Substantial logistical challenges and vaccine refusal by health care providers have contributed to a slow vaccine rollout. Better policies could fix this. Read the rest at USA Today.
Tag Archives: public health
Cyberattacks as a Public Health Threat
The first known death from a cyberattack raises the prospect that malware could be more than just a financial crime. Read the rest at Geopolitical Futures.
Will the Coronavirus Forge a Brave New World?
Of all the major geopolitical players on the planet, Mother Nature may be the toughest adversary. Nature has neither imperatives nor constraints to guide its behavior. Rather, it operates off general patterns that occur under various conditions. While the patterns provide broad strokes of expected behavior, it strikes mostly randomly. Even predictable phenomena, such as the Atlantic hurricane season, tell us nothing about the magnitude and target of, or potential for, economic damage. A catastrophic Category 5 hurricane that misses major population centers is quickly forgotten; a milder Category 3 hurricane that decimates New Orleans has long-lasting consequences. Read the rest at Geopolitical Futures.
Crime, Homelessness and Decorum Should Be Top Priorities for Seattle City Council
We are now in the year 2020, a metaphor for perfect vision. Though President George H. W. Bush once derided that “vision thing,” Seattle is in dire need of one. The mayor and City Council should embrace the following priorities. Read the rest at Puget Sound Business Journal.
Seattle’s Homelessness Crisis Is About to Become a Public Health Catastrophe
Seattle faces a public health catastrophe if King County and the Seattle City Council don’t deal with the squalid conditions at the city’s homeless encampments. Read the rest at Puget Sound Business Journal.
Anti-Vax Parents Face Jail in Europe, Africa
This article was originally posted at RealClearScience.
In late January, I wrote a controversial op-ed for USA Today on how jail should be an option for parents who endanger their children and society at large by refusing vaccines. I received plenty of hate mail for that — mostly in the form of four-letter words, Nazi comparisons, and vague death threats. However, before you turn your keyboard into an instrument of revenge, I would like to further elaborate on what I feel is a very, very important issue — perhaps the most important issue we have ever discussed at RealClearScience. Continue reading
Are Liberals or Conservatives More Anti-Vaccine?
This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
Thanks to my favorite troublemaker, Hank Campbell, the “who is more anti-vaccine” debate has sprung up again. In 2012, we co-authored a book, Science Left Behind, in which we argued that the anti-vaccine movement began with the political Left, but spread to religious conservatives and libertarians. However, because the most visible public spokespeople for the anti-vaccine movement (e.g., Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bill Maher, and Jenny McCarthy) are mostly on the political Left, we continue to believe that the Left should bear most of the blame. However, some writers argue that the anti-vaccine movement is truly a bipartisan phenomenon.
New CDC data helps shed some more light on the issue. The CDC has compiled an updated list which depicts vaccine exemption rates in each U.S. state. (See map.) Continue reading