One of the problems with dealing with trolls on the Internet and Twitter in general is you sometimes get unwanted attention. There's a reason I don't allow commenting on my blogs; I really don't to spend time reviewing unsolicited comments. Now Twitter does provide a means to filter prospective reply tweets. (Of course, your own followers might push back on your tweets.) And of course, you can always mute or block any Twitter user harassing you. Of course, I can't and wouldn't censor people disagreeing with me. I'm probably attracting maybe up to a dozen daily post readers, only one blog follower I'm aware of. Someone could spend his time and effort creating an anti-RAG blog, but what's the point? Even on Twitter I'm struggling to gain followers in the teens (number, not age),
Twitter doesn't identify all reply tweets. I don't know how they decide which ones to notify me about--maybe impressions or status (one was a celebrity actress wondering if I was for real)? Now admittedly I sometimes poke a bear with a stick, so it's not entirely unexpected when s Twitter user snaps back at me. I don't keep a counter, but probably a plurality are pissed-off leftists, followed by Trumpkins, and a hodgepodge of others, even a slimy neo-Nazi I quickly blocked.
I'm not happy with anti-vaxxers, and I've fought the good fight on Twitter and in my regular journal post COVID-19 segments battling misinformation. The politics are seriously screwed up. I'm pro-liberty, but just to give an example from the recent news, FL Gov. DeSantis is looking to recruit police from around the nation alienated by vaccine mandates, even promising signing bonuses. What kind of message does that send to cops who have done the responsible thing in terms of contributing to herd immunity? Unvaccinated cops are basically transferring the cost and risk of any preventable COVID-related expenses to the taxpayer.
Now as a libertarian, I'm probably on the minority side of opinion, although I was highly critical of the federal government's botched COVID-19 test monopoly/rollout, harmful policies like Andrew Cuomo's decision to place infected patients into nursing home, Draconian economic shutdown policies creating a double standard for "essential workers", certain guidelines/heuristics translated into inflexible laws of dubious scientific merit (e.g., the mandated use of cloth masks). and Biden's attempt to force an employer vaccine mandates through an unconstitutional/illegal OSHA regulation.
Let's be clear: I'm not opposed to the concept of vaccine mandates, particularly in certain employment considerations, e.g., on a Navy ship where you live and work in close quarters or meat packing plant, health professionals/nursing home workers or other professions interfacing the general public and especially at risk populations . I would be more nuanced in my approach. For example, I would probably use health surcharges or tax penalties; in a country where over 76% of adults are at least partially vaccinated (presumably most working Americans), I question heavy-handed tactics. I seriously doubt most workplaces are super-spreader locations. You name it: trucking, landscaping, logging, fishing, farm work, remote IT work, professionals with their own offices or in well-spaced cubicles, etc. It just seems like employers are better able to judge workplace contexts.
But don't get me started on the anti-vaxxers. This is not the first time over the life of the blog. I was unhappy anti-vaxxers kept kids below herd-immunity allowing for multiple small-scale measles breakouts, probably via foreign-traveling kids catching the disease and importing measles back into the states. Whereas I as a libertarian normally take a dim view of the State protecting us from making bad choices for our own health, it's a different case when people are conduits for the spread of contagions. Some people are sensitive to vaccines and a number are immuno-compromised, at high risk for severe health complications. The modest burden of an immunization seems a reasonable price to pay towards herd immunity.
As someone who did reasonably well in high school and college science (I also did well in high school district for the Texas interscholastic league science contests) I resent the fearmongering tactics and malicious rumors of anti-vaxxers or what progressives alternately call "misinformation". It's almost impossible to summarize most of them, but common ones include exaggerating the nature and extent of breakthrough infections and trying to portray mRNA vaccines as gene therapy. It seems a number of them try to turn the tables on arguments for vaccination. A good example is one Twitter user I caught trying to blame capacity hospitalizations on breakthroughs (people who get infected despite vaccination). It's almost like playing a game of Whac-a-Mole. No, a vaccine can't always fend off infection in a pandemic any more than an umbrella keeps you from getting wet during a hurricane. It almost always helps the body fend off a novel viral infection from more serious consequences. The duration of protection may differ on personal health condition and factors like age.
One point of contention is Biden's recent order for the military to vaccinate. (Disclosure: I was an Air Force brat, served honorably as a Navy ensign in my early 20's, and I've worked in the past on DoD contracts, so this ) Vaccination is a fact of life in the military with foreign assignments, and you would think after the March 2020 COVID outbreak on the Theodore Roosevelt, Biden's order for a vaccine mandate wouldn't be questioned. But I also picked up on a progressive talking point of Gen. George Washington's precedent against a smallpox infection breakout during the Revolutionary War.
That's an interesting story for the unfamiliar reader. No, we're not talking in today's terms of needles and injections. Jenkins' revolutionary cowpox vaccine was still years off. Back then was the alternative of variolation, of cutting into the flesh of a patient and inserting a thread soaked in the puss from an infected person's sores. The idea was to induce a typically milder case of smallpox, and recovery often took a month or so. Interestingly, Washington caught the disease in his late teens. Smallpox had been endemic in Britain, but not in its colonies. This provided the British with a tactical advantage and there were rumors about the British deliberately exposing the troublesome colonists without herd immunity. So Washington attacked the crisis with a mix of quarantines and inoculations.
So, one anti-vaxxer Twitter user mocked my reference to the precedent by suggesting I also wanted to bring back the use of medical leeches. Of course, the dimwitted troll doesn't seem to realize leeches are used in circumstances even today to save lives and limbs. No, of course I'm not suggesting bringing back variolation again; the practice often killed as many as 5-10% of patients. But the statistics of those catching the disease naturally were worse, and Washington couldn't afford for his army to be eviscerated.
