whatever to get ppl to do what u want. Can’t imagine why that would erode trust in institutions
aug 26, 2025, 2:46 pm • 0 0 • view
Never said you were lying. You are, however, willfully ignorant. What I did was show that the reasons people gave for refusing to vaccinate were groundless. The issue wasn't what anyone wanted, but containing risk & harm to human lives.
aug 26, 2025, 9:28 pm • 0 0 • view
Government overreach for a vaccine that didn’t stop infection is gonna make ppl weary of professionals who encouraged this. If you can’t understand that u have no business participating in society
aug 27, 2025, 2:43 pm • 0 0 • view
Only the people too ignorant of basic science to understand that vaccines still prevent the vast majority of illnesses & save lives even if they don't completely block all infections. Or too selfish to care that they are endangering other people. >>
aug 27, 2025, 11:04 pm • 0 0 • view
They still get to participate in society, but nobody with any sense lets them make decisions that affect public health.
aug 27, 2025, 11:06 pm • 0 0 • view
The Constitution stipulates that the government shall "promote the general welfare." Not requiring vaccination when necessary would do the opposite. And in this case, any claims that it wasn't necessary are factually, ludicrously, wrong.
aug 27, 2025, 11:07 pm • 0 0 • view
Public health regulations go back to the Old Testament & before, including consequences for noncompliance. Then as now, the point was never forcing anyone to do anything, but the well-being of the entire society, Your childish butthurt is not a higher priority than saving lives.
aug 26, 2025, 9:36 pm • 0 0 • view
I never said that people in certain professions were not required to vaccinate. What I did was debunk your baseless claims that the vaccine was experimental or untested. Rail against reality all you want.
aug 26, 2025, 9:44 pm • 0 0 • view
News flash: very few vaccines of any kind completely prevent infection. What they do is reduce the severity to where many people don't even realize they're infected. And they massively decrease the odds of hospitalization or death. The Covid vaccine works in this regard exactly like >>
aug 25, 2025, 9:37 pm • 2 0 • view
dozens of other proven & effective vaccines that have saved millions of lives. The Covid vaccines may be new, but they are not experimental or untested. We caught a break so major I personally consider it a miracle: the Covid viruses are very closely related to certain flu viruses >>
aug 25, 2025, 9:44 pm • 2 0 • view
that already had or were close to having vaccines. Once the DNA was sequenced, it was pretty straightforward (though not simple) to replace the DNA of a flu virus in a vaccine with a Covid virus. Those flu vaccines were known to be safe & effective; testing before release >>
aug 25, 2025, 9:52 pm • 2 0 • view
...with *that of a* Covid virus.
aug 25, 2025, 11:51 pm • 1 0 • view
& now much practical experience confirm that's true for the Covid vaccines as well. Those are the facts, whether you like them or not.
aug 25, 2025, 9:54 pm • 1 0 • view
aug 26, 2025, 2:28 am • 1 0 • view
Trump fired the entire 'Pandemic Response' team in 2018 that had been established in 2015 under Obama. Covid struck at the end of 2019. This is why so many people died of Covid in the US. Spite, jealousy, and incompetence.
aug 25, 2025, 10:26 pm • 0 0 • view
NO, not our response, Trump's and heroin addled RFK Jr's response 🙄. I voted for Kamala.
aug 25, 2025, 5:55 pm • 1 0 • view
Plenty of blame to go around
aug 25, 2025, 6:25 pm • 0 0 • view
Let's not pretend the two administrations handled Covid the same. And Let's not pretend that this administration shows any concern about the health and welfare of the citizens of this country. Many more died than was necessary and many more are going to die now. Blame is not equal on both sides.
aug 25, 2025, 8:14 pm • 1 0 • view
We remember who was in charge during the pandemic right? The 34-ct felon, rapist and pedophile. America suffered the most loss of life under his regime. Now we're back to no research, no vaccines, hell no healthcare. Maga great again right?
aug 25, 2025, 11:07 pm • 0 0 • view
Isn’t history fun?
aug 25, 2025, 10:18 pm • 0 0 • view
The American populace is profoundly idiotic
aug 25, 2025, 9:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Not “our response.” The Trump Administration Response.
aug 29, 2025, 5:37 am • 0 0 • view
You think this is all just Trump? The “wellness” community has been around much longer than he has been in office.
aug 29, 2025, 5:44 am • 0 0 • view
Typhoid was a thing people didn’t like dying of as well
aug 26, 2025, 1:03 pm • 0 0 • view
It was Their creation and Their response to COVID.
aug 25, 2025, 10:29 pm • 0 0 • view
Well is certain that many of the important lessons learnt from the Spanish flu were ignored during the 1st year or so of COVID. A prime example being the importance of ventilation. The crazy notion that infection was in the air led to windows being closed and not opened as they should have been.
aug 25, 2025, 9:35 pm • 0 0 • view
And just as a century old wisdom from that pandemic was ignored, so too do we dismiss lessons from the early days of communism - the deadliest ideology ever to blight humanity.
aug 25, 2025, 9:41 pm • 0 0 • view
LOL okay
aug 25, 2025, 10:32 pm • 0 0 • view
It takes a capitalist to believe whatever bullshit the bosses feed you
aug 26, 2025, 1:37 pm • 1 0 • view
My only "boss" is a keen and insatiable hunger for truth. #Marxism is vain pretence blended with failure, resentment and malice.
aug 28, 2025, 8:01 pm • 0 0 • view
If you say so
aug 28, 2025, 8:03 pm • 0 0 • view
makes NO sense on any level
aug 25, 2025, 5:41 pm • 0 0 • view
I think about the Deadwood episode where Al and all the reprobates worked together to get the vaccine so they could be safe
aug 25, 2025, 10:02 pm • 2 0 • view
Brilliant! 👍😍
aug 25, 2025, 6:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Not ‘our response’ but the undereducated MAGAt crowd.
aug 25, 2025, 10:29 pm • 0 0 • view
It's so difficult to comprehend that one of our major political parties is vehemently against: Subject matter experts Science Educational institutions Maps Penguins Our Constituition Windmills Objective reality Women Anyone whose skin tone is darker than the color camel
aug 26, 2025, 2:52 am • 1 0 • view
That wasn't my response. That was MAGAs response.
aug 26, 2025, 9:18 am • 0 0 • view
7.1 million people in the world have died from COVID-19 so far. 50-100 million died from Spanish flu.
aug 25, 2025, 6:07 pm • 0 0 • view
The reference was to Americans
aug 25, 2025, 6:27 pm • 0 0 • view
🐀🐀🐀
aug 25, 2025, 6:56 pm • 0 0 • view
Wheeeeeeeeeee
aug 25, 2025, 5:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Not our response, the republiCON response
aug 26, 2025, 3:07 am • 0 0 • view
Not our response. MAGA's response has been to dismantle public health, vaccination, and anyone who disagrees with Trump.
aug 25, 2025, 6:14 pm • 2 0 • view
Plenty of blame to go around
aug 25, 2025, 6:33 pm • 3 0 • view
Absolutely mind boggling. I keep thinking that surely they aren’t that foolish but evidently they are….
aug 25, 2025, 5:32 pm • 1 0 • view
There were literally twice as many people died in the USA vs Canada per capita! The blue states faired better than red as they got more vaccinated than red. Just an observation, not critical of the red states. The USA might have faired better if they were led by a competent leader.
aug 25, 2025, 6:40 pm • 2 0 • view
The response of the Biden administration was abysmal as well. Look around the next time you go to the grocery store. 1. Are YOU wearing a mask to protect the vulnerable in case you have an asymptomatic case of Covid? 2. How many others are wearing them? 3. How many are still practicing NPI?
aug 26, 2025, 5:23 pm • 1 0 • view
Well I live up north, and its not an issue here. We vaccinated in large volume, and the issue is minimal. No one is wearing masks anymore and no one is contracting COVID but a minuscule sector.
aug 30, 2025, 3:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Except, for the benefit of the goddamn deliberately oblivious, 50% or more of covid infections are spread by asymptomatic or presymptomatic people. Now tell me that again, providing proof the majority of 'up north' people are regularly testing for the virus. I'll wait.
aug 30, 2025, 5:05 pm • 0 0 • view
Tough sledding on this kind of narrative in 2025, but you are sticking to it, and that takes courage! You can't hope to win anyone over ever again, but you keep pushing ahead! Wooooo!!!!
aug 25, 2025, 6:40 pm • 0 0 • view
That's exactly right, and you stupid American voters, VOTED FOR IT.
aug 25, 2025, 6:34 pm • 0 0 • view
I didn't vote for it
aug 25, 2025, 6:43 pm • 0 0 • view
No excuses, my friend. MILLIONS of Americans - an outright plurality - voted for Trump, knowing very well what (e.g. fascism, cruelty, stupidity, corruption, misrule and decline) they were voting for. It is long past time that American voters were held accountable for their nihilist misconduct.
aug 25, 2025, 7:20 pm • 0 0 • view
I don't know what response you want here
aug 25, 2025, 7:22 pm • 0 0 • view
I don't want ANY specific response, because based on very comprehensive evidence, I believe that "liberal democracy in the U.S.A." is a lost cause. I'd suggest that non-fascist Americans simply leave their declining empire, while this is still (sort of) possible. It's 1933 in Germany, my friend.
aug 26, 2025, 3:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Well I can't afford to leave the country so I guess I'm fucked
aug 26, 2025, 3:04 pm • 0 0 • view
That may indeed be true, as it was for millions of Germans in the 1930s (or, better still, for millions of liberal Russians, today). Historical honesty requires us to acknowledge that there simply IS no "nice" solution to situations like this. America is sliding into fascism and rapid decline.
aug 26, 2025, 3:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Repeat. 🇺🇸 Rinse & Repeat. Until you regain control of all the institutions designed to benefit public health, safety and security. Carry On! 🌻🇨🇦🕊️
aug 25, 2025, 9:34 pm • 0 0 • view