No, the CDC didn’t report that masks are ineffective against COVID-19

16 Oct

Let’s put this another way. Masks don’t work if you wear them “all the time” but not when you are in the most risky situations. Imagine sitting down to drinks with your friends and saying, “Hey, I wore a mask all day. So I’m safe drinking my beer and talking to you all while in this room filled with other people who aren’t wearing masks”.

Do you wear a mask? How would you characterize your mask wearing? By that I mean, do you wear your mask all the time? Often?

Let’s say you said “all the time”. A lot of people, heck the majority of people say that. Do you wear your mask when you sleep? When you eat? All the time when you are at home? Of course not. You assume by “all the time” to mean “all the time when I’m out and about” or something like that.

Keep that in mind.

Most Americans do wear masks. One recent survey claimed 95% of Americans claim to wear masks. In that survey, 44% said they “always” wear masks.

In a Gallup survey, taken between June 29 and July 5, results showed nine in 10 people said they had worn a face mask at some point in the last week. However, regular adoption was lacking, with 14 percent saying they never wore them and four percent saying they rarely used and 11 percent saying they sometimes used them. Twenty eight percent said they “often” wore them, while 44 percent said they wore them all the time.

–Gallup Survey

The CDC are very interested in what causes the novel coronavirus to spread. And, since they expect masks to have an impact, you wouldn’t be surprised if they asked about mask wearing behavior when they do their studies.

Such is the case in the recent CDC study: Community and Close Contact Exposures Associated with COVID-19 Among Symptomatic Adults ≥18 Years in 11 Outpatient Health Care Facilities —United States, July 2020.

The CDC led team interviewed people who were sick (sick enough to show symptoms) and people who weren’t. They found three important factors differed between those who were sick and those who weren’t:

  • Sick people were more likely to have a close contact who was also sick
  • Sick people were more likely to have gone to a restaurant
  • Sick people were more likely to have gone to a bar or coffee shop

These were big effects. Those who fell ill were about 3 times as likely to report a close contact who was also ill. And often that close contact was a family member.

Close contact with one or more persons with known COVID-19 was reported by 42% of case patients compared with 14% of control-participants (p<0.01), and most (51%) close contacts were family members.

–CDC MMWR

If you asked me, I’d tell you I wear a mask all the time. Am I wearing one now? No, I’m at home with my family. Was I wearing one 8 hours ago? No I was asleep. If someone here is infected, I’m exposed. Even though I wear a mask “all the time”. Because I understand the question to be not literal “all the time”. If I’m outside, especially when other people are present, I wear it all the time.

People who got sick were also much more likely to have gone to a bar, coffee shop or restaurant. Again, this isn’t a small effect. People were 2-4 times more likely to get sick if they went out like this.

First off there is the obvious: if you are in a bar or a restaurant you are probably not wearing your mask, even if you tell a researcher you wear them “all the time”. All the time may mean to you “well, of course not when I’m eating”.

But there’s another factor in play here. If you are at a restaurant you are around other people who are taking their masks off. They are eating too. The CDC asked the people in the study if the other people in the bars/coffee shops/restaurants were wearing masks and social distancing. Here’s that table (click to enlarge):

table from CDC study
Table from CDC report

People who went to restaurants where other people followed social distancing (perhaps seating people farther apart) and mask recommendations (perhaps wearing a mask while not eating/driking) were less likely to get sick.

Let’s put this another way. Masks don’t work if you wear them “all the time” but not when you are in the most risky situations. Imagine sitting down to drinks with your friends and saying, “Hey, I wore a mask all day. So I’m safe drinking my beer and talking to you all while in this room filled with other people who aren’t wearing masks”.

Sadly masks have become a political talking point, and people are and will die because of it. I first saw this in “The Federalist” which chose to misinterpretation of a CDC study to claim that “A Centers for Disease Control report released in September shows that masks and face coverings are not effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19, even for those people who consistently wear them.”

Since then, the President was heard repeating the misinformation. With that in mind it was clear it had become a talking point so I checked with an old friend of the blog, Ginger Taylor. She’s an anti-vaccine activist who has been following that movement’s drift into becoming an arm of the alt-right. I knew she’d be on this. It’s misinformation and it’s dangerous and it’s an alt-right talking point. And I wasn’t disapointed. Here she is sharing the story by Tucker Carlson (Fox News entertainment personality). I know understanding scientific reports is not something Ginger does well, but after years of complaining that no study is a real “vaxxed vs unvaxxed” study, you’d think she’d know this isn’t a “masked vs unmasked” study. But, then again, perhaps she does understand it. The truth is not Ginger’s best friend.


So, yeah, this bit of misinformation is now a talking point. An anti-mask talking point. It’s a lie, but for some reason masks are a political statement.

That said, masks work. They prevent the spread of airborne diseases. Let’s take the time to point out this includes spit droplet born diseases. Keep that in mind, you ingest other people’s spit often. We all do when we are talking to each other. Most of the time this isn’t such a big deal, but really, we are talking about a simple way to keep droplets of spit with coronavirus in them from travelling from your mouth to another person’s mouth. Explain to me exactly why that’s a bad thing? Or so difficult to understand?

Hey Ginger? I wonder how many times over the past 20 years you’ve invoked the story of Semmelweis teaching us that germs spread through contact and washing hands prevents disease spread? But, hey, let’s abandon germ theory now, right? And that whole cry of , “let’s find non pharmaceutical ways to keep people healthy?” A mask vs. a hospital stay…gee, even you can do that math and work out which involves more involvement of “big pharma”. Seriously, if masks were being promoted by other anti vaccine activists, you’d never criticize their use. I’ve never seen you show that sort of backbone.

Hey Tucker? I know we aren’t supposed to take your show as fact and all. Your own lawyers say so (You Literally Can’t Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox’s Lawyers). But, really, is this the hill you want your audience to die on?

I’ll leave with this one observation that apparently also didn’t register with the likes of Tucker Carlson. The vast majority of Americans wear masks. Over 80% report wearing masks often or all the time. How often do Americans agree on anything to that level these days? Why are you guys fighting against the choice of the American people?

Anti-vaccine activist on the Proud Boys: “They seemed like really good guys”

7 Oct

Over the past four years many extremist and conspiracy theorist groups have been connecting and even forming alliances. The pandemic and the shelter in place orders have probably increased this trend, with anti-vaccine activists and other conspiracy groups joining with extremist groups in protests online and in person.

This isn’t entirely new. Recall a few years back when Andrew Wakefield’s faux-documentary (propaganda film, really) Vaxxed was touring the U.S.. One spokesperson they collected on the way was a holocaust denialist (Why are Robert Kennedy Jr. and Wakefield’s Vaxxed team allying with someone who spreads holocaust denialism?).

With that in mind, one shouldn’t be surprised to see that a prominent anti-vaccine activist has come forward to defend the Proud Boys. In case you haven’t heard of the Proud Boys, they made big news (always a win for extremists/fringe groups) when they were mentioned during the Presidential Debate recently. Donald Trump, stalling on calling out white supremacists, asked for a specific group to be named. Joe Biden obliged and named the Proud Boys (read about the Proud Boys on the Southern Poverty Law Center website here ).

Here is a post from the Facebook feed of Joshua Coleman (click to enlarge). He states:


They [the Proud Boys] seemed like really good guys. Over the last few years I’ve met many more and seen them at events they either organized or attended.

–Joshua Coleman



It’s unclear why he was at the events the Proud Boys organized or attended. But a key word there is “organized”. It’s not just “hey, look who showed up? Those really good guys the Proud Boys are here!”. No, it’s “I’m going to this event the Proud Boys have organized.

Ok, but who is this Joshua Coleman guy anyway? There are many anti-vaccine activists out there, who is he? He was part of the Vaxxed tour, driving around with Polly Tommey touting Andrew Wakefield’s monstrosity of a film. Since then he’s been a very active part of the anti-vaccine movement, arranging events and protests. I won’t link to them as I’ve given him enough attention, and, as I noted above, extremists love attention. A quick online search will get you a lot of information.

So, we have part of Wakefield’s team, a leader in the anti-vaccine movement attending “events” organized by the “really good guys” the Proud Boys.

I keep thinking I’m done losing respect for these people and this movement. And they keep going lower and proving me wrong.

—

By Matt Carey

Mr Trump, Mr Azar, your inaction is hurting autistic people

1 Oct

You took credit for it, but it is meaningless if it isn’t implemented. You are short changing people with disabilities.

Mr. Trump, a year ago you signed the Autism Cares Act into law. September 30, 2019. That law calls for the formation of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (the IACC). Which has yet to be named and start work.

That is clearly your responsibility. Both of you, President Trump and Secretary Azar, both of you. I know, I served previously on the IACC. I was appointed by then Secretary Sebelius.

Six months after signing that bill, you took credit for it. You noted the IACC in your press release.

Last year, I was proud to sign into law legislation reauthorizing the Autism CARES Act, approving more than $1.8 billion in funding over 5 years to research and develop new treatments and therapies, and enhancing support services for those with ASD throughout their entire lives. This legislation also expanded the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee to include representatives from 17 Federal agencies and stakeholders from throughout the autism community. The enhanced public-private partnerships made possible by these efforts are providing support to those with ASD.

It has been another six months and still nothing has been done to form the IACC and push forward the mission of the Autism Cares Act.

I am sincerely grateful that you and Congress put that law into the books. You took credit for it, but it is meaningless if it isn’t implemented. You are short changing people with disabilities.

Mr. Trump, Secretary Azar, select the new IACC. Get them started right away.

—
By Matt Carey

Trump’s strategy in the debate was to abuse Biden’s disability. That should sicken any real American.

1 Oct

Biden is a stutterer. He’s learned how to communicate clearly but that involves focus. There’s a great story in The Atlantic on this: John Hendrickson’s What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say. Here is one paragraph discussing possible ongoing strategies Biden has:

Eric S. Jackson, an assistant professor of communicative sciences and dis­orders at NYU, told me he believes that Biden’s eye movements—the blinks, the downward glances—are part of his ongoing efforts to manage his stutter. “As kids we figure out: Oh, if I move parts of my body not associated with the speech system, sometimes it helps me get through these blocks faster,” Jackson, a stutterer himself, explained.

I watched the start of the presidential debate last night, and watched more segments through the night. Everyone could see the interruptions and it’s natural to assume that this was Trump’s attempt to dominate the conversation. And Trump wanted to appear stronger than Biden, to be bullying him. And, of course, to try to get Biden angry. All of these are probably true.

But there’s another aspect to this. Watch Biden, he clearly focuses on what he’s saying to get through the stuttering. Trump’s team clearly saw this and saw this as a way to derail Biden. So the strategy emerged: keep interrupting, keep chattering while Biden is talking. This will throw Biden off. If Biden interrupts in kind, as he did some times, it won’t work as well because, frankly, Trump doesn’t think while he talks. And it is a way to get under Biden’s skin. Keep poking at that stutter–without being completely obvious–and Biden will get angry.

As I read John Hendrickson’s piece I realized a few things. I realized how lucky I am. Lucky that my speech issues were caught early, and that since special education had started being offered in schools, I was able to get help early. But I also realized how I need focus to speak on important issues, and how interruptions make that so difficult.

So, yeah, I think this is real. Team Trump saw an opening. A disability in an opponent. And they planned their attack to use that disability.

These are the people running the country today. This is why I can’t sit back and watch 2016 happen again.

—
By Matt Carey

So where is that economic miracle, Donald?

30 Sep

There’s a reason why Trump isn’t talking GDP growth these days. It’s because he failed by that measure.

Four years ago Donald Trump was able to sell America that the economy was in bad shape (it wasn’t) and that he, a businessman, could help. Many Trump supporters have told me then and now how we need a president who can run the country like a business. I’ve never gotten any real detail on that argument, they have just repeated Trump’s slogan.

We’ve recently learned from Mr. Trump’s taxes that he’s not very good at business. It wasn’t a big surprise given his failures in so many businesses over the years. We now know that his businesses have been kept afloat by his reality show and endorsements. And big, big loans.

So, we have a showman president, not a businessman president. Which anyone watching the past few years already knew.

But how about that economic miracle? What about the turnaround we were promised (since the economy was doing well under Obama, we didn’t need a turnaround, but let’s keep going). One way we can measure Mr. Trump’s success is with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The recovery from the great recession was slow, we were told. Trump can do better. This was also a key to his sales pitch for his tax cut: the economy would grow so much that the tax cut wouldn’t increase the deficit. He’s promised 4%, 5% even 6% quarterly growth in GDP.

We don’t hear him talk GDP much now. We don’t hear him brag how he grew the economy so much that we can pay for the huge deficits he created with his tax plan. Makes me want to know if he succeeded (OK, I know he failed, makes me want to quantify it).

With that in mind I pulled GDP data from here to check. Here it is: a table of the percent change in GDP by quarter going back to part way through the Obama administration:

I’ll be fair: I won’t include those quarters affected by the pandemic. Sure, I could also argue that with Trump’s epic mismanagement the economic hit has been far worse than it should have been. I could argue that convincingly. But let’s just look at the quarters before the pandemic. Trump had 11 quarters as president, back to Q1 2017 when he was inaugurated. For compariso, I then counted 11 quarters back to average for Obama.

Average GDP growth in Trump’s first 11 quarters was 2.5%. For the previous 11 quarters, under Obama, it was 2.4%. Trump did no better than Obama. And–this is important–that is with the short term jolt he got with his tax cuts.

So the only way Trump did as well as Obama was at the huge cost of a big deficit.

There’s a reason why Trump isn’t talking GDP growth these days. It’s because he failed by that measure.
—

By Matt Carey

Looking back 4 years: the rise of Trump, aided by faux autism advocates. I won’t be quiet again.

29 Sep

I still can not fathom how parents of disabled kids, of autistic kids, would support Trump. But this election, I’m not going to remain quiet. I have no illusions that my voice will make a significant difference. But I will not stand by silently while that charlatan tries for another 4 years of damaging America

Four years ago I stopped wanting to write. There were many reasons, but one was the rise of Donald Trump. Even when it looked like he wouldn’t win, the fact that so many Americans could support this man was horrible. Donald Trump, who had no disability platform. Donald Trump, who thought it funny to mock a disabled reporter (Serge Kovaleski) at one of his rallies.

The excuse offered–he has used acting disabled like that to mock people in the past. Or, as Ann Coulter put it, he was doing a “standard retard”.

Oh, that makes it soooo much better. Because to America, using disability to insult and mock others is allowed. It’s expected.

Anti vaccine autism parents long ago showed us their priorities: attacking vaccines. They demonize autistics, playing them up as burdens and worse. Their children’s disability is a weapon in their war against vaccines. Ironically, this group which fights efforts to bring acceptance to people with disabilities crave, absolutely crave acceptance for their views against vaccines. So it wasn’t surprising that they’d support Donald Trump, a man who had tweeted about the vaccines-cause-autism lie (So Anti Vaccine Crowd, how did that campaign for Trump thing work out for you?)

Quite frankly, these are not good people. I needed them out of my head. So I stopped writing, countering their misinformation by blog. Instead I counter their message in life, showing my community what a beautiful human my kid is.

But we are back, another election. Trump wants more time. More time to make the world even harder for my kid and other people with disabilities.

I still can not fathom how parents of disabled kids, of autistic kids, would support Trump. But this election, I’m not going to remain quiet. I have no illusions that my voice will make a significant difference. But I will not stand by silently while that charlatan tries for another 4 years of damaging America.

—
By Matt Carey

Did Jake Crosby close “Autism Investigated”?

25 Sep

There is/was a blog called “autism investigated”. If you are unaware of it, consider yourself lucky. It is/was a cesspool. Take one of the worst of the anti-vaccine bloggers (so bad that even the Age of Autism blog split with him), add a hefty level of misogyny, and then go full Trump supporter and you had Jake’s “autism investigated”.

As of now autisminvestigated.com website gives this:

As noted Jake became an ardent Trump supporter, in addition to his anti-science and anti-vaccine views. He also took on a very self-defeating view of why he was unsuccessful socially.

WaPo Wants Autistic Men to Fuck Even Less

What autists need to do is get over their extreme anxiety when it comes to women, not worsen it by worrying about make-believe “boundaries” established by feminists and “autistic” cuck reporters. It’s almost as if the author wants everyone else to be as dry as he is down there; he’s just picking autists as an easy target.

RESEARCH: Autistic Women More Likely To Be Dykes

And, let’s not forget how he characterized gender reassignment surgery as “genital mutilation” (allying with alt-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos)

Facebook Censors Milo Yiannopoulos For Condemning Transgender Genital Mutilation of Autistic People

Apparently he wasn’t alone in sabotaging his own desires to find female companionship. He seems to have allied with a former commenter on this blog (whom I had completely forgotten until I read this): Autism’s Gadfly on Why Nobody Wants to Fuck Us

It looks like his Facebook page is down as well. I hope Jake has indeed moved on. It would be great if he’s decided to analyze his efforts to date and move on. Unlikely, but it would be good for him.

—
By Matt Carey

Shelter in Place saved lives

25 Sep

When people claim that shelter in place orders didn’t save people, they are just wrong. When people say we didn’t “bend the curve”, they are just wrong. And this sort of misinformation will lead to people dying.

This is obviously a non autism post. Sadly, the same people (many of them autism parents) who have spent years promoting misinformation about autism, autism ‘cures’, and vaccines are now talking about the COVID-19 pandemic. So I felt it appropriate to speak to some of this misinformation.

This is also a lot of graphs.  But the bottom line is simple: we were in a runaway situation.  Cases were doubling every 5 days.  In a few weeks after shelter in place we would have had our hospitals overwhelmed.

There is a push against the shelter-in-place orders that were put in place to slow the spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2. I’m sure we will be debating for years to come what the best plan should have been. But what is not a debate is whether the shelter in place orders limited the spread and, in so doing, saved lives.

I live in Santa Clara County, which was one of the first counties to institute shelter-in-place (SIP) on March 17, 2020. While I was surprised by the order, the reasoning was already becoming clear: the virus was spreading in our county at an alarming rate. I had been watching the numbers day by day, and we were seeing a case count doubling every 5 days. New York City was clearly seeing the start a huge outbreak at this time.. In a little over a month previous Italy had seen deaths rise from near zero to 6,000 per day. That’s one month.

I pulled the data to see what happened here in Santa Clara county.  And, more importantly,  what could have happened.

Here’s a graph that would have faced the public health staff in Santa Clara County in mid March:

COVID-19 cases in Santa Clara County as of March 17

Looks like an exponential, and this is exactly what it is.   Cases were growing fast.  Here’s a fit to those data using an exponential growth curve:

That’s a very good fit to the data. Cases were doubling every 5 days. With that sort of growth, we were not very far behind NYC. Keep in mind, this is just a count of who was being diagnosed with COVID-19.  A lot of cases were not, so there was a lot more COVID in the community than these few hundred cases.  The shelter in place order is at day 25.

Put yourself in a public health official’s place. You see these data, what does that tell you about the future? Well, since it’s an exponential, we can use the fit to  predict. Consider 4 weeks out from the date of shelter in place. Ask, how much would the epidemic have grown in that time? The curve tells us: we would have grown to about 93,000 identified cases (assuming testing could keep up).

When you are covering this much of an increase, it’s often helpful to use a semi-log plot.  In that case the exponential curve is a straight line (same data, graphed differently):

Let’s overlay the actual case count on top of this line.  We can ask  ” did we bend the curve”? Absolutely. Here are the data:

Very soon after the shelter in place order (day 25) the case count diverges from the projection.  The curve was being bent.  By 4 weeks out from the shelter in place order, and the number of cases was 50 times lower than what would have happened without any actions to mitigate the spread.

50 times lower.

This is even more clear if we go back to a non log plot:

You can barely see the black line for the case count on this graph.  By day 50, the actual number of cases is well below the prediction. And that means lives were saved.

At the time, the fatality rate was unclear, there were estimates of about 4% of those identified as covid positive dying (the “case fatality rate”). Current statistics put the case-fatality rate in the U.S. at about 2.9% . With 3% case fatality, we were looking at almost 3,000 people dead by a month after the shelter in place . And that number would have continued growing steeply had we not taken measures to mitigate the spread.

It is worth keeping this in mind: if the hospitals were overwhelmed, the case-fatality ratio would have been higher. More people would have died. 90,000 cases would have absolutely overwhelmed our hospitals. Even with the extra capacity in the temporary hospital set up in our convention center. That hospital had only 250 beds. Not all of the 90,000 cases would have required hospitalization. But there would have been enough to swamp our hospitals.

Santa Clara County lost about 150 people in the first wave of the pandemic (it’s hard to say precisely where the cutoff for “first wave” would be, but somewhere about 150-200 looking at the trend). It could have been 10 times higher, or even more than that.

When people claim that shelter in place orders didn’t save people, they are just wrong. When people say we didn’t “bend the curve”, they are just wrong. And this sort of misinformation will lead to people dying.

—
By Matt Carey

We needed the IACC in 2020. It’s past time to re-form it

13 Sep

The U.S. has a committee called the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. It’s mandated by law, a law that has been periodically renewed. Most recently as the Autism CARES Act of 2019, public law 116-60. Signed into law on Sept. 30, 2019, nearly a year ago.

I was a member of a previous incarnation of the IACC. The IACC is limited in what it can do, but there are areas where it is uniquely capable of action. Let’s use the pandemic as an example:

The IACC could bring together experts to share what is known about how the pandemic would affect the autism communities. What strategies work for remote learning for autistic students? What strategies might help for group homes where individuals are unable to get out into the community? What are the medical considerations of a disease like COVID-19 on autistic people?

The IACC brings in experts in each meeting to discuss topics of importance to the community. The topics above and more could be covered. Recommendations and information could be gathered and written into reports and web pages for members of the community to use.

The IACC also recommends research funding strategies. I am 100% certain that there is a lack of information on how the autism communities could best react to the pandemic. Right now is the time to focus research funding into how the pandemic is affecting autistic people and what works and what doesn’t. Because there will be another pandemic.

The last IACC term ended with the sunset of the previous Autism CARES Act, at the end of September in 2019.

In the best of times, there is no reason for the IACC to go through such a long hiatus. These are not the best of times. The IACC would have to meet remotely, but that is no reason to not form a new committee. The best work of the IACC is done outside of the meetings, gathering and reporting on research. We need that now.

—

By Matt Carey

So Anti Vaccine Crowd, how did that campaign for Trump thing work out for you?

12 Sep

In 2016 the anti vaccine community was very excited to have a candidate who lent them credibility. They always crave credibility and will latch on to anyone who does so. Think Robert Kennedy Jr., Del Bigtree, Andrew Wakefield, the whole raft of charlatans that any reasonable movement would cut loose. But in 2016 they had Donald Trump, who evolved from dark horse candidate to Republican nominee to president.

Donald Trump had tweeted the vaccines cause autism lie:

Trump lies about vaccines to get attention

Trump lies about vaccines to get attention

And had made other comments about autism and vaccines.

By this time most people understood Donald Trump. He’s a shameless self promoter who likes to take controversial positions to get attention (birther conspiracy, anyone? He even revisited birtherism with Kamala Harris).

Being a conspiracy theorist wouldn’t alienate Trump from the anti-vaccine community. Far from it. Just as they deny their own conspiracy theory roots, they will look past this in Trump. And being a loud mouth who is often wrong? Well, that sums up JB Handley to a T.

Trump flirted with the anti-vaccine movement and the anti-vaccine movement fell in love. JB Handley (anti-vaccine activist who uses his position as an autism parent in his campaign) wrote an article: Trumps Stands with my Son, I Stand with Trump with comments like “If ending the Autism epidemic is your top priority, how in the world can you vote Democrat? rel=’nofollow'”.

Let’s leave aside that the “autism is an epidemic caused by vaccines” is doubly wrong. Many of us responded at the time: if having respect for people with disabilities (such as your son, Brad) were any sort of priority, how could you vote for Trump? Trump clearly doesn’t respect people with disabilities. For example:

Why would an autism parent support this?

Why would an autism parent support this?

That said, JB Handley and many others in the anti-vaccine movement (including other autism parents) clearly don’t respect people with disabilities. Remember when Del Bigtree compared autistics to dogs and exotic chimpanzees while autism parents Mark Blaxill and Ginger Taylor laughed?

Many of us autism parents prioritize our kids and the autistic community in general. We feel that respect and rights for people with disabilities is a paramount issue. And Trump had no disability plans in his platform. But the anti-vaccine movement, even the autism parents, do not place such a high value on respect for people with disabilities. In fact, they disparage it as trying to “normalize” disability (I got a hint for you all–disability *is* a normal part of being human).

Here we are 4 years later. Donald Trump not only hasn’t taken up the anti vaccine banner, hasn’t taken up the “autism is a vaccine induced epidemic!” campaign, he’s now throwing money into the development of new vaccines and actively trying to get the vaccines to market before they can complete safety and efficacy testing.

Instead of “draining the swamp”, he’s pressuring the CDC and the FDA to become part of his political machine, where independent science isn’t reported but rather science-like support for Trump’s messaging are allowed.

The irony is thick. The anti-vaccine movement got the exact opposite of what they hoped for.

So I wonder what they are thinking now. How much do they know that they were played? And do they care that they were played?

I haven’t done much digging on this, but I did run across this from “you are so charming Del, I’ll laugh at your autistics-as-dogs remark” Ginger Taylor:

Yeah, she’s on to Trump. But she still backs him.

It’s rare for the anti-vaccine movement to admit even this much of a mistake (JB Handley, for example is very much in the Trump mold. Including the ‘never apologize, never admit mistakes’.)

I do wonder if somewhere, hidden from view, there have been discussions of “well, we were played by Trump” among the anti-vaccine community.

—
By Matt Carey

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