Speaking of determined optimism, a Michael Druker, from Ontario, Canada, wrote on a social media site:
Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something you’ve seen get better in your lifetime?
My introduction to his challenge was seeing the following reply of Naomi Kritzer, someone I follow:
In 1991, when I was a freshman in college, Magic Johnson was diagnosed with HIV. My roommate (a basketball player and fan) was genuinely devastated. We assumed he’d be dead within a couple of years. He’s 67 now.
As a 68-year-old, I can almost hear the whispered opinion that if Magic died tomorrow, okay, he had a life, but other than that I’m with Naomi. Michael Druker got a lot of responses and by my unofficial count the biggest vote getters are in the medical line–cure rates for childhood leukemia, for instance, as well as for other cancers. Seems everyone is grateful that someone they love is still alive, and likely wouldn’t be if they’d come along a generation or two earlier.
But as a sour, glass-half-empty sort of guy I’m obliged to point out that there is currently a measles outbreak in Minnesota–80 confirmed cases, almost all among young people who have not been vaccinated. I trust that the above graphic from the CDC makes a strong case for the effectiveness of the measles vaccine. Nowadays, however, a lot of people “do their own research,” especially in rural and politically conservative parts of the state. Most Minnesotans live in the Twin Cities, but of the 80 measles cases, 57 are in Todd County (county seat is Long Prairie, about 15 miles north of Sinclair Lewis’s home town of Sauk Centre, the model for Main Street). Trump got three-fourths of the presidential vote in Todd County.
It’s part of a trend. In 2025, Republicans in the Minnesota legislature offered a bill banning mRNA treatments, including several Covid vaccines, on the ground that they are “weapons of mass destruction.” Unbelievable! The bill would have made possessing or administering the vaccines a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Did I say “Unbelievable”? Should be but I’m getting used to the stupidity, sort of.
Even in medicine and public health, not everything is getting better, largely because politics have gotten unspeakably dumb.
Leave a Reply