I get that some people argue measles and chickenpox aren’t that bad because they had them as a child and came through just fine. It’s an extremely common argument and I hear it all the time. And that’s great! For them. What we fail to acknowledge is that recovering from an infection doesn’t always mean the virus is done. Because viruses can continue to be vicious. And it is the nature of its invisibility that can make it difficult to convince people the risk is in fact real. Measles can erase immune memory for months or years. It can also cause a fatal neurological disease years later. The chickenpox virus remains dormant in nerve cells and resurface later as shingles, causing persistent nerve pain and damage. HPV can cause 6 different types of cancer in both men and women. Hepatitis viruses can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer. Polio can produce new and progressive weakness decades after recovery. COVID can cause chronic illness affecting multiple organ systems. The point is that we sometimes don’t see the consequences of an infection until months or years later. Even then, we probably fail to connect them to the original infection. So yes - some of us are lucky enough to come through unscathed - many however are not.

Misinformation doesn’t give you control. Pseudoscience doesn’t give you freedom. Conspiracy theories don’t make you a critical thinker. You can’t make informed decisions with bad information. Good decisions start with good evidence.

Fauci did literally everything right: January 2021: we should look at this issue it seems plausible but unlikely February: it seems safe so far and we shouldn't withhold it for pregnant women August: confirmed safe for pregnant women in vsafe January 2022: confirmed safe in multiple trials Knuckle draggers on twitter don't understand science.

Two senators released a January 2021 text from Anthony Fauci this week, in which he told colleagues that fever after the second vaccine dose could theoretically be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. The text is circulating as evidence that covid vaccines cause miscarriage. This question was studied extensively in the years that followed, and the results deserve to circulate at least as widely as the text. 1/

🚨 BREAKING: Lady Gaga said: “This is our opportunity to vote against Donald Trump,” and her video was removed from Facebook and Instagram. This is what Republican fascism calls “freedom.”

Imagine you were a foreign agent working to undermine America. What would you do? Weaken public health. Undermine trust in vaccines, medicine and science. Weaken agriculture. Spread fear about food and agricultural technology. Make food harder and more expensive to produce. Drain military resources. Encourage conflicts that burn through weapons, money and attention faster than they can be replaced. Destroy trust in institutions. Convince people that scientists, doctors, universities, regulators and journalists are all lying to them. Then divide the population. Make Americans hate each other more than they fear their actual adversaries. And finally, destroy the idea of objective truth itself. Flood the information space with so much misinformation that nobody knows what to believe anymore. The result? A country that is poorer, sicker, more divided, less secure and less capable of responding to a crisis. You don’t need to defeat a country from the outside if you can persuade it to weaken itself from within.